bloak

49 ms·

631.
by bloak 5y ago
Unfortunately this article completely fails to describe what the current laws are or how they might be changed, but those things would be interesting.
632.
The Guardian view on changes to copyright law: book lovers beware(theguardian.com)
5 points by bloak 5y ago|2 comments
633.
by bloak 5y ago
As I understand it, the category "tech" was invented by stock traders. The applicable definition of "tech" company is a company whose share price movements correlate with the share price movements of other "tech&quo
634.
by bloak 5y ago
Not disagreeing with you so much as taking it a bit further ... It would be highly controversial to claim that any organisation has a valid mandate to represent the Palestinians. Meanwhile, the Israeli government, in order to avoid angering
635.
by bloak 5y ago
In the longer term, "semantic drift" might also be a problem. The article keeps referring to the example of the mayor of San Francisco. But the definition of mayor (i.e. what the job involves) changes over time, and the definition
636.
by bloak 5y ago
That sounds vaguely familiar. I remember something like that happening with a device from the 1970s, which I can't now identify. I think it was mostly black plastic and offered a choice of about four different games, something like: ta
637.
by bloak 5y ago
It's perfectly normal for salaries to depend on location, even within one country, and even within quite a small country like the UK. So the problem here is the "level", the seniority/role/title/whatever, not t
638.
by bloak 5y ago
I used to like The Bill ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bill ), back when it had 30-minute episodes, each of which was in effect a self-contained little play using the same set of main characters. The episodes were w
639.
by bloak 5y ago
I'd put my money on it being a fake. Maybe I'm cynical, but the refusal to provide DNA plus the deliberate destruction of photos seems fairly significant to me. Years ago huge amounts were written about a woman who claimed to be A
640.
by bloak 5y ago
Interjections can contain sounds that don't occur in ordinary words. In German there's "tja", and in English there's "tsk", which is a click, quite an unusual sound: https://en.wikipedia.org&#x2
641.
by bloak 5y ago
"Just pronounce it the way it's spelled" might make sense in some languages, and it probably makes a lot of sense in Russian, say, where the person who transcribed a name from Latin letters has already decided how it should b
642.
by bloak 5y ago
Yes, that review is definitely worth reading. Thanks for pointing to it.
643.
by bloak 5y ago
The article suggests that if the government abolishes pennies then it would be legal to melt them down. Is there a good reason for believing that? Germany had something a bit similar. The two Pfennig coins made before 1968 were pure bronze
644.
by bloak 5y ago
Is this in some way related to Bezos and Musk's antics? There's a recording on YouTube. Only two minutes, worth a listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goh2x_G0ct4
645.
by bloak 5y ago
> "Do you know why I pulled you over?" On a scale from 1 to 10, how bad would it be to answer that with "Is it because I is black?" (© 1998-2021 Ali G)?
646.
by bloak 5y ago
I read about a quarter of it and regret the time I wasted. It's interesting to look at the Amazon reviews: most of the reviews give 5 stars, but if you look at the 1-star reviews you'll see that there is a significant minority of
647.
by bloak 5y ago
What do you think it would have been like if you'd taken Wednesdays off instead of Fridays?
648.
by bloak 5y ago
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex I don't think anyone's claiming that "biological sex is a spectrum", but some people "do not fit the typical definitions for male or female bodies&quo
649.
by bloak 5y ago
The ICAO standard says a passport must have a field labelled "sex" containing F, M or X; in this context, X means "unknown" or "unspecified". About a dozen countries will issue passports with an X in the "
650.
by bloak 5y ago
So, which systems allow hard links to directories?
651.
by bloak 5y ago
Yes, good question. One reason is that I haven't found a convenient portable way of modifying Linux keyboard configurations. Another is that sometimes I'm SSH-ing in from a machine that isn't even Linux. I have used xkbcomp t
652.
by bloak 5y ago
Yes, I finally got around to adding some "quail" stuff to my .emacs so that I can directly type various kinds of quotation mark and dash rather than rely on complex conversion rules that sometimes go wrong. The lack of first-class
653.
by bloak 5y ago
Raymond Chandler wrote seven novels. I read somewhere that his favourite was "The long good-bye", but I didn't care for that one so much. I think my favourite was "The lady in the lake", though that's the last
654.
by bloak 5y ago
The first step is to realise that it makes no difference to the people living inside a universe whether that universe is "real" or simulated. The second step is to realise that it makes no difference to the people living inside a
655.
by bloak 5y ago
According to Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_error ): "in modern devices, cosmic rays may be the predominant cause". However, radioactive isotopes in the packaging used to be a major cause. I lik
656.
by bloak 5y ago
I think it would only be useful if the colours on the screen have to match colours off the screen. If all you're paying attention to is what's on the screen then it probably doesn't matter much exactly what those colours are
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by bloak 5y ago
I wouldn't necessarily carve salad servers out of old railway sleepers but I don't see what problems they'd cause if used for the edge of a flower bed. Remnants of human faeces that have been in the sun and the rain for a yea
658.
by bloak 5y ago
This is partly about "mutual recognition of database rights": "since Brexit, any database made on or after 1 January 2021 in the UK will not be protected in the EU, and vice versa". It's not something most people ne
659.
by bloak 5y ago
On the other hand, pathogens survive longer on a smooth surface than on a rough absorbant surface, and I would guess that they are more likely to be transferred from a smooth surface onto somebody's hand than from a rough absorvant sur
660.
by bloak 5y ago
There's some good information about that here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subtitle_(titling)

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