talkingtab

Words limit our understanding of words because they are intrinsic to a particular kind of understanding. yes? no?

In "Notes on the Synthesis of Form", Christopher Alexander talks about how we can know something is wrong even when we do not know how to make something right. He was talking about this I think

=z==

as opposed to

+|+|+

or

+|+|+|

I happened upon the word "entanglement" and it seems an interesting alternative to the order that is inherent in words.

Our language is all about Actor-verb-object. Entanglement provides a fundamentally different concept. I cannot say "I drove my car on the road" with entanglement. Or at least with entanglement I can say something equally valid like "the road moved my car with me inside."

And entanglement works for the + and | things, at least for me. There is some kind of entanglement (degree) that creates a gestalt.

At least that is the best I can come up with.

I got 502 bad gateway. Then a register page. With a section about "Cyber Resilience Act".

That section is worth a read in my opinion.

"it’s proof that the rot has been rooted out of Apple’s software design team"

I know little about Apple, but have quite a bit of experience with how software products get "designed". Goofy and offensive things happen when corporations decide not to pay attention to customers.

The decision to ignore customer and focus on market wow is not the software design team. It is a systemic and structural thing.

Hunting good bugs is something every good software developer should experience. A good interview question is "tell me your favorite bug". Bugs are about reasoning, not intelligence. And I will take someone who can tell me what is wrong over what is correct any day. It requires a focus on getting things actually work.

I have two favorite bug stoies. The first is from a printout from the run of an IBM 360 assembly language program when I was just learning. Someone asked em why their program failed to run. I glanced quickly at the front page of the printout and it said "Too Long". So I told the person that was the problem. Something was too long. He looked at me very strangely, so I looked back at the page a little more closely, only to notice "Too Long" was in the name field of the person running the program. He was Vietnamese and his name was Too Long - literally. There is a powerful lesson (at least one) there.

The other happened when I was implementing some AppleTalk protocols - NBP to be exact. (Don't ask). I would capture the working packets then compare all the checksums, headers, constants, length fields in the packet my code generated and fix any problems. I was stuck on one failure. I just could not see any difference as I went through byte by byte, time after time. It was late and time to go home so I decided to print off each packet on paper and compare them later - certain I was missing something. The problem was instantly obvious. One printout took a page, the two pages. I had been appending junk data in the packet. Sigh

Interestingly, as a result of this discussion, I have a much better understanding of the whole artificial intelligence issue. This:

There is a strong distinction line the ability to think (intelligence) and the ability to reason. (just ask google!).

There is lots of "intelligence" in this discussion. Reasoning? Not so much. Some how - and perhaps this is partly from how I phrased things - there was some impression that I meant storage of food caused cancer! But apples are indeed affected by storage. Just ask google!

And "just ask google" is the problem. You may be intelligent, and your comments may be perceived as intelligent, but does that mean they are reasoning? Nope.

And for all the people out there wanting to know whether you will have a job, and what the future with AI will be:

If you are only intelligent you are out of luck! If you can reason, there is a huge opportunity! Just ask google.

What I find interesting is the concept of dead food versus live food. This is just something I wonder about. For example a dead apple is one that was picked a year ago, sold today, kept in storage until now. Long shelf life - is the crucial change in our eating that I can see. When was the last time you had a fresh apple? Does the food industry want us to consider the health benefits of a dead apple versus a living apple?

Let think twinkies! You can open a package of twinkies and let it sit out for a long time. A long time. A long, long time. They you can eat it. Long shelf life means it does not succumb to digestion by random microbes etc in the environment. Does the twinkie then succumb to the random microbes in your gut? I think not, but what do I know.

Then there is living food. You can take milk, put a culture in it and let it grow for 10 hours. Instant pot, heating pad, whatever. Then you eat it. It is now filled with living cultures. It tastes better to me than any store bought yogurt, costs exactly the same as the same quantity of milk. With a chopped apple, cinnamon and a tiny bit of sugar it tastes better to me that most of the faux ice cream you get these days.

What is funny to me is the conversations we have about "ultra processed food" do no address this aspect of the issue. I keep wondering why.

Here is the fundamental issue. We use the word "intelligence" for different things. Can you follow a recipe for making sour dough bread? Pretty easy. Can you make sour dough bread? Not so easy. Does following a recipe require "intelligence"? Yes. If something can follow a recipe can it also make bread? Not necessarily.

