Geoffrey Challen, a computer scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, plans to offer a new course this fall in which he will teach students to develop software “without writing, reading, debugging, or viewing a single line of code,” he told me.

Is that meant to say reviewing? Either way, I can’t see how this would lead to good results, even with a comprehensive test suite. Security? Scalability? Maintainability?

Figuring out how to solve a problem on an OS I’d used for a few weeks fortuitously solved a problem I’d created trying to solve a different problem on a different OS a few years ago. We learn by doing!

I loved this bit, I think everyone in tech has a similar story of some kind.

Bah, I see this was already posted here a year ago - only two comments showed up when I searched for the url before posting!

then unapproved by Lennart Poettering

No, you’ve misunderstood, here is a quote from your own source:

A merge request asking for this change to be repealed was struck down by Lennart

It was a reversion that Poettering rejected, the PR stands.

Ah yes, I see what you mean. OP has posted content from Ten Epstein Revelations You Might Have Missed, which is the article that I see after the Israel/X story.

You scrolled past the (annoying) “read more” button and are now on the next article.

Also there’s the style of delivery - old acting used to be very exaggerated and hammy, then there’s the kind of flawless but somewhat natural style that OP is talking about, through to today’s more realistic “mumbling” style that everyone complains about.

Bad news on the backbone
I couldn’t scan a single ASN

I’m trying to figure out what pronunciation or accent the author uses to have this rhyme. A heavy South African accent, so backbone is more like “berckben”? Pronouncing ASN as “a-sone”?

In the other post, you claim you’d ordered them from Etsy. Is it your Etsy shop? I’m struggling to see how both can be true.

edit: FYI, this shop is OP’s shop

Found them! This lets me cheat and figure out the ones I couldn’t name (or knew I’d got wrong like Digital Ocean that I thought probably wasn’t Commodore 64).

These are really consistent, do you print them yourself?

Only 116 days until Towel Day

[he wrote] a sequel to 1984.

I didn’t know this bit of his story. Anyone read it? I’m assuming it’s not very good/coherent but perhaps he was as gifted a writer as he was a coder.

Element Effects

Zodiac sign elements create elemental affinities and oppositions:

Boosted Combinations (tasks thrive under compatible elements):

• 🔥 Fire (Aries, Leo, Sagittarius) × CPU tasks: 1.5x boost
• 🌬️ Air (Gemini, Libra, Aquarius) × Network tasks: 1.5x boost
• 🌍 Earth (Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn) × System tasks: 1.4x boost
• 💧 Water (Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces) × Memory tasks: 1.3x boost

Hang on - Aquarius, the water-bearer, is an air element? I’m beginning to think this astrology stuff doesn’t make much sense.

I like that water is responsible for memory, like how homeopathic medicine works.

That’s really interesting, I guess I’d assumed it was a universal thing.

I know some people who are known by various versions of their names in their different circles, e.g. Robert/Bob to their family, Rob to their school friends, Bobby to their uni mates and Robert at work.

That argument only works if you’re expecting Google to move youtube.com to youtube.google, which I can’t see happening. If a brand’s a household name and can be found at brand.com, then it stands to reason that they’d leave it like that.

For Google/Microsoft budgets, domain name registration is irrelevant as a cost. Besides, even if they did move the domains, they’d still keep the old ones alive for forwarding and to stop anyone else taking them. For example, Google still has googleplus.com, despite that that was never the official address (they used a subdomain: plus.google.com).

The UK had a history of rhyming nicknames for shortened versions, like William -> Will -> Bill, and most of those are still common in English speaking countries. Richard -> Dick, Robert -> Bob (also Hob, Dob and Nob but these didn’t survive).

These shortened versions can then get extended: Edward -> Ed -> Ted -> Teddy, Margaret -> Meg -> Peg -> Peggy, Anne -> Nan -> Nancy

In the middle ages it was common to make a diminutive name by adding -kin, -in, or -cock, which gave us John -> Jankin/Jenkin -> Jakin -> Jack. Also, Robert -> Robin, Henry -> Hank

Equally, you can only allow *.google.com as easily as *.google, so I still don’t think that makes much sense.

You can block *.google.com as easily as *.google, so I don’t think that makes much sense.

The two most populous countries are moving in the right direction, which is good news. I really wish you guys wouldn’t insist on bringing your country into every single conversation - we know what’s happening, you don’t need to constantly remind us.