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paulolc

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Ever aspiring software craftsman.

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What is this nonsense? I don't understand. All of these are concepts were created, invented and are commonly used by Homo Sapiens. God, math, numbers, integers, rational numbers, irrational numbers, what have you. All abstract concepts brought about solely by humans.

Everyone's missing the point. You can't reverse globalization. The government doesn't want you to have more babies. Baby production was outsourced overseas to import grown adults. Let others worry about childcare expenses.

Any speculation on the effects of any human related behavior, like tiredness, are just that, pure speculation. we have the illusion to have enough knowledge about these things to infer conclusions and emit opinions about it but the truth is , we don't even know what we don't know. There are inumerous processes that we don't grasp yet the full scope and spectrum of their consequences and side-effects, much less the ones we are yet to discover.

In relation to tiredness, specifically, it seems to me that it's an evolutionary trait that involves all sorts of chemical responses from the body, besides the related induced brain activity, This works to save energy and to ensure it's spent on activities that benefit the spread of the genes, somehow. You get tired mentally (what you are specifically referring to) because the executive function of the brain taken by the frontal-cortex are the most energy expensive one and gets shut-off as soon as anything that can be perceived as life-threatning is detected so that energy can be redirected to the fight-or-flight response required for your survival, as it's coded in your genes.

Now, assuming it will be possible, an uploaded version of whatever human conscience there could be, it would not need to have any of these energy regulation stuff. Or at least as much as we need it right now, as humans, per the limitation by our body's capacity of energy intake. The uploaded conscience would have at its disposal an quasi-unlimited amount of energy to it would not trigger the tiredness response or any "suffering" reflex.

However, of course, I really don't know ;)

This is Science. Computer Science. From one of the greatest alive.

"This is a preliminary version of a book. If you have any comments to make or questions to ask about it, please contact me by email. But when you do, include the version date. I expect there are many minor errors in this version. (I hope there are no major ones.) Anyone who is the first to report any error will be thanked in the book. If you find an error, please include in your email your name as you wish it to appear as well as the version date."

ok, maybe? i don't think that's unanimously true

I get your point. Some people seem to be thriving. Yes, but those don't suck. The ones that are thriving and do suck are, in the end, succumbing to the increasingly dehumanizing environment.

and who puts them there and uses them as such? who comes up with things like DRM'd juice packets?

We do. People do. Yes. Those people suck. They are not ok and are clearly succumbing to the increasingly dehumanizing environment.

people anthropomorphize machines:

Oh yes they do. Excelent point! In the end, it's all people. I totally agree. We cannot let responsibility die as an orphan. Those people suck, but ... well, you know, they "suckumb" ;).

machines, computers included, are simply powerful levers. they amplify forces applied - good or evil or dehumanizing - by their users. nothing more. not all people are good, and when those people use powerful machines to amplify their intentions, it can have enormous negative effects.

Yes. Without any doubt. We need to counteract that. Let's work together. We can!

"It is inevitable that we face problems, but no particular problem is inevitable." - David Deutsch - The Beginning of the Infinity.

This would be a much better TV series script than that "The Good Doctor" crap. No offense to all the "The Good Doctor" fans. (We all have our own "crappy" stuff we like)

Society would improve if we could turn these high skilled individuals into productive law abiding citizens without having to go through A Clockwork Orange kind of "reeducation".

No it's not. People are great. The problem is that we are not OK. When can't help ourselves, much less others. A lot of us are sick and don't have help. We are silently succumbing to the suffering of an increasingly dehumanizing environment. Machines should be beside us, to help. Not between us and stop us from fully interact with each other.

Sure. The one angle I am talking about is focusing on maximizing the application of money on the _things that do the most good possible_. There may be cases where financing something that will certainly not do the most good possible, on the contrary, it may cause havoc, suffering, death and destruction, like war, is the best course of action. Sacrifice sometimes is needed. Effective Altruism already proved to be a failed idea. It inspired smart and good people to justify any means for and end, just because they thought the end was ultimately good and honest (I believe that SBF was aware of the illegality of what he was doing but it was ok because it was for a good cause). EA is a virtue signalling and a god complex pit.

Of course, no one is against maximizing resources to where they are needed the most. That it should be an evidence based approach and focused on systemic change and long term solutions, rather than just alleviating symptoms. Yes, but this is just common sense. Now, naming it Altruism and adding Effective on top is just creating a banner for another Crusade like endeavor. Throw your money at us and you will be saved and your sins forgiven.

Effective Altruism is a bad idea. Applying money in a way that does the most good possible is focusing/obsessing too much on one angle. A Local Maximum will be reached without mechanisms to get out of it.

