VariableStar

openSUSE is a great all-around distro, not only for sys-admins. It comes in two main flavors: Leap (stable) and Tumbleweed (rolling), and several others. The main difference between Tumbleweed and other rolling with other distros is the quality control before releases. This is done almost daily. If for some reason the quality check does not pass, the release is hold until it is solved.

"It's interesting that modern movies have to make you think you understand something, before they pull the curtain back and reveal there's a twist. Otherwise people will get disengaged and stop watching before the twist occurs."

I agree with this. For a particularly insidious example see the latest Star Wars series, the Acolyte, by Disney.

As a former researcher I can attest this is how research is done :-)

Not condoning his actions, but "a thinker and doer" is certainly a fitting eulogy, and not a bad one to have in ones grave.

Hope you keep discovering all the wonderful things about Perl, and that you keep finding it useful and enjoyable. Perl is extremely powerful and comes handy in a lot of situations not only in text processing. Perl's bad reputation often comes from people who know very little about it.

I am worried too. But not as much for the AI itself, but the hoards of brainless humans (including quite a number in positions of at least some power) who are being seduced by the idea of AI without a hint of critical thought.

This is an interesting history that was surrounded by mysteries until recently. In Sweden, where I live, it is well known of course. Author Bea Uusma has done intense research many years ago and written a very good book on this expedition, also available in English ("The Expedition: Solving the Mystery of a Polar Tragedy"). In summary, what did go wrong? You guessed correctly: poor planning, poor technology, poor preparations, too optimistic expectations, zero previous knowledge or experience about polar conditions and, at the end depression and hopelessness. Poor little fools that did not realize when to stop while they still had time :-(

Ditto! For the same reason Perl is my go to language for everything I do that I do not have to share. When I have to work with others it will have to be Python (in the best cases) or R (in the less good cases).

I see that. My point is that if the captured energy is used, and thus ultimately dissipated as heat, on the planet's surface, that planet is sooner than later going to have climatic imbalance.

One aspect that I find problematic with the idea of Dyson spheres is: where will the energy be dissipated? In the civilization's planet's surface? It seems to me that it would create serious energy imbalances and soon climate disruption.

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I dont understand what you mean. You may be confusing with other user. Nevermind.

Yes, it was about the Perl Data Language. I see, thank you.

More info on: https://perldoc.perl.org/perldelta

Interesting article. Even more interesting comments.

Dangerous. Certainly emulating China, which is less than auspicious ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System

Yes, Perl is still used and it is fast and excellent for anything that becomes too big or complicated for a shell or awk script. As you write it is installed in the vast majority of *NIXes as default.

By the way, why post this? The Python-vs-Perl war ended long ago. Python won in a number of ways, in particular the popularity contest.

But Perl still has a lot to offer (CPAN, backwards compatibility, speed). Go look for example at Git (https://github.com/git/git), not a small nor insignificant project. It says there is 5.9% Perl and 0.9% Python there. Maybe some intelligent geeks out there still appreciate Perl, and Perl still does a good job.

Just use what suits your needs and tastes.

This article is from 2014.

ahh me too ... between ages 10-14 in the 80s I would spend my way back from school looking for magazines with schematics, then on saturday mornings I will bike to the local component shop and spend my money there, back home the rest of saturday and sunday went by soldering boards, building amplifiers, alarms, thermometers, regulated powersupply units, radio transmiters, random LED arrangements and what not ... ah, and also exploding capacitors

Sometimes the best security is to go low-tech. At the risk of not being original, I vote for a mechanical/physical hardware switch for microphone, and a manual lid/lock for the camera (or chewing gum, but it will leave marks :-) )

Agree. The article writes nothing new but it is ok to remind people anyway! I have been using Linux exclusively since 2005 and IMO there is nothing that makes it a lesser desktop in comparison with other OS:es. On the contrary, having become used to bare-bones and pragmatic look and feel of XFCE I find the Windows desktop bloated and forbidding. Linux and the Linux desktop have been mature enough for production use by non-technical people since many (>15) years. I know of several people who are not at all interested in computers that use Linux without any trouble. In my limited experience, the problem seems to come from the outside. For example, when one collaborator/coworker/friend wants this person to use a particular application or feature in application that is not easily found or replicated in Linux. Then that person may feel compelled to change.

2.078 2022-04-10

- Ops::atan2 etc have default swap param

- fix Transform::Cartography::t_carree spelling (compat alias created)

- add Transform::Cartography::t_raster2{fits,float}

- Transform::inverse on transform without an inverse now fatal error

- fix Transform::t_fits bug which ignored ignore_rgb for making inverse

- TriD::GL now more resilient and exceptions don't leave GL broken

- add Transform::Cartography::earth_shape

- back-port Text::Balanced fixes to improve NiceSlice (#383)

- fix long-standing "harmful" scaling of output with dim 1 (#392)

- fix segfault bug for Ufunc::{odd,}{pct,med}over with empty

- thanks @nerdstrike for report

- struct pdl add "value" field for data that fits there, avoiding separate memory-management (#358)

- copy over the sensible method-name aliases for PDL::Complex from PDL::LinearAlgebra

I am not surprised. I don't know how this plays out across different cultures, regional or corporate. I only witnessed how it went in the circles I work in here in Europe. My impression is that the group of people that clearly reacted mostly negatively to the work-from-home-during-the-pandemic period were indeed middle-managers, lowly heads of units, project managers, and those that populate the middle ranks of organisations with funny and unclear job titles. Perhaps these people are by nature of the extroverted people-person type that need extra social interaction to feel good. Or perhaps they found that their need to control others was more difficult to satisfy at distance. In my country it was also discussed at a point that many people were confronted during the pandemic with the meaninglessness of their jobs. I really believe it can be the case for many people, and not not only those middle-managers with funny job titles.

Nice reflection over personal data management. I can relate to several moments. I agree specially with one thing: that a good file naming convention is essential and is perhaps the most fundamental piece of data management in conjunction with a wisely chosen folder structure. ISO8601 is perhaps the most important standard in this regard, but I often used the compressed version YYYYMMDD (instead of YYYY-MM-DD), followed by _ and whatever descriptor is suitable.

But as others have already written I have overtime become less and less keen to keeping a lot of stuff. My family knows where the important documents are (say, for valuable inheritable stuff). Digital photos live in an external hard drive. Other things worth keeping for posterity like books, articles, letters, notes etc that may have intellectual, historical or emotional value for others can be kept in a less than 32 Gb external drive.

The rest is just ephemeral dust or electrons ... as perhaps we all are after all :-)

Suggestion: pick up one of your projects and dedicate your self entirely to it until it shows whether it is worth your efforts or not.

Interesting (and long) post. I believe no one will deny that modern "popular" internet culture has a very shallow side and that a lot of people will brainlessly waste away their days and nights browsing social media. But I will also not through the baby with the bathwater and negate the whole cultural and technical progress that the internet has brought to us. Shallowness was already present in society well before the internet, and even before TV. To me reading and writing books, even novels and poetry, are as interesting now as they were before 1995 ... the year I got in contact with the internet.

Exactly, also you can see what the sky looks like in different locations and at different times, and learn the properties of celestial bodies.

Stellarium is a free GPL software which renders realistic skies in real time with OpenGL. It is available for Linux/Unix, Windows and macOS. With Stellarium, you really see what you can see with your eyes, binoculars or a small telescope.

Thank you, this is more or less what I am finding as well.

Thank you. You are right. This is what I do now. But I wonder if there are better methods.