bumbada

It depends on where you are raised.

I need to make deals in cities like New York, or London or Paris, Frankfurt, or Madrid.

At buildings, specially hotels in those cities there is a constant hum, low level noise all the time that is specially present when you need to sleep.

People that are raised in cities are hearing this sound all the time. I was raised outside them so for me this sound is alien but for those people it means "home".

It was incredible being in Paris or Madrid center with COVID and hearing birds as background instead of road sounds.

I need birds or sea waves or tree leaves sounds in order to work and focus. Cars or air blowers sounds are really distracting for me.

That is because it is a little secret. It is a secret hidden in the open.

We program in C#, we program in swift, C and C++, but we continue using so much Lisp as I did 20 years ago or way more.

With Lisp you don't need to write only Lisp, you can write swift or any other language in Lisp, as we do.

When people ask what programming languages we use, even competitors, we just tell them. They don't listen.

They just can't really understand. They probably believe we use Lisp because we depend on obsolete technology because they are under the influence. The influence of snake oil salesman that want to sell them their new shiny language.

For them anything new is shiny and old means dusty because things degrade over time, but computer languages do not.

If competitors can't "get it", much better for us. They probably believe that we try to deceive them and that in reality we are using this new language-paradigm of the week that solves all the problems. Let them.

Lisp guys have nothing to sell you but probably the software they create. And if they have a powerful tool, they are not that interested on you knowing their secret.

Radar data is also an assumption, way weaker than cameras.

Cars radar sensors are not the F22 ones, they are very simple, limited and it is not the sky in which metallic objects are foreign and there is empty space everywhere.

The world on earth surface is full of metallic objects with very complex shapes and reflections everywhere(and you have military safety standards, my uncle got cancer(and died) after working with military radars as an engineer and working so close to them). My uncle could not prove the connection but if thousands of people start getting cancer after those devices are common it will be much easier to prove.

With cameras you have millions of points array for cheap that lets you differentiate things much better than simple radars do.

Imagine that you integrate all the colors that go in a camera to a single color. That is what you have with radar sensors.

Luxury and communism are opposites.

Compatible words with communism are miserable, corrupt, genocidal or tyrannical. You can pick whatever you want.

Not really. The main reason Vienna have rental prices below other European capitals is because it was one of the few cities that actually lost a significant part of its population multiple times. It was the capital of a big empire that was destroyed and they incorporated to a different Empire that also was destroyed.

Lots of people left to other cities that were not as bureaucratic looking for opportunities an oversized capital without Empire could not sustain.

BTW, It was not pretty. Lots of families that used to live in Vienna now live in Israel for a reason.

You could say the same thing about Detroit in the US.

Never. I am from Spain, probably the most envious country in the world.

I never talked about money when I was starting my career(and earning way less than my peers, friends and family) and do not talk about it now that I make much more than them.

In the US people brag all the time with money. People value other people more because they make money and they value you less if you don't make money. People working in the private sector earn much more that people in the public space.

In Spain it is the opposite. Spain today is a socialist State in which public servants earn in average more than 35% than people in the private sector. Everybody wants to be public servant because it is "safe", even when the State is bankrupted and supported by EU deficit that will end sooner than later.

In places like Africa, South America or South Asia talking about the money you have is just dangerous. One of my family members had a cocaine bag planted in her luggage in Thailand by the taxi driver. She noticed and trew that away but the police man in the airport knew exactly the specific place where the bag was and searched for it again and again.

You better be careful because people like your kids used to the West can really be very stupid in those countries, because they are used to things like a Police system that is not corrupt.

I have traveled to many places of the world on my own alone wearing causal clothes and not spending much money that would have been very dangerous if they knew the money that I had in the bank.

We use those tools for industrial prototyping because we can program those in things like python.

We use it for creating as crappy designs as fast as possible, not getting designers to premature optimization.

For serious design no, we use expensive commercial software for that, once it is clear what the solution is.

For exploring lots of different spaces cheap 3d printer, cheap CNC milling machines and laser cutters are amazing.

