diskzero

Yes, I could have done without the ice maker. It never broke, but it did have a tendency to turn the ice cubes into a solid block.

The previous house I moved from had a Subzero fridge in it from 1990. It was serviced in 2012 and was still running strong when I left. One thing that pleased me was the easy access to a parts catalog and the ability to easily order replacement parts. Some of the tray slides had cracked and I just ordered them online after consulting the catalog. I know the unit cost a fortune in 1990, but decades of service and the ease of ordering parts was certainly nice.

We ended up with a Samsung fridge in our new home. It has no external display or any other indication that it is a "smart" fridge. I only found out when a friend visited who has a Samsung phone and the phone offered to connect to the fridge. We spent the next 30 minutes removing panels from the fridge and found the wifi/bluetooth antenna on a small board under the top-right hinge cover. The board was disconnected and the fridge continues to operate normally.

I am now eyeing my dishwasher very suspiciously.

Interesting and useful. I would welcome societal action and have no faith the government can do anything at all given the government has no idea what to act on. I have seen the “government” wage a war on drugs, allow encampments to sprawl only to bulldoze them later, allow cars and RVs to serve as ad hoc housing only to tow them away, provide injection sites only to close them down, etc. Whatever the government does it reverses itself and we can’t seem to make progress.

I’ll use the word though; our inability to provide housing and basic essential services to our fellow human beings is a blight.

When I lived in downtown Los Angeles, I volunteered at the Midnight Mission and various veterans organizations dealing with addiction and homelessness.

Only you can really define what is productive to you, but people are always needed for running the shelters, working in the kitchens and more. It isn't glamorous at all.

People need to be transported from one facility to another, to medical appointments, to court, to counseling and more.

I currently work with youth at risk, helping them finish their high school degrees and families who are right at the brink of falling into serious problems.

I can't really tell you which organizations to volunteer, as there is a spectrum of them; some are religious like the Salvation Army and some have social and political agendas that may not align with you. Without recommending or condemning, for example, you will find organizations who work with pregnant teens who are anti-abortion. This may not be for you. The same goes for sexual and gender identity issues.

One thing that seems very unpolitical to me, and it is how I started, was volunteering at a local shelter. If you have more affinity with helping women, there are shelters that deal with them. If you have more affinity with dealing with people with addiction issues, there are shelters dealing with them.

Because of my background in the military, education and addiction, I find affinity working with veterans, addicts and at risk youth.

The problem is daunting, and the needle feels unmovable most of the time. In the big scheme of things I feel powerless, but I know reducing local misery is possible and is something I can help with.

"Cars are plentiful and cheap in America and can be had next to free in many cases." What is the buzzword bingo and what is my bent?

I think it should be permissible to allow some dude to live out of a 2002 Town and Country that parks at a revolving series of strip mall. I currently work with several people who use a similar method to keep themselves and their kids off the streets.

The phrasing might be bad in that I was pointing out the overall bleakness of the overall situation; no insurance, no registration, no maintenance, but the intent was to show that they are teetering on the brink of falling into an abyss that is very difficult to come out of, not that they were some sort of anonymous nebulous mass.

The main thing I have been struggling with personally with working with this issue (housing, addiction) over 25 years is that it is such a huge, seemingly unsolvable problem that no one is able to address systematically and when I think about the big picture I feel overwhelming helplessness, but find hope working in much more local situations.

The car comment was just an observation to the parent comment, with some additional commentary on how it isn't at all a big luxury, rather a bleak situation where the car owner is in a very precarious situation. Reading it now, I do see how it could be misconstrued as some sort of zealotry of people of a certain bent, but I think I am might be bent the opposite way of what you think!

I agree and understand part of what you are saying. I am not exactly sure what the privilege was, but I do understand your observation about the tone-deafness. It is for certain that current job outlook seems bleak and this is extremely difficult. In general, I admit I am very privileged in that I was able to live in a time when certain types of jobs were plentiful and there seemed to be limitless opportunities available to me.

When you put it this way, it is very anxiety inducing and I understand that. What this is helping me realize is that my childhood, and our lives of our children were different than many of the commenters, not necessarily better or worse.

As children, my siblings and I didn't have a lot of stuff, and our family didn't have a lot of stuff either. It certainly wasn't our intent to traumatize and stunt our children and this doesn't seem to be the case. I will certainly ask them.

Yes, I can see this now. Thanks for the insight.

Very good points. Thanks for the insight and critique. There is a reason I don't wade into social topics and usually only comment on technical things I have worked on and this is helping me understand why!

Got it. I mainly work with people who have severely fallen off the cliff with almost no way to climb back out. I totally see how this new gear could keep someone from reaching a critical breaking point.

A very interesting and valid observation. You and your children are super fortunate and your approach seems like a very good hedge against some serious uncertainty coming up.

We weren’t quite in the same position until much later, and I am somewhat envious of your position. Best of luck!

There is no implication here. It is clearly stated as "Our primary goal", not your primary goal. You are reading way too much into this.

