arrowsmith

Knowledge for its own sake is great, but it's worth noting that many "useless" fields of mathematics turned out to be very practical in the long run.

Number theory was long thought to have no practical application, but now it's the backbone of cryptography. Boolean algebra was developed in the 19th century (George Boole died in 1864), decades before it was used to build computers.

Those "useless" theorems being proved today may turn out to unlock a world-changing technology centuries from now. When the breakthrough comes we'll be grateful for the people who laid the foundations.

Yes but it's always advertised as "$12/MONTH" in big letters with billed annually written somewhere small and non-obvous.

Regulation is a good thing for big, established incumbents who can afford expensive lawyers. It keeps them safe from competition.

Yes but that didn't happen in the Americas. They didn't settle or leave any lasting impact.

They briefly visited, they didn't "conquer"

The president of the European Commission is “elected” through a thin pretence of democracy that the people of Europe have effectively no control over, and mostly pay no attention to. If you think she’s there because the greater public decided she’s the best person for the job then you don’t know how the EU works.

Also most of the EU population don’t know her for anything at all. I’d be surprised if more than 50% of Europeans could name her.

Maybe an ESL thing? "Potatoes" are literally called "earth apples" in some languages (e.g. pommes de terre in French; Erdäpfel in some German dialects.)

Max Planck published the same paper in multiple journals in the 1940s, which was common practice at the time. He also published a second unrelated paper that happened to have the same title as the paper it was a response to. In 2011 both papers were retracted from their journals' archives, most likely because a bot incorrectly flagged them for plagiarism.

Saved you a click.

Then it's perhaps not the best name, given what happened in the end to the empire's eastern border.

https://xkcd.com/2151/

The UK government has just create an upsurge of interest in digital privacy, so that might be why

It's here: https://codeberg.org/rickoooooo/BannedBookLibrary/src/branch...

For the curious, the "banned" books are (it's a short list):

  - Call of the Wild - Jack London
  - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
  - The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain
  - Women in Love - D.H. Lawrence

Yeah I had the same reaction. From the title I was expecting to find out what the "future of email" is. I'm still waiting.

US had net negative migration in 2025 for the first time in decades:

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2026/01/14/immigra...

Which led to a British journalist holding an "offensive poems about Erdogan" contest, which was won by Boris Johnson:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/may/19/boris-johns...

In the UK, employers pay a stealth tax of 15% (recently increased from 13.8%) on top of the quoted salary minus the first £5k (recently decreased from £9,100.)

So your "£50k" salary actually costs your employer £56,750, and that's before all the other expenses mentioned elsewhere in this thread such as hardware, office rent etc.

See also: Germany's leader filing hundreds of criminal complaints against people who insult him on social media:

https://rmx.news/article/germany-chancellor-merz-quietly-fil...

Don't forget Futurama's: https://futurama.fandom.com/wiki/Old_Freebie

ZIRP will never happen again

29 isn't remotely close to too late, dude.

How do Poles answer "how are you?" differently to Brits?

"To whatsapp" is a common verb, but I have never heard anyone say "apping".

Where do you live where "apping" is understood?

if Netherland has some information-sharing agreements with … Fourteen Eyes

Probably a safe assumption, since the Netherlands is a member of the Fourteen Eyes

So the “anti-separation” petition was a bad faith move by pro-separation forces? Am I reading you right?

I don’t remember anyone before the referendum saying it would be the first of two.

A lot of people pushed unsuccessfully for a second referendum after the first one but that was never based on any pre-existing legalities or precedent, it was just an attempt to overturn the first result from people who were upset that theyd lost.

The Brexit referendum was non-binding for important constitutional reasons.

Legally, leaving required an Act of Parliament. To hold a binding referendum, they would have had to pass an Act that says "here are the exact details of how we'll leave the EU, coming into force if the referendum passes".

But that would have required them to figure out all the exact details of what it means to leave the EU, and they didn't bother - they just held the referendum and assumed they could figure out the details later if Leave won, which they didn't expect would happen.

We all saw how well that worked out.

there was sufficient political capital to push it through without a follow up vote.

This seriously overstates how smoothly things went between 23/6/2016 and 31/1/2020

Why not just wait until the court case is resolved?

I don't get it. They're having a referendum on whether or not to have a referendum? Why bother with two steps?

I googled the Clarity Act and it appears to be recently-passed US (not Canadian) legislation about regulating cryptocurrencies or something. What's its relevance here?

I am not Canadian and know nothing about Canadian politics. Someone please enlighten me.

This thread? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47783940

Where's the contradiction? I'm not auditioning to play guitar for Metallica but I'd take the job if they offered it to me.