Benni aus H

Computerversteher 🤖 Metalhead 🤘 Hobbykoch 🍜 Jäger 🦌 Grün 🟩

[Benni aus H @benniausha]

@Der_Fumpinator Oder was "Erwerben" im Sinne des WaffG bedeutet... 😄

[Majority Democrats @MajorityDems]

Reflecting Pool 2: The Secret of the Ooze

[Ryan Els @RyanEls4]

Still accurate in 2026 😂🤭

[Der Postillon 📯 @Der_Postillon]

Nächster Rückschlag bei Stuttgart 21: Bauarbeiter haben zu tief gegraben und müssen jetzt gegen einen Balrog kämpfen
https://t.co/Fspx5QSDBk
https://t.co/Fspx5QSDBk

[Benni aus H @benniausha]

@neutral_af Stutzen mit Deutschem Stecher, classy 👌

[Benni aus H @benniausha]

@metalgigs_us

[Brian Roemmele @BrianRoemmele]

Cardboard Was 20% Of IBM Profits!

The lesson most in tech forgot.

In the 1950s, roughly 20% of IBM’s total profits didn’t come from its famous tabulating machines or the emerging electronic computers.
The real money poured in from selling billions of blank pieces of stiff cardboard.

This punch-card empire stands as one of the earliest, most ruthlessly effective “razor-and-blades” business models in technology history.

Before magnetic tape, disks, or any form of electronic storage, data had literal physical weight.

By the middle of the 20th century, the U.S. government, insurance giants, railroads, and major corporations ran their entire logistics, payrolls, censuses, and accounting on mountains of rectangular paper cards.

In 1928, IBM introduced the now-legendary 80-column punch card with its clean rectangular holes.

They didn’t just patent the machines that read and sorted them they patented the precise dimensions, thickness, and layout of the cards themselves.

That single move created a de facto industry standard that competitors found almost impossible to match without triggering costly patent wars.

The true genius was the lock-in architecture. IBM leased its tabulators, sorters, and collators to customers, keeping ownership of the hardware and collecting steady monthly rental fees.

But the sky-high margins lived in the consumables. The high-speed readers were exquisitely sensitive: only IBM’s tightly controlled card stock would run reliably without jamming or misfeeding.

Cheap knockoffs would destroy throughput. So every year, customers bought billions of blank cards directly from IBM
at premium prices.

The physical medium itself created an almost insurmountable switching cost. A large insurance company or government agency couldn’t simply “export a database.”

To defect to a rival system, they would have had to manually re-punch and re-verify millions of customer records onto a different card format.

Once you committed to IBM’s 80-column standard, you were ecosystemically captured.

When IBM rolled out its electronic computers in the 1950s and 1960s, it kept the card as the bridge. The wildly successful IBM 1401 and its siblings were designed around the very same 80-column cards companies had been using for decades.

Businesses could step into the digital age without re-keying their vast physical archives. The punch card quietly transitioned from standalone storage medium to primary input device silently carrying IBM’s captive customer base straight into the computer era.

An IBM 5081 punch card. The 80-column layout became one of the most ubiquitous standards in computing history, quietly powering IBM’s dominance for generations.

This wasn’t just clever salesmanship it was a masterclass in how standards, physical lock-in, and recurring consumables can create decades-long economic moats.

Long before software licensing and cloud subscriptions, IBM proved that the real fortune often lies not in the machine… but in the endless river of blank cards that feed it.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

Stateside, a gas station. I drank a frozen blue beverage too quickly, and was struck down by a punishment this entire nation knows, and accepts, and has named.

The drink is called a slush. Ice, sweetness, and a blue that does not occur in nature. The day was hot. I was thirsty. I drank like a soldier at a river.

The pain arrived in my skull like a war horn.

Behind the eyes. Above everything. Total. I gripped the roof of my car. I may have made a sound.

"Brain freeze," said the cashier through the door, with no urgency whatsoever.

It has a NAME. The affliction is so common it has a household name, like a cousin.

"Tongue on the roof of your mouth," called a man at the pumps. He did not look over. He prescribed the remedy mid-pump, casually, the way one mentions weather.

I pressed my tongue to the roof of my mouth. The war horn faded. The healer nodded at his pump, finished, and was gone in a Chevrolet.

In my land, punishment follows crime by way of courts and seasons. Here, the sentence is instant. Drink with greed, and the ice strikes the mind directly. No trial. No appeal. Perfectly fair.

And here is what moves me. EVERYONE has felt it. The cashier. The healer. Children. Elders. An entire nation united by the same small lightning, all taught the same cure, all passing it on to strangers at gas stations, free of charge.

You cannot fully distrust a country once you know it shares one pain.

The freeze does not punish thirst. It punishes haste.

I finished the slush slowly, like a scholar. Blue tongue. Clear mind.

Then at the door I forgot everything, drank deeply, and was struck down again.

"Tongue, hon," said the cashier, without looking up.

Discipline is a journey.

[Benni aus H @benniausha]

@Prometheus089 @nimby_first Oder Far Cry 5 😬

[Benni aus H @benniausha]

@pilipalagwyn @BStarkimarm Kann man gerade auch hier sehen:
https://t.co/nwTplNOGFE

Noch ein Bier ! 😄🍺

[Benni aus H @benniausha]

@txgermanbre 🎂

[Benni aus H @benniausha]

@_Sakrosankt Netter Umbau der Beretta 👌 Wenn schon Tacticool dann wenigstens richtig 😁

[Benni aus H @benniausha]

@KarachoKurt @WassiDer Fieser 90er Flashback 😵‍💫

[Benni aus H @benniausha]

@MartinRosenkra3

[Martin Vigneron @dr4ch]

@grauhut Hatte damals einen Spieler in Shadowrun der nannte seinen Char "Rigger Toni"

[Grauhut @grauhut]

DM, reibt sich die Augen: "Okay... Bobblin der Goblin also... Und als was spielst du?"
"Ich spiele einen normalen Kämpfer, mit dem Flaw Aufmerksamkeisschwäche."
DM: "Endlich was normales. Wie heißt er?"
"Ritter Lin."
DM: (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

[Benni aus H @benniausha]

@Der_Fumpinator Die haben alle Sticks erkannt, aber dann unter Umständen die Musik komisch sortiert

[Benni aus H @benniausha]

@Der_Fumpinator Das VW das immer noch nicht hinbekommen hat 😵‍💫 War bei meinem Seat auch doof, da habe ich irgendwann alles über Bluetooth vom iPhone gestreamt

[Benni aus H @benniausha]

@BlackChesterde Das ist viel cooler als das Zeug in Hamburg 🥹

[E L H O T Z O @elhotzo]

wenn ich ein Land wäre, das überall völlig zurecht gehasst wird, würde ich die beliebteste Sportveranstaltung der Welt als PR-Gelegenheit nutzen, um mich sympathisch und weltoffen zu präsentieren, aber ich bin wirklich kein Experte