PeterWhittaker

TFA mentions s/Philosopher/Sorcerer/ in HP, which I confess to having confused me greatly (are Americans THAT ignorant that they are unaware of the concept?) and pleased me, since the Canadian publishing house stuck with en-GB throughout, AFAICT.

As a multilingual Canadian capable of understanding most English and French accents, I'm grateful for those who preserve and persevere with their home patois.

Funnily enough, I had a hard time with Bradley's accent the first time viewing Hot Fuzz but many hours of BritBox and Acorn and a few hours of HarbourCustoms later, no problems at all!

I'm largely unfamiliar with his work, but in reading the article and viewing a few works online, I was struck strongly by the resemblances between his work and that of Alex Colville, 17 years his senior. To say that Hockney "restored the human form to art" and to ignore, to not even mention, Colville, seems hagiographic and willfully ignorant.

I'm in no way asserting that Colville restored the human form to art either, just observing that Hockney was far for alone in using the human form to convey aspects of his meaning.

In these days of concerns over digital sovereignty, I cannot help but wonder if they would be best served by moving to a privacy-protective European state, e.g., Germany or Switzerland (not EU but tends to align with EU regs, e.g., GDPR) and doubling down as a privacy protection service (to the extent permitted by law).

Just musing....

They don't discuss a "why", so much as present data on the "how" and "when". If this work is valid and reliable, then it will be up to later research to propose and test hypotheses as the why.

In a nutshell, the paper basically says that the lateralization that led to the predominance of right-handedness occurred around the time humans became bipedal and around the time of neuroanatomical expansion, possibly related to bipedalism.

In other words, before these two changes, we used all four limbs for locomotion and had no preference for either forelimb for grasping. Then one or two things happened and right-handedness predominated. It seems that that neuroanatomical expansion took over the areas of the brain that previously allowed our left hands to be as capable as our right hands.

I write "one or two things happened" because it wasn't clear to me from the paper whether the neuroanatomical expansion that led to lateralization was necessary to and part of bipedalism, i.e., caused by our locomotion bits taking over other parts of the brain to manage our balance, or whether it was merely coincident with it.

Interesting questions asked and answered, more research needed.

Is this positivism?

My understanding of positivism is, in a nutshell, that its goal is to reduce everything to physics, including social, inter-personal interactions. My read of the article is that Rovelli is focused on the intra-personal, so to that extent it isn't positivism, or is at least a limited, focused positivism. Extending Rovelli's thinking to the inter-personal would be, IMHO, a categorical error: While we may one day be able to fully describe the physics (and electrochemistry, etc.) of everything inside the person, physics is insufficient to describe what happens between people, at least to the extent that what is happening is a result of each person's actions, choices, etc.

I think this where bringing qualia in as a level of abstraction is useful: Everything about us is ultimately operating on our physical hardware, but not everything about us is "just physics", since our "us" (our OS, if you will), makes observations and chooses actions that are determined at least to some extent by the "us", and not just by the physical operations.

At this point, one could bring in Skinner and make everything operational conditioning, or Kahneman for a slightly different take where much of what we observe or consider consciously (the energy-hungry slow system) has been pre-filtered by physical processes that are not available to us (the energy-efficient fast system).

If those lines of thought are correct - and that remains an open question - then we could potentially arrive at a complete positivism wherein everything is determined primarily by our internal physics, though we wouldn't get predictability for the same reason that we cannot solve the three-body-problem analytically or predict the weather accurately for all time or predict with certainty the motions of the planets, etc.: There are too many inter-dependent variables, and modelling will always lag actual behaviour.

I think we are on safe ground saying that intra-body behaviour is all physics, and on safe ground describing some of the physics responsible for what we call thought, e.g., neuropsychological processes, but at some point we need to model things differently to continue to make sense, make progress. We get away from just-physics at higher levels of abstraction, with the challenge being to describe the transitions from one model level to another (corporeal electro-chemistry to reflective thought and action to inter-personal relations to sociology and economy).

Sort of like how we know that everything is quantum mechanics at the appropriate scale, but that QM isn't terribly useful for modelling weather, planetary motion, etc.

Because it leads us down seemingly useful paths that are in fact dead wrong. There is only physics, but at some levels it more convenient to ignore the physics (what is happening in the body) and to describe our experience.

Rovelli is a reductionist, the only logically and physically defensible intellectual position, while dualism is inherently supernatural, invoking phantoms, phenomenology that is purely fictitious.

