openSUSE is a great all-around distro, not only for sys-admins. It comes in two main flavors: Leap (stable) and Tumbleweed (rolling), and several others. The main difference between Tumbleweed and other rolling with other distros is the quality control before releases. This is done almost daily. If for some reason the quality check does not pass, the release is hold until it is solved.
"It's interesting that modern movies have to make you think you understand something, before they pull the curtain back and reveal there's a twist. Otherwise people will get disengaged and stop watching before the twist occurs."
I agree with this. For a particularly insidious example see the latest Star Wars series, the Acolyte, by Disney.
Hope you keep discovering all the wonderful things about Perl, and that you keep finding it useful and enjoyable. Perl is extremely powerful and comes handy in a lot of situations not only in text processing. Perl's bad reputation often comes from people who know very little about it.
I am worried too. But not as much for the AI itself, but the hoards of brainless humans (including quite a number in positions of at least some power) who are being seduced by the idea of AI without a hint of critical thought.
This is an interesting history that was surrounded by mysteries until recently. In Sweden, where I live, it is well known of course. Author Bea Uusma has done intense research many years ago and written a very good book on this expedition, also available in English ("The Expedition: Solving the Mystery of a Polar Tragedy"). In summary, what did go wrong? You guessed correctly: poor planning, poor technology, poor preparations, too optimistic expectations, zero previous knowledge or experience about polar conditions and, at the end depression and hopelessness. Poor little fools that did not realize when to stop while they still had time :-(
Ditto! For the same reason Perl is my go to language for everything I do that I do not have to share. When I have to work with others it will have to be Python (in the best cases) or R (in the less good cases).
I see that. My point is that if the captured energy is used, and thus ultimately dissipated as heat, on the planet's surface, that planet is sooner than later going to have climatic imbalance.
One aspect that I find problematic with the idea of Dyson spheres is: where will the energy be dissipated? In the civilization's planet's surface? It seems to me that it would create serious energy imbalances and soon climate disruption.
Yes, Perl is still used and it is fast and excellent for anything that becomes too big or complicated for a shell or awk script. As you write it is installed in the vast majority of *NIXes as default.
By the way, why post this? The Python-vs-Perl war ended long ago. Python won in a number of ways, in particular the popularity contest.
But Perl still has a lot to offer (CPAN, backwards compatibility, speed). Go look for example at Git (https://github.com/git/git), not a small nor insignificant project. It says there is 5.9% Perl and 0.9% Python there. Maybe some intelligent geeks out there still appreciate Perl, and Perl still does a good job.
ahh me too ... between ages 10-14 in the 80s I would spend my way back from school looking for magazines with schematics, then on saturday mornings I will bike to the local component shop and spend my money there, back home the rest of saturday and sunday went by soldering boards, building amplifiers, alarms, thermometers, regulated powersupply units, radio transmiters, random LED arrangements and what not ... ah, and also exploding capacitors