WhyCause

The slowness is a feature, not a bug. It gives your brain time to chew on it a little bit, digesting the information and storing it away instead of just copy-pasting.

Speed-hacks like shorthand and stenographers' machines are for copying exactly what was said, not consuming and understanding it. I would be very surprised if there were not very old studies moldering in a paper journal somewhere investigating the information retention of secretaries / stenographers compared to "naive" note-takers.

Also, MS Word auto-corrects <space>-<space> into an em-dash just like it fixes quotes. Depending on which software was used to write it, it's very likely that's what happened.

I'm never suspicious of only one em-dash, as they are a perfectly valid, if infrequent punctuation. Three or more in an article this length would make start looking at the rest of it more closely, though.

I'm just picturing me watching their stupid ad, then opening the door and permanently disabling the locking mechanism, with a sawz-all, if necessary.

...you can't control what others send you.

Of course not. You can, however, control what you then do with said data.

If a courier accidentally dropped a folder full of nuclear secrets in your mailbox, I promise you that if you do anything with it other than call the FBI (in the US), you will be in trouble.

PyInstaller-made executables also used to have a habit of getting flagged by security software as malicious (maybe that's why you couldn't run it?) -- apparently, so many malware writers used it that it ruined the party for everyone.

Fortunately, that was only the 32-bit version of Python 2.7. Using 64-bit versions or Python 3 was enough to not get flagged as malicious. I figured that out when I decided I didn't want to teach myself Go just then to deploy something that had worked the day before.

The most successful exception I've seen are books by Joe Klassen (of I Want My Hat fame)...

If you haven't read it The Dark[1] (his collaboration with Lemony Snicket) is also great; my kids absolutely love the voices I do for the animals in I Want My Hat Back and for the titular Dark.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Bccb-Ribbon-Picture-Awards/dp/03...

In the article, they mention that they are working with the crawling company to be reimbursed for the download costs.

Naming and shaming the company while you're trying to work with them is a real good way to not get what you want.

Seinfeld was "a show about nothing."

I would argue that the fast part isn't optional for web apps (where "transpiling"), but it can be in many other instances.

I write a lot of data-pipeline code in Python that mostly runs once a day. Does it matter if it takes an hour to run instead of five minutes? Not really, as long as it's ready to go for the next run.

It's not necessarily wealth that governs price changes, but access. Anyone with a car and 'enough' money for gas can go to the store across town if it's cheaper, but if a store is isolated enough by geography or neighborhood income level, you'll likely see higher prices.

Case in point: the Kroger in Oxford Ohio (where Miami of Ohio's campus is located) has had remarkably higher prices than other Krogers in the area for as long as I've known. Oxford is 'close' to Cincinnati, but there's enough corn and soybean fields between the two to make the trip a pain.

I think it's more that once you get rich, the political machine becomes obsessed with you and your donations. That attention can be kind of addictive.

I worked for a power company that had something like this. Except it was two F4 Phantom jet engines (modified to use natural gas) per generator.

I believe there were two sets in that plant, and boy, did it get loud.

It's not just Moonlite and Owensboro; it's common further downriver too. I end up in Paducah at least once a year, and I always try to make it to Kountry Kastle for a mutton sandwich.

I'd say that mutton and burgoo are the defining elements of Kentucky BBQ.

Many tools shipped python as an embedded scripting language.

I had dabbled with Python before encountering it (in its embedded form), but once I started using it inside ESRI's ArcGIS software, it became my go to language for many, many tasks.

Or Firefox Focus, which is what I use. It does a pretty good job.

That was impression I got from the article as well.

I wind up revisiting it every year when the derby comes around

As do I. It's tradition at this point.

Bingo. I find the styling of Teslas to be so boring and same-y.

I also hate the design laziness of "only a central display panel", and I really, really want buttons and knobs.

Out of curiosity, are the GIS dependencies the proprietary ones (coughESRIcough)?

There is the Planet Gemini [1]. My understanding is that the company was founded by some ex-Psion folk, and the keyboard on the Gemini is supposed to be pretty close to the one on the Series 5. The Gemini runs both Android and Linux.

Having owned both a 200LX and a Psion Series 5 (and other handhelds), I wish I could justify buying the Gemini. Unfortunately, I already have too many bits of tech I don't use regularly to warrant another to go on the pile.

[1] https://www.www3.planetcom.co.uk/gemini-pda

I've made a few "games" that go a step further, including images as SVG or base64 encoded binary.

I use them mainly for learning / testing new (to me) concepts.

Cupping is probably a better analogy. Also, there was a long stretch of time there where we didn't use leeches, at least in part due to the stigma associated with the older practice.

Lucky. When I was in Engineering school, the Mechanical Engineering department had one catalog. We couldn't get any more - something about limited numbers printed (though, I'll confess I never tried to get my own). It was passed around among the students in Machine Design as if it were some sacred scroll.

I want my Psion Series 5 back.

Odd; when I do that it just rotates the same map (back and forth, between a horizontal alignment and about 30 degrees).

I do agree that hijacking ctrl-r is not ideal.

They are tasty in chili.

I have had iOS tell me I needed to "unlock the phone to enable accessories" (or something to that effect) when plugging in the charger that came in the box with the phone.

This has usually been when the lightning port has been fouled by pocket lint or the cord has started going bad, but I bet it happens often enough to desensitize users (especially for people using off-brand cords) that it has been identified as a possible attack vector, and developer mode is the solution.

You're assuming that the daily commute is short for most people.

I live in a fairly dense US city, and there is a fair percentage of downtown office workers that live more that 40 miles out, which given the routes they have to take and the traffic involved can often take 45 minutes to an hour.

I too recall that. I suspect it was a boon for the carriers, eating into your MMS quota. At the time though, my plan was unlimited SMS/MMS, so it didn't really matter to me.

Not generally, no.

Most of the time, it's software that goads you into a subscription after your 30-day trial, like anti-virus packages or HP's ink subscription.