We restrict access to serious software for early prototyping because people will try things like super complex organic shapes that require supports or special milling machines instead of machines that cost 100 less money.

That makes time to market so long and a design a competitor could squash the price when he uses cheap alternatives for manufacturing.

People in America were not stupid, there were not repetition guns yet, like Repeating rifle or early machine guns.

The biggest significant factor for Spanish people was getting the support of the local population. It was not foreign powers against local powers. But local powers against local powers.

And that was because local empires were terrible with the subdued tribes. There was human sacrifices with subdued tribes and they were slaves. Under Spanish rule those who supported the Spaniards were soon considered Spanish citizens, a huge improvement.

And Rome usually worked the other way around. Rome did outnumber everybody and squashed any opposition. First they did because mandatory Conscription ("the draft")in the army, an army of peasants that was way more numerous than anybody else and a population that will replace casualties much faster than anybody else.

The Army of peasants did fight against elite warriors that were much better trained and equipped but were way less numerous, for example against the Macedonian Army,and they won.

Finally, after growing and organizing themselves much more, Rome will use infrastructure that only they had like the Mediterranean sea and specially roads to move massive amounts of soldiers very fast from one part of the Empire to another.

This was the equivalent of the train that will make it possible for Germany, Russia or the US moving so much people to the war front fast.

It was the Romans those who did outnumber everybody else concentrating the army at one point, defeating the enemy and moving the Army to another place.

And it was Julius Caesar who wrote "divide et impera" because that was the Roman way of doing things, dividing their enemies, and fighting them isolated with a much bigger army.

are we to consider them a continuation of the Roman civilization?

Yes, because being Roman had nothing to do with ethnicity. Even people from Italy were not Romans at first. The Latins people allies of Romans(socii) fought wars to be recognized as fully Romans and only after winning some battles they got it.

In Jesus time only 10% of the population had Roman citizenship, like St Paul, but after some centuries everyone had it.

Something similar happened in the US, black people were certainly not fully Americans or even people at first, they were slaves, let alone native Americans, devoid of any right.

The survivors that were not exterminated(like native Americans) fought for their rights and eventually they got it, after having lots of their houses burned,their women raped and their men murdered. They were sent to World wars in the worst conditions at the most risky positions.

Rome was a way of living, way beyond ethnicity. You only understand it when you travel to places without this heritage, like China or Afghanistan.

When I traveled to China I was surprised to live in a place with no rule of law for example. The Rule is whatever the CCP leaders want today. I took so many things from the West for granted.

This is the reason Weather reports and forecast are so important for people on boats.

Most people living in boats actually live on ports and don't get very far from the coast most of the time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party

All people in China mainland is taught that Taiwan is part of China and it is so ingrained on them that it is impossible to discuss this with them.

And now that things are getting sour in China the CCP always uses the external enemy card to redirect the anger against others and not become beheaded themselves.

It was never my thing, but it is a masterpiece like Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 or Hitchcock films.

It was the first real 3d world game and went to innovate in so many things that we take for granted today.

In an open world the number of possibilities and combinations grow enormously. They had to solve so many problems for the first time.

Games like Crash Bandicoot are much more constrained and simple.

Other companies(SEGA) tried to create their own and failed.

Today it is trivial to make such a world with the great tools that we have, but Mario 64 was the first to prove what was possible, it was inspiration for younger developers.

The Naughty Dog guys actually believed that such a game was impossible to make until they saw it.

This is like telling a poor person: Just earn a million dollars!

Then you can try with an smoker: Just don't smoke!

Finally you can tell an obese person to loose weight.

They are such high level statements that it is completely useless advice without implementation details.

Neither me or anyone on my team write significant bugs. We spend a very small part of our time dealing with bugs. But for this lots of knowledge, discipline and practice is needed.

You can fill several books just with that knowledge alone.

Rereading your code for me is completely useless. When I was a kid I reread code for days without finding the bug because I just make the same (wrong and most of the time subconscious) assumption over and over again. Then I learn better strategies.

A simple tool that checks for wrong assumptions finds those bugs in seconds.

You can log your bugs so you identify recurring patterns and can correct those patterns.

