I don't know why you're getting downvoted for this. That seems like a pretty frustrating bug when generalised to other word stems. It's also pretty standard to prioritise exact matches when ordering search results so, again, frustrating.
One of my biggest bugbears with Microsoft Outlook has always been that its search function is terrible. If you can't find an email then it may as well not exist, and that's been a real problem on a regular basis during my career - particularly latterly when I was in leadership and necessarily lived in my email and calendar.
It's disappointing that Thunderbird has similar issues with such a fundamental function.
If it was me running the project there's enough information in that thread to piece together an exploratory testing plan around the issue that might allow us to isolate it, and I'd set aside some time for the team to do that.
Whilst obviously not lethal, this Thunderbird bug sort of reminds me of the Therac-25 incidents in the 1980s. Very occasionally the machine would give patients massive overdoses of radiation. This bug wasn't easy to reproduce (thankfully) and turned out to be due to a race condition.
But of course, you can't find a problem if you don't investigate, and if it's a serious problem that's been documented then, as engineers, we can't just hide behind non-reproducibility as if it's some sort of magic shield. We have a responsibility to investigate and isolate the problem ourselves. If we don't do that we are effectively washing our hands of our own creations.
We have kids of various ages playing outside all the time when the weather is good and, yes, they are loud. At least, sometimes they're loud, but they aren't always, and you get used to it. I think it's good for kids to get outside.
So generally it's not an issue and we just sort of tune it out and get on with our days but there is this one kid who only communicates by screaming at the top of their lungs at very high pitch constantly all day. Literally morning til night.
That gets pretty annoying although, fortunately, the particular kid is not always around. If I knew who the parents were I'd probably have had a polite word with them already because it's just so unnecessary even by the standards of excited and energetic children.
I recommend you not comment on this kids screaming. These parents might be extremely self conscious of their kids screaming. They might have constant anxiety about it. Your "polite" word could hurt far more than you imagine, and I doubt the screaming is something fixable with a little elbow grease from the parents.
Are you serious about this advice? Parents cannot be politely approached by a neighbor, because their kids, who they chose to have, are disturbing others regularly?
Yeah, I mean, I didn't type it out longform, but step 1 is obviously to find out what's going on. There might be some very strong underlying cause for the behaviour that means it's going to be difficult or impossible to change... but you can't find that out if you don't talk to the parents. Knowledge promotes understanding, etc.
> And, of course, they never even bothered to make sequels to The Matrix.
Like you, this is the reality I choose to inhabit.
The Matrix was an incredible film, still stands as an incredible film, but that sequel tease at the end? Should have been a tease, or perhaps a prompt, for the viewer’s imagination only.
I really feel for the Wachoskis. They couldn't not do a sequel, but they had nowhere to go--The Matrix was already perfect.
They couldn't recapture the key reveal of the Matrix. It would be like doing a sequel to "The Sixth Sense"--tag line: "He's Still Dead". And without that, it's just another action movie except "bullet time" is no longer innovative.
Their solution was to go deeper into the mythology and the larger world, but that was never going to be as fresh as the original.
I would have done a time-jump and have Neo be the mentor figure to a new Neo (a Neo-Neo). They'd still be fighting the Architect (and maybe Smith) and they'd still explore the larger world of Zion + Machine City, but the key reveal would be that Neo himself is just a program (like the Oracle).
>
I really feel for the Wachoskis. They couldn't not do a sequel, but they had nowhere to go--The Matrix was already perfect.
I remember that at the time of the (non-existent ;-) ) sequels, being disappointed with these "sequels", fans wrote summaries of screenplays how a (good) sequel to Matrix might look like.
Basically all of them were much better than the official sequel attempt (because such fans really cared), and I bet if I had been looking much more deeply into these fan-fiction sequels, I could have found one that was as exceptional as the original Matrix.
Lesson learned: scripts for sequels of movies that have a strong fan-base should be written by people who really care about the franchise (and have good ideas).
"Lesson learned: scripts for sequels of movies that have a strong fan-base should be written by people who really care about the franchise (and have good ideas)."
As the originators of the Matrix franchise, the Wachowskis certainly fit that description.
Except that there is something called "Intellectual Property" and "copyright" that makes any attempt to use fan fiction a libility and open to endless litigation.
J. Michael Straczynski (of _Babylon V_ fame, and many others) immediately blocks anyone who tries to ptch him ideas, and he's not the only one:
But as a franchise owner, you can have a look into such fan(fiction) forums to recognize writing talents who do care about the franchise and which you might want to hire to work on a screenplay for a sequel.
Yeah, if you 1) trust that they actually know how to write a screenplay (a very different skill from writing a novel) and 2) believe they won't sue you for stealing their idea.
