Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.

[IDEngineer]

I do wish there were some way (other than personal responsibility!  ) to insure that those who don't want children don't have them, and those that do can do so without undue hardship.

We were married for 20+ years before having our one and only son. As my wife approached 40YO it became evident it wasn't "just going to happen" and we deeply desired to have a child. This was not a case of "Oops, an accident". No one was ever able to diagnose the problem which is how we ended up doing the Full Monty of IVF+ICSI.

And it was so totally worth it. Our son is truly one of the finest humans we know, and that's not just a proud Dad talking. As an infant he showed some signs of what I interpreted as potential autism but I specifically worked with him as a baby to avoid that and now, at 19YO, he is perfect in every way. A competitive swimmer (so no physical issues), in his junior year of his BSEE degree (so no mental issues), can play in a crowd but also study alone, an internationally ranked drone racing pilot that's been on TeamUSA at the World Cup two different years, etc.

I understand your comments about "went to lengths to make it happen and he ended up with severely autistic twins". I was frankly terrified of "pushing too hard" and overriding nature with technology. But as a result I kept a close eye on his early development and actively managed what I perceived to be risk factors. I don't know if other people pay attention like that, or if any of it mattered at all, but here he is and things couldn't be more perfect.

Well, OK, they could be more perfect in the sense that we wanted more children and went the IVF route a couple more times but it never worked again. Amazing odds BTW... they say you have a 30% chance of carrying to term for each attempt so "don't get your hopes up on the first couple of attempts". Yet after everything else had failed, IVF worked perfectly the very first time - and then never again.

We cherish our son and are thankful for every single day with him. He's soon off to school again and has openly told us that while he'll come home for visits, he likely won't be home "to live" again due to internships and other opportunities. Emotionally we hate it, but we recognize this is exactly how his life should be progressing. Parenthood isn't for everyone and we respect that, but it's been the single best thing to ever happen in our lives.

[james_s]

Don't get me wrong, I'm not even remotely suggesting that someone who wants kids shouldn't try to have them, or that they shouldn't necessarily resort to technology to achieve their goals. I totally recognize that for a lot of people parenthood is the greatest thing they will ever experience and I respect that. On the flip side, I wish more people would accept that it isn't for everybody, not everyone gets that same enjoyment out of it and not everyone flips and becomes a great parent once their kid is born. I think people who choose not to reproduce should be respected for being responsible rather than chastised for not doing their part or whatever. I don't expect the whole world to be fascinated with engineering the way I am and I wish they would not expect me to be as fascinated with human reproduction as they are. Different strokes...

[IDEngineer]

I didn't misunderstand your comments and, in fact, fully agree with them!

WRT "with something like 10 billion people on the planet" and people "pressuring us to have kids", I do find the hypocrisy aggravating. Generally speaking the same people who favor zero (or negative) population growth are also those who favor increased social services and entitlements. That's disingenuous and hypocritical, because the bigger the "social safety net" the more workers required to fund it via taxes. Most of the social programs in the USA were created decades ago when the demographics were radically different; the ratio of producers to consumers was many 10's to 1. Fast forward to today when I recently heard that the ratio of Social Security producers to consumers is under 5:1. Maybe my numbers are off a bit (I haven't independently confirmed) but that's an order of magnitude shift and the demographics of the USA are headed the same place as, say, Japan where they are very open about having a serious social funding crisis.

I don't care which way folks want to advocate, but they should at least have the honesty of a consistent position. You can't both want ZPG/NPG and greater tax-and-spend on social programs. They need to pick one or the other and accept the baggage that comes with their choice.

[james_s]

Generally speaking the same people who favor zero (or negative) population growth are also those who favor increased social services and entitlements. That's disingenuous and hypocritical, because the bigger the "social safety net" the more workers required to fund it via taxes. Most of the social programs in the USA were created decades ago when the demographics were radically different; the ratio of producers to consumers was many 10's to 1. Fast forward to today when I recently heard that the ratio of Social Security producers to consumers is under 5:1. Maybe my numbers are off a bit (I haven't independently confirmed) but that's an order of magnitude shift and the demographics of the USA are headed the same place as, say, Japan where they are very open about having a serious social funding crisis.

I agree with you in principal, but I think I'm somewhere near the middle. On one hand I think a social safety net is important, within reason, obviously the money has to come from somewhere and it can't be so comprehensive that it is a permanent replacement for work. On the other hand the system we have of relying on perpetual growth in a world where resources are finite is an unsustainable Ponzi scheme. Creating more people to generate more tax revenue cannot possibly keep going forever, because at some point an increasing number of those new people become old and unable to work and the population cannot increase infinitely forever for obvious reasons. I think there's plenty of room for discussion and compromise on this balance, but what gets me is the tendency of people to seek simple solutions to complex problems and boil everything down to isolated cause-effect relationships. "Just fix x, y and z and everything will be great!" Well except you look a little closer and x affects a whole slew of other things, as does y and z, and everything interacts. It might be easier for someone to understand who has ever aligned a CRT projection TV where there is a big grid of pots and every adjustment affects every other adjustment so it all has to be done in a precise order and usually through several iterations before it's good enough, and it is never perfect.

