“is” is correct here, due to the implied nouns. “Data” in this case is an appositive and serves to describe the implied noun, “word.” And “plural” is an implied noun for “plural word”

You can see it most clearly if you fill in the implied nouns:

(the word) data is a plural (word)

It seems to be a per-school kind of thing. I am late millennial/early Gen Z, and my school had computer classes where we learned how to use Windows and Microsoft office, how to touch type, the meaning of computer terminology, and what the functionalities are of basic computer parts (eg, “CPU is the brain of the computer”). And later on we started learning how to use Photoshop and Illustrator.

I’m always surprised when I hear that other people don’t have that sort of in depth tech learning in their schools, and worse so, that some people don’t even have computer class. It just always felt like what we learned in computer class was an essential skill

Technology needs to be actively taught and actively learned! If their school isn’t teaching it, maybe try subscribing to some online tech literacy courses?

Regardless of the reason, the end result is still the same, which is that new users are left with the idea that terminal is essential for using Linux.

You can say that you set up a distro without using terminal all you want, but as long as new users don’t know how to do that, my point still stands. Frankly, the fact that you even thought to bring up that point feels like, to me, extra proof that experienced users are highly dismissive of the new user experience.

I mainly play indie titles, but actually zero times so far. Steam really does everything for you nowadays

As a recent Linux user, I can say that he’s got a point, but he’s making the wrong point. What I’ve learned is that technically, you don’t have to use terminal. But as a new user, you’re never made aware that there are non-terminals options. Every time you try installing a program or really doing anything, the first response on any article or forum is generally going to be to open up terminal and start typing. Linux is in a weird spot because the are so many desktop environments that the only way to make a tutorial that works on all distributions is to tell the user to use terminal. Yet by doing so, you are pushing away new users who will begin to think that Linux is too technical for normal use.

I see many experienced users dismiss new users’ concerns because “you don’t actually need terminal,” but I don’t think these people really understand that while that’s technically true, the new user experience has been constant tutorials and articles that basically state the exact opposite. I’m not sure what a good solution would be, but I do think that experienced users need to acknowledge that just because new users identify an incorrect problem, doesn’t mean that there isn’t a problem at all

The biggest difficulty with answering this question I think is that I don’t know how broad the categories should be. Do you have an estimate of how many categories you’re looking for?

Ah, needing emeralds is a downside? Have you considered a tool called “mass slavery?”

I think doing nothing is an overlooked business strategy. Companies always expect change and improvement. There must be a new version, a new redesign, a new functionality, a new hype. It looks good on paper and signals leadership to the investors, even when what the customer really wants is just stability and consistency. We saw it with Windows, where Microsoft’s endless hype-chasing led us to Windows 11. If stagnation is one extreme of business strategies, then whatever these tech companies are doing is the opposite extreme.

Valve knows what to change and, more importantly, what not to change.

It’s very simple - the sun isn’t burning. The sun is actually a very large healing crystal. As you may know, healing crystals capture the harmonic vibrations of the universe and turn them into things that are good for our health, like warmth, vitamins, essential oils, and positive ions.

The sun is made out of a healing crystal that converts the vibrations into warmth, witch is what we see as sunlight. The sun is so big that it’s able to capture a lot of harmonic vibrations and so it makes a lot of warmth.

The real question is who polished the healing crystal that forms the sun, and who put it up into space. The natural answer is that it’s clearly done by my good friend Moonlight Namaste, and she will teach you how to do the same thing if you visit her blog and sign up for her meditation classes. With enough guided meditation, you too will start to see the universal vibrations and learn how to change your oscillations to match the universal vibrations. The first 200 people who sign up will get a free dream catcher, so sign up today!

Thanks for the details! I forgot some of the details since I last took a course in linguistics like almost 10 years ago

Definitely not the same, at least in my experience. It differs by field, but in my field, grad programs basically have zero classes, and whatever classes there are are generally automatic A’s. In turn, the difficulty comes from the fact that you are basically in indentured servitude to your advisor, and there is no actual recourse for trivial things like “overwork” and “burnout.”

I know of people who did 70 hour work weeks, and for a period of time, I had to do that as well. Also, you get paid less than you would if you had just gotten a 40 hour per week job at a company.

Anyways, the advisor that you pick really makes or breaks your experience.

Asterisk means that the word has been reverse engineered without any direct evidence backing it up. All proto languages will have asterisks in front of all their words because proto languages are, by definition, languages that were used before anything was written down.

The reverse engineered word is likely to be correct (or at least, as correct as we can be), but in the absence of direct evidence, it’s still just guesswork

The numbers you’re talking about are because we know that there are different consonants used, but we don’t entirely know what sounds those consonants are. So we just write all of the consonants that likely sounded somewhat like the letter h as h1, h2, h3, etc., and repeat for the other uncertain consonants.

So basically h1 definitely sounds different than h2, but as for exactly what they sound like, all we know is that both of them are kinda like h

It’s something that people, in least in my field of microbiology, have been recently aware of and are trying to correct. The problem is not just an in-group signifier, since everyone, even experts, finds the author insufferable and difficult to understand

Yeah, but my impression has been that there was no need to keep perfect time - good enough and easy to keep track of were the priority.

Like in the Roman times, they only had 10 months in a year. Not because each month was longer, but simply because they didn’t bother to keep track of the time during the 2 winter months (it was unproductive anyways, and so there was no need to keep track of the time). I can definitely see the use of a system in which the first month of the year is just defined as “the moon cycle when you start planting seeds.” And any deviation is just swept under the rug as “winter month weirdness.”

As a matter of fact, my impression has generally been that most (or all?) lunar calendars define their first month as the moon cycle that contains the spring equinox, likely for the exact reason that that’s when you start planting crops

I don’t think so. Lunar calendars are just simply easier and more relevant to keep track of (eg, when to plant and when to harvest), so it made more sense to use those initially. Wasn’t it only like 500 years ago that Europe switched to a solar calendar? And that was primarily for religious reasons, iirc.

Not a history buff, but that was my impression.

My partner recently shared a video/clip about the differences between the way girls do makeup to attract guys vs the way girls do makeup to attract girls. What your comment reads like to me is that she put on the light makeup because she figured you would like that, but now, she’s figured that there’s no need to attract you with her makeup anymore

No makeup at all for me. I know that some women have a “no makeup” makeup, the kind where you say you don’t have any but you actually do. I don’t like that either. (she thought that I couldn’t tell)

Domestication of the horse had massive impacts on human civilization

Is it alright to go around wiping the OS off of other people’s computers?

• is what your comment reads like to me.

To be clear: each machine generally needs a computer to be permanently plugged into it. Generally the computer belongs to the university. You’re not plugging in your own personal laptop into the machine. Saying to install Linux on these computers is essentially tampering with the university’s electronics and IT will be very unhappy that you did that.