ceceron

War with the Newts is wonderful, though The Absolute at Large is also worth of attention :)

That's why I am so often disgusted with the psychology research ethics. So many experiments are impossible to reproduce (vide recent reproducibility crisis), some (like the Stanford Prison Experiment) are debunked, but it is already too late — the damage is already done. As soon as a controversial research thesis reaches the public opinion (Zimbardo made sure his thesis would become popular), it becomes part of the "folk wisdom" and is repeated as a holy truth and a self-fulfilling prophecy.

AFAIK there is no single generally accepted definition, what does it mean for a language to be declarative.

Some people believe that pure functional languages are declarative because of the analogy with mathematics — computations are determined purely by the statement structure, not by the ordering of the statements.

Some people (including me) have higher requirements — the declarative programming language should never tell what to do, should only define the problem without providing an algorithm to solve it. According to this definition, pure functional languages are far from declarative as much as the procedural languages. The only pure programming languages here (AFAIK) are some variants of logic programming (Answer Set Programming, Problog, ...), Constraint Programming (MiniZinc, Essence, ...), PDDL, some configuration languages (not all of them), etc. There is nothing wrong in having conditionals/loops in the declarative language, as long as they are used to define the problem, not the algorithm to solve it.

Are you saying, you trust diplomats and politicians solely on their word? I'm happy, there are still so innocent people :)

There are a lot of very good answers already in this topic:

- quality doesn't bring enough to the business value;

- high demand requires hiring people without enough knowledge/skill;

- other people have just different quality metrics than you;

- "know-how" transfer between generations is difficult...

IMHO the similar question may be asked about any domain of life: why not all the buildings are well-built? Why the political/social systems are not just? Why good art is so hard to spot nowadays? They have different answers, but there is one common theme: building "well" is difficult; creating a "just" political system is "difficult", creating a good art is difficult; also writing "useful and reliable" software is difficult.

It's only natural that not everybody is a perfect software engineer, therefore is not a surprise that not every software will be perfect. What's more, there are a lot more mediocre software engineers than the perfect ones, therefore the majority of software will be... mediocre. The same about art nowadays — the sheer amount of music produced (even the word "produce" suggests it) every day makes sure that, in overall, there is a lot more terrible music compared to good compositions. I believe that software engineering has the same issue — the rising number of software projects is an enough explanation for low quality of the software we are able to perceive.

In fact, I don't believe the quality of the software engineering degraded over the years, but it's just more difficult to spot the great projects in the avalanche of "normal" life.

In Europe, UHT has caught on even in "wealthy" countries. In most shops you can buy both kinds, the UHT cheaper and the unprocessed as the more luxurious version. I think you're overstating the taste difference — as a child, I was often drinking really fresh milk (my grandma had cows). Later, most of my teenage life I was drinking UHT, and now I'm drinking the unprocessed refrigerated milk. I agree with you that the unprocessed one is better, but the difference isn't mind-blowing. I even know people that prefer the UHT taste.

True, that's why I haven't used 'finite' in my comment.

Apparently I've missed that the parent referred to the finite collections and in fact was wrong making my previous comment misplaced. Thanks for pointing it out :)

The number of symbols in the language may countable, but the number of sets of symbols will be indeed uncountable, i.e. AFAIR the number of sets of natural numbers is uncountable — you can even construct real numbers as sets on rational (still countable) numbers.

In 2014, I've met in Krakow a Ukrainian woman in her sixties, feeding pigeons just next to the Wisla river. It wasn't anything uncommon, during the Crimean crisis hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians migrated to Poland. She asked me in Polish/Ukrainian how to reach the main square — she has been in Krakow for many days but hasn't been able to see the city attractions. I had few minutes to spare so I decided to walk her to the old city (~15 min walk). The short walk transformed into a tour over the restaurants — we had to visit every kitchen to ask if they would employ her as a kitchen aid; then over the churches — she was an orthodox, I believe, but she prayed in every catholic church for her family, Ukraine and finally, for me. When we have finally reached the main square, she was so authentically delighted with the place — she stopped everywhere to admire and marvel on various old buildings and... tourists. She was so happy to be able to talk (me, being a poor substitute for a translator) with tourists from USA and western Europe. Tourists were also happy to give her some small souvenirs (e.g. very small American flag you can attach to your backpack).

All in all, the short walk took few hours, she was very talkative and I've learned a lot about her life in the central Ukraine and I've been invited to visit her anytime. The thing I will remember the most is how she appreciated the world around her, everything was so interesting and new — a world-view foreign to most of the people I know. It was a very enriching walk and I don't regret it, even if it destroyed my daily routine ;)

I had completely different experience. Pathfinding and inventory - honestly I don't remember, they didn't stay in the way. Not more than in any contemporary game. Combat wasn't in the center, but was fair and challenging enough to blend into the narrative. The gameplay was designed to facilitate the story-telling in a way to put the player as an agent in the epic tragedy.

I hate modern narrative-heavy games deciding to remove the gameplay to focus on the story/atmosphere. Movies/books are much better mediums for this kind of entertainment.

Ok, now I'm lost. What does the "gameplay" word mean for you? Planescape had IMHO am amazing gameplay.

Good example of a great RPG with terrible combat system was Arcanum but even there the gameplay was great (except the combat).

I've switched to SE 2022 and it's "okayish". Much worse experience but good enough to get by and is reasonably priced. The mini model is another option, but is worse (no fingerprint, no button, notch...) and simply too expensive. The only plus of the mini model is the size, which is still worse than the original SE.

To be honest, my favourite model was 4s ;)

> - subtitle settings get reset every time I close the website.

I also find this ridiculous and annoying, but... I've found a "solution". Just open a mobile Disney+ app (I've used the iOS one) and set the subtitles/audio language there and this change is persistent. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

IMHO all the modern "streaming" UIs suck, but the Disney+ is definitely the worst I've experienced.