"Only the Paranoid Survive" is rather a quote and book title by Andrew S. Grove.

As you can read at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Errno.h errno is barely used by the C standard (though defined there). It is rather POSIX that uses errno very encompassingly. For example the WinAPI functions use a much more sensible way to report errors (and don't make use of errno).

I think you deeply underestimate how deep your thinking can be convoluted with your native language that you grew up with:

I very often have discussions with native speakers of other languages about how I can translate some specific German phrases/thoughts into their mother tongue. They often have to admit that their native language simply has no "pattern" for this, or that the phrase is based on cultural assumptions that do hold in Germany, but not in the country where the language that I want to translate my phrase to is commonly spoken.

> Here's the frequency of the " - " pattern in tweets by "josefprusa"

What do you want to tell with this?

Because the USA and Israel attacked Iran.

Rather: Josef Průša is not a native English speaker (his mother tongue is Czech).

I observe this for myself: a lot of my original thoughts are hard to translate into English because they are deeply intertwined with how the German language is built.

From my observation in particular native German speakers are prone to this phenomenon (that their original thoughts are quite intertwined with how their native language works). I had this discussion with educated English, Turkish and Russian native speakers, but they honestly told me that for them this relationship between their mother tongue and their original thoughts is not similarly marked.

I think the problem is a little bit more subtle:

To finance a lot of innovations, better also some intermediate step towards the far goal should already be very useful, otherwise the company that builds it will go bankrupt.

If this is not the case, it's typically not commercially viable, some product category is typically basic research (which is very important, but it typically means that the commercial potential will only come up in some future).

There do exist problems where a quantum computer gives an extreme advantage in the sense that we have no idea how a fast classical algorithm could look like. So, the only viable approaches for these problems are:

1. work on a huge algorithmic breakthrough (to be able to solve these problems fast on a classical computer)

2. build a quantum computer

What are these problems?

They are basically all special cases of the abelian hidden subgroup problem:

> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hidden_subgroup_p...

In particular cf. the table at the end of this Wikipedia article:

> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hidden_subgroup_p...

If you do have such a problem to solve, 1 and 2 are the only viable approaches.

So, there do exist goals and applications for which a quantum computer is insanely useful (assuming no huge algorithmic breakthrough happens).

The questions are thus:

- Is the abelian hidden subgroup problem sufficient for being able to carry a whole potential industry?

- (To come back to my introduction) What use does a quantum computer that is only capable of solving very small instances of this problem have for the user?

Using the German translation "Softwareingenieur" of "software engineer" on your LinkedIn page might easily get you into trouble.

Typically, as far as I know, law enforcement agencies only get active in the punishable act "Missbrauch von Titeln, Berufsbezeichnungen und Abzeichen" [abuse of titles, occupational titles and emblems] if the culprit gets denounced by someone or if there is a public interest, but everybody knows how easy it is to make enemies in your job or on the internet.

The reason why I avoided this term is that in Germany, there exists a quite strict of whatx an engineer (Ingenieur) is, which is defined in the laws of many federal states (Ingenieurgesetz [engineering law]). "Ingenieur" (engineer) is a protected professional title:

> https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ingenieur&oldid=2... (*)

Falsely claiming that you are an Ingenieur when you aren't (by the definition in the Ingenieurgesetz) is a punishable crime in Germany:

> https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Missbrauch_von_Ti...

There exist some boundary cases under which as a software developer you can call yourself an "Ingenieur", but you have to be insanely careful about whether you actually satisfy the legal criteria (see (*)) - in most cases you don't and you are thus a criminal if you do.

This tests for very different skills than being an exceptional programmer.

I know that a lot of people who are into privacy topics would immediately willing to buy a round to celebrate when a politician who voted for these laws dies.

The hate among privacy-minded people for these laws, the politicans who voted for them and the judges who judged in the name of these laws is insane.

Because you made yourself dependent on these smartphone-only services beforehand. Don't do that.

In some countries people are willing to fight much harder against being coerced to have to use a smartphone. The message should thus rather be: follow their example.

I wouldn't say so: when I go to the bank, I often combine it with grocery shopping, which I have to do anyway. So doing banking the old way is hardly an inconvenience.

I (also German) have the impression that people who work in the IT sector are often much more critical of surveillance methods (including smartphones) than the average citizen.

Very true. But it is a huge first step.

I really have the impression that using a smartphone makes a lot people much more dumb with respect to seeing obvious solutions for their problems.

I know someone who worked in fraud detection of financial transactions. He told me that indeed lots of filters that are applied mostly test for anomalies. The thing is that most criminals are not insanely smart, and commonly don't have a lot of inside knowledge about accounting, banking, finance system etc., so criminals often have a bad intuition about more subtle things that are looked at for fraud detection.

But if you are a very dedicated criminal with lots of inside knowledge about, say, accounting, banking, finance system, ..., you could likely outsmart these filters. But these people typically have much better career options (even if they want a career as a "big fish criminal": just look at the history of accounting scandals, stock manipulations, Ponzi schemes, ...).

So, here an archive.org link:

> https://web.archive.org/web/20260515135354/https://kingy.ai/...

I am not so sure about this. Many universities in Europe are still really good (even if they market their research achievements much less aggressively than US-American universities). The problem that exists in many European countries is that companies or startups have difficulties commercializing these research achievements.

> I can install WhatsApp in a few tens of seconds.

But do you now have an insanely deep knowledge of WhatsApp (i.e. what serious "learning" means)?