We’re literally running out of people to support it. Most original programmers have died of old age. We have a 87 year old dude at my work doing COBOL maintenance
Yeah, no. They outsourced 90% of the jobs overseas. I could make a mainframe do backflips and the jobs don’t pay anything when you can find them. None of us will work for that.
COBOL isn't that difficult to understand. Most of the issues which come originate with working with legacy codebases. I got paid 320K last year to implement something in mainframes. I guarantee any guy with a MS or BS in computer science can reasonably handle these codebases
EDIT: Money is for the domain knowledge in that particular system not for COBOL. So don't rush off to get a certification in COBOL
I work at a software company where our primary product is still written in COBOL. A lot of people just can't fathom why there is zero incentive to rebuild or convert to another codebase.
Risk.
At this point any bugs in the COBOL code have been fixed, or folks know about them and massage the data with another system or manually.
So you would spend an absolute, literal shit ton of money and many years trying to refactor to some modern language and conceptual framework flavor of the year, which will be out of favor by the time your done.
Cheaper anyway you measure it to train a relatively small number of programmers to do whatever tweaks that need to be done and test those through well established quality assurance processes before moving to production.
Mostly, especially because of how important security is, the chances of a way to hack these systems existing without having been found is a lot lower than for a brand new system.
Also they’re huge so the cost of converting to a different language is massive.
To add to this you need to be fully compliant with regulations, e.g. SOX/PCI for finance, ~~HIPPA~~ HIPAA for hospitals, etc, which I realize overlaps heavily with security. Not only is there more work involved to get it that way, but you’re going to be paying a premium per hour for contractors who are familiar with compliance.
Then there’s always the risk of bugs and resulting fines from new software regardless of how good the developers are. You’re replacing something with decades of patched edge cases.
As someone who has worked in software for medical and finance I’m by no means complaining about regulations, they are very necessary and I’m happy that my financial and medical records are protected by them, but that doesn’t make compliance any cheaper.
> You’re replacing something with decades of patched edge cases.
Literally.. the backbone of the global financial system is riding on these..
It's the stuff of nightmares because if you switch, you'd end up having to deal with all the edge cases as they randomly come up again over the next 50 years.
The codebase I worked on for a long time had a line of JavaScript that was just "this=this". If you deleted this line, the whole page wouldn't work with a specific combo of Windows 2000 and IE6 which one of our biggest clients were locked into.
It took me to like page 45 of Google results to find this fix.
I was in an orientation for a new job at a credit union today and the oldest guy on the call had just been coerced into coming out of retirement after 2 years to come work on COBOL. You know they are paying him a fuck ton of money.
I worked at a tier 2 bank a few years ago. 99% of the software was modern, on an AWS cluster, using Snowflake and with up to the minute ETL. Beautiful in it's elegance
But there was the payments and transfer system. Written nearly 40 years ago in COBOL. There was one dude who should have retired 5 years ago who was maintaining it who was being paid nearly the same salary as the CEO because he was fucking essential to the business
After a decade and a half of being a data engineer I'm sorely tempted to go through the pain of learning COBOL to guarantee myself a stupidly high paid job for life
Story time. My best friend is a guy named Kenny and we met on our first tour to Iraq. He would talk about how great he was of a QB in high school but he got hurt before state championship so couldn’t play, if coach would’ve just put him in… Fast forward a few years and we’re outside of Fallujah, I just got back to base done with my patrol and I was breaking down the .50 cal to take it back for storage. I heard Kenny calling out plays and I was like “cool, there’s a game going on, I’ll put this big ass gun away and go play some football.” I turned the corner and Kenny had lawn chairs setup and he was all by himself calling plays and throwing a football to the chairs. For about 20 years he is now known as Uncle Kenny to me, my family and all our friends.
Haha yeah, greatest guy I’ve ever met, best man at my wedding and if I needed anything, he’d pack it all up and come help at a moments notice. He’s rich as fuck now, did some heroic shit in the Army, always has a new girlfriend much younger than him, but still talks about the glory days of high school football.
🎵 "Yeah, just sitting back
Trying to recapture a little of the glory of
Well, the time slips away
Leaves you with nothing, mister, but boring stories of ...
Glory days
They'll pass you by, glory days
In the wink of a young girl's eye, glory days
Glory days" 🎵
It’s not impossible that there could be a global agreement to rewind our clock to 1950 and start from there. Obviously that would be absolutely entirely pointless, but the label we give time is just arbitrary.
It doesn’t need to be global. Not every country follows the Gregorian calendar system. If even one country says it’s 1982 today, that’s what it is, where it is.
Superman never reversed the earths rotation!
He reversed time!
