Not an engineer problem. Turning engineers loose without micromanagement gets us things like the SR-71, digital electronics, and most of the technological advances over the last 100 years. Of course, if you put us in an oppressive environment (like East Germany), then you get exactly what you deserve.

... and ITVX demands several pages of personal info., just to sign up.

If I remember correctly, the proposed IEEE P1912 standard has user-enforceable data protection. I didn’t see this mentioned in either link. https://standards.ieee.org/iee... https://standards.ieee.org/wp-... ISO and ITU both have working groups that specifically mention IEEE P1912. Does anyone know if Solid is working with IEEE, ISO, or ITU on this? I realize that large gate-keeping corporations will probably drag their feet and try to ignore this, but any control that is given back to the user is progress in my opinion.

Kid. Hey, kid. The first one's free.

Wow! These are that same imbeciles who are mass firing people and claiming that AI can do all those jobs.

I always try to remember that people often like and use tools than don’t suit me. (Once worked with a killer engineer who wrote everything in Basic.) But you need to remember the same thing. The environment, that you describe as unacceptable, is exactly the environment that I’ve been writing Python in for more than 20 years. Even a lightweight Python IDE can auto indent and match parenthesis and brackets. When I first started writing in Python, it felt like I was working without a net. I was very uncomfortable without the curly braces. What I discovered was that the invisible characters are not invisible to Python or my editor. When I hit Return, and the indentation looks wrong, I know to check it. Any time you execute, Python will tell you where an illegal indent is. If one part of a nested loop is at the wrong indentation, then that is a logic error. It’s exactly the same problem as in C, but I can find it faster in Python. You have had some bad experiences, and you apparently don’t like Python. You are the only one who can judge if a language is for you or not. But realize that the problems you point out are not inherent weaknesses in the language. If you would say that Python is a terrible language, in your experience, then we have no argument.

I think I understand what you’re saying. I had a similarly horrible experience with early Java. The move from Python 1 to 2 was a really big one. While Python 3 was being developed, I followed it. So I knew which parts of my libraries might need work. I also followed the tools, and knew that lots of old code could be safely run (for a while) using 2to3 and six. As a result, I was able to migrate at my own pace. I can see that starting with 2.7, then having to migrate to 3 could be a real bear, especially if nobody told you about the migration tools. A little history might help here. Python 3 was in planning for years. Python 3 was first released in 2008. Python 2 reached end-of-life in 2020. Once again, I knew the plan, so I was able to migrate without a lot of hassle or down time. This time table may not have been very clear to someone starting out, and that’s a shame. In the long run, I have found the design and migration of Python to be both self consistent and transparent - much better than most languages. If you are still interested enough to give it another try, I have a few pieces of unsolicited advice. Pick an IDE that understands Python and provides interactive feedback. Read the style guide, https://peps.python.org/pep-00... . And consider the wisdom of Tim Peters, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... . Good luck.

TLDR: This is your obligatory reminder that hammers are really awful at driving screws. I write large simulations in Python. My libraries are carefully written in object oriented code, in order to manage the complexity and perform sanity checking. The number crunching is, of course, handled by native, compiled libraries. I migrated all my libraries to Python 3, about the time of Python 3.6. Python provided very nice migration tools, and I didn’t jump until I was satisfied that it was suitable for my work. I’m sure there were people who had libraries that were inherently harder to migrate, but I migrated one module at a time without greatly impacting my productivity. I’ve written in several languages, at every level, from assembly to G. Every single one has its warts, including Python. However, I think that Python is designed from the ground up in a very consistent and understandable way. The white space mindset is unusual in the programming world, but several IDEs do an excellent job of auto indention and recognizing common indentation errors. I don’t judge anyone who decides that Python white space is not for them. That is their personal preference, but it is not a legitimate critique of the language. If you think that Python is an awful language, then you either don’t understand it, or you are trying to make it do something that it is not good at.

Exactly THIS!

The Financial Times article is paywalled. The paper on Nature is not.

Did you really mean to say, "Part of working for a company is following the rules they put forward. You deserve to be fired if you just blatantly ignore the rules put forth by the company"? Maybe you meant that you "should EXPECT to be fired." It's important to make the distinction that company rules have NO moral imperative. In fact, they are often unfair and immoral. And part of working for an organization is that I EXPECT to be dealt with in good faith and in full respect for the deal that I agreed to. ... not whatever the pointy-haired boss decides to impose on me.

Well, that was a much better answer. So you do have some good points. Maybe next time lead with your rationale instead of name calling and belittling people.

Some social programs are beneficial to society, even though they cost money. Other social programs are not only beneficial to society, they actually pay for themselves financially. Of, course, there are also some wasteful programs, and there are some freeloaders. But anyone who categorizes all advocates of these programs as "communist" is incredibly ignorant. They should turn off the Fox and do some real homework - starting with learning the difference between communism and socialism. Some people are highly sensitive to any mention of social programs, getting so upset that they rant mindlessly. I believe the popular term for such people is "snowflake".

This is the key: "I know many talented people at GitHub who care, but the company's priorities just don't seem to value what I value about the service."
Once you start to see that this is true, in the long term, for all corporate software, you can make much better strategic decisions about the tools you rely on. With very few exceptions, all corporate software evolves toward squeezing dollars out of the customer. Your desire to get your job done efficiently and accurately, is not a factor in their decisions. No corporate software house gives a flip about your opinion or needs. Hang around long enough, and you will see that this is true.
So, use whatever tools you want; just be aware that healthy open source projects usually evolve in an understandable direction. Corporate software does not.

I know a physicist who works in this area, and I asked him about this. I'm just an engineer, so he knows to translate into English. This is what I heard. If any physicists want to weigh in and correct me, please do.

There are different types of "atomic" clocks. The one in my bathroom doesn't measure atomic oscillations, it is just a radio receiver, picking up the transmission from NIST in Colorado . Their time base is maintained by "an ensemble of cesium beam and hydrogen maser atomic clocks" .

I think that these NIST clocks, as well as the ones on satellites (GPS, GNSS, etc.), operate by measuring the oscillations of atoms. This is accomplished by exciting the electrons to higher energy states, with lasers or masers.

The energies required to change states in the nucleus are generally much higher than those for electron states. Recently, they have found a nuclear energy state transition that can be excited by a UV laser. Because these states in the nucleus are much more stable, and less susceptible to effects from neighboring atoms than the electron states, the measurements will be much more accurate.

And I agree with Powercntrl. Atomic power for all our battery operated devices would be a great thing.