Isn't "number of old men who die from heart attacks while doing anything is non zero"?
Shoveling snow is a well-established high risk factor for older adults.
Readit Newsmacintux commented on What is the nicest thing a stranger has ever done for you? louplummer.lol/nice-stran... · Posted by u/speckx
macintux commented on I tried Gleam for Advent of Code blog.tymscar.com/posts/gl... · Posted by u/tymscar
If you just see language as a tool, unless you’re self employed or working in open source, wouldn’t the lack of job market demand for it be the first blocker?
If you're fortunate, you can find companies with a passion for good code who use lesser-known languages. Picking Erlang, or Haskell, or OCaml generally filters out candidates who don't share your interest in seeing what can be done outside the mainstream.
macintux commented on Fedora: Open-source repository for long-term digital preservation fedorarepository.org/... · Posted by u/cernocky
“99.99 percent of the people I’ve met have been the very best in humanity,” he said. “The world is a much kinder, nicer place than it often seems.”
I wish everyone could experience this, internalize this. Sometime in my 20's or 30's I cast off any fears that I had about people and the world in general. And it was like a huge weight was left behind.
I started to believe that it was paying too much attention to the news (especially cable news when it became a thing) that had come to shackle me with fear. Getting out in the world, traveling, making yourself vulnerable even (and nixing cable) were all things that made me start to love the world and people more. (My kids know me as the Pollyanna of the family.)
I suppose I am armchair psychologizing now, but I often see fear behind a lot of people's behavior (and even some friend's) and I feel sorry for them: I see them missing out on a lot of life experiences.
Some of my favorite (or at least most durable) memories are from giving hitchhikers rides. I wouldn't recommend it for everyone, and the pandemic really put a damper on that, but I've given ~20 people rides over the years and never regretted it.
Although, you definitely hear some tough stories that way.
I wrote about the ones I can remember here: https://opposite-lock.com/topic/45077/hitchhikers-over-the-y...
I read a book called A Walk Across America in college, by Peter Jenkins. I liked the idea of traveling under my own power, but I didn't want to spend years walking. I kept when I got my driver's license, and I was bike commuting in NYC at the time, so biking was a natural fit.
I was teaching at the time, so the first summer without any obligations I rode across the northern US. Then I rode across the southern US the next summer. I loved it, and wanted to live outside for all the seasons. So the next year I quit my job and circled the continent: Seattle to Maine, down to Florida, across to California, then up to Alaska. I moved to Alaska a few years after the trip ended and spent 20 years there. We moved to North Carolina last year, because dark southeast Alaskan winters were getting old, and all our family is on the east coast.
I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to do that trip in the era of paper maps, and truly being out of touch for so much of that time. It pushes you to meet so many new people in all the places you visit, instead of staying in constant contact with people you already know. It was also nice to not see satellite imagery of the road ahead. Every day was a surprise. :)
I did write a book, The Road to Alaska: https://www.amazon.com/Road-Alaska-Eric-Matthes-ebook/dp/B07...
One of my claims to fame is writing one of the best-selling Python books of all time (Python Crash Course), and one of the lowest-selling travel books of all time. :)
A Walk Across America was amazing reading when I was college aged. I've never forgotten the story about the accident when he and his (then-girlfriend?) were walking along a quiet highway, I think in Nevada, and they decided to walk on the wrong side of the road, against his usual rules, because it had a shoulder.
And, she landed in the hospital after a car hit them.
macintux commented on Fedora: Open-source repository for long-term digital preservation fedorarepository.org/... · Posted by u/cernocky
macintux commented on Fedora: Open-source repository for long-term digital preservation fedorarepository.org/... · Posted by u/cernocky
macintux commented on The tiniest yet real telescope I've built lucassifoni.info/blog/min... · Posted by u/chantepierre
A friend of mine once told me - learning a new field is all about learning the language of that field
A friend of mine asked me why we have such precise terminology in IT; I asked her why English has so many different words for "chair".
macintux commented on Things I want to say to my boss ithoughtaboutthatalot.com... · Posted by u/casca
AI generated content in the comments is already prohibited. I hope we extend the restrictions to submissions entirely.
I would rather people who don't currently have a voice due to language barriers or simply poor communications skills be able to use LLMs than try to gatekeep them.
And I'm certainly weary of "someone used an em-dash, must be GPT" low-value comments.
I basically had to teach myself all over again. Not much fun.