Designing file systems for newer storage devices is an engineering problem that requires a lot of effort, but not a great amount of new insight.
Designing a new programming language that somehow exposes the concepts you mentioned more transparently while still being actually useful would require major, major breakthroughs and insights in PL design.
The instruction to pour water straight into the pot, and not onto the plant, always struck me as odd. Maybe it’s one of those small ancient nuggets of knowledge that we struggle to justify but just work. Might be a big leap still, but reactions like the one from this paper could justify not spraying water all over my house plants.
Tap water is often hard so pouring it on the plant leaves deposits behind.
Another justification is that when it's sunny water droplets on leaves act as lenses and might burn the leaves.
It is also known that wet leaves increase the chance of fungi, mildew, etc. taking hold on them. The article shows that plants are also well aware of that!
Plants do most of their water absorption through their roots, not their leaves. They're also prone to fungal problems when their leaves stay damp. There's no reason to water the leaves rather than the dirt around the roots, unless you're applying a foliar spray or watering something like a tillandsia that doesn't normally live on the ground.
The article says it's no surprise plants panic because water spreads disease, which is exactly what we're avoiding by not watering the leaves. It's not to save our plants' feelings, although the root cause of the feelings and the problem we're avoiding might be the same.
Is there a good transition path for someone who uses a lot of Google products? In particular, I use Chrome across all my devices, and I depend on the ability to search my history/recent tabs/etc from anywhere. Will Firefox give me the same ability? Is the transition literally just: Install Firefox everywhere and start using it instead?
> Is the transition literally just: Install Firefox everywhere and start using it instead?
Yep. I did this about a year ago. You have to create a Mozilla account (if you haven't already) in order to sync your tabs and history across devices, but that should be a given.
I find the Firefox sync a bit clunky compared to Chromes though. I think Chrome sends udpates to Google on each change whereas Firefox polls and updates on a schedule which means sometimes if you put a device to sleep (or if you're on iOS and the app gets suspended) your history and tab state won't be propagated and it'll be missing on your other devices which can be frustrating when you're away from those devices.
Agreed to what everyone else said, but to me the killer feature of Firefox Sync is that you can send tabs from one browser to another, so I can find links on my work computer and ship them directly to my home computer or phone to read later, and they'll just show up when it syncs next.
I'm actually not sure if this is a native Chrome feature, but I can instantly send tabs to my other devices with right click > "send to your devices" > list of devices with a Google account signed in (Which is my phone and laptop for me on my desktop).
As long as you use it everywhere in the same way you presently use Chrome everywhere, yes. You can also import a certain amount (history & bookmarks, not, I think, current & recent tabs) to get started.
Firefox Sync let's you syncronize Bookmarks, Open tabs, Logins, History, Add-ons and Preferences across devices by logging in once with username password
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Designing file systems for newer storage devices is an engineering problem that requires a lot of effort, but not a great amount of new insight.
Designing a new programming language that somehow exposes the concepts you mentioned more transparently while still being actually useful would require major, major breakthroughs and insights in PL design.