There’s an argument to be made that a continuous function is better than a piecewise function when coming at things mathematically, so in that sense it’s at least somewhat interesting.

Sure, in computer science where discrete mathematics is king and the modulus operator is ubiquitous, a cosine representation is entirely unnecessary, but from a recreational mathematical angle, it’s a fun distraction.

And it’s not like cosine interpolations are useless in a broader sense. They’ve contributed much to computer graphics.

There’s a reason kids in Spelling Bee competitions are allowed to ask for the language of origin of a word.

It can often give a hint that a certain sound is spelled an unusual way. The “Ch” of “Chemistry” comes through Greek where it’s spelled with their letter “chi”, which for reasons I won’t get into, looks like our X.

Kids in a spelling bee wouldn’t need to ask about “Chemistry”, of course, but there may be other examples where that would be useful.

The posts that I’ve seen so far seem to be lacking context that’s available when visiting the original on the home instance.

That is, these posts look like the first comment made by the OP in a thread below their main submission, but the main submission isn’t visible.

Very disorienting. I hope there’s a fix on the way.

OP seemed to suggest that these dreams are, or quickly get to being, beyond their control. Nonetheless, even daydreaming at the wrong time can be perilous.

I say this as someone who has never had good attention control.

Frankly, I’m torn on this one. I have a few fantasies that I like to pretend are real because I think they prevent me from falling off the edge into the chasm of complete insanity, while at the same time recognising that it’s not strictly sane to maintain the fantasy in the first place.

But this is something I consciously maintain. There are no elements completely beyond my control like visual hallucination.

The closest I get is the occasional flash of something I’ve been doing for a while if I close my eyes (basically the Tetris effect ), and maybe the occasional auditory equivalent if it goes quiet.

And yet, in my dreams I’ve had full blown conversations with people where I haven’t expected what they’re going to say next, so I suppose if all the above combined into one, I might have a similar experience to you, OP… but then I’d have to strongly considering contacting a medical or psychological professional.

Lapsing uncontrolled into a dream - however comforting that dream might be - when out in the world, could be dangerous for you or people around you. Imagine if you’re driving. Or controlling some other form of machinery. Or heck, even pushing a shopping cart.

You’re confusing two things.

The aboriginal peoples of North and South America (the continents) are descendents of Asiatic people who crossed the Bering Strait from Asia during the last ice age. That was over 10,000 years ago.

These include, but aren’t limited to, the Canadian First Nations - both inland and Inuit, many nations of Native Americans in North America, and in South America, the peoples of the Amazon, the Maya (who still exist), the Incas, Aztecs and so on.

Then, from roughly 500 years ago and then for a century or three, there was a significant amount of admixture both genetically and culturally with Hispanic colonists that came over the Atlantic from Europe.

Yeah. I think I have a preference for a three tier system that’s Y.R.P (e.g. 25.0.2; “Year”, Release within year, Patch number), so yes, I could imagine the third level being incremented the following year in an emergency.

And if two-tier is paramount, tricks like (R+1)*100+P will work provided there aren’t going to be 100 patches per release. (e.g. 25.102)

I wouldn’t want to keep the 11 in there. The entire reason for (hypothetically) making this change is to get away from the old version number and any potential confusion it might cause.

I also prefer smaller version numbers, so “subtract 2000 from year” works better for me (and there’s no better time to take advantage of the fact this produces sensible numbers), but I can see why the full year might be preferable for someone else.

Odd question: What would be the fallout from changing the version numbering to be more like the change recently made by LibreOffice? That is, making it be related to the year number rather than the current system.

The reason I ask is that Linux has been and will be getting refugees from Windows 10 and 11, and the timing of the current version numbers is somewhat unfortunate and potentially confusing in that regard.

I’m aware I may be imagining a problem that won’t actually exist in any meaningful amount.

There’s also the potential problem of Microsoft following suit with whatever follows Windows 11 being “Windows 2029” or something, but it wouldn’t be too hard to deliberately throw in another jump if that were to happen at the loss of some synchronicity.

Wine 49 certainly has a ring to it!

Once upon a time, my computer’s hostname was 1x4x9. The case was a black tower, the first non-beige PC case I’d ever owned, so the name seemed to fit. Unfortunately, that hostname went out of use in 2010, long before I switched to Linux at home.

On the one hand, the PDF editing feature could be useful, but on the other, it’s a sign of yet more feature creep and I don’t know whether I’m justified in feeling concerned about it.

*Confused LMDE noises*

(The funny answer is that I’m somewhere up Mount Stupid, but if I am, it’s a bit like Everest base camp and there’s a nice fire going. I think I’ll stay here for a while.)

Either that or this thread and others like it have caused the hug of death from well meaning visitors. Whoops.

For the lazy: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html

It’s working for me right now. Unsure if Tobias happened to visit during (or shortly after) maintenance, or if he’s region locked.

The Mastodon thread explains it. GNU.org was being attacked by a botnet and the automated protection excluded many legitimate visitors. They’ve since dialled it back.

Edit: unnecessary word

Left field answer: Any dried or dessicated fruit, e.g. sultanas, raisins, currants, cranberries, candied peel, etc.

… I did not intend those to be in reverse alphabetical order, but that’s how they came out.

Wasteful consumer answer: Tinned (in juice) or those fruit cup things.

I once heard about someone accidentally pouring tea from a teapot into a mug with instant coffee in it rather than hot water.

Your laptop has the GPU equivalent of that drink.

Oh! This must be the guy who was called out on that exact thing and it gave him serious pause before he was able to jump-start the bullsh-tting part of his brain.

As someone who is firmly in the greybeard mould, I ain’t shaving my legs for this.

Ask the British (and apparently Australians too) about that and we might say meerkats are Russian on account of a very popular set of insurance TV advertisements.

That said, I haven’t watched TV in earnest for a few years at this point, specifically before Russia fell from favour, so I’m not sure whether that’s affected their popularity or not.

And I have no idea what we might have said prior to the ad campaign.

I seem to remember having little to no trouble with the 5 to 6 transition on my old system, so I’m inclined to believe that.

I just need to get my head - and backups - in order for the day I decide go ahead with 6 to 7, just in case it doesn’t go smoothly.