And another question, perhaps the most important. Can you determine that a recipe is flawed? In immediate terms, if I tell you to feed your sour dough starter every day, can you determine why, how or if that might be bad advice?

My conjecture is that there are at least three types of intelligence, as outlined above. And you have to remember that AI is by definition "artificial". Not in the sense of being unnatural but in the sense of artificial sour dough bread. It is not the real thing. (at least for two out of the three definitions of intelligence).

This is not to argue that AI is not useful and extremely beneficial in some contexts. Unfortunately our whole system of education has trained us to be "follow the recipe" kind of people. Uh Oh! So if your only skill and ability is to follow recipes, you might want to focus on developing your other kinds of intelligence.

Interesting point. I wonder if "easier for them to read" is too simple. I took "read" as in "read words" or "read a book". But "reading" a program is not I think the same as reading words. Reading words could be this:

for i = 0 i < 10 i++ if i = 7 printf("hello 7") else printf("who are you");

But with a more pictorial presentation, it is easier to read the program.

for i = 0 i < 10 i++ if i = 7 printf("hello 7")

I'm just wondering - if we had a more pictograph based programming language would it be easier to understand?

There is, and should be, a red flag for these situations. No make that RED flag. If you go into an interview that leaves you feeling the least bit helpless or at someone's mercy then run screaming. Not politely, not quietly. Just say to calmly to the person that you find the situation abusive. It is. As you go out, if you see anyone or have a chance to talk to anyone, just tell them you found that your interviewer to be personally abusive. That you will not be willing to take the position if it is offered, that you will share you perception with others around you and expect an apology.

Then fall down and appreciate that you did not end up in that situation. And tell everyone you know not to apply or work there.

I'm not sure it is React I like. I like JSX.

Here is a fun thing.

Write a bunch of JSON. A lot. Now write a lot of JSX. Then convert the JSON to JSX. Then convert the JSX to JSON. I was surprised by how much easier it was for me to reason in JSX. I use threejs and react three fiber (r3f). Again the JSX type of representation easily wins out for me. I don't really understand why. Maybe JSX ends up being more pictorial - as in a picture is worth a thousand words?

So I'm not sure I even care of about React. I just reason better with JSX than with all the other crufty things (template, html, htmx, etc). And yes, find all of them including React crufty.

We have an economy like this:

producer => provider => consumer.

What happens when providers are the gateway for the providers and consumers? When the providers own the market place for both producers and consumers?

1. A producer grows a potato 2. The provider buys the potato for $0.10 3. The provider sells the potato to the consumer for $600.00

This is the system we have now. The wealth goes to the corporations and wealthy stock owners. $599.90. Well, okay, they end up paying $.90 for packaging and to buy politicians.

The number of people who can afford a potato gets smaller and smaller, so fewer and fewer potatoes are sold. For more and more money. Because there is so little demand for potatoes, then potato growers have excess capacity so they get paid less and less. They go out of business.

Is this a problem? What are the long term effects? Guess we will find out.

@halapro, thanks for your reply. No, marketing is the last thing I would do, but I understand how these days you might think that. I have had many experiences that dramatically change how I see the world. Maybe running a marathon is easier to understand. I did not run it because I am an athlete or good at it. It took me 4 hours and I thought I was going to fall down before the finish line!

That did change me profoundly. I saw the world not as something to watch but to be in. That I could suffer (and ouch did I suffer) and survive and do something that I had no idea I could do. So how I see myself changed as well, but the profound thing that changed was me<-->world. How I and world relate to each other.

I seek out things like this. Not for thrills but because of the transformation. Some times this does not work out well. I kick myself because in my quest of transformation I find that I can utterly and completely fail. But again, there is a transformation there. I can utterly and completely fail and go on.

This is not marketing, this is me urging you to attempt to do something that is important enough to you that if you do it, your relationship to life, the world and yourself will be changed in good ways.

This is great! As a kid I used to love HO scale model trains. There is an old movie of me on my birthday looking at my train set with eyes as big as plates. Fast forward, and I love networking and programming. I recognized that networking is just trains on Ethernet or Wifi, but now realize even the programming is just the same. Still making things go places and go around after all this time.

