rytis

I guess the takeaway is that everyday utility instruments should not require time invested in studying manuals to operate them. Imagine that every screwdriver you buy requires you to read 20 page document that tells you how to operate it. As a user all I want is "a cup of coffee". Why do I need to read that manual? What if I'm just a visitor, and was told that "the coffee machine is over there". Do I really want to read the manual to get a cup of coffee?

Few years ago we were in the market for a new oven. The main criteria was the absence of any "smarts". Ended up getting Smeg gas oven (SF6341GVX if anyone's interested). So simple, so intuitive, and most importantly, so dumb that there's very few thing that could go wrong with it.

And who doesn't want that these days?..

Just another data point, but I absolutely don’t miss my 2.5hrs round trip commute. I spend on average 1 hr more working, and run the other hour. And still get an extra 30mins family time. Win-win-win situation. No, I don’t miss going to the office.

I guess it depends on the complexity of the task. If it's something I could knock up in a few hours time, and experiment with the results myself, why would I engage in endless inter-departmental politics, of who's project is more important, etc. On the other hand, there's a threshold where project is significantly complicated and requires professional assistance.

Instead of home+#+enter try alt-#

Maybe. However, if this was my diary or photoalbum, bank statements, medical reports or anything of that sort I’d rather have them destroyed than knowing that they may have been copied... The lesson is not for the people, it’s for the companies that take shortcuts to save money. It for the MBA’s that think things don’t have to be properly engineered.

Except that I didn’t leave the doors open. Someone I trusted with the keys, left them in their safe. Unlocked. So I rather have their whole place burned down and MY keys melted at the same time.

The detectors still trying to find the distinctive scent. Which gets lost in all the fumes, dust, whatnot produced by humans...

Depends on a book type I suppose. Most have "index" section, which is just a list of tags. In recipe books I find it more useful than ToC actually.

Romania, judging by the profile.

Same here in London. We still can enjoy relatively car free roads, but this is definitely going back to "normal" where cycling becomes quite close to a Russian roulette type of activity... I'd like to commute on a bike, but I'm not that suicidal (I've clocked in 20k km on London roads commuting, but now it's too far, too dangerous).

But look at the year: most of them seem to be pre 1950's. Does that still apply?

Sounds similar to how cybernetics was "seen" in USSR (early years): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics_in_the_Soviet_Unio...

On the other hand, view source, and it's all there, and actually is rather readable for uninitiated...

You mean you can send emails to <user>-<tag>@<domain> and it'll be delivered to <user>@<domain> account (assuming MX for <domain> is pointing at fastmail)?

Is there anything you need to enable to allow this? I just tried, and the email got bounced back.

Or are you talking about email aliases? As in, you register <user>-<tag>@<domain> first before sending emails to that address?

I thought "charge more" is a good thing? /s

Not sure if can be considered "serious", but one example could be ЭЛЬ-76 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Эль-76). Sample code: https://ramlamyammambam.livejournal.com/211315.html, and some lecture notes: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2e6QHbfGLLMZ094QTZwVmJxMlE... (Russian)

> We tolerate MIDI, but it's really pretty terrible. It's ubiquitous, but it's just barely good enough to have avoided being replaced.

OK, what I'm going to say is not constructive, but, boy, how I hate this type of comments. Where were you 40 years ago? Why did you not prevent it from being terrible? What did you do to replace it with something better?

Yes, it may be "suboptimal" by the 2019 "standards", but back then, I'm pretty sure, people put a lot of thought in to it and tried to make it as good as possible. Just because it looks childish on the current hardware does not make it "pretty terrible".

EDIT: It's almost like complaining that 555 is absolute rubbish comparing to 8266 that can do sooo much more, and why just did they not come up with something better back then.

Socrates agrees: "no one ever knowingly does wrong". :) And a nice essay on the subject: https://midnightmediamusings.wordpress.com/2014/06/24/socrat...

Then why not use 'THAT' and 'ANY' instead?

Also, in your example, what is the purpose of referencing particular phone with 'THE'? Why not just 'on phone'?

NB. Just like zvrba I was (still am) having troubles with As and THEs. Baltic language speaker here btw.

True. However the inflexibility of the physical media (pen/typewriter+paper) forced people to think and plan before they acted. These days, not so much, and I can see the difference in approach when my kids are writing essays - back in the day we were taught to come up with a little plan, toc, etc before getting down to the details. Now my kids just spit it out without structure, then add bits an pieces here and there and call it done. Maybe they are taught the structural approach in scool, but the tools aren't helping.

I have children. They go to school. We can only go to vacation during school holidays. Prices go up during this time sometimes 2-3 times. How's this working out for "equality"?

Commotio cordis (Latin, "agitation of the heart") is an often lethal disruption of heart rhythm that occurs as a result of a blow to the area directly over the heart (the precordial region), at a critical time during the cycle of a heart beat causing cardiac arrest. It is a form of ventricular fibrillation (V-Fib), not mechanical damage to the heart muscle or surrounding organs, and not the result of heart disease. The fatality rate is about 65%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commotio_cordis

Losing one customer can either mean: a) losing $100 b) losing $1'000'000. What do you pick?

> Ask me how I know

OK, so how do you know? :)

> Wordpress is failing on mobile.

I don't know much about WP, so I'm really curious, is it WP that is failing on mobile, or is it the poorly designed themes?

> many children learn to kill and dress game early in life

Can you give some examples? I'm genuinely curious about the first, "learn to kill", type of games.

Why killing needs to be presented as a game? You want to teach children about life and death? Get then to a slaughterhouse. No? Why not? It's just teaching them about life and death...

It is quite difficult to come up with a good catchy name that has no meaning in the real world, and yet is easy to memorize.

Having said that, I agree with you (and don't understand why people were down-voting, you make a perfectly valid point?). I had real trouble a while back searching how to use "chef knife" and how to write "chef recipes".