And the capability of those computer labs was purely educational (at least on paper, little shits like me were breaking the networks regularly, but that happens now as well).

If you were unaware, this is a baseline for a micro generation sometimes called the Oregan Trail generation (or Xennials). I’m in that cohort myself. My district was well-funded though and by the time I was in late high school, the computer lab looked like this.

Is this referring to computer labs in schools in general? This is at least Win 95 (and the school system didn’t bother to update things in 98), so I would have been in high school with these, and thinking back we had very similar machines. I do kind of miss it because my friends and I had setup a hidden series of IRC servers on a few PCs. So, while we were supposed to be learning to type, we’d just chat. In retrospect, it was a good idea that was poorly implemented (people will eventually get around anything that they have physical access to) but the modern idea of kids in schools just having a ChromeBook, tablet, phone, or w/e is kind of fucked up. We had access to the computer lab for 1 period a day vs. the modern 24/7.

I think that in the end my real opinion is that I don’t miss this, I miss my friends and I testing the limits of the security for both network and individual PC. We did some wild stuff with our TI-83s. One of my friends from that time was a certified Machine God and wrote an assembly program for his TI that would allow him (and by extension us) to surreptitiously plug in our calculators to those PCs via serial and effectively “dial out” bypassing the restrictions. It was a wild time.

I have been on Linux for years now, but known hardware is the reason why things will tend to break less often with driver updates, and updates in general. With a PC that gets hardware upgrades semi regularly, that is much more of an issue in my experience.

I was going to mention that driver support for known hardware is pretty huge. I am not a tinkerer at all, so I personally find this appealing.

Same era iirc. Right before Altavista and Lycos, I believe.

This reminds me of https://elan.school/ . Fair warning, It is pretty long and is the opposite of a light read.

And there is so much to that series of books in terms of complex topics that are dealt with in subtle ways that I don’t understand how they think it is Y/A.

They are constantly adding levels too.

Edit: maps to levels

Honestly it is way better on PC. I don’t think the controls translate very well to touch screen. It gets pretty damn hard, and I don’t think I’ve ever been able to get very far on phone or tablet. That could be a me thing, though. The game is amazing nonetheless.

passengers wave

It’s all the same guy.

I mean, that isn’t true. r/All is still available even with the shit app. It just takes 5 seconds of inconvenience now.

It is an amazing story. It is worth it if you have the time.

https://natethesnake.com/

They tend to feature rosewater, which tastes the way that old furniture smells. I’ll pass.

I am going to try to make up for breaking the rules by making some OC that people might like.

I need a source, please. I’m struggling to find it.