Does "all but" always mean "nearly"? I've been conversing in English for 20 years now but this one eluded me.

I guess I am just unable to parse the words to piece together such a meaning. In my mind, there are two ways to interpret it: "this subject may be all kinds of things, but one thing it is not" (all but = everything except), or the opposite "this subject may be all kinds of things, but one thing it is for sure". And neither of these means "nearly" :(

Yes. I think the idea is that on the path of events or actions between the starting point and the target, you have already completed every single one, and all that remains now is the final step before you can call it done.

You've walked all but the last step of the journey.

Thank you, that makes sense!

If you're in Germany, I would not be so sure. Copyright extortion used to be a huge industry here for two decades.

TPUs?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think all kinds of UTF, including 16 and 32, support arbitrary length for a single effective character. This would be because you can stack modifications as long as you like.

What you meant by "single effective character" is grapheme clusters. This whole discussion is about variable sized code points.

The first comment was kind of iffy when it was also talking about buffers and characters, and focusing on code points is mostly a bad focus. It's worth bringing up so nobody thinks fixed width at a single layer is particularly useful, because other layers will still be variable.

Just one example: Facebook is mandatory for school/university in large parts of Asia. You cannot trivially block them. They should be considered an utility.

How did facebook make its way into education like this? Can you explain to an outsider?

> Or are these TVs auto connecting open WiFi or the neighbor’s Xfinity WiFi?

Yup. How does that make you feel? Because for me, it was the moment when the border to not only blatantly, but also actively evil was passed.

Do you have any evidence of this? The video expose that kicked off this firestorm said that if you don't actively connect to the internet, then the system is largely inert.

You'll be delighted to learn that this exact reasoning had, in fact, been used by the copyright industry against (illegal) movie streaming websites. If I remember correctly, this was in Germany and was, after a relatively short time, no longer accepted by the courts.

It is simply unethical, period. Knowing that a solution exists is a gigantic advantage when working on a solution. Normally, noone can abuse the knowledge fast enough to gain an advantage, but here, they could. This is fraud and as a journal, I would reject it.

Especially if they kept telling us how dangerous the machine is.

No, the parent is exactly right. I've seen it countless times and I am so sick of it. The poor, poor CEO has to be evil, it is his duty.