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Comment Still using Perl... (Score 1) 83

... though not exclusively. There are cases where making the choice between Perl and Python still has me leaning toward Perl. Perl was my first (non shell) interpreted language and it still feels like a comfortable pair of slippers.

I had to modify a Perl script written back in 2010 when the Govt recently decided to change the format of data I was reading via Perl. It took longer to figure out the change in the data than it did to modify the 15 year old Perl script.

Python is fine -- I really like the ArgumentParser module and a few others -- but going back to make changes to an old Python script is more painful than it is for a similarly aged Perl script. What helps when I have to deal with Python is using Code with some plugins that make the indentation more obvious (esp. Blockman).

Comment This was (IMHO) inevitable (Score 1) 175

When the startup announced these doors on LinkedIn and were looking to hire, I predicted on the announcement that there wasn't going to be much future in it. Asking "Ever notice that stores with feezers/coolers keep the interior lights off until someone triggers them to be on via motion sensors? That's how cost-aware those stores are. And you want to light up the entire door? Obscuring the contents? Even when nobody's in the aisle? How much does that cost?" The only response I got was probably the biggest I've ever gotten to an LI post. My profile was hit by what seemed to be the startup's entire marketing, legal (that one worried me a bit), and C-level types.

I'm personally flabbergasted that it took TWO-HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS to be poured down the drain before someone at Walgreens finally figured out what a boondoggle this was. Maybe this was the same Walgreens management group that decided to build one of their pharmacies on every other block. Some heads should roll after this.

Comment Re:Mark Zuckerberg thinks it's cool (Score 1) 23

``You can't have a mass market product that a quarter of the population or more can't use.''

Does Zuck know anybody who needs to wear corrective lenses? His obsession with products like this seems to indicate ``no". Or has he lined up frame manufacturers to use his ``smart frames''. (Jeebus they're expensive enough now with Zuck having anything to do with them.)

Comment Hollywood flips a coin and goes with ... (Score 1) 131

... one of the only two ideas they've had for the past couple of decades:

  1. Produce a remake of something that made money before.
  2. Produce a movie based on a comic book.

Do these geniuses ever stop to wonder why attendance at movie theaters has been dropping over the years? Nope, sorry, it wasn't COVID (though that didn't help). It's the crap movies.

Comment Re:What? (Score 1) 195

So "keeping the system working as anticipated" means Win11 is intended, in part at least, to be means of collecting data on users in order to direct advertising to them. No thanks.

I had my belly full of Windows when WinXP keep crapping on itself and rendering itself unbootable. Nowadays, I'll only use an Microsoft operating system when an employer shoves it at me---but I'll looking for a means of running Linux in a VM.

Comment A human intervened how many times? (Score 1) 44

How productive was it to have the AI write articles that had to be re-done -- several times -- because they contained factual errors? Assigning the story to a single writer -- who might, initially, have included the same inaccuracies -- and having it reviewed/fact-checked and corrected once would have been more efficient.

I'm hoping that sites like CNET includes disclaimers about having used an AI to write particular stories, but, hopefully will include them at the top of the article so I can bail out before I've wasted my time reading something that may or may not contain bogus information.

Comment Privacy? (Score 1, Troll) 161

``And if I catch you recording me for content, I will smack your phone away.''

... preferably into heavy truck traffic.

Just because some TikTok videographer thinks privacy is dead, they need to learn that, no, it isn't. Simply being in public doesn't make you a potential subject for some video project they're working on. Whatever happened to model releases anyway?

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