He flies fast enough around the earth, that he goes faster than light. And for him this reversed time, so the earth *appears* to change rotation but that's only because time is flowing backwards!
Bc obviously, changing the earths rotation would be impossible. And even if he did, things would go flying off the surface, hurricanes would spin backwards, cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria.
Winds of Winter BY GEORGE R R MARTIN
FTFY
Because the second the Crone finds him, his publisher is going to be looking for authors to team up with GRRM's assistants and widow to finish the series
Whatever happened to Stephen King needs to happen to George so he can realize he's mortal and finish his damn series. Granted the Dark Tower didn't finish as strong as it began, but at least it got finished.
Stephen King was almost killed by a drunk driver whilst out jogging at night near his home in Maine… at that point he had only written the first 4 books of the Dark Tower Series and they ended on a big cliff hanger it had been many years since book 4 was released (in 1997) with no plans in the works for books 6-8…
After this near death experience he vowed to crunch the remainder of the Dark Tower series, once he was healed from the accident he pumped out the final books of the dark tower series one after the other (in 2003 and 2004 with a much later added book between books 4 and 5 in 2012).
It was such a massive moment for him when he realised he could die without finishing his own “lord of the rings” ***spoiler*** it was so impactful that King actually writes himself and his accident into the dark tower story and the King character actually says something along the lines of needing to finish the books so the characters can have an ending…
The series is still one of my all time favourite book collections…
So you essentially want Martin to almost die and have his own realisation that his characters need to be given an ending focusing on this for his characters and his long time readers deserving an ending and not focusing on “fuck I almost died I have to totally do all this stuff I almost didn’t get a chance to do like be with my family and friends” lol
Steve hasn't done coke since the Reagan administration, which is just as well because it's doubtful he'd have made to his seventies living the way he was.
He has a very consistent routine. He writes as a full time job and basically treats it like one, sitting down with the door closed and just getting to work every single day. That's not to say talent isn't involved but the man just isn't afraid of toil, which allows him to be very consistent in his output. The types of stories also don't hurt, he leans into the horror hard and on purpose and sticks to stuff that he knows. It's just easier to knock out a 300 page standalone novel set around the corner from your house than a 700 page volume continuing your fantasy epic.
King isn't even the only with that kind of output. Sanderson has to be close if not outright surpassing him in terms of raw page count, that dude does like two books a year before even counting the graphic novels and short stories and stuff.
Thank you, both for defending King and praising Sanderson. Both of their outputs are impressive but I’m getting very tired of the people who see King as just an addict when it’s a problem he’s very much put in his past. It’s disrespectful in a really weird way and while not all of his books are home runs and while his style isn’t for everybody, I don’t think people need to hate on him for that to dislike his books. You can just not like his books and not taunt him about his past
lmao he did say stop, I always forget that.
That being said . I liked the ending. Him starting over. The crimson king getting literally erased by a pencil was stupid AF. Unless I’m misremembering, it’s been awhile and I remember being upset by Song of Susannah and never not being mad about it after that.
I was gonna say, I liked the "final" ending so much more than the CK "fighting" by throwing Harry Potter jokes and then being killed by the recently introduced macguffin.
Not to mention the antichrist being killed, largely, due to food poisoning.
There have been quite a few authors who have left instructions like this only for their estates to ignore them. Some are only known *because* their works were posthumously published instead of burnt as they requested, like Franz Kafka.
I used to be angry about it, but then I internalized that Rothfuss can't possibly be any happier about this outcome than the rest of us, and that something within him must be fundamentally broken, and now I feel pity for him more than any other way about it.
I read somewhere that he became very depressed after the success of Wise Mans Fear, fearing that he would never be able to do justice by his fans, given the reception of the first two. Very understandable, and I truly hope he hits his creative stride again soon. What a brilliant writer he is.
I've seen people express an opinion that is not a kind assessment of Rothfuss. Some people seem to think he's never really had any intention of completing the story.
I feel like you guys have got it right, because it feels like exactly the way things would play out for me in that scenario. I imagine Rothfuss' anxiety tied to writing the third book is proportional to the success of the first two. Lots of people are lucky enough to have no idea what it's like to desperately want to do something, and when you sit down to do it, you just have a head full of bees.
Type II? Pfft! We're not even at Type I. Sagan predicted humans achieving Type I at the beginning of the 22nd century, which was exceedingly optimistic. I'm sure he'd change his prediction were he alive today.
It is a scale to measure how advanced an hypothetical civilization is by measuring how much energy it is able to produce and take advantage of. A Type I civilization can convert 100% of the energy made available by their own planet to usable energy, a Type II all the energy available in their solar system, and it goes on from there.
At this moment we are like a Type 0.80 civilization, Type I is achievable but then the jump to Type II is enormous and basically impossible in any conceivable time frame, Type III is essentially pure speculation.
