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kogus

No. He's right. Cruelty is corrosive to the cruel person. Courtesy and kindness help build up the kind and courteous person. Burning compute for courtesy is compute well spent.
My first reaction was similar to the reaction I'd have if you told me that cockroaches had learned to unlock doors and stand on their hind legs. But then I thought about accessibility, and the ways this could be used to help technologically illiterate or disabled people, and I thought again.

Do you remember when PCs used to come with a completely soup-to-nuts tutorial that would talk to you like you had never seen a PC before? Things like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ScS4OYDfHE

This kind of baked-in interactivity could really help in a training or disability context.

Re:Inception-style curved map for turn-by-turn directions on Friday August 28, 2026 @11:51AM (#49480371)
I don't really know why, but the thought of my (elderly) mother using this made me laugh almost as hard as the El Risitas guy[1]. I adore it, and it also should never ever be used in any car GPS scenario. It's far too distracting, and puts far too much emphasis on the places you are not going.

I could see it being useful for a more exploratory style of map, however. Games like Pokemon Go come to mind as a place where this would be pretty cool.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fkk9DI-8el4

Re:Delphi 13 Community Edition Is Now Available on Wednesday August 12, 2026 @10:13AM (#49272724)
Re:Delphi 13 Community Edition Is Now Available on Wednesday August 12, 2026 @10:13AM (#49272710)
I have used Beyond Compare for 20 years, and as far as I know, it has always been and still is written in Delphi. Quest Software, maker of TOAD for Oracle was also a big Delphi shop for many years. Not sure if they still are.
Re:How many of the 170k English words do you know? on Friday June 19, 2026 @04:43PM (#48603038)
Suggestion: Add an "I don't know" button. If I don't know a word, I can admit it - but if I have to guess, then I have a 1/4 chance of getting incorrect credit.
Re:AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale on Thursday May 21, 2026 @12:41PM (#48225576)

  quantitative changes in an activity produce qualitative changes

Well said!
If this is the Trump Administration's "punishment" for "disloyalty", then we are in for a treat. Hopefully US forces can also be withdrawn from Japan, Iraq, Italy, Guam, and the other 180 locations where they are currently unnecessarily stationed.
I'm pretty sure you are right. Or to emphasize the devaluation, "$100 today would be worth only $3.05 in 1914."

I think it is astonishing that we accept that in a best case scenario of sustained 2% inflation, we are literally planning for the value of the dollar to be cut in half every 36 years.

Re:Fast-Servers on Thursday March 05, 2026 @10:50AM (#47263054)
Ah, that makes sense.
Re:Fast-Servers on Thursday March 05, 2026 @10:14AM (#47262499)
Slightly tangential, but why is the first diagram duplicated at .1 opacity?
Re:Delphi is 31 years old – innovation timeline on Wednesday February 18, 2026 @04:24PM (#47066638)
I have very fond memories of working with Delphi 5 and 2005 in the early 2000s. Both the language and IDE were a real pleasure to work with, and they were head and shoulders better than anything from Microsoft at that time. The community was small but enthusiastic and supportive as well.

It would be hard to justify Delphi in a new project today - not because of the tooling or language, but because of the prohibitive license costs.

Re:STFU on Friday January 16, 2026 @02:37PM (#46651078)
I love the ingredients for this project:

    made with spite and web audio api. do whatever you want with it.
Re:Claude Cowork Exfiltrates Files on Wednesday January 14, 2026 @04:00PM (#46623317)
I don't think I understand what you are trying to say.

Are you suggesting that if a technological advance is sufficiently important, that we should ignore or accept security threats that it poses?

That is how I read your comment, but it seems so ludicrous an assertion that I question whether I have understood you correctly.

Re:Shipmap.org on Wednesday January 07, 2026 @12:53PM (#46529773)
I posted this as a top-level comment, but for up to date info you might try this:

https://www.vesselfinder.com/

I have no affiliation with that site, I just enjoy it.

Re:Shipmap.org on Wednesday January 07, 2026 @12:51PM (#46529739)
This is beautiful and well done. For realtime shipping information, may I suggest this:

https://www.vesselfinder.com/

As an American, I am also gratified to see the EU take steps toward independence from US foreign policy. Independence doesn't mean enmity; it just means that the EU and US should both be adults in the room, reaching decisions on equal terms.

