Was that a dig at the recent RubyGems situation?

One helpful element that has changed over the years compared to the old wild west days is the large number of PEPs that have quietly in the background bit by bit standardized packaging formats and requirements.

Some foundations have moved into the stdlib. This means that newer tools are much more compatible with each other and mainly just differ in implementation rather than doing different things altogether. The new stuff is working on a much more standard base and can leave behind many dark crufty corners.

Unravelling the legacy stuff and putting the standards in place seems to have taken 15+ years?

Shudder. I'm guessing it was the always breaking libxml2 compilation step right?

Didn't they have some issues when you tried charging from the left side ports? Eg overheating and throttling etc.

There are some models of MacBook Pro where one side has more 'thermal headroom' than the other side. I have one of those models, and I can't remember which side it is.

Let alone the hordes who think "critical thinking" just means disagreeing with things.

Was that from actual experts, or bad faith strawman coverage (plenty of that about).

At least in my country, there was sober objective coverage from experts about their purpose and percentage effectiveness at reducing the range and spread of potentially infected droplets. Masks were somewhat effective for filtering incoming droplets, but most effective at containing outgoing droplets. The smaller the viral load you were exposed to the lower your chances of getting infected. Experts never claimed them to be 100% though, it was about reducing transmission rates not absolute protection.

Which is the main reason they're used in surgery too coincidentally (they aren't primarily for the surgeon's protection). Or is that an even longer running conspiracy?

That's if it was coming from Mars specifically.

It was also a great experiment in delegated decentralized moderation (and meta moderation) in a pretty hostile environment.

When the term first came about, it was mainly used to contrast with what was around earlier.

"Earlier" could be anything from Usenet to forums etc that were based around topics. Your view of content was based around the topics you selected. You followed topics.

A social network was where you connected with other people, and your view of content was based around who those people were and their activity. You followed people not topics.

That's definition I'm sticking to, and why I don't regard reddit or HN as a social network. Although on HN doesn't really have topic following functionality, you just select topics on the fly.

It sure was. Although my favourite Elite port was the Amiga one.

Another one I was amazed by was Tomahawk on the Spectrum. A wireframe helicopter gunship flight sim with live ground campaign happening around you in 48k.