• 4 Posts
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Joined 10 months ago
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Cake day: December 31st, 2023

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  • cacher does, but cache as in “cache-toi !” (go hide!) and “je me cache” (I’m hiding) are pronounced “cash”.

    Besides, “correct” pronunciation in a different language is pretty meaningless. The word may have come from French but we’re speaking English, not French.

    Also, it might not be a loan word so much as a legacy-of-foreigners-taking-over word (c.f. the Normand invasion of Britain), which doesn’t tend to help the language’s users care about respecting the “original” pronunciation. I’m not certain when exactly cachet entered English.












  • the police say they are targeting the criminals responsible but cannot “arrest their way out of the problem”. They also say manufacturers and tech firms have a bigger role to play.

    Even though I fully expect the police here aren’t doing as much as they could (I mean come on, are they expecting phones to come with wiimote hand straps?) , I’m at least glad their public rhetoric is that they can’t “arrest their way out of the problem”.

    I imagine that’s poor compensation when you’ve just had your phone snatched, however.




  • Having just watched the lecture, the only classified info I can recognize is the capabilities of 80s era satellites.

    Given that, I think it’s quite a shame that the whole thing is only now available. Rear Admiral Hopper seems to have been someone who deeply understood both computers and people. The prescriptions she gives regarding “systems of computers” and “management” vs “leadership”, to name just two, are spot-on. Her lecture is quite grounded in what I’d call “military thinking”, but that’s just because she’s in a room filled with people who are of that life. In my opinion, everything she talks about is applicable to communities and businesses.

    The general gist of the entire ~90mins reminds me of Project Cybersyn in its perspective on how computers could serve society.


  • The idea is neat, and there is a certain precedent for the approach in .htaccess files and webserver path permissions.

    Still, I worry about the added burden to keeping track of filenames when they get used as stringed keys in such a manner. More plainly: if I rename a file, I now have to go change every access declaration that mentions it. Sure, a quick grep will probably do the trick. But I don’t see a way to have tooling automate any part of it, either.







  • The English royal court became french speaking after the normands invaded, around 200 or 300 years ago. Nobles and royalty can afford lavish meals and dishes.

    They can also regularly afford meat, whilst it was the peasants who tended to the animals. Thus pork (from porc) vs pig, beef (from boeuf) vs cow, poultry (from poulet) vs chicken.

    It doesn’t explainall of the gaps, but it’s an important part of the explanation.



  • The background trend, unfortunately, is of the far right slowly but surely gaining votes. We pushed them back to third place today, but they still almost doubled the number of representatives they’ll be sending to parliament (from 89 to the projected ~130 for today’s elections).

    • In 2002, Jacques Chirac won against the far right with 82% (to the far right’s 18%).
    • In 2017, Macron won against the far right with 66% (to the far right’s 34%).
    • In 2022, Macron won against the far right with 58% (to the far right’s 41%).

    IMO it’s largely a consequence of the center-left and center-right (Hollande, Macron) completely abandoning the working class, and demonizing the left whilst cozying up to the far-right (mostly Macron, though Hollande definitely slid right over his term).