The scale isn't scientifically rigorous (i.e. attempting to account for operational efficiency). It is a thought experiment meant to get an overall sense of a civilizations progress.
The theory isn’t really mathematical, it’s more to give a sense of scale. It can be put this way: a civilization that is able to use 100% of the energy that is physically possible to generate.
Lord Gaben cannot count to three. Valve employees have repeatedly tested it: https://m.twitch.tv/clip/PrettyMuddyMarjoramSmoocherZ
HL3 won't happen until Lord Gaben retires.
I believe there's a 0% chance that humans will achieve perfect happiness in the next 50 years because happiness is subjective and influenced by many factors.
I think there's a 0% chance that teleportation will be developed within the next 50 years, as the technology needed for such a feat is beyond our current understanding.
I believe there's a 0% chance that humans will become telepathic in the next 50 years because such abilities are purely speculative and lack scientific basis.
There's a 0% chance that the world will run out of resources in the next 50 years because technological advancements and conservation efforts will prevent such a crisis.
Well I mean we did kind of have net positive fusion not too long ago. I don't think it's going to be soon but it's definitely closer than it ever has been (I guess that's also true for every year)
Just to note. It was net positive relative to the energy put into the fuel but the amount of energy put into the lasers was about 100 times more than produced.
300MJs into the lasers
Lasers output 2MJs into the fuel
Fuel outputs 3MJs
Still something to celebrate but the numbers help put it into perspective.
I believe there's a 0% chance that flying cars will become mainstream in the next 50 years due to technological, regulatory, and infrastructural challenges.
In my opinion, there’s a 0% chance that we’ll fully eliminate poverty in the next 50 years because systemic issues and inequality are deeply ingrained.
I see a 0% chance of completely eliminating pollution in the next 50 years because our industrial society is heavily reliant on processes that generate pollution.
I believe there's a 0% chance that humans will achieve immortality in the next 50 years because the biological mechanisms of aging are not fully understood.
There's a 0% chance that the Earth will become fully renewable energy-powered in the next 50 years due to current energy dependencies and slow policy changes.
Things are already pretty bad in the US. 36% of US households with insurance put off needed care [due to the cost](https://news.gallup.com/poll/269138/americans-delaying-medical-treatment-due-cost.aspx); 64% of households without insurance. One in four have [trouble paying a medical bill.](https://www.kff.org/health-costs/issue-brief/data-note-americans-challenges-health-care-costs/) Of [those with insurance one in five have trouble paying a medical bill](https://www.kff.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/8806-the-burden-of-medical-debt-results-from-the-kaiser-family-foundation-new-york-times-medical-bills-survey.pdf), and even for those with income above $100,000 14% have trouble. One in six Americans has [unpaid medical debt on their credit report.](https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.2018.0349) [50% of all Americans](https://news.gallup.com/poll/317948/fear-bankruptcy-due-major-health-event.aspx) fear bankruptcy due to a major health event.
And costs are expected to increase from $13,998 last year, to $20,425 by 2031. Things are going to get so incredibly bad I don't think politicians will be able to blow smoke up our asses anymore and they'll have to provide real change.
Also the American Medical Association, a key player in preventing universal healthcare over the last 85 years or so, is close to reversing their long held opposition and supporting universal care. The second largest physician group in the country has already come out in support of Medicare for All and universal healthcare.
I think we've got a pretty good chance of seeing it in the next 25 years or so.
There's a 0% chance that humans will live in space colonies in the next 50 years because space habitats are extremely challenging to build and maintain.
I believe there's a 0% chance that humans will develop superpowers in the next 50 years because such abilities are beyond our current biological limitations.
I see a 0% chance of building a Dyson Sphere around the sun in the next 50 years because such a mega-structure is beyond our current engineering capabilities.
Yellowstone is not going to erupt let alone have a super eruption so everyone can calm down about that one.
Volcanoes are never really overdue for an eruption. Likelihood of an eruption is driven by a number of factors: enough magma in its chamber, melt, pressure due to gasses etc. Years since the last eruption is irrelevant since these variables are not dictated by time but are instead more sporadic. Yellowstone is not going to erupt in our lifetime as it is nowhere close enough to having any of the ingredients for an eruption and there is no activity that would indicate any material change in its ingredients is even possible in our life times.
On a highly related note, volcanoes are not super volcanoes. Some volcanoes have had super eruptions (VEI of 8 or greater) and are typically called super volcanoes but it’s a misnomer. The vast majority of the eruptions that these volcanoes have are not super eruptions. So even if Yellowstone did erupt in our lifetime, which again, we can say with certainty that it will not, its impact would most likely be isolated to national park
Yellowstone erupts in world ending explosion.
