I appreciate the suggestion, but that looks like a Java library. Interpreted languages make me feel dirty. Java makes me feel even dirtier. If it’s not C, C++, or ASM, is it really worth using?

I’m okay with the “human-readability,” but I’ve never been happy with the “machine-readibility” of XML. Usually I just want to pull a few values from an API return, yet every XML library assumes I want the entire file in a data structure that I can iterate through. It’s a waste of resources and a pain in the ass.

Even though it’s not the “right” way, most of the time I just use regex to grab whatever exists between an opening and closing tag. If I’m saving/loading data from my own software, I just use a serialization library.

Leader of a terrorist organization endorses another terrorist organization. Can’t say I’m surprised.

That’s kind of the point I was trying to make. They feel so different, I can’t imagine one being a viable alternative to the other.

I couldn’t care less what happens to the wine industry, but are people really using weed as an alternative? They’re completely different experiences. I enjoy drinking, but cannabis is in no way pleasurable to me at all.

It really depends on how far back you want to look.

If the US was to suddenly stop projecting its interests internationally, then as others have mentioned, then likely the world work become somewhat more socialized. European countries would probably step up and try to keep China in check, but without the US contributing to these efforts, it would cause a significant strain on their military resources.

If the US was to take an isolationist policy 100 years ago, then there is a good chance that WW2 would have been won by the Axis. The Allied forces likely would have put up a good fight, but I’m not sure they would have emerged victorious against the combined Axis forces. The war in the Pacific would have raged on much longer, and without nuclear weapons, there would have been an extreme loss of life invading Japan. At the very least, WW2 would have lasted much much longer than it did. Depending on the outcome, plenty of countries might currently be speaking German and debating if they should tear down 80-year-old statues of Hitler.

I thought I spelled something wrong; I didn’t, and now I’m lost. Aren’t most non-fiber connections asymmetrical connections?

This is only true when you have a single transmission medium and a fixed band. Cable internet is a great example; you only have a few MHz of bandwidth to be used for data transmission, in any direction; the rest is used up by TV channels and whatever else. WiFi is also like this; you may have full-duplex communications, but you only have a very small portion of the 2.4Ghz or 5Ghz band that your WiFi router can use.

Ethernet is not like this. You have two independent transmission lines; each operates in one direction, and each is completely isolated from any other signals outside the transmitter and receiver. If your ethernet hardware negotiates a 10Gb connection, you have 10Gb in one direction and 10Gb in the other. Because the transmission lines are separate, saturating one has absolutely no effect on the other.

You are absolutely correct; I phrased that badly. Over any kind of RF link, bandwidth is just bandwidth. I was more referring to modern ethernet standards, all of which assume a separate link for upload and download. As far as I am aware, even bi-directional fiber links still work symmetrically, just different wavelengths over the same fiber.

If you have a 10GBaseT connection, only using 5Gb in one direction doesn’t give you 15Gb in the other. It’s still 10Gb either way.

This is a really good explanation; thank you!

There is one thing I’m having a hard time understanding, though; I’m going to use my ISP as an example. They primarily serve residential customers and small businesses. They provide VDSL connections, and there isn’t a data center anywhere nearby, so any traffic going over the link to their upstream provider is almost certainly very asymmetrical. Their consumer VDSL service is 40Mb/2Mb, and they own the phone lines (so any restriction on transmit power from the end-user is their own restriction).

To make the math easy, assume they have 1000 customers, and they’re guaranteeing the full 40Mb even at peak times (this is obviously far from true, but it makes the numbers easy). This means that they have at least a 40Gbit link to their upstream provider. They’re using the full 40Gb on one side of the link, and only 2Gbit on the other. I’ve used plenty of fiber SFP+ modules, and I’ve never seen one that supports any kind of asymmetrical connection.

With this scenario, I would think that offering their customers a faster uplink would be free money. Yet for whatever reason, they don’t. I’d even be willing to buy whatever enterprise-grade equipment is on the other end of my 40/2 link to get a symmetrical 40/40; still not an option. Bonded DSL, also not an option.

With so much unused upload bandwidth on the ISP’s part, I would think they’d have some option to upgrade the connection. The only thing I can think is that having to maintain accounts for multiple customers with different service levels costs more than selling some of their unused upload bandwidth.

This is kind of a shit article. Most of these are just old hardware that eventually had modern improvements, not “trends.”

