VBprogrammer

Yeah, I for one am getting pissed already about having legitimate parts of the internet cut off unless I'm willing to submit to ID verification.

For example, discussions about recent killings by ICE in the US. This example is one where I really don't want to tie my real life ID to my online presence for fear of retribution if I ever feel confident to travel to there again.

For my home laptop I ended up going for 13" specifically to avoid off centre / number pad layouts.

I'm sure there are plenty of better options if money is no object but it was mainly for light gaming, personal projects, video editing etc.

This government have been in power for less than 2 years. Despite launching a lot of trial balloons on raising taxes they haven't actually raised the headline tax rates (other than allowing fiscal drag to do so).

Overall the tax burden in the UK is middling for western democracies. It's actually on the low side for low earners - which is probably a problem because the distribution is such that the majority pay very little.

The other problem being cliff edges and complexities which distinctive chasing pay rises and working more for a lot of people.

Where does it stop. My dad is a decent guitarist but a poor singer (sadly, I'm even worse). He has written some songs, his own words, some guitar licks or chords as input material and AI turning it into a surprisingly believable finished piece. To me it's basically AI slop but he's putting in a modest amount of effort for the output.

One of the most relaxed flights I ever had I was window seat in the back row with a pleasant elderly couple. When everyone else was busy queuing to get off the plane they were sat knitting. I'd got into my novel and just sat enjoying it until they moved. Far less stressful than the usual madness.

Even when travelling for work I could never bring myself to get a laptop out on an aircraft. I only do it on the train occasionally if I've got something I'm deep into and a table to myself.

> throw a rager

That was not a phrase I expected to read on Hacker News! Haven't heard it since I was about 13. I always assumed it was a Scottish phrase.

BGP is outside of my skillset, and I'm sure the analysis is fair and accurate. However, had billion dollar US based company Cloudflare detected widespread manipulation of routing tables by the US secret services, I certainly wouldn't trust them to publish it.

I imagine, purely as a thought experiment, if you asked a sample of US expats what their reaction to the "forced removal" of the current president from office you'd get a similar response.

You know when something doesn't annoy you until someone points it out?

It's so obvious in hindsight. Shows like the Big Bang theory, House and Scrubs I very rarely caught two episodes consecutively (and when I did they were on some release schedule so you'd forgotten half of the plot by next week). But they are all practically self contained with only the thread of a longer term narrative being woven between them.

It's doubtful that any of these netflix series you could catch one random episode and feel comfortable that you understand what's going on. Perhaps worse is the recent trend for mini-series which are almost exactly how you describe - just a film without half of it being left on the cutting room floor.

Yeah, the wires in the new London tunnels are XLPE. Despite being first used in the late 60s it took a long time to be commonly used. Though much of the infrastructure around is still very old.

Overhead conductors use air as the insulator. Underground cables use an insulating jacket. In the past it was really difficult to build cables with voltage ranges in the 10s of thousands of volts without additional complexity like a dielectric oil being pumped through the cable. I think modern dielectrics are significantly better though.

It sounds like sour grapes. London contributes nearly a third of the UKs tax income. It has a higher population than the whole of Scotland.

Not to mention that over ground wires are manifestly better in every dimension except for aesthetics.

This is a great example:

https://youtu.be/z-wQnWUhX5Y?si=qdqrpJ-zS7lh2J8Z

Not sure where you are from but it's not exclusive to the UK. People directly quoting the US president following the tragic death of a right wing commentator also found themselves locked up. Not to mention the same president suggesting that people suggesting that the military should refuse illegal orders should be locked up etc.

I think realistically we've grown up in an age where you could say almost anything online, free from any threat of any kind of reprisal. It probably reasonable that, given the internet is key to daily life these days, that we treat it as no different from standing on a park bench and shouting. If you're calling for the death of people based on their religion or some other characteristic then there are consequences to your speech.

Unfortunately the most recent example of this kind of legislation, the laws surrounding age verification on websites, was introduced under a previous government so it really doesn't matter who you vote for on this anyway.

