jes

I do think that would be possible.

Your question seems to be along the lines of "Is it possible to speed up the process of seeing that the separate, egoic self is an illusion?"

I think it is. In fact, Rupert Spira and others talk about "The Direct Path" for doing exactly this.

Why do you ask?

Fully agree, and thank you.

Regarding Alan Watts, maybe check out the chillstep recordings of his different talks on YouTube, if you have not already done so. They are excellent!

For much of my life, I was a jerk. I was insecure and often became offended and unkind when things didn't unfold the way I thought they should. It really screwed up my relationships and in my mid-50s, I found myself pretty much angry and alone in the world. I was constantly stuck in a story no one else really knew much about.

What I came to understand was that I had picked up certain ideas about myself over the course of my life. "I am this" and "I am that." They weren't really true, and so I was always kind of at odds with the world.

Over a period of years, I started to understand the situation better. I was fortunate to be able to hire a good therapist, and I worked with him for four years. I started reading about Buddhism, Advaita-Vedanta and other non-dual philosophies. I began to meditate and attend a local Buddhist temple.

I also listened to a lot of Alan Watts, Rupert Spira, Francis Lucille and other spiritual teachers.

I also read and watched a lot of the work of Sam Harris, Robert Sapolsky, Gabor Maté and others.

Eventually I came to realize that my false, egoic self was just an illusion, and that I no longer needed to take anything personally. I also developed a greater sense of compassion for other people, and started to notice how they were caught in the same trap that had held me for so many decades.

At this time, I don't really take things personally anymore. I'm generally at ease in the world. If this kind of stuff interests you, you might enjoy the following video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oX1IFUDNtto

edits: Fixed up typos and missing words a bit.

I don't know if I have favorite resources to recommend. I know there are a ton of YouTube videos and podcasts that offer a lot of good ideas. I like reading the Linux Kernel Mailing List and tech notes.

Simply buying any one of the cheap boards you can find online (if they have supply) and trying to get something like a JTAG debugger working will be beneficial to you. Just try to get something simple going on bare metal. It's been a while since I worked with PIC microcontrollers, yet as I remember there is a lot you can do with some of the cheap PIC devices, a breadboard, and an investment of $100 - $200 in electronic parts. It was important for me to build up a modest lab of electronic test equipment, power supplies, breadboards, etc.

Wishing you success, whatever route you go.

I'm a 62, almost 63, year old programmer. Thanks for being open-minded. It's been a great career for me. My first computer was a PDP-8/E and an ASR-33 teletype. I've had the good fortune to see a lot of computer history over the years. I still do embedded systems programming for work and hope to continue to do so for another five years. I've used UNIX most of my career.

I think you mean vulva, not vagina[1]. Vaginas are mostly internal.

[1] https://www.allure.com/story/vagina-vulva-difference-planned...

Additional info:

https://www.olcf.ornl.gov/frontier/

I really appreciate your insights here.

I declined the position today.

Thank you for the help!

Thank you. I think I figured out what was bugging me.

I see the relationship as rent-seeking[1]. I'm assuming the agency is going to take somewhere between 25 - 30% cut on all hours billed to the client.

Over the first year, that amounts to about $57K. I'd be OK with paying that tax for the first year.

Yet I can't just cut the agency out of the deal after the first year. Anytime I cut them out, I have to leave the client for a year.

I get this. I understand it's common practice, and designed to keep providers (like me) from ever cutting the staffing agency out of the deal.

I think what was / is bugging me hinges on whether I look at this from the perspective of "It's everyone for themselves" or "What's good for society also matters."

In rent-seeking, one party is extracting value on an ongoing basis without doing anything productive (also on an ongoing basis). While it may be good for me on a selfish basis to take this deal, I question whether it's good for our society at large for people to engage in rent-seeking transactions.

I think I have clarified this a bit for myself. If nothing else, I learned a bit about why people can be of different opinions about rent-seeking.

Again, thanks for your help.

[1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking

All of what you say makes sense.

One option, I suppose, is take the gig and work it for a year, while working on finding a better one during that time.

I really don't like the idea of having a third party in the mix, for the same reason I wouldn't want a third party moderating my relationship with my partner.

I also think burdening the business relationship with 25 - 30% overhead isn't helpful. Yet like you say, if the deal meets my financial constraints, why should I care?

Thanks for the help.

I appreciate your help.

The reservation I have is that I still have to wade through a raft of shit when it comes to sorting out legitimate texts that wound up in Unknown Senders because they weren't in my Contacts.

I would like more control over the filtering of incoming messages, without sending them off-device.

I wish Apple would give me a way to filter junk SMS texts via a regexp or something, without needing a third-party app.

Thanks very much for the link. I was way off in left field on the title.

Thank you for the clarity. Good to know.

Here's some additional information on the SPEED-I and SPEED-II applications.[1]

[1]. https://www.appx.com/history

> ... all sorts of clever PACK/UNPACK processing to make maximum use of what had originally been very restricted amounts of memory.

Up thread, I mentioned that I helped with the development of a C language interpreter for BASIC-2.

You're exactly right about how tight memory was.

One of guys at TOM Software, "Russ," used to keep a 1-dimensional array variable in his code. I remember one day we did something to the interpreter that wound up giving BASIC-2 programs a few additional bytes of program storage space. Russ just about had an orgasm as he updated his "free space" variable. When I asked him about it, he indicated that "When I get enough free memory, I can implement another feature!"

