556 karma · joined February 4, 2010
And people who make fonts, create art, and write prose generally do these things because they like doing them, not because they're forced to. These technologies aren't automating drudgery, they're automating things that give people's lives meaning. What's the endgame here exactly?
The benefits are obvious. The downsides (disk space?) are not. Why didn't anyone ever do this?
EDIT: Nevermind. Xcode used to ship on the MacOS discs.
Microsoft was more interested in developing .NET and C# to battle Java, and less interested in developing and promoting VB, their own successful and original product.
The other great feature is the "Little Arc" window that appears when opening links in other apps. This lets you check something out, close the window, and resume what you were doing, preventing you from getting sucked into the Web and away from the conversation you were having.
I don't find much else compelling, but these are both really nice. For some reason, I don't care at all about the tiling system or the Boosts feature (modifying pages to remove elements, change fonts, etc) even though people talk about those a lot. If they can think of one or two more really useful features (and communicate them properly on the website) then they'll gain a lot of users.
At least, they'll gain a lot of users on the Mac. The biggest downside is the lack of Windows and Linux support. They're working on Windows. I don't see them doing Linux at all, but who knows.
"A pattern matching heavy language designed with Advent of Code. langjam0002 runner-up"
If any significant number of people are afraid of opioids now, that's good progress.
On the other hand, in the US, "gimp" is always either an insult, a derogatory verb, or the open source project.
But why would that always be the case? And why should we assume that the reasons the author states are even true right now, much less whether they will actually impede the development of uploading? As we have plainly seen with artificial neural networks over the course of the past decade, major progress in technology can happen overnight, and that overnight progress can lead to completely unexpected new directions in research, consumer products and social consequences.
I also just don't buy the arguments to begin with. No, our brains are not static connectomes – has anyone ever seriously argued this? Obviously, our brains and our minds are dynamic. Any system we build to represent a human mind would necessarily require the capacity for dynamism and change.
Another argument form the article: we can't measure synapse strength without a barrage of tests for each individual synapse. Is this even true? And why should we believe that will remain impossible? Machine learning techniques seem like a great match for this. We need a lot more data and a lot better instruments, but those will come.
And, of course, everyone understands that you can't make a completely detailed map of anything without some form of simplification or abstraction. The first uploaded minds and the first simulations would surely be crappier than the ones that follow. This has been covered in a dozen sci-fi works: Stephenson's Fall (2019) is the most recent big name example I can think of.
We're never going to know until we try. And people are definitely going to try this... a lot. Constantly. Until the end of our civilization. So no, we can't upload anyone right now. But we should probably assume that it will happen, with varying levels of quality, before many of us die. Compared to other fantastic scenarios, like contact with aliens, human brain simulation seems like a sure bet.
Carbon and C++Next both seem very directly "inspired" by Circle, but neither of those efforts seem to have actually produced anything yet.
Ideally, Circle it would be open source. But I understand wanting to hold out for some amount of corporate sponsorship first.
Built with a simple static site generator in PHP: https://rogerclark.org/website.php.txt
Of course, there's more to the story, like all the reasons I was an alcoholic in the first place. The other people who were doing the challenge just went back to drinking normally. But at that moment, I just happened to be at the right place in my life where abstaining for a while helped with quitting: I was in a stable relationship with a supportive partner, I began to take my career a little more seriously, and I had just gotten back into competitive Dance Dance Revolution. Playing hardcore DDR several hours a day, I could clearly see the effects of a previous night of drinking in my physical and mental performance -- as pure numbers, in the form of scores.
It's worth trying: you might be at a stopping point too. Without that Dry January, I may have slowed down, but would I have really, actually quit?
In short, my perspective on alcohol is as follows:
- Mental and physical health are hard enough to maintain without constantly poisoning myself with a depressant. If you're having a hard time getting things done, and you aren't exercising enough, alcohol probably isn't helping.
- I needed to learn to socialize, express my emotions, and release inhibitions without alcohol. So I did, and now I can do that.
- Without alcohol, for better or worse (almost entirely for the better), life becomes drastically more predictable. Yes, you'll probably make fewer crazy memories. But: you'll be a better friend and partner, every flight of stairs gets way less dangerous, and you'll pretty much never vomit again.
Coming out of alcoholism on the other side really feels like a superpower. No hangovers, better sleep, and I don't get sick. At social events, the drunker everyone else gets, the funnier and smarter I am.
I completely understand why people drink, and I don't hold it against anyone. I just don't need to do it anymore. Dry January is a good idea.
We have many explanations for what people describe as "the hard problem". But nobody who believes in "the hard problem" accepts these explanations, which have been given for decades by philosophers like Dennett.
There is no way to reconcile your view, that there IS a hard problem and that no progress has been made toward solving it, with our view, that there is no such problem, and that it does not need solving.
There's nothing useful about this kind of negative comment.