Yeah, I spent a bit of time trying to figure out some masking issues with a file I created in Inkscape but which chrome would butcher. Turned out to be opacity on a mask layer or something.

Yeah, after that they started nuking VBA too. Sad times!

Yeah, the German speakers I work with often say "Can you do this until [some deadline]?" When they mean "can you complete this by [some deadline]?"

Its common enough that it must be a literal translation difference between German and English.

One man's leet code is another man's simple programming question which involves minimal domain knowledge...

I've had candidates describe what I'd loosely call "warm-up" questions as leet code problems. Thing like finding the largest integer in an array or figuring out if a word is a palindrome.

Some might consider that a kind of commentary on the leet code interview format.

I still regard Office '97 as the best UI it ever had. I spent a lot of time inside it, including a couple of years at a bank reconciling corporate actions before I got my first programming job. The ribbon version was awful in comparison.

The IKEA instructions are generally regarded as a triumph of simplicity. Yet on more than one occasion I've come across cases where a few words in a call out would have prevented having to redo some step after later realising that some features had to be oriented a particular way - the pictures not quite conveying their intention until it was obvious in hindsight.

> Transformers don't 'trip'. Circuit breakers do.

I'm not sure what this pedantry adds. It's pretty common to say that a piece of equipment tripped for example whole power stations, a generator, a pump etc. When of course it's the circuit breaker protecting that equipment or even occasionally something like a physical over speed trip.

The pod drive architecture, and diesel electric more generally, only makes sense when the other benefits outweigh the efficiency losses of converting from mechanical to electrical and back again. It's very difficult to beat a shaft connected directly from the flywheel to the propeller.

Almost all languages provide a method of calling C generated code for sure. But, as I understand it, this is usually a more tortuous path than straight ABI compatibility.

I haven't ever had to do anything serious in C but it's hard to imagine getting it 100% right.

A while back I wrote some C code to do the "short-bread" problem (it's a bit of a tradition at work to give it to people as their first task, though in Python it's a lot easier). Implementing a deque using all of the modern guard rails and a single file unit test framework still took me a lot of attempts.

Zig has been in the news a lot recently but I haven't explored it much other than a few tech talks which seemed interesting.

I wonder if this is it's killer feature - compatibility with the C ABI.

It's interesting but it's just an automated system build on top of the existing pod drive architecture which is there for the reasons I suggested.

Interestingly, there are situations in which it might be helpful where it wouldn't have worked. For example, the Francis Scott Key Bridge incident. The vessel suffering from a blackout caused by a transformer being tripped by a single loose wire.

Pods are used primarily for manoverability. This allows Cruise ships to get in and out of ports with a minimum of assistance (none at all, if conditions permit). This is important because they are entering and leaving ports every day or two. It also makes sense as the hotel loads on these floating skyscrapers is similar to the propulsion loads so having combined main engines and generators gives other advantages.

Ocean going container vessels on the other hand use massive direct drive two stroke diesel engines (usually they only have a single engine). They have no gearbox. The only way to go-astern is to literally start the engine in reverse. This can only be done up to a limited speed, otherwise the windmilling effect of the water passing through the prop would overpower the starting air.

Suffice to say, I'd put a long bet on the overwhelming majority of containerships being powered by internal combustion engines in 30 years time. If we get our act together we might have come up with an alternative / synthetic fuel by then but I wouldn't hold my breath.

In fairness most cars get taken for scrap with an engine which starts and runs. Even when they are running a bit rough it's more often fueling and ignition components than a mechanical problem with the engine components.

That said, the synergy drive is by design a very robust mechanical system. It has no dog gears, clutch or torque converter. I'm sure this contributes a lot to their long life.

I wonder how much affect this has had in the Christmas trade for the entertainment industry. Back in the early 2000s it was common to buy a comedy DVD or a TV series for a family member or friend.

Now people who own DVD / Blu-ray players are a rare breed.

I occasionally like to see what the highest mileage Toyota Prius I can find for sale is. They are obviously used as taxis and it's common to find one for sale with half a million miles.

Usually at that point someone puts in a new hybrid battery and sells it to someone else starting out driving Ubers.