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econ

Re:SOML – A Config Format for Humans on Monday November 02, 2026 @04:16PM (#50343881)
Have a text area that checks if the config is valid on each key stroke, if not rollback to the previous one. Can put some red ink under it explaining why you can't do that.

Trying to remove a required number the last remaining digit is highlighted so that you can type over it.

Watch it, it's funny. The post is describing what it looks like to them. No need to argue.

I read some hilarious stories where people creating ads had to pick race and sex for the characters. Each possible configuration had a laundry list of things some people would find offensive.

In this ad the white guy is offended by his colored coworkers success then uses copilot to steal his thunder and everyone worships him, specially the woman.

Pretty much the most offensive configuration... Or no wait, it could have been a black guy stealing from a white one! Or would you prefer a woman stealing a man's job?

In one story the folder got the same cover with 3 happy employees on the front but they replaced the elderly black guy with an young Asian woman. This was how people told the difference between the editions so everyone noticed and was forced to think about it.

You better work hard or you end up like James. Oh, I thought he died!

I want this, but sorted by most down votes.
Re:The Alien Space of Science on Friday October 23, 2026 @06:03PM (#50215981)
After crawling out of the primordial ooze we send explorers in all directions. (Usually groups) As they get further from the source they spread out thinner. Someone will have to find the gaps eventually and they might even find things close to the source. If you add dimensions of exploration they might travel far leaving many large gaps back home.

I love the effort trying to squeeze wine from a mountain. I wonder if the generalisation also remedies unpopular topics as they are now reduced to simple data points. It should be fine to map forbidden grounds as long as you don't go there.

Re:Airbnb bans making guests do dishes and take out the trash on Thursday October 22, 2026 @12:51AM (#50191309)
There is a difference between paying and forcing someone to do it. The later might kill you.
Linking to something from the wiki is considered irrelevant as it doesn't prove anything.

If an editor is an expert in a field and you can verify it it would be most useful to the encyclopedia to treat them as such. This is not actually a special privilege but how people normally do things.

I can gather citations and glue them into an article but someone with actual expertise knows which parts are important, what isn't and what is missing.

Wikimedia is of course free to have an encyclopedia project to entertain children with to much time on their hands but they will continue to lose good editors. You can't have both.

If you disarm the man before throwing him into the alligator pit he won't survive but it will be great for the alligators.

An example would be a minority view on something. Even experts may strongly disagree if it should be included.
Editors are still not allowed to have credentials. The absurd argument is that credentials can never be validated.

I don't know how scientific journals manage to exist but technically it could be as simple as a link to the user page on the university professors profile page.

If the source doesn't agree with my world view you may not use it.

My favorite version is when topics are stuck decades ago and newer sources are rejected as an attempt to make the topic look real

More generally, if there are two incompatible versions of an article to be had and editors can't write a neutral article (could have various reasons) initially the largest group "wins" which may be overruled by so called established editors which at times works out even worse. If the topic is actively propagandized or insulting to one or more people the thing may drag out for years.
If you can ban one thing just for easier taxation there should be many other things that could also be banned for the same purpose.

You could ban Apple pie and extract more tax from the slaves.

Re:Gold is now the top U.S. export on Sunday October 18, 2026 @04:50AM (#50139230)
For paper gold you don't even need gold.
Re:I know why Mathematicians weep on Thursday October 15, 2026 @10:16PM (#50113071)
And then "ideas are cheap" becomes the dumbest thing. I always knew people would laugh at us 1000 years from now just not why.
Re:We are entering a period of overlapping crises on Thursday October 15, 2026 @09:48PM (#50112796)
When it fundamentally changes? It's hard to imagine something else while living in this. The Chinese formula might be different enough since so few in the west can even superficially understand what they are doing. Over there wealth and power are trying to be two separate things.
Re:We are entering a period of overlapping crises on Thursday October 15, 2026 @09:32PM (#50112654)
I believe it is the ratio of people who collectively do constructive things vs those who don't. Constructive deeds require things like vision, planning, curiosity, knowledge, experience, networking, tools, resources and empathy too

People who lack enough of those req will actively get in the way.

Things like building a house for little Jimmy in it self isn't hard at all. You can also give him some [digital] textbooks, answer his questions and create a position as an apprentice wizard. There is nothing hard about doing that.

Sure, some people will try to get in the way but one unmotivated saboteur vs an army of millions isn't going to change anything.

Sometimes constructive is to preserve and protect. Don't argue with those trying to stop sensible efforts and don't pay them to get out of the way. You put them in cages or otherwise ruin their everything until they get out of the way.

But if you fail to do that and their numbers grow there is no alternative but to wait until they've destroyed enough of the good stuff for them to become miserable enough to change sides. It might take a thousand years but we will build a new glorious civilization and it will sit there waiting for people to stop caring again.

We are of course far over that hill already but destroying everything takes quite a bit of time.

