Frankly, you’re coming off quite hostile about what is literally a texture.

So it’s acceptable for you to call me a pedant, but I’m crossing the line when I say you’re being a curmudgeon? Ok.

What I’m telling you is that it’s literally a visual element. I already said, it could be optional.

It could be, but maintaining multiple designs isn’t free. To keep them all involves additional QA and bugfixes for every release and designing an interface to allow a selecting different designs. There’s a cost to this, and why bother? As you say it’s literally a texture, not a big deal. What’s your justification for a development team to put time and effort to maintain some old designs that are no longer optimal?

And this is a microcosm of all interactions with technology. Some people simply don’t like change, even when there’s good reason for the changes. Every technological improvement no matter how big or small comes with reactions similar to yours. It’s best not to impede technological improvements to please curmudgeons, because there’s no pleasing them. You can decide to be angry over every minor improvement in technology, but that’s just deciding to be angry for petty reasons. It’s best to try to understand technological changes rather than always being angry over them.

I mean you’re still upset over a change in the look of scrollbar, even after the reasons for the changes were explained. There are much bigger changes in technology coming, not sure how you’re going to handle it if a scrollbar change bothers you.

Yeah, there’s many times I type “class for:” followed by a a dump of SQL, JSON, XML or whatever and it’ll make a class with properties named correctly with the right types. I still have to figure out tricky data relationships and that sort of thing, but the boring tasks of creating interfaces to databases and objects for serializing stuff goes a lot faster now.

So a much larger percentage of my time is devoted to solving problems rather than doing all the boring grunt work usually involved with getting data in and out of the app.

I’ve explained to you the decision making process that’s used when changing UI elements. If you’re so dedicated to being a curmudgeon to learn about why technology changes, that’s your decision.

Dude, a date is a fixed point in time… just has less accuracy than if a time is included.

In what archaic system are int’s still 4 bytes?

When you have more experinece in programming in more languages, you’ll find that in a lot of modern languages an int is always 32 bit and a long is 64 bits. Doesn’t change if your system is 32 bits or 64 bits.

If I read your format on a 64-bit machine, it’ll break.

And this is exactly why many programming languages don’t change the definition of int and long for different processor architectures.

You clearly don’t have any experience with higher level programming languages, which you should really look into. If you have so little understanding of the problems with dates and times you should really only work in languages that have a well defined DateTime structure built in so you won’t get into trouble with all the various edge cases and performance problems you’re creating by not understanding why parsing date strings should be avoided whenever possible.

You know what’s not ambiguous ? “This time is stored as an ISO8601 string”.

Interesting that you were boldly claiming that experts use a dd-MM-yyyy format and now you’re bringing up a format that starts with yyyy-MM-dd. Do you understand now why it’s put into that order?

But yeah check out high level languages, they’ll serialize dates into a standard format for you. Though I still have to put in serialization options to handle communications with partners that don’t follow standards. Like all the time. I get enough headaches with just dates in a string formats when I can’t avoid it that I know better than to do it when I can avoid it.

The meme you had that says that experts use dd-MM-yyyy is the wrong way around. Beginners use the built-in DateTime functionality that’s offered by a high level language. Experts use this as well. It’s only the mid tier devs that think they’re going to come up with a better way on their own and get into the problems you’re going to find yourself in.

First of all, midnight in what timezone? A timestamp is a specific instant in time, but dates are not, the specific moment that marks the beginning of a date depends on the timezone.

What are you talking about? The same problems apply no matter which format you’re talking about. Depending on which side of the dateline your timezone is on you could wind up with different dates.

Does your janky string format of “18-03-2024” suddenly has to become aware of the timezone if I tack on a “0:00” at the end of it? Or maybe you always will have timezone issues no matter what the precision of the time you want to store.

I think you got it in your mind that you can’t do anything other than Timestamp=getdate() and if it’s a date only you have to use a string. That’s not the case. You can indeed translate a date into any number of formats, unix time is one of them. I assure you that 1710720000 will translate to the same janky “18-03-2024” format you’re using every single time unless you deliberately mess with timezones in code where you admit that you don’t want to deal with timezones. But your string jankiness break simply by someone parsing it with MM-dd-yyyy just as easily and this may not require someone to do something to deliberately break it. Depending on the library that’s being used and the localization settings of the OS, this can happen automatically. If your code will break because someone has different OS settings than yours, you are writing bad code.

If the goal is to save space then your format uses 10 bytes, while the timestamp uses 4 (with Y2K38 problems) or 8 with 64 bit Epoch time. If you’re not too worried about saving space (you really shouldn’t be these days) then use the appropriate structs defined by the language you’re using and the DB you’re using.

Even this would be better than a string:

struct { int year byte month byte day }

Six bytes as opposed to 10 and there would be no issues with confusion with the dd and MM parts of the string. It’s still shit (use existing date libraries instead) but still won’t have as many problems than what you’re doing. Seriously anything is better than just dumping a date into a string. And as I say, using the dd-MM-yyyy format is bad for multiple reasons.