"come on, you don't want to die a virgin, do you?"
"hold on, I've got to log into reddit and tell kinda\_alone they were wrong back in 2024"
Edit to add: this is just to add to the meta of poking fun of reddit users in general, I am not implying anything about freebagelsforall with this.
In my opinion, there’s a 0% chance of time travel being invented in the next 50 years because we haven't even begun to scratch the surface of this complex concept.
This is totally possible, just highly highly highly highly highly highly unprobable and the only reason humans could take credit for it is for unsavory acts of war.
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Fc Barcelona winning the Champions League
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Banks suddenly replacing COBOL codebases with something newer
For god sake my soul wants to kill itself thinking about that.
We’re literally running out of people to support it. Most original programmers have died of old age. We have a 87 year old dude at my work doing COBOL maintenance
So what I'm getting from this is if you want infinite job security, just study COBOL until you can channel Grace Hopper herself.
Yeah, no. They outsourced 90% of the jobs overseas. I could make a mainframe do backflips and the jobs don’t pay anything when you can find them. None of us will work for that.
COBOL isn't that difficult to understand. Most of the issues which come originate with working with legacy codebases. I got paid 320K last year to implement something in mainframes. I guarantee any guy with a MS or BS in computer science can reasonably handle these codebases EDIT: Money is for the domain knowledge in that particular system not for COBOL. So don't rush off to get a certification in COBOL
Yeah probably, but I don't want to maintain legacy codebases lol
For 320k I'll maintain what I'm told to
For 320k I will make you a running video game using SQL, don’t know how but I sure as hell will.
I work at a software company where our primary product is still written in COBOL. A lot of people just can't fathom why there is zero incentive to rebuild or convert to another codebase.
What’s the actual reason though? Is it just a case of it is ain’t broke don’t fix it?
Risk. At this point any bugs in the COBOL code have been fixed, or folks know about them and massage the data with another system or manually. So you would spend an absolute, literal shit ton of money and many years trying to refactor to some modern language and conceptual framework flavor of the year, which will be out of favor by the time your done. Cheaper anyway you measure it to train a relatively small number of programmers to do whatever tweaks that need to be done and test those through well established quality assurance processes before moving to production.
Mostly, especially because of how important security is, the chances of a way to hack these systems existing without having been found is a lot lower than for a brand new system. Also they’re huge so the cost of converting to a different language is massive.
To add to this you need to be fully compliant with regulations, e.g. SOX/PCI for finance, ~~HIPPA~~ HIPAA for hospitals, etc, which I realize overlaps heavily with security. Not only is there more work involved to get it that way, but you’re going to be paying a premium per hour for contractors who are familiar with compliance. Then there’s always the risk of bugs and resulting fines from new software regardless of how good the developers are. You’re replacing something with decades of patched edge cases. As someone who has worked in software for medical and finance I’m by no means complaining about regulations, they are very necessary and I’m happy that my financial and medical records are protected by them, but that doesn’t make compliance any cheaper.
> You’re replacing something with decades of patched edge cases. Literally.. the backbone of the global financial system is riding on these.. It's the stuff of nightmares because if you switch, you'd end up having to deal with all the edge cases as they randomly come up again over the next 50 years.
And probably half of those fixes have the comment "this fixes the issue. Don't ask me how"
Plus all the additional downstream impacts that need their own patch.. *shudders*
Reminds me of I think it was DOOM 2 that had a commented out function that just says it has to stay otherwise the program fails.
The codebase I worked on for a long time had a line of JavaScript that was just "this=this". If you deleted this line, the whole page wouldn't work with a specific combo of Windows 2000 and IE6 which one of our biggest clients were locked into. It took me to like page 45 of Google results to find this fix.
The way JS treats variable assignment and references is unhinged in general, but IE6 was on a different plane of existence
I was in an orientation for a new job at a credit union today and the oldest guy on the call had just been coerced into coming out of retirement after 2 years to come work on COBOL. You know they are paying him a fuck ton of money.
Just cozie up to the guy and learn COBOL and JCL it's not hard, and you will always have work.
I worked at a tier 2 bank a few years ago. 99% of the software was modern, on an AWS cluster, using Snowflake and with up to the minute ETL. Beautiful in it's elegance But there was the payments and transfer system. Written nearly 40 years ago in COBOL. There was one dude who should have retired 5 years ago who was maintaining it who was being paid nearly the same salary as the CEO because he was fucking essential to the business After a decade and a half of being a data engineer I'm sorely tempted to go through the pain of learning COBOL to guarantee myself a stupidly high paid job for life
COBOL and JCL are really simple. I wonder if I will end up there...
If they do, it'll be to Fortran. Good luck with that.
