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I’m sorry but this comment just highlights how mind bogglingly bad we in tech are at documentation and knowledge transfer. The very idea that a single project can only survive as l…

I agree. Sometimes I'm prototyping something or feeling my way down one possible implementation -- it's a lot more efficient to go deep in one area of the codebase and come back to…

Lots of mine (like git and vim) have already been mentioned, so here's some different ones The Elm compiler, for giving me a welcoming on-ramp into functional programming. It's not…

What are you talking about? Of course they do! Try performing any of the operations listed in this article, or making a reply to this comment, by only twiddling the state of the tr…

Several years ago, to learn about machine learning, I wrote an algorithm that learnt what the best links in a Wikipedia article are to click in order to find the shortest route bet…

It's only tangentially related, but I just wanted to say that being able to programmatically hack around with the minecraft world via python on the raspberry pi is what first made …

I've recently taken up basketry for much the same reasons, but it has the added bonus that you don't really need any special equipment and the cost of materials is pretty low. Just…

I believe that my current work has a positive social impact. I work for ResearchSpace ( https://www.researchspace.com/ ) where we make software for bio-med research labs. Its no ch…

Used to be the same in the UK (was my first language), but now they've revamped computing education up and down the country I'd be very surprised if it's still used anywhere

Yes, going back and understanding why something broke/has changed is incredibly valuable. Often it's not because of one singular decision but a collection of decisions over time th…

I find this debate interesting, but I can see this argument being used by both sides. Is your point that you don’t foresee external issues by buying like the supplier going under/t…

Neither. All you get is in effect a certificate that says you “own” it. Nothing more, nothing less.

ZSA, the mechanical keyboard company, has layout.new —- that’s the smallest institution owning one of the .new domains I’d seen prior to this. Not exactly a global brand

IIRC tin was one of main motivating factors for the Roman invasion of Britain

I don’t know, seems reasonable to me. How many people on the street would know when asked what the safe dosage of liquorice is? Guess most would say it’s no worse than any sugary c…

The problem is that a lot of the specialist machines weren't designed with security in mind — it’s not so easy to do as you describe

The main thing I’ve never understood is why online voting is even desirable. Even if it were as secure what’s wrong with going to a polling station? If it’s inaccessible to many bu…

Had the same idea just before seeing your comment as I pondered over another discussing the horrendous environmental cost.

Precise means lots of fine-grained information; accurate means close to the truth. If the weather is 20° exactly and one thermometer reads 20.2° and another 20.562° the first can b…

That’s what it means for a legislature to be sovereign — you kind of need the ability for future people to reverse past decisions to have a functioning democracy

Great idea - very poor implementation. Most of us here could have seen this coming and designed a better solution.

If it does then it’s evidently not dangerous if it’s interfering with WiFi

Maybe it should have been company brands only, so: playlist.spotify.new or sheets.google.new. Oh well

From the long term view, it seems reasonable to assume that the high economic growth rates of the 20th century are not going to be something we’ll see again anytime soon. An enviro…

Encryption isn’t like using a mask - we can still see who is communicating with who, we just can’t see what they’re saying. Banning encryption is like banning envelopes.