Though congratulations, you’ve convinced me that Y2K might’ve been a bigger problem than I thought given how adamant you are about repeating similar mistakes that caused those issues. I guess even when there’s very obvious problems with how someone’s doing things they will insist on doing things that way even when it’s pointed out all the problems with it. I can imagine someone in the 80s and 90s pointing out the Y2K problem to someone writing the code and getting some arrogant bullshit about how only mid-level programmers worry about that. “Experts put dates in strings LOL!”

You’re point being that anyone that people in the past should have known the future?

History is like a mystery novel where you’ve read the last chapter first. People in the past didn’t immediately think Nazi=bad like we do today. The full extent of how evil they were hadn’t happened yet. Remember there are many things that you’re associated with now that in the future will be seen as monstrous.

Right now there are many acts of violence towards Jews by certain movements. How careful have you been in making sure you have no associations with that?

You also don’t store dates in a string that you’ll have to parse later. I’ve had to deal with MM-DD-YYYY vs. DD-MM-YYYY problems more times than I can count.

And you understand that you could have a date in unix time and leave the time to be midnight, right? You’d end up with an integer that you could sort without having to parse every goddamn string first.

And for God’s sake if you insist on using strings for dates at the very least go with something like YYYY-MM-DD. Someone else may someday have to deal with your shit code, at the very least make the strings sortable FFS.

Well yeah the bottling plants were the property of Coca-Cola before the war. After the war it would be expected that property would be returned to Coca Cola. Bottling plants are physical things that couldn’t be instantly teleported from Germany when Germany declared war on the US, so they continued to operate. The existence of Fanta proves that Coca Cola didn’t support the bottling plants in Germany, not evidence they were colluding with the Nazi government. If they were secretly supplying those bottling plants they would’ve been able to continue producing Coca Cola and Fanta wouldn’t exist.

Yes Coca Cola existed in the same time period as the Nazis. Maybe they should’ve stopped doing business with Germany earlier. But the idea that a business is going to push political ideals seems like an unreasonable expectation. There’s no clear path for a business on this other than following the law which Coca Cola did. The real question should be about why the US government didn’t impose sanctions on Germany earlier for their horrible politics. It’s really elected governments that should decide foreign policy, not private entities.

Telling a robot that he’s “done a man’s job” is a Gaff.

Coca Cola?

From what I understand they severed all business with Germany when the war started and because of this Germany had to start making Fanta.

The Mayans figured a calendar that only went to 2012 would be good enough. And they were right, their civilization didn’t exist anymore in 2012. Only relevance their calendar system had in 2012 was that some people felt like it was a prophecy about the end of the world. Nope, just was an arbitrary date the Mayans rightly assumed would be far enough away it wouldn’t matter.

While I suppose you could make a date format that was infinitely expandable, it would take more processing power and is really unnecessary.

Anyway got until 2038 until we’ll have to deal with a popular date format running out of bits. We’ll probably be in some kind of mad max post apocalyptic world before then so it won’t matter.

You’re saying “imagine” a lot there.

Were there concrete examples of critical software that actually would’ve failed? At the time I remember there was one consultant that was on the news constantly saying everything from elevators to microwaves would fail on Y2K. Of course this was creating a lot of business for his company.

When you think about it storing a date with 6 bytes would take more space than using Unix time which would give both time and date in four bytes. Y2K38 is the real problem. Y2K was a problem with software written by poor devs that were trying to save disk space by actually using more disk space than needed.

And sure a lot of of software needed to be tested to be sure someone didn’t do something stupid. But a lot of it was indeed an exaggeration. You have to reset the time on your microwave after a power outage but not the date, common sense tells you your microwave doesn’t care about the year. And when a reporter actually followed up with the elevator companies, it was the same deal. Most software simply doesn’t just fail when it’s run in an unexpected year.

If someone wrote a time critical safety mechanism for a nuclear reactor that involved parsing a janky homebrew time format from a string then there’s some serious problems in that software way beyond Y2K.

The instances of the Y2K bug I saw in the wild, the software still worked, it just displayed the date wrong.

Y2K38 is the real scary problem because people that don’t understand binary numbers don’t understand it at all. And even a lot of people in the technology field think it’s not a problem because “computers are 64 bit now.” Don’t matter how many bits the processor has, it’s only the size that’s compiled and stored that counts. And unlike some janky parsed string format, unix time is a format I could see systems at power plants actually using.

There is still a need to indicate progress when scrolling even with a mouse wheel. So scroll bars are designed with that in mind. And there is still occasion that you may want to use it to brag the bar to a specific part of a page. But this is fairly rare, because how do you know what part of a page you want to go to before you’ve seen it?

Currently on my Firefox there is indeed no scrollbar displayed. If I use my mouse wheel a thin version appears to indicate progress while scrolling. If I move my mouse to the edge of the screen a wider version appears which is easier to interface with on the rare occasion I want to do that. This is an optimal interface given the hardware I have available.

On a phone or table the scrollbar will not be interacted with my clicking on it. It only appears to indicate progress.

The old scrollbar design is obsolete. Doesn’t make any sense on touchscreens and is a waste of screen space on desktops since people have scroll wheels now.