How dependable are you on your google account? What if Google would block your account and make you pay if you don't go trough enough ads? It has already started to force you to disable the ad-blocker. So, I think that could be a next step.

With this blocker however, the ad is still loaded and played but it's skipped. So, you don't see the ad but Google, hopefully, still counts it as an impression.

I'm seeing all kinds of dark patterns emerging on google apps. In Google Play, the new notification indications (the bell icon with a number, supposedely indicating the number of new unread notifications) that are just ads. Still in Google Play, when you search for apps you get the sponsored ones on the top with the install button like it was a search hit. And of course, youtube that is just a bunch of traps all over.

I know they've thrown away the "Don't be Evil" motto long ago but this? This is just going the opposite way in full force and being in complete a$$O1e mode. I am sure I've seen malware applying less agressive tactics.

They are just not taking care of their product (their users) very well.

If you look at what's important, you are, in fact, hugely successful. Maybe you're just comparing yourself to others who you probably don't really know. You have achieved quite a lot and for sure more than a great majority of the population.

If you want to feel better and become engaged again, help others. Share your success. Teach. Do hobbies that bring you physically close to a community. There is a lot of research that indicates that volunteering and helping others improves a lot our wellbeing [1].

To me it makes all the sense and I've experienced how it greatly improved my own life. If you like fabrication, the Maker/FabLab movement are awesome (at least here in Portugal).

I'm 46 and some time back, in my early forties, I joined a local CoderDojo club. CoderDojo is a global community of Programming Clubs for Kids. I started there as Mentor, teaching and helping kids having fun with coding and it was a lot of fun. However, the best, was the community itself. I have acquired many new friends and have met a lot of great people between the other mentors, the champions (club leaders/organizers) and also the kids parents. The parents of the younger ones are incentivized to participate.

Good Luck!

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2020/07/29/voluntee... [2] https://www.jstor.org/stable/3090173

I ruptured out of suspension of disbelief the moment I read "The missing persons did not return. In the large, they were no longer missed"... Really? No longer missed? 400 people disappear out of thin air and that's it. No "Thoughts and Prayers"? No middle eastern 3rd world country to wipe out of existence? Seems to me like a veeeery unrealistic waste of political leverage to gain...

Don't get lured by the Dark Side! Accessibility is the real reason you must use tabs instead of spaces for indentation [1]. Yes, it's evident that Accessibility is not valued and that it's easier/cheaper to not care. We should start to care. Maybe it doesn't even cost that much. Just by flagging it on formatting commit hooks or in some plugin in static analysis tools like Sonar, would go a long way in raising awareness and improving this.

Developers with visual impairment have different needs regarding indentation. One could need a tab-width of 1 due to the use of gigantic font size and the other a tab-with of 8 because of a wide monitor.

[1] Nobody talks about the real reason to use Tabs over Spaces https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20381027 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20341354)

Previous threads https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20381027 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20341354

Yep, that's how evolution works. It's natural selection working. We'll keep forking the planet until it becomes too costly to do it. Anyway, the will to survive while profiting from it, will become a pretty good incentive to come up with some good alternatives either here on Earth or somewhere else. Otherwise we'll hit the Big Filter. OTOH, it's true, it's not looking good for us in the long run. It may well be that the water already started to boil and we are the frog.

Interesting observation. I think that's very well put. If it's not public property it cannot be a public square where strangers can freely mingle and speak. It makes sense. If you mingle and speak out on someone else's property, they should be able to kick you out whenever they want. OTOH, private property does not necessarily mean the owner can do whatever he wants with whoever uses his property. The owner of a public space like a cafeteria cannot invite someone to leave on a whim. Yes, there's the "Rights of admission are reserved" but this is closely scrutinized and protected by law. I concede however that the consensus regarding this is not generalized [1]

Should Big Tech be accountable for all the content they publish, then? However, since they are not the authors of the content they publish, should their responsibility be something comparable to the responsibility of a traditional newspaper on its classifieds section?

[1] https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/research-and-subject-groups/propert...

"Are you moving one step in 20 directions or 20 steps in one direction?" So what if I'm moving one step in 20 directions but I'm enjoying each one of them? Isn't preferrable to enjoy the journey and never reaching nowhere rather than reaching your destination whatever it takes on each step? :D

Scratch 3.0 8 years ago

Construct is targeted at professional game development market. It's not comparable with Scratch which targets the creative programming education. Construct is a full closed source proprietary premium payed ecosystem for professional game developers. Nothing to do with the open source, completely free and joyful nature of Scratch which delights the young creative minds of tommorrow (and today!). On top of that Scratch has an absolutely caring, loving and vibrant community.