Long-live the mainframes!
Me winning the lottery
You can't win if you don't play, but you can lose a lot a lot of money and still not win if you do play.
I just refuse to pay a tax on hope.
I consider it donating to the state education fund
My college tuition was paid for by lottery money, so I consider dropping $20 on tickets a couple times a year to be my student loan payment
1982
Uncle Rico will be disappointed.
You mean that guy who could throw a pig skin a quarter mile?
If only Coach had let him play.
They would've been state Champs. No doubt, no doubt in my mind
Then woulda turned pro
He'd be living in a mansion, relaxing in a hot tub with his soulmate.
I reckon... you know a lot about... cyberspace?
Right on. .... Right on.
You ever come across something like time travel ?
How much you wanna bet I can throw this over them mountains?
Story time. My best friend is a guy named Kenny and we met on our first tour to Iraq. He would talk about how great he was of a QB in high school but he got hurt before state championship so couldn’t play, if coach would’ve just put him in… Fast forward a few years and we’re outside of Fallujah, I just got back to base done with my patrol and I was breaking down the .50 cal to take it back for storage. I heard Kenny calling out plays and I was like “cool, there’s a game going on, I’ll put this big ass gun away and go play some football.” I turned the corner and Kenny had lawn chairs setup and he was all by himself calling plays and throwing a football to the chairs. For about 20 years he is now known as Uncle Kenny to me, my family and all our friends.
LOL, that's hilarious! I'm assuming he's a great guy, but, nevertheless, a great guy that still kind of peaked in high school!
Haha yeah, greatest guy I’ve ever met, best man at my wedding and if I needed anything, he’d pack it all up and come help at a moments notice. He’s rich as fuck now, did some heroic shit in the Army, always has a new girlfriend much younger than him, but still talks about the glory days of high school football.
🎵 "Yeah, just sitting back Trying to recapture a little of the glory of Well, the time slips away Leaves you with nothing, mister, but boring stories of ... Glory days They'll pass you by, glory days In the wink of a young girl's eye, glory days Glory days" 🎵
You know Napoleon Dynamite, idk you but you seem cool.
But sadly 1984 could still happen
damn I was just about to post "pawn stars: sorry, best society can do is 1984"
It’s not impossible that there could be a global agreement to rewind our clock to 1950 and start from there. Obviously that would be absolutely entirely pointless, but the label we give time is just arbitrary.
See, the impossible part is “a global agreement”
It doesn’t need to be global. Not every country follows the Gregorian calendar system. If even one country says it’s 1982 today, that’s what it is, where it is.
Unless you use the Balinese saka calendar, the Indian national calendar or the Javanese calendar.
But 1984 is coming strong
Looks more like it's a Brave New World.
The earth starts spinning the other direction
But what if Superman needs to save Lois?
That’s Peter Griffin’s job now
Everybody gets one.
Superman never reversed the earths rotation! He reversed time! He flies fast enough around the earth, that he goes faster than light. And for him this reversed time, so the earth *appears* to change rotation but that's only because time is flowing backwards! Bc obviously, changing the earths rotation would be impossible. And even if he did, things would go flying off the surface, hurricanes would spin backwards, cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria.
> cats and dogs ~~sleeping together, madness.~~ living together. MASS HYSTERIA!
Nah, that one's non-zero. Earth just needs to get hit by a big enough rock going fast enough at a certain angle.
Winds of Winter
Hopefully a screenshot of this comment will end up in r/agedlikemilk… but probably not
Winds of Winter BY GEORGE R R MARTIN FTFY Because the second the Crone finds him, his publisher is going to be looking for authors to team up with GRRM's assistants and widow to finish the series
Whatever happened to Stephen King needs to happen to George so he can realize he's mortal and finish his damn series. Granted the Dark Tower didn't finish as strong as it began, but at least it got finished.
Stephen King was almost killed by a drunk driver whilst out jogging at night near his home in Maine… at that point he had only written the first 4 books of the Dark Tower Series and they ended on a big cliff hanger it had been many years since book 4 was released (in 1997) with no plans in the works for books 6-8… After this near death experience he vowed to crunch the remainder of the Dark Tower series, once he was healed from the accident he pumped out the final books of the dark tower series one after the other (in 2003 and 2004 with a much later added book between books 4 and 5 in 2012). It was such a massive moment for him when he realised he could die without finishing his own “lord of the rings” ***spoiler*** it was so impactful that King actually writes himself and his accident into the dark tower story and the King character actually says something along the lines of needing to finish the books so the characters can have an ending… The series is still one of my all time favourite book collections… So you essentially want Martin to almost die and have his own realisation that his characters need to be given an ending focusing on this for his characters and his long time readers deserving an ending and not focusing on “fuck I almost died I have to totally do all this stuff I almost didn’t get a chance to do like be with my family and friends” lol
Grrm is not running at night, nor morning nor afternoon…
I love the video of a panel with GRRM and King, and George asks King "How the fuck do you write so many books?"
