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emptybits
6,418karma·1,004submissions·November 20, 2012
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Darren Stone, Vancouver, BC, Canada
"Once men turned their thinking over to
machines in the hope that this would
set them free. But that only permitted
other men with machines to enslave
them." - Frank P. Herbert, Jr., 1965
"The programmer, like the poet, works
only slightly removed from pure
thought-stuff. He builds his castles
in the air, from air, creating by
exertion of the imagination."
- Fred P. Brooks, Jr., 1975recent activity (1,004 total)
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There is a spectrum of goods and services suppliers, from luxury to essential. These gentlemen wanted a wedding cake. It's not essential and they may have had time to find an alternative supplier…
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Acceptance and its role in happiness is such a great topic and I am so grateful we can access the works of long-past lucid thinkers. This is a very productive use of limited reading time IMO. Putting …
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> It's not about race but rather their patriotism towards China. Please explain, then, why race is a category used to reduce a person's numeric "trustworthiness score" in China.…
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You refer to a very qualified and narrow "identical". In the general sense, before an Uighur commits a crime, are they treated in an equal manner to a Han Chinese before they commit a crime?…
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A thought experiment, from an ignorant Canadian to those Chinese who accept ethnic discrimination in national policy: Generation(s) of Han Chinese and Uighurs get together and start having children. A…
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Treatment identical to Han Chinese would be a great start.
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Classic and relevant quote from 1985-ish: "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway." Today, the equivalent may be an autopilot Tesla Mode…
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Let's be accurate, then. It's disingenuous to simply say it was moved towards the end. It was always at the end but until approximately a month ago, Google actually led its Code of Conduct…
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If you find yourself inspired by wild notations I recommend this coffee table book: "Notations 21" by Theresa Sauer.
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Clearly a work of passion and I appreciate OP sharing. I enjoyed earlier days of "Silent PC" building, ten or fifteen years ago. For example, building a silent tower or desktop for a DAW or …
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The Philae spacecraft [1] (2014, first craft to "land" on a comet) was controlled by a couple of Harris RTX2010 CPUs, which are radiation-hardened CPUs that execute Forth words natively.[2] …
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This reminds me of observations some have when looking at the I Ching. The I Ching is elegant from a modern binary/math perspective because it appears to be an ancient hierarchy of 1-bit symbols …
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> On smart contracts: "Of course, writing programs that produce permanent financial consequences gives me some pretty serious anxiety, and I would hope that most senior engineers would feel t…
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My first reaction to what you said was "bah, the scale of space and time in which railways operate wouldn't be impacted by Einstein's ideas about space and time." (And they aren&#x…
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OP recommendation is minimum 512 MB RAM. Giving it 1 GB for headroom still lets you run on the AWS EC2 Free Tier (i.e. t2.micro instance). Would that work?
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This is not a general solution as the author wants, but when I know my own utilities are going to be redirected or piped and I don't want ANSI/colour sequences captured then I've wrap…
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In the C64 piracy heyday of the mid 1980s, there was an urban legend of this anti-piracy tactic: At manufacturing/packaging time, some games' floppies had a physical hole punched in a far-aw…
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> "Woebot has moved away from Facebook and launched as a stand-alone app that only requires a first name to sign up; ... Users can also ask Woebot to delete their account history, wiping all c…
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The article mentions the first interview Sam Harris did with Jordan Peterson. It appeared frustrating for both parties because they got caught up in definitions of words, etc. Still, it was civil so t…
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> there's no law, not even Canada that would allow me to choose a peaceful ending date for my own Canada is getting there. Slowly. For those not in the loop... Since 2016, medically assisted …
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If Apple wants to cling to the now-inappropriate "Pro" brand for these MacBooks then may I suggest they add a new line: maybe, MacBook Ultimate or MacBook Power or MacBook Unlimited or MacBo…
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I write this as an overall Apple enthusiast. I used to say this every year but I haven't been able to say it for years: "I want the latest MacBook Pro because it's the best yet."…
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Yes. Technology to restrict usage sounds a lot like DRM, which has many downsides. Enforcement, ultimately, will rely on good old fashioned copyright and licensing (contract) law.
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If you don't like a user's request then don't service it and tell them why. You owe them nothing. A simple 403 FORBIDDEN probably covers it. Or 429 TOO MANY REQUESTS might be appropriat…
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Yes, those are my own assessments. It's possible that someone could view Apple's decision to compromise its customers privacy to remain in the Chinese market as "morally strong". I…
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Apple's compliance with Beijing is morally weak but financially strong, not just for them but for Apple Developers. A month ago, Apple noted that it has 1.8 million developers in China (and…
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The site works fine for this Mac user. (Safari 11.0.2, High Sierra)
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I think it's accurate to say our healthcare system is often loved and quite dear to our hearts as Canadians. (Canadian here.) And, much like a beloved relative, our system has major annoyances an…