With just a team of three, I wrote a tool that gave an error for any "one line if" without parenthesis after fixing the nth time the recurring bug: People will write a one liner if without parenthesis and then a year from that will add an additional line to the if without adding a parenthesis because they were just so focused in the new problem they just could not see anything wrong while rereading the indented line.

We even use statistical Bayesian analysis of code that automatically highlights any code that goes against the style of her author. In that code she is not experienced and could make the wrong assumptions so must be careful.

Asserts everywhere in developer code that are automatically eliminated in production code(but remain in developer). We assert everything because bugs just pop up from the asserts again in seconds.

Also incremental tests between revisions is extremely useful. Your test work flawlessly in last revision, you changed 20 lines. It doesn't work, the error is in those lines. The smaller the increment, the easiest to find the problem.

Those things are obvious for experienced programmers, but for other people could be magic and sorcery, because there are many details needed to make it work.

I don't believe you understand the concept of "tenuous".

I have worked in China, China is a totalitarian communist State. There are no tenuous connections between the CCP and Chinese companies, companies ARE the CCP.

For example if you go around China you will see children with a red badge around the neck. This badge represents that the kid is a good student and the kid is forced to wear it.

In China the best students automatically enter the CCP, there is a spy apparatus that controls them once people travel abroad from friends and relatives. If they do something abroad against the CCP they take retaliation against their families.

If you want to create a company in China, you must enter the CCP. How tenuous is that?

People that have not lived there just can't understand what totalitarian means, there is no rule of Law and not free press. The "dictator for life" Xi Jinping can kill anyone in China with no consequences, and he regularly kills competitors or threats to his power.

Having said that, people in charge in the US or the financial elite would love the world becoming their own totalitarian regime, just like China but on the entire world. They lobby for that every day.

Those guys really love power, because they have power, they want more, they want it all like the song says.

It is really nothing new. Just like the Romans wanted to conquer Cartage to own the entire world. Philip II of Spain wanted the same thing conquering Britain, later it was Napoleon, and then Hitler and Stalin.

Now it is the US who would love to conquer China and Russia if they could. Also China would love to expand by force if they could.

The only reason they don't is because nuclear weapons.

The price of liberty for normal people is eternal vigilance.

I believe that while there is some inner truth in the article, that you could push harder and go farther than you could ever believe, there must be a big warning sign too.

If you push yourself hard, then you should also rest hard. You can burn yourself, you can destroy your immune system with stress and die from cancer in your 30s.

I know because I have worked the hardest a person can and gotten nowhere while watching other people succeed with little effort and have learn a lot from those guys.

Then I became much more successful doing much less effort.

I have seen people literarily kill themselves through work and getting miserable. Don't do that.

You must enjoy your wealth while you create it. Enjoy your journey, enjoy the process and things become easier.

Learn basic physics, learn productivity. The more output with the smaller effort, the bigger the efficiency. Master efficiency. Learn Pareto' principle. Learn habit formation so things become automatic and easy. Learn psychology so you understand people.

Learn your limits, pick the battles you could win and win big. Do NOT do work that brings you little while requiring significant effort.

If you work too much in the wrong things you will be miserable anyway.

It does not surprise me at all.

People did die very easily from infections, the people that survived were usually really strong.

E.g My grandpa never caught a cold, he went to his 90s basically never getting ill. His immune system was so strong.

I go to rural areas in Europe where 80 somethings climb the mountain faster than the city kids in their 20s.

Some kids from the city have really no balance or physical skills at all, like they could not step over a stone without falling down.

I believe that Doctorow is missing the most important issue here.

The elephant in the room is the privatization of your social space and that Facebook is a private spy agency. That is what makes FB extremely dangerous.

The fact that FB is private, efficient and full of technically brilliant people is not good for the rest of society, because the society can not imagine what those brilliant guys could do with their data.

For example, I go to a party with friends. I don't have facebook, but one of my friends have it. He takes a picture of the group and posts it on FB.