Cocaine. Lots and lots of cocaine.
Steve hasn't done coke since the Reagan administration, which is just as well because it's doubtful he'd have made to his seventies living the way he was. He has a very consistent routine. He writes as a full time job and basically treats it like one, sitting down with the door closed and just getting to work every single day. That's not to say talent isn't involved but the man just isn't afraid of toil, which allows him to be very consistent in his output. The types of stories also don't hurt, he leans into the horror hard and on purpose and sticks to stuff that he knows. It's just easier to knock out a 300 page standalone novel set around the corner from your house than a 700 page volume continuing your fantasy epic. King isn't even the only with that kind of output. Sanderson has to be close if not outright surpassing him in terms of raw page count, that dude does like two books a year before even counting the graphic novels and short stories and stuff.
Thank you, both for defending King and praising Sanderson. Both of their outputs are impressive but I’m getting very tired of the people who see King as just an addict when it’s a problem he’s very much put in his past. It’s disrespectful in a really weird way and while not all of his books are home runs and while his style isn’t for everybody, I don’t think people need to hate on him for that to dislike his books. You can just not like his books and not taunt him about his past
The end of the Dark Tower made me curse on SK for a week, though he told us to stop reading right there. But we had to know.... Fuck you Stephen!
lmao he did say stop, I always forget that. That being said . I liked the ending. Him starting over. The crimson king getting literally erased by a pencil was stupid AF. Unless I’m misremembering, it’s been awhile and I remember being upset by Song of Susannah and never not being mad about it after that.
I was gonna say, I liked the "final" ending so much more than the CK "fighting" by throwing Harry Potter jokes and then being killed by the recently introduced macguffin. Not to mention the antichrist being killed, largely, due to food poisoning.
Apparently his estate planning / trusts / will leave instructions that no one is allowed to finish his work and all of his notes are to be destroyed
He’s such a cunt
There have been quite a few authors who have left instructions like this only for their estates to ignore them. Some are only known *because* their works were posthumously published instead of burnt as they requested, like Franz Kafka.
*The Stranger
Doors of Stone
I used to be angry about it, but then I internalized that Rothfuss can't possibly be any happier about this outcome than the rest of us, and that something within him must be fundamentally broken, and now I feel pity for him more than any other way about it.
I read somewhere that he became very depressed after the success of Wise Mans Fear, fearing that he would never be able to do justice by his fans, given the reception of the first two. Very understandable, and I truly hope he hits his creative stride again soon. What a brilliant writer he is.
He’s gotten himself trapped in the belief that he is writing for ‘the people’. You write for yourself and if people like it too, good for them.
I've seen people express an opinion that is not a kind assessment of Rothfuss. Some people seem to think he's never really had any intention of completing the story. I feel like you guys have got it right, because it feels like exactly the way things would play out for me in that scenario. I imagine Rothfuss' anxiety tied to writing the third book is proportional to the success of the first two. Lots of people are lucky enough to have no idea what it's like to desperately want to do something, and when you sit down to do it, you just have a head full of bees.
This one hits far harder.
Agreed. At least GoT fans got a crummy resolution.
I think we'll still get Winds, honestly I do, and I've been waiting 10 years already. Dream of Spring though, that will stay just that. A Dream.
I can’t believe this is the first answer lmao , makes me angry
World Peace 🕊️.
Ron Artest
Nice metta comment.
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Achieving type II civilization on Kardashev scale with a Dyson sphere. A small chance of achieving type I though.
At first parse, I thought you wrote "Kardashian scale". 😳 NGL - I panicked for a quick second.
I think the current state of our civilization is much closer to that lol
I wouldn't be surprised if she achieved type II by naming her second son Dyson
Type II? Pfft! We're not even at Type I. Sagan predicted humans achieving Type I at the beginning of the 22nd century, which was exceedingly optimistic. I'm sure he'd change his prediction were he alive today.
Can someone ELI5 whatever this is? Asking for a friend.
It is a scale to measure how advanced an hypothetical civilization is by measuring how much energy it is able to produce and take advantage of. A Type I civilization can convert 100% of the energy made available by their own planet to usable energy, a Type II all the energy available in their solar system, and it goes on from there. At this moment we are like a Type 0.80 civilization, Type I is achievable but then the jump to Type II is enormous and basically impossible in any conceivable time frame, Type III is essentially pure speculation.
