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linguistics__

82 karma · joined April 7, 2022

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linguistics__··on The Om Programming Language
Forth + APL: Uiua
linguistics__··on Unity's Mono problem: C# code runs slower than it should
> Yeah I think Unity just doesn't have the technical skillset anymore

It's not a technical skillset issue, it's a case of lacking resources, leadership changing priorities and changing requirements mid-development, causing a lot of work to be redone.

We still have highly skilled developers working in this area, if we can just actually be allowed to do (and keep) we work we have.

linguistics__··on Brutalita Sans: An Experimental Font and Font Editor
Where you see the 'Q', it's a text-field, you can just enter a different letter and it'll switch.
linguistics__··on Tbsp – treesitter-based source processing language
I mean I'll be calling (pronouncing) it Tablespoon, that's a great name:)
linguistics__··on Electric eel’s zap can transfer genes to nearby animals
To answer that there are two main factors: 1) For this kind of single instance gene transfer to have an evolutionary effect, it will need to happens to germ-line cell (so an egg or sperm cell in a multi-cellular organism, or in a single-celled organism). Otherwise the mutation won't be inheritable and it won't be evolution, just mutation.

2) The organism(s) affected by this gene transfer would need to be under some evolutionary pressure that would benefit from extra genetic variance. Genetic variance in itself is not a driver of evolution, evolutionary pressure is, which does need the variance to actually do anything. Pressure is the sculptor and variance is the clay, without one of those there won't be a statue.

Also, normally most random mutations are either negative or neutral (there's a lot more ways an organism can be dead than alive), so I would suspect this might also be true of gene transfers. Though gene transfers from environmental DNA isn't as random as direct genetic mutation, so perhaps there's something interesting happening there. But I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the risk of cancer or viral infections would be higher.

linguistics__··on Losing Metaphors: Zip and Paste
Or if you're working with a list of lists, the wonderful: ↓⍉↑ will do
linguistics__··on Beetle grows ‘termite’ on back to steal food
The life/dinner principle doesn't work in absolutes, it just states that you would expect asymmetric evolutionary pressures from asymmetric stakes in interactions.
linguistics__··on Beetle grows ‘termite’ on back to steal food
It's also worth taking the "Life/dinner principle"[0] into account. If the termites fail to detect the beetle, then they might loose a tiny bit of food or whatever. While if the beetle fails to deceive the termites it might get killed or starve. Hence the adaptive pressure is probably higher for the beetle than for the termites.

0: The name comes from the example: the rabbit runs faster than the fox, because the rabbit is running for its life, while the fox is running for its dinner.

linguistics__··on Oslo district court rules Meta is violating the right to privacy (Norwegian)
That's 1 million kroner per day, just fyi
linguistics__··on What’s the world’s oldest language?
Well, the question is in reality either unanswerable (we don't know - and may never know - how many and when the first proto-language(s) emerged) or meaningless (all live natural languages go back as far as we can reconstruct or attest to).
linguistics__··on What’s the world’s oldest language?
Just as a little correction: Dutch is not an "evolved German dialect". German and Dutch are both West Germanic languages, but so is Scots, Frisian and English. So it would be like saying that German is an evolved English dialect then (though to be fair, Dutch and German are grouped closer to each-other in that family tree usually and have provided a lot of substrate for each-other due to close contact).

Swiss German is not regarded as a its own language by any nation, though from a purely linguistic perspective it could very well be classified as its own language. What is deemed a language vs. a dialect usually comes down to politics. The saying usually goes something like: "A language is just a dialect with an army".

linguistics__··on The Almost Romance Languages
Because of palatalization [0], a very common sound change.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palatalization_(sound_change)

linguistics__··on English in the Real World
Fair enough:)

It's also okay to have opinions about language of course. I just often see people confidently stating, that they're speak the right way, and those others (from that other city, country, those young people, those poor people, those black people, etc.) speak the wrong way. And it often boils down to either ignorance about how languages actual work and evolve, or just elitism/classism (or worse).

And as somebody who cares a lot about languages, this just rubs me the wrong way, and I see it so often. Hence my previous response, pardon the snark:)

linguistics__··on English in the Real World
It's almost like it's an unimportant distinction for normal speech and that the spoken language is moving on, as it inevitably does.
linguistics__··on Show HN: Ractor – a Rust-based actor framework with clusters and supervisors
Yes, if you dare to look into a GC implementation, you might see some truly unsafe code indeed
linguistics__··on Ruby 3.2.0 is from another dimension
If you're curious about how their YJIT, with it's lazy basic block versioning, works then I can highly recommend watching their presentation on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFb5wNj2ztM
linguistics__··on Ruby 3.2.0 is from another dimension
JIT compilation is done lazily on a per basic block level (so you only JIT blocks you're about to run). It keeps track of statically known information for specific basic-blocks and specializes different versions of basic blocks based on this. So if you're coming from an if-statement checking the type of X, into a new basic block, then the JIT specializes the block based on the knowledge that X indeed has said type (so it can specialize operations or skip future checks).

I can highly recommend watching their presentation on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFb5wNj2ztM

linguistics__··on APL deserves its renaissance too (2018)
Most editors let you use an input prefix, so typing `y gets you ↑ for example. Makes it a lot easier
linguistics__··on How Aphex Twin Made Selected Ambient Works 85-92
I mean I could list reasons, but in the end, it just comes down to taste really. Different people like different things.
linguistics__··on Purring is a love language no human can speak
Indeed, in Danish the verb 'misse' means to slow blink like a cat, and comes from the word 'mis' which can be translated as 'kitty' or 'pussy-cat'.
linguistics__··on Blech: A language for developing reactive, real-time critical embedded software
The "black-" in blacksmith, just means black [1], most likely in reference to the iron they worked. As far as I can tell, "Blech" doesn't have a cognate in English. If it did, it would probably by "blek" or "blik".

1: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/blacksmith#English

linguistics__··on 30% of Google's Emotions Dataset Is Mislabeled
I feel like this is basically a subset of the translation problem, which you probably need actual artificial general intelligence for (because you need to be able to model another human mind to a certain degree). Here's a neat video covering the topic [1].

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAgp7nXdkLU

linguistics__··on DRY is an over-rated programming principle?
For those wondering, it's a reference to this beauty: https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/000/838/967/e39...
linguistics__··on Swedish slow TV: The great moose migration [video]
That's an odd take. A lot of people just like having the TV or radio on in the background and this is a cheap and relaxing kind of content to fill that niche.
linguistics__··on Google Docs will “warn you away from inappropriate words”
I think most people could do with a little less exposure to US culture tbh
linguistics__··on The remarkable brain of a carpet cleaner who speaks 24 languages
You're conflating language with writing. While it is true that Japanese writing is related to Chinese writing, the languages are still from two completely different language families[1]. Anything they have in common is due to exposure, not relatedness.

The argument you're making would be the same as this: "It's easier for an English-speaker to learn Finnish because it uses the Latin alphabet". The only reason that helps is that you don't also have to learn to decipher a new set of squiggles. It doesn't actually help you understand spoken language or speak it.

1: Mandarin is a Sino-Tibetan language, while Japanese is a Japonic language. These two language families are not related in any ancestral way known to modern linguistics.