Ariel Millennium Thornton @arielmt@computerfairi.es

I totally expect a Windows toy I haven't turned on in a year take four hours to install the complete suite of updates released in the interim.

I should know better by now, but I still never expect a Windows toy I haven't turned on in a year take four hours to install a single update. Not the suite. Just one.

The progress bar GUI widget was created so that a program could show its progress to users in a nice, linear, and moderately predictable way.

But now the progress bar is used primarily to show a complete lack of progress, moving back and forth in the progress tray like the light on a Cylon's face, as reassurance to the user that, no, the program hasn't frozen, only that the company behind it couldn't care less about its users.

@nabijaczleweli @mcc For (a): Today I learned. Thank you. https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/V3_chap02.html#tag_18_09_04

@nico @mcc I relied on https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/dirname.html for availability.

That noted, "${file%/*}" is both faster and more elegant. I like it. (It does fail silently and probably bad if a pathname ends with a slash, though.)

@mcc This inspired me to write and test a somewhat robust shellscript function for inclusion in ~/.shrc or ~/.bashrc:

touchp() { for file in "$@"; do mkdir -p "$( dirname "$file" )" && touch "$file"; done; }

USA: *blows up the countryside and traumatizes pets every July 4th to celebrate sending the king of England a nastygram*

UK: *blows up the countryside and traumatizes pets every November 5th to celebrate sending the king of England a slightly different kind of nastygram*

Folks, wherever in the world you are, could you maybe celebrate whatever without traumatizing your neighbors' pets?

"Running the 'Reflections on Trusting Trust' Compiler" - Russ Cox (research!rsc): https://research.swtch.com/nih