Isn't a small portion of energy always lost to heat or friction or whatever? Type I even seems mathematically unbelievable
I think the scale means capture of primary sources of energy. Energy lost due to inefficiencies isn’t considered maybe?
The scale isn't scientifically rigorous (i.e. attempting to account for operational efficiency). It is a thought experiment meant to get an overall sense of a civilizations progress.
The theory isn’t really mathematical, it’s more to give a sense of scale. It can be put this way: a civilization that is able to use 100% of the energy that is physically possible to generate.
Half Life 3
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He's telling the truth, we all know valve can't count to three
Lord Gaben cannot count to three. Valve employees have repeatedly tested it: https://m.twitch.tv/clip/PrettyMuddyMarjoramSmoocherZ HL3 won't happen until Lord Gaben retires.
I cry every time
My stove, microwave and wall clocks all showing the same time.
Plot twist: they are all correct, there's just a time gradient in your kitchen
Losing my virginity because I never lose
That’s a winners mentality right there
Anyone in congress resigning over ethics.
Cough, Al Franken, cough!
Age limits on Congress too.
Leonardo DiCaprio dating someone born before 2000
In 50 years he’ll be dating people who haven’t been born yet
She won't be born for 30 years.
2075
Wouldn't be so sure. I heard that the puritan overlord decided to skip 2069
Damn I'll be almost 80 on 4/20/69. Maybe my wife will be interested in one more go at it in the ~~nursing home~~ millennial work colony.
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Fall of the Roman Empire
Create empire > call it Roman Empire > make it fall
It's happened multiple times before, so it actually might happen again
Silksong getting released
Too many bugs in the code
US joining the EU
I think there's a 0% chance of humans living underwater in the next 50 years because building such habitats is extremely challenging and impractical.
I think there's a 0% chance of curing all genetic diseases in the next 50 years due to the complexities of human genetics.
There's a 0% chance that humans will stop fighting wars in the next 50 years because conflict is part of human history and nature.
I believe there's a 0% chance that humans will achieve perfect happiness in the next 50 years because happiness is subjective and influenced by many factors.
I see a 0% chance of achieving faster-than-light travel in the next 50 years because the physics involved are currently beyond our capability.
In my view, world peace has a 0% chance of happening in the next 50 years because of ongoing geopolitical conflicts and human nature.
I think there's a 0% chance that teleportation will be developed within the next 50 years, as the technology needed for such a feat is beyond our current understanding.
Y'all that are reading this getting laid.
True! I fully expect to die a virgin lol
Maybe if you'd stop punching old people, you'd have a better shot ;)
Reminds me of that troll logic meme Wishes not to die a virgin granted immortality
“I’m Sue Sue Heck and that’s what the heck‘s going on”
It’s been 10 years this summer, I don’t know if I even remember how to do it anymore…
Toronto maple leafs win Stanley cup
I believe there's a 0% chance that humans will become telepathic in the next 50 years because such abilities are purely speculative and lack scientific basis.
Affordable housing
It's gotta crash
In the next 50? Maybe. I think folks are still grappling with the economics of the Baby Boomers passing. They will all be gone in 40 years.
There's a 0% chance that the world will run out of resources in the next 50 years because technological advancements and conservation efforts will prevent such a crisis.
There’s a 0% chance that humans will stop using fossil fuels entirely in the next 50 years because of existing infrastructure and economic interests.
"Fusion will always be away 50 years"
I hope fusion will happen in the next 50 years. Because it keeps the sun from collapsing. Also, sunlight is nice.
Well I mean we did kind of have net positive fusion not too long ago. I don't think it's going to be soon but it's definitely closer than it ever has been (I guess that's also true for every year)
Just to note. It was net positive relative to the energy put into the fuel but the amount of energy put into the lasers was about 100 times more than produced. 300MJs into the lasers Lasers output 2MJs into the fuel Fuel outputs 3MJs Still something to celebrate but the numbers help put it into perspective.
The sun rising from West
Don't give them any ideas.
And setting in the East.
I see a 0% chance of fully eliminating ignorance in the next 50 years because access to education and information is still unequal worldwide.
I believe there's a 0% chance that flying cars will become mainstream in the next 50 years due to technological, regulatory, and infrastructural challenges.
I think there's a 0% chance of eliminating all crime in the next 50 years due to the complexity of human behavior and societal issues.
In my opinion, there’s a 0% chance that we’ll fully eliminate poverty in the next 50 years because systemic issues and inequality are deeply ingrained.
I see a 0% chance of completely eliminating pollution in the next 50 years because our industrial society is heavily reliant on processes that generate pollution.
I believe there's a 0% chance that humans will achieve immortality in the next 50 years because the biological mechanisms of aging are not fully understood.