Not at all. As the fourth paragraph from the end states, we experience qualia. Rovelli is simply saying that qualia are simply physical processes described from a salient perspective, that is, at a level more abstract than the eletrochemical processes that underlie them.

It's a bit like pain: to create better analgesics, we need to work at the lower levels closer to the biology, but a patient describing pain to a doctor works at a higher, descriptive level, as does the doctor. Where is the pain, what are its qualities (dull, sharp, shallow, deep, burning, etc.).

Not at all sure why this is downvoted, since this is essentially a five-word tl;dr of the article.

Ah, our geography. I live in Arnprior, about half an hour west of Ottawa (technically, my house is a couple of clicks from the Ottawa border, but we don't really start counting until the burbs).

Anyway. I live closer to James Bay than DC. Let that sink in a moment (and sink is what you will do if you attempt the drive).

I may be wrong, but on a correctly-configured system, one would have to have root access to act nefariously. Since this is intended to prevent exploitation of vulnerabilities that enable privilege escalation, it feels like a net win.

Clever! I know some will say it's like closing the barn door after the horse left, but having this in place to mitigate future vulnerabilities will be handy.

All organizations above a certain size have a Sarah. This I've learned first and second hand over decades (the second hand was a spouse whose job at one point was finding, interviewing, and collecting the knowledge of her's org's Sarahs).

Very, very few of these organizations have ever known, and fewer still have ever cared, about their Sarahs.

This isn't the end of Sarahs. Sarahs have never had their time or place beyond immediate teams, many of which have used Fight Club rules when it came to their Sarah: Never talk about Sarah, especially not to the boss. Other, non Fight Club rules: When Sarah is away, cover as best you can. Change jobs before Sarah retires. It is not the end, because the time of Sarahs never began.

So I agree with ";dr" comment, but it would apply had this been written by a human, by AI, by a super-intelligent shade of blue, or a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

I love that! I am inspired to create Terry, Tizzie, Topé, Bubba, and Roxy (the three Ts are in my office right now), the last two are no longer with us but for the hole in my heart.

I have no idea what these projects would be, but based on personalities, Roxy would chew through CPU and memory like a beaver (she loved turning large branches into small chunks), Bubba would inspire calm and peacefulness but walk into things (he was one-eyed and a little clumsy), Terry would stick like glue (an eBPF program, maybe?), Tizzie would work well most of the time then destroy your stuff (an AI agent?), and Topé would always be there, but never quite willing to participate (a bad Windows driver?).

I don't the area well enough at all to suggest an alternate name, but maybe Wiley, which is an indirect reference to Dag from Barnyard via Wile E. Coyote?

I guess I am showing my age, but no, the Internet was never "a place", for me and my ilk.

The Internet was just another network, albeit one that worked more reliably (most of the time) and with less configuration effort (most of the time) than UUCP. I didn't "go to the Internet", it was just another path to the computer on my desk, the most convenient way to get USENET. If I "went anywhere", it was deliberate, using Gopher or WAIS to find things then "visiting" a place with ftp. Or telnet.

The only "other place" I had then was the VT220 (? It's been a while) in the basement with the Gandalf (? ditto) modem, eventually replaced with a PC and a Hayes (? ditto bis). I had to physically go somewhere to access work, but then again, I had to physically go somewhere to access work even without remote/home access.

My then-me would say that the author confuses the Internet with "the world wide web as accessed from a personal device".

Perhaps if one was just the right age at just the right time, the Internet Was a Place, but for anyone before and anyone after it was just was and just is.

Congrats on the work, but have you considered another name? Naming is hard and always will be: When I first scanned the headline, my initial thought was "that's an interesting area for the Rocky Linux team to explore". After a moment, "wait, no, that's confusing, it's some other Rocky".

One quibble with the article: the notion that CRLs have to be large. When I was with Entrust our first releases targeted early Windows versions with limited memory, back when most Internet connections and even local networks were slow.

To ensure that RLs would always be manageable in size, we used distribution points (cRL and issuing) and decided at certificate issuance which RL would contain this certificate's serial number if ever it were revoked.

This approach scaled really well and kept RLs manageable.

There were applications that didn’t understand distribution points and needed the One RL to Revoke Them All, so we supported that as well (as an option, IIRC).

there is no other way to resist US military power

I'm struggling with how to articulate the idea that seems to be in so many Canadian heads, regardless of their military experience.

