It is unclear why Americans write dates in month-day-year format. What is clear is that the format makes little sense and differs from formats used by most of the world creating confusion. While human confusion is well-documented (something I’ve written about as well), equally critical is how screen readers and machine translation behave.

When handling dates in a free-form text, software relies on fragile heuristics. For example, DeepL and Google Translate decide seemingly randomly whether to treat dates the British or American way as demonstrated on figure below. The behaviour can change depending on the use of padding zero, existence of other dates in the translated fragment or surrounding text.

W opinii w Poradni językowej PWN, dr. Adama Wolańskiego bezapelacyjnie odrzucył formę RRRR-MM-DD zapisu dat tłumacząc, iż „w korespondencji z Wielką Brytanią datę zapiszemy cyfrowo jako 21/6/2009 lub 21/06/2009, lub 21.6.2009, a z USA — jako 6/21/2009 lub 06/21/2009.” Jest to opinia, która pomija istotę problemu i sens komentarza czytelnika Poradni. Z założenia jestem zwolennikiem reguł językowych, jednak w tym przypadku jasno trzeba przyjąć, iż po angliesku, daty w formie cyfrowej piszemy jako RRRR/MM/DD lub, wedle uznania, RRRR-MM-DD.

Szczególnie w międzynarodowych projektach tożsamość i kompetencja językowa odbiorcy często są nieznane. Może to być Brytyjczyk w Nowym Jorku, Amerykanin w Zurychu, Japończyk w Sydney itp. Dodatkowo czytelnik może próbować zgadywać co autor miał na myśli, np. Amerykanin rozumować, że Europejczyk stosuje zapis dzień/miesiąc. Sytacje kompilkuje fatk, że wiadomości może być powielana zatracając informację oryginalnym autorze i odbiorcy. Do tego dochodzą czytniki ekranowe i narzędzia do maszynowego tłumaczenia, które mają swoje niejednoznaczne heurystyki (o czym napisałem osobny arrtykuł).

Podstawową funkcją języka jest komunikacja. Zapis XX/YY/RRRR (czy też XX/YY bez określenia roku) komunikacji nie sprzyja. Wręcz przeciwnie; jest on źródłem nieporozumień i opóźnień. Z tego powodu powinien być odrzucony.

The chilly afternoon in Łódź was no match for the warm welcome Andrzej Sapkowski and Adam Badowski received as they entered the stage. The author of the Witcher book series and co-CEO of CD Projekt Red (CDPR) arrived at the 36th International Festival of Comics and Games to explore a simple but elusive question:

What makes a Witcher story?

The panel was moderated by Michał Giersz, who wasted no time to start the conversation. According to him, having Geralt, Ciri, Yennefer or Triss by itself doesn’t make a Witcher story. Narratives without those characters may still feel like Witcher tales. In trying to find the essence of the Witcher stories, he asked about aspects that Sapkowski focuses on first when writing.

Updated on the 31st of July to reflect the fact deadline for both petitions have now passed.

The dystopian interpretation of the ‘you’ll own nothing and be happy’ phrase feels increasingly prescient.¹ As corporations hide behind lengthy Terms of Service and End User License Agreements,² the concept of ownership becomes alarmingly ambiguous. This erosion of consumer rights has given rise to the Stop Killing Games (SKG) movement.

In 2015 I’ve stumbled upon the Classic Tetris World Cham­pion­ship. Even though I’d never played NES Tetris, I started following the event with interest. I keenly remember watching the historic 2018 final which was a prelude to the next generation of players picking up the game.

In contrast, world of racing games offer an example of fleeting ownership. While generations continue to enjoy NES Tetris, with a 13-year-old famously ‘beating’ the game 34 years after its release,³ Ubisoft’s 2014 game The Crew didn’t even last a decade. In 2024, Ubisoft didn’t just shut down the servers; it began revoking players’ licenses, seemingly doing everything in its power to ensure the game couldn’t be preserved or revived by the community.