Knowing about Japanese Lacquer (aka Urushi) will change the way that you see the world. Urushi is the sap of a tree that is related to poison oak and posion ivy. You can learn to use it by wearing a biohazard suit or by suffering through until you develop an immunity to the urushiol. To call it "the itch" does not do it justice. You do not really know the full depths of being a human until you decide, with full knowledge of the consequences, to go down this road.

Urushi is transformed by curing in a warm and humid environment to something that is food safe and not toxic - for example Japanese rice bowls. Then there are they myriad decorative techniques such as Rankaku - using quail egg shells for decoration.

I've recently seen the word "entanglement" in a completely different context. But Urushi entangles you in nature and your environment in way that is utterly breath taking. For example: https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2019/modern-masters-...

[edit for grammar and clarity]

Building for the future is great!

Except for one small, very tiny, itsy-bitsy problem. We humans are very bad at understand the second and third order effects of events. Really, really bad. First order consequences: "Oh we don't need people anymore".

Do I know the second order effects? Probably not. But at least I know they will be there.

You put this really well. I have been considering that communities are based on mutual benefit. But I had not considered "mutual help". It makes me think of how people who have been in combat talk about the incredible bonds that are unlike anything in normal life.

What you wrote is that "Friendships are solidified ..." but I wonder if the same is true "communityship". They are solidified when you are helped not out of person to person relationships but from community.

I know in my small adopted town I have gotten and given help not because I know the person but because they are part of my community as am I.

I wonder if this is something that is missing for many people?

Absolutely true! Perhaps the thing I was trying to say is do not travel or live your life in a bubble. Do not be a tourist in life, get in there. Be safe, but take survivable risk. And yes be honest. I would remove this line from the post, but on the other hand your reply adds a good guide post!

I have found three strange and unexpected avenues for interacting with people.

1. Be on a quest. Yes a quest. I was trying to buy an old metal key as a gift for a friend. I wanted to find someone who sold sheep's milk (for making cheese). If you are on a quest it gives a context for an interaction. You both have something to talk about and it you both have an out: the answer. People almost always help you with a quest. And this ties with #2

2. Need help. I am lost. I am trying to get to the airport and I don't have much money. I trying to find a good book store. My car won't start. etc. I don't speak English.

3. Humor. Not telling jokes, just have a sense of humor about yourself, your common situation, the world in general.

I especially like being on a quest. Once I asked someone about the key, they sent me another place, they sent me another place and finally I found one. It was a blast. Everyone was helpful. I ended up telling people how I got there, why I was searching etc.

Hiring is now by filter. Corporations do not try to hire good people, they just avoid hiring questionable people. In other words they are looking for the lowest common denominator.

If you do not think this is true, then ask yourself whether the company is attempting to use AI. THAT IS WHAT THEY WANT AND VALUE. The safer and easier you are as hire the better you will be.

So yes. You were probably hired because you are not a super genius and because you don't have a fancy company name. Not despite it, but because of it.

The question I have is why do I now think many corporations are "too stupid to succeed"? I know they will not fail, but the panicky rush for the supposed safety of AI is stunning.

This measures fatherhood in terms of time spent with children. I question whether that metric is of any value what so ever. Is a farmer a better farmer because he/she spends hours in the field? Or is the correct measure of a farmer the crops?

This article, and the place it has on Hackernews and the quality of "commments" raises serious questions for me about Hacker News as a whole, the moderation, the readers and mechanism.

My complaint is not that this kind of thing exists. My complaint is that something better does not.

Meta said the contracting "did not meet (meta's) standards". I am sure that is true. meta's "standard" is not to reveal the illegal, immoral, unethical things meta does. No matter what the harm.

Maybe a company with those standards should not get our business. Oops, no wait, maybe they mean the Friedman Doctrine standards? In that case they are entitled to do any and every thing to make a profit. No matter what the harm.

[edit: add last two sentences]

You are not helpless in these situations. You have a legal right to take action, appearing pro se, so it cost you almost nothing. Our legal system has degenerated into a medieval class system of trial by combat. Corporations can sue you, small corporations and users do not have a symmetric ability. It is like challenging a (dark) knight with armor and a very sharp sword to combat. You will lose. But here is the thing, if people start challenging, it is going to cost them a lot of money to field that knight. Think of this like drone warfare against Russian tanks. Be the drone. If GoDaddy has to field a lawyer for stuff like this, they will have the financial motivation to provide support.

While you could use small claims court, you have to be careful about your ability to appeal and to obtain evidence. In this case you are clearly aggrieved and AI should be able to help you draft a cease-and-desist letter.

