KrokanteBamischijf

It's a global phenomenon, caused by infinite growth based economic modeling (you know, where you base your whole economy on extracting increasing amounts of value from finite resources).

This type of modeling has been proven wrong and debunked early in the previous century, but it is still practised because it works very well for those gaining most of the profits.

You'll usually hear the politicians promoting policies that help the larger companies argue that such policies directly create jobs and thus economic value for the people. But this is more of that trickle-down economics bullshit that doesn't apply in the real world.

Because politicians worldwide have been so fixated on financial gains as a measure of the economy, they fail to measure and correct on (mental) healthcare, housing, education and equality.

Just some context on how large our housing problems have become: There is currently a deficit of 450 000 homes, which is projected to grow past 500 000 by the end of 2024.

The time we stop running countries like we do companies is when we'll see things improve.

Certified European here, can confirm individual member states and EU as a whole as not being a utopia.

Especially us Dutch folks who have been fucked over and held hostage by a waaay to large upper middle class for years. To the point where we've managed to abolish the ministry of housing, open up the housing market to foreign investors, replace a functioning healthcare system with a healthcare market where insurance firms rule with an iron fist and demand more bureacracy than actual care being provided.

... and the list goes on.

It's a worldwide symptom of economic unequality and the decrease in social skills stemming from the fact that we live our lives increasingly isolated in our own online social bubbles. We're turning increasingly hostile towards each other because we're no longer confronted with all people and perspectives in our surroundings, but just the ones we like.

The United States, being a large country filled with very diverse people, despite all being taught to "love America", still deals with Nebraskan farmers having wildly different wants and needs, and way different social standards than the Californian yuppies.

You're a large country, with 334 million people spread out over a vast amount of land. Meanwhile, we're 18 million living on a patch of marshy land roughly 3/4th the size of West Virgina, and we're further from being united than ever before. The fact that you're even holding together as a country is nothing short of amazing considering the fact that your political systems probably cause way more chaos than ours do.

A lot of Europeans probably mean it when they say "How are you even a country?". And it's not so much an attack on the American people as a whole (though some of y'all deserve to be made fun of), but geniuine amazement at the fact that it has more or less held together since 1776.

While I'm not exactly an expert user of AutoCAD (my background is architecture, industrial design and full stack development), I know enough about the software where I can tell it's based on a lot of legacy spaghetti code.

It's the same for Solidworks, which I know through and through, including the shitty VBA scripting environment. My CAD teachers always used to say the software is built like a wooden playhouse, which has been extended over the years to include a second story, a slide, a swingset and a roof extension. But underneath it all, it is still the same "don't fix it if it aint broke" codebase that Dassault has taken their chances on since the '90s.

The second someone invests any kind of money into an open source alternative, the way Blender has done for the mesh modeling industries, both Autodesk and Dassault systemes stand to lose their respective monopolies on 2D and 3D CAD.

But the trend is not limited to CAD software only, it is also highly prevalent in software providers for governmental tasks. Most of which sell the same products for years without iteration on their codebase. The result is that government organisations have to deal with shitty software that requires their individual users to connect to the database (yes, you heard that right, every user has to manually input database credentials that include all grants on all of the relevant datasets). Most of these cronies are reselling badly thought out software, where they've outsourced the development to third-world shitholes. Is is a goddamn miracle that there aren't more major incidents with government organisations.

The only solution for this kind of bullshit is open standards that encourage an open source approach to these kinds of critical applications. Where more parties are actually encouraged to build their own software and where the businessmodel is built around being a service provider and not a magical black box salesman.

If you're able to stop worrying about generating revenue based on your intellectual property and focus on generating revenue from the service you provide, surrounding your product... you'll automatically build a better product.

Not sure if you're going to like the route they'll be taking.

https://www.infoq.com/presentations/autocad-webassembly

I bet AutoCAD will collapse either way if Microsoft decided to purge legacy components from the OS. Feel like the codebase hasn't changed since the early days and it probably depends on some APIs that have been there since Windows ME.

Exactly, and I'll be ready - lighter and gasoline in hand - to burn bridges if they do.

I like the Wizarding World as a fantasy setting, but that is something not even our fucked up copyright laws can take away from me now. Rowling is going to hell for being a piece of shit, which is just as inevitable.

Just like Star Wars, the original creator started something amazing, ans they can fuck off now, the fans are taking over.

Sadly this world of publishers and royalties does not work this way, but I can at least cherrypick which parts of the material I get my enjoyment from.

Different take:

What we got was a pilot, an experiment to see if it is even worth going all in on the 'Portkey Games' route in the future. Sure, there's young adults out there who played the old school movie tie-in games of the GameCube era. But they aren't enough of an audience to warrant spending big on something that might flop.

