I don't see any indication that pdftotext has been discontinued [1]. It looks like a Mac-specific installer available via Homebrew Cask has been discontinued [2], but pdftotext is still available through the normal poppler formula [3].
It seems like a likely explanation is that these are primarily done by children and that this is a human universal / instinctual behavior during child development. Looking at google scholar there are at least a couple studies of hand print sizes estimating that in a few regions they were almost exclusively done by young people. That would seem to suggest a biological basis for this specific behavior.
What I find interesting about this explanation is that it suggests a much more limited scope of decision-making than is often attributed to humans. A practical example of why this could matter is that instead of spreading an idea through viral mechanisms where an information is transmitted between individuals, this would provide an illustration of how an idea could be spread by replicating conditions and causing the idea to essentially regenerate in a predictable manner among disconnected individuals, while from each individual’s perspective they are doing something novel.
Indeed. It seems possible that there’s something about the red ochre hand motif is hardwired into human brain and is related to language development. But on a time scale of tens of thousands of years, even if we somehow outgrew it as a species, it seems there would still be residual evidence.
Rock art is really weird because there are exactly same motifs using the same materials (usually red ochre) all over the world and separated by tens of thousands of years.
People act like it’s no big deal, but it sure looks like a pretty big deal that raises some interesting questions. We have a global view of information flows now, and I feel like I haven’t seen a lot of behaviors in humanity that explain how this has been working. What is happening here? Every few thousand years some small group of people in a new random spot on earth somehow magically decides to do that hand thing with red ochre on a rock face? By what mechanism? There doesn’t seem to be a lot of evidence that we are innately drawn to hand symbols in red ochre, aside from these examples separated by diameter of the earth and tens of thousands of years.
Given the time scale and given our current visibility into humanity, human information, and human creativity, it seems like whatever would cause that to happen should be something that’s still observable in the modern world.
This is not typically how the term "backend" is used in this context. Most mature apps will use a variety of tools and services built in a variety of languages, but this is not referred to as "importing a second backend." In fact, your comment is apparently the first use of the phrase "import a second backend" on the entire internet: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22import+a+second+backend%2...
That is obvious (it's in the name). The way your comment is phrased reads to me like you are saying that one can't use Rails and has to switch to a full JS backend for SSR. If that's not what you are saying, then it's unclear what you are actually saying and why you juxtaposed Rails / Django against a JS backend.
> if we're talking about building an SPA you're typically going to be building a worse solution if you can't SSR your client views, which you need a js backend to do.
I have not used React with Rails and maybe I'm misunderstanding your comment, but the react-rails readme includes a section about SSR via ExecJS and integrated with Rails:
It’s entertaining watching these threads pop up and then quickly disappear off the front page, all the while attracting the same stock, bot-like comments expressing indignation.
Names change all the time. Leader / follower and primary / secondary are better for a lot of things, anyway. Even ignoring the social issue, master and slave are not great terms for how they are used. Frankly, I find it disturbing that so many developers are so attached to the master and slave terminology. It’s like the tech industry’s version of the confederate flag.
3000-2500 BCE is such an interesting time period. Civilization and technology somewhat inexplicably pick up throughout the world within just a few centuries. For example, coinciding with the Gilgamesh time period (around 2800 BCE to 2500 BCE) the major pyramids in Egypt pop up, and so do the Caral / Norte Chico pyramids and cities in Peru.
No, the people who want this change literally built the tech. [1] All of you getting triggered and crying from the peanut gallery need to develop some perspective and go back to work.
Obviously, all of you bitching and moaning about your precious master / slave terminology are the most triggered. If you can't handle a name change, then software is absolutely not the career for you.
1. https://poppler.freedesktop.org/releases.html
2. https://formulae.brew.sh/cask/pdftotext
3. https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/poppler