Now the fact that I went to the party, the place of the party, the time, the people that went to the party, the private opinions of some friends about other friends, girl-boyfriends or lovers(if they used FB channels like wassap to communicate) has been recorded for the rest of my life and can be accessed by American spy agencies like the NSA.

Society expects FB will forget because they as humans do forget, but machines never forget.

People talk about a crush on someone else with a friend and expects nobody listening(on wassap), but a bug is always on, recording everything they write or say.

FB is like Stasi, only way more efficient and that applies to the entire world population instead of just one country.

And they are constantly pushing the boundaries of privacy like using "smart glasses" so espionage is full in your life.

And they are constantly improving their AI techniques so even when they could technically not do something today does not mean they could not do in five years with the data that they already collected about you.

It is a complex issue. Usually gas is extracted as a byproduct of coal or even oil. No coal being extracted, no gas. No supply, big demand. Prices go up.

Also gas tankers have waited for years on the sea without entering port because of COVID. Lots of companies have gone under and the supply has been disrupted.

It takes months for a gas tanker to move and global transport right now is chaos.

Why are you leaving out the context that the principal defense alliance is with America specifically in defense against Russia?

Specifically against the Soviet Union, a communistic totalitarian regime that does not exist anymore.

Specifically it never included Ukraine as member, and specifically the US promised that NATO will never expand to more than the original members.

The only countries in Europe that are against the NS2 are those that have already pipelines or interests and are economically harmed by more competence.

Claiming that the US is acting purely in self serving motives is wildly disingenuous.

Claiming that the US is acting purely in self serving motives is telling the truth. The US can mind its own business.

Different environments have different priorities. And in some we really don't know what the priorities are and we need to discover them.

Aviation is a mature technology in which almost anything is already known and we could fly above the clouds where atmosphere is stable. Those conditions were not met for a long time in Aviation History.

In many environments the best thing you could do is communicate, like in a natural disaster like Tsunami, volcanic activity, Tornadoes. The sooner you can communicate and the better you can predict what will happen, the less damage.

One of the best things I learned from my mentor in company building is that the best working companies are boring, because they could plan ahead(navigate) and avoid (most)emergencies.

Some people just love emergencies because they make you feel alive, and if they don't have them on their lives they will just create them, because they need all the drama and rushing and adrenaline of being at the edge all the time.

I prefer jumping of bridges with parachutes or diving 100 meters and leaving my company boring.

Does anyone feel it is a little strange to have a government entity mandating a physical interconnect?

I believe governments mandating interactivity standards is one of the main reason of its existence.

Before we had standards, like ISO on screws and so on mandated by governments, it was chaos.

But on a phone it acts as a data connection as well.

Precisely, the data communication protocol should be open for anyone being able to interface with those devices without having to pay extortion rates for anything connected to a phone.

The fact that Apple demands 30% of my income if I create a keyboard for a phone because they control the interface is outrageous.

I carry a battery powered projector for this reason for talking with customers, providers or partners. I use standard airport suitcases for that.

It just makes no sense spending lots of time trying to adapt to obsolete infrastructure for every person you visit. If necessary I even have a blackboard and color chalks in my car and get away with them.

When I go to the meeting room, if I don't need to use my projector, great, but I will never use VGA, too much hassle.

It happens, only the probability of hitting someone-something human is almost nothing.

Years ago,while I was teaching the starts to kids on the mountain at night one of them asked for a bright star on the sky. We looked at the star and it became bigger until it was a big ball of fire so bright that we had to look away.

For two or three seconds, it became as bright as in daylight, but shadow moving ultrafast.

Then nothing,it became dark again. No sound, no nothing.

Nobody talked about that in the news. Most people were sleep. It must be normal.

The nest must be near. Instead of torturing the birds every single day because you want your coffee(or you just enjoy torturing birds) you can change your reception point 20 meters or so and probably the attacks will stop.

I have done speleology on things like old mines and had attacks from small birds to big ones like vultures and eagles that make their nest on the mine. I have marks on my helmet from that.

It is very interesting how small birds will pretend to have a broken leg or wing just to divert your attention from the nest.

