I wonder if I should roll back this:

unix.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/309975

@muru that looks like something that should have been a comment, not an edit to someone else's answer.

This is probably a seriously dumb questions, but Make uses file timestamps to decide whether to rebuild, doesn't it?

According to Wikipedia:

> Make decides whether a target needs to be regenerated by comparing file modification times.[31

Which also fits my recollection.

Ok, so problem statement.

I'm loading an SQLite DB from sources (CVS files) which ultimately originate from a LaTeX file. So if I don't want to rebuild unnecessarily (which probably isn't a terrible thing, because it's a small DB) file timestamps are an obvious way to go.

Any other thoughts?

@FaheemMitha are you planning on using Make for this, or implementing something yourself?

@qubert that wasn’t why I said that, though; I might believe something like that about someone, but I wouldn’t say it unless there was publicly-available backing evidence. I said that because many people have been saying that for a number of years, and I’ve met some of them who’ve told me about it. There are two angles to it: the public angle (others have written about it publicly), and the personal angle (I’ve met people who say such things, and I believe them).

@qubert I don’t want to drag them into it so there’s no point in asking me to name names.

@qubert I do find it rather amusing that there should be a venue somewhere where I’m the topic of conversation...

It's not exactly been a secret, for quite a long time now

On top of all the things he's done archivally

@MichaelHomer exactly

@StephenKitt I was just thinking of checking whether the timestamp of the LaTeX file was newer than the timestamp of the SQLite file, and if so, calling the function. Otherwise not calling it.

Obviously, this doesn't scale, but it's only two files. And unlikely to increase in number.

Make obviously typically handles quite complicated configurations.

@FaheemMitha but is also useful in very simple situations ;-)

How is your SQLite file used?

I’m wondering if its timestamp could be updated from “normal” use, which would mess up the check.

@StephenKitt @MichaelHomer The worst I've heard of Stallman is that he's makes possibly inappropriate, possibly clumsy, and probably unwanted advances to women. I've never heard it suggested that he has ever being guilty of anything approaching sexual assault.

@StephenKitt I think it's read-only.

@StephenKitt Good point. I don't think so, but I should probably look into it.

Or I could just rebuild it every time.

I guess inserting something into the SQLite DB would change file modification. I don't see how it wouldn't. But my use case is a one time build/reload, then read only thing. It's for use with a LaTeX file. Specifically LuaTeX.

@FaheemMitha you’ve probably spent more time thinking about this than all the time that would be spent rebuilding the file every time ;-)

(don’t take that the wrong way, I do the same thing)

@StephenKitt Possibly. And please don't post that xkcd comic.

But it's a valid question. How far should one take automation?

@FaheemMitha yes, the issue is what he says, not what he does (as far as I know)

Don't get me wrong, I like xkcd. But I frequently see the same thing over and over again.

@FaheemMitha in this case I’d say you should automate the file creation, but not make it conditional on timestamps

that’s the important part: not having to remember stuff in the future

the optimisation side of things (not rebuilding it if nothing has changed) can wait, possibly forever

@StephenKitt Well, the SQLite DB loading is part of a script, of course.

I'd be nuts to do it by hand.

@StephenKitt Not conditional on timestamps because they are not reliable in this case?

@FaheemMitha because it’s yet another thing that can go wrong, in general

@StephenKitt True dat.

Mercurial doesn't try to preserve time modifications. I suppose for a VCS to try to do so is nightmare territory.

What I’m saying is that it’s all OK today, when everything is fresh in your mind; but imagine you make a change in six months’ time, run the build, and take the PDF — will you notice if something in the PDF is slightly wrong because the data wasn’t fully rebuilt?

Having said that, the file modifications would err on the site of being more recent. So in the "right" direction.

@StephenKitt Agreed to all of that. Well, the implied stuff.

@FaheemMitha VCSs shouldn’t try to preserve time modifications: that way, stuff gets rebuilt whenever you move around the history, whether forwards or backwards

or rather, they can preserve timestamps, as long as they don’t restore them on checkout

@StephenKitt Right. I wasn't suggesting they should. It's not useful and would needlessly complicate things for the VCS.

@FaheemMitha yup

People who think of VCSs as tar-on-steroids tend to disagree, until they understand the rebuild impact ;-).

Though Mercurial does have a timestamp extension.

