I fucking hate these kinds of questions. D is the CORRECT answer because TECHNICALLY html is a markup language and not a programming language but the average person irl will just call you a dipshit for trying to explain that. If this were a question on a shitty academic exam, its going to be a 50/50 toss up on which will get counted as correct because the Autograder Bot Knows All™ but you better not fucking use AI to get your low effort AI-generated homework done quicker because fuck you.

underemployed, not unemployed. I got REALLY lucky when I was younger and enjoyed a short but glorious period of time where life was actually working out. Turns out jobs that pay a living wage are really hard to get and hard to keep. There’s always shitty retail or fast food jobs.

I’m still coasting off the success from when I was gainfully employed up until 2018. I sure am glad I did nothing but stockpile savings into a bank account during this time. I can’t believe I’ve made it this far just living on a “at least im losing money slower” basis. Don’t know what I’ll do next. I should have used my savings to buy a plot of land and a camper to homestead on since that seems to be the only way to circumvent unfair apartment rent and unfair housing prices. I think I could have lasted even longer doing it that way, live and learn I guess.

Computer engineer here (well I have a computer engineering degree and have worked on several computer engineering projects at least). The only point of fucking with an i486 in 2025 for reasons besides “vintage computing” or playing MS-DOS games is that it’s probably the most powerful cpu that can still run on a cheap 4 layer circuit board. This cpu is also simple enough that a i486 chipset can be DIY’ed without ball grid array components. Electronic devices with 4 layer circuit boards are less susceptible to getting ruined by tariffs because they can be manufactured for a reasonable price in places besides just China. Ball grid array components require specialized equipment in order to put them on circuit boards. The easier surface mount (quad flat package) chips required to build a viable and performant i486 motherboard are simple enough that all you need is a cheap soldering iron and a steady hand to solder them onto a circuit board.

What I’m getting at is that prior to them dropping i486 support in Linux, it was possible to use cheapo microchips from Mouser, connect them to i486 cpu and singlehandedly DIY a modern-Linux capable computer, in theory at least.

With Linux dropping support for i486, the bar is now much higher. It’s still possible to completely DIY an ever more powerful, non-i486 based Linux-capable computer yourself if you REALLY know what you’re doing (and people HAVE done it).

I wanted to build one just for fun and maybe to use it like super high performance arduino but now there’s a lot less of a point so meh.