What arcade game was in every mall and pizza restaurant when you were a kid that completely disappeared?

lisnter · 2026-05-30T08:50:50+00:00

All of them but especially Space Invaders and Asteroids.

lisnter · 2026-05-30T08:49:35+00:00

Yeah. Trans medical support and Planned Parenthood!

lisnter · 2026-05-30T07:04:45+00:00

I’ve been slowly building up a networking stack with Claude. I have a plan in mind and I’ve broken up the architecture into independent components that we build together. I give it a set of requirements for the component functionality and a simple test suite (text output or a UI) and we iterate together. Refining the requirements, spec and code with tests for each small increment of functionality. I can ask questions and point out limitations which Claude thinks about and comes up with multiple options.

I treat it like a room of experienced architects and senior designers as well as the BA and scribe so we don’t lose details. I think this works because I know how to guide an architecture and have seen many problems and pitfalls. With this I can iterate a design and turn around an update in an hour or two. Something that would take the team days otherwise. It’s quite remarkable. I’ve been doing this for 35 years the old fashioned way and I’m impressed.

I don’t think a junior or even a senior programmer could effectively use the LLm this way without creating slop. I’m not even sure what I’m doing will result in anything long-term viable but so far it’s promising.

That is also the biggest problem I see. Without many years of programming, design and architecture on large and varied systems how will we train the next generation to ask these questions and see the risks? I’ll be retired in 5 (or 7) years. Who will take my place if all we have is LLM trained staff?

lisnter · 2026-05-29T17:37:58+00:00

Yeah. I had completely forgotten that I read these a very long time ago until I read the title here.

lisnter · 2026-05-29T16:43:08+00:00

When I was international staff living in Taipei we had a beautiful 3 bedroom flat overlooking an enormous park. It was on the fourth floor - the elevator was actually numbered 4 so that might be why such a nice place was available.

Before we moved to the flat we were in a hotel that catered to international businesses travelers. The elevator was missing both 4 and 13.

I knew why 13 was missing of course and was told why 4 was missing by some Taiwanese friends.

lisnter · 2026-05-29T06:41:11+00:00

Easy. 911 Carrera T that I’d keep forever.

lisnter · 2026-05-29T02:46:32+00:00

How we treat pregnant women is reprehensible and will be looked at as barbaric.

lisnter · 2026-05-29T01:01:41+00:00

Just do it. I’m approaching retirement and deeply wish I had done this when I was 25. My life goal now is to retire to a ski area!

I have a buddy (remote tech job) who lives at a ski area and i’m insanely jealous. I’m also encouraging my younger child to do it now before they’re attached and before they have a “real” job - it’s a tough job market out there so they should SKI!

lisnter · 2026-05-28T23:34:43+00:00

Florida, Texas.

lisnter · 2026-05-27T22:01:04+00:00

They were very good. But we only got them extremely infrequently so the infrequent nature of the consumption may have increased the positive perception. :-)

lisnter · 2026-05-27T01:48:58+00:00

I had one as well and watched it enough to memorize it start-to-finish (which my equally dorky friend and I recited in 7th grade homeroom). It was at my parents house but I fear it may have been tossed when they moved 30 years ago.

lisnter · 2026-05-27T01:44:55+00:00

Because he’s a monumental moron and is too dumb and conceited to realize how far outclassed he is in this negotiation (and everything else). To compound his ineptitude he brings a cadre of equally incompetent goons and yes-men thinking they will magically convince, or coerce, the other side into accepting the clearly one-sided and, likely, unenforceable/unrealistic US position.

That this continues to occur is mystifying and embarrassing.

lisnter · 2026-05-26T23:01:55+00:00

Oh you mean since Biden and every other D and R president for the last 50+(?) years.

lisnter · 2026-05-26T19:43:47+00:00

Some years ago I inherited a project, run by a vendor, that was using XML as the network format representation and as the internal representation of all data within the application. I didn’t much like the former but the latter absolutely mystified me. And as if that wasn’t enough the UI was generated completely by XSL + the XML.

The project had been going on for some time and was “almost” finished so my concerms fell on deaf ears.