Never used it. Probably never will.

@FaheemMitha So apart from the predatory behaviour, what predatory behaviour?

@StephenKitt A VCS is far from being comparable to tar, with or without steroids.

This post seems like a summary of some relevant points across a pretty long time span

@MichaelHomer Well, if you consider what I described as predatory behavior, then ok. But that sort of thing happens every day to many people at every bar in the United States. And probably elsewhere. Though presumably not Saudi Arabia.

Personally I'd consider it to be within the parameters of normal human male behavior.

Well that's something for you to reflect upon, isn't it.

But of course, I've never seen what Stallman actually does. Never even seem him in the flesh. My father did attend a talk of his many years ago, in Bombay.

@MichaelHomer What is?

@FaheemMitha oh yes I agree wholeheartedly. But I know quite a few devs who came to VCSs after a long time of manual source control where they would zip up (or tar up) they code for safekeeping; to them a VCS is an extension of that.

@FaheemMitha that doesn’t make it OK though, does it?

@StephenKitt I don't know if it is ok or not. Possibly not. But if that is your baseline for bad behavior, then most of the human race are violating it, one way of the other.

The thing is that the whole “it’s normal for men to hit on women” attitude, with various degrees of “acceptable” behaviour, creates a frightening environment for women

Do you want to condemn them all?

Many people I know have behaved badly towards me. Human beings aren't particularly nice, you know.

@FaheemMitha oh I know

I do think we can improve though (starting with myself).

@StephenKitt That's a fair point, I guess. But it's a big gray area. A lot of this stuff happens when people are not fully sober, sort of by design. Because it's often difficult for men to approach women. But that's not exactly news.

And if men don't approach women, and women (probably) don't approach men... Well, you see the difficulty, right?

Obviously, violent behavior by men towards women, often sexually driven, is a big thing, internationally. It's a big problem here. To the extent that Bombay has trains only for women (ladies specials). And women only compartments.

Because (apparently) it's such a big problem.

One incident which drove this home for me was once at a conference in a hotel. A bunch of us took the elevator up to go to our rooms, quite late at night; the last two to get off were a co-worker (not from the same company, but working on the same project) and myself. We got off on the same floor, and took the same corridor, because our rooms were in the same wing (but we didn’t know that beforehand).

My co-worker told me later she got quite scared for a few moments because she thought I was following her!

@StephenKitt Who? You? Seriously?

Wow.

We haven't actually met, but that's hard to imagine.

@FaheemMitha yes. That’s the thing: any man can scare any woman, sometimes not even directly because of something he’s doing, just because he’s a man, and men in general are frightening for women (because of all the societal baggage you mention).

@StephenKitt Yes, that's all very true. Though fortunately women don't seem to be scared of me. At least if they've known me longer than 5 minutes.

Which is fortunate, because I think I would find it quite stressful.

In a place like India, it's particularly a problem, because of the particularly dysfunctional social relationships between men and women here. But that is also not news. At least, not if you know anything about India.

A place like Saudi Arabia might be worse. But that's speculation on my part.

Anyway, holding off on the timestamp thing, possibly forever.

Thanks for the feedback, Stephen.

But still wondering who wrote that Software Conservancy post.

If it was Kuhn, there's a story there.

@StephenKitt "I said that because many people have been saying that for a number of years" that's pretty much what I was suspecting. "I’ve met people who say such things, and I believe them" God bless your soul!

@qubert so basically you’re saying that the only people who can say anything negative are direct victims, and that no one should believe them?

and by quoting the way you did, you’re misconstruing what I wrote, but never mind, I get the impression there’s not much point trying to have a discussion

(here’s a hint though: the “and” which you dropped from your quote is important)

@StephenKitt This. I once got off the tube at the same station as my neighbor (we share a house, she rents the top floor and I rent the bottom). So I walked behind her from the tube station all the way to our street and up to our front door. I had just moved in so she didn't know me or recognize me, so I took pains to stay back, make some noise, make myself as unthreatening as possible, but I could see she was nervous until she realized that I'm the new neighbor.

I'll often cross the road to walk on the other side when I find myself walking behind a young woman at night. No reason to cause her any undue distress.

@terdon Or just introducing oneself is an option.

In real life, I'm kind of nosey, and ask lots of questions, so people tend to know who I am.

