nescioquid

As a lay-person who likes to read about bugs, I've come to expect the qualifier "true" to connote something special about bug's "mouth parts".

>>I'm not a headphone person but always have music playing in the background on speakers — often at a fairly low volume so it is easily ignored...<<

Given the number of self-exonerating qualifications in that statement, I think that deep down you know that people who play their music aloud in the office should be shot.

Note how one opinion provides the warrant for the other.

To add to your comments on travel, reading position, lighting, some books are just too large or heavy to lug around or even hold for long periods. There are a number of door-stopper books that I otherwise just wouldn't have read because of this.

If the medium makes the difference between me reading a text rather than not reading that text, I tend to think that makes it functionally "better".

There is a story about an inventor who approached Trajan[0] with plans for new construction machinery that would require far fewer laborers. Trajan's response was incredulous: if he used the new construction equipment, how did he expect he would manage to pay everyone? I.e. the construction project was itself a beneficium to those it employed.

[0] Could be another emperor -- I just have an association of this story with Trajan's markets for some reason.

Consider that you may be eavesdropping on the sort of self-talk the author engages in. The clear reasoning mixed with vituperation makes me suspect he probably beats himself up. There is a lot of worry over being mistaken and stupid.

I'm unfamiliar with the author, so I could be way off base.

People often screw around over the piano keyboard, usually an octave or so about middle C until an idea occurs. Brahms likened this to a pair of hands combing over a garbage dump.

I think a creative person has no trouble generating interesting ideas without roving over the proverbial garbage heap. The hard (and artistic) part is developing those ideas into an interesting work.

Make it three. I'm on the third battery for my darter pro: twice so far, the battery has swelled up and made the keyboard buckle. System76 support consists in selling me replacement batteries at a serious markup.

I've decided not to install the third battery, so I have more of a desktop now.

My impression is that the term came from Make magazine marketing/PR/branding.

I think that we say "maker spaces" rather than "hacker spaces" probably has a lot to do with the success of Make's branding efforts.

It's also the sound a gun makes when it's fired (in German). There's a pipeline-related joke in there somewhere.

That sounds like a Fagan review. I haven't been involved with one either, but I think some of the forces that drove people to do them have been weakened.

When you are shipping code that you won't be able to update easily (i.e. cheaply), you try to remove as many defects as early in the process as possible. CI/CD and web delivery seem like they would blunt the motivation to go through a Fagan review for most software developed these days.

I would imagine that some form of this still happens in safety-critical systems (or more likely the state of the art has advanced from this).

Eumenides trousers?

woosh

In the early 20th century, arguments against eugenics included pointing out that natural selection works through environmental pressures. Selecting for traits we value currently may well paint us in a corner should the environmental pressures change in some way.

I guess that might hint at a fly in the ointment to drive the plot...