They've been pushing this, C. P. Snow Two Cultures-style, for some time now. Codifying the meaning of 'creative' to film, music...whatever. This coercion of language use is all a bit Eloi vs Morlocks for my liking.

It's not true. And I say that as someone who plays and writes music too. Toolmaking can be creative. Software design can be creative. I'm less well versed in physical industrial processes but I'd be more than willing to bet that there's creativity going on there too. On the other hand, acting is only sometimes creative as well, music often written to a formula...these 'creative industries' are often not very creative. And they often don't create, they use the output of some tools they were given.

I hate the language. I'm clearly not saying that all film making or music is bereft of creativity. I'm more saying that creativity as a word shouldn't be relegated and codified in this monstrously industrialised and high-handed manner so dismissive of everyone else.

I feel you need to elaborate a little further on that. The book lays out sources, equations and testable hypothesis. Interestingly it rarely suggests actual policy. Page 5 of the Motivations sections also laws out why - it is as scathing of campaigners as it is of incumbents.

That aspects are outdated 17 years after its last update does not surprise me. That it is fundamentally incorrect however...given the sources and calculations, I think you'll need a to provide a little more reasoning than "you should fee bad" (sic.).

As someone who has had a strong interest in this area for a while now, not professionally - just following along, it's been fascinating to watch almost every single prediction from the 1990s UK government advisor come true. These recommendations were, in 2015 this was put up as a web site - Sustainable Energy - without the hot air. This is not a political book, the "without the hot air" bit alludes to that. This is a quantitative book with the maths to back up all assumptions and recommendations.

In it, David McKay makes comments about future energy mix. If you look at the full PDF, the idea of a cable from northern Africa to elsewhere is explored starting page 178. Bear in mind this book was written late 90s/early 2000s with the last revision being 2008 (the author has sadly passed). Generating from Morocco appears on page 181.

Thoroughly good read and I recommend it to anyone interested in the mechanics and figures behind energy transitions. Clearly some will now be outdated...but it's surprising how little. A lot of what he suggested is now unfolding.

But what I'm saying is that's all vocational. Computer science is basic information theory, patterns, HCI...all of that kind of thing. I'm a graduate of Comp. Sci myself, though in the UK from 1992. During that time we were taught a programming language as an abstract for various concepts (I was taught ADA, for instance) but it was assumed you would go and teach yourself any language you were interested in. I self-taught myself C for instance.

What you seem to be looking for isn't Computer Science grads, it's programmers. From your description I don't think you'd care if they new Huffman's Information Theory or deep graph theory, but would care if they didn't know Javascript. And this is what I mean - that's not a Computer Science thing, that's vocational

I think that's an industry fault rather than yours for instance. I think pushing Computer Science as the name but turning out average programming people is an educational failure.

I hate to be blunt, but what has any of that got to do with Computer Science? This is the problem. To quote Dijkstra - "Computer science is as much about computers as astronomy is about telescopes".

People wanting vocational programming degrees or courses should get them. Computer science is not about teaching Angular. And from my own observation over the years, I can clearly remember the first time I interviewed a programmer who clearly had no idea how a computer worked, or any of the theory behind one. They just knew syntax to type in - that was all. Came as a shock to me at the time, but it's decades ago now and I'm more used to it sadly.

At the risk of invoking the Death of the Author trope, I don't agree with him here (and I note that he leaves that open too, by saying he personally doesn't want to and not excluding others from wanting to)..

Markdown is now a way doing shorthand formatted typing, effectively. What it's original purpose was is interesting, but not a limitation ('make', for example, was not made for software development but for compiling books). I'm computer-centric, not mobile-centric. A way of formatting bullets and tables without having to move my hands off the keyboard is great for me.

Be interested to see how it handles the round trip - can I take an existing note and edit it using Markdown for instance. But overall - can't see this as anything but a good thing.

The only people who have this kind of stuff are collectors/nostalgia people. They want things to be accurate - that's why go to that trouble.

For a long time I had a Commodore 64 set up ready to go in my rooms, connected to a 1541 snail drive and a C2N cassette. I had a Mac/SE 30 an d a Mac Plus. I had an Atari ST. I enjoyed them all, and I can absolutely appreciate wanting this kind of thing.

For myself I've moved on (played the C64 version of Portal? That was developed on hardware I donated) from physically collecting, although you could argue I've merely transferred the habit to synthesizers instead. But I absolutely recognise and understand the enjoyment people get from this, and it's nice to see this kind of thing being done.

Heard this so, so many times over the last 35 years. 3GL, 4GL, graphical-style (Powerbuilder etc.), object orientiation...so, so many times.

It's a giant string generator, copying from other people's strings. It's a good giant string generator, but that's what it is - another tool in the box. Most of programming is not just the syntax, it's the ideas. "Doing exactly what you want it to do" - hah, most people absolutely cannot specify exactly what they want a thing to do.

Did it start and run more than twice in a row? Well then, it's not an Eleanor clone.

I mean - I was there. People were on dial-up. Fast display of the page was the thing people liked. SEO didn't even really exist as a concept at that point, and the whole PageRank thing was later and quickly dropped. At the time it launched and started getting sway, Google's results were different-but-fine. It progressed quickly to better, but by that point people had mostly moved.

People have forgotten and bought into the legend. Google won because it was a white page with a search box. Alta Vista had gone for the 90s portal fad, and people didn't want that.

Later revisions of Google may or may not have been better, but certainly the "gained sway" bit was because it was faster and not laden with stuff you didn't care about.

Now I lay me in my bed,
Darkness won't engulf my head,
I can see by infra-red,
How I hate the night.
-- Marvin the Paranoid Android, aka Douglas Adams,

...and we're on unlocked phones. UK, EU...all of it that I'm aware of. No harm done at all.

OK - so let's assume the lowest participation rate is also the lowest number of physical answers - that's not a given, but taking this assumption would actually show things in the most optimistic light. Under this assumption if 5 is 13%, then ~39 (rounding up) is 100%. That survey then was sent to only 39 people - that's quite a specialised survey.

The method of engaging needs to be questioned as well as the statistical fall in responses, I feel. Also the relevancy of the survey - if I'm not interested in the answer, then even if you've found the perfect way to reach me I'm still not going to respond.

Also - anecdote not data, but I've been working in the UK for 35 years now. Never received any engagement from the ONS other than the standard once every four years census.

It's for Tim Cook to say he had a VR set. Like Apple Intelligence was for Tim Cook to say he had an AI solution.

I like Apple stuff, but honestly it's been a rough few years as a consumer of Apple kit. ARM transition? Superlative. Excellent. Mac Mini rebirth? Couldn't be happier. Anything else? Well....errr....there was USB C on the iPhone which was a good thing. And, and...*

They really, really need a product person back. Trouble is, everything I just said was from the point of using it. It was not from the point of view of an investor, where Tim Cook appears to be superlatively good at logistics and perspective. So it's going to languish until some high profile failures. Unfortunately I don't think that the Vision Pro earned the 'high profile' moniker so they're likely to emerge relatively undamaged.

*Niche use case, but as a Logic Pro user I'm pretty happy. Mac that is. Would actually get an iPad if Logic Pro worked better when sequencing external MIDI gear, had working MIDI learn etc.. It could be an MPC competitor at that point, but it's a bit limited now.