I agree it is a modern post-WW2 phenomenon, but not sure what is funny about it. Societies and systems constantly change and evolve. This is part of progress, and yes, can also cause setbacks.

My use of the term "conflict" might be what is triggering. Maybe "bucks the trend" or "not in line with" would be better.

Many approaches to parenting are successful. I presented my approach. Others work.

Interesting comparison and one I didn't consider. Thanks for the insight!

Are you infinitely wealthy? Storage units are a slow leak on finances, just like uncanceled subscriptions and mobile phone plan features.

I somewhat expected my post would generate this type of attack and then lead to my parenting style is better than years, my kids are more successful than yours, my kids are happier to visit us than you, ad nauseam.

Parenting is hard and there are multiple approaches that lead to successful outcomes. Your approach worked and I am happy for you. Congratulations on your successful approach.

This is a difference in parenting approaches. For our kids, going to college, or in one case the military and another no college, was moving out. You have your approach, we had ours. They were perfectly capable and successful in figuring out their lives without flying back to the nest every summer.

This must be a generational issue. My kids took “their” things with them when they became autonomous adults. As parents, we raised our children that they would move out and establish their own identities and futures. We never created any expectation that their childhood home would serve as a storage facility, extended stay facility or even exist. We of course offer help and support when needed.

I know this is in conflict with a lot of modern parenting for many reasons. Our primary goal was to create independent, autonomous, fully functional adults capable of funding their own lives and determining their own future.

A thousand dollars may as well be a million dollars. In my personal experience, gifting a thousand dollars to someone in housing distress will not lead to the purchase of a solar panel.

You are correct, but regular supermarkets can even be scarce or non-existent in many areas.

The issue in America is that you can own a car, not pay for upkeep, not pay registration, not pay for insurance, not pay to park and still drive it many times without consequence.

My parents gave me my “crap” back and it went straight into the trash. When my kids moved out, their “crap” went to Goodwill or the trash.

One problem with what? Also, a problem is not “too much food”. This is an absurd statement. The problem is non nutritive, unhealthy food loaded with calories. Work in any troubled urban center and you will encounter a complete lack of actual grocery stores selling healthy food. Instead you get fast food, bodegas and convenience stores selling low quality, cheap items. We have known of this problem for decades. The poor are poor and certainly don’t have the income for “too much food”.

Cars are plentiful and cheap in America and can be had next to free in many cases. They will be in terrible shape, operated without insurance, registration and driven by someone without a license. They will also be gross polluters but won’t be taken off the street unless there are a series of criminal actions. Many states will only cite and not tow for lack of insurance or a valid license. The chance of getting pulled over is also quite low in many areas due to distribution of police resources. These vehicles are allowed to be parked and serve as shelters in many cities who choose to allow this as a tacit form of shelter. Just look at the transformation of the streets in Seattle, parts of the Bay Area, Los Angeles, and more. This is an ad hoc solution to a situation that can’t be addressed effectively.

As someone who has worked directly with these people in Los Angeles and Seattle, I tend to focus locally, otherwise the enormity of the situation is overwhelming and fills me with despair.

When you say “we need to fix this” no one can agree what “this” is. There is no one “this” and it becomes a morass of generational systemic issues, localized problems, competing views on economics, morality, government and more. It reminds me of when tech people show up to “fix” education. It just isn’t a single issue.

I agree we need to fix something, but as soon as I think about the big picture it feels futile and I have been involved in efforts for decades.

It is sad, and as one of the several former BeOS employees who went to Apple to add our experience to OSX, I can say that most of us have moved on. This isn't to say that others can't do what we did; they certainly should be able to. The OSX team back then was much smaller and we all had a maniacal attention to detail. One reason is that we were micromanaged by Steve J. and did lengthy weekly reviews with him and he was direct and brutal. He wasn't always right, but he did have the final say. This is all gone and even though Steve Lemay (now head of UX) was there during this time, he was also present during the overall rot of the user experience.

This would be so exciting. The implementation language would be less of a concern, but it worth wondering about... Would you use Rust, Racket, Lisp, Clojure, etc? I had a lot of fun teaching adults to program using DrRacket and didn't focus on the language as much as the concepts you mentioned above. They ended up being easily able to move to Javascript, Swift, and others at the end of the course.

K.W.Jeter was writing Blade Runner 2 in the office next to our small video game company. We were working on the entirely forgettable Dark Fiber title which was only published in Japan for the NEC PC-98.

https://archive.org/details/DarkFiberWindowsMac/(WIN+MAC)%20...

We talked a lot but I resisted asking him to help with the plot of the game. I probably should have!

"It takes five years to become an overnight success" I heard a variation of this from a VC who invested in my startup in the 8Os. I had to use it on him when we went back to the well a few times for more funding.

I don’t understand what you mean by “we don’t know”? Are you saying tech entrepreneurs don’t know education? I agree with that. Or are you saying we don’t know what problem to solve?