scbrg

Somehow I can imagine that a world where a the brightest minds of a generation didn't spend their prime optimizing ad clicking wouldn't necessarily be a complete disaster.

Presumably this. Coffee terminology is (apparently) not global. I've never seen the term "long black", and I visit cafés quite a lot. Wikipedia lists it as a thing primarily in Australia/New Zealand.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_black

These days, the needy on the streets accept our local app based payment system called Swish. Still not joking.

There's not much left to sort by then, is there?

Thanks to your link I also learned that Alex has done some voice acting work, including the voice of Ancano in Skyrim! Thanks for posting :)

My reasoning is quite simple: I really don't need the latest versions of everything. Were computers useful two years ago? Yeah? OK then, then a computer is obviously useful today with software that is two years old. I'll get the new software eventually, with most of the kinks ironed out. And I've had time to read up on the changes before they just hit me in the face.

Sure, it was a bit painful with hardware support some twenty years ago or so, but I can barely remember the last time that was an issue.

For the very few select pieces of software where stable doesn't quite cut it there's backports, fasttrack and other side channels.

TFA: Candy consumption started increasing in 1980s and by 2010s, Sweden had the highest per capita candy consumption in the world.

I'd say that "highest consumption in the world" qualifies as "great amounts" :)

It's perhaps the single worst database in the world; with no type control, no relationship management, no data safety whatsoever to speak of (it even actively mangles your data), its interface is utter madness, and yet - it's the most used database in the world.

It's perhaps the single worst development and runtime environment in the world, obscuring code, making reasoning about code and relations between code almost impossible, using a very obscure macro language that even morphs between different computers, and yet - it's the most used development and runtime environment in the world.

It's perhaps the single worst protocol/data exchange format in the world, with dozens of intentionally obscure, undocumented versions, insane format with surprising limitation (did I mention it actively mangles your data? - it's worth repeating anyway), supremely inefficient, and yet - it's the most used protocol/data exchange format in the world.

I can't really think of anything in the computing world that has done as much damage as Excel.

The Galactic Standard Calendar or Galactic Standard Time was the standard measurement of time in the galaxy. It was based on the Coruscant solar cycle. The Coruscant solar cycle was 368 days long with a day consisting of 24 standard hours.

60 standard minutes = 1 standard hour

24 standard hours = 1 standard day

5 standard days = 1 standard week

7 standard weeks = 1 standard month

10 standard months + 3 festival weeks + 3 holidays = 368 standard days = 1 standard year

This is not unique to Go.

We didn't even have any version control. Everybody was logged in, editing the same files over ftp, and reloaded the code on the running instance. It was chaotic and hilarious. I eventually ended up in charge of the "mudlib" (essentially the standard library). I learned so much from reading, debugging and trying to improve that code and, eventually, being a sort of mentor to a slightly younger batch of newbies.

I've never been a guru when it comes to clever algorithms, and I'm pretty shit at math, so I've had to find some other role fit on a team. I believe my main strength to this day is debugging weird and messy code, and much of the reason for that is the years I spent trying to get that wonderful mess of a code base to work.

All in all, I'd say the MUD was a terrific place to learn to code. You could literally write a few lines of code, and see their effect immediately. "I want to code an orc." Inherit stdmonster, call a few API functions to set name and description, and BAM! - you've got an orc! And so on. Motivation never ran dry because - hey, I was adding features I wanted to a game I loved! Feedback (of varying quality, sure) was immediately available in the built in chat channel. Code was hot loaded/reloaded, so iteration cycle time was approximately zero. Emacs + angeftp (later replaced by tramp) to the host machine, you were literally editing the live code all the time (who needs pull requests when you have C-x C-s, eh?), so lots of instructive oops moments. It was amazing.

Have a whole bunch of friends with a similar story.

Great post, by the way!

I recently changed jobs and found myself in a position where I would need to do a lot of work on remote machines. Since I am Emacs user, the most common way to do this is using TRAMP (Transparent Remote access, Multiple Protcol). TRAMP is an Emacs package that let’s you treat a remote host like a local system, similar to VSCode Remote Development Extension.

Doesn't that provide context?

In fact, later on the man page only mentions a shell in the part that talks about the behavior when no additional arguments are given:

  When the user's identity has been accepted by the server, the server either executes the given command in a non-interactive session or, if no command has been specified, logs into the machine and gives the user a normal shell as an interactive session.

