At the beginning of my career, sometime around 1999 or 2000, I was at Microsoft with our team because we were trying to integrate our product with this absolute piece of junk called Microsoft Biztalk.

It simply didn’t work. I complained about it and was eventually hauled into a room with some MS PMs who told me in no uncertain terms that indeed, Biztalk didn’t work and it was essentially garbage that no one, including us, should ever use. Just pretend you’re doing something and when the week is up, go home. Tell everyone you’ve integrated with Biztalk. It won’t matter.

Light-duty pickups still exist, eg the Nissan Frontier with the 6’ bed is probably the most reliable, sturdy and cost-effective pickup out there. Europeans may know this truck as the Navarro.

Yes, the lack of context or history has annoyed me in the past too.

Also, Liam Neeson just catching strays over here

I think the OP is referring to the company Palantir.

Ah fair enough. I just couldn't see it. Thanks for explaining.

Conan the Barbarian: co-written by Oliver Stone, directed by John Milius, music composed by Basil Poledouris. Oh, and co-starring James Earl Jones and Max von Sydow. An astounding lineup.

I updated to version 10.5.7 and now I see Samsung ads in my peripheral vision, wtf

You're the lucky one... they're a/b testing this and I get them flashing full size for a half second twice a day. I've tried blocking them at the firewall but their AI is so good now it can hack that in a couple of seconds, and they're using what I've seen as input to their bypass. It won't be long before we won't be able to turn it off at all. Joe Jackson saw it coming...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgqwdYAmoFQ

I am now nicotine addicted without smoking a single cigarette.

It’s available for purchase from multiple sellers, from bookshop.org to Amazon.

Zig could include the file at compile-time with @embedFile.

So could Go (https://pkg.go.dev/embed), Rust (https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/macro.include_str.html) and a number of other languages in the set.

this would provide the optimizer the unfair chance to replace the entire application with a compile time constant

The idea of using a file is to force the program to use that number as an unknown value at compile time.

command line arguments would be unknown at compile time.

You graciously omitted the article’s follow-on conclusion: the public is being gently trolled.

“On the other hand, at a time when trust in the honest intentions of experts is at a low, it may be unwise for experts to troll the public.”

Yes, Dead Internet Theory went from joke to reality in what feels like overnight.

The usual goal of professional propaganda - of disinformation - is to paralyze, to prevent constructive communication, discourse, progress.

Was it a joke?

Am I to mourn the loss of what I personally consider one of the worst manipulative toxins to ever exist?

Thanks AI.

It was never a joke because bots are older than AI