Posts by that one in the corner

BeOS rebuild / Haiku has a new feature / that runs Windows apps

Re: RIP BeOS

You are not wrong about BeOS being harder to program for due to the multithreading.

The real shame is that back then, people saw that MT is tricky and avoided doing it, so BeOS fell, but now it seems every halfwit thinks they know how to MT under Windows and Linux and have no qualms about inflicting the results on us.

Cue flashback to my team leader asking for a sanity check after seeing the expensive contractors' code create a Mutex as a local variable, strangely always succeeding in locking it on the next line of code. Something that worked so well said contractors decided it was a Pattern and duly cut'n'pasted it... Well, it passed *their* tests, never deadlocking.

The inevitability of the Windows 11 UI: New Notepad enters the beta channel

Re: Bugs -> Dark Mode

It always got our IT guy wound up, for some reason, but I find the best taskbar is on the left (the rhs would also work, for those with the mouse in their right hand), wide enough to fit 20 or more characters and with autohide.

All the screen space available for serious work. When it is time to change your focus, one quick flick of wrist and you get a column of window titles large enough to actually read.

Not looking forward to a greyscale 2022? Then look back to the past in 64 colours

Junkuary?

Nothing's working, and I've checked everything, so it must be YOUR fault

Bilsdale transmitter, by any chance?

Developer creates ‘Quite OK Image Format’ – but it performs better than just OK

Re: Zig, Rust, Rust, Rust, Go, TypeScript, Haskell, Ć, Python, C#, Elixir, Swift, Java, and Pascal

But I don't like rust!

Re: public domain

> first mage format

What, is this some kind of demonic sorcery?

> use Imagemagic

Burn the witch!

The dark equation of harm versus good means blockchain’s had its day

Re: Lack of comprehension and imagination ...

In the deep past, when a species has gone extinct because of a catastrophic change to its environment, which caused related species (e.g. its predators and prey) to follow it soon after, we weren't affected. But only because we were not there for most of these events.

Now, when, say, the bees and other pollinators go extinct, we suffer - and dramatically so.

If you want to argue against my example (please do, I have no idea how vulnerable bees are to temperature) I hope you can demonstrate a total knowledge of all the species interactions to show which ones we can "afford" to lose without any problems to us.

Re: We know it has no future

Are you claiming that the Bitcoins transacted in El Salvador are only managed (? what word should I be using here?) by the mining done in El Salvador?

You are totally sure that they aren't using the electricity generated somewhere else, somewhere with a mass of mining rigs who don't give a monkey's where the transactions are sourced, just so long as they can race to the hash first?

In other words, if El Salvador is responsible for a large number of transactions that "need" to be recorded, El Salvador is responsible for encouraging miners everywhere else. So any green power El Salvador has is irrelevant to the greenity of their Bitcoin usage.

What will life in orbit look like after the ISS? NASA hands out new space station contracts

Except that keeping them in LEO whilst we learn what to and what not to do means that, when we do what we should not have done, we can bring the poor buggers back down and help them. Swapping them for more brave souls who now know not to do that thing.

But if we just send them direct to Mars without going through the LEO experience then they - and therefore the entire Mars mission - are well and truly shafted.

Hopefully the plan is to give the people the best chance we can of getting to Mars, surviving getting to Mars, doing some decent science there and maybe even making it all the way back again.

When you think of a unit of length, do you think of Antony Gormley's rusty anatomy?

Wide, not high

Using the Angel's height is daft - driving past it in the morning is definitely a side-to-side "it were *this* big" moment.

Leaked footage shows British F-35B falling off HMS Queen Elizabeth and pilot's death-defying ejection

Are we quite sure that a Kraftwerk album would need to be taped over before being fed into a Tornado?

Can Rust save the planet? Why, and why not

Re: The language is not that important

Leaving aside the "this is not weird (names some other language that isn't exactly in the top 10 best beloved)", just because someone considers a language feature weird, especially in comparison to a newer language and all that language's offspring, in no way calls for that style of response.

Multiple entry points is definitely weird, compared to the "formulas" that you are "translating", let alone structured programming. *But*, precisely because you do know what you are doing, you may well be able to come up with a prefectly valid technical reason for using them (such as saving code space in the Good Old Days of kilobytes of core). And you then noted down that weird usage in your accompanying lab notes, didn't you?

Being able to recognise something as "weird" is definitely a Good Thing: it indicates a breadth of experience *and* the understanding - including self-awareness - that this thing isn't commonly encountered. The true measure of the programmer is then their response (which, I really hope, doesn't include just ramming this weirdness into everything they do until it becomes the norm for them: self-awareness can go down as well as up).

Academics tell Brit MPs to check the software used when considering reproducibility in science and tech research

Re: What's the betting that...

*Start* playing with data, maybe.

When you have an idea that there is something to the found in the data, move onto something - more robust.

Super-rare wooden Apple 1 hand built by Jobs and Wozniak goes to auction

> dump the ROMs, digitise the data sheets

Bundle all of that lovely digital data into an NFT, then bung that into the next auction. Ka-ching.

Reg reader returns Samsung TV after finding giant ads splattered everywhere

Re: Can you opt out of the data collection on smart TVs?

I think that it is mean not to send the data on to Samsung in a timely fashion.

Instead of letting them pile up on your server, how about, every now and then (Friday at 12:00?) selecting some that look important (use you best judgement) and then email them to Samsung?

Base64, rot13 (after all, they probably think that "their" data needs to be encrypted) and with the urgent flag set, of course. I'm sure a few quick web searches will result in the proper recipient - head of marketing, CEO - bonus points if you can manage to find a "board members" or "all staff" address.