I can't fault the theory and can only share an anecdote. It was illegal for school children to smoke when I was in school, 80s into early 90s. So much so that kids caught smoking were expelled from school. Kids still smoked. Perhaps it was a different time and perhaps this time it is being done right.
Sounds like Prohibition but for cigarettes. We know how that went. We also know what banning marijuana hasn't worked out too well. At the start of Covid pandemic South Africa banned the sales of cigarettes for about three months. Result was lots of unscrupulous people became rich [0][1].
South Africa has high taxes on cigarettes making cigarettes relatively expensive. The result is black market of unregistered cigarette brands. A good number come across illegally from neighbouring countries. Perhaps NZ being an island nation might be able to control illegal imports better.
I presume the two smokers did more than just smoke. If they were parents They probably also provided food, education, love and whole lot of other things than just secondary smoke. Life tends to be a complex mix of good and bad.
This. Perhaps HN crowd can afford machines with sizeable amounts of RAM but many people in my family still use old hardware. 2G RAM machines are pretty common from Windows 7 era. I often "upgrade" family members unwilling to buy a new computer onto lightweight Linux distros which don't need that much RAM.
There is always too sides to a story. We don't know what pressures the FB engineers were under and the problems they were trying to solve resulting in them "demanding" changes. In the end I think everyone wins with the forking.
It feels similar to the sometimes unintended consequence of having more legislation only serving to entrench the incumbents by making it hard for new players to enter. In a couple of African countries I am familiar with it is the same story. An endless series of papers and stamps and signatures that are supposed to stop corruption but really just serve as an opportunity to be corrupt. I am so paranoid now of not having the right paper I tend to store all papers issued by a government official.
Anecdote on eye strain, I can't speak to the contrast in bright environments. I am 46 don't need glasses but started feeling the strain of staring at a monitor. Switched to dark mode and my eyes feel better for it. I now use DarkReader in Firefox.
I am not sure if this counts. Also second hand information but apparently safety in mines has been improved through AI monitoring camera feeds. Alarms/warnings go off when people get to close to certain equipment. This most likely has prevented not only economic losses but probably saved lives.
I am loving the responses to your comment. I want to add that as a grown man in my forties I have a couple of Rasberry Pis and a BBC micros along with some interesting components from Aliexpress which I have done absolutely nothing with but pack neatly away for a few years now. One day.
I understand your point. I am undecided about the overall impact. I have spent my life in two countries. One is a dictatorship where the culture is basically to tell the cops the truth to avoid trouble. Not great but the net effect is the country has less crime. Less murders, less armed robbery and it is a pretty safe. Just don't say anything about politicians. The other country has a culture of not cooperating with the cops. Basically someone can be shot in a street full of people and not a single witness will come forward. The net result this country is far more dangerous and you need to be careful when out and about. None of them are perfect because humans are not perfect.
It is nice to be a dominant position like Microsoft because if they weren't they would have put aside their "feelings" and hired Casey to help them out. But they don't need to. Feelings of Microsoft seem more important than feelings of all their users who will just have to bear with it.
To add it's not just languages. I was once assigned to teach Cognos a BI tool that's been around a while. I was given the instructor's manuals to go through. It was then I realised how incredible sophisticated the software was and I also realised most people didn't even use 50% of the software's capabilities. I have found the same with text editors and IDEs. You can use an editor for five years and still continue to discover new features.
I can't speak for iPhone but I was always bemused by the line. Until someone responded to one of my messages and I realised my message also ended with sent from my ** phone. I hadn't added the line. I realised on some Android phones the phone adds the line to the bottom of your message. You can turn it off but I suspect most people don't..
On a tangent from the article which discusses the Java the languae. I write SQL for a living and the one thing I like about Java based SQL clients like DBeaver [0], SQL Workbench/J[1] and SQuirreL SQL [2] is that they tend to support most databases that have a JDBC driver. Turns out most databases do have a JDBC driver. So if you want to connect to "new" database like DuckDb to Oracle, SQL Server and even CSV files using one client JDBC client is one way to do it. The steps to connect to a JDBC database tend to be very simple and the same for all databases. Get the driver jar file, put it in the classpath and then use the documented connection string to connect to the database.
If you only work with SQL Server then it is probably best you use SQL Server Management Studio. If you use different databases you will need a different client and I find with JDBC based clients you can use one client for to connect to many databases. I have seen many here complain that the Java tools are slow and bloated and look ancient. From a looks perspective you can use FlatLaf themes which look good to me. There are some nice dark themes to chose from.
I wonder if they threw in the towel too soon. I too had a Nokia Windows phone and I loved it. They were popular in South Africa as Nokia was a recognised brand. Bandwidth is still expensive here so most people just need WhatsApp and Facebook and they are fine. Perhaps the developed market needed more apps.
We have baboons and they are smart. They can open all sorts of doors. They ignore you if you are a woman or don't have anything in your hand that could cause them harm. They know how to bluff an attack making you throw away food that is in your hands. The stand upright make scary noises and charge at you. Quite frightening and most just throw whatever it is in your hands away. So yes animals can be smart.
My bank's internet banking page to pay multiple beneficiaries pages is a jumbled mess in Firefox. I haven't bothered to check why but I am guessing it's some grid layout issue. I did write to bank highlighting the issue. It's been over a year and still issue persists so I just switch to Chromium for internet banking.
I don't know anything about manufacturing but I wonder if problems associated with outsourcing IT overseas are not also experienced in manufacturing.l? Wouldn't having the factory closer give you same benefits as being able to walk across to a fellow developer and discuss some issue.
This. I got a standup desk and I find it is easier to do some exercise if you are already standing. Not sure why but it is just easier to do some lunges or pick up a kettlebell from standing position than to get up and do the same exercises. YMMV.
You are right about the LEFT join coupled with a filter in the WHERE clause sometimes makes the join a normal INNER join. Just when this is the case is difficult for me to work out. This is often a trick question in some SQL assessments I have seen. I say this as someone with over 20 years of SQL almost on a daily basis. I avoid such scenarios by using CTEs.
I remember using the addon too. The reason for the addon had words to the effect that it enabled you to keep track of sites that did not have an RSS feed which was the more standard way getting new web content.
I often "favorite" such threads because of the alternatives listed in the comments. I use Multi Commander[0]. I have tried a few of the others over the years but for the last five years or more I haven't moved from Multi Commander.
I have the same attitude as you do. When I was younger I spent so much time tweaking and changing Linux distros and desktops. Now I just install any Debian based distro and enable the dark theme. I pretty much leave everything as default. I spent most of my time in the apps I use, DBeaver for database work, Firefox and whatever editor I am using. I am bemused by the passionate partisan comments in this thread. I am long past that but thankful to all developers working on Open Source desktops.
I get your point but I was specifically refering to houses in cities that people live in. The majority of houses were mud huts in Zimbabwe and these were not dwellings passed on from generation to generation. This is contrast to cities like London were some buildings have been standing for hundreds of years. This means new generations are not starting building from scratch.
When you a few hundred years behind most of the world it is a problem. I don't know of any building in sub Saharan Africa that predates the colonialists. I know Egypt and North Africa do have old buildings but not where I am from.
Result is overcrowding and people living in shacks.