cybernautique

I specifically and purposefully ignore anything Microsoft. I'm interested in open computing, which Windows and Microsoft exist to spite. I assume Microsoft does everything in bad faith, and that any technology they deploy is ultimately in service of their walled gardens. I refuse to participate; I won't let myself be walled-in, and I won't give them any credibility.

Windows does exist, but it ought not to.

If it's productive and you like it, then that's great! I stopped using Windows about 7 years ago; I've slowly radicalized myself to the point where I just genuinely hate Windows as a product and often wish toenail cancer upon its engineers.

I'm realizing how detrimental this is to my emotional well-being, but I still genuinely can not imagine what would entice me back to the Microsoft stranglehold. The fact that you even need to run a debloater (that removes most of the user-facing crud), add a package manager, and empathically tell your OS to shut up... I just don't see the point.

It's adversarial.

Why do I want an enemy for an OS? and even if the OS was friendly, Microsoft certainly isn't, and so: why do I want an enemy's snitch for an OS?

Stability is an important thing. The fact that 30 year old scripts still work, and still can be run, is a testament to the staying power of the underlying technology. That staying power generally means some reduction in cognitive load: I can use the same semantics, principles, and idioms on my phone, laptop, and computer.

That's good.

That's powerful. Contrast that with the JavaScript framework du jour: React today, React with new shiny hooks tomorrow; Svelte a week ago and a week from now; while the boss just told you in an email that the meeting an hour from now regards porting everything to Vue. That's the kind of cognitive load that we're thankfully spared by long-lasting technology.

Now consider PowerShell. It is not an open standard. It is not an open technology. Its steward is Microsoft, of "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" fame. It bucks against the long-established norm, so that all the established idioms are useless, while its semantics are just as tedious.

Why, therefore, should I bother putting pilot time into this proprietary flying rug whose engine is more-likely-than-not a cracked bottle of Microsoft semen?

As to whether PowerShell has anything to teach us about shell engineering: meh. It's not as good as Bash at doing Bash-like things and it's not as good as scripting languages at doing scripting things.

EDIT: I figured I'd look to see whether PowerShell is open. Surprisingly, it is! With an MIT license to boot. However, as expected with any Microscum code, it includes telemetry out-of-the-box.

As a matter of principle: I don't like it, I don't trust it, I don't want it. The semantics are ugly and it stinks of Microsoft.

Honestly, if you're going to modify Windows, why not just go Linux? Monkeypatching Windows into a good (useable?) OS seems like more effort for less return than just picking up a distro. The only advantage I've heard people claim for Windows is that "it just works." If it can't even meet your workflow, why bother?

This seems more like a perspectivism, egoism, or absurdism than nihilism. Ultimately, nihilism is the position that even any meaning you create is likewise inherently meaningless. To create your own meaning, and maintain that it is meaningful, is a refutation of nihilism, not its embrace.

What are the use cases and often how do you use it? (reposting to everyone who says they're open to questions)

What are the use cases and often how do you use it? (reposting to everyone who says they're open to questions)

I have a bookmarks folder for small search engines I like. I don't think there's a need for it to be a default.

For context, this isn't from a player; I steadfastly refuse to run google services on any of my devices, so I'm incapable of downloading your game from the Google Play store. I'll keep an eye out for it, should you ever decide to release the .apk or host it on F-Droid!

Your personal story is nothing short of inspiring. A sincere kudos to you and your husband :) Your children are incredibly lucky to have two such productive role models, and I hope they grow up to see computers as not just tools but as friends (as it seems they were to you in childhood)

To me, computing is somewhere between a philosophy and a spirituality. I'm still very novice, but welcome to the rarefied air of technological wizardry! You had a vision, a meaning in your mind, and you manifested that into the devices of strangers. You created something wholly new and thereby opened a port from the rich inner world of bananabat &co. into the reality of our shared experiences. This capability, to me, is nothing short of miraculous. It was your combined passion and effort that seized upon such miracles to create novel spectacles. As I said: nothing short of inspiring!

Best of luck to you and your family as you continue down this journey! I wish all of you well, and who knows? Maybe in some years from now, someone will post a Show HN with their own project, their passion fueled by Slingshot Effect!

Keep rocking!

Another really good point that I just failed to take into account. I've always been amazed at how well Emacs Just Works between its TUI and GUI.

Yeah, fair; I'd read that Clojure runs on the JVM, I just hadn't really put 2 and 2 together on that.

Unfortunately, I was born into a world without FOSS phones yet where phones are mandatory. I've therefore unhappily furnished Google with more money than I'd ever have liked to, did my best to scrub the hardware of their taint, and treat it like an adversary.

Thankfully, for now, VR is not mandatory. If it becomes mandatory in the long dusk of my latter years then I will be content as a grumpy old man humbuggering about the kids with their newfangled record players.