Or if they don't, they ask.

But in some cultures, people don't like to talk.

To some extent it's an Anglo thing.

@FaheemMitha in the dark, in the street? I can’t see that necessarily going down too well ;-)

When I find myself potentially scaring a woman in a dark secluded area I will often take steps to hide my face with a bandana or ski mask so it wont threaten her. Then I'll ensure to make lots of noise so she knows I'm there. I often use a roll of duct tape that I carry (for misc reasons) to just make that trademark duct tape ripping noise. That usually sets anyone at ease

then you run to catch up to them and ask if they'd like to have tea tomorrow afternoon

@Jesse_b and then cut a piece of the tape with your hunting knife

assuming you haven't been maced or shot at this point

@JeffSchaller “oh you didn’t attack me so I thought that meant I could ask you out”

We've found the inverse of Interpersonal.SE

@JeffSchaller extrapersonal.SE?

@StephenKitt extraoffensive.SE?

@JeffSchaller interfrightening.SE

you have to distribute the inverse through all the nouns

so heap instead of stack, what’s the inverse of exchange?

solitary (as in confinement)?

or confinement directly

so extrapublic.heapconfinement

or containment

that way we could have containment breaches

very similar theme to the new book by the xkcd author "How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems" (amazon link)

@JeffSchaller I’ve got that in my short-term to-read pile ;-)

I have "Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words" arriving in a few days; can't wait to read it with one of my kids (two of them have regular reading as homework)

"You will not go to space today" is a regular refrain at work, now

@StephenKitt Wave and call yoo-hoo?

@FaheemMitha I can't help but think that you're imagining a different scenario than the rest of us.

You both don't know ahead of time that you're going much the same direction.

(trying to steer this back to something possibly helpful instead of incarcerating)

@JeffSchaller Tea is always nice. Maybe with home-made scones. And honey.

I don't share that British fetish for actual tea, though.

Oh dear. I see we're back with xkcd.

I thought of buying honey for my Airbnb. But didn't. The other hosts thought it would be a waste of money. I still quite like the idea, though.

May day is complete; I snuck in The Answer (42) to an Answer

@JeffSchaller with ed?

@StephenKitt unfortunately not; this was just a getent copy/paste. I suppose I could have shelled out to do it...

@JeffSchaller 42, and “do the thing you thought wasn’t possible”!

@StephenKitt "that first thing you did, didn't that work?"

funny how you get primed to expect certain failure cases (unquoted $HOME)

and by "you" I mean "me"

InverseEnglish.SE

@JeffSchaller oh I do too

5 years ago, cat $INPUT | while read foo bar wouldn't have raised an eyebrow. Now...

two eyebrows!

eval cat $INPUT

ls | eval cat $INPUT

@FaheemMitha Dude, I live in England. You don't go around introducing yourself to random people on the street! ;)

@terdon Yes, I'm aware. I once lived there too. And I wasn't thinking of the UK, particularly.

Though that strategy doesn't work particularly well anywhere. I still do, it though.

I know you are, so I know you can appreciate just how shocking such behavior would be there :)

I did introduce myself once we were at our shared door, of course. And also demonstrated that I already had a key for said door.

@terdon at least in Scotland it’s common for older people to start talking to you on the bus or the train ;-)

I remember I was once walking out back behind Chapel Hill Public Library when I passed someone on the street and fell into conversation with them. She was a "visitor" too, I think. That sort of thing doesn't happen very often, but does happen.

@terdon and then your neighbour realised she no longer had hers! Cue screaming

And on another occasion I remember I met someone else, who was male that time.

Though Chapel Hill isn't actually a social hot-spot.

(Excuse rambling...)

@StephenKitt that really doesn't happen in London. Especially not in the tube.

And once I was stopped by the police while walking there, so I had to introduce myself to them too. That wasn't particularly social, though.

@terdon yup, the tube is definitely “heads down, mind your own business”, and was even before smartphones became common

The British have always been a nice friendly race of people.

I was in NYC for one day once. I talked to lots of people while I was there. I remember there was this really beautiful Brazilian girl who was a dentist, I think. Not sure what she was doing there, though.

@FaheemMitha To be fair, that's more of an English than a British thing, in my experience. The Scots, Irish and Welsh folks I've met tended to be less closed.

