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great_krakenon The Story of Surface Book

For me, it's not about FOSS per se, more about the development environment that comes with it; a parent comment even mentioned a hackintosh. It's just that a Windows environment is so radically different from everything else out there that it makes it pretty impossible to realistically conduct work when all the tools are made for OSX and GNU/Linux.

I'm only addressing Microsoft with my comment because that's the topic of conversation here. Also, because they're specifically positioning themselves to convert Mac users, and IMO a notable portion of these users are developers who need the POSIX-like ecosystem.

great_krakenon The Story of Surface Book

This really is the problem. The amount of hardware wizardry going on here is going to be nearly impossible to support on GNU/Linux or any POSIX-like OS without support from Microsoft. Unfortunately, they don't "get" this, and they operate in a vacuum where they believe that the software they create is just the best thing for everyone.

I honestly have no idea how they operate under this presumption. Are they unaware of the millions of developers using Macbooks purely for this reason?

great_krakenon To End Soccer Riots, Brazilian Club Forces Fans to Sit Next to Rivals

That's cool.

As someone who doesn't follow sports, or anything that I'm purely a nonparticipant in, it baffles me how much people can care about stuff like this, especially enough to injure another human being. It's a crazy thing that it does to the human mind.

great_krakenon FoldingCoin

I recently was reading up on folding again. I thought, wouldn't it be great if people could manage to combine protein folding for a good cause with bitcoin mining. Cool idea.

great_krakenon When you have to wake up earlier than usual

I have to say, I was hopeful up until he mentioned the hunger bit. The delayed sleep phase disorder sounds exactly like me, and I already eat a strict low carb diet, but that fact means that I'm never really hungry. In fact, I believe many people who eat low carb experience the same reprieve from the constant cycle of hungry-satiated-hungry as their blood sugar and energy levels remain constant.

Maybe it's just because I'm not a breakfast eater. Oh well!

great_krakenon Problems With the Python 3 Ecosystem

True, it's an incredibly personal and situational post with him using the word "me" throughout. The title choice is just really poor it seems.

Although I'm someone who doesn't develop in python, I have toyed around with the packages and versions for dependencies for other projects and tools I use. At first I assumed that "latest is greatest" but recently came to understand that it's not the case as far as practicality is concerned. Perhaps it is involved with the rather irritating versioning (python3, pip3, etc. - I've found the same thing to be true on archlinux), but I think a lot of it is definitely as somebody else said above, the lack of updated libraries.

great_krakenon A Lost 1996 Interview with David Foster Wallace

I guess what makes me sad is that I would like my generation to realize that it would be way better for us, like inside, in our stomachs, to be willing to pay higher taxes to be able to shelter and feed poor people, not for their sake but for ours, so that we would be the sort of culture that doesn’t let people die. And instead we’re all so worried about an extra 4% off our monthly paycheck that we get all exercised about it. And I see you looking at me… I know this sounds all pious and weird and it’s got nothing to do with the book, but doing this book was hard for me because it was about why exactly are we so sad and how have we become so unbelievably selfish, like lethally selfish and self-indulgent.

I love David Foster Wallace because he is one of those people who have a knack for summarizing and articulating huge concepts that have great relevancy to me. This quote stood out to me especially as a source of personal sadness and a sadly still-relevant commentary on our culture.