Brendan Eich’s contributions to computing are immeasurable. Your opinions of his social or political views don’t change that.
Do you not use Linux because you don’t like Linus? He’s quite a controversial figure. And before you say Linux is not Linus, the same can be said about Brave and Brendan.
Many other people work on these projects than just the leader.
Do you not use JavaScript because you don’t like Brendan?
It's a risk trade-off vs how many years of life you have left. Nobody has a crystal ball. I'd rather have enough to retire and then die unluckily, than not have enough to retire and live until I'm 100.
Future humans will be part human, part lizard, part zebra fish, and seveal other species. We will regrow teeth, heart, and limbs. Sometimes we might accidentally grow a tail.
> Even as late as 1978, an informed observer could still consider interest in personal computers to be exclusive to a self-limiting community of hobbyists
The Personal Computer became an accepted, even required business device when IBM launched their PC in 1981 --- at that point, w/ WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3 there was a standard set to which folks for the most part adhered --- going into a Compubiz? (blanking on the name) which sold Big-Blue to businesses was a lot different than going to an Apple reseller at that time, or earlier.
A vivid memory was being in a computer shop when a young accountant pulled up in his Trans Am and declared to the salesperson, "I need a Visicalc" --- once it was explained that this was a program for a computer and that one would be needed, the guy was set up with an order of basically one of everything in the store:
- Apple ][ w/ 80 column card and matching green monitor
- disk controller and dual disk drives
- 132 column printer
and of course a copy of Visicalc and a couple of books on using a PC all of which was then loaded up into his Trans Am and he drove off into the sunset --- always wondered how that worked out....
Probably worked out pretty well. I get the impression that people tried harder back then: stuff cost more and there was less help available. So, if you even attempted to jump in the deep end, you were committed.
In the late 80's/early 90's I was working for a little electronics manufacturer that also sold Color Computer software. I remember all the phone calls and letters asking for support and there was one lady in particular whose complete address I remembered because she wrote us so often, trying to get her Digitizer working. She was finally successful and pasted a scanned photo of her daughter in a cowboy hat into her final thank-you letter :-)
One of the lessons that stuck with me all these years is that quality of product documentation/ease of use is inversely proportional to the number of support calls I had to take.
> In the late 80's/early 90's I was working for a little electronics manufacturer that also sold Color Computer software. I remember all the phone calls and letters asking for support and there was one lady in particular whose complete address I remembered because she wrote us so often, trying to get her Digitizer working. She was finally successful and pasted a scanned photo of her daughter in a cowboy hat into her final thank-you letter :-)
That was really touching. Thank you for sharing.
“Computers aren’t the thing. They’re the thing that gets us to the thing.”
I don't think so. My dad worked for a consulting firm ("Big Eight" as they called it back then) in the early-mid 80s and as far as I can tell his job mainly involved slinging Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets on PCs. PCs very quickly infiltrated business starting in the 80s and had already left the exclusive "community of hobbyists".
The line is the reason you don’t lose a day now. When you circumnavigate the world westward, the earth has rotated one less time for you than for everyone else, so it appears you have lost a day. By artificially switching the day at the date line you avoid this kind of slippage.
On a ship, you also keep the same time zone as local time for the area you are steaming through. Going consistently westward to get somewhere is a bonus, because every other day you get to sleep in an extra hour.
This sounds like a marketing-speak. Joy is not an experience gained by staring at the visual design of a browser. You are confusing joy and another experience, perhaps appeal or attraction.
If you genuinely experience joy from browser visual design, you are probably that same guy who experiences “delight” when a customer support representative treats you well on a phone call.
The core of the big modern (relative term here given these designs are pretty old by now) bombs are implosion fission devices that then trigger a secondary fusion explosion. The core of that primary bomb is a plutonium ball called a pit that gets crushed to trigger the initial explosion. Then the xrays released by that get reflected and use in a secondary fusion device in the tiny amount of time the shell of the bomb lasts.
The pit (primary) is a hollow shape that gets crushed, producing a fission explosion. The X-rays released by that are absorbed by a (highly classified) foam encasing the secondary, which vaporizes (explodes), compressing the secondary causing fusion. The foam, and the secondary, are encased in a substantial tamper made of U-238.
The tamper’s mass impedes the expansion of the secondary, making it more efficient. The tamper is also largely converted to Pu-239 by the neutron flux from the secondary, and immediately fissions releasing a whole lot more energy. This approach is used in all modern thermonuclear weapons, with the majority of the total energy coming from fission.
The ‘Tsar Bomba’ weapon, the largest ever detonated, was designed to be a 100 megaton blast, but Khrushchev was concerned about fallout. So, he directed the U-238 tamper be replaced with lead, which reduced the explosive yield to ~60 MT.
