Re: good post on LinkedIn

An often repeated myth, entirely untrue.

Adults can learn a new language in much less time than a child, provided they are motivated and immersed. Those are the keys, motivation and immersion.

Jeroen Belleman

A true ripple counter is as fast as its first flop.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

Jeroen Belleman wrote: |----------------------------------------------------------------------------| |"On 1/30/26 21:00, Nioclás Pól Caileán de Ghloucester wrote: | |> Bill Sloman snipped-for-privacy@ieee.org wrote: | |> |------------------------------------------------------------------------|| |> |"Languages aren't learned any faster if you learn them young" || |> |------------------------------------------------------------------------|| |>" | |----------------------------------------------------------------------------|

N.B. Bill Sloman misused "learned" instead of "learnt". N.B. he misused "it's" instead of "its" (in "Russia has spent the last four years inching it's way into the Ukraine from the borders with Russia,and it has made some progress, but it has been very slow and very expensive" in Message-ID: <10ldbf7$jvt3$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me ).

|----------------------------------------------------------------------------| |"> It is much easier for a child to learn a language than it is for an | |> old person. | | | |An often repeated myth, entirely untrue." | |----------------------------------------------------------------------------|

Sorry.

This is not an entirely untrue myth. I simultaneously used to study many more languages as a child than as an adult.

|----------------------------------------------------------------------------| |"Adults can learn a new language in much less time than a | |child, provided they are motivated and immersed. Those are | |the keys, motivation and immersion." | |----------------------------------------------------------------------------|

Motivations and immersion are not sufficient. I used to be an immersed adult with much more meaningful motivations to learn languages as an adult than I used to have as a child. Children do not want to learn languages but they do learn them. (S.

Adults rarely acquire a new accent at native level.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

My understanding was that it wanted to map your connections to others (that they likely expected to also "participate")

I don't see the value of that -- except to know that someone *I* know happens to know someone that knows *you*. "You" likely would never come up in a conversation unless I was asking that "someone" if he could RECOMMEND (more than just KNOW) someone with a particular skillset.

Again, why can't this be done without them as a third-party? I regularly exchange information with colleagues on a variety of subjects (many non-technical).

What you ask -- and what you say/tell -- leaks information that you might not want (or can't allow to be) shared. I have always been extremely careful to phrase "public" questions and anecdotes in ways that hides information while revealing only what is necessary. Because, of course, I never know if a client (or LAWYER for a client) is reading my comments...

What cost failing to do so? Stop logging in. Discard any email addresses associated with it. Anything you've posted is stuck in the aether but so is USENET, etc.

A technology may be "well known". But, knowing that a product uses it can be important. Reverse engineering other folks' products gives insights into how THEY approached the problem and may shed light on why it (mis)behaves as it does. These things having value if you are undertaking a similar adventure.

Atari (?) had a video (arcade) game in the 80's that was admirable for drawing great curves (vector graphic display monitor). To the point that it used them EVERYWHERE (imagine a '1' in a score NOT appearing as a straight line segment). Looking under the hood you realized that it could ONLY draw curves -- hence the reason all of the digits and letters had funky shapes!

So, beyond the folks you *know*, the value of such disclosure is sharing with other "unknowns".

If you actually understand electronics, you are in demand.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

Discussing the value of group membership or participation in LinkIn

Usenet groups has also changed over the years.

Discussing the shortcomings of either the FaceBook or LinkedIn organization, coded functions or performance on those sites is a quick way of being 'dismembered' from a specific group, without notice or justification, by robotic admins.

RL

In case this post is too long: I do not recommend any of you to bother to create an account on LinkedIn. The USENET is much better, but I interact on LinkedIn with important non-engineers who insist on using LinkedIn. One of the most important thereof even almost does not use emails!

Don Y wrote on Fri, 30 Jan 2026 12:36:44 - |--------------------------------------------------------------------| |"On 1/29/2026 7:26 AM, Nioclás Pól Caileán de Ghloucester wrote: | |> LinkedIn is legally obligated to provide copies of comments, but | |> LinkedIn acts illegally. If you want to back up comments which you| |> uploaded to LinkedIn, then now might be the time to back them up. | | | |Why not just scrape the site" | |--------------------------------------------------------------------|

How?

"User Agreement Effective on November 3, 2025 [. . .]

|--------------------------------------------------| |" -- instead | |of trying to encapsulate it in a single document."| |--------------------------------------------------|

I saved hundreds of comments from years into a single document because LinkedIn does not even pretnd to offer a less laborious way of backing them up. I do not want this lame method. LinkedIn forces me.

