retrac

94 ms·

1231.
by retrac 4y ago
That's probably why some LGBT folks went and founded the MCC back in the 1970s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Community_Church The institution of traditional religion played a social role in Western
1232.
by retrac 4y ago
It is still a bit hard to believe that a language changes so much, even during a single person's lifetime. It seems so static when we use it. And yet the proof's right there. I've been noticing it more often, in older film
1233.
by retrac 4y ago
Absolutely. Circa 1900, the delay from a major event occurring in New Zealand, and newspapers carrying the story in London, could be as little as a few hours. And the 24 hour news cycle was born. The revolution wasn't just for the n
1234.
by retrac 4y ago
> It provides a lot more transparency as observers can actually follow every single step of the entire process and verify everything. Simple folk physics gives everyone an understanding of the security of ballot boxes. There's thou
1235.
by retrac 4y ago
I've played around a bit with this, and I was quite impressed by a hobby project. It's over-all a well designed language. I like the syntax, inspired by Scala (in which the Millfork compiler is written). Semantically, it's
1236.
by retrac 4y ago
RS232 itself is a well-defined spec. But you're right. An lot of equipment existed that was only vaguely RS232 compatible. Some of it even predates RS232. For example, the old electromechanical teletype machines send and receive so
1237.
by retrac 4y ago
I've been learning Chinese. Learning to write the characters (not even memorizing -- just copying by sight correctly) has been a very effective way of learning to read Chinese handwriting, especially the semi-cursive script. With alm
1238.
by retrac 4y ago
Some things (root vegetables and berries come to mind) may do better at a cool dry 10 - 15 °C rather than in a fridge just above freezing. A typical fridge's condensation is their enemy.
1239.
by retrac 4y ago
Yes, for 2020 to 2021. But American life expectancy has been on the decline for about 10 years now, and the decline was already accelerating before COVID-19 hit. This is visible on the charts in the article. Drug overdoses do account for
1240.
by retrac 4y ago
ASIC is "application-specific integrated circuit". A custom IC design for some task. There won't be anything after except maybe better and more miniaturized designs, at least until computers and digital logic are built from
1241.
by retrac 4y ago
As early as the mid-1970s, minicomputers and mainframes started incorporated microprocessors for things like system monitoring, booting, and peripheral interfaces. In 1981, the original IBM PC's keyboard had a 8048 microcontroller int
1242.
by retrac 4y ago
Christmas lights often have a female plug on the end to allow chaining sets of lights together. A common mistake is to put them up the wrong way and have the male connector on the far end from your outlet, and the female connector right th
1243.
by retrac 4y ago
Yes. They are largely oblivious. I'm hard of hearing. The echo and distortion from most phones on hands-free, makes many people/environments completely incomprehensible to me. "I'm sorry I can't understand you.
1244.
by retrac 4y ago
C is a bit of a free-for-all with case, but some languages have well-established conventions for this. E.g. type names are almost always CamelCase in Haskell, and the compiler requires the first letter be a capital. If there's a con
1245.
by retrac 4y ago
Personal effects must be like 1% (approximately) of what they ship in, by weight. Consider things like the consumables and construction equipment.
1246.
by retrac 4y ago
In common law countries, there is an extensive body of law about lost, mislaid, and abandoned property and how to deal with them. Lost, mislaid and abandoned are technically distinct classifications. Lost is a wallet on the side of the ro
1247.
by retrac 4y ago
There's definitely some code in BSD that dates to around 1980 largely untouched since. But probably not much older than that. It was heavily rewritten around that time.
1248.
by retrac 4y ago
Are we talking about slipping in the odd quote from the Bible? Let the atheist who has never quoted from John cast the first stone. My advice would be to just put up with it. If they're actively proselytizing to you and making you mi
1249.
by retrac 4y ago
Wonderful novel. Galactic standard time is still counted in the number of seconds since a certain epoch. (January 1st 1970 00:00 UTC as it happens, though both that calendar system, and the precise significance, if any, of the date, are l
1250.
by retrac 4y ago
Every jurisdiction already has a less-specific and mandatory version of this. When demand exceeds supply, they just start disconnecting loads from the grid, perhaps randomly.
1251.
by retrac 4y ago
Correct. Same thing has happened with GPUs. The vast majority of general purpose computers sold today come with integrated graphics. Only those who have unusually heavy 3D graphics needs, like CAD or the latest games at full quality, sti
1252.
by retrac 4y ago
The mention of the I Ching reminds me of the Shang dynasty of early China. Divination played a central role in the ruling class's political authority. Among other techniques, questions for the ancestors of the ruler, as well as other
1253.
by retrac 4y ago
Yep. 60 seconds, 60 minutes, 12 hours. To the Sumerian mind that was apparently as nice and round as 100 seconds, 100 minutes, 20 hours. 60 is the smallest composite number with three prime factors, and divides evenly by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10
1254.
by retrac 4y ago
Pasctran is an ancient cult. [1] Some say they're extinct. Others say its practitioners have just gone underground, now that society will no longer tolerate such things done in public. It's everywhere once you start looking thou
1255.
by retrac 4y ago
Unfortunately, as with all standards, there's so many wonderful alternatives to choose from. I rather like Wisp: https://www.draketo.de/software/wisp I wish all languages had the : operator that Wisp has. It&#x2
1256.
by retrac 4y ago
Most well-written Lisp code has its structure indicated primarily by the indentation. Some form of offset rule is the most commonly suggested alternative Lisp syntax. It does make the tree structure more obvious: define
1257.
by retrac 4y ago
Hopefully they'll still be running on Interbase, like back in '96. https://web.archive.org/web/20011118011732/http://www.cert.o...
1258.
by retrac 4y ago
Many descriptions of future events can use the present tense. For example: "He's fixing that tomorrow." If English has a distinct future tense, that should sound just as wrong as "He fixed that tomorrow" does. Bu
1259.
by retrac 4y ago
It should be Japanese, of course! Japanese can be written using either the Latin alphabet, or Chinese characters. The two most common writing systems in the world. It can also be written with its own elegant and purely phonetic writing sy
1260.
by retrac 4y ago
> Current graduates are simply asking for their compensation to reflect the cost of living in the United States. If the entire GDP of the USA, after taxes, were simply taken (about $15 trillion) and equally distributed among the ~210 mil

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