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mybrid

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Against /tmp 2 years ago

I think if one is going to post something like this one should post statistics on security breaches of the risk in question.

How many security breaches have there actually been because of /tmp?

I grew up reading Tolkein and then playing D&D. It seemed to me along with everyone in our playing sphere that D&D was set in Middle Earth, not Medival Times. It wasn't long after the original release when the Gods & Demigods manual was released to help clerics have someone specifically to worship. I never ever thought this game was in any way trying to model reality. Then, of course, you have the various astral and god planes of existence. The only "setting" that makes sense to me for D&D is bringing Middle Earth and myths into a game setting.

I think it will be a niche. Frameworks will be updated to AI Frameworks where AI has known patterns to plug and play with.

Given the way capitalism works there will be a market for AI software. However, the cloud server provides have created Frankenstein patchworks of technologies in order to deploy the stuff on the cloud. DevOps will still very much be a thing.

To whit, Wordpress is about to get a whole lot more functional.

I don't have a problem with the article. I do have a problem with the "every programmer". Not every programmer writes sophisticated algorithms. In fact, in my experience working on web sites most programmers are front end developers coding web sites or back end developers shuffling data around. The most sophisticated algorithm they need is a for loop. Occasionally one needs and algorithm developer to work on scale out.

Next time try, "challenging algorithms and data structures every algorithm programmer should try."

I've been using Emacs the way most people use Notepad++, just for quick text edits. Been doing that since the 1990s. The other thing I use Emacs for is the regular expression modes for search and replace. Unlike Notepad++ Emacs is available on most systems.

The on thing I would caution is Emacs creates backup files that can clutter. I find it is worth creating a dedicated back up folder. This does require configuration and there are tutorials on Youtube for this. I'd say about once or twice per year the backup files on every save have saved my bacon.

Finally, I prefer Emacs key binds to vi modes but that's just personal taste.

There is no language ether. Dictionary words such as folder originally applying to paper was a metaphor that realized widespread usage and eventually made it into dictionary for computer directories. Libsoftiktok was engaged in public shaming of LGBT people. That's not doxxing per se but shaming. Using public records is not doxxing. Doxxing is exposing public records with the intent to excite harm. Investigative journalism is defined as exposing things hidden that some people would rather keep hidden. Its not doxxing though because of the power dynamic difference, those being exposed are typically the rich and powerful. These people now whine about cancel culture. Intent is key. Doxxing is done with an intent and expectation of harm, like swatting. Usually the person being doxxed is not powerful but helpless. Alex Jones doxxed Sandy Hook families and they received death threats and had to move. Jones just didn't reveal otherwise public information, he whipped up animosity against those families using an online mob. Doxxing requires more than just exposing someone's personal public info. It also is done with an expectation to do bodily harm in an online mob environment. Libsoftiktok was exposing public information in an online mob fervently anti LGBT. Which comes closer to the spirit of doxing than Investigative journalism done on Libsoftiktok. But at the end of the day, words aren't owned by anyone and usage is always evolving. Doxxing is slang at best. Slang is just new words used colloquially and very loose in meaning. Get over it. At the end of the day the concern is intent to do harm. Clearly Libsoftiktok purposeful shaming speaks to intent. Reap what you sow. Live by exposing others, be prepared to be exposed

YMMV. What I learned from experience that I already knew from education is that absolute power corrupts absolutely. There is a real tension when picking a graduate school. Do you go with the topic of interest and a tyrant? Or do you pick an amenable advisor that's in a different research field? I guess one can get lucky and find both but that wasn't an option the year I applied. The thing about graduate schools and research domains is that there a typically only a handful of choices if one is lucky. The other thing I learned is graduate schools never admit absolute power corrupts absolutely and when one points that out one is immediately ostracized. Go along to get along should be a sign over ever graduate schools doorway. Or dog eat dog.

Agile is much, much, less complicated paradigm and it has been turned into some Frankenstein of borrowed past processes at every company I've ever worked at. I can only imagine what would happen to this watershed model if it became popular.

I think the piece overlooks the fact that most FOSS software these days is written by corporate America for corporate America. This became apparent back when Redhat was being sued by SCO for Unix copyright infringement. Turns out IBM had "donated" a bunch of code to Linux, including their journaling file system code that had once been part of AIX. It is a moot point to ask FOSS developers to use FOSS tools when most FOSS code these days is donated by corporate America.

Every culture has some version of the golden rule yet religions claim to originate it. Most of what was studied in this article is common across all religions. Calling such practices "religion" is like calling smiling "religion". Religion co-opts nature and then, for a fee, hands it back to you. Human nature is not religion, religion puts an artificial price on that which should be enjoyed sans grift.