[IDEngineer]

I agree with you in principal, but I think I'm somewhere near the middle. On one hand I think a social safety net is important, within reason, obviously the money has to come from somewhere and it can't be so comprehensive that it is a permanent replacement for work.

Agreed. There needs to be a balance. If people truly need short-term assistance that's a proper role for a caring society. I don't pretend to have the answers but some sort of means testing on a case-by-case basis seems warranted to help with one's most basic needs. A true "safety net", as in "when things get truly desperate". Unfortunately we seem to swing wildly between "nothing" and "cradle to grave handouts". And those wild swings generate tension between the various strata of people... if we're in a "nothing" phase the destitute are angry at the well-off, and if we're in a "cradle-to-grave" period the taxpayers feel ripped off by the beneficiaries.

I suspect the vast majority of people would be happy with a stable, transparently fair temporary assistance program where means testing (of some kind) helps insure tax dollars aren't being skimmed. That would inspire confidence in the system, helping to damp the oscillations. Unfortunately, politicians benefit from conflict and strife and class warfare (it gives them enemies with which to distract voters) so the system is sort of rigged against such stability.

[Nominal Animal]

My pet peeve of the day: language lawyers.

Standards are nice and very useful, but reality always trumps theory.  Whenever I need to choose between code that is known to work in practice, and code that is supposed to work because the standard says so but in reality does not work, guess which one I choose?

There are those who say C89 cannot support threads.  Yet, POSIX threads (POSIX.1c) were standardized in '95, and worked just fine in e.g. Linux.  The rational explanation is that the standard did not fully capture the actual implementation users relied on, and I fully agree –– even the later C99, C11, and C17 still do not fully capture the real feature set current users require.

However, the C language lawyers claim that it is the users that are in the wrong.  This is insane.  Standards cannot dictate reality; they're not SCP reality-benders.  They can only describe a consensus understanding, and if the description does not work in practice, it is the description – and therefore the standard – that needs fixing.

[mrflibble]

However, the C language lawyers claim that it is the users that are in the wrong.  This is insane.  Standards cannot dictate reality; they're not SCP reality-benders.  They can only describe a consensus understanding, and if the description does not work in practice, it is the description – and therefore the standard – that needs fixing.

Or the ever popular alternative, create a new standard to "fix" the previous standard.

Oh, and introduce some new issues as well.

[mrflibble]

Next time I get on an airplane, I'm going to "plane" the plane. If they can call it "deplaning" when getting off, I can call it "planing" when I get on!

Didn't like port, never drank starboard.

[mrflibble]

... Our son is our "science project", maximum IVF technology, ICSI, the whole package. ...

Mmmh. Turns out I am unable to read that as anything other than iSCSI.

[Nominal Animal]

However, the C language lawyers claim that it is the users that are in the wrong.  This is insane.  Standards cannot dictate reality; they're not SCP reality-benders.  They can only describe a consensus understanding, and if the description does not work in practice, it is the description – and therefore the standard – that needs fixing.

Or the ever popular alternative, create a new standard to "fix" the previous standard.

Oh, and introduce some new issues as well.

No, that approach is by the idiots who think they can affect what others do by writing a paper describing what others should do, instead of leading by example.
Language lawyers are a different set of idiots.

(They're idiots, because history has shown that that almost never works.  You need to invoke god or ghosts or something else supernatural to make it stick.  The few exceptions to the rule are articles like Magna Carta and various constitutions, that happen to be brilliant and actually work in practice [but even they tend to be based on observations of existing reality and human behaviour, rather than invented rules humans should follow].  Only idiots and those suffering from megalomania believe they can invent something new that is even more brilliant and useful while completely detached from practical reality and considerations.)

The C standard prior to C11 did not attempt to describe the rules compilers should follow; they recorded the existing consensus among the C compilers.
Annex K in C11 (the bounds-checking "safe" variants of many standard C library functions) was a major push from Microsoft (that has vowed to never implement C99 fully in its C frontend to its C++ compiler), and outside Windows, is basically either nonexistent or unused.  Nothing new from Microsoft; they did push OOXML as a "standard" just so that they could claim .docx and others a "standard" format, even though it really is just an XML format memory dump from some MS applications, and completely unsuitable as interchange formats.

You could say "language lawyerism" is a myopic affliction that involves the inability to see or understand reality; using some arbitrary text, and its syntax, as a replacement for reality: an axiomatic truth that is inviolable and above all practical considerations.  This affliction is a basic requirement for successful defence lawyers, hence the name.

