Oh, it gets updated. We sell a lot of COBOL development tools. There's quite a bit of new COBOL development, too, because many large organizations have significant numbers of COBOL developers.

In many cases they're still working with old-fashioned COBOL, but some have moved to COBOL-85 (which at least has decent scope terminators and some other useful features), and others have even adopted OO COBOL.

Modern managed OO COBOL is actually pretty nice in some respects, with all the features of its environment (JVM or CLR). Properties, type inference, anonymous inline delegates, event combining, and so forth.

It may yet be. Has anyone checked whether Amazon is hiding erotic guns from searches?

Yes, when I drive 900 miles in a day, mostly through the rural Southwest US, as I do several times a year, those rapid chargers sure do come in handy.

Of course, being an old-fashioned sort of fellow, I call them "gas stations".

It'll be a long while yet before the EV infrastructure meets my requirements. Currently the only feasible way to support my use case would be battery-swapping - I'm not stopping for 40 minutes or longer to charge an EV[1] - and that in, at best, very small cities in low-density parts of the country.

Here, let me throw in a bit of prolepsis. The EV proponents will claim my use case is rare. Sure. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist, though; and that means mspohr's claim that range "is a non-issue" is narrow-minded bullshit. Everyone isn't you, mspohr.

[1] The Tesla Model X (which I wouldn't drive if I got for free, because I don't like anything about the Tesla designs, but let's ignore that for now) takes 40 minutes to go to 80% charge on a rapid charger. The X is pretty much the only EV that would work for me, since I need towing capability. The longest-range X has a nominal range of 351 miles; 80% of that is 281. So even in ideal conditions and departing with fully-charged batteries I'd be forced to charge three times on a trip of a bit more than 900 miles. That's two hours wasted.

They certainly seem to be at Bloomberg, based on this piece.

Good to see those proof-of-traction schemes are finally gaining ground.

Twist ending: You are the ghost. That's why he's your friend.

Agreed. In fact, I find it worse than traditional radio, though for the latter I mostly listen to college stations that are typically much more varied than commercial ones (because they let students work with a number of formats, rather than sticking to one), or similarly varied independent stations that haven't been homogenized by the likes of Clear Channel.

I have friends who like Sirius for long trips, but I only found a couple of stations I was interested in, and they loop after two or three hours. When I'm doing a 10- or 13-hour drive, that's useless.

According to Apostolaki et al., the BitCoin network routinely suffers routing attacks already. And by "routinely" they mean at least 100000 times a month.

It would appear that partitioning the BitCoin network is already a widely-used tactic, and that's just BGP attacks - we're not even talking DDoS yet. I haven't looked closely at Lightning (I'm not very interested in BitCoin, personally), but I wouldn't be surprised if (as GP suggested) it will make things worse.

This is the Internet. Every day is Comment on Things You Know Nothing About Day.

Or so I've heard.

We can't stop the earth from rotating - the moon will just start it up again. Stupid moon.

(This is mentioned in Munroe's What If? book, but doesn't seem to be one of the ones on the website.)

Though we could try blowing the moon up first, as in Seveneves. Or get rid of it, as in Space 1999.

A minor media personality has provided anecdotal evidence based on casual observation? Well, that is a compelling argument.

In other news, did you know hyenas switch sex every year? Aristotle said so, so I guess it must be true.

Personally, I'm impressed that the summary author managed to state the rate ( 2mm / year), then say it "can add up fast". When something happens at a given rate, that's how fast it "adds up".

The "can add up fast" comment is entirely redundant. Either you think 2mm/yr is fast, or you don't. If the quoted rate is correct, and that's how fast it will - never mind "can" - add up. Simply a stupid thing to write.

(Also, tangentially, is there any rule that a runaway train has to be going fast? It just has to be runaway, no? If you can't stop it, it qualifies. So ... this is more or less analogous to a runaway train, I believe. Just a slow one. A walkaway train, perhaps.)

I've been writing software for several decades, and I've yet to see the appeal of any IDE. (And I've used a lot of them.) Why use a limited set of functions when you can have a good shell (of your choice), a huge and easily extensible collection of general-purpose tools, and the editor, debugger, and build toolchain you prefer?

When I'm doing woodworking or fixing something mechanical, I can put whatever tools I want on my workbench. I'm not limited to a set of tools that came with it; that would be idiotic. I don't see any good reason why software development should be different.

That said, I think Venomous Studio is particularly terrible (and seems to get steadily worse with each iteration). It's full of misfeatures, like its insistence on performing a build when you start a program for debug. (I have to use it for debugging CLR code; Microsoft doesn't offer a decent standalone managed-code debugger.) Or the way it likes to inject patently-incorrect elements like and into project files for no reason. Or the way it will re-enable extensions you've disabled when it updates.

I'll allow it, if it uses the Star Wars Crawl effect.

I've seen plenty of people reading the newspaper, and once or twice someone reading a novel,[1] while driving. This would be really convenient for them.

Another good use: project 3D illusions to fool oncoming drivers. Fun for the whole family!

[1] My favorite: On Colorado 159, between San Luis and the New Mexico border. At night a very dark road, one lane in each direction, no median, breakdown lanes, or guard rails. 65mph speed limit, rarely enforced. With 17 miles of open horse range - and, yeah, I've seen horses on that road. I was driving it late one night when I came up behind an old Honda Civic with the interior lights on, doing about 40mph. As I passed it, I saw the driver had a book propped on the steering wheel. Didn't even glance my way as I went by.

That's not my experience - because on public transportation, all that time was available to me for work, entertainment, or sleep. That's an efficiency that no non-zero-driving-time commute can beat. If you have a driver, or a carpool, or an autonomous vehicle, then a personal vehicle might be more efficient.

(And I'm not interested in autonomous personal vehicles, personally. But then I also no longer commute.)