taink · HackerTrans

4 か月前議論

Tangentially, E. W. Dijkstra's handwriting is the cleanest I've seen, and I had the same feeling you did when I came across his papers in his archive.

I later came across this blog post: https://joshldavis.com/2013/05/20/the-path-to-dijkstras-hand..., which prompted me to improve my own handwriting as well.

taink

8 か月前議論

He specifically references the last page of the last issue, and concludes his commencement speech with its words "Stay hungry. Stay foolish." [1]

Pretty nice to see it context, next to all the other editions.

> I wonder what obscure (probably online?) source of information of today we'll be comparing to the mainstream sources of tomorrow.

Maybe this very website will be among them?

[1] https://wholeearth.info/p/whole-earth-epilog-october-1974?fo...

taink

9 か月前議論

Unlearning OOP does not necessarily involve forgetting abstraction and the concept of an object. "Unlearning OOP" involves freeing yourself from the notion that all programming should be designed as an object hierarchy. There is/was a tendency in object-oriented programming to consider that it is the only way Real Software™ is made. You tend to focus more on the architecture of your system than its actual features.

Notice the prerequisite to unlearning something is learning it first. I don't think anyone proposes that the concept of an object is useless.

taink

9 か月前議論

> The transition from the Fourth to the Fifth happened in 1958 without much violence.

Quoting from the article:

  Things came to a head in 1958 as France struggled to decolonize. There was strong opposition within France to Algerian independence and part of the army openly rebelled. Important generals threatened a coup unless de Gaulle was returned to power. They sent paratroopers to capture Corsica in case anyone missed their point.

The article even fails to mention Operation Resurrection. Hopefully we don't need coups every time we want a new constituent assembly.

taink

9 か月前議論

I have no knowledge of DANE but its reliance on DNSSEC makes me worried that it would be difficult for people to adopt it.

Also, I think it solves a different problem: it prevents spoofing/MITM but what about legitimate certificates? We would still need CAs that actually curate their customers and hold them accountable. And we would need email servers/clients to differentiate between strict CAs and ones that are used solely for encryption purposes.

I don't know that DNS should be applied to emails as is anyway but I find it could force spammers to operate with publicly available information which would make holding them accountable easier.

taink

9 か月前議論

Why should curation be centralized? We do not need a "decentralized dictatorship" (what would that even be? that's antithetical) and we certainly do not need a centralized one. It seems crazy that your solutions to AI, spam, and "automated traffic" (I don't know what that is, I assume web crawlers and such) is that the police control every single transaction.

First off, we can simply let the user, or client software, choose. Why should we let centralized servers do that by default?

At scale, DNS is somewhat centralized but authorities are disconnected from internet providers and web browsers. They're the best actors to regulate this.

For mail, couldn't we come up with a mail-DNS, that authenticates senders? There could be different limits based on whether you are an individual or a company, and whether you're sending 10'000 emails or just 100.

Regardless of whether these are good solutions -- why jump to extreme ones? "TINA" is not a helpful argument, it's a slogan.

taink

9 か月前議論

Well it did have to change its name from GAIM to Pidgin at some point because it infringed on "AIM" by AOL. And whether or not Pidgin was fully "TOS-compliant" (which it might have been depending on the service we'd be looking at) is not as relevant as whether these terms would have been actually legally enforceable or not.

taink

9 か月前議論

How so? Where are the bugs you speak of? I don't find the UI to be nightmarish either. Can you point to specific issues the site maintainer can look at?

If this is the worst modern website you've seen, you're very lucky.

taink

9 か月前議論

Another comment by krajzeg points to this repository for more context: https://github.com/Piddewitt/C64-Game-Source-Code

taink

9 か月前議論

From the repository's README:

  Commented source code of the C64 Lode Runner Game - Including the copy protection

taink

9 か月前議論

It's like exercise: if you can withstand more training, you will get better results. The most important thing is not how hard you train, but how consistent you are at training.

The advice given here can be dangerous to some people: one should be cautious of exerting too much effort because "working harder allows you to get more done".

The useful bit of advice here is the consistency, not the quantity of work.

taink

9 か月前議論

Even if we did manage to achieve such an upgrade, we would still have to successfully manage to secure the rare earths required for electronics manufacturing. Extracting and processing these resources is becoming more and more complex. Especially when you consider we would need these resources not only to sustain our current infrastructure, but also to improve it.

taink

9 か月前議論

> Stallman goes further than my preferred definition, insisting that Free Software must also be freely redistributable with no required payment.

