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There is a mechanism for this, internationally usually named some variant of a Law Commission [0]. The idea is to look for laws that are technically in effect but can rarely or never be applied. For example, the UK Law Commission boasts a repeal of 3000+ acts in its time [1], such as repealing rules for conducting slave trades that were made obsolete in the 1800s but not repealed at the time.

In addition to the sibling comment's mention of the Congressional Review Act for agency oversight, there is a US Office of the Law Revision Counsel [2]. It has an official website [3] which is beautifully old-fashioned, but looks to be purely a resource for accessing the letter of the law and doesn't recount its volume of repeals in the same way.

None of this matters if the insane or counterproductive regulations are deliberate and desirable for the current lawmakers, of course.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_commission [1] https://lawcom.gov.uk/repeals/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_the_Law_Revision_Cou... [3] https://uscode.house.gov/


Divided we stand,

United we fall.


The almost-wrong simplification is that a nonlinear medium changes the wavelength of the light that passes through it.

If you can control the nonlinearity, you can control the wavelength change and so change properties such as the angle of refraction to change where the light goes (like in a rainbow/a prism, where the red light refracts more).


The immediate question is: how much "resistance" is there? That is, how much light will be lost per node, and as a result how long is the longest circuit you can make without boosters?


> can we not expect writers to just keep it brief?

In essentially every situation, you cannot expect readers to read.


I recall from my own visit that the electrical transformers are supposedly original. So, the National Museum of Computing justifies calling its Colossus a rebuild rather than a replica, since it is made with some original parts.


This is excellent. I wonder how deep the roots of pre-20th century computing systems go. Babbage, Lovelace and the Difference engine are well catalogued, and I have seen a Jaccard loom in a museum with my own eyes.

What comes before this that isn't a history of mathematics, aside from the abacus? If this search is broad enough to include the topic of this article and Luca Pacioli's briefly mentioned double-entry ledgers from Italy, then I can imagine systems from all over the world where commerce flowed or administration ruled: similar systems must have existed in China and India, and I have heard of the Quipu system in the Andes that functioned as a digital storage medium for thousands of years.

How many modern components of information systems are reinventions of past ideas, rather than upgrades?


This seems untrue, especially for reddit?

Using the 1/9/90 split [0] for creators/commenters/readers, it seems farfetched to suggest that reddit accounts (which benefits readers making an account to curate subreddit subscriptions) can't follow this pattern where many legitimate human users do not comment often.

[0] "The 1% Rule", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule


Plenty of people don't comment often, but the impetus to sign up for an account is often to comment, which subs then either disallow or delete because they don't want new accounts commenting.


You are right. The grandparent post ironically uses word this in a cheapened, shallow way when they can use it freely in their own writing.

You could argue this is the very sort of activity they were criticising when they posted! We are all vulnerable.


Tell that to the Pierce-Arrow company: makers of the first official cars for the white house, but they didn't survive cash flow problems from the great depression. Meanwhile, Ford survives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierce-Arrow_Motor_Car_Company


You would think, but there are many "sea lochs" along the coast that are salt water inlets (lagoons?), and Loch Long is one of them. I think it's a grey area (and perhaps the West coast of Scotland in general is too).


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