• 0 Posts
  • 39 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

help-circle
  • It’s gotten a lot better in recent years tbf in terms of those kinds of resources. Beginner recommended languages like Python are still a pain because it’s super easy for a beginner to bork how they set it up, but on the whole there’s plenty of online code sandboxes and other ways to get started.

    Your point is definitely valid though. Why on earth would we want someone who’s just showing an interest in programming to write their own compiler??? Wtf? If someone wants to get into baking you don’t send them out into the fields for 6 months to grow some wheat.

    When I was a kid I mucked around with html and css to make some GeoCities sites. I decided I wanted to learn how to code so I got a book from the library called “how to code games for beginners” or something. The thing never told you how to set up an IDE or compile the game. So I was just frustratingly typing out the code examples into notepad without a clue as to what to do. I think this was during the dialup era so it wasn’t like there was a wealth of info online.

    I ended up abandoning programming for quite a few years. It just seemed like nonsense because writing graphics libs for C in notepad does feel like nonsense to a child. I wonder what life would be like if I had some better resources at that moment in time and decided you continue pursuing it.


  • Unadjusted pay figures is an interesting one. On the one hand adjusted pay scales makes it really clear whether people are being paid the same for the same work, on the other hand unadjusted could potentially highlight areas for improvement in terms of adjustments for new mothers etc. That’s tricky though as if the father works for a different company and can’t take time off to look after a new born then the mother will likely have to. Why not release both along with the weightings?



  • HDR support is supposedly fixed on kde and should be getting fixed in most other distros soon supposedly.

    Unity worked for me on pop os after some fiddling and installing of dependencies, but it didn’t fully work. There was a bunch of tools (like animation keyframes) which just didn’t display correctly for me though. Checking out the source code of one the util did a check to see whether it was running on windows or Mac, then exited if it wasn’t either of those. Would be good to run it via proton if possible so we get full support without the Devs needing to write tons of code to support a small percentage of users. That experience is pretty common when running Linux as your main, but the other benefits make up for it.




  • Yeah there were multiple times when the allies could have pushed Germany over before they started steamrolling. When they remilitarised the Rhineland, as you said when they occupied the Sudetenland, and even when they invaded Poland.

    France started pushing into Germany once war was first declared and there was basically nothing in front of them. Most of the tanks etc were in Poland. If they had continued pushing then it might have all ended there. Instead they pulled back to the Maginot line and the rest is history.




  • To counter this I used to visit some factories for a big contract manufacturer in the UK. They would often make say lasagne for the supermarkets and for the “premium” brands. Whilst they were all made in the same place, the “premium” brands products had much better quality ingredients in them and different ratios of the good stuff (say meat) to filler (say pasta sheets).

    For some things it’s the exact same materials, but for many it’s different. You have to do blind taste tests to see which ones you prefer.





  • I don’t understand this argument re Scotland. Brexit was a disaster for a country which had been a member with a trading block for a few decades and which only had some regulatory compliance laws on its own books to amend.

    Scotland has been fully integrated into the UK economy, political system, and legal system, etc for hundreds of years. It would be many many times more painful and damaging for them to leave, and joining the EU after who knows how many years of sitting up there isolated wouldn’t make up for what Scotland would lose by leaving the UK.

    We should be arguing for more cooperation and bigger unions, not smaller ones. Further devolved powers, a better system for representation of the nations in parliament, kicking out the Tories and bringing in more beneficial policies for the UK, etc should be the priority imo. Not even more -exits.


  • I hate this trend of saying “SLAMMED”, or “HOUNDED”, or “ATTACKED” etc in news articles where the stories are just “a couple of people with a dozen followers between them posted slightly negative tweets about topic xyz”.

    My parents were bitching about how Adele was “HAMMERED” online because she said “I am proud to be a woman” or something. Turns out it was just two complete nobodies tweeting about how that’s trans exclusionary or something with 1 heart each.






  • I’ve seen videos of a firm doing interesting stuff with bigger “mothership” drones that hover much higher and then lower a much smaller drone like thing on a cable to place the parcel on the ground. They can hit pretty precise targets and can maneuver around more obstacles than bigger drones can.

    All that needs to happen is for the tech to advance to the point where it’s cheaper to do x% of their deliveries via automated drones than it would cost to have delivery drivers do it and they’ll start doing it. Saving millions(billions?) by say halving the number of human operated delivery trucks will make it a no brainer for them.