I was hoping someone would bring up OCR.

Can anyone recommend good OCR software (preferably open source) for converting archival material to plaintext?

The article author mentions Dropbox's photo tools, but as far as I can tell, those would still be a PDF containing an image, not text, so the best the tools would be able to do would be to add PDF annotations. Scrivener was mentioned too, but a quick look at that doesn't show me any capabilities related to image to text conversion. If the historian's time in the archive is moving towards taking photos of original documents, it seems to me that a substantial portion of the work of writing a new book would be to convert all of those images into searchable, copy-pasteable digital text.

I ask because I have a digital copy of a book. The original physical copy is no longer available. The digital copy is in the form of jpeg images of pages. I'd like to translate that into computer readable text.

I agree with you about the lifespan for chromebooks. But I'm not sure that I agree about the lifespan of Macs

My last Macbook Pro lasted about 3 years. It started to have problems with overheating and became unstable. I think this had to do primarily with the graphics card and overly aggressive design decisions made with cooling & power management to make the machine lightweight and slim. My current Macbook Pro hasn't even lasted that long ant it's on its way out. It's one of the ones that has the keyboard problems.
https://support.apple.com/keyb...

Mac used to have a better build quality & more longevity. But the long term utility of the machines suffered from Mac constantly changing up the IO interfaces. Not too long ago, mac was pushing Thunderbolt; I'm thinking the one based on the displayport interface, not the USB-C. And before that there was firewire. So if you want to keep using your old mac, you've got to start shopping on ebay to get replacement peripherals when your old ones wear out.

I have actually seen a working mac that was 10+ years old. But it was the last generation of the power PC chips, which comes with a whole new set of problems. You're running a 10 year old web browser complete with 10 years worth of unpatched security holes. New versions of the browser aren't readily available because they don't compile for your architecture anymore. And for getting any more software, you're probably down to compiling from source & hoping that the package maintainer has up to date power PC build targets.

Of course, all old hardware is going to come with it's own problems. But considering that, a 5 year lifespan for a chromebook sounds like a pretty good bang for your buck.

I'm a senior programmer and have sometimes been asked to help interview candidates for potential managerial positions. Here's a question I've used that I find useful in spotting bad apples.

"What are you thoughts on the proper way to treat interns?" Try not to give too much more context to what you mean by this.

The idea is that how people treat those with less power than them is more telling about their personality than how they treat those with more perceived power. Even in a hypothetical situation, I still get useful reactions.

If they say "give them all the menial jobs" that's a bad sign. If they say "throw them into the deep end, let them sink or swim." that's a bad sign too. Most likely they will be trying to divine your intentions in asking the question and trying to discover what you want to hear. They may ask for clarification. If you've trained interns before, talk about your experience doing so. Most often, this will involve some trial and error and a lot of time spent teaching the basics. If the interviewee hears this and says something derogatory about those button pushers that waste our time, here today, gone tomorrow, that's a real bad sign. It indicates a desire to cozy up to those above while shitting on those below.

If they say things like "long term investment in the future of the company", "help me to be more patient" and express an interest in mentorship, that's a good sign.

Even if you can't get any signs, positive or negative, I still think this is a useful jumpoff question to try to understand the candidate's philosophy about power and how it ought to be used when roles have an unequal power relationship.

Just my 2 cents. Hope this helps.

Thanks for the reasoned and measured response. Too many of these conversations degenerate into fanatics on one side or another arguing for complete, unrestrained capitalism or complete communism. I don't think either extreme serves mankind well.

Personally, I don't think pure, unregulated capitalism has ever worked well. It's always needed the government there as an enabler, to build roads, to ensure the safety of naval transport, to provide a postal system so they can ship product. That's not a pure 'free market', that's externalizing real costs to society as a whole (forcibly, through taxation) while companies reap the benefit. But it works.

I think it is true when proponents of the free market point out that harnessing self interest or greed on a large scale generates more wealth per capita, which can potentially benefit a whole society. I think it's also true when proponents of socialism point out that the corporate structure tends to corrupt, that a successful corporation will attempt to strangle the market, locking out competitors with a monopoly or vertical integration & prevent competition and the functioning of the free market. I'm reminded of the strikes in the mines in Butte Montana about 100 years ago. The Anaconda company was so powerful that they forced the miners to return to work at gunpoint. Where is the free enterprise in slave labor?