Obsolete doesn’t mean it no longer works, a horse and carriage still functions after all. Obsolete simply means there’s more optimal options available because of improvements in technology. The scrollbar on Firefox right now is more optimal because of newer technology. The scrollbars pictured are obsolete no matter how much nostalgia you might feel for them.

The point is that you haven’t really thought things through.

But - generally speaking - if you’ve got a delegate you support in the parliament you’re much better off than if you’re casting a protest vote for an individual or group who will never hold a seat.

And you’re better off still if you contact your representative about issues that matter to you in a community representation system.

Also people like Bernie Sanders or AOC simply wouldn’t have any prominence in prop rep system. Bernie is an independent that’s popular in his state. AOC is in congress because she won a primary in a safe blue district. They aren’t required to vote on party lines, so the Democratic party has to compromise with them. In a prop rep system they’d either have to fall in line with the party leadership or form their own party and be irrelevant.

Third Parties are only relevant because of their potential to spoil an election. In a multiparty system they no longer have that capability. The only power they could potentially have is in the backroom deals to form a coalition with a larger party if the larger party doesn’t have the majority of the votes. And once again, this kind of thing swings both ways. A center right party may need to form a coalition with far right extremists in order to take power, as we’ve seen happen in Israel.

Not if they’re doing the one-term Senate gambit, like Kristen Sinema. Six years cultivating favors with corporate interests, and then resign before you party can primary you out so you can take a job as a lobbyist.

Next election, Kristen Sinema will be gone. This is an indication of the system working, but you’re characterizing it as a sign of the system being broken. No matter which system you have, it’s not feasible to have elections every week. There will always be bad actors that will require an election to remove from power.

Coalition governments build support by appealing to particular interests of the various party members. That means an “Abolish the National Debt” Party and a “Green New Deal Party” are going to form a different kind of government than a “Green New Deal” and a “Small Business Alliance” party.

Exactly the problem. I don’t have a say in the nature of the coalition that’s formed after the election. I’m not going to 100% agree with any party, and in a Prop Rep system the policies will be determined after the election during backroom deals to form a coalition. I’m in Canada and the Green Party basically imploded over Israel-Palestine even though there’s no chance for them to ever have any influence over foreign policy. Many times I might agree with a party in theory, but politicians tend to be whacky people and party leadership tends to be even whackier. But since the 2 MPs they have represent their communities they can do that job even when the party leadership goes batshit crazy. People can still call their Green Party MPs and those MPs can bring up those concerns in the Parliament even when the party itself is completely broken.

The only reason why Justin Trudeau is PM is because his party has built a lot of capability in identifying community leaders and recruiting those people into the party. People may not even like the party but they like the person they have running in their area, so a few seats can be picked up in this way. It’s interesting how bringing in community leaders is a good strategy to win an election in the “bad” First Past the Post system isn’t it? In a prop rep system you’d want to fill your party with yes men who would go along with whatever the party leadership wants.

Also compare what happens if the party leadership goes nuts in both of these systems. In the first past the post system, if a majority of members (who are beholden to their communities) thinks the leadership is bad, then the leadership is gone. In a prop rep system is there’s any members that don’t like the leadership those members get replaced, because the seats belong to the party, not the people that sit in them.

See politics isn’t just a numbers game. There’s debate and discussion and compromise. Power dynamics should be the primary consideration in any system. Prop Rep is a party first system, the power flows down from the party leadership. In a community representation system the power flows up from the communities. Voters decide who represents the community, community leaders decide who the party leader is. No system is without flaws, but a prop rep is completely dependent on parties which creates too many disconnects between the voters and those in power.

If you cap rent, you have housing shortages. If you cap interest rates, you have out of control inflation.

It seems UBI is a product of people on the left buying into the supply side economcis theories which hinge on the idea the work is meaningless and it’s only through a largess from the wealthy that people have money. This is a competing idea within the flawed supply side economics framework where UBI is a proposed way to have people receive a largess from the government instead of from the wealthy.

Everything you consume comes from someone doing work somewhere. Those minimum wage jobs don’t exist because companies are being charitable. They exist because there’s work that needs to be done. They’ll tell you that they’re “job creators” and those jobs would be eliminated if minimum wage were increased, but that’s all a lie. UBI leading to some Star Trek paradise is another lie meant to distract people.

Increase minimum wage, form more labor unions, and working conditions will improve. There’s known solutions to these problems, we should implement these solutions instead of the solutions proposed by wealthy people like Andrew Yang.

Those jobs still need to be done though. Seems to me the problem is that minimum wage is too low, it isn’t a living wage. So it’s bizarre to me that the emphasis isn’t on simply raising minimum wage. UBI feels like something everyone knows won’t happen, it’s just an excuse to be angsty.

Threatening democracy is the only policy he’s consistent on.

That’s cavemen for you. Always getting angry over stones being thrown but not realizing they’re throwing the exact same stone.

I mean your response to an over-generalization is to increase the level of generalization to include literal cavemen. I wonder at what point cavemen developed a sense of irony?

Its the epitome of technology that as it improves some things become obsolete.

Pretty much every mouse has a scroll wheel on them now. I very seldom click on a scroll bar now. So the design has changed with that consideration in mind.