Przeglądając archiwa swoich starych dysków, natknąłem się na niesłychanie ciekawy artykuł z Gazety Praca. Czas zrobił swoje i na stronie Gazety już go niestety nie ma,¹ a szkoda aby zniknął po nim ślad. Pozwolę więc sobie go zacytować w całości, aby przetrwał dla potomności:

Informatycy najgorzej ubrani

Michał Stangret, 2005-11-25

Są przepoceni, rzadko myją włosy i noszą flanelowe koszule wciągnięte w spodnie. Komputerowcy zajęli pierwsze miejsce w rankingu najgorzej ubranych zawodów. Dostało się też księgowym, urzędnikom i dziennikarzom.

In September 2022, ‘Théâtre D’opéra Spatial’, a work submitted by Jason Allen, won Colorado State Fair’s annual fine art competition in the digital art category. What made the success noteworthy was that the image had been AI-generated. Mr Allen eventually tried to register the work with the US Copyright Office but his attempts turned out fruitless. In September 2023 the Office refused his registration.

I didn’t think much of it at the time. I wasn’t that invested in the consideration of what kind of ‘two-dimensional artworks’ are protected by copyright and, more notably, I somewhat agreed with the decision. Perhaps the prompt was protected, but if only minor manual edits were made to the image, it felt like a stretch to say the image as a whole could be covered by copyright law.

So far I have been lucky in my professional life. I have never had any conflicts with my employers and for the most part maintained good rapport with coworkers and managers alike. Alas, my luck has finally run out.

Long story short, I left Composable Foundation in October and I am still waiting for my final paycheck. TL;DR: If you are doing business with them make sure you are paid in advance.

Last updated in October 2025. See updates below for a full list of changes.

Ever since Witcher games took off the franchise skyrocketed in popularity. Books, comics, TV show, games, more comics, another TV show… The story of Geralt and his marry company has been told in so many ways that it’s becoming a wee bit hard to keep track of chronology of all the events; especially across different forms of media.

In this article I’ve collected all official Witcher works ordering them in chronological order. To avoid any confusion, let me state up front that if you’re new to the franchise or haven’t read the books yet this list might not be for you. If you’re looking for the order to read the books in, I’ve prepared a separate article which describes that.

Skip right to the chronology

Updated in October 2025 to include discussion of Crossroads of Ravens.

Without beating around the bush, the reading order for the Witcher books is as follows:

Every now and again I need to name an operand or result of an arithmetic operation. It usually takes me embarrassingly long to look that information up. To save time in the future, here’s the list: $$ \begin{align} \left. \begin{matrix} \text{augend} + \text{addend}^† \\ \text{summand} + \text{summand} \\ \text{term} + \text{term} \end{matrix} \right\} & = \left\{ \begin{matrix} \text{sum} \\ \text{total} \end{matrix} \right. \\[.5em] \text{minuend} - \text{subtrahend} & = \text{difference} \\[.5em] \left. \begin{matrix} \text{multiplier} × \text{multiplicand} \\ \text{factor} × \text{factor} \\ \end{matrix} \right\} & = \text{product} \\[.5em] \left. \begin{matrix} \text{dividend} ÷ \text{divisor} \\ {\text{numerator}\over\text{denominator}} \end{matrix} \right\} & = \left\{ \begin{matrix} \text{ratio} \\ \text{fraction} \\ \text{quotient}^‡ + \text{remainder} \end{matrix} \right. \\[.5em] \text{base}^{\text{exponent}} & = \text{power} \\[.5em] \sqrt[\text{degree}]{\text{radicand}} & = \left\{ \begin{matrix} \text{root} \\ \text{radical} \end{matrix} \right. \\[.5em] \log_\text{base}(\text{anti-logarithm}) & = \text{logarithm} \end{align} $$

† Occasionally used to mean any operand of addition.
‡ Occasionally used to mean the fraction itself rather than only the integer part.

List in big part thanks to Wikipedia.