randrus

Introduced my son to Scratch yonks ago. He found the graphics editor and dove in - he never developed any interest in programming, and now he’s third year in law school.

So maybe his Scratch experience will result in a fulfilling career far from high tech :)

When you say “inherent property” I think “immutable” as in “cannot be changed from one chirality/spin to another”.

Is that a useful line to draw?

Not a physicist. Never played one on TV.

Always reminds me of the forces that shape the mechanisms around the exchange of genetic information that powers evolution.

See: Red Queen by Matt Ridley.

I ask gpt a lot of questions about plants and gardening - I’m happy that it remembers where I live and understands the implications. I could remind it in every question, but this is convenient.

I joined DG in their last days, largely due to kidders book.

Also, I really liked DG/UX, for reasons I no longer recall.

My mother in law asked for help with her computer. I went in dreading the whole windows mess - only to find somebody had set her up with Linux Mint - I was actually able to help her with her internet issue, and am so happy for that unsung hero.

I’m not an SME here and would love to hear more about this.

I paid full boat 20+ years ago but I’ve spent more time in that chair than my car and bed combined, and it’s always got my back. Best purchase ever.

I seem to remember something like that in DG/UX too.

Absolutely this.

This rings almost true for me - but “addiction” makes it seem like some sort of personal failing, whereas I think the cost of that backtracking and the probability of finding another Balrog in the woodpile later makes it seem like a perfectly reasonable choice.

Source: been there, done that.

What’s your favorite democratic institution? My favorite is separation of powers.

Would you say it’s holding?

Philip K Dick includes this as a side bit in Ubik - iirc there’s a great scene where the main character is broke and trying to get the front door to let him in to his apartment.

AI - red in tooth and claw.

Koyaanisqatsi

Seems like it varies by state - I’ve purchased Sudafed in at least two states other than my own.

Samuel Delaney - Nova, Babel-17

Clifford Simak - City

Alan E Nourse - The Universe Between

My interpretation of Conways Law is that social problems) in development organizations) are isomorphic to (gross) technical problems, and that leverage works both directions.

In case this is relevant to your reasons for posting … every time I see one of the fact free posts the slam Python to promote Julia it pushes me further from considering Julia for anything.

IIRC LiquidPlanner models uncertainty.

…languages which are mad..

Reference to “Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge”?

Somewhat relevant (which I posted a while back):

https://climate.metoffice.cloud/

A very apt reference to the story

The ones who walk away from Omelas

Dunno how pasting a link works but here it is:

https://shsdavisapes.pbworks.com/f/Omelas.pdf

That is truly impressive.

In the 90s I worked across the aisle from our AS/400 dev - after an office power outage we’d spend hours running fsck on our unixen and he’d take a long lunch. Every time.

That resonates.

I’ve heard it this way: it’s not the language it’s the leverage.

Don’t be the dad that loses the first year of baby photos due to poor backup practices :|

Sat through a showing of Herzog’s Fata Morgana - partway through they stopped, apologized for the film being backwards or flipped or something. They changed … something … and started up again. It didn’t greatly improve the experience.

Fountainhead triggered a kind of moral indignation in me. I read it as arguing that the path to happiness and success was to ignore social mores, hold your vision firm, and take what you want. I think I described it as glamorizing sociopathy.

Also, I want to reject the imputation of faddish dislike for her. I read this 40+ years ago - I'm not some johnny-come-hately.

It's a remote object model, very similar in spirit to CORBA. This allows the object creator/user and the object itself to be in different fault domains - which makes it all too easy to lose track of objects and leak them, unless you've added significant management scaffolding.