Assume the worst case, that the US invades Canada and that no allies come to assist, for whatever reason.

The best the US can hope for is a pyrrhic victory: while it may well be true that the Canadian military and population cannot hope to resist the US military, anyone thinking there would be anything other than a pyrrhic victory does not understand how, uh, what words to choose, hmm, bloody mindedly petty and vindictive Canadians can be.

There is that old trope about mistaking "polite" for "nice". Canadians are mostly are the former, and are mostly the latter most of the time, and can even be the former while not at all being the latter. But remember too the trope as to why so many of the specific rules of the Geneva Convention, etm., exist.

Canadians don't pick fights, generally, but see fights to the end, always, and almost always no matter what. And it's not a red mist thing: That comes and clears. What is left is cold. Sober. Focused. Are you still here? Are you not retreating fast enough? Do I still have functional limbs/weapons/comms? Carrying on....

We don't stop until it is safe to stop, and by safe I mean we can stand down and not have to stand to again, or until there is no we left.

Now, more tropes:

Longest sniper kill: Canada has the top spot and at least two more of the top five. Those are all recent.

Only force to meet its D-Day objectives: Canada, with fighting as fierce on Juno as elsewhere.

Only western soldier to fire on a Soviet: A Canadian with the group sent to protect Denmark from Soviets who were rolling fast and hard over northern Germany. The RoE were sort of vague on that point, but they were explicit about not withdrawing, about not giving up an inch. Words didn't work, triggers were pulled, a standoff occurred until sufficient forces arrived to convince the Soviets to withdraw to their agreed lines.

Before becoming PM, Lester B. Pearson won the Noble Peace Prize for the idea of UN Peacekeepers, of putting Canadians in harm's way to separate combatants in hot zones. The idea was taken seriously because memories of Canadian performance in WWII and Korea were fresh in mind. "Oh, those guys? Yeah, OK, ceasefire and separation sounds good."

Again, I am not in anyway suggesting that the US would not win in an invasion of Canada, if Canada stood alone. What I am suggesting is that what would be left (of the US, let alone Canada) would make the victory hollow and bitter.

(You do know that the Canadian boycotts that are so impacting tourism and distillers, among others, are not economically motivated, right? So many US talking heads cite tit-for-tat tariff nonsense, and very few miss the point entirely: Canadians mostly didn't give a damn about tariffs, but when "51st state" was mooted, even if as a joke, Canadians stopped buying US stuff. The tariffs could disappear today and many would still push for closer ties with the EU, possibly even membership, for distancing Canada from the US even more, all because we are fiercely independent, and willing to sacrifice a great deal to retain that independence. Canadians are mostly quiet about it, but never mistake silence for acquiescence or consent.)

I've been doing this almost 40 years and have never had to pay for either.

Now, if you don't find gcc and neither of vi (and later vim) or emacs usable, well, let's not go there.

And the tools, they just keep getting better. Now I have both clang and gcc, and so many wayy-cool vim plugins to choose from.

I still pay for good hardware, but thanks to Linus and his ilk, I barely need to do that anymore.

Thank you for forcing me to clean my keyboard. </s>

:->

Site renders great for me, iOS Safari with blockers; text selection works fine.

Yeah, I know, karma hit coming, but the other comments are so counter to my experience (I quite like the page and content) that I could not not comment.

What if they are? Why should people attempting to browse securely be punished?

Looks pretty good, but would love to know this compares to bottom (btm), featurewise. Thanks!

Especially when you drizzle them with balsamic vinegar!

Fascinating. Anecdata, sample size 1. If it works for OP, fantastic.

Definitely does NOT work for me.

My recipe, such as it is:

1. Be gentle with myself every morning. I may wake vaguely human, but consciousness and acuity require coffee, word games, ablutions, and point 2.

2. Dog walking, aka DW, aka Diagnostic Wandering, allows me to breathe fresh air, let my mind wander or perhaps let it focus. Most of the best code I've written in the last 4 years has been DW code. All of the weird bug discoveries have been DW discoveries. Most - and almost all - of my discoveries about how ND I am and how I really work have been DW discoveries.

3. Recognize which brain I have today, and select issues/workload based on that...

4. ...unless I really, really must, MUST, work on something specific, in which case force it, knowing there is a cost.

