Data processing in space can be useful, albeit not in the way that Musk seems to sell it. I spoke with some people from a space startup (edgx) at a jobfair in Belgium half a year ago.

Their thing was that they did some data processing in space to cut down on bandwidth (so this is specifically for applications where satellites are a necessary component). I also remember specifically asking them about cosmic rays and they told me it’s definitely manageable because their computers fly in LEO. (They already have a computer in space)

Personally when I install some software I generally look at popularity (like stars if the code is hosted on Github), whether an audit has recently happened, it is recommended by someone I trust, and whether the permissions it needs are reasonable (I’m on Silverblue so I only install Flatpaks)

When I used to use Arch I also looked at the pkgbuild beforehand since they’re generally fairly small en very human readable. I also looked at popularity there and whether the developer maintained an Arch package. But that obviously doesn’t say anything about the code itself.

I definitely don’t consider myself non-techy since I’m doing an an engineering masters with a CS track but those things shouldn’t require any programming knowledge.

But I think most of the more common users don’t really care and install the packages they need without thinking too much about it. Unless the source seems very untrustworthy.

Edit: you can never truly be certain that a project’s code is safe. You can only have soft guarantees. Albeit some like formal verification are harder than others like project popularity.

Yeah the strangeness I do have with German as a native Dutch speaker. But that’d made sense since I’d obviously know when a word isn’t Dutch, like you’re alluding to.

Though I’m assuming it’s not to the same extent you have with Spanish and Portuguese, since that description fits more with what I have with Afrikaans.

But I only learned some basic German in high school for an hour per week so I definitely don’t have the same experience with it that you probaby do. Neither do I have any push to use or learn it, compared to French where there was.

Still really cool to hear the perspective from someone like you!

Damn that’s cool!

The more you know! German as a Dutch speaker has always been a bit of a special language (I’m assuming the other way around as well).Like some words are similar (like gevonden/gefunden). Which makes sense, but then some German composite words sound funny. Because we do understand what a bahn (baan) and hof (also hof) mean. But we call a bahnhof a station.

False friends usually aren’t homonyms since the word comes from different languages.

To give an example: an English speaker might look at “rare auto” (Dutch) and might translate it to “rare car”. But “rare” means “weird” in Dutch. So rare is a false friend in this case

Edit: an example of a false friend that is a homonym is “horloge” in French and Dutch. They are pronounced and written the same, but it means “clock” in French but “(wrist)watch” in Dutch

Edit 2: just a writing mistake :)