I also have seen eagles attack friends' macaws in the open space or a group of magpies attacking an enormous eagle.

The animal world is not as peaceful as some people believe.

While I understand this man's position, I also understand his opponents'.

If something has become crystal clear with COVID is that there are secondary effects or unintended consequences coming from biological experimentation that could affect our life greatly.

In the same way as Wuhan's lab relationship with bats and COVID, there is a relationship between a laboratory that was experimenting with chimpanzees and viruses 30 kms near the origin of AIDS.

Playing at home could pose existential risk to society at large. You will have the best of intentions,like probably the Wuhan people had,but the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

In Spain the socialists tried to copy the Scandinavian model of tax information.

Very soon they realized terrorist groups like ETA or GRAPO used that information in order to extort, kidnap or kill family members of those that had high income in order to finance itself. Having access to that meant the ability to calculate the "revolutionary tax" for every entity with extreme precision.

So it was short lived, but on the Basque country they continued having access to that information because the political party that represented the terrorists had access to it.

Today travelling to places like Thailand or Mexico is extremely dangerous if they know you have money. They can kidnap your taxi driver, or put cocaine bags on you luggage.

I personally believe what I earn is nobody business but me and my family.

People have strong opinions about something they have never experienced, like socialism and communism. They really love those systems from outside, the grass is always greener on the other side.

That is what happens with electric cars, they are maintenance free, for most people.

That was the main reason car dealers did not want to touch an electric car, they make more than half of their income from the repair shop, and they know with electric cars that business is mostly gone.

New business will be created, though. Changing the batteries, balancing them when dead, putting a new technology when batteries improve,or improving the driving assistant will be necessary.

Don't drink the Kool Aid.

We have been doing multiplatform development for a long time. It is in our company's interest not to depend on a single provider(like Apple, MS or Google) for anything.

It is also in those single provider interests to make you depend on them as much as they can, because every company wants to become a monopoly. If you can not change provider overnight, they have a virtual monopoly over you.

E.g MS spent literarily billions in order to make game developers to develop exclusively for Windows using technologies like DirectX and when people started using graphic cards for everything, like CAD, CAE, crypto, Microsoft(and Nvidia as her partner) benefited immensely from their virtual monopoly.

Technologies like objective C, C sharp, Azure or swift are designed so you can not escape the company platform. So easy to get in, so hard to move your code to other platforms once you have been programming for years on them.

Unless you spend as many Billions as Microsoft or Apple or Google has spent in alternative platforms, those alternative platforms will have significant caveats.

What we do is compromise, like with so many things in engineering. We use Linux, we use web technologies, but we also create native programs in Macs and Windows and tablets(Including Android NDK) because there is no way around it. You must use native for things that must be efficient and are extremely demanding, or some times it is just way easier. Most of our code, like 90-98% is portable libraries that we could use in every platform, but that 2% to 10% must be done native.

One of the great things of our approach is that we are not opinionated. We generate automatically code for different platforms, or different OS and we could just compare without prejudices. If tomorrow the Web backbend were as good as native we would shift our focus on that platform. But it is not today, very far from it.

If the only thing that you do is using programs like text editors that were available in the 90s, then sure, you can use electron for everything, spending gigabytes of memory for opening a single file.

But if you don't you are better served if you remember that it is going to be a constant fight. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Companies are never going to stop trying to lock you in, and you should never stop wanting more freedom.

Tunnels are one of the most important things you could build on any planet or satellite like the moon.

Remember there is no atmosphere nor magnetic fields on other planets to protect you from cosmic rays, so a good solution is make people live underground.

Some time ago a teacher offered me to make my Master thesis on that(I did not take it) because there were people already working on this problem.

BTW, places like the moon are very interesting. Because there is no fluid erosion every single grain of sand is extremely abrasive.

As precise as you are willing to pay, usually micron resolution is the limit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dsrLD52Mv0

This is a DIY EDM(Electrical discharge machine). Proffesional machines are much better (and more expensive too).

What is good about EDM is that it doesn't care about the hardness of the material you work with , only about its conductivity. You can shape diamond or the strongest steel without problems.