The developer stored floating point values in a text file written out by whatever means, in the developer's locale (say en-US). These files were shipped with the application and the values were read in using locale sensitive functions on a user's machine (the developer was unaware of the locale sensitive nature of these functions), and the user's locale was something different like de-DE for example. This resulted in a different value being read in compared to the value expected by the developer, therefore causing issues in the rest of the program.

For example the file stored "1.05" which in the developer's en-US locale is "one and five hundredths", but reading it on a different user's locale (de-DE) could result in the value being "105" (one hundred and five), or even "1" (one).

These files are generally not considered to be edited by users (unless they are modding the game, and then they do so without warranty etc).

This caused issues in the game as the values would be significantly different than originally designed, and it would be hard to test for since the people testing the game would usually be using a similar locale to the developer writing the game, and therefore they would only become apparent upon release or wider testing. Now the fix was to explicitly specify the locale before reading the data files, but it still took time to find and implement the fix.

In suburbia where the grocer is surrounded by a parking lot and there's busy roads to navigate nearby then of course people would drive rather than walk, and thus also end up getting a week's worth of groceries at a time.

In a dense mixed use environment where it is easy enough to navigate on foot then the urge to drive lessens and all grocery shopping can be done more frequently and on foot or by public transport.

I've experienced this personally in Australia, where living in suburbia I went grocery shopping once a week with a car and brought back many bags worth at a time, and also in a more dense neighbourhood where I could get groceries on the walk back from work more frequently and barely used my car even once a month. In Europe I only ever walk or get public transport for groceries as I live in a dense area and don't need to own a car.

> That's a feature: Where did the string come from if not the user?

Many games and applications store floating point values in text file formats. This has caused bugs in those programs many times over because they didn't realise it was locale dependent and the data parsing broke in another locale.

One is if your work is not creative any more as many people here suggest, does programming qualify as an artistic activity and would you say it qualifies for the tax break?

Two is if an LLM, AI, agent or other machine thing wrote the code for you, since it cannot produce copyrighted work, can you claim that tax break?

My original comment was to signal that if all you do now is write descriptions to feed to agents then you're not a programmer any more but you've become a manager as what you're doing is a management role and not an artistic or engineering one. You've changed jobs and you should be fine with that, just acknowledge it and move on, but stop fooling yourself that you're still a programmer or engineer. You're not, you're a manager now, even if you're not doing most of the things required of a people manager, as in your comment.

This combines with two other dangers, one of unintended recordings when the wake word is triggered unintentionally, and one of intended recordings by third parties based on various other wake/watch words. They already have it in the T&C that they will share this data with law enforcement, so it's not that far fetched that these TVs and other appliances will spy on people in the home far more effectively than even the East German Stasi could have ever imagined.

This sort of malicious compliance of using T&C to enable bad behaviour by corporations needs to be fixed with laws.

Reminds me of cookie banners, the dark pattern where they've decided to be deliberately verbose and annoying in order to get people to take the easy path and agree to let them continue doing their bad behaviour.

There's too many dark patterns and bad behaviour from big corporations these days trying to wear you down and trick you into relinquishing your rights and letting them "get away with murder".