5. Recover from such costs as quickly as possible, but as gently as possible (cf #1, #2).

6. When off-roading with my very good friend the CTO, do NOT talk about work...

7. ...unless we both agree something needs 30-90s, after which resume #6.

8. Watch football all day Saturday, if possible, preferably Liverpool, but not necessarily. Detach. (If Saturday is impossible, e.g., family obligations, substitute Sunday.)

9. Read in bed every night before turning off the light, regardless of how tired I am. Subject is irrelevant (current bedside stack: LotR (again), two books of category theory, Ulysses). One sentence, one paragraph, one page, or as many as need be, until I start to drift off. If my GF has to collect the book from chest and turn off the light, so much the better! :-> (She's a night owl, there is no cost and there is much joy to her in this.)

10. Endeavour to start the bedtime process between 2300 and 2330 as often as possible - but see #1 re gentleness. DO teeth. EVERY night. REGARDLESS.

11. Nap occasionally. Ah, my 60s.

12. Recognize when #11 is a MUST, not just a SHOULD.

Let the brain cook and stew and bubble and backburn whilst doing other things. As effective as DWs for things that are more "R" than "d".

This comment <s>, maybe?

I guess, then, that one of the big benefits of my daily is that we don't swing wildly between WFH and RTO with whatever trend/fashion/panic/wind/fart is in the zeitgeist/ether/air/media?

With the exceptions of the occasional client meeting that must be onsite, or the occasional conference, and our monthly team lunches, I've been 100% WFH since mid-2020, not pandemic related (I was mostly WFH for since sometime in 2019 (waves vaguely), and it was changing from consultant to senior wage slave that sealed the deal).

Just like the rest of my team. OK, sure, we're small, and OK, sure, perhaps we use the available communication channels more effectively than others seem to, and OK, sure, while some of us are friends, I don't think any of us make the category error of assuming that coworkers are supposed to double as our social life, but seriously, if people are effective working from home, and we are, then let them.

The world started WFH, we changed nothing. The world started RTO, we changed nothing. The world started complaining about gas prices, well, those of us who own trucks and/or off-road did too, but we changed nothing about how we work.

Triple the price of 1Gbps fibre to the home and we might get a bit more upset. </s>

Like I said to a friend, I know just enough category theory to know that I do not understand. Perhaps upon Nth reading.

My guess is that no one ever bothered to define hash(nan), which should, IMHO, be nan.

nan isn't anything. It's an early attempt at None when no/few (common) languages had that concept.

That python allows nan as an index is just so many kinds of buggy.

Interesting article, but it compares apples to a fruit stand: The approach could be improved by comparing Capsicum to using seccomp in the same way.

Sometime ago I wrote a library for a customer that did exactly that: Open a number of resources, e.g., stdin, stdout, stderr, a pipe or two, a socket or two, make the seccomp calls necessary to restrict the use of read/write/etc. to the associated file descriptors, then lock out all other system calls - which includes seccomp-related calls.

Basically, the library took a very Capsicum-like approach of whitelisting specific actions then sealing itself against further changes.

This is a LOT of work, of course, and the available APIs don't make it particularly easy or elegant, but it is definitely doable. I chose this approach because the docker whitelist approach was far too open ended and "uncurated", if you will, for the use-case we were targeting.

In this particular case, I was aided by the fact the library was written to support the very specific use-case of filters running in containers using FIFOs for IPC, logging, and reporting: Every filter saw exactly the same interfaces to the world, so it was relatively easier to lock things down.

Having said that, I wish Linux had a Capsicum-equivalent call, or, even better for the approach I took, a friendlier way to whitelist specific calls.

The actual title of the short uses the word "automate", French for "automaton"; I suspect NPR simply used the more familiar word in their headline for clarity.

Sorry, we don't accept code contributions and direct you to the original libxml2 project.

This has me puzzled to the point of being dumbfounded: If libxml2-ee has fixed many security and other flaws in libxml2, then what's the point of directing people back to a project that is relatively flawed?

Licencing it as AGPL is also interesting, since the original was MIT, though I'm not sure they've worked out all of the kinks, given this example from one of the M4 files:

  # LICENSE
  #
  #   Copyright (c) 2011 Maarten Bosmans <mkbosmans@gmail.com>
  #
  #   Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification, are
  #   permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright notice
  #   and this notice are preserved.  This file is offered as-is, without any
  #   warranty.