Don Y wrote on Fri, 30 Jan 2026 12:36:44 - |---------------------------------------------------------------------------| |"> Microsoft Edge took circa 12 minutes to produce this PDF file. | | | |None of hose metrics mean anything. It takes me an hour to get to the post| |office (on foot!)." | |---------------------------------------------------------------------------|

Don Y wrote on Fri, 30 Jan 2026 17:56:54 - |------------------------------------------------------------| |"Another way to waste resources (in this case, your time!)."| |------------------------------------------------------------|

Sorry, Don Y contradicts himself at 12:36:44 and 17:56:54. Time is measured as a value more than no second. These metrics are meaningful.

It took me many tens of minutes to use a webbrowser to download circa

Instead, it took me circa 18 MINUTES to use a USENET client to download 289 articles from alt.comp.periphs.cdr.mac

I.e. LinkedIn is slow and the USENET is fast.

N.B. that USENET client was invoked as a background process via setsid & so I myself could concurrently do something interesting and useful, whereas to archive from LinkedIn I used a tedious webbrowser with a PgDn key in a manner less pleasurable than watching paint dry, while hoping that Microsoft Egde would not again emit: "!

This page is having a problem

Try coming back to it later.

You could also:

• Open a new tab

• Refresh this page"

These circa 352 LinkedIn comments take up circa 86 MEGAbytes or 238 MEGAbytes.

Instead these 289 alt.comp.periphs.cdr.mac articles take up 772 KILObytes.

I.e. LinkedIn is excessively inefficient. As Don Y is lucky enough to not use LinkedIn, he does not know that all LinkedIn comments are small because LinkedIn imposes an excessive limitation.

Don Y wrote on Fri, 30 Jan 2026 12:36:44 - |------------------------------------------------------------| |"I can't comment on LinkedIn as no one that I know uses it. | |My understanding (?) is that it is a networking site -- a | |way to "get jobs". | | | |Most of my colleagues have more than enough work without | |any sort of "advertising" or "job mining". Makes you wonder| |what the folks using it are lacking... (REAL contacts??)" | |------------------------------------------------------------|

Don Y wrote on Fri, 30 Jan 2026 17:56:54 - |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |"On 1/30/2026 7:24 AM, legg wrote: | |[. . .] | | | |[...] LinkedIn. AFAICT, it just lets folks advertise other people | |that they know/endorse. The practical effect of that is referrals| |(which is another way of saying "get jobs")." | |-------------------------------------------------------------------|

Don Y sent these paragraphs to the UseNET as a NETWORKING exercise, whether or not he has "more than enough work".

LinkedIn is a networking website.

LinkedIn is MARKETED as "a way to "get jobs"" which is VERY DIFFERENT FROM ACTUALLY BEING "a way to "get jobs"".

I repost many job advertisements on LinkedIn. (This is a signifcant reason for a person (and apparently persons) following me on LinkedIn, even though said person owns his own (probably profitable) company and probably does not need such a job and probably shall not apply for such a job and if he does, then he really does not need LinkedIn for it anyway.) I warn in many of these reposts that this employer is evil.

One student was interested in one of these jobs but it is an unpaid internship in a continent which he would have to move to in an extortionately expensive neighborhood, so I warned him and I gave him a tip on a way to find an apartment if he really would go thru with it.

Precisely no LinkedIn post and no LinkedIn comment by me is a job application. I use LinkedIn to communicate with real contacts, like the USENET, except that one USENET article by me is an application for a job.

No one who ever follows me on LinkedIn or who connected with me on LinkedIn or who invited me to connect with him or her on LinkedIn ever applies to me for a job.

Indeed, overworked professionals invited me to connect with them on LinkedIn in 2025. I offered to contract them. One replied declining explaining that he is not competent for this would-be contract, so he contacted a colleague for me. I did not get a response from a different one, but he is busy with even more significant projects. ("Newsweek" began publishing an article by him during January 2026. He also publishes articles in major international newspapers. He is not "lacking... (REAL contacts"! I did not receive a response from him to contract him, but he did thank me for detecting that LinkedIn suppressed an exposé by him.

I already had "more than enough work" when I created an account on LinkedIn. I had not a job which actually pays money when I created an account on LinkedIn - and LinkedIn alas did not change this. Cf.

LinkedIn is not just to "advertise other people that they know/endorse." LinkedIn also lets discussions, but LinkedIn does not do so well.