What do you mean? What would free software requiring redistribution payment look like? Say I send a copy of a free-as-in-freedom game that I may or may not have modified in some way to a friend or on a forum, should I pay its author(s) for this? How could I, for instance, commission someone to modify software if I want to change it when I don't have the skills to do so myself, in your definition of free software? I think a simpler definition, like Stallman's, is less restrictive of software modification.

Restricting how software is redistributed holds a great deal of power, especially when you remember the idea behind free software is that you get to have control over your software. Copyleft is such an example -- it is highly restrictive.

I get the financial issue one could have with free software as defined by Stallman; freeing the software you distribute is a difficult decision. Free software is advocated from the point of view of its users, who are ignorant to the difficulties one might face when developing and publishing software. If this is a decision you can make, it is kinder to your users to free the software you publish.

Side note: free software requires one to examine how they value commodities. Do you value the object itself, or the human time it took to make it? In a world where software is thought of as free by default, developers can be paid not per copy, but per patch. I believe such a world would be better for software quality because I agree with you that competitive markets are better at aligning with consumer interests than monopolies.

taink

9 か月前議論

The initial sale never has and never will be the issue with non free software; in fact, they can sometimes be acquired free of charge. I get your sentiment and I agree with you that some software can indeed be proprietary without being predatory or abusive.

I think there is an issue with your definition of "user freedom". What do you mean by it?

Stallman, when defining free software, does not bother with standards or terms: he relies on his own definition of what "user freedom" means and from there states that free software is software that is not restrictive of this freedom.

Free software simply does not restrict what the user can do with a program. It is not a matter of interest. People that choose a free license when they publish something (and respect the license's terms, obviously) are voluntarily letting go of their ability to restrict the user's usage of the program.

The issue I would have with "non-predatory" or "non-abusive" non-free software is that it does not allow me to fix problems I might have with the program. But this is only a problem I have. In other contexts, maybe a user needs to send (modified or otherwise) copies to other people of the software without being able to make sure the author agrees that this transaction is ok.

Fundamentally, non-free software restricts the user's freedom, even if it fully respects what the user would want to do. Similarly, a typewriter that can only output English text would restrict your freedom to type anything beyond English text (which is not something you would care about if you only wanted to write English).

That's the idea anyway. What do you think?

taink

9 か月前議論

What exactly does your diet consist in? What other adjustments have you made, e.g. in sleep or exercise?

From what I've read[1] the risk with a long-term keto diet is an increase in cholesterol (LDL and total), which can be attributed to lower micronutrient and fiber intake, replaced by more animal-derived foods.

Reducing inflammation is interesting, I'll have to look into it.

[1] e.g. https://doi.org/10.1093/advances/nmaa006

taink

9 か月前議論

Thank you for your input. I was familiar with proper noun capitalization (e.g. Moon/moon and Earth/earth).

French (my first language) is different in that it differentiates language, adjective and demonym through capitalization (languages are common nouns and when used as adjectives are not capitalized), which is sometimes necessary because of how French sentences are structured.

The more you know.

taink

10 か月前議論

Can you elaborate on using "folks" instead of "people"? I'm unfamiliar with the difference as english is not my first language.

For reference, to my knowledge these words are pretty much interchangeable with "folks" being less formal I guess.

taink

10 か月前議論

An extreme example would be gwern.net -- specifically you might want to read https://gwern.net/about and https://gwern.net/design

taink

10 か月前議論

Exactly, I completely agree with you. This is what baffled me about the parent comment: "Unlike other human rights, the right to privacy has always been a bit fuzzy with a ton of exceptions and caveats".

Compare the right to privacy with other human rights, and I find it as clear and succinct as its counterparts (if not clearer and more succinct in some cases).

At the same time, given the international nature of these laws, I disagree with you on their problematic nature. They are (in my view) meant as a basis of diplomatic debate and not enforcement (which would be impracticable). They are to be complemented by organic law, because on their own they are unenforceable.

taink

10 か月前議論

What would pass "clear and succinct" in your opinion? I don't see how it is less clearly defined than any other human right.

Let's take international law[1]. Right to privacy is defined as protection from arbitrary interference with privacy.

Is this definition problematic? Privacy itself has a short definition too: the ability of one to remove themselves or information about themselves from the public[2].

I don't see what is unclear or verbose here.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_privacy#International [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy

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