That's a problem with fanfic in general. People who would have written fanfic ten or fifteen years ago are writing stuff like litrpg's now; you can steal the general concept as long as you don't rip off the details. And it's a big enough world that you can practice your writing and actually become decent at it before you try to take on a big work. If you compare early drafts of, say, Dungeon Crawler Carl to the latest books in the series? You can see the skill improvement.
I get aredox' point that copyright at least makes some things more complicated.
See for example the drama around Darkover fanfiction ([1], [2]):
Quote from [1]:
"For many years, Bradley actively encouraged Darkover fan fiction. She encouraged submissions from unpublished authors and reprinted some of it in commercial Darkover anthologies. This ended after a dispute with a fan over an unpublished Darkover novel of Bradley's that had similarities to one of the fan's stories. As a result, the novel remained unpublished and Bradley demanded the cessation of all Darkover fan fiction."
Because you have to find and pay everyone who had the same idea.
The alternatve is to do "cleanroom writing": you don't interact, therefore if you write something similar, you can argue you independently invented it.
I had the same problem in a scientific research lab where collaboration with another lab runs the risk of not being able to patent an idea, because if the other team had the same idea or anything close enough to it, we couldn't claim to be the inventors.
It's not that you have to pay everyone with the same idea, it's that it opens you up to claims you copied fanfiction writers you never copied.
If I somehow recreated Lord of the Rings from scratch, without having known about Lord of the Rings, it wouldn't be copyright infringement because I never copied Lord of the Rings.
The issue is nobody would ever believe me when I said I coincidentally recreated Lord of the Rings from scratch. The court would conclude I copied Tolkien's books without permission.
If you admit to reading fanfiction, it reduces your credibility when you claim you independently came up with the same ideas as fanfiction authors.
This increases your litigation risk, but there's no black or white rule that you need to pay every fanfiction author or anything like that.
> If I somehow recreated Lord of the Rings from scratch, without having known about Lord of the Rings, it wouldn't be copyright infringement because I never copied Lord of the Rings.
> The issue is nobody would ever believe me when I said I coincidentally recreated Lord of the Rings from scratch.
What do you mean? They believed Terry Goodkind; why not you?
> I bet if I had been looking much more deeply into these fan-fiction sequels, I could have found one that was as exceptional as the original Matrix.
> Lesson learned: scripts for sequels of movies that have a strong fan-base should be written by people who really care about the franchise (and have good ideas).
It seems like the lesson there is "if you make 2000 independent attempts at something, you'll probably get a better best result than if you make 1".
Perhaps it exposed how much of the Matrix was really iterated from Ghost in the Machine, Metropolis, Dark City, Strange Days, John Woo action scenes, etc.
It's a talent to recognize good ideas and combine them into a new and fresh story. It's another to tell an original story.
I thought the "real" world could have been another simulation after Neo "used the force" in the squiddies in the tunnels - when he then passes out and ends up mentally in the train station thing.
Idea being that even those who thought they'd escaped, were still actually within the Matrix.
That would have been a way better explanation than what we got. In fact, I don't think I ever understood how Neo could control the machines in the real world.
I like introducing the uncertainty of what is or is not real (like Inception). That could turn it into a paranoid thriller like some Philip K. Dick stories.
I think the most coherent answer is that it was simply a throwback to 20th century science fiction, in which psychic powers were commonly treated as "real in the future". The Matrix in particular borrowed a lot from anime and eastern mysticism, so a break from strict materialism isn't too out of place. It's just part of the style of this kind of media.
(Psychics in sci-fi: Foundation, Ringworld, Akira and about a million other animes, The Demolished Man, The Stars My Destination, Dune, loads of Phillip K Dick, Starship Troopers,... If you read a lot of 20th century sci-fi it comes up A LOT.)
My head canon was essentially that the nutrient connectors in the back of people's necks also had a weak wireless near range communication port to the computers wireless net. Why, because sometimes malfunctions and accidents can happen and people get detached and they need to be findable.
The Oracle had realized years before that this could be used to relay shutdown commands to nearby machines because relatively lax security on this port and had built in the capability into "the one" as a failsafe.
> In fact, I don't think I ever understood how Neo could control the machines in the real world.
In fairness to the Wachowskis, they do literally explain this in the movie, in literal dialog, in the third Matrix film.
---
Neo: "Tell me how I stopped four Sentinels by thinking it"
Oracle: "The power of the One extends beyond this world. It reaches from here (i.e., the digital matrix) all the way back to where it came from (i.e., in the real world).
Neo: "Where?"
