Reflecting on my own experience on both sides, I can tell a generational difference.
As student, research-focused professors and some old timers made you feel unwelcome in office hours, a mixture of “you are wasting my time” and “you should have put more work on this, I’ll just give you some hints so I can send you away quick”. Many had in common being from a generation and country where university access was not so normalized and accessible to all social strata, just graduating came many times with some sense of entitlement.
Some years later and I’m the one assisting students during office hours. I could already sense some generational change, with younger professors and assistants treating students more like equals. They were exceptions of course, we had younger assistants cargo culting the worst attitude parts of old timers (fun enough they were usually from kind of privileged background, families with ties to the field or even de same department). The result was students from other groups kind-of/secretly attending my office hours and the ones from other nice colleagues.
The Internet seems like a small place, and lately, I always find you talking in a demeaning way about the South of Spain and/or its people. :-)
I usually wouldn't engage further (as most people don't when faced with your harsh statements), but as a "hick farmer from Andalusia" myself, and your history on this topic, it hits too close to home.
You probably think you don't need to, but maybe consider checking how you are perceived and how you come across to people when you write the way you do.
This is my last interaction with you here or in any of the other platforms where we cross paths.
I'm from Spain and some elderly people un the South have a very hard accent to grasp. That's a reality. Andalusia, Extremadura and Albacete. The last one have been the hardest one to pick something.
The same happens with the Basque language/variants with some Uribe Kosta subdialects and some further away French Basque dialects.
> Basically plants evolved Lignin (wood) but there was nothing in the world that could break it down so it rapidly accumulated along with a hyperoxgenated atmosphere due to the extensive growth.
That was my understanding too until recently, when I have read in a couple of places that things might not have been like that. Checking the Wikipedia article about Carboniferous [1] it seems there is not consensus yet:
"There is ongoing debate as to why this peak in the formation of Earth's coal deposits occurred during the Carboniferous. The first theory, known as the delayed fungal evolution hypothesis, is that a delay between the development of trees with the wood fibre lignin and the subsequent evolution of lignin-degrading fungi gave a period of time where vast amounts of lignin-based organic material could accumulate. Genetic analysis of basidiomycete fungi, which have enzymes capable of breaking down lignin, supports this theory by suggesting this fungi evolved in the Permian. However, significant Mesozoic and Cenozoic coal deposits formed after lignin-digesting fungi had become well established, and fungal degradation of lignin may have already evolved by the end of the Devonian, even if the specific enzymes used by basidiomycetes had not. The second theory is that the geographical setting and climate of the Carboniferous were unique in Earth's history: the co-occurrence of the position of the continents across the humid equatorial zone, high biological productivity, and the low-lying, water-logged and slowly subsiding sedimentary basins that allowed the thick accumulation of peat were sufficient to account for the peak in coal formation."
One way or another, I find fascinating how different the planet has been along its geologic periods.
You may want to turn it on and check how it is doing, just in case. That model is infamously known for its bad capacitors and their tendency to bulge and die.
As a side note, I find OpenBSD the best modern OS for those old PowerPC machines. The main "problem" is the lack of modern web browsers, but it is not like the CPU can handle the modern web anyway :-)
I really like the form factor, if only there would be some off-the-shelf options for a mechanical keyboard version ..
I know there are plenty DIY projects for this (and the cyberdeck scene is a rabbit hole that I do not dare to go down), but it would be nice something more easily available.
Yeah the 400 made it difficult to fit a replacement keyboard. It will be really nice if the 500 has an RP2040 for the keyboard controller instead of the fixed function Holtek thing in the 400. Then the keyboard FPC connector would be a second secret GPIO bank :-)
I am a big fan of thin clients as servers. It is true you lose the "built-in console and UPS", but they usually come in very nice and compact form factor, many are fanless and consume 10~15W tops while being acceptably capable (in general much more than a RPi but with much better memory and storage specs)
As student, research-focused professors and some old timers made you feel unwelcome in office hours, a mixture of “you are wasting my time” and “you should have put more work on this, I’ll just give you some hints so I can send you away quick”. Many had in common being from a generation and country where university access was not so normalized and accessible to all social strata, just graduating came many times with some sense of entitlement.
Some years later and I’m the one assisting students during office hours. I could already sense some generational change, with younger professors and assistants treating students more like equals. They were exceptions of course, we had younger assistants cargo culting the worst attitude parts of old timers (fun enough they were usually from kind of privileged background, families with ties to the field or even de same department). The result was students from other groups kind-of/secretly attending my office hours and the ones from other nice colleagues.
Academia is its own kind of hell :-)