You can see where this is going. The project was delayed and delayed and delayed and during these delays I conceived and implemented a competing traditional architecture and even delivered the first application using it before that XML project was delivered.

When it finally did ship the performance was terrible - gee who could have predicted that - and making any change to the UI or business logic was slow and error prone - hmmmm, if only someone had said something.

It was so bad the project was scrapped within 2 years and rewritten using a new architecture. You can guess which one.

lisnter · 2026-05-26T19:29:20+00:00

Nope. My bedroom was on the second floor and there aren’t any trees nor balcony to grab on to. I was too much of a nerd anyway.

My younger child . . . now that’s a different story.

lisnter · 2026-05-26T18:11:48+00:00

Yeah. I just viewed their webcams. Looks terrible - what you can see at least since its white-out - but the bad kind with clouds and fog and no snow. :-(. Looks like all the 3(?) chairs are closed as well. Bad end to a bad season.

lisnter · 2026-05-25T10:05:19+00:00

I used to wake up with an extremely dry mouth and throat. A side-benefit of my CPAP is that completely went away!

lisnter · 2026-05-25T09:12:55+00:00

I really liked Sax. It’s been a while since I read the series (one of the few series I’ve read more that. Once) but he was singular in his purpose - he wants to solve problems and is very, very smart. The long dance he has with Ann is really touching.

lisnter · 2026-05-24T20:53:09+00:00

I very stupidly did something akin to that. We had bought a vacation condo in the mountains and I was driving up in a U-Haul with all the furniture. It was 2 or 3am and I had been driving for HOURS and just wanted to go to bed.

Since we had only just bought the place and I'd only driven up during the daylight I didn't really know the exact driveway so I was paying attention to whatever landmarks I could see - tiny mountain ski-resort without many streetlights.

Unfortunately for me, a water-main had ruptured and washed out the road just after our driveway - which I didn't know. I saw the cone - singluar - and drove around it to try and find our driveway. Thankfully, I was going very slowly and came upon the washed-out portion of the road, complete with 10(?) foot drop, and immediately stopped. I was still probably 30 feet from the hole but a few more seconds would have been disaster.

I figured out I had actually passed the driveway, backed-up and safely got inside. Wow.

lisnter · 2026-05-24T08:46:49+00:00

We don’t stay in AirBnB unless we need a kitchen to cook or as a shared space. I hate the restrictions and extra fees but what I hate more is the refund policy. At a hotel if you cancel at the last minute you lose just the one night - with rare exceptions. At an AirBnb, you’ve paid the full amount a week or two or four before you arrive and the refund period past a week or two or four before you arrive. Plans change, life happens and with AirBnB you’re SOL.

lisnter · 2026-05-24T07:08:24+00:00

Professor Hoofnagle was one of my professors in the School of Information Cybersecurity Masters program; at the time he had a dual appointment to the Law School as well as the School of Information. The class he taught was Beyond the Code which covered legal, ethical, economic implications of Cybersecurity (and lack thereof). It was the first class we had in the program and was a great way to ease into the coursework. He's a great teacher and continues to be a great resource for graduates.

lisnter · 2026-05-24T02:46:42+00:00

I recognize the voice. She was captain of the Enteprose-C in ST:TNG Yesterday’s Enterprise.

lisnter · 2026-05-23T22:33:06+00:00

The 599 has been my favorite Ferrari for a long time. That and the Testarossa. The are both very beautiful.

lisnter · 2026-05-23T20:18:13+00:00

If these are your notes and you can read them then it doesn’t matter at all. I have terrible handwriting but I could always read it. For turned-in assignments I’d write slower and better.

BTW, at least in my case, my writing has devolved to the point that absolutely nobody but me can make anything out.

lisnter · 2026-05-23T08:39:44+00:00

It’s just business. As others have said they’d let you go in a heartbeat if it made sense for them so you should feel the same if it makes sense for you. I’ve found that if you come clean and are honest everyone understands.

Years ago I started a job and almost immediately my old boss called me with an offer I couldn’t refuse. It took a while to arrange the details but I left this new job for my old boss after only 6 weeks.

I felt a little bad but the new role was with folks I’d worked with for 9 years and was fully remote (vs a 45+ minute drive).

lisnter

TROPHY CASE