Notices by clacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛 (clacke@libranet.de), page 64

On using natural language tooling to write software:

If programmers do it to save time on boilerplate, that can be helpful, even though arguably that seems the language and libraries don't have the appropriate levels of abstraction.

If programmers do it to learn from examples and quickly catch up on stuff they haven't done before, that can be great.

I have friends who do either or both of the above.

If people who can't program use a statistical engine to generate code they don't understand and can't validate, and they trust the results blindly because they also don't understand QA and testing, we're entering an era of more and weirder bugs than ever, on all levels of abstraction from high-level logic down to API calls.

On the positive side, for the few programmers left who can write formally verified programs ... or who can write things like AIs and system libraries, maybe their salaries will be worth tenfold.

The sustainability of that crowd is already in question though. They're on average only slightly below 20 years older than hey were 20 years ago.

People born in the 21st century believe it's a "plot hole" in "Friends" when the landlines work during a city-wide power outage.

Nope, sorry, our infrastructure really used to be that resilient.

The organizers of the AFC eAsian Cup 2023 used "Hong Kong, China" as the name for the Hong Kong team, but they couldn't make Konami update their eFootball 2024 game from saying just "Hong Kong", so the Hong Kong Football Association withdrew from the tournament.

The team was told only three hours before their game.

hongkongfp.com/2024/02/02/hong…

#hongkong

> Why does it look like there are two Chinese versions

@Kermode It's exactly what you'd expect: The same Chinese, just written with traditional characters or simplified characters.

They don't want to alienate Taiwanese and Hongkongers, but they also don't want to be inaccessible to Mainlanders and Singaporeans.

> [ . . . ] although the -um spelling was occasionally used in Britain, the American scientific language used -ium from the start. [ . . . ] In 1828, an American lexicographer, Noah Webster, entered only the aluminum spelling in his American Dictionary of the English Language. In the 1830s, the -um spelling gained usage in the United States; by the 1860s, it had become the more common spelling there outside science [ . . . ] By 1890, both spellings had been common in the United States, the -ium spelling being slightly more common; by 1895, the situation had reversed; by 1900, aluminum had become twice as common as aluminium; in the next decade, the -um spelling dominated American usage. In 1925, the American Chemical Society adopted this spelling.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminiu…

*shakes fist*

Websteeeeeer!

I forgot about it and missed my appointment, but today i
I got it done! One jab in the left arm, one in the right.

The flu one was cheaper than I thought. The XBB1.5 was ~200 USD and the flu was ~20 USD.

Star Trek Discovery: Universal Translator Malfunction

farside.link/invidious/watch?v…

youtube.com/watch?v=lIKppXg0sY…

I went there because I was curious of the Welsh, but what made me happy was the Norwegian "Jeg kan ikke forstå noe som helst".

#StarTrek

It's not an audiobook, it's radio theater!

I enjoyed the first episode.

#TheSojourn

@Digital Mark λ ☕️ ⛄️ 🕹 Ok, now I am also dead.

That was amazing.