verisimilitudes

> An expert can only be an expert on a repository that they have a history of contributing to

This is what I mean. Not everything happens in a repository like this. Unfortunately, I'm in the overwhelming minority here, but I still wanted to comment on this.

> If they still chose to give bad advice then I would be disappointed.

It's something to consider, for it will happen.

What's to stop someone from purposefully giving bad advice for his amusement?

Well, companies used to have employees write code, rather than stitch together random garbage written by random dipshits who could be tricked into using loose licenses. That's one cause for concern.

> Open source won because everyone worked together.

No, ``open source'' has ``won'' because it helped corporations defang Free Software and get gratis labor.

> Supply chain security will happen because everyone works together. If you try to do this alone, you will fail.

This isn't food, but perfectly uniform applied mathematics. There's no ``working together'' with corporations. Doing it alone is the only reasonable option, which means aggressively reducing the size of this foul shit is necessary.

> Thank goodness others had the foresight to create our current SBOM formats.

Yeah, MicroSoft totally *<3* ``open source'' guys.

> Long ago all the software supply chain work was done by hand.

Oh, right, all of this new security theatre is always about trust and reputation, and not trusting those disgusting lone programmers such as me or other silly things; it's always really about doing anything but truly auditing that yucky code.

The fact of the matter is that old phones may not have been formally-proven to work, but basically worked. The new phones aren't formally-proven to work, and basically don't.

> People just don't know what they're demanding.

As a programmer, I want the cretins claiming to be programmers to face justice for their disgusting work, about which they're so smug and condescending.

Do I understand correctly that this would be one possible interpretation of this sentence: If you've only used UNIX, and not something IBM made decades ago, then it seems impossible.

That's hilarious.

Those are just another two sacred cows.

>And since you're explaining your thoughts, are those nature the same or is each one a different facet of the programmer culture?

UNIX and UTF-8 are alike because they were made by the same fools, and both made to avoid upsetting the delicate sensibilities of the disgusting C language. The nature of Hacker News is similar in its ignorance and wastefulness, but it's not a consequence of either.

>And lastly: do you honestly think most production or data engineers should be imprisoned or stripped of their titles?

Sure, probably; it's not as if their titles mean anything anyway.

> about things they like and understand

They like politics and understand very little about being a hacker, certainly.

The fools over at Reddit call some things "adulting", because the idea of growing out of childhood is so foreign to them that they'd rather make it childish too. It's the same basic disease.

> I had never thought about the "asymmetry" of putting control codes with the character codes in ASCII--it does seem illogical now that you point it out.

Yes, this is why I call them insidious.

The issue with constructed languages is that they simply don't have the beauty of something such as Latin, and never can, due to their very nature.

Anyway, feel free to send me an e-mail at some point, if we're to continue our discussion at some later time.

I've not reached out to John Cowan but think I might, despite my dislike of Unicode. I'll also look into this Ronin Institute. I'll keep the book in mind. I appreciate the help.

As I explain in the last linked article, a lot of these artificial languages retard language work, rather than help it. I expect to target real languages with most of my time now.

Think of Elision like MIDI, but for human language. Text is stored uniformly as indices into a dictionary, rather than as a sequence of characters with interspersed control codes.

This is my current progress: http://verisimilitudes.net/2022-06-13

However, that was somewhat a waste of time, so I also wrote this reflection on it: http://verisimilitudes.net/2022-06-17

> Sorry for my part in that, most people don't find me interesting.

I didn't intend the remark as an insult.

It's interesting to mention Shakespeare so much. I'm reading The Merchant of Venice lately.

> It seems to me like for the most part only the best connected, ruthless, garrulous, overly vocal people get their ideas heard.

Yes.

> I've tried business development orgs (including personal connections), directly contacting relevant researchers or sources of funding, on and on.

I tried contacting VPRI and similar organizations, but to silence.

I found no way to contact the author of this, as an example, but it's similar, except I'm making some progress: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32495133

I've largely given up on promoting my novel work here, as it never makes the front page, and none of my work ever gets any interesting comments whenever it does.

Tell me, do either of us see people championing this for other languages? I don't. I think, if a white man learned Chinese and butchered it, and a Chinese man corrected him, that would be fine. Why is it different for English?

Without prescriptivism, we'll see "Me love you long time" be considered to be as acceptable as "I will love you for a long time" and the very thought sickens me.

It's nice that you've chosen the GPL, as I also prefer that license, but what value do you see in this software that only you can modify for use? Do you intend to release an Android or other port, at some point?

The reason I didn't strictly adhere to the POSIX behavior was because I don't know where this is documented and don't feel like scanning through the C to find out. On all of the files I've tested, which include a wide array of punctuation and other such things, the results were identical, but I'm merely not making any promises. I'd prefer to not be accused of being one of those Lispers who only complete part of the program; if you look at the libraries I've written, which actually concern me, then you'll find they're well-documented and rather comprehensive for their purposes.