Way to take one for the team, Russ, wherever the hell you are these days!

Yep, SPEED-1 and SPEED-2 were products of a company called "TOM Software," where TOM was short for "The Office Manager."

Here's a little inside baseball on that.

TOM Software (Burien, Washington) had many applications written in Wang Basic-II. Sometime in 1983, or so, I hired on with TOM Software to help with finishing and porting an interpreter for Wang Basic-II to various small (and not so small) UNIX systems that UNIX system vendors provided to TOM Software in the hopes of getting some applications on their systems.

It was a hugely fun time, working on that interpreter. It was all written in C, and unfortunately, it's wasn't as fast as we would have liked. It did work and we did ship it on a number of platforms. Machines like the Fortune 32:16, the Pixel, Zilog Z-8000 micro, Perkin-Elmer 8/32, and even a Burroughs system (wtf?)

As I remember, the Wang VS system was released and was a competitor to the Wang 2200.

There was another company, Niakawa (sp?) if I remember, that did have a fast port of the Wang Basic-II interpreter to Windows based systems.

Towards the end of my time there, we were coding certain SPEED-1 subroutines directly in C in the interpreter. They could be called via a magic command ... "BOB-N", that was embedded in the interpreter. So you had BOB-1 XXX, BOB-2 XXX YYY, etc.

There is a book by Payne and Payne called "Writing Interpreters," which if memory serves, kind of centers around Wang Basic-II. I think I still have a copy of it in my storage unit, but I might have chucked it. I didn't find it on Amazon when I just searched, so perhaps I'm wrong.

It was really a good time for me. I learned a lot about writing interpreters and other V7-ish stuff working there.

I had a TeamViewer subscription for a few years. Getting it cancelled when I elected not to renew it was tedious and difficult.

I don’t recommend TeamViewer anymore. My opinion is that they are janky as hell.

Seems likely. Decades ago I had a discussion with someone about working at STSI, and the draw for me was that I would be working in CL.

I found this[1] report (PDF) from the DEA:

"Currently, China remains the primary source of fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances trafficked through international mail and express consignment operations environment, as well as the main source for all fentanyl-related substances trafficked into the United States. Seizures of fentanyl sourced from China average less than one kilogram in weight, and often test above 90 percent concentration of pure fentanyl."

Presumably, if the CCP wanted to do so, they could put an end to the groups shipping this deadly substance into the United States.

1. https://tinyurl.com/4396s38r

You are right about this.

One of the visible signs of an unrecognized (and therefore, unresolved) dilemma is oscillation between two poles.

I got this from the late Eli Goldratt and the problem-solving tools he created. One of those tools is the "Evaporating Cloud," which is a way to visualize a dilemma of some kind.

I'd suggest that there is an unresolved dilemma here: Should we rent or own data centers?

Over a period of years or decades, you can watch these things flip-flop between two extremes.

It's interesting to me that this dilemma is kind of like a specialization (in OO terminology) of a more generic dilemma, which might be something like: "In general, do we want to own or rent the things we need to run our business?"

If your turn your head a bit, close your eyes a bit and squint, you can see how a dilemma like this can apply to things like "What should be our policy regarding employees vs. contractors? Should we try to hire and retain over a long period of time, or should we rent the people we need to get the job done and release them as soon as we are done with them?"

The overall point is that whenever you see flip-flopping between two poles, think "Unrecognized dilemma."

Sorry if this is vague.

Was this a port to CP/M? The Kaypro 10 was a Z80A cpu, right?

I really appreciate the advice. I'll check it out.

I liked it too, when I used it. It's been decades, though. I think you're right about the use model and its benefits.

uw-beaver!tikal!jes :-)

I'm enough of a dinosaur that I think I'd be good just going back to the days of USENET, UUCP and rn.

With respect, it's not a matter of money or resources.

Getting angry is optional. With some practice (largely, mindfulness) people can learn to notice their emotions and not become strongly identified with whatever is happening in the moment, and choose to do something more productive than simply stewing or ruminating in the unfairness of life.

Thanks for engaging.

Of course. If someone wants to be angry, that's their choice.

Yet a lot of people get angry easily, and being an easily-triggered person works against a person's life. No one wants to constantly have to walk on eggshells around another person in order to be their friend, partner, child, etc.

Personally, I don't enjoy the emotion of being angry. If you do, more power to you.

> I'd be furious at the inequality of input and output

Stranger here. Just want to suggest that getting furious over things outside of your control, or the world not being as you would like it to be, is optional.

If you don't like being enraged, you can quit that pattern with some practice in learning to notice your emotions as they come and go, and then learning to interrupt the chain of events that leads to the state of being furious and brooding.

Thank you for those examples. I agree that they are examples of predictions made by Musk that did not pan out.

That being said, do you think the majority of the predictions he makes in going about his every day business are wrong?

To get to the point Musk has reached, it seems to me that that would, over a lifetime, require a person making billions (?) of small predictions that no one ever hears about. I think it must be the case that he’s very good at making those kinds of predictions.

I agree with you that being wealthy does confer a great advantage to people. I don’t think it explains everything about Elon Musk and the success he has achieved to date.

To be clear, I don’t believe in free will. It seems like an error to me to look at a successful person and claim that they achieved their success single-handedly.

Can you say more?

Musk is the world’s wealthiest individual. I’m having trouble seeing see how being bad at making predictions results in that outcome.