I have it on good authority that Uranus is safe for another 600 years.

Your reply indicates that you consider programming analogous to driving a car.

I consider programming analogous to building the car, with the driver being the end-user for whom I am building it.

C treats programmers with respect, whereas most other modern languages are "nanny" languages that have arrogance baked into their design. Java and C# fall within this category. The nanny languages are centered around the premise that pointers are "dangerous" and that programmers are not intelligent enough to test their code or learn from their mistakes.

C programmers find this insulting, and the lack of pointers feels a lot like censorship. Yes, I'm aware that you can use pointers in C#, you just have to announce that the region of code which uses them is "unsafe" ... do you notice anything arrogant or suggestive about that keyword?

I'm not trying to imply that the nanny languages are useless, or that they didn't take an enormous amount of time and effort to create. They're very welcoming to beginners, dabblers, and people who don't care about details that aren't relevant to their project. But if you stay with these languages long enough, you'll eventually realize that they come with a hefty price.

With C# and Java, the library classes and functions all have beautifully descriptive names, which is a godsend when you're learning the language because you rarely need to look at the documentation to figure out what a function does. C, on the other hand, gives their library functions short, cryptic names which are a real turn-off to beginners.

But here's the thing: once you become fluent in Java or C#, you realize those long names become a bottleneck, even with Intellisense. Once you become fluent in C, you realize those short names are a godsend. So the Java/C# approach welcomes you with open arms, but then punishes you for the long haul. The C approach makes your life difficult up front, but then rewards you for the long haul by staying out of your way.

C programmers don't like things holding them back. Nanny-language programmers can't see the things holding them back.

It's a catch-22 for the customer.

Your car has safety features? High premiums for you because your car will be expensive to repair!

Your car has no safety features? High premiums for you because you're more likely to have an accident!

Murderless Meat

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A newborn baby's gender is typically announced with the phrase "It's a boy!" or "It's a girl!".

The "it" in each case refers to a living human being whose gender is in question.

Their recent 'enhancement' to the ad system fixed a bug that worked for a very long time. I can't imagine I'm the only one who discovered it, but I didn't dare share it online for obvious reasons. It's fixed now, so there's no point keeping it secret anymore:

It used to be possible, once you clicked on a video (which typically began with an ad, but not necessarily), to click the "next video" icon (in the lower-left) and then click your browser's back button -- and presto, not only would the video start immediately (bypassing the initial ad), but all of the yellow bars in the timeline where ads would appear or interrupt the video were gone as well, and you could watch the entire video uninterrupted and ad-free, even if it was 8 hours long.

But ever since they started getting really aggressive with the ads (about a month ago), this bug/feature no longer works. If try it now you enter an endless loop of advertising hell.

Is the Trickle Down Theory that thing where republicans pee on our leg and tell us it's raining?

Here is one of the most famous videos of a UFO sighting. It's not your typical shaky shot of some light(s) off in the distance; the quality is quite good and at around 33 seconds you can actually see some detail of the alleged UFO.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

The point of the argument is that NN used to be an inherent part of the internet. Whatever speed you got, everyone moved at that speed. The point of NN is to fight against what's now possible - ISPs mucking around with internet traffic artificially so they can charge both sides to get the advertised speeds.

I agree with that. NN is optimal strategy; anything else is necessarily a degradation. And letting politicians make these kinds of decisions instead of us techies is like letting a McDonald's employee perform open heart surgery.

I don't believe ISPs when they ask us to just trust them that they don't need those rules, and I don't believe for one second that Ajit Pai will keep NN in place, no matter how much public backlash there is. However, I'm also no longer 100% certain that getting rid of the NN rules will be the "internet armageddon" that I used to think it would be.

I used to be vehemently in favor of NN, but when you stop to think about it, do we even really have it right now?

Per the FCC:

Blocking: Broadband providers may not block access to lawful content, applications, services or non-harmful devices.

Name one big cable company that lets you serve lawful content via port 80 on your home internet connection.

Throttling: Broadband providers may not deliberately target some lawful internet traffic to be delivered to users more slowly than other traffic.

Name one big cable provider that doesn't offer multiple speed tiers. If you've got the lowest/standard tier, watch what happens when you download something from a fast server: your download speed hits an artificial limit, according to your service level.

I know getting rid of the NN rules opens up a huge can of worms with lots of nightmare scenarios because of the broadband providers' collective monopoly.

But really, what good are NN rules when nobody is following them anyway? And has life been unlivable with the fake NN we currently have?

Yes, to clean up the incontinence issues that arise when the passengers learn they are in a vehicle that has no steering wheel and no brakes.

...DOWN BY THE RIVER!!