I appreciated learning what's involved, though.

There's been this since 1998, likely earlier:

    std::vector<std::string> split(const std::string& text, char delimiter) {
        std::vector<std::string> parts;
        std::istringstream stream(text);
        std::string part;
        while (std::getline(stream, part, delimiter)) {
            parts.push_back(part);
        }
        return parts;
    }

font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;

My computer has neither Verdana nor Geneva, and my browser's default sans-serif is Noto Sans, which has bars on the upper case "I".

Verdana does, too. It looks like Geneva does not (<http://www.identifont.com/show?1O3>), so you're probably using Geneva.

Maybe Verdana is the default for Windows, Geneva for MacOS, and "other" for Linuxes.

One place where the big i and small L look almost identical, and a pretty funny/annoying place for them to do so, is when you're typing a WiFi password in OSX (if you toggle "Show password"), at least as of MacOS Monterey 12.1. I also see them as almost identical in my browser's URL bar (Firefox 148.0.2 on aforesaid version of OSX) which isn't just an annoyance but might even be a security concern!

I think the serifs would be embellishments at the ends of the bars, not the bars themselves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serif

Yeah I heard it describes a movie where the line to get into the theater went around the block.

edit: ah, but wiki disagrees <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbuster_(entertainment)>

It's a way to manage a fleet of corporate workstations, and some other things that businesses with lots of people on laptops end up needing.

Quite low compared to a power utility's HVDC, but quite high compared to the 5/12/24 V output of most AC/DC converters used for electronics.

Yeah I always heard that the phone lines carried their own power, and in Florida the phones did keep working when the power went out, but I never knew why.

So the grid was always charging up the lead acid batteries, and the phone lines were always draining them? Or was there some kind of power switching going on where when the grid was available the batteries would just get "topped off" occasionally and were only drained when the power went out?

The phone grid predated the electrical grid. There was no other choice for power.

Actually, there was one. Even earlier phones had their own power. A dry-cell battery in each phone, and every 6 months, the phone company would come around with a cart and replace everyone's battery. Central battery was found to be more convenient, since phone company employees didn't have to go around to everyone's site. Central offices could economize scale and have actual generators feeding rechargeable batteries.

It's a pretty decent chunk of power down a POTS cable too, as it was designed to ring multiple big chunky metal bells in the days of yore.

I was wiring in a phone extension for my grandma once as a boy and grabbed the live cable instead of the extension and stripped the wire with my teeth (as you do). I've been electrocuted a great number of times by the mains AC, but getting hit by that juicy DC was the best one yet. Jumped me 6ft across the room :D

I discovered the same exact thing wiring a second phone line to my bedroom as a teenager. I jumped into a pile of fiberglass insulation! :/

The teeth. Yikes! But yeah, I remember having the rotary phone disassembled and touching the wires adjusting something when a ring came. Gave me enough of a jolt to remember.

Neither.

The batteries, the grid/generator-supplied power supplies, and the telephone switch equipment are all connected in parallel -- as if the entire DC power infrastructure consists of only two wires, and everything involved with it connects only to those two wires.

1. In normal operation, the batteries are kept at a constant state of charge. The switches are powered from the same DC bus that keeps the batteries charged.

2. When the power grid goes down, the batteries slowly discharge and keep things running like nothing ever happened (for hours/days/weeks). There is no switchover for this; it's just the normal state, minus the ability to juice-up the batteries. (Remember: It's just one DC bus.)

3. When the grid comes back up (or the generators kick in), the batteries get recharged. There is no switchover for this either; nothing important even notices. (Still just one DC bus.)

4. If the grid stays up long enough, go to 1. Repeat as the external environment dictates. (And as you might guess, it's still one DC bus and there's also no switchover here. Things just continue to work.)

--

You can play with this at home with a capacitor (which loosely acts like a battery does), an LED+resistor combo (which acts as a load), and a small power supply that is appropriate for LED+resistor you've chosen (which acts as the AC-DC converting grid input).

Wire them all 3 parts up in parallel and the light comes on.

Disconnect the power supply, and the light stays on for a bit -- it successfully runs from power stored in the capacitor.

Reconnect the power supply, and the light comes on and the capacitor ("battery") recharges -- concurrently.

Improve staying power by adding more parallel capacitance. Reduce or eliminate it by reducing or eliminating capacitance. Goof around with it; it's fun. (Just don't wire the capacitor backwards. That's less fun.)

The batteries and phone lines were one system at -48v with power supplies converting AC power to DC while grid / generator is up.

The batteries are floated at the line voltage nothing was really charging or discharging and there was no switchover.

This is similar to your cars 12v dc power system such the when the car is running the alternator is providing DC power and the batteries float doing nothing except buffering large fluctuations stabilizing voltage.

Grid charging batteries, phone draining them as I understand. Of course there were switches all over the us so I can't make blanket claims but from what I hear that was normal.

can call it PCRE now

'PCRE' never really caught on broadly, unfortunately.

It seems that Boost actually uses 'perlex' https://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_31_0/libs/regex/doc/syntax_... .

As my high school friend said "Everybody likes their own brand."

Consider the alternative.