I don't think I've ever user recursion in my professional career. Sure, if I ever need to code a BNF grammar I might, but it's just never come up in the real world.

[gsmith@thing1 ~]$ ping thing2

2015 is actually the year of Linux on the hoverboard.

No, that only happens when people are protesting now.

Are you sure about that?

You haven't lived until you've poured a PBR into some Fruity Pebbles.

My description of that map slice was bad. I meant to highlight the EU members that are packed together tightly, which the map did, because those so often are used as the examples I don't think are useful comparison points. My text did not match the map though.

The FCC is the Federal Communications Commission. They can't set rules for the entire country if they are unreasonable for some of the states to follow. That's why I was highlighting that the capabilities of the worst states end up being a limiter for whatever rules they can put in place. They can't say "broadband means X in most states, but because telcos in Alaska can't deliver that they can ignore this rule". That's also loads of evidence that if left alone, telcos will just offer good service in the dense areas, and forget about the rural ones altogether. That's exactly what's happened here with mobile phone coverage, several fiber projects, and before that things like DSL Interent connections. So instead everyone gangs up on them and tries to negotiate for everyone at once.

In theory individual states could raise the requirements above those set at the federal level. Unfortunately, the monopoly problems just get worse there. When there's only one provider actually giving service to an area, states have to legitimately worry about them just pulling out of the state altogether if they're pressed too hard. They can't walk away from a federal negotiation like that.

According to sources like this, about 85% of Sweden's population is in urban areas. When you only have 15% of the population that's really spread out, of course it's easy to just spend the extra money to wire all of them up. The population of Sweden is so small, you really can't extrapolate out from it very much to US sized problems either. You could barely fill the NY metro area here with everyone in Sweden.

And our sparse states make Northern Sweden look like a huge party. Nationwide US policy has to consider what's feasible in states like Montana and Wyoming, at 2.7 and 2.3 people per sq km. And then there's Alaska at 0.5...a single state that is also 4X as big as Sweden, too.

There's a similar pattern with all sorts of infrastructure people in tiny countries point out are missing in America. The Amtrak trains here operate one profitable line: the one that goes from DC through NYC then to Boston. That's the one chunk of the US where the urban density is similar to the EU.

But all our trains are still an overpriced mess, because the company's agreement with our government has them operating all these less urban lines that just burn money like mad.

No, the main reason European countries have better Internet access is due to their small size and layout. Sweden is roughly the size of California. If the US was a country that small, it would be easy to get fiber to everywhere. First speed test result I found averaged just over the state puts California at 39MB/s down and 9MB/s up. And that's without nearly as much taxation to support the whole thing as EU countries too.

But the FCC has to set policies that cover the middle of nowhere USA as well. Why do you think Verizon already gave up on laying more FIOS fiber? Because they already got all the interesting urban areas. No one can cost justify fiber to the middle of the US. You could lose all of the continental Europe in that wasteland and not even notice it.

Whenever I find myself needing to manage a group of younger dudes, I look around for some big problem they've been stuck on. And then I solve it, while lecturing on the context of how software like that has been built in various decades. Once someone has watched you quietly take out software enemy #1 on a project, they stop trying to mess with you on their reports.

40 is old for a software developer. Someone who is 40 today entered college just as web browsers were being invented. You could not just connect the dots on library calls to put together an application then. Now you can.

I have a strong sense of wanting to know how things work that comes from having built a lot of software in the 80's and 90's, when you had to know the internals to make progress. That is downright counterproductive in web development now. By the time you learn enough to understand how a library works, the developer who just learned enough to use it already shipped their code. That's the sort of disconnect between age ranges at work now.

Anyone who reads to the end should realize this a joke even without noting the date: "We can add a kernel later on, following the GNU/Hurd’s successful
approach".

You're right, these kids need more paranomia.

There's another kind?