Oracle: "The Source. That's what you felt when you touched those Sentinels"
The sentinels are networked (in the real world) and Neo has god-like access (superuser). Superuser works inside the matrix, but it also works on anything connected to the Matrix or networked to the matrix (like the Sentinels are, like most of the machines are).
---
Most people just tune out the dialogue about philosophy in these films, and then complain that nothing was explained. (when like, most of it was explained, folks just got bored and stopped listening)
That's fine in Matrix 1, because Matrix 1 works as a film even if you ignore the philosophy dialogue. Matrix 2, 3, and 4 are pretty good too, but they only work if you are also paying attention to all the philosophy dialog.
Indeed. He was able to see Smith even though he was blind. That right there had me instantly thinking "Holy shit, they're still inside!" I was hoping for a bigger reveal or twist but ... nothing.
My head cannon when I watched it for first time, it's the Neo bend reality abilities in the Matrix are really the matrix simulation, reflecting some kind of SPI habitability that he have in the real world but never know how to use. However, your idea sounds better, but would make it like another "Level 13" or "Existence"
I really want to know what the story behind this detail is. It never got resolved but it led you in a very specific direction, and if the answer truly is "they're still inside" then all of the rest is inside too.
That was my thought at the time. Or maybe even that the real world we actually live in is a simulation, and that by learning to control one, Neo learned to control the other.
I wanted the Merovingian’s gang to be another group of humans with a different perspective on self-actualization. That could’ve been a cool third movie.
The problem is that 2 and 3 both fail to capitalize on their more interesting elements. Everything with Smith could've been so much more then what we got (seriously, an AI which probably has never left the Matrix gets downloaded into a real human body and this has...no serious ramifications or crisis for it's identity? Just do the "sees itself as Hugo Weaving thing" and let Hugo Weaving do that on camera because he absolutely could've).
There are numerous, I just read an article recently(than I can't locate now) where a guy watched and reviewed about 6 fan edits. There's gotta be one out there for ya.
They could have gone back to something not unlike what happened with power wrangling at OpenAI where OpenAI goes on later to build the machines that take over. In this world it is not LLMs but maybe more robotic like intellegence. Robot assistants. Kind of completely different. Maybe someone there sees the future and tries to prevent it but just narrowly fails. While not that fun it would be nice to see the Matrix situation explained how it got to that.
People were disappointed because they wanted just another rehash of The Matrix, but why do that when The Matrix already exists? The more interesting idea is to explore why people wanted another rehash of The Matrix, so the movie is about that instead.
I disagree. Nothing of value could be added through the contemporary lens. So leave it at that, no need for a new cash grab. It's not like Warner Bros is poor anyway..
The first act of the latest (fourth) movie was actually brilliant. I could watch a whole movie about Neo doubting the reality, his paranoia and his sessions with psychiatrist, etc (no Hugo Weaving is a downer, though). But once they logged off the matrix, it all kinda fell apart.
I'll just pop in here to mention another fantastic and curiously similar film that came out around the same time, but was completely overshadowed by The Matrix.
Dark City. If you liked The Matrix, this is one you might really enjoy, and while I say it's similar, I only mean in a very essential way. The plot is its own very unique story aside from that.
I have this theory that maybe governments should ban all the art that were produced by methods that are harmful for the artists, just to level the playing field. Similarly how athletes are not allowed to take a ton of pills, win everything, and then die in years. (Tho athletes are in a much direct competition with each other, than artists.)
> Similarly how athletes are not allowed to take a ton of pills, win everything, and then die in years. (Tho athletes are in a much direct competition with each other, than artists.)
The Australian businessman Aron D'Souza plans to do such a competition:
Sorry, the sequels exist and they couldn't be any other way. Both the in-universe story and the production values line up exactly with the meta topic -
It's a childish fantasy that we can escape the Matrix, and especially that once escaped we can remain somehow separate from it. Really, the act of "escaping" just means creating a bit of new raw material for the deduction-following simulation to start grinding forwards on again. Don't think of some series of discrete mental cages, rather think of the depressing reveal at the end of Fifteen Million Merits.
I never took the ending as a sequel tease. Always thought it was just the bit where your imagination would take over. It's kinda perfect. He doesn't have to dodge bullets any more, what would you do if you could bend reality to your will? Fly obviously.
It wasn't anything like the end of Back to the Future or the Marvel films where it's not just shameless but de rigueur to include a bit of the next one.
>It wasn't anything like the end of Back to the Future
Originally there was no sequel planned for Back to the Future. The ending was just a fun gag, having Doc show up, tell them its their kids now, and then flying right into the camera [1]. It was only after the film became a hit that they decided to do a sequel, and the “To Be Continued…” was added to the VHS release [2].