Surely you recognize the irony in stating this here, considering the pieces of shit who create these startups are responsible for making the world worse at a large scale, purely for their own gain, right?

It's obscene to me how you've written this. These startups ignore major laws, break numerous consumer protection laws as well, purposefully provide mechanisms intended to hurt anyone but themselves, erode societal trust, and even kill people, and yet you're blaming the people these vampires feed from?

If you'd care to learn some real history, I suggest you read The UNIX-HATERS Handbook: http://web.mit.edu/%7Esimsong/www/ugh.pdf

With this book, you'll learn that UNIX and C are nothing admirable and have actually been responsible for successfully destroying much better systems and languages in the popular eye; languages including Lisp, APL, Simula, ALGOL, Smalltalk, and Forth all existed before C; systems such as ITS and Multics addressed concerns UNIX users still suffer under today.

Make no mistake, for all of RMS' admirable qualities, he's basically responsible for UNIX proliferating by copying it for GNU. You also shouldn't look at your modern BSD or GNU system and think this is what UNIX users used decades ago, because for all of their faults, GNU and BSD actually try to produce programs which work correctly and GNU goes much farther than several of the BSDs in this respect. The UNIX attitude is one of getting half the job done and leaving it at that.

In closing, UNIX has no philosophy. The UNIX philosophy is simply brand-named simplicity. The ideas of modularity and simplicity predate automatic computing and recorded history, and yet people will claim you're following UNIX if you write a program which adheres to these basic ideals. Further, those other qualities of this philosophy result in programs that aren't modular, simple, nor beautiful.

Secondly, with regards to RodgerTheGreat, it's interesting to see one of your messages here. I'm not certain I'd mark CHIP-8 as the first, but that's due primarily to my not being aware of any older virtual machines used for games, discounting any games on, say, the DEUCE. I've participated in this game jam, as well as the last, so I expect my submission has been properly submitted; here's to at least one other game I submit.

That isn't bullying and surely you can see how it would be alarming to see you jump to defense in this way, threatening to ban a user over that benign and relevant comment, including criticizing everyone who has supported that user.

Hacker News was originally Startup News and there's no improving it, per se, as several of the issues are inherent in the model, such as how discussions don't last long and almost every topic is from an outside source. This will be my third and last reply, I'll let you have the last word, and you can't have much conversation with just three responses. Hacker News isn't based around starting much real and deep discussion, by design. It's a fundamentally flawed model.

For the record, I don't go around making bad messages on imageboards. I'd much rather write good messages. My username doesn't seem pretentious to me and I'm not only interested in work, where work is defined as making progress on my own projects; I also read and other fun things.

I won't deny that America has major social issues, some of which are inflicted at birth. I can't do anything about that, though, and realizations such as that are the true test of stoicism and the like. Again, I was only discussing these things in the context of employment. I don't know how it is elsewhere, but American employers can fire at-will and whatnot and the only reasonable way to treat them is to act solely in one's self-interest, unless perhaps you personally know the man. There's no value in not pursuing self-interest with an employer you don't intimately know and which, despite all of the fluff, doesn't care, and yet people in this discussion are advocating about how those darn kids recognize this for what it is and don't want to get paid in experience or knowledge, but focus on money, instead. Money is worthless if you don't have anything you want to buy and more and more people, including myself, want the minimum amount to live decently comfortably and that's it.

Where do I have an opening to discuss with you the ideas without voicing how uncomfortable what you said is?

You may have the last word in this discussion. If you care to go beyond that, I've an email address I host you may find and then send mail to.

I understand the metaphor you're making, but how was I trying to be cold to start with?

Empathy is not a form of capitulation. Solipsism can be a detrimental.

What I meant is this article assumes someone employed as a programmer needs more empathy and how that's a poor one. In an employment context, I figure empathy will usually be a method of extracting more resources out of an employee, which is what I meant by capitulation. It would be nice to be solipsistic, but I don't feel like creating any startups that violate laws and kill people for my benefit.

I don't talk mad game and I'm merely being more honest about my purpose here than I feel others are. The only reason I made an account here is because my work was ignored and that displeased me, but the one who originally uploaded my work, in pursuit of Internet points, was no longer doing so and so I had to do this myself. My work has received some attention now, but I'm stuck with this account and its posting history, so I continue with it.

Even on imageboards you have an identity.

It depends on how careful one is.

You just don't have particular kinds of consequences.

Is that intended to be a negative aspect? Free speech is freedom from consequences thereof and it's great for a beginner to learn the ropes without an identity, even if the beginner does eventually start using one.

Stay off them, they aren't your social skills crutch.

I don't understand what your point in writing that is. I can't tell if you're trying to give advice or are trying to make demands of me. In any case, I'll continue using them.

I see an amoitnga has also been downvoted for implying that money isn't the ultimate and only pursuit of employment. You could argue that's due to his tone, but I understandably take a more somber view of why that view would be disliked.