[RJSV]

Re:.    Pet Peeves around apostrophes, (a few days ago).
   My (advanced) reasoning seems to prefer the using of the different (spelling), for cases of 'SOMEONE EXPLAINING SOMETHING'.
   So, a 'commentor' individually, stays spelled that way, while a commentator just sits there, commenting in a more formal or even more 'professional' or on-the-job context. That, I think, starts us on the road, to satisfactory (and consistent) word handling.
   BUT, the whole, open, world doesn't practice consistency, consistently. (funny).

   I once googled 'the'. Of course, that was simply another crazy-assed approach, to self-entertainment via smart phone.

[Circlotron]

I once googled 'the'. Of course, that was simply another crazy-assed approach, to self-entertainment via smart phone.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_The

[@rt]

Power hungry control freaks dictating rules about your password via their software... like Hitler.

[TimFox]

Google “Godwin’s Law”.

[RJSV]

OK, NOW, folks, gonna mention, seriously, a media source, potentially COMPLETELY discredited (even to the point, of self-discredit!

   THE SIMPSONS tv animated sitcom.
  We, no shii, watched an episode every night, at the shop. Closing time being 7 pm. Kind of an employee perk, reward for good sales day.
(Besides, Hayward city traffic was killer, so we would wait out).

   Anyhow; the SIMPSONS writers would often indulge in WORD USE MASSACRE with a satire bend.
One example I can remember (it was 20 years, now) was a deliberate mispronounced:
   "Nothing can possib-lie go wrong...uh that's 'possi-bly go wrong..."
... That's deliberate, multiple language errors, used to dispell any trust / reliance, on the rocket engineers nearing launch.
   I think a venture back to those (late 1990s) SIMPSON tv shows would reveal a pattern, of many such deliberate gaffs: making Homer Simpson et al look stupid. (Duh).

[@rt]

Google “Godwin’s Law”.

I’m absolutely aware!

[RJSV]

Yes, I just googled Godwin's law:
  '...power hungry control freaks, in protest demonstration...'

   But, hey look: (they) are wearing 'tie-die' shirts, AKA 'WOODSTOCK FESTIVAL'!

[@rt]

The probability that spark plugs or butterflies will get a mention also approaches 1

[RJSV]

(LOL)
   I was just alluding to the probability that a real-genuine NAZI, meaning Nazi Party member, old school that's 1940s, ok. And the point being, a '1942' Nazi wouldn't be caught DEAD, wearing a tie-die to a protest.
  Somewhat immature and jerky, but reading all this thread puts me in that (playfully - sarcastic) mood.
Actually, this thread, on pet peeves, is chock full of good info. (Also see recommendation for 'orange oil' to clean up old plastic 'goop'. Very helpful.
-- Rick B.

[mansaxel]

I once googled 'the'. Of course, that was simply another crazy-assed approach, to self-entertainment via smart phone.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_The

"I'm just another Western guy
 With desires that can't be satisfied"

[RJSV]

Actually (and thanks, mansaxel) that's partially insomnia / part fascination with smart phones that get you on the internet.   Irony is: The more interesting or 'engaging' the movie, the faster the SNOOZES come!
   As for 'unsatisfied', that has alternate words, like 'drive', 'ambition'. Those are the people whose BIOGRAPHYs fascinate me, as a growing Engineer.
Age 67, and still waiting for 'success': but that is the given territory. Million point 2 dollars gets you a 'nice' home in the (California) 'YAY AREA'.
  (Note: Yay Area I stole that one, from Oakland Rapper.

[Bassman59]

Here's one.

Xilinx and the others have ISERDES and OSERDES elements in their I/O.

So there's an Input SERializerDESerializer and an Output SERializerDESerializer.

PUHHHH-LEEEEEZE.

There is a deserializer (input is implied) and a serializer (output is implied). Simple. Right?

I suppose this is the modern version of the UARTRX and the UARTTX. At least they don't call it Input UARTRX.

(And yes I'm aware of the wall of confusion that surrounds RS-232 and whether RX is an input or an output.)

[PlainName]

modern version of the UARTRX and the UARTTX

I sometimes use that kind of thing to note the RX is from the UART and not to be confused with GPSRX or whatever.

[SpacedCowboy]

> And yes I'm aware of the wall of confusion that surrounds RS-232 and whether RX is an input or an output

To the extent that I breathed a huge sigh of relief when ST made their UART TX and RX swappable in software. The number of times that a hardware designer and a software engineer had screwed that up by not communicating sufficiently ... blood boiling doesn't even come close...

[PlainName]

The number of times that a hardware designer and a software engineer had screwed that up

Wouldn't that be an entirely hardware issue? The software bod can only use what the hardware person provides.