"want nothing less than 'a chat'" ... my first interpretation (knowing I was wrong, with the "shut up!" header) was "the minimum I want is a 'a chat'; I really want more of a conversation"

@terdon I'd even go as far as saying it's a Londoner thing.

twitter.com/BeingScots/status/1172909143344197632/photo/1

@Kusalananda No. It was very much in evidence in the years I spent living in York, in the north of England.

@terdon Oh. Ok, maybe it's just me then :-)

People of my grandparent's generation (so, ~65 or so 20 years ago) were very open and friendly. The younger folks would avoid eye contact like the plague.

Yes, that might actually be true in many places. It's easier to talk to older people here than to younger ones.

Note that this doesn't extend to cases where some interaction is inevitable. For instance, if you need to buy something, so you have a good reason to start a conversation. Once the conversation has been initialized, it is very common to have a pleasant exchange about neutral subjects.

It's the starting of a conversation that's hard.

I think the Irish are a bit different. I don't know about the rest of the UK, though.

@terdon non-threatening conversation starters: “I’m looking for the cemetary”, or “... the hospital”

lol

"Hi! Have you heard of extrapublic.heapcontainment? What a site!"

of course that depends on whether you want a conversation based on truth

I've never detected much variance, though rich/upper-middle class South English are the worse in general.

@Kusalananda You lived in the UK too. Do you concur?

Meh, I don't think he's lived in England. Cambridge and London don't count :P

I was once asked by an older chap on the last train for the evening between London and Cambridge, whether I was married. I said I had a girlfriend since almost 16 years. He decided that was good enough and proceeded to ask me to wake him up at a particular station. He was dead drunk and promptly fell asleep. I made sure he got off where he needed to get off.

@terdon I think you might find some disagreement there.

His question about whether I was married or not was probably a way of testing whether I was trustworthy enough to depend on waking him up. :-)

@FaheemMitha I know only that London was a bit "special" when it came to social interaction (you don't do it, basically).

@Kusalananda a non-trustworthy person would of course answer truthfully ;-)

@Kusalananda And Cambridge?

@FaheemMitha Cambridge was friendly enough, as far as I was concerned.

@Kusalananda I see.

@FaheemMitha I meant that in both of those places, there is a very, very high concentration of foreigners. And in Cambridge, I would expect the average level of education to be far above the national average since so much of the town consists of academics and various people around academia.

@terdon No, that's true. Both Cambridge and London are their own micro-cosmos.

@terdon That's true of Cambridge certainly. Still England though.

Though your calculations would depend heavily on whether you included the undergrads or not.

@FaheemMitha Yeah, but people that say they "went to England" when they really only went to London, they haven't really been to England.

But you didn't actually live in Cambridge, did you?

@FaheemMitha I lived in Cambridge.

@Kusalananda London is England too. I don't know why you would say it isn't.

... and in Saffron Walden.

@Kusalananda I meant @terdon. Sorry for ambiguity. I know you did.

@FaheemMitha Only goegraphically.

I've visited. Seemed pretty English to me. More cosmopolitan than the majority of the UK, of course.

Never lived there, it's true.

@Kusalananda Did you live in London too?

@FaheemMitha I did not, but I was down there often enough.

@Kusalananda Ok.

@FaheemMitha London isn't England in the sense that Paris isn't France, or New York isn't the US. Of course they are, in the most obvious sense of the term, but these are cities that have their own myth and have developed their own personalities, which are often very different to the rest of the country.

So if you live in such a city, then you haven't really experienced living in the country containing the city, only living in the city. The point being that the city is sufficiently different to the rest of the country that living there isn't actually representative of living in the country in general.

London isn't representative of the UK, that's true. But that's also a different statement.

More crowded, noiser, ruder people, more expensive. Probably a higher density of libraries and art galleries and universities etc than most of the UK, too.

And of course, a higher proportion of foreigners. Probably more places to dance, too.

@FaheemMitha perhaps you took terdon a little too literally when he said "London isn't England" as a shortcut. You have to assume he knows that London is part of England

@JeffSchaller Perhaps.

@FaheemMitha Precisely. Which is what I tried, succinctly if not successfully, to convey in the pithy London isn't England statement.

I've been described as annoyingly literal-minded. (Or something like that.)

what would that be? some sort of negative metaphor?

