I’ve tried all the suggestions made so far by other commenters, and they are solid options IMO. One of my personal requirements has been that the writing tip is either smooth/rounded, retractable, or covered in some way, because I use my pencil a lot every day, and I prefer to keep it in my hip pocket. If a fine tip is exposed, it gets caught in the fabric and/or bent.

For a long time the GraphGear 1000 was my favourite because the tip retracts and it has a sturdy metal body. But it’s quite long and heavy, and I had to use the clip, which has a somewhat flimsy hinge joint. If the clip gets ripped off (happens to me) it renders the pencil useless because the clip holds the tip out for writing. I also used Orenz pencils for a while because I like the lead-protecting sleeve, but the tip doesn’t seem to be designed to be repeatedly pushed back into the body, because they always start jamming on me pretty quickly.

A few months ago I discovered the Pentel Kerry and it’s my new favourite. It has a removeable cap to protect the lead when closed, and to use it you remove the cap (friction/snap fit) and put it on the other end of the pencil like you would with a regular pen. The tip of the cap has a spring-loaded button which connects with the lead advance button on the main pencil body, so you can click on the rear end to advance the lead as normal. Unfortunately I don’t think there’s a metal body version, but the plastic feels quite sturdy to me.

Drum memory predates the Sinclair by quite a while. But there is an often repeated story involving an impossibly-optimised Blackjack program for a drum memory computer called “The Story of Mel, a Real Programmer”.

I sympathize with the point of the article, but if someone’s seriously citing Flash, which had widespread success for a run of about 15 years before being overtaken by later developments (driven in part by a billionaire with an axe to grind), as a short-lived “dead end” that was best avoided, then how long do they think is a sensible amount of time to wait to see if something’s worth spending time and effort? Nothing remains on top forever.

I think that the big, highlighted quote a few paragraphs down–which I believe is also by the author of the article, even though they refer to themselves in the third person–seems somewhat at odds with what they say in the rest of the article. I would guess that they started writing it to make an emotional argument, then tried to back it up with logic, but along the way they lost their emotional momentum and forgot exactly what they were supposed to be arguing.

There’s an interesting section further down, though:

What do we do about it? This horse is not going back in the barn. The billionaires wouldn’t let it, anyway.

There’s no need to get it back in the barn; the thing is lame, and only being kept propped up by a lot of (cash) injections and diversions. The facade will fall before they actually get it to work the way they pretend it works.

The Mikado Method, eh?

(All together) Three junior devs at work are we,
Busy and harried as devs can be,
Compiler warnings flowing freely,
Three junior devs at work!

(Alice) Everything is a source of bugs! (Laughter)

(Bob) When they wrote this, were they on drugs? (Laughter)

(Carlos) Don’t touch our “World’s Best Coder” mugs! (Laughter)

(All together) Three junior devs at work!

Is the main issue really tracking and consolidating microdonations, or is it transferring credit between these donation systems and traditional finance entities like banks and credit card networks?

From what I’ve seen, efforts to develop microtransaction/microdonation systems generally seem to have trouble with regulatory compliance, either through legitimate legal requirements that force them to do things that seem nonsensical to their users (My guess is that the registered servers issue OP mentioned with Flattr came down to this), or due to greedy intermediaries stalling and witholding under false pretences while they hold out for a bigger share of the money, without appreciating the already extremely thin margins involved.

I’ve never had one myself, but a few of my friends have had Crumpler bags for years and they swear by them.

Crumpler is an Australian company started by some bicycle couriers who couldn’t find really sturdy bags that suited them. I believe that the story goes that one of them was trying to carry a slab of beer (24 cans packed in one flat layer) to a friend’s party when his bag broke apart, and that was when they started making bags for themselves.

They’ve been around since 1995, and have quite a range of bags and backpacks now.

• You want to make a technically simple game, and want it actually to be able to run on a potato instead of just looking like it should, and you already have the skills or aren’t afraid to take the time to learn.

the cross platform is a pain.

It doesn’t have to be with libraries like SDL. Years ago I got stuck fighting all-in-one game engines that didn’t fit my design choices, precisely because I thought it would be worth it for platform independence. Then I found out about SDL, which was what I actually wanted.

If someone thinks that not using a pre-rolled engine with a full editing suite included is a waste of time, I can respect that. But there are options if you’d rather make your own but still don’t want to have to learn the ins and outs of multiple hardware architectures and operating systems.

He sure loves to evangelise “cloning”, a.k.a. “copying other people’s work”. One wonders how anything new or even slightly tailored for each situation will creep into this ecosystem.

To make an analogy, there’s usually nothing terribly wrong with the mass-produced clothes that big box stores sell. But it rarely fits that well, looks too stylish, or does much more than cover your nakedness. Often, that’s acceptable. But sometimes you need special gear or want a really good quality, tailored shirt.

People still make a living as tailors. In fact, a lot of their work these days is making small alterations to the mass-produced stuff for individual clients.

When I was in my teens and twenties, I used to believe that if I thought of something that I’d never heard of before, I must have been the first person ever to come up with it.

Now that I’m older and the Internet is ubiquitous, when I have those moments I go straight to a search engine. And even if I’m not the first, I still feel pretty good about discovering whatever it is for myself.

Also over on itch for pay-what-you-want, with extras.