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let's agree to disagree here. my ideal world is probably a lot messier than you'd be happy with considering.

more language diversity is more fun. common languages are boring. folks should learn more languages, rather than less. its good for your brain too. here's to another babel moment!

building matrix is really expensive i guess. i wish them luck, but so far i haven't been sold. probably wont be either.

i think spreadsheets could represent an interesting future programming paradigm, but excel is not the tool that'll do it.

i'm not anti-social at work. i'm friendly and it can be fun to shoot the shit, but i've rarely had workmates turn into real friends. i don't know why, but the people i tend to connect with don't often work in the same industry. i know how to keep work and home separate (i have a couple of ways of setting work context for myself so i have a way to leave when i'm done).

the only good thing about working at an office is the free food, but food isn't terribly expensive anyway. i could probably use transport savings to buy myself a nice food every week or two.

depending on how you capture that energy there will be waste of some kind that is created either in the manufacturing/growing process for the capture system or as a byproduct of converting solar energy to another form that is more easily stored. one of the advantages of diverse biological systems is that you can have cycles of organisms that process waste back into energy sources using solar energy + reactants as input. a self-sustaining silicon-based life-system would probably end up following a similar pattern to process waste back into useful resources, because waste products probably cannot be avoided.

generating electricity will also create waste products. i'm not sure that part can actually be avoided. biological systems can repair themselves (within limits) and make use of a wide range of energy sources. silicon based life certainly sounds interesting, but it would probably end up being a lot more biological than you're expecting.

there's also the whole racism thing. north american settlers basically wanted nothing to do with the natives, except to claim their territory. we have a folktale of the one time a white guy and a native girl got together and it was "a big disaster". latin america has its own racism problems, but there was way more race mixing which is probably a more important diver of assimilation than who controls the power.

unclassified version of the report is expected to be released later this month

so has the report been released? i would like to read it rather than continuous speculation about its contents. also, i'd love to see a leak of a more classified version of the report (if one exists), just to see what they consider sensitive information and not. the more info the better really.

i've sometimes thought that APL could mesh really well with spreadsheets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7Mt0GYHU9A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UltnvW83_CQ

i didn't say "fully independent" i talked about a willingness to pursue independence. that's the difference that i care about. i value independence more than money. you do need a certain amount of money to be autonomous, but its about end goals. i don't agree with the end goal of "make the best business deals for the biggest amount of money". besides, long-term you make way more money if you are independent. i have respect for visa and i'd work there because they do value independence, but i wouldn't work for a subsidiary who couldn't hack it as a competitor.

to me this move indicates weakness. its a fine exit for the early employees and the executive team, but there's no reason to sell if you have a solid business plan and a realistic vision for future profitability. maybe the only vision for the future they want to pursue involves some expensive investment or the business was built on massive debt that can only be paid of in this way.

i want to be a part of building something that can survive as an independent entity. selling is an admission that this is either not a goal or not possible given the current position of the company. both of these are against my ethics. why should i stay at a company that has openly admitted that they are incapable or unwilling to pursue independence?

i always hope that new exciting companies will work towards a sustainable business model that can exist without a buyout from some mega. i understand that its difficult to start a business, much less a sustainable one, but its sad to see such promising companies grow into a pitch instead of a business.

maybe its a good thing i didn't get hired for their SLC office, because i would have quit over this.

i run a bunch of services for some online social clubs and foss projects that i'm involved in. i've floated between a bunch of different service providers (Digital Ocean, Scaleway, Hetzner, Joyent Public Cloud, Vultr, and Linode to name a few) and now i'm working on setting up some colo infrastructure. i'll probably keep some of the cloud stuff around for failover and maybe some edge cache type stuff, but you don't really need cloud unless you have extremely variable loads on your system.

i won't say cloud isn't nice, i've been able to learn a lot by playing around with cloud servers. just good to remember that cloud isn't the only option for a lot of workloads.

there are democratic companies (called cooperatives) if you think workplace democracy is important, you should join one.

oh yeah i'm a big fan of racket. i'd prefer something that's AOT, but maybe i can make an AOT racket :thinking:

you don't remember M-expressions?

S-expressions were originally intended only for data to be manipulated by M-expressions, but the first implementation of Lisp was an interpreter of S-expression encodings of M-expressions, and Lisp programmers soon became accustomed to using S-expressions for both code and data.

— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-expression#Use_in_Lisp

now, i won't say that i don't enjoy S-expressions, because i do. i do think there is some value in creating ..less intimidating front-ends to lisp-fam languages. one of the things that i love about racket is their focus on alternative syntax. i love that. everyone knows that lisp is capable of creating new syntax, but most of the time that ability is not used to its fullest extent. some standardization is needed, but it would be really cool to have a way to create compilers for arbitrary languages using advanced syntax macros. especially if the lisp representation is callable from other lisp programs AND other languages. JVM and BEAM have this, why not lisp?

personally i'm very interested in creating an elm compiler using chicken scheme. it is a little bit outside of the C-like comfort zone, but it is made to be very beginner friendly which i appreciate.

that's a problem with linux not taking container security seriously. there are other, more secure, container implementations in different kernels. containers are a good abstraction, but linux does them poorly.

i use an xmpp server[1] as a hub for most of my coms. i run biboumi[2] which caches the messages (up to a limit) so i can read them whenever from any device. there are some interesting xmpp chat rooms too, but it isn't as popular as IRC i'd bet. i host family chats on my server. you used to be able to talk to OStatus servers over XMPP too.

there are some other servies like jmp.chat that i integrate with over xmpp for voip and sms.

[1] https://ejabberd.im/ [2]: https://biboumi.louiz.org/

that's true, but the way you paint it sounds like there is no web of trust or reputation IRL and that its all shady ad-hoc meetings. buying smack off of a random stranger is junkie behavior. considering the estimated size of the black drug market, there is no way most drug users fit into this category. most drug users must be functional for the market to be that big. ergo the most likely scenario does not take place in a dark alley among strangers.

nobody buys drugs in a dark alley. people buy drugs in parked cars or living rooms.

the key word being make and sell. the design is publicly available, you just need to have the patience to build one yourself and you can have anything you like even if it is patented

None of that is society's fault.

if a society can only produce debt-ridden failures, that society has failed. if society does not provide adequate resources and training, you end up with angry stupid people. there's not really a reason why people need to get into debt to be able to be useful members of society. that's how things are done in the united states, but its a pretty ineffective system in a lot of ways.

a NN is overkill for something like this. you don't even complex logic to make a good shuffled mix.

nobody enjoys STEM work, people are in it for the money.

there are some big security and performance holes in the DAG resolution algorithm, but hopefully more funding will give them the resources to revisit some of their dangerous assumptions.

prove it :)

lavabit had access, they were shut down when they refused to share the encryption keys with law enforcement. the only legal way around this in the US is to host your own email and encrypt everything at rest. as an individual you aren't obligated to reveal passwords the same way a business would be in this case.

it might be an interesting idea to build a system that decrypts a small email server per user using their login credentials they interact with that system only and forward mail to the provider MTA for sending. there are still leaks here, and the provider could be compelled to reveal the user key to law enforcement, but the data would only be visible until after the user is authenticated.

communication is key. they should be aware of the market rate for their employees and adjust compensation accordingly, but i try to be very clear from the get go that i'm in it for the money and how i define my relationship with their organization. i also tend to decline non-monetary perks to drive it home that i am motivated primarily by compensation.

changing jobs has ~0 risk. i can (and have) spent time job hunting while fulfilling my responsibilities to my employer. then i use the offer as leverage to get a raise and switch jobs if my current employer declines.