Some commentators in this discussion treat Marc Benioff's opp-ed as some radical new heresy and a complete betrayal of the free market. It's really not a new idea; it's a renaissance of an old one. For example, take Andrew Carnegie: completely ruthless in business. But he also build libraries all over America for the edification of the public. I had a lot of time to consider both the light side and the dark side of Capitalism, because I spent a lot of time when I was young & poor reading books in a library build by Carnegie.

I don't think Benioff's exhortation to do good is going to change much in and of itself. But I agree that we could use some more noblesse oblige in our society.

I red the wikipedia article you referenced. That footbridge looks awesome & I'd love to visit it one day. However, I think the MIT article makes a good point
https://news.mit.edu/2019/leon...

So the Norwegian bridge didn't provide the same proof of concept because it used modern materials & reinforcement techniques.

Argh! I have no mod points today. Someone please uprate this Anonymous Coward.

The the 1981 Conan the Barbarian soundtrack *is* amazing. I use this to help me concentrate at work all the time (It's the open bullpen office layout problem again). In fact, I'm playing it at work right now. I think it is perhaps Basil Pouldouris's finest work.

Agreed. More quotes to refute the value of that nazi "research"

To the above I will add, that the "study" lacks one of the basic requirements of the scientific method: reproducibility.

Not to dispute your main point about gerrymandering, but state boundaries have been re-drawn after states have joined the union.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
(separation from Massachusetts)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
(ceded territory in exchange for assumption of debt)

Hasn't happened for a while though, that I'm aware of.

Hi Larry

Thank you for your contributions to the field of Computer Science.

My question is: in your opinion, what are the most important things to consider when designing a new computer language?

Guys, I think you're getting the intent of the story wrong. It's not an X11 security problem. It's primarily a PR problem for Ubuntu & secondarily, it's a security problem for snaps.

Ubuntu has been promoting snaps as a more secure way of packaging
https://insights.ubuntu.com/20...

And the research that Matthew Garret has done has demonstrated that the security provided by the snaps framework is not terribly good. So that's a PR problem for Ubuntu if one of the primary features they are advertising is demonstrated not to be fit for purpose. Personally I don't think that Ubuntu cares much about the security aspect of snaps. I think they care more about convenience and monetary gain. And I don't have a problem with either of those motivations.

in.re. convenience: The apt package management system has many benefits, but it has problems with software development projects that run at different cadences. Remember when Ubuntu 8.04 LTS shipped with Firfox 3 beta? The apt system would lock you into the beta version for the life of the release. With snaps, you could upgrade just one application (like Firefox or Libre Office) without upgrading all of the libraries on your OS or upgrading your OS as a whole. I think that's pretty useful.

in.re. monetary gain: Canonical has poured a lot of effort and money into Linux over the course of a decade. I wouldn't mind seeing them reap the rewards of their efforts in a monetary form. It looks like they want to run an AppStore to do this & an app-store just won't integrate well with apt. But it will with snaps. So good on them.

I would just like them to be a bit more open about their motivations. I don't think the release of snaps has much to do with a desire for security, at least in a desktop environment.

Thanks for the explanation. I appreciate it.

Linus mentioned a Swedish phrase: "Bränt barn luktar illa"
I got curious and ran it through Google Translate.

"Bränt barn luktar illa" in Swedish = "Burned child smells bad" in English.

What the hell?
Is that a bad translation or is that actually right? If that's right, that seems pretty grim to me. Would a native Swedish speaker on this thread be willing to explain that the origin of that phrase?

Google might have fiber in rural Idaho already. They bough up a shitload of dark fiber a few years back. There doesn't seem to have been too much talk about it since 2007 or so. I think that the fiber was originally laid down by MCI prior to the bursting of the .com bubble in the early 2000s. I was unable to find a map for what areas could actually be reached by the dark fiber if it was lit up. If Google still has plans for all that dark fiber, they seem to be shrouded in secrecy.

I read a pretty interesting article about management by AI a few years back: "Manna"
http://marshallbrain.com/manna...

It's over a decade old, but I think it's still relevant. It's kind of scary stuff, mostly because it's believable. The hopeful ending seemed a little less believable, unfortunately.

I'm all for it. And since this seems to be the right venue, let me pitch you my mammoth cloning idea.

Not only do I think we should bring back the mammoth, I know where to put them once we do. Yellowstone National Park. Plenty of space. I think the climate would suit the mammoth. And it would be tremendous boost to the tourist attraction of the place.

Also, I would really love to see a mammoth forging through the deep snow, emerging majestically from the icy fog.