small bag of usb adapters, for charging friends' phones or connecting a flash drive, etc
dualshock 4 controller, modded with back buttons, a usb-c port, and a phone holder
slim mouse and folding keyboard
I used to carry a battery pack but its heavy and rarely used, so now I just carry a second usb-c cable and a c-to-c extender and hopefully i'll be able to reach an outlet.
Yes, we have ghost communities. No, it's not a problem. We're not here to entertain you 24/7.
The Reddit communities that drove the most engagement were also the most toxic. The good part of Reddit was, and to some extent still is, the slow-moving communities that act as magnets for scraps of obscure knowledge.
I carry a spare usb stick and some low-capacity microsd cards, because sometimes its just easier to hand someone a file the old fashioned way.
Sometimes I do play games on my phone, but whenever possible I use a usb or bluetooth gamepad, because touchscreens aren't supplanting buttons any time soon.
And of course the Steam Deck is my favorite gizmo, not just because it can run every PC and emulator game, but also because it doesn't have any bullshit preventing me from installing mods. If phone modding was easy and accessible i'd be willing to spend more on a phone.
I like to say that Star Wars is to fantasy what Discworld is to sci-fi. Star wars is swords and sorcery in space, and Discworld is ethics and robotics in middle earth.
you may want to be careful how you word this; if you focus too hard on a specific culture then you inherit that culture's biases. I don't think english language sci-fi novels are known for their racially and sexually diverse fandom, for instance.
When dating people, I often ask "name a book that's not Harry Potter". Doesn't even have to be one you've read. Pick any book at all (other than Harry Potter) and tell me why you thought of it.
I'm not gatekeeping people who do or don't read books, and i don't care if it's sci fi, fantasy, fanfic, nonfic, whatever. what i do care about is that you are aware of at least one book and care enough to remember what it's about. That's a low bar, but not as low as you might think.
The "no Harry Potter" clause isn't specifically due to jkr being a terf (although that too), but because it's such an overused answer. Yeah, I do remember the books that were so popular that they had their own brand of jelly beans. I have run out of things to say about them. Pick literally anything else.
depending on your budget, consider the MNT Reform, a notebook computer designed to be as repairable as you can possibly imagine. Every plastic part is 3d-printable, every circuitboard is open source, and it uses off-the-shelf parts for its keyboard, batteries, and screen. really its only downsides are the entry price (around $1600) and the fact that it relies on a relatively low-power SOC (system on chip) for CPU, GPU, and RAM.
disclaimer: I don't have one myself (yet) but I'm keeping an eye on them because it looks like an incredible hobby computer
I didn't see what c this was, and I was all set to say "Brother multifunction b/w laser printer", along with some colored copy paper and a long stapler that can reach the middle of a page. Everything you need to make some bitchin zines.
Good callout! I agree, don't rewrite just for the sake of rewriting. By "barely works" I am referring to code that functions but where a small change to the requirements would make it incorrect. In that situation you should "break it" in order to add changes, rather than calcifying the legacy code by building around it.
I've worked in programming for the last ten years and the most important skill you might not have guessed: Bravery. People are going to say "if it works, don't fix it", but a lot of real-world code barely works, and you need to be willing to break it to make it better.
If you're good at your job, you will spend a lot of time reading other people's code and testing small changes to see what happens. Write "new" code for yourself, because it's fun and its good practice, but also learn to read and repair "old" code.
wow i cant believe nobody else pointed this out but today someone on discord informed me that I accidentally misplaced a bit when multiplying 10 by 101. According to this chart, two times five is eighteen.
I'm using octal as a sub-base to make it easier to count digits, just like using commas to group decimal digits. I think that still counts as binary tho!
maybe something like a Raspberry Pi and set him up with html? html and js is still a great way to learn, you get immediate feedback!