Legg wrote on Fri, 30 Jan 2026 15:24:48 - #---------------------------------------------------------------# #"[. . .] # #It has groups, similar to Facebook, [. . .] # #[. . .] # # # #20yrs ago it was pretty useful. [. . .] # #[. . .] # # # #Tapping into 20 year old threads (where all the good references# #and articles were being discussed)in such a group is well-night# #impossible." # #---------------------------------------------------------------#

True. Accessing such old USENET threads is easy. Scrolling thru a few years of LinkedIn comments results in Microsoft Edge screwing up with:

"!

This page is having a problem

Try coming back to it later.

You could also:

• Open a new tab

• Refresh this page"

Legg wrote on Fri, 30 Jan 2026 15:24:48 - #-----------------------------------------------------------------# #"Like Facebook, it is heavily dependent on your machines' RAM and# #is unfriendly to non-google, non-chrome browsers. This may be # #why Edge is having issues: it would serve MS right. # # # #RL" # #-----------------------------------------------------------------#

LinkedIn is limited whatever way one accesses it. This is not specific to Microsoft Edge. Microsoft owns LinkedIn.

Legg posted via X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 4.2/32.1118 which is not a "google," "chrome browser".

Don Y wrote on Fri, 30 Jan 2026 17:56:54 - |-----------------------------------------------------------------| |"On 1/30/2026 7:24 AM, legg wrote: | |[. . .] | |> Networking is just keeping track of co-workers and professional| |> acquaintances - but there's no real controls on spam. | | | |And, you need a third-party "site" to do that?" | |-----------------------------------------------------------------|

Yes, because they insist on using LinkedIn.

Don Y wrote on Fri, 30 Jan 2026 17:56:54 - |------------------------------------------------------------| |"If I'm contacted about a potential job, I think about the | |people that I know who might be appropriate (because anyone | |that I refer for a position is a reflection on me!). | |Who (if anyone) I contact is based on my knowledge of where | |their interests lie and what they might be doing, presently.| | | |I know those things because of communications with them | | directly -- not by "reading about them" on a site." | |------------------------------------------------------------|

Good. Exactly as the aforementioned person who contacted a colleague for me for a project which I propose.

Don Y wrote on Fri, 30 Jan 2026 18:05:31 - |-----------------------------------------------------------| |"Similarly, if I am contacted about a particular employer, | |client or potential employee, I can give a candid appraisal| |without fear of reprisals or running afoul of legalities." | |-----------------------------------------------------------|

Good unlike LinkedIn. LinkedIn offers a thumb-up icon without a thumb-down icon. LinkedIn wants you to say that a person is good. LinkedIn does not want you to say that a person is bad.

Legg wrote on Fri, 30 Jan 2026 20:22:45 - #-----------------------------------------------------------# #"It used to be a discussion of work-related issues and news# #between people you knew, or were introduced to on-site. # #Jobs or contracts seldom came up, as I recall. Participants# #were just too disparate in specialized fields. # # # #[. . .] # # # #Supplying references to articles and publications was the # #primary benefit, as well as keeping in touch." # #-----------------------------------------------------------#

Yes. (S.

The editors have to find the referees. The IEEE does publish a lot of peer-reviewed scientific journal - some of them quite good - but the quality of a publication depends on the quality of the papers submitted to it for publication. A good editor can fish for papers from promising potential contributors, but if the community of researcher's being served isn't up to much, the journal serving them won't be either.

My wife could be quite eloquent on the topic.

Only because a child doesn't have anything else to. The downside of learning your first language as a child is that you have to work out what language is.

Noam Chomsky thinks that evolution has provided every human with a built-in language learning mechanism, but people with a better idea of of how evolution works are aware that it would have to have been built on some pre-existing processing mechanisms, and nobody has any useful ideas about what that might have been. Music processing has had some attention, but hasn't offered any useful insights that I've heard of.

People differ a lot in their capacity to learn second languages. Dutch is pretty much identical to German, and if you are fluent in one most people can get to be fluent in the other in six months. English isn't wildly different from either, but the benchmark there is eighteen months (as I did at 50 years of age - I did have minimal German then). Basque is about a different from any other European language as you can get, but apparently most people can learn even that just as fast.

The comment is

Sloman A.W. “Comment on ‘Modular digital box-car for applications in pulsed laser spectroscopy” Review of Scientific Instruments, 67 3763-4 (1996)

If you go to the comment you will get a reference to the paper I was commenting on. I was once told that my comment was more interesting than paper I was commenting, which wasn't much of a compliment.