I've been using Linux Mint on Lenovo since 2011. I've never had a problem installing. The biggest ongoing issue is the Nvidia driver will crap out on some upgrades. Sometimes I can't display on external monitor, sometimes the sound won't go out the HDMI. Hint on all day laptop use: 1. External keyboard. I always use one even when travelling. There are many models like the JellyComb that will allow one to use the same keyboard with multiple laptops, just hit a button. 2. External mouse. If your hands aren't on the laptop then everything stays fresh on the laptop. Spill coffee on your cheap external keyboard or mouse? no problem just replace them. 3. I buy the 5 year onsite warranty for the $500 and it is great here in Maine. The come to the Starbucks and replace the keyboard or screen. 4. I use LVM snapshots and rsync my important files to a second disk and external disk daily/weekly.

So I just wanted to pushback on the notion that Lenovo today is not viable with Linux Mint. I've never had a problem with the installer. I keep up with the upgrades and with major upgrades I install from Live ISO on USB each time and restore my important files from backup.

Question: I use Lenovo laptops that come installed with a lot of bloat. My resolution is to simply got to Microsoft's website and install Windows 10 from their ISO.

Have you compared the bloat of say a factory shipped Windows 10 implementation versus the vanilla implementation downloaded from the Microsoft website?

Thanks

Experts vs elites 5 years ago

I'd contrast this by watching a season of HBO's "Entourage".

I find it interesting that actors who are those with the least expertise and least value of conversation have talent agents and publicists whereas the experts have little to no talent agents or publicists.

Why not just hire a publicist to write popular versions of the technical stuff that the expert feels accurately portray the technical innards?

The ability to communicate with the masses is talent independent of other expertise. One can be talented in both that's what it is, two talents.

Finally, America's corruption right now is off the charts. One cannot take seriously any critique of America's elite without factoring in the huge amount of influence corruption is having at all levels of elitism in this country. So I couldn't take this seriously.

America is weird.

Why Erlang? 5 years ago

Perhaps a little more experience with teaching would enlighten. I taught programming for a year in college and you know what one of the hardest concepts was that caused test scores to drop? Recursion. People invariable struggle with base cases. Recursion is a key tool for software development albeit procedural or functional. Teaching software to students is a real eye opener if one never struggles with what may be seemingly basic concepts like recursion. I've seen students flunk tests because they couldn't grasp the concept. Another concept that is not quite is hard is callback functions. I believe this is why functional programming challenges is because lambda functions are callback functions. I have to admit if hadn't taught software at Berkeley for a year as a TA I wouldn't have this perspective so something to consider.

Why Erlang? 5 years ago

If one is doing async programming my experience with Promises in JavaScript is that glossing it over only works to the degree the async mostly behaves like synchronous. To quote Albert Einstein, make something as simple as possible, but no simpler. If one is writing programs for asynchronous applications abstracting them away as if the asynchronous behavior environment doesn't exist is problematic.

Most developers I work with day-to-day are not designers. Fred Silverman's "The Mythical Man Month" from 1972 has a good take on this. The way I see it, languages like Erlang are amber that locks in dead code because no one except the original author can maintain it. Once code goes into maintenance mode good luck finding Erlang maintainers.

Why Erlang? 5 years ago

UC Berkeley uses Scheme as the first course for CS for a reason, to weed out people. I've seen first hand people struggle with functional programming to much higher degrees than procedural. I'm not in the procedural camp per se, I'm in the common person camp who struggles with things like async and functional programming.

Why Erlang? 5 years ago

The key gap in this argument is the blank slate which I'll define to be everyone has the same type of intelligence and same level.

1. Type of intelligence. This piece drove by the functional versus procedural roadblock. Most developers don't like and don't grok functional programming.

2. Level of intelligence. Systems programming and concurrency is not for the faint of heart. When I was a TA in college the threading topics were the ones that challenged the students the most.

The functional versus procedural mental capacity is very real and most developers have to fight with functional programming mentally. One cannot just ignore this decades long struggle of functional people bullying us in the procedural camp. One just has to search HK news here for functional programming and most comment sections will have this debate.

Amdahl's law can be stated as make the common case fast. Functional programming is not the common case for the human mind.

The thing about Lenovo is one can get a 4 year, on site, service contract for less than $500. If a keyboard key breaks, no problem, they swap it and come to your house.

Over the hears I've had monitor pixels die. They don't care, they'll replace it.

And unlike with Apple Lenovo doesn't mind if you replace the hard drive or other components yourself, the warranty is not voided.