A few lines later it gets even more confusing:

  The session terminates when the command or shell on the remote machine exits and all X11 and TCP connections have been closed.

I'd argue that programmers are indeed much more aware of how many exceptions and edge cases most real world domains have. Ask a lay person about such a simple thing as leap seconds, for instance, and they'll often believe you're making shit up.

Meanwhile, I know what the word desert means, even if I have never been in a country that has one. I know what a cyclone is, even if I've never seen one. We're affected by, and have knowledge of more than our local environment. We read books. We watch TV and movies. Heck, we're having this discussion in a language that that isn't spoken in the country I'm living in. Most people do, in fact, interact in some way with people in other time zones right now. Perhaps not on a daily basis, but at least a bit.

It just occurred to me; if we placed the meridian in the Pacific, very few people would have the date change during their sleep cycle. Sucks to be Niue, I suppose ;)

By the way - I'm not even for abolishing time zones. I'm just spectacularly tired of the straw man arguments against it. It's like saying "we couldn't build a city that's on both sides of the river, because people would drown when they go to work", as if building a bridge would be an impossibility.

There is a perfectly good argument against it btw, which is the one you propose at the end. The change itself wouldn't really be worth it. But that's simply because people are confused by changes. Not because the end result would be worse.

If you're used to date changes happening "whenever", you'd stop assuming they happen at a fixed point during the day.

Any argument that starts with "Today, we're already confused about ... because we're used to date changes occurring while we sleep" is meaningless, since we wouldn't be used to date changes occurring while we sleep.

The whole terminology thing would be solved by having two words; one meaning "after next sleep cycle" (which would probably be more common when speaking to people in your own geographic region), and one meaning "after next date change" (which would probably be more common when speaking to people in other geographic regions). The appearance of this second word would likely happen naturally within weeks, if not days after abolishing time zones. As usually happens with language.

The argument against abolishing time zones always seems to assume that humanity would be incapable of adapting to a time zone free world. Like this would mysteriously be the first and only change in the history of mankind society couldn't adapt to.

For instance, we handle 24 hour clock (with 60 minute hours?! WTF?) fine, even if it's insane and we use the decimal system elsewhere. Because we got used to it when we grew up. Many even have the clock reset in the middle of the day, ending up with things like two hour activities spanning from eleven to one! (Don't get me started on shit like "half four" - it means different things depending on where you are, but it never means two!)

Heck, there's a whole, huge country that gets by on inches and ounces and pounds and miles and whatnot - a mind boggling amount of extra mental energy required, and with the exception of some recent lapse when selecting their boss dude they seem to be doing mostly as well as (and over the previous century arguably somewhat better than) the rest of us in the thinking department.

If we grew up with date/day changing in the afternoon, every kid in preschool would have it figured out already. "Early morning flight confusion" would seize to exist (except, perhaps, for the poor bastards who'd happen to live close to wherever we decided to place the prime meridian), because everybody would know what "1:20" meant, and not randomly guess at something based on when they happen to sleep.

I start explaining, very carefully, like I'm talking to a child, that this is an alternative shell, which replaces the standard Windows Explorer et cetera, und so weiter... it's very complicated you know...

Guy says, "cool... hey, why don't you check out this URL?". I do. It's the litestep contributor page. His nick is on it. Near the top.

Ow.

This must be the first time I'm on Autocorrect's side ;->

> I have noticed that a lot of people don't bother to consider the proper spelling of words but rather they just spell a word however it sounds to them.

This is my "spot the native English speaker" trick. Some native speakers consistently type "your" no matter if they mean "your" or "you're", and either "their" or "there" whenever they should have used one of "their", "there" or "they're".

My experience is that people who have learned English as a second language don't make this particular mistake as much - although we make tons of other mistakes, of course!

My guess is that the cause of this is that native speakers learn the language mostly by listening, long before they learn to read and write. Consequently, to them a word is primarily defined by its pronunciation. Its spelling is a secondary property that's attached years later.

For second language speakers, a word's spelling is usually something they're exposed to immediately when they learn the word - in many cases even before they learn how it's pronounced. To them, the spelling is what primarily defines a word.

It's a bit frustrating. I tend to get confused when "your" is used in place of "you're", and I usually have to reread the sentence once before I decipher the meaning.

Source: Me, having lived there most of my life.

Second source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_and_time_notation_in_Swed...