@JeffSchaller Hmm?

@FaheemMitha sorry, I should have made my statement a reply to terdon's: "London isn't England" as an example of "X isn't Y"

literal-minded me couldn't help but wonder if there's a name for that category

@JeffSchaller There might be. English SE would probably have the answer. I learned from David Lodge that English has a surprising number of words for different figures of speech.

Synecdoche and metonymy come to mind, for example.

@JeffSchaller XY metaphor? :P

But I guess hyperbole wouldn't be too far off.

@FaheemMitha zeugma and syllepsis are my favourites

we can't say he pulled a terdon so we do need something else

@StephenKitt fun! as a creative misinterpreter, those are right up my alley

I sometimes wonder how people communicate at all :)

My wife and I recently had the "If they have bread, get a dozen" conversation

@JeffSchaller loaves?

yeah, I didn't get it right

"Get a loaf of bread, and if they have eggs, get a dozen"

ROFL

imagine an interactive fiction parser capable of dealing with that

to be fair, it wasn't word-for-word like the joke, but it was in the same vein, so of course I had to tell the joke

"living with a programmer" I think was the header

I’m currently wading my way through Kubernetes operator packaging, and it’s a bit like that. The docs say “this field is optional”, so I leave it out, deploy the operator, and boom, the manager says “field blah in body is required”.

“like that” as in “wondering how people communicate at all”

@StephenKitt "ohhh, we meant it was optional in the subject; it's definitely required in the body"

@JeffSchaller ah that could be a valid interpretation when taken at face value

(but the fields only exist in the body)

oh and of course YAML

I don't speak enough K8S to make up a more-plausible escape hatch

the file format which encourages you to glue rulers to your screen

didn't we learn anything from FORTRAN?

@JeffSchaller ah, but with Fortran you glued rulers to your hole-punch!

we learned to use screens instead

@StephenKitt ahhhh, progress!

Can somebody help on this?

@JeffSchaller I don't remember if I posted this here:

twitter.com/erinfranmc/status/1168523325414490112

Help! I need somebody! Not just anybody...

@terdon lol

what an appropriate twitter account to bring in at this moment! "front-end developer ... • translator • bread fan"

A little odd -- I mean, why would you call yourself a bread fan? Do you stick loaves in your sleeves and spin around?

@JeffSchaller no, you stand in front of the bread section in the supermarket and blow really hard

@StephenKitt I didn't know either of those. Thank you for enlarging my literary horizons.

@StephenKitt ahhhhh, now I get it. Thanks for translating!

I mean, saying you're a fan (supporter) of bread surely would conflict with EATING it

@JeffSchaller Well, often they don't. Communicate, that is.

@StephenKitt Surely you cheer very hard?

@FaheemMitha just watch out for people with those pins!

@terdon that depends on the nature of the simile: football fan, or air fan?

@terdon maybe you'd just remove all doubt and cheer "Goooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!" while spinning?

...until someone hands you a "shut up" pin

wow! seven seconds into reading the news headlines and I'm reminded that it's a bad idea

@JeffSchaller What is?

@FaheemMitha this sequence: "Opinion: Why is Trump so desperate to make California’s air more polluted?", "Democratic Donor Ed Buck Accused Of Running A Drug Den After A 3rd Man ODs", and "Trump Names Robert O’Brien, a Hostage Negotiator, as National Security Adviser"

I should take more steps to follow the positive news feeds instead of taking random feeds

@JeffSchaller Just an average day on Planet Earth.

very very average

I've often thought I'd like to move to a different solar system. But I haven't had any invitations.

I wonder if VCS handling style questions would be on-topic anywhere on SE.

How to arrange commits, what to put in them, what log messages to write - etc.

@StephenKitt Yes! :)

@muru I'd leave it alone if correct (or edit to fix in incorrectness). I'm sure Gilles knows how to revert it if he doesn't like it, and I think the site notifies you when a suggested edit is made to one of your answers. At least I've sometimes gotten notifies... I guess if it doesn't, you could leave a comment to let him know.

@derobert "code edited on answer" if gets approved; not sure you see a suggested edit

And I once saw a screenshot of Gilles's top bar somewhere. The notifications numbered in the thousands, IIRC

Hah, true, he must get a lot.