If one takes a longer view of things, the period from WW2 to now is very much an anomaly reflecting relative European weakness in the aftermath of that war's physical and moral destruction. There is no intrinsic reason that the US should take the lead on, say, policy toward Russia. Quite the opposite.

Assuming that these claims are unsubstantiated, as the article indicates[1], what is the motivation for the Trump administration to put forward this bogus assertion?

[1]From the article:

A Kenvue spokesperson told CNBC in a statement that "over a decade of rigorous research, endorsed by leading medical professionals and global health regulators," shows there’s no credible evidence linking acetaminophen to autism.

Wake Forest University is a fairly prestigious private research university in Winston-Salem, NC. The costs of attendance (without financial aid) are normally almost 100k / year.
Re:William Gibson Reads Neuromancer (2004) on Tuesday September 16, 2025 @12:58AM (#45258166)
I had to read Neuromancer twice; once to learn the world, then once to actually enjoy the story.
Re:SQL Injection as a Feature on Thursday July 24, 2025 @01:19PM (#44673354)
I am not an expert on SQL/PSM, but I have worked in an Oracle shop before, and used PL/SQL extensively. In SQL Server, the equivalent is T-SQL. T-SQL procedures can do pretty much anything (assuming it is executed by a user with sufficient privileges), including creating and altering tables, creating and executing other procedures, running dynamic sql, as well as ordinary CRUD style operations. The "no side effect" limitation applies specifically to SQL functions.
Re:SQL Injection as a Feature on Wednesday July 23, 2025 @11:51AM (#44660599)
I'm not sure what database platform they used, but in SQL Server, functions cannot have side-effects.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/u...

Re:There Are No New Ideas in AI Only New Datasets on Monday June 30, 2025 @01:17PM (#44425720)
To be fair, if you imagine a system that successfully reproduced human intelligence, then 'changing datasets' would probably be a fair summary of what it would take to have different models. After all, our own memories, training, education, background, etc are a very large component of our own problem solving abilities.
Re:The Effect of Noise on Sleep on Friday June 27, 2025 @09:52AM (#44396818)
I personally would not be able to sleep well with earplugs. The feeling of pressure in my ears, combined with the 'pushing' of the earplug if I rolled over to lay on my side would be very uncomfortable.
Re:The Hamburger-Menu Icon Today: Is It Recognizable? on Tuesday June 17, 2025 @03:25PM (#44302888)
Not related to the original post, but I have been visiting your site for 15+ years now, and it's one of my favorite online art sites. Really grateful for your many years of beautiful work.
In principle, I do not think the income tax should be replaced by anything at all. Most federal spending is either unnecessary or actively harmful. But practically speaking, I'd suggest a federal sales tax combined with a Universal Basic Income subsidy to all citizens (e.g., everyone gets a check for $X every month). The subsidy would cover the increase in prices for anyone below a certain income level - it would effectively produce a progressive tax structure without the privacy infringement. There would be no loopholes or exemptions to think about either.
I'm going to be that guy and just say that one of the many many harmful side effects of income taxes is the kind of social engineering power it gives politicians, who are neither qualified nor properly motivated to make good decisions with such tools. Income taxes are an unethical pollution to our society and government.
Re:Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools on Wednesday May 07, 2025 @10:44AM (#43916408)
The article suggests that someone from Maine would be reluctant to ask Mississippi for advice, given the stereotypes and biases that all Americans have absorbed over the years.

If the Maine Secretary of Education overcame his or her reluctance and did in fact ask Mississippi for advice, imagine their disappointment if the response was "we actually teach math".

Do you have a source for your response? I'm genuinely curious about what they changed to achieve this level of success. I'd be interested first for the actual educational methods, and secondarily I'd be interested in relating it to the idea of organizational changes that can produce relatively rapid reversals of a long term trend.

Re:Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools on Wednesday May 07, 2025 @09:55AM (#43915749)
This was very interesting to read, and news to me. It's gratifying to see Mississippi prove that it's possible to break out of a pattern of failure. I would love to see a discussion around the specific policies and practices that MS has put in place to actually achieve these results. The article doesn't really discuss that.

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