The problem here is the for-profit model that drives mass (over-)production and planned obsolescence.

We can do away with this if a company embraces a completely different model. Instead of doing the usual thing, go 100% on-demand with pre-orders, and only build what people want to buy. Then, keep moving horizontally into other product lines, following the demand and manufacturing need. Once pre-orders hit a given theshold, manufacturing starts for a given product. This eliminates all kinds of overhead and allows the company to survive by investing in multiple revenue streams. As a bonus: it’s a lot less wasteful since you never make more units than you can sell.

Subscriptions are like insurance and gym memberships. They’re profitable only if they represent value that is never fully realized by the consumer. They’re a really bad tax, and people dislike them for good reason. I want to buy a thing from a company, and that’s all; it’s not my responsibility to keep them afloat after that transaction.

If you take inflation into consideration, high quality products still exist at about the same price.

There’s another side to all this. We used to have appliance and, specifically, vacuum repair shops. Sometimes, the latter were franchise operations by manufacturer/brand. Electrolux and Oreck had stores that also did repairs, to name two. The business model had a lot in common with the auto industry at the time. To me, that stands as a cautionary tale of how things can get twisted around to cost the consumer more money in the long run, not less. I think it’s an important consideration, as old designs/patents were from and for a market serviced on all sides by this business model. But we can do better. If such products were designed to be user-servicable, there wouldn’t be a strong need/want to capture breakage as another revenue center.

So, we can absolutely bootstrap a new “buy for life” economy, but I think the downstream user hassle, repair, and secondary costs are crucial to consider.

Its just that there are now MUCH cheaper options now.

This is the part people keep ignoring. I keep calling it “realizing the actual cost of things.” Nowadays, you can buy cheap, but you’re going to get something fragile and packed-to-the-gills with surveillance and advertising. To get what grandma had (e.g. a refrigerator that runs for 50 years and just keeps food cold), anything cheaper than the inflation-adjusted equivalent costs you in other ways.

Meanwhile, over in the hobbyist and professional tool world, we’ve been saying “buy nice or buy twice” for a long time now.

or my son.

I kid you not, when the realtor showed the house they brought their rambunctious 7-year-old with them. Kiddo wasted zero time and did a running full-gainer into the conversation pit, tucked into a roll on landing, and sprawled out flat to stop in the middle of the room. Realtor/mom was NOT amused. Frankly, I was impressed but also relieved that there was no staged furniture in that particular room.

I hosted a few house-parties over the years and always had to keep a watchful eye on guest’s alcohol intake and all the steps and railings. It was kind of exhausting.

I had a house with something like the first one, although it had a railing installed.

At first I hated the railing and considered removing it. Then I slipped on the hardwood steps on my way down into the pit. A whole 20 inches doesn’t seem like a lot, but let me tell you that hitting my ass halfway down was enough to make me re-think all of it.

Aesthetically, conversation pits are amazing. That said, they are absolutely built to fuck up someone’s day the very moment they’re not being careful.

Is that… is that a top-of-the-line graphics card fully-populated with RAM?!

Still hot.

Yuuuuuuup.

Invite also shows up in your inbox an hour or less before meeting time, and is completely irregular from your normal schedule.

Protip: BACK EVERYTHING UP NOW if this happens. There’s a chance that IT hasn’t shut down your access to systems yet.

I just now realized: someone has the most cursed resume on LinkedIn. I’d expect something in line with this.

I want to see someone try this, get some steamy ankle pics in reply, and then hit it off since they’re on the same (ridiculous) wavelength.

one of the good executives

…

10 person non-profit.

This sounds incredibly top-heavy for such a small company. The fact that you got micro-managed like that in such a rediculously small outfit is kind of unheard of, frankly. Usually small companies are the exact opposite, where there’s one owner/operator, the job titles are largely made-up, and everyone just gets everything done because there’s usually not enough expertise-hours to go around to solo every task.

Or you’d get lucky and some other program you installed happens to have the right dependencies. Just copy them to the application install dir or to C:\windows\win32\ and off you go.

Yeah, stuff like that continues to be the best use-case for windows virtualization. Sounds a lot like trying to upgrade the BIOS or Firmware on an older PC; often the installer is some binary that only runs on Windows of the same vintage.

Backwards-compatibility with older web browsers so engineers can build websites for them, is another. I’ve also heard of industrial automation (e.g. CNC machines) being married to Win2k or WinXP, so being able to run an old OS on new hardware is crucial.

Windows, can I run this 25 year old software I just installed?

Yup. Same goes for temp/hunger/thirst. Unless the environment creates a situation that directly challenges that, like arctic conditions, desert, underwater, extended covert ops etc., these things do not serve the story and get in the way.

Plus, a bag of holding neatly side-steps a lot of encumbrance problems and I firmly believe that’s why it’s been a part of D&D lore since at least 2nd ed.

Meanwhile, if the table wants to go deep simulation on all this, the rules are there for that. But I wish everyone good luck with fighting monsters up close in a cave where weapons bigger than daggers are too large to swing, and heavy armor too bulky to be practical.

It gets 1000% more fun when you have a lot of dental work.

Was that part of a filling or a crown? Did that damage my fillings?

::sigh:: I know what you mean, Vern.

Jeorgia?

Thank you for your service.

like sifting through resumes.

Then we need to call it what it is: This exchange is an HR screen.

That’s a good call. I kinda/sorta figured that the fire department would see it sooner or later, but that’s clearly not the case.

It might be a matter of just being under a rock for the last 10-20 years. Retail PoS systems have changed quite a bit in that time, but how you interface with gas pumps and dining, hasn’t changed at all.

Also: a lot of folks navigate digital systems by rote memorization and don’t read or think all that much. If you throw a new interface in front of them, just sit back and watch the bewilderment. Gotta give people like that time to learn it all.