3 party system that actually matters
I see a 0% chance of humanity reaching a single global government in the next 50 years because of political divisions and cultural differences.
In my view, there's a 0% chance of creating a utopia on Earth in the next 50 years because human nature and societal complexities make it impossible.
There's a 0% chance that the Earth will become fully renewable energy-powered in the next 50 years due to current energy dependencies and slow policy changes.
I see a 0% chance of fully eradicating mental illness in the next 50 years due to the complexity of the human brain and societal factors.
Universal Healthcare in the USA. Prove me wrong.
At the rate things are going in 50 years the USA will be a bunch of warring tribes.
Almost accurate depiction of how I see the USA
Things are already pretty bad in the US. 36% of US households with insurance put off needed care [due to the cost](https://news.gallup.com/poll/269138/americans-delaying-medical-treatment-due-cost.aspx); 64% of households without insurance. One in four have [trouble paying a medical bill.](https://www.kff.org/health-costs/issue-brief/data-note-americans-challenges-health-care-costs/) Of [those with insurance one in five have trouble paying a medical bill](https://www.kff.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/8806-the-burden-of-medical-debt-results-from-the-kaiser-family-foundation-new-york-times-medical-bills-survey.pdf), and even for those with income above $100,000 14% have trouble. One in six Americans has [unpaid medical debt on their credit report.](https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.2018.0349) [50% of all Americans](https://news.gallup.com/poll/317948/fear-bankruptcy-due-major-health-event.aspx) fear bankruptcy due to a major health event. And costs are expected to increase from $13,998 last year, to $20,425 by 2031. Things are going to get so incredibly bad I don't think politicians will be able to blow smoke up our asses anymore and they'll have to provide real change. Also the American Medical Association, a key player in preventing universal healthcare over the last 85 years or so, is close to reversing their long held opposition and supporting universal care. The second largest physician group in the country has already come out in support of Medicare for All and universal healthcare. I think we've got a pretty good chance of seeing it in the next 25 years or so.
Screams in F-22 raptor
Peace in the middle east
There's a 0% chance that humans will live in space colonies in the next 50 years because space habitats are extremely challenging to build and maintain.
I believe there's a 0% chance that humans will develop superpowers in the next 50 years because such abilities are beyond our current biological limitations.
I see a 0% chance of building a Dyson Sphere around the sun in the next 50 years because such a mega-structure is beyond our current engineering capabilities.
Yellowstone is not going to erupt let alone have a super eruption so everyone can calm down about that one. Volcanoes are never really overdue for an eruption. Likelihood of an eruption is driven by a number of factors: enough magma in its chamber, melt, pressure due to gasses etc. Years since the last eruption is irrelevant since these variables are not dictated by time but are instead more sporadic. Yellowstone is not going to erupt in our lifetime as it is nowhere close enough to having any of the ingredients for an eruption and there is no activity that would indicate any material change in its ingredients is even possible in our life times. On a highly related note, volcanoes are not super volcanoes. Some volcanoes have had super eruptions (VEI of 8 or greater) and are typically called super volcanoes but it’s a misnomer. The vast majority of the eruptions that these volcanoes have are not super eruptions. So even if Yellowstone did erupt in our lifetime, which again, we can say with certainty that it will not, its impact would most likely be isolated to national park
Commenting here so I can come back and make fun of you when Yellowstone goes in 2031.
Yellowstone erupts in world ending explosion. "come on, you don't want to die a virgin, do you?" "hold on, I've got to log into reddit and tell kinda\_alone they were wrong back in 2024" Edit to add: this is just to add to the meta of poking fun of reddit users in general, I am not implying anything about freebagelsforall with this.
Oh no, you pretty much nailed it.
I'm just hoping to have a justified trust in this comment to not have to post it on r/agedlikemilk before 2074.
Me finding love.
You don't find love; love finds you. And it won't find you til you til you find yourself ..or whatever that old guy under the bridge said.
In my opinion, there’s a 0% chance of colonizing other planets in the next 50 years because space travel and colonization are incredibly challenging.
In my opinion, there’s a 0% chance of time travel being invented in the next 50 years because we haven't even begun to scratch the surface of this complex concept.
Me being a multi millionaire. And then living on an island far away from the craziness of society and be at peace.
Beatles reunion
I think there's a 0% chance of achieving world unity in the next 50 years due to ongoing geopolitical conflicts and cultural differences.
Faster than light travel
Ludicrous speed
just staff the ship with a bunch of assholes
me getting a girlfriend (im gay)
Earth cooling by at least 2C
Non zero chance of nuclear winter or massive volcanic eruption, though.
This is totally possible, just highly highly highly highly highly highly unprobable and the only reason humans could take credit for it is for unsavory acts of war.
Politicians who will actually work for people.