Re:I know why Mathematicians weep on Thursday October 15, 2026 @12:15PM (#50105861)
Plenty of people pay the bills with work they hate doing.
Re:I know why Mathematicians weep on Thursday October 15, 2026 @12:13PM (#50105833)
I had visions of large automated warehouses full of chemical and biological components hooked up to science machines to do everything from mixing, boiling and printing to spectrograph and robotic assembly. Smart computers and humans would pick the experiments to brute force with exact billing.
Re:Do dentists know what they're doing? on Thursday October 15, 2026 @12:47AM (#50099268)
I had a rather obese 50 year old coworker once who ate quite frequently. After stuffing his face he would immediately brush his teeth (no toothpaste), chewing the last bite by the sink with the brush in his hand. His teeth were absolutely perfect. Never visited a dentist. He said it wasn't as good as cleaning with some kind of tree. In his home country/Village a lot of people did it like that but they also had people who cleaned their teeth less frequently. The later all lost their teeth as they aged. No exceptions. He held up a kiwi, acid and sugar what do you think will happen?

I also know a guy who eats carrots all day every day. He is 80 something. Most of his teeth are still there and bright white.

Could still be genetic or considered anecdotal but to them it is completely obvious.

All that screen time has to be sourced from some place.
Re:Imposing Sanctions on the International Criminal Court on Friday October 09, 2026 @01:29PM (#50023885)
Where the "what" is human rights. Pretty much horrific things I'd rather not describe.

Then they got mad that the rest of the world didn't approve of actually doing the horrific things.

And then no one wanted to buy bonds from the country endorsing the horrific acts.

Why am I even in this function if it shouldn't happen?

    bool w;
    int x[1000];
    int y[1000];
    for(int i=0;i<1000;i++){
      x[i] += y[i];
    }
    if(w){
      for(int i=0;i<1000;i++){
        y[i] = 0;
      }
    }
Slower but prettier with the if pushed down.
Re:Animated ASCII Art for Web Pages on Wednesday October 07, 2026 @07:03PM (#49999950)
For no particular reason I will share with you my favorite by an unknown artist.

____\o/______/\__

It's called Help shark.

Re:Why don't more developers "use the platform"? on Sunday October 04, 2026 @03:47PM (#49957170)
Most browser things live in a bubble of ignorance about what people are trying to build.

It's not overly ambitious to have rich text input fields or a sortable table. If you can have a half assed xpath implementation you can have a shopping cart and a product.

Someone knowledgable once ran off with a fumble of mine acting like I pulled gold from thin air.

It took the id's from the page, created strings with the same name containing the inner html, made a copy, compared the copy with the string every 50ms, if they were no longer the same the dom node and the copy were updated with the new value. Input fields compared the copy with the input value as well.

So you could do:<div id="myname">my name <div>

Then do myname += "John";

Or <div id="a">42<div><input id="b" value="123">

Then do a = a * b / 2

Re:So You Think You Could Be an Electrician? on Sunday October 04, 2026 @02:20PM (#49956425)
You do have some choice on a construction site. Physical activity depletes nutrients. You can choose to replenish them. Strength and obesity is also a choice.

I once had a coworker 24 years old but he barely ate and barely slept. In a few years he has injuries everywhere that didn't go away.

One guy I know fell down 10 meters onto his back then got up and went back to work. He looks exactly like someone like that.

I've met a surprising number of manual laborers who seemed to believe you can build or repair something without materials.

Much like office workers who think ergonomics is something that comes after ruining your body.

This doesn't even look real

https://youtu.be/7bXNCrGc0Ro?is=zCL-1ARUzygbdSqS

Re:So You Think You Could Be an Electrician? on Sunday October 04, 2026 @01:43PM (#49956050)
If you scratch the wire while pealing of the insulation it looks the same now but it might burn down the house later.

Edit: or more fun, if you twist the end of a flexible wire (so that you can stick it into a clamp easier) the little threads cut each other while tightening it and wiggling the cable breaks them. It's like a person can stand on your hand without pain but if you cross your fingers first....

Re:The smart home graveyard is getting crowded on Wednesday September 30, 2026 @03:37PM (#49913290)
If one took extra care to wire everything properly one could close the door and leave knowing it would just work until the contacts are black. Even then, wobbling the switch up and down is likely to buy at least a decade of use. The plastic might turn crispy in 100 years.

We put everything in pipes in the Netherlands. If you don't bend them in absurd corners and properly fasten them one can also replace the wires and switches without opening up the wall.

Then came the flimsy IoT wanting to be part of the installation but it should really be a disposable plug and play component that is easy to replace like a lightbulb.

It should use switching wires where possible, Ethernet as a second choice, then Bluetooth and finally wifi if non of the above satisfy the req.

For renovation you often have no choice but new houses entirely depending on wifi and flimsy IoT seems only worth it if it really saves a lot of money.

I suspect they are working on the edge where limited data makes the subjects more interesting.
Re:Mercury 2.5 LLM hits 770 tokens per second on Thursday September 24, 2026 @12:08AM (#49826147)
Would have made a nice local tool.

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