@whitequark yes, the backwards compatibility is good. (as long as you don't change any of your systems default settings. around the turn of the millenium just changing your system font, or its size, might break some software, because the buttons might no longer be entirely visible anymore […]

@whitequark oh!, that explains so much. the graphical interfaces are in every situation so unpleasant to deal with, that i long ago decided that only terminal window level user interfaces are ever worth dealing with. yet, i still remember, when i was a kid and tried to read from old windows […]

@whitequark well, there is one last thing i might say, which i think should be obvious to everyone, but yet: mac should be always approached (apart from the complicated graphical interface stuff) as the older freebsd that is in fact (given some allowances) actually is.

@whitequark i am sorry, i give up. something is clearly going on here that i don't understand. i'm sorry to have wasted your time. i wish you well. :blobcatheart:

@gildilinie the society is doing an old fashioned financial bubble. but at an unprecedented scale.

@mntmn in principle that would mean cybersecurity insurance. however, i am not confident a usual policy would cover that. (always read the small print carefully and take your time!)

@ReignOfRaining i have no context for this but sounds nice! nya indeed! :neocat_aww:

@ReignOfRaining yes, it is. i have been thinking like that my entire adult life.

just in case you didn’t know that “it’s only for code reviews, I don’t see the problem” is always bad faith horseshit: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linus-Torvalds-Claude-Code

> Linux creator Linus Torvalds has been known to use AI to help with kernel debugging and outside of the kernel tree […]

@whitequark

@davidgerard another thing to keep in mind is that pure mathematics tends to proceed at a glacial pace. (though there are significant differences to both directions depending on the particular field.) in my research areas, a single referee process of a serious submission can easily take more […]

@davidgerard since you ask, and since i have just wasted more time than i should on this stuff (almost two vacation days), some notes, in no particular order (i'm drowning in stuff to read about this and i'm yet to organize this in my mind in some coherent way, just the files are a true chaos) […]

RIP Margaret Hamilton, software engineer extraordinaire.

"We had to find a way and we did. Looking back, we were the luckiest people in the world; there was no choice but to be pioneers." - Hamilton on the Apollo 11 mission

https://news.mit.edu/2026/margaret-hamilton-computing-pioneer-dies-1007