Decided to OpenSource instead of Software Patent (as my employer was urging me). Nowadays, that technique is used in every decent Image CDN + compression tool. Still proud to see it everywhere. Maybe it wouldn’t have made it if had been patented.

Many other good ones have already been mentioned, so I won’t repeat those titles. But “Suspiria” (2018 edition) definitely deserves a mention. The ending is just … well, clearly somebody amongst the original writers had some issues regarding reproductive systems … but the other 98% of the movie feature brilliant suspense & eiriness at all times. And Tilda Swinton is simply to-die-for in it. ;)

It Follows is definitely one of the best horror movies regarding suspense and general feeling of … gloom?! Eireness?! Futility?! Darkness?! Whatever it is, I love it!

And the (potentially) underlying message is powerful.

A Knippix Kombi-Zange. Well played! Good tools are worth every cent.

(FYI: this is divorcées attempting to date)

Went on my 1st date after divorce. Sat down together at a café. After greeting each other, she immediately asks “So when do you intend to move to my town?”. I reply by saying “Whoa! Take it slow. Let’s get to know each other first!” and feeling that she can’t be serious about her question.

She, however, explodes in my face that she has a life and a kid in that other town and no time to waste. I managed to reply that I have a life and kids in this current town we’re in, too, before she jumps up and storms away cursing.

Not the most conducive first post-marital dating experience.

Definitely “Abzû” and “Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice”. One is a beautiful piece of art that touches me every time I replay it and the other finally gave me a wonderful example to show to friends & family of how noisy it is in my head sometimes.

+1 on this. Hiker+Trail-Runner here. So I sometimes encounter cows on high mountain passes where taking a detour can mean hours of delay. But after getting kicked like that once, I am very careful around herds, esp. when they have young ones / horns (as they often do grassing on mountains) / bulls in the mix.

Now I’m left wondering what the children of a water system look like.

In no particular order:

• Finally do those after-class reading + tutoring sessions for kids in my daughter’s school.
• Sign up for shifts on the “Good-Night-Bus” in my local town that looks after homeless people during night-time.
• Play hand-pan, guitar & other random instruments at local relaxation spots to add to the overall atmosphere of “the good life”
• regularly offer my handymen skills to my neighborhood via local web-platform and also contribute to “Repair-Cafés” as a helping hand
• Find a local community-garden project to help out at so that the city stays 0.1% greener than without me
• Offer my yet-currently-relevant professional skills (Frontend / WebPerf / CDNs / DevOps) to a NGO that couldn’t usually afford my wages (again: preferably something relevant to my region to feel a sense of impact)
• Keep maintaining my OpenSource repositories and publish new ideas ASAP to prevent Software Patents

Magnolia.

Having JUST finished replaying it myself last week, I wholeheartedly enjoyed your review. Thank you!

I had the exact same thought regarding the ending: the girl that in this game is so often depicted as vulnerable and caring (she loves her friends) is at the same time a ruthless serial killer who doesn’t seem to hesitate for a second about setting dozens of stranded survivors on fire who “just” want to escape the island as desperately as she does. When the final outro cutscene was playing and she ends with "I’m not going home…" I couldn’t help but fear for the next group of people she’ll encounter. ;)

Non-sequitur: OMG did I hate the quick-time events, though! Felt like I needed to fail at least 3x for EACH quick-time event before I got it right. /o\

Yes! No.1 reason: microphone quality! I have to attend many calls every day and no Bluetooth headset (BT v.4 > 5.3, SPS, AAC, LDAC) has even come close to the simple quality of a ~25,-€ wired headset.

Long-term custom ROM user here.

Regarding security: as always, it depends on your threat model. If you fear a government actor getting access to your phone, a locked bootloader won’t slow them down.

Regarding privacy: I’ve had both VPN logs and external Wireshark running against traffic going in&out of my custom ROM phones & sometimes I still do it for fun. If you know what you’re getting into (e.g. LoS still using some Google services) then a Custom ROM usually holds far fewer surprises than some questionable OEM ROM (and which is terrifyingly scarce regarding changelogs while still having OTA update power).

tl;dr: stick with well-known ROMs & you get … not the best of both worlds … but a “good enough” of both worlds.

As a parent, EVERY kid feels like your kid. This made me cry.

I’m glad to hear it’s not an issue in your experience / industry.

German here: I have yet to witness these “European-style” vacations mentioned in the post title.

Most workplaces seem to frown at people taking >2 consecutive weeks of vacation, esp. if they don’t have kids and do it in main travel season / during school holidays. Handing in ~3 weeks of holidays often at least needs some kind of explanation to the team-lead, e.g. “I have school kids who have their summer holidays and we need to keep them busy until school starts again.”

I have yet to see a single company going easy on someone saying “I’ll be off all of August KTHXBYE”.

“Because you’ll be together”.

• Inception, Mal, with her head on railroad track

The Banshees Of Inisherin.

It was like finding razorblades if you are in a really razorblade-y kinda mood.

Shorter is not necessarily better: “THE Fall” from the early 2000s was a much better value-per-minute movie. :P

Poco X3 NFC with LineageOS.

200,-€ price, excellent photo quality if paired with fitting GCAM mod (AGC) plus config. Powerful enough as daily driver, privacy-frieendly enough after some simple changes, runs everything I need & if it drops & breaks (2 kids at home…) it’s an affordable loss (I’m diligent about backups).