And, yes, I am in the extreme minority. It has a negatively, and severely, impacted my social life (on top of being socially ungraceful, I have relatively far less space to ply my social wares). I'm so thoroughly radicalized that this is merely another price I'm happy to pay.

My actions don't matter to them, and I aspire to a day where their actions have a similar impact to me.

I absolutely respect the technical challenge of the Metaverse, but also: I'm not really interested in it.

I live a fairly tech-minimal lifestyle already. I have my computer, which is largely a tty machine, and my phone. All of my media is either downloaded music files, pirated lectures, or physical books.

I think of VR/AR, the Metaverse, etc. ... and it fills me with a sort of vertigo. I'm desperately in love with my physical existence, as such. I very much abhor any attempt to make computers _more_ present in my life.

I'm happy to wait 30+ years for a Metaverse that doesn't repulse me. If I were to die without ever having worn a VR headset, I'd be likewise happy.

I'm much more interested in finding ways to meaningfully, socially, connect via my terminal. I've been happy with IRC for the past 5 years and see no reason why I won't be happy in the future.

EDIT: thanks to mosh and termux, my phone is also largely a tty machine.

I wouldn't use a non-FOSS platform or experience for non-corporate reasons. My employer wants me to use a particular hardware? Fine, but I'm not using my money for it, I won't like it, and I'll break it every chance I get.

The idea that I will work and play in the metaverse is forever and eternally blocked by which particular group of assholes is trying to wrangle me. If it's a group that allows me the same access they have, which enable me to wrangle the tech and myself? I'll pay triple the premium, just to stick it to Zuck and other proprietary scum.

Then much of science is irrational; what about those times where it's understood that a belief is false, but it also holds the most explanative power of all other considered beliefs?

And, again, the notion that something is 'clearly false' at some point presupposes perfect information about the context within which the belief is held.

That's not irrational in the sense of there lacking inherent reasoning or rationalization, it's just a poor deduction. If you mean that rational agents are incapable of flawed reasoning, then I agree that humans are somewhat irrational (and further that no human could ever be rational).

I suppose my biggest gripe is this: how do you construct a notion of rationality which allows for some people to be perfectly rational sometimes, imperfectly rational at other times, and others to be rational never, while allowing for real flaws in reasoning and the absence of perfect information? (this is, to me, a rough sketch of some necessary/sufficient conditions)

Irrational in what sense? I can, indeed, claim that NFTs have value to even a purely rational actor, if I'm allowed to ascribe self-determination to that actor.

Particularly, I think it's important to delineate whether 'rationality' allows for arbitrary actions, decisions, and desires. I do include these qualities in my notion of rationality, so long as the actor can rationalize the phenomena to themselves (even if this rationalization is based on nothing more than their ability to do so).

Given this notion of value and rationality, yes: I can very easily allow for NFTs ('useless' though they are) having value.

Do you mean 'rational' in terms of 'every action or desire is reducible to some unknown deductive logic'? In which case, I agree that everyone is somewhat irrational and furthermore that nobody could ever be rational. 'Rational' in the game theory sense? In which case, I see no reason to say that everyone is irrational instead of allowing for the mathematical notion imperfectly capturing reality.

Economics is not a philosophically-laden exercise.

Economics defines value as that which a rational agent is willing to make a sacrifice for, and the degree to which something is valued by that actor is exactly measured by what they're willing to sacrifice.

Why is this not valuable? Or, rather, what might a better definition entail? A precise formulation isn't required, I'd be happy to see a rough sketch of necessary and/or sufficient conditions.

Tons of modern systems built from and on top of legacy. Modern != !legacy. I can also access a lot of legacy systems through modern browsers.

Absolutely! Are you likewise a fan?

I highly recommend reading it as a comedy, in the vein of inherently absurd shitposts. Stirner's bragadocio really underscores the absurdity of self-interest vis-a-vis the individual's standing with reality.

I very much agree with your position! I came to a similar view, which I only acknowledged in my explicit deconstruction of my beliefs. It's taken me ages to reconverge; Camus, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Stirner finally gave me the confidence to declare: "fuck it, I am my impact, and I'm proud of what I do right."

It's really the most life-affirming philosophy I've found, it helps me walk the fine balance of empathy (tending to self-destruction) and self-interest (tending to dread isolationism, nihilism).

I'd love to keep a dialog as you read Stirner! Let me know if you're interested, I'll give you a line to reach me at :D

Keep in mind, rationalism is about "this, therefore that;" the root of rationalism is ratio, as in the multiplicity of proportions which lie between integers. Rationalist thought is "I have these guarantees, what does that mean for this context?" Try inverting it: "I want these contexts, what guarantees allow for their manifestation?"