I don't know what his opinion on people editing his answers are. Personally I'm happy when people edit mine to add information like that (at least when relevant and correct).

come on @JeffSchaller: You mean to tell me "is a piece of shit" isn't the proper technical terminology for malfunctioning wireless signals?

@Jesse_b I'm tempted to misinterpret it like I misinterpreted "bread fan" earlier

@JeffSchaller I must have missed it

@Jesse_b no, that's only the proper technical term for the machine that looks like it was looted from the mid-90s at the checkout isle

@Jesse_b from chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/51749391#51749391 onwards

Especially when it won't read your card for whatever silly reason. Or even when its working. They're always POS.

@derobert curse those POS POS!

@JeffSchaller I think by POS standards to be a POS POS it has to still be running DOS.

@JeffSchaller hah

And it's really advanced if its running Windows XP.

Still a POS, though.

(Unless you were referring to a store where you buy cash registers. Then I guess they have a POS POS.)

I've never heard of this pOS. Sounds like an interesting new system

@derobert well, sure, when you check out, you're at the POS POS POS POS

@JeffSchaller Oh no, soon we're going to need better notation, and I bet they can't handle ⁴.

@Jesse_b Maybe it's a million times smaller than a microkernel?

nanokernel

C:\> dir POSPOSPO.POS

@Jesse_b still a thousand times as bloated as pOS's picokernel!

mmmm picklekernel

pOS, now in dill flavor!

... from an email I just got. I think I'll avoid opening the .pdf.rar attachment to see if it includes ammo and guns.

And how much a tank costs, for that matter.

Or if there's a cost difference for Left-Tanks and Right-Tanks. Or if they export Center-Tanks to the US

Are rar extractors common enough for that scam to work?

@MichaelHomer I wouldn't have thought so, but...

@JeffSchaller Or if there is a difference between a Center Tank and a Centre Tank.

"I want this unrequested quote so badly that I'll brute-force open it in several applications until something happens"

Are there zip extractors that don't know about rar?

I will however share my tank quotation with the folks over at VirusTotal. I hope they need some tanks, because I don't...

@Jesse_b Most obviously the ones built in to Windows and macOS, yes

The built in one in windows 10? I'm still using windows 7 but both winzip and obviously winrar can extract rar files without an issue

The built-in one in every version of Windows for the last twenty years

I don't think windows has had a built in one for 20 years

Well, nineteen

I think it started in windows 10

Not sure about 98, but definitely in ME

I've always had to use winzip until windows 10

See this random article from 2005 telling you all about it

Apparently introduced by Plus! 98, but not in-box until ME

well I'll be

Wow, I'm getting all the interesting scams today. Also got a "hey, here's the password from some random site that was compromised as proof I've recorded you watching porn, send bitcoin", been a while since I saw one of those.

Nice to hear I'm not the only one getting scam/spam (the two are virtually synonymous).

Hah, so that scam attempt reminded me to go check my password manager to see if there are any passwords I need to reset. While there, it (LastPass) also let me know that there are some other sites (using other passwords) that I should reset. One of them is Apple, which I had an account with from way-back-when.

I tried to log in to reset my password. It asked me for security questions. I'm pretty sure I know what the answers should be, but they won't take them or any variations I can think of.

And eventually it tells me fine, I need to reset my security questions... when I click the button....

... that's great! So, umm, what am I supposed to do now?

Because what I'm tempted to do is just publish the username and password, disclaim the account, and tell them it's their own #*@#*()! problem at this point.

@derobert Is calling customer service an option?

Though they will probably just read stuff off their computer, so same diff.

@FaheemMitha I'm sure it's an option, but it's an account I no longer use and isn't really valuable anymore. So... how much time would you spend on the phone to deal with it?

@derobert You don't use your Apple account?

And I have a lot of phone fun in India, so that's a hard question to answer.

Not in the last, errr, decade or so.

But the answer is probably "too much".

@derobert Nice to hear someone doesn't.

It might have access to some old Mac OS X bug reports from 2003 or something. I think that's about it...

Its approximate value to me is $0. So certainly not going to spend 20 minutes on the phone to deal with it.

So, where do you buy a laptop without a network card nowadays? unix.stackexchange.com/questions/542529/…

> my laptop doesn't have an ethernet card/port

I think they just mean no RJ45 jack

Which is common on most thin laptops now