It's not a misuse, merely a regional variant.

N.B. he

I didn't actually misuse "it's" - I just made a typo. I actually re-read the text I post here to catch that sort of typo, but I read too fast to be a particularly good proof-reader. I edit the local quarterly IEEE new-letter, but there a Greek national on the local IEEE committee who does a much better job as a proof-reader than I can manage

Many Dutch kids learn French, German and English from an early age. Lots of Belgians are raised as French/Dutch bilinguals.

They don't want to learn any language as such, but they do want to communicate with their playmates. One of my wife's (American) colleagues spent six months in Britainy, and and his kids learned Breton.

Since the "Intelligence Quotient" is a remarkably ill-defined measure, nobody sensible would bother to quibble

Accountants have to explain what they are doing to other accountants, and Excel won't let you do anything that is hard to explain. I could have done the job much faster in Fortran - in which I got fluent around

I know Steven Pinker - my wife worked with him. He is good at a sweeping generalisations.

There are adults who can acquire a new accent at a native level. A lot of them become phoneticians.

My wife learned German as an adult and acquired a pretty much perfect Bavarian accent in her early twenties. When she learned fluent Dutch at around age 50 it wrecked her German accent and Germans started picking her as a Dutch speaker who had pretty much perfect German, which didn't make her happy. She'd studied German and psychology as an undergraduete, but did her Ph.D. in psycholinguisitics.

Rubbish. The state of the outputs of a multistage ripple counter isn't useful until the increment has rippled through every stage.

I once set up a system that prevented the system from latching the outputs until a 4usec retriggerable monostable triggered by an incoming count had timed out. It was useful in the application, but I didn't like it.

The same issues apply to any such "exchange".

Yes. In the 90's, there was much technical discussion on USENET. It has long since taken on the role of a "watering hole" (pub).

One of the downsides of "moderation". Perhaps a reason USENET survives despite the dearth of content?

This circles back to my comment of maintaining your own, *personal* set of contacts without reliance on a "third party" institution. The limiting factor, there, is how long people maintain an interest in the technology (many retired friends are still actively engaged in discussion, though no longer "practitioners". Others have not remained "current" and fade away realizing they no longer understand the issues to be able to contribute. And, still others are pushing up daisies. <frown>

Then, what you have already done violates their AUP.

Your USE of linkedin coerces you. That is your choice.

Do you imagine spending an hour walking to the post office to be of no value?

Assume there is a need/desire to go there. So, the method of transit is where value can be lost or gained.

I can drive and do the trip in 20 minutes -- assuming I am not impeded by any accidents or "road work" along the way.

I can walk and do it in 60 minutes. The first 20 of those would have been required had I driven. So, I've "wasted" 40 minutes for the "same result".

Yet, in the walking case, I've exercised for 60 minutes at a "cost" of only *40* minutes. The "wasteful" option is, in fact, the more efficient (given the need for daily exercise). Walking around the neighborhood or on a treadmill for 60 minutes will result in an expenditure of 80 minutes (20 + 60) to accomplish the same two tasks...

And, the content you are scraping is different in each case. How does 1 minute of USENET compare (content wise) to 1 minute of LinkedIn?

Apples/Oranges.

That is a consequence of age/experience/workmanship.

Without dragging out the old saws about "youngsters", most employers/clients want to KNOW they are going to get a job done, not just "started". I've been asked to cleanup/finish far too many jobs, over the years. There always seems to be some old client or friend-of-a-client trying to coax you into "a little job" -- despite past experience teaching you that "little jobs" are a year or more on the calendar! <frown>

I see my colleagues falling into three camps:

- reliant on work as an income source (usually folks who still feel some financial obligation to their offspring OR who have developed expensive hobbies, late in life and need the occasional "job" to finance those)

- unconstrained financially (able to pursue their own goals without the need to cow-tow to a client/employer to remain "highly immersed" without being subjected to IMPOSED time/money pressures or having someone ELSE decide what should tickle their imagination)

- fully retired (some having a minor interest in keeping track of technology but not as an immersive experience; reclaiming THEIR time as their own)

Most often, this being a progression that comes with time (age?) and level of "satisfaction" with past accomplishments.

I find the third stage a bit scary to consider, wondering how all that "other" time will be consumed. But, see many folks transition to it without too much complaint!

Which those of us who were initially self-taught obviously had.

If you have a supportive circle of friends, they will realise you are in danger of becoming bored and will find lots of little jobs to keep you busy. Never retire, you won't have a moment to yourself.