Two I can think of, luckily neither was that bad.

Firstly I got impatient and bought a new DSLR camera kit off eBay, thinking I would save money and get a good deal. It came with two decent lenses, supposedly, and a bunch of other accessories. Very highly rated seller.

After I made the purchase, I get a message to expect a phone call from such-and-such number. Strange, I thought. They call and immediately I can tell it’s a bait-and-switch. They tell me what they’re going to send, but it’s not what was in the listing. Only one lens, instead of two, and some other shenanigans like substituting inferior brands and cheap shit. I called them out and said either you deliver what was promised in the listing, or I’m opening a dispute, and it won’t be a good look that you tried to change the deal over the phone.

Anyway I got what was listed, but overall it was a disappointment. Grey market items from overseas, not official US licensed gear, so I had no warranty. But I ended up paying as much or more than if I had walked into a local shop. It wasn’t counterfeit, but just left a bad taste in my mouth. The seller disappeared from eBay not long after that…

Second time: I received one of those emails with a password in the subject. It looked familiar, and was in fact an (old) password I had used. Someone took a hacked DB and just fired off countless emails with the passwords to the matching email addresses. But the tone of the email was what spooked me. It said, I have had full access to all your emails, I have figured out how to reset accounts and hacked into your webcam and have some very interesting photos. Either you pay this amount to this bitcoin address or I send the photos to all your contacts and your life will be ruined.

In the moment, I panicked like oh shit this is legit. Even though I couldn’t imagine what photos they referred to, it was still scary being blackmailed. I thought about it, discussed with some people, and they helped calm me down. After a few days, I realized it must be a scam. It was so generic. Surely if it was real, they would mentioned specifics… my name, or what I looked like, or some other unmistakable details.

Over the years, I received a number of other variations with the same jist, and different passwords (my email address was in several major leaks in mid-2000s). I’m glad I didn’t fall for that shit, regardless of how serious it seemed in the moment.

Weird, because my experience with science and mathematics is that everything I learned only leads to more questions. I personally preferred taking a small chunk of that knowledge and using it to do real-world stuff which was always surprisingly complicated but satisfying. An engineer that “guesses” is not a very good one IMO lol

OK but electromagnetics is totally magic.

Also remember the nearest comparison to building a website, was a book, magazine, or newspaper. So just plop those text and images down as if it was a book, only ever intended to be viewed at one fixed resolution (say, 800x600). No smartphones yet. No apps to inspire us. No web 2.0. No emphasis on minimalism or dynamic content.

Unexpected and unpleasant things should happen with different browsers, window sizes, etc.

That site would have been considered remarkably beautiful and aesthetically pleasing. As such it’s not quite realistic.

Much too legible. I recommend less contrast for the text.

I don’t see you playing with alignment? I would like more centered text personally. And long lines of text without breaks.

Why not throw in some “lorem ipsum” placeholders.

Are you using a WYSIWYG editor?

Where are your dancing hampsters?

Also is this before or after it became trendy to copy/paste all sorts of scripts into the html? Remember scrolling text on the status bar, how about those ascii things that follow your mouse around?

I’d keep an eye on your page’s size, remember we would be loading this on 56k dialup modems… if we were lucky!

No lectures before the third date, everyone knows that. Huge red flag.

Did anyone else not know it’s pronounced see-la-kanth? I’ve been saying it wrong in my head all these years omg.

“Hey am I boring you, you’ve hardly said anything and your eyes are glazed?”

“Nnggh no baby… I-I’m… really close. P-please… d-don’t stop”

I think it’s hilarious that people are still using DOS in 2024!

Sim City 2k was the first time I used Windows 95. One of the teachers in my sixth grade class had it on their computer, and they let us take turns playing it. It seemed really amazing to those of us who grew up with more primitive computers, like Apple IIs, even Macs, various x86 clones running DOS, or occasionally Windows 3.1.

My first PC in 1998 even had Sim City 2k “Network Edition” pre-installed. Played the shit outta that game!

Haha I’m driving my 13-year-old car like, what you all don’t have buttons?!

Oh yes, my phone is nearly impossible to use as a camera, between the inherently awkward shape, the case, and the long processing delay. Does it work? Yes. But it’s not much fun. I love the ergonomic grip(s) of my DSLR and how every button and dial is in a natural position.

That’s another thing we miss, plain old tactile feedback of buttons, dials, sliders, switches.

Not as strange or pointless as it might seem at first glance, I’m reminded of this article from years ago comparing the experience of a modern phone with the old handsets: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/08/why-people-hate-making-phone-calls/401114/

What does Gen Z suffer from even more than the rest of us? Loneliness, isolation. So using a phone that is designed with physical comfort foremost is a way of reclaiming a sense of social connection and physical touch (“reach out and touch someone”), even when distances between callers are great. And touching the cord, again, a way of feeling the connection with the other person, which in a world of wireless devices isn’t possible – there’s nothing there but empty space. It’s not just about twirling the cord.

This isn’t to suggest there are no benefits to smartphones, and others here suggest earbuds to improve call quality and ergonomics. But the fact is modern smartphones are designed to do many things OK-ish in compromise, but nothing so well as the other devices they replace (phones, TVs, calculators - remember those?, flashlights, keyboards, etc etc.)

Highly recommend Anathem and Diamond Age. Cryptonomicon and Baroque Cycle are more tours-de-force but if you are nerdy enough (I mean c’mon this applies to all his work) and very into history, I can recommend those too.

FACTS don’t care about your feelings! Study reveals Macos is 2 1/3 times better than Linux, massive 27% improvement over Windows!

What, no votes for ‘goatse’?

I’ll uh show myself to the logout button now

Taught Chuck Norris everything he knows.

Yes, Chuck is from the future. But also the past. At the same time.

I mean if he uploaded it in 240p quality, or rotated sideways, he would totally deserve to be fired.

Also the title had me thinking he was operating a studio or something. I, too, have been known to produce porn, and I wouldn’t want to work anywhere that had a problem with it.

The solution is to examine why it makes you uncomfortable. Most likely irrational thoughts are at the root of this. If it’s an involuntary response of your body to external stimuli, then it’s ultimately self-harming and destructive to punish yourself for what you can’t help. Especially when you consider that as humans, we are animals, and animals have the same response.

You need how much dilithium dear?

number one looks appalled

Well isn’t that rather a lot…?

Oh you’re traveling to the beta quadrant with a friend, that’s nice. But isn’t it so far away, and dangerous?

You want to join a band… no th-that’s great that you’re getting out more, but aren’t there bands closer to home?

Well if you promise to still visit mummy, you can join a band with your friend.

Don’t forget to send subspace messages! Number one, how much pure dilithium do we have?

number one collapses onto the floor

Isn’t TNR a print font? It looks rather bad on a screen actually. I certainly wouldn’t (and never have) use it for a technical report.

btw NHD data tends to be too large for JOSM to handle… my one complaint about JOSM, I feel it could be more memory efficient. Qgis can be used to process and extract large datasets, just split them up into several files per state. (You also need to merge the source files.) But it’s totally worth the pain, because you get a lot of rich, high resolution data.

Depending on where you live, your state or city might also have open datasets available.