This is normal and by design. They fly super low, way in the upper atmosphere. This means they can’t stay up there for more than 3-4 years. It’s partly to reduce latency, but more likely it’s just a part of the trick to keep SpaceX in business. Starlink is their biggest customer, a lot of the launches are just for Starlink. And they need to keep on launching, otherwise the network will fail. This means Musk can pump the huge pool of investment money from Starlink straight into SpaceX. This keeps them in business to keep funnelling money from taxpayers in the form of NASA grants into SpaceX. Musk then used that SpaceX money to invest in xAI, which was used to absorb a lot of the debt created by buying Twitter.

All just a scam, pumping money around to keep filling their pockets.

we end up with lost history

Oof, I felt this in my soul

There are a couple of things I do agree with in regards to the comments in code. They aren’t meant as a replacement for documentation. Documentation is still required to explain more abstract overview kind of stuff, known limitations etc. If your class has 3 pages of text in comments at the top, that would probably be better off in the documentation. When working with large teams there are often people who need to understand what the code can and can’t do, how edge cases are handled etc. but can’t read actual code. By writing proper documentation, a lot of questions can be avoided and often help coders as well with a better understanding of the system. Writing doc blocks in a matter that can be extracted into a documentation helps a lot as well, but I feel that does provide an easy way out to not write actual documentation. Of course depending on the situation this might not matter or one might not care, it’s something that comes up more when working in large teams.

Just like writing code, writing proper comments is a bit of an art. I’ve very often seen developers be way too verbose, commenting almost every line with the literal thing the next line does. Anyone who can read the code can see what it does. What we can’t see is why it does this or why it doesn’t do it in some other obvious way. This is something you see a lot with AI generated code, probably because a lot of their training was done on tutorials where every line was explained so people learning can follow along.

This also ties in with keeping comments updated and accurate when changing code. If the comment and the code doesn’t match with each other, which one is true? I’ve in the past worked on legacy codebases where the comments were almost always traps. The code didn’t match the comments at all, sometimes obviously so, most times only very subtle. We were always guessing was the implementation meant to be the comment and the difference just a mistake? The codebase was riddled with bugs, so it’s likely. Or was the code changed at a later point on purpose and the comments neglected?

Luckily these days we have good tools in regards to source control, with things like feature branches, pull requests with tools that allow for discussion and annotation. That way at least usually the origin of a change is traceable. And code review can be applied before the change is merged, so mistakes like neglecting comments can be caught.

Now I don’t agree with the principle of no comments at all. Just because a tool has some issues and limitations doesn’t mean it gets banned from our toolbox. But writing actual useful comments is very hard and can be just as hard as writing good code. Comments also aren’t a cheat card for writing bad code, the code needs to stand on its own and be enhanced by the comments.

It’s one of those things we’ve been arguing about over my entire 40 year career. I don’t think there is a right way. Whatever is best depends on the person, the team, the system etc. And like with many things, there are people who are good and people who suck. That’s just the way the cookie crumbles.

Yes context is very important in Dutch. Which is why translations are almost always off. A Dutch speaker can almost instantly recognize whether a translation was done by someone with a native speaking level, or a machine. That’s why a lot of Dutch folk prefer English on their computers and phones. The Dutch translations are often terrible, or as the Dutch would say “tenenkrommend”.

Dutch is also a language you can very easily unlearn, even as a native speaker. I’ve experienced this firsthand, where I mostly use English and German every day. My Dutch has gotten terrible over the years.

This doesn’t even scratch the surface of how weird the Dutch are. See this translation isn’t really accurate, “Geef me een klap papa” translates to “Hit me father”. A more accurate translation would be: “Geef me billenkoek pappie”. (Even though this stil isn’t completely accurate, the daddy thing got borrowed from US culture, so would still be daddy even in Dutch)

Now this might be a bit stranger, but not all that different. However when we zoom in on the word billenkoek it gets real weird. Just like other languages, for example German, the Dutch can just omit spaces and create longer and longer compound words. Billenkoek is one of those words, comprised of two words namely “billen” and “koek”. The first word translates to buttocks, which makes sense, spanking involves hitting the butt. However the second word doesn’t have a direct translation in English, but is a collection term enveloping baked goods such as cookies and certain kinds of cake. So it could be translated into “butt cake” .