A “trend” is cold cathode black lights inside the case, not a silly naming scheme for CPU revisions.

Everybody who keeps saying “just go” seems to be assuming that OP works in an office job where you can just come back and finish your work after your appointment.

What if they’re an air traffic controller, they’re operating factory equipment, monitoring a nuclear reactor, etc. Some jobs require a person to be present and attentive. Now they have to talk to their manager, find someone to cover for them, etc. Mental health treatment should be easily available without having to jump through hoops. I understand their frustration.

I think you might be misunderstanding what I’m trying to say. I’m not discounting the value of human culture. I enjoy various types of art, and I am grateful for the people who produce it.

What doesn’t interest me in the slightest is urban “culture.” By that I mean going to restaurants, attending parties, seeing live music, walking to the corner pub, etc. I haven’t done any of these things in years, and I’m happy. If I discover a musician I like, I’m going to spend some money and buy their record, but I don’t need to be surrounded by a crowd of people listening to them live.

You mention the term “anti-social behavior,” but that doesn’t describe everyone who’d rather live in a rural area than a city. Some of us just like our peace and quiet. As far as subsidizing roads and shipping to rural areas, you like to eat, right? Where do you think the food came from? You live in a house or an apartment, right? Where did the wood, concrete, and raw materials come from? A huge amount of agriculture and production comes from rural areas, and it’s always going to be necessary to have roads and infrastructure to support this. The fact that I live in the same area that supplied your food doesn’t mean that your tax dollars are paying for roads solely so that I can drive on them.

I understand that people like you enjoy the busy life of a city and that you can legitimately take advantage of what a city offers. I’m not like that. Large gatherings of people don’t make me happy; they just make me want to leave. My original argument was that a lot of people live in cities because they have to for work. Some of them, like you, live in cities because it makes them happy. For the people that live in urban areas because they have to, I was speculating that many of them might move to more rural areas given the option. I’m not trying to shit on your lifestyle (although I do have strong negative opinions about bicycles on roadways), and I would hope that you extend the same courtesy. Life is short, and in a perfect world, everyone could live in a place that they enjoy.

I feel the same as you, but you really can’t deny the fact that the engineers at his various companies have managed to design some really great tech despite their CEO.

Not just spacecraft either. Starlink is really the first usable satellite broadband, and Tesla has mastered the art of putting advanced powertrain in terrible automobiles.

If you feel that way, then you probably should live in a city. Some people prefer city life; there’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s not for everyone. I have no desire to be around other people, and the “cultural” aspect of urban living holds no interest to me. I get enough human interaction through work. At home, I want to be un-bothered by other people and go about my business in solitude.

I’m interested to see if this rural/urban divide is going to shift in the future. With the ballooning cost of real estate and the rise of remote work, a lot of urban liberals are moving to more rural areas.

There’s certainly a group of people that enjoy city life, but a lot of people (myself included) just want some peace and quiet and only lived in or near cities to be close to work.

We had laundry, but nobody really used it except for the officers. They got their uniforms nicely washed and pressed. Enlisted got their uniforms balled up with the rest of the laundry from their berthing and shoved into an industrial washer. If you were lucky, your stuff was on the outside of the laundry ball; most of the time it barely got wet.

Most people used the self-serve laundry. We had something like 8 or 10 washers you could use on a first-come-first-serve basis. Usually half were broken.

This was on a small boy, early 2000s.

It’s been a while, but I think they changed the coveralls, too.

It all just seems like such a waste. I get that the old NWUs could be worn anywhere. Underway, in-port, out in town, etc. Would have been a lot more cost-effective for the powers-that-be to just say “you know what, just wear coveralls everywhere, as long as they’re not covered in paint.”

I have a stack of ancient uniforms that replaced a stack of even more ancient uniforms. The Navy changes their uniforms faster than the ship’s laundry can pretend to wash the last set.

I’ve seen the dungarees, the utility uniform, the blue camo pattern, and now whatever this is. I just don’t see what the point is in changing it over and over again.

Go into any surplus shop and you’ll see at least 4 different “every day wear” uniforms from the 90s to now.

I’m okay with (and generally supportive of) my taxes going toward military spending. Requiring servicemembers to wear a different style of clothing every 10 years or so is just a waste, though. Changing the uniform because some crusty old fuck decides they want to does not help the country win wars at sea.