Oh, and I have to include a disclaimer that this is not legal advise, that you should pay lots of money to get advice, etc or some dark knight will show up at MY door.

Do not be helpless. You have the right to take legal action. Knowing how to file a case pro se is a useful skill that every citizen should have. (Oops, that is not legal advice either!)

I believe at one point you could run ClojureScript without Java, but either I was wrong or that version is no longer available. As far as I can tell both Clojure and ClojureScript require Java as of now.

I was hoping that at some point one of those would get to be self compiling and so would not require Java, but that seems not to be the case?

The moral of this story is: it is human nature that when we have something, we do not want to lose it. This is an entirely different paradigm between what we do when we do not have something. It explains why the wealthy are so toxic. Their only goal in life is not to lose what they have.

I worked at a well respected technical company and was given the task of evaluating a small company that we could acquire. I looked at the technology -something anyone could put together in a day. I looked at the business model. It was that you get free storage if you get a friend to sign up for free storage!!

I told the company that it had no technology and a business model that made no sense. They bought the company. Why? Because the target company told them that other companies were interested - and they were.

They did not want to miss the boat and lose what they had. Nothing came from this acquired company. Meanwhile the fundamental technology was disrupted by something new and the company fell apart. End of story. This is common.

So AI? This is about not missing the boat. Someplace, somewhere there is value in AI, but for now, if you have missed the boat you are probably better off. So no, this is not (as the current top comment says) about "they couldn't sell their software". This is about a very real reason why companies try to not miss the boat rather than innovate.

[ASIDE] And I cannot help but laugh at the Clojure reference with the statement "two things are simple if they are not intertwined". I have always been interested in Clojure, but I never go there because it is not "simple". It is intertwined with Java which I know all to well and do not love. Java was the language of choice at this same company and I wasted too many months of my life bowing before that cumbersome language.

When I first read about transducers I was wowed. For example, if I want to walk all the files on my computer and find the duplicate photos in the whole file system, transducers provide a conveyor belt approach. And whether there are saving in terms of memory or anything, maybe. But the big win for me was to think about the problem as pipes instead of loops. And then if you could add conditionals and branches it is even easier to think about. At least I find it so.

I tried to implement transducers in JavaScript using yield and generators and that worked. That was before async/await, but now you can just `await readdir("/"); I'm unclear as to whether transducers offer significant advantages over async/await?

[[Note: I have a personal grudge against Java and since Clojure requires Java I just find myself unable to go down that road]]

I started reading Byte when I had no way to understand what it was talking about. There were technical terms that I simply had no reference for. What the heck is an assembler?

I suppose it was an example of immersion language learning because after devouring the magazine for months it started making sense. I knew it was about something I wanted to know.

I also have used DO for years, and was very happy with the quality of their service. Until I found the alternative prices. Not as easy to use, but much better performance for much lower prices.

The introduction lost me. To quote: "Japan’s vast railway network", but it does not address the mouse in the room. Japan is approximately the size of California with a population density that is three times that of California. I would argue that a comparison of rail systems without addressing those critical issues may be interesting but isn't really informative. The issues are complex.

Anyone interested in creating a CommunityEmailAlliance. Like dkim but with blocks on corporate email systems that allow spamming?

The substantial issue is not "unconstitutional" or "revenue", but instead "corporate protectionism". The elephant in the room.

There are certainly concerns about home distillation. The question is whether We address those concerns uniformly or whether protections of "tax revenue" is really protection for corporate interests.

We live in a time of toxic corporatism. Not all corporations are toxic, but those who prioritize their interest over the common good are indeed toxic. Everyone has the right to use nicotine and smoke cigarettes. You can buy them - if old enough - anywhere. But the use of cigarettes is toxic. As are vapes. But some corporations believe that their wealth is worth all the early deaths and health costs that a lifetime of smoking brings.

It is the behavior of these corporations that is the issue here. Those who take the Friedman Doctrine to toxic extreme. The courts have promoted these greedoconomy by enacting United vs FEC and other anti-democratic policies. In contravention of their duty.

Corporate interest have become so powerful that we have become a corpocracy rather than a democracy.

Jeff Bezos has "Democracy dies in the dark" as the motto of the Washington Post. Democracy dies with the Friedman Doctrine and United vs FEC. Thanks Jeff and to all of the other corporate overlords.