Most of the game's systems and gameplay are underwhelming, yes. And they could probably have spent some time writing a more compelling story with a lot less chosen one bullshit tropes in it. But they did manage to build a wizarding world that convincingly lets you immerse yourself in it. The game has a real sense of scale to it, unlike the older games, and my favourite thing is just walking around looking at details and letting my own fantasy do the rest.

Now here's the thing. They did a succesful little experiment: They made a game that isn't outright hated and lives up to some of the dreams we had as kids playing the original movie games. And they managed to do so without defaulting to the shitty loot box practises so many publishers are known for this day and age. Especially WB stuff. It all depends on what they do next.

From here they can go one of two ways: Either take the easy route and create a carbon copy of this game, rake in some profits and watch as people start seeing the cracks and slowly lose interest. Or take it seriously, spend the extra attention and actually improve upon anything this game has to offer and stand to gain even more revenue.

Chances are they take the first path and everything comes crashing down, and they'll blame fans for losing interest. If they do opt to go the second route there is a lot of work to be done. Interested to see where it goes either way.

Holy crap, that would be dense.

Oh yeah, Hogan and Bischoff definitely did more harm than good. I remeber getting so tired of the Bischoff stuff that I would just not watch it anymore.

Best decision they've made was to bring in Sting to replace Hogan and we got a new Main Event Mafia and an awesome feud with Roode as a result.

Thanks for the suggestions by the way, definitely interested to see how the wrestling world is becoming more inclusive. I feel like it might still take some time to adapt, though we have been watching shiny muscular men in tight speedos for years now which is arguably more gay than watching someone talented doing what they do best and they just happen to be queer.

Impact/TNA are weird.

They have had their fair share of bad decisions and behind the scenes controversies. Though probably not all the hate they get is justified.

I tend to look past the mediocre stuff because most of it is born from milking the same storyline past its due date. Aces & Eights comes to mind, and all of the EC3 stuff. Loved the concepts, they just took way too long to resolve, which kinda drains the energy.

Ultimately it's the small moments and unique twists that I'll remember fondly, such as Roode terrorizing Sting to the point where he took out his Insane Icon gimmick. Jay Lethal impersonating Rick Flair, the Joseph Park Esq. arc, Austin Aries bluffing his way into 'option C' for a shot at the heavyweight title, the introduction of The Rising during the Beatdown Clan time with the amazing speech by Eli Drake. All moments that were amazing within their context.

But my absolute favourite arc was when they brought in Taryn Terrell as a referee after Gail Kim discovered you can just seduce the male referees to win. Which escalated into one of the best feuds I have ever seen.

Great to hear that trans wrestlers are taken seriously. Really curious to see them in action now. Might look up some matches.

Just read up on his separation from AEW since I don't know the guy at all. Seems like a very annoying person to deal with. The wrestling world sure has its fair share of drama but those involved tend to be professional (in the sense that you keep your personal views from interfering with your profession).

Yet the industry keeps making the mistake of allowing aspects from the personal lives of the performers to mix with the storytelling. And it has never lead to anything good. (The whole Kurt Angle/Jeff Jarett debacle comes to mind)

Interesting, I might give AEW a shot then.

I've been watching TNA/iMPACT since I was a little kid and my friend introduced me to wrestling. Probably the first episode I've ever seen is the one where Abyss slams Brother Runt's forehead into a pile of thumbtacks, instantly sold. Little me couldn't shut up about it for weeks.

I stopped watching iMPACT because they've devolved into a shell of their former self with all the talent leaving and the new roster is more WWE-like. Never liked WWE because of their lack of creativity. Their roster seems to consist of "muscular man really wants championship"-type cookie cutter personas and I haven't heared of any interesting storyline that wasn't [insert character] turned heel and betrayed [championship contestant] at Smackdown.

AEW seems like its worth giving a go. I actually liked some of the things TNA has done through the years such as mixed tag-team matches where the women convincingly beat the men and they weren't weird about it. ODB carrying Eric Young around and "protecting her man". Christopher Daniels walking down the ramp like a bond villain wearing a scarf and drinking an appletini. And probably most of all, the X-Division where the original Mexican Lucha Libre style wrestling was much more promoted than anywhere else.

If AEW can scratch the itch for womens wrestling and wacky storylines I'll likely stick around. Especially interested in seeing how they position their trans wrestlers as that seems to be a hot topic in sports in the United States right now. I tend to get bored of the macho nonsense quite quickly (which explains my love for the X-Division, back in the day).

Definitely nothing wrong with that. People have spent way more outrageous amounts of money on other hobbies so just go for it.

If the expense is worth it to you, there is no reason not to. And you'll likely find other uses for the secondary phone too.

If you ever want to do more serious surveying, look into what people are doing with RTK antennas and their smartphones. There are definitely some interesting options for very serious centimeter-accurate surveying that can be done with just a smartphone and an external RTK antenna.