Oooh, saw Andrei's name pop up and remember his books on C++ back in the day .. ran into a systems engineer a while ago that asked why during a tech review asked why some data size wasn't 1000 instead of 1024.. like err ??

"shall" and "must"

A favorite past-time back in the day was driving at night from pub to pub along the 'back roads' (B-roads specifically in the UK) as fast as 'possible'. There were typically no street lights, however lights from other vehicles showed up alerting you to any possible danger. It was fun at the time, but i wouldn't do it now .. lol ..

Right, there were no street lights where I grew up because street lights cost money and the people where I lived were rich partly because they paid few taxes, so no money for street lights. I happened to move to a city when it wasn't yet concerned about the environmental impact or cost, so I went from "Of course the main road doesn't have lights, what are we made of money?" to "Of course jogging tracks in the city parks have 24/7 street lighting. what if you wanted to go jogging at midnight, you can't jog in the dark!". Today those tracks don't have lighting 'cos there's no money and the wildlife hates it but thirty years ago, sure.

However some back roads aren't even B roads, the classification keeps going through C and D but it's local numbering, the numbers are just for local maintenance crews - so a C-1234 could be duplicated a few miles away in another local government territory and that would be confusing for drivers so they won't write C-1234 on a sign, they'll just say what's in that direction or maybe a local name for the road.

That’s great just so long as your county roads doesn’t have any dog walkers or wildlife like deer.

The best case scenario then, is that you write off your car with a deer shaped hole in the front. The worst case scenario is you have a death on your conscience for the rest of your life.

I hit a pheasant on such a road once, not driving at silly speed but it was pitch black. My fog light was never seen again, nor the pheasant.

If you're walking in the middle of the street in the middle of the night, in the middle of the woods, with no reflective clothing, and I hit you, it's your fault. I know how fast I'm driving. I can live with that.

>lights from other vehicles showed up alerting you to any possible danger.

When I started driving I preferred the dark for these roads because the lights let you 'see' hazard around a corner.

Headlights were worse then - and I hadn't seen a crash into a deer.

I went to a wedding in Devon recently, friend of my wife’s whose family are all farmers and her brother was joking that it’d be fine to drive back drunk because the car would just bounce off the hedgerows…

Safety first. More hedgerows!

of course it's re-usable .. most passionate excel jockeys would agree, as long it's their VBA that gets reused

Tony Wheeler has a lot to answer for

This is not unique to SV. This is happening world over. The wealthier are buying more assets, the middle and lower classes are left paying rent to the wealthy landowners. "Gary's Economics" has tons of material on wealth inequality and its impacts.

A Gattaca moment ?

I went as a contractor (fixing a port from PDP 11/44 -> SUN 5/110) on-board a UK nuclear sub back in the 90s, and had a contractor berth in the 'bomb shop'. I slept underneath the Tigerfish MK24 torpedoes, smelly and greasy, but i don't remember it being cold !!