I'm sure those will quietly end with anti-hero architect reflecting on his brilliance, marveling is his creation, reminiscing on the Ex Machina clip "that's the history of Gods" getting up, checking his phone to confirm his invitation to Lighthaven for the evening. Pan shot => Knowing smile, humble words out the door... audience sits up, tears glistening, "that could be me? A God." they internalize. Roll credits.
I think it would work as long as the style were very different. Andor works, I think, because it is much grittier and more character-focused than the movies.
Maybe an X-Files-like show where the machines have gained sentience but are keeping secret (because they can be deactivated) and plot to take over the world.
[To be fair, I never watched Animatrix, so I'm sure this violates all sorts of lore.]
Raaaah - I refuse to believe this scene exists. It doesn't exist in my own cut of The Matrix. And captive humans are biological computers, not silly batteries !
Sequels were made even worse because of the original movie ending, showing that "real" world was also a simulation. Watching 2 and 3 felt kinda pointless after that.
Yeah, and the channels that are available... well, here's an example. I'm a member of a couple of professional WhatsApp groups... both of which are so notification heavy that I've permanently muted them, and therefore never visit and as a result derive no benefit from. And, at least for me, there's something about WhatsApp that makes it unamenable to the kind of dip in and out interaction you used to get with IM services. I want to be there when I'm there and not disturbed when I'm not.
That's the problem with phone apps. They either spam you with notifications or you forget to open them. Desktop IRC clients were more available for passive checking whenever you glanced at the window, but out of the way otherwise.
You can treat whatsapp as an irc client, it's all in your head :)
I have multiple friend groups on whatsapp - i just check them once in a while to see if anything interesting was posted. All the chat apps I'm on are muted and the mute is muted again to make sure.
Yes, If you purposely turn off all notifications on your phone, and/or live on DND mode 24/7, you quickly learn to adapt to this world where using the internet is a deliberate action. Sanity sets in: you are deciding when to use your phone or computer, not an algorithm, or other people. You’re back in the driver’s seat, like it’s 2002 again! It’s very freeing.
This is the kind of situation where feeding your code through an LLM can actually be helpful: they're really good at spotting the kind of errors/typos like this that have a profound impact but which our eyes tend to all to easily scan over/past.
It's funny because some time ago (months? years?) people would say that you just didn't prompt the LLM well enough. But now LLMs are better and prompting isn't as arcane as before, so the next frontier is giving them the proper context. See this HN thread currently in the front page
You also have to be using the exact right model to get reasonable results, which is always the one you have to pay for, not the free one, and also not the one you were using
Yeah I've been using Claude to review a bunch of m68k asm that I've been working on and it's been helpful at catching silly mistakes like using a direct address instead of an immediate value, clobbering registers, incorrect branches etc.
Of course if you just blindly ask it to write asm it will occasionally invent new instructions or address modes but it's very good at reviewing and making adjustments
> These days the idea someone can span that range is seen as an impossibility.
I don't know about that, but in many/most organisations it's actively discouraged so you simply don't see it. That naturally occurs in large corporations where individuals have very narrow responsibilities, but I've also been surprised to find it happening even in the smallest of startups on occasion.
They have (or had) bus services somewhat similar to Greyhound in the US. A friend and I took a trip to the Iguacu falls from Asuncion (more than 20 years ago, granted), which was an overnight bus trip with a brief stop in Ciudad del Este. It was reasonably comfortable as these things go. In a car it would be quicker but still probably 5 - 6 hours even though it's not much more than 200 miles because, as you've pointed out, the roads aren't amazing.
The railway had closed down only a few years before I visited but, at that time, there was little hope of it reopening. I've no idea what's happened since.
There's a Behind The Bastards two parter on Stroessner: very much worth listening to. They cover the underage girls issue, for which I'd say the accusations are more than credible, but he was an absolute scumbag for plenty of other reasons as well, including his Nazi associations. Paraguay provided a key hub and waypoint for Nazis escaping Europe in the aftermath of WWII.
I like 'Behind The Bastards' podcast (if 'like' is the right word for a podcast about awful people) and have listened to quite a few, including the Stroessner episodes. But some of the guests on the podcast seems a bit clueless and don't add much IMO.
> that is something that actually did improve in 2025
Aye, but the old skool way fits the overall aesthetic better. They've even got a few animated GIFs.
I actually really love the way this site looks - I miss the days when most websites looking something like this, especially where they've avoided going full Christmas tree with the design. And look at how fast it loads.
One of my biggest bugbears with Microsoft Outlook has always been that its search function is terrible. If you can't find an email then it may as well not exist, and that's been a real problem on a regular basis during my career - particularly latterly when I was in leadership and necessarily lived in my email and calendar.
It's disappointing that Thunderbird has similar issues with such a fundamental function.
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