It's also important to remember that we are animals of habit and change. Valuing collaboration is a habit; sports are a great way to build and exercise it. I'm personally very fond of rowing. There's little else that matches it for enforcing collaboration.

Last, have you ever had an interest in psychedelics? LSD lit a fuse of empathy in my skull, and a lot of this has developed naturally (but not easily nor simply) from my relationship with the absurd.

Have you read Max Stirner? This is one of the most compelling motivations of egoism I've seen, and the phraseology converges almost directly with Stirner's "The Ego And Its Own."

I recommend "Tuesdays With Morrie" for a good why book.

Either you value collaboration and the opinions of others, or you don't; there's not much that you can do to reason yourself into or out of it, since it's not really a rational position.

I find dialetheism[0] to be a fulfilling model of mental gymnastics for this 'humbling' you refer to.

[0] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dialetheism/

I highly recommend downloading their tutorial .zip folder here: www.bayfronttechnologies.com/mc_tutorial.zip

I also highly recommend visiting the workshop here: http://www.bayfronttechnologies.com/mc_workshop.html

Very fun to play with!

I'm an outsider myself. I'm currently taking the tact of studying Domain Theory concurrent to my introduction to Category Theory, while reading up on recursion.

I've replied from a different email address. Please check your spam/junk folder!

I've replied from a different email address. Please check your spam/junk folder!

(TL;DR: learn to notice aesthetic; learn to acquire perspective; get out of your head.)

What's worked for me:

0. General advice

- No negative self-talk!

Find more constructive ways to communicate your ideas _even to yourself_. "I wish I could communicate my ideas better" -> "Here's an idea I felt I did not communicate well, this time, in this context. Why do I feel this way? How could I have presented myself better? (Where can I gain competence?)"

- Write and rubber ducky!

Writing and rubber ducking are methods for practicing the linguistic aspects of communication. While verbalizing to the duck, play with the timbre, cadence, tone, etc., of your voice. Record yourself and listen to it. Have problems finding material to verbalize? Pick a poem. Memorize it. Recite it. This is, in my opinion, the calisthenics of social practice.

- The person with the most developed opinion of you- is you!

"He who despises himself will still respect his skills as a despiser." ~ Nietzsche, "Beyond Good And Evil" (paraphrased, can't be arsed to cite it just now)

The Spotlight Effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotlight_effect

_You_ might notice every failure of your communique, but then again: you have an ideal for your communique. A goal, a reason, a vision of how it ought to manifest. To everyone else, however, it's an utterance like any other. The ultimate measure of your effectiveness isn't how closely you manifest your idea, but how much of an impact (and of what kind) it has on the audience.

=== 1. Practice, practice, practice. ===

It's a skill, like any other; and like any other, you succeed to the level and quality of your training. If you want to "get better at talking to people," then go talk to people; if you want to "get better at talking to people, in a book club, with a small number of friends" then do that!

How to do the first (i.e., practice speaking to people)? Communication is both observational and "applicative," in that you apply yourself in the actual doing. This suggests a good path in itself: practice your observations and also practice the doing.

How to observe strangers? (in a socially-conscious way?) The easiest way is to be conscientious of your interactions. I got started by making mental notes, pushing myself to take note of the most simple and basic details. "Oh, her nails are purple;" "It's midday and he's wearing shorts;" "He has a GameStop tag on his keyring." The simpler you can break down a situation, the more data you have for a fuller analysis.

Of course, simply having data does not an analysis make. Even with a habit of conscientiousness, I found myself struggling to derive actionable insights. Why? Likely because I was leaning too heavily on poor tools to make my analyses. This was during a phase in my life where I was very concerned with reducing as much as I could to logical and rational principles, including my interactions with others. "Assuming that people's statements reflect their internal state, that their internal state is logically consistent, and further assuming that some particular data X is included in their analysis, I can reasonably conclude that (by their statement) they must internally position themselves thusly with regards to X." This is a good general example of my internal dialogue during this period; it was helpful in some ways, fatal in many others. I now believe that there is no decision funnel you can induce, explicitly or otherwise, which makes this line of thinking safe.

I've since abandoned this project of rationalizing, because a key assumption I made was that every healthy, moral, person must have a logically consistent internal state. Indeed, I considered logical consistency to be a prerequisite for any kind of morality. I now believe this foolish; whereas I previously considered Man to be the rational animal, I'm now of the opinion that Man is much closer to the aesthetic animal.

This was a key insight for me. It has directly led to the most socially productive period of my life (which I'm thankfully still enjoying).

What does 'the aesthetic animal' entail? That people are, at base, motivated by their sensibilities. I take the most basic statement of logic to be equation: "this is that;" more specifically- "this is this." I believe the most basic statement of aesthetic is: "this pleases some sensibility I have."