What do spanking and cakes have to do with each other? And what exactly is a butt cake? Who knows, the Dutch are just very very weird.

(for all my etymology nerds, the term comes from rewarding good children with cookies and bad children with a different sort of cookies, namely corporal punishment)

Which funny enough is part of the reason they don’t have trains. Some dickhead fascist billionaire charmed the simple brained with magic transportation, so they wouldn’t invest in high speed rail anymore. Go figure

Which would be the reason the hackers are celebrating

While this is good for some sort of movie or book plot, it isn’t realistic. Remember humans and species we evolved from were around a lot longer than 40,000 years. We’ve encountered these microbes (or their cousins) before and will be able to handle them just fine. Especially because we have an evolutionary advantage over them, they don’t know all the new tricks.

The ones to really be scared of are the ones that have become resistant to all of the antibiotics we have thrown at them. Those super bugs can kick our asses.

I had one of these but it died. One day it simply wouldn’t turn on anymore. So YMMV

You should know any man that wears an ascot with pride fucks a LOT.

Are you sure these aren’t insect nests?

I’ve heard it from many people, shame it isn’t fixed yet.

I replaced my cable and bought a 5 pack in the store, so if this one starts acting up, I can replace it right away.

I hope they fix that bug where on Linux when the controller disconnects for whatever reason, all of the analog inputs like the triggers and sticks stop working. I connect my controller using an USB-C cable which is kinda broken, it usually works just fine, but every once in a while it disconnects before immediatly reconnecting. Usually that’s not an issue, it just hiccups a bit and then I can continue playing. Since it doesn’t happen often, I can blame my skill issues on it and I’m lazy, I hadn’t bothered to replace the cable. With this annoying bug, I had to restart the game every time it happened. After a couple of times I replaced the cable, but still would be cool if they just fixed it.

Also people running the Windows version of the game on Linux didn’t have the bug. So good on them to make a Linux version, but kind of a shame the Windows version on Linux runs better in this aspect at least.

Would have been funny if it was original. Just randomly wasting peoples time with copy-pasta is not cool.

Well technically yes, CSD was a thing and allowed mobile phones to connect to the internet. However it wasn’t like these days, where you could actually use the internet on the phone. It was a technology that allowed mobile phones to work as a modem. So you’d connect the phone to the serial port of your 90s laptop and could “dial in”. The data rate was terrible as well as the latency, but it could allow salespeople on the road to digitally submit orders to the head office for example. This was technically internet, but usually people dialed in to a specific number which only connected to the one server/service. It was also super expensive to do so, so adoption was low.

Internet on mobile phones first started with WAP and I-mode, which are close to internet and technically use the internet, but still isn’t the same as what we have these days.

The first mobile pocket devices which could actually browse the internet in a modern way were probably pocket pc’s. Especially the Windows Mobile ones that came with a (for the time) very capable browser. They exploded in popularity and soon became available for phones as well. Yes there was a time Microsoft dominated the mobile phone market and caused the juggernaut Nokia to fall. They then completely dropped the ball when they didn’t realize they were actually marketing to consumers instead of business and failed to innovate in ways that were more user friendly. Instead focusing on productivity and technical capabilities. Blackberry and Apple swooped in and the rest is history.

That’s mostly because digital cameras were known at the time to be extremely shit. I remember having a webcam in the 90s. It kinda sorta worked, but even in high res picture mode it was 640x480 and the images looked like shit. So it would be more a case of convincing people a digital camera can be as good as an old school one. The concept itself would be familiar. In fact, calling it a webcam instead of a digital camera would be a lot easier for a 90s person to understand.

Well WAP and I-mode were both introduced in 1999 and didn’t go mainstream till 2000. So I don’t think any phone had internet access in the 90s. Even in 2000 most people had a Nokia 3210 or similar, a lot of people still had screens that could only display 2 lines of text at most.

They seem very close to the desk? Are they still working, seems like it would choke them?

Lmao, you crying now, wait till you find out about climate change, get wrecked little man