935 karma · joined October 16, 2017
Ada/SPARK seems to be trying to make a comeback, something I welcome. They are interacting with the 'maker community' [1] and the online learning resources have improved a ton.[2] SPARK is even taking some inspiration from Rust. [3]
[1] https://www.makewithada.org/ [2] https://learn.adacore.com/ [3] https://blog.adacore.com/using-pointers-in-spark
The only cultural differences that get on my nerves is rubbish disposal and sometimes Chinese men seem to be a little rough with their girlfriends (It's entirely possible I'm just misinterpreting what I'm seeing). But if there is a location where a large number of Chinese people hang out, it will often be covered in trash and cigarette butts.
But I also remember a decade ago when the thing that annoyed everyone about Chinese people was constant spitting everywhere, yet that isn't really an issue anymore. So I'm sure in time our cultures will synchronize further.
Disclaimer edit: I’m slightly uncomfortable making statements like this about a particular group of people. This sort of conversation on the internet can do downhill fast. So I want to emphasise that I’m just referring to differences in culture and that I’m optimistic these differences will resolve themselves organically.
Every time I go and have a play with Godot my mind is blown that the whole program is a single ~45MB executable.
Do you not dream?
I keep it simple. The heuristic I use for sweets is, if a child would cry for it in a supermarket, then I can't have it.
I've been losing ~1 kg a week since I cut out sweets like this 3 weeks ago. Was at 81kg, slightly overweight for my sex/age/height, now at ~78kg.
So no candy, chocolate, biscuits, cookies, potato chips, cake, cordial, fruit juice, soda, milkshakes including "breakfast shakes" which aren't actually food, even if you want to believe they are like I did. Also dessert versions of real food, like flavored, sweetened yogurt.
I still have takeaways once or twice a week and still drink alcohol if I feel like it.
My main cravings are soda and candy, so I have some sugar-free alternatives I use to satiate that.
From http://erlang.org/doc/man/erl.html:
+sbwt none|very_short|short|medium|long|very_long
Sets scheduler busy wait threshold. Defaults to medium. The threshold
determines how long schedulers are to busy wait when running out of work
before going to sleep.Honestly, I don't know. I don't remember them not being like that. I still have some normal dreams, even the common ones like teeth falling out. But a large portion of my dreams have always been nonsense.
I'm going to get silly now, but I can't help but think the semantic primes - if you can avoid thinking of them as words or even conscious experience - represent some core set of cognitive axioms, like the primitive elements for constructing mental models. As you go to simpler life forms the "word list" would get smaller. If there is any truth to that, I wonder what potential primitives we are missing that would allow us to think more complex thoughts and whether you could measure species intelligence by their "vocabulary" and working out what concepts can't be expressed when one of the primitives is missing. What would happen if you lost the concept of above'ness?
The other thing I find interesting and it might be no more than a coincidence, is how there is only the numbers one and two and then you have to use many or more. This in some way matches up with the ideas of the Parallel individuation system[1] whereby young children can only precisely recognize quantities up to 3, or 1 + 2 and an adult can only precisely recognize quantities up to 4, or 2 + 2. After that, the brain uses the Approximate number system[2]. So it's like there are only 2 slots to place a quantity.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_individuation_system [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approximate_number_system
* RISC-V, and a general open source hardware revolution.
* Augmented Reality. I don't see VR going anywhere. AR has broader practical applications.
* Voice UI. I think this still counts as niche. The general interaction model at the beginning of the movie Her seems highly plausible to me. Not so much the AGI.
* Desktop/mobile OS convergence. This seems inevitable. The convenience factor is too high and why would the average Joe keep forking out for 2 or 3 computers when they can have 1 that does everything.
* Software formal verification. This is long overdue and we can't continue to be this irresponsible.
* Cryptocurrency, or something like it. I think the need is there, but the current implementation leaves much to be desired.
* Processors with many cores. We're already up to 18 or so on desktop processors. But I expect many more.
* FPGA. I'm less sure about this. 10 years might be to soon. But if your computer was just full of FPGA's and companies could sell you digital hardware through an app store without having to actually manufacture anything, I'm sure they would love it.
<meta charset="utf-8" />
charset -> utf-8
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1" />
meta -> viewport -> width=device-width, initial-scale=1
They keep costs down by producing a single, neutral, yet attractive style. You can have just about any color you want and a choice between four sizes.
An engineering friend of mine was helping them improve the recycling process. Once you are done with the glasses, you take them back to Dresden, they grind them down and reuse the plastic in new frames. I'm not sure if they recycle lenses.
It would be a real tragedy to do it all again, only to make a mistake on the very first decision, what language to use.
There are several mental models used for picturing numbers. I think the most popular is the number line [2]. Common Core uses this in a clever way. I've never found it useful personally.
I suspect some people might see numbers as purely symbolic and perform purely symbolic operations. When the symbol 2 and the symbol 3 have the operation 'add' applied, it yields the symbol 5. Or something.
I think I mostly visualize the numbers as a quantity of solid objects. So I think of 3 as 3 things. This has limitations. I can break objects apart but how do you visualize 3.767? So some of it is intuitive.
There is evidence that the human mind can only encode exact quantities up to four [3], after that they use an estimate. [4] So maybe your situation is the norm. What I mean is, sometimes it can feel like everyone else has 'got it' and you're the one lacking, when in reality everyone is just as bad.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyscalculia [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_line [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_individuation_system [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approximate_number_system
Could you please explain? I don't think I misrepresented anything, but I'm open to correction. I'm no expert either, but I have explored these ideas and I feel like I gave fair summary.
> but it's not the whole truth
True, it was a summary of what I felt were the relevant points.
> misinformation
I don't think what I said is even particularly controversial, least of all misinformation. It's just not well known. Most of what I said is explicitly stated by the people who hold those beliefs.
For all we know, the universe is jam packed full of Predator-like aliens who are the dominant species on their planet specifically because their society is built around dominating everything they can.
This is such an important point that it needs to be emphasized. Large chunks of the humanities and social sciences operate under a completely different epistemology. This epistemology rejects reason. And I don't mean that as a jab, I mean it literally rejects the philosophical concept of Reason itself.
Everything is about ideology. It has at it's core the notion that there is no objective truth, and that any assertion of truth is merely the application of power of one group over another. Under this epistemology, lying, contradiction, hypocrisy, fallacy, and rhetoric are all acceptable and even encouraged.
Dig a little in to post-structuralism, postmodernism, critical theory and deconstruction and so much of the Social Justice movement will make sense. You'll start to find very little about Social Justice is about social justice.