ThePowerOfGeek

The remarkably calm kid near the top of the painting who is being eaten by two dragons: “Well, I guess this is my life now. Oh well.”

Oh yeah, good point!

#MapsWithoutNewZealand

“What makes you qualified to be employed by Pink Food Tray Inc?”

“I can shit on a bullseye from a quarter of a mile up.”

“Welcome aboard!”

Well, given the subpart quality of most complex AI-generated code right now, it could easily mean that too. You just have an AI system generate some spaghetti code and then just vibe with it and ignore the cavalcade of errors and issues that code causes.

“Scruffy’s on break!”

I’m not sure, but probably. I know there was a guy who was in a maximum security prison and often put in solitary confinement for long stretches who said in an interview that he learned to go into a meditative state and project himself into fully immersive scenes of his own creation. And he could do that for hours on end and at will.

It’s basically the evolution (or devolution?) of the Internet in a capitalist global economy. This is just the next step in the effort to profit off digital Data and communications.

Back in the early 2000s pretty much everything was free to use, and revenue came from passive ads. Then ad blindness and ad blockers kicked in, revenue went down, and the cat and mouse game began of companies trying to find ways of getting clicks and views while the consumer didn’t want to do that. This has escalated over the last 20-odd years.

We’re now at a point where paywalls are fairly effective (for now). So that’s what’s being pushed. Plus, subscriptions and everything-as-a-service is in vogue right now.

I expect that will end when the money-making enshitification of the Internet reaches a critical mass and the economy nosedives for various reasons.

Given the context, no I don’t think you are being aloof. They both knew what they were doing, and no amount of toadying up to you can make up for that.

Only way I can think of would be to purchase a burner phone.

Oh no, that’s giving me Game of Thrones / ASOIAF / George RR Martin / King Bran vibes!

VS Code licenses… If they had said Visual Studio licenses that would make sense. But isn’t VS Code free to use?

ETA: Can confirm it’s freeware. There is no license cost. 50% chance the DOGE dummies are too stupid to realize that; and 50% chance they know and are acting dumb because Fox News and other MAGA news outlets don’t care and just want their already ignorant and outraged viewers to get angrier for no good reason.