People reveal their sensibilities- their aesthetic- with their genuine smiles, their sincere fashions, their honest jokes. Take note of these; my analytical habit these days is to capture as much of someone's aesthetic as I can. Again, it starts with conscious conscientiousness and observation.

=== 2. Perspective, perspective, perspective ===

You are distinct from every other person. I like to keep myself in perspective with counting the number of "distinction points" by which I differ from another. My love for the Beatles is one such point; that I know Sgt. Peppers' Lonely Hearts Club Band by heart, but none of their other albums, is another. That I program, when and how I started, what I'm doing now (with which languages)- all of these, too, and even the breakfast I had.

Don't try to store all this state at all times; just develop a habit and method of counting, and apply it where appropriate. Of course, the method, the habit, the application, understanding in which contexts it's appropriate: all of these are skills, too!

This is how I attempt to understand the differences between my perspective and others. From there, I spend a lot of my downtime acquiring alternate perspectives. I find Nietzsche ("Beyond Good And Evil") helpful to this end. (NOTE: I explicitly disavow and condemn Nietzsche's misogyny.) "Tuesdays With Morrie" is indispensable, in my opinion; specifically, Morrie's advice to embrace emotions. All of them.

Allow yourself to be embroiled in your feelings, until it finds its natural conclusion. Then practice conjuring your emotions, and be conscientious with your emotions. Observe their onsets and evolutions- _not_ to rationalize them, but to explore your own sensibilities and aesthetic.

Once you've made a habit of these observations and conjurations, seek out stimuli that alter your perspective, and then practice your perspective. Imagine how your relation to that stimuli might change if you were elsewise distinct. Conjure the emotions that you feel inherent to that you-but-else, and explore them as your own.

I treat it like a game; to these ends, the methods of acting are instructive.

This helps me explore a wider, but still woefully limited, aesthetic space. That, in turn, helps my conscientiousness of aesthetic (of both mine and others). Further, with my method of distinction, it gives me a much richer insight into how I perceive the aesthetics of others.

=== 3. Accept your mistakes, acknowledge your success ===

The possibility of failure is a precondition of any endeavor. Unfortunately, social failures can be particularly impactful to certain dispositions. Social failure can mean embarrassment, self-doubt, stigmatization, and (perhaps worst of all) emotional fallout in others.

An anecdote: I decided, for a period, to exercise my sense of humor. I visited a male cousin of mine, shortly after he had taken a new wife. His lot in life had been unhappy til then, filled with struggles and poverty. My visit was on the heels of his release from a half-year prison sentence. Imagine my happy surprise when I approached his address, to find a rather generous estate! Great land, a beautiful home, healthy children... I said to them- he and his wife- "What great success! But, I have to ask: who died and left you this land?"

She meekly replied, "My ex-husband."

It took me a while to feel comfortable making jokes. I was absolutely mortified for months thereafter. The mortification is appropriate! But it's not reasonable, nor healthy, to avoid an entire category of expression over a mistake- even such a horrid mistake as that. Perhaps _especially_ even for such a mistake. Accept it, take the L, and be more conservative in those expressions for a time thereafter: but don't define yourself by your missteps.

Likewise, acknowledge tho successes you have. Ultimately, only you can define what success looks like, and your successes must be operationalized to the context- but cherish these memories. Meditate upon them. Try to embrace the graces that led to it, on your end and the audiences'; yet, at the same time, refute the desire to embody these graces. Do not define yourself by your successes, either.

Ultimately: get out of your head and learn to love the strangeness of your fellow humans :) we are all a unique vintage, some more delicious than others (and a few that spoiled on the vine) yet all worthy of at least one honest snifter.

=== Recommended Materials ===

Nietzsche (specifically, "Beyond Good and Evil" [again, I categorically disavow his misogyny.]) "Tuesdays With Morrie," Mitch Albom

=== The Extremely Unorthodox ===

I recommend psychedelics.

Talk to your doctor, your therapist, your spiritual mentor, the neighbors' dog- whomever can help ease your mind. If you have any doubts, don't do it! And, of course, responsibly indulge where legal and when you are safe.

I also recommend "escorts," of any gender.

Not for the sex, but because escorts are by-and-large social professionals. Perhaps the _most_ social professional. They are experts of aesthetic, masters of perspective. Pay their fees, reassure them that they need not disrobe, and just go off. Ask all those little questions that you usually dare not vocalize. They've experienced stranger. It helps you exercise failure modes in a significantly safer space. "Adult entertainers" and bartenders are also choice for this.

Agreed. Seems like a conflict of interest. I'd very much appreciate any Googler outright stating as such at even the slightest mention of their employer, and doubly so when recommend Google products.

It would be hypocritical of me to not do as I ask of others, so for the record: I'm a self-employed programming consultant.