JohnLocke4 (u/JohnLocke4)

JohnLocke4 commented on Allow me to introduce, the Citroen C15 eupolicy.social/@jmaris/1... · Posted by u/colinprince

haspok · a month ago

My first car was a rusty 20 year old Renault 5, in which I barely fit myself, so no sex in the car for me.

(But my grandma had a flat that she did not live in during the summer months... hmm... sweet memories... excuse me, what were we talking about again?)

JohnLocke4 · a month ago

At first I wanted to write a comment about how cars and sex are apparently very well linked. Upon thinking it over once more, it appears that the real link to sex is privacy, which is of course obvious. Thinking over it once more, we're brought back to the real selling point of cars: total privacy. Public transport is on paper really good, but it is totally devoid of privacy - which means that it is bad in reality. In other more provocative words, public transportation is bad because you can't have sex on the bus

JohnLocke4 commented on Linux is good now pcgamer.com/software/linu... · Posted by u/Vinnl

nosrepa · a month ago

echo "$((( $(date +%Y) + 1 ))) will be the year of the linux desktop"

JohnLocke4 · a month ago

Yes. The reason the year of the Linux desktop has yet to arrive is because most people don't understand this joke. Linux is powerful because it is made for power users (although certain distros are changing this)

JohnLocke4 commented on List of domains censored by German ISPs cuiiliste.de/domains... · Posted by u/elcapitan

Semaphor · a month ago

For those wondering: it's DNS blocks, so only affecting those using ISP DNS.

JohnLocke4 · a month ago

As a reward for freeing yourself from the de facto government DNS, you will now be gifted free movies for eternity

JohnLocke4 commented on Always bet on text (2014) graydon2.dreamwidth.org/1... · Posted by u/jesseduffield

smj-edison · a month ago

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I agree: text is infinitely versatile, indexable, durable, etc. But, after discovering Bret Victor's work[1], and thinking about how I learned piano, I've also started to see a lot of the limitations of text. When I learned piano, I always had a live feedback loop: play a note, and hear how it sounds, and every week I had a teacher coach me. This is a completely different way to learn a skill, and something that doesn't work well with text.

Bret Victor's point is why is this not also the approach we use for other topics, like engineering? There are many people who do not have a strong symbolic intuition, and so being able to tap into their (and our) other intuitions is a very powerful tool to increase efficiency of communication. More and more, I have found myself in this alternate philosophy of education and knowledge transmission. There are certainly limits—and text isn't going anywhere, but I think there's still a lot more to discover and try.

[1] https://dynamicland.org/2014/The_Humane_Representation_of_Th...

JohnLocke4 · a month ago

I think the obvious thing to do here is to say "Always bet on symbolics".

What separates text from images is that text is symbolic while images are visceral or feelings based. In the same way, text comes in short when it comes to the feeling you get when seeing an image. Try to put in to text what you feel when you look at Norman Rockwell's Freedom of Speech or a crappy 0.5MB picture of your daughter taken on an iPhone 3. Hard isn't it? Visual and symbolic are not isomorphic systems.

Examples of symbolic systems like text are sheet music and Feynman diagrams. You would be hard pressed if you tried to convey even 2KB of sheet music in a book

JohnLocke4 commented on F-35 Fighter Jet's C++ Coding Standards [pdf] stroustrup.com/JSF-AV-rul... · Posted by u/birdculture

JohnBooty · 2 months ago

    In this case, a 141 page highly dense (and frankly 
    boring to read) document is in its essence a liability

So, do you think that the intent was for developers to memorize this document?

Or do you think the expectation was something more reasonable, like using this document as a tool to configure linting tools so that developers could get realtime feedback as they code?

JohnLocke4 · 2 months ago

No, that is not what I mean. The efficiency of a piece of knowledge is not only a function of its intrinsic value, but also how easy it is to understand. Sure, the people who are expected to read the document are smart and this is probably the best way to do it, but even Lockheed engineers are fallible.

If anything, the enemy will be defeated before they have had the time to understand the document in case it gets leaked xD

JohnLocke4 commented on F-35 Fighter Jet's C++ Coding Standards [pdf] stroustrup.com/JSF-AV-rul... · Posted by u/birdculture

fcpk · 2 months ago

And yet the F-35 is known for having extremely problematic software with many failures that have caused it to cause crashes/ejections.

JohnLocke4 · 2 months ago

It is often that seemingly irrelevant factors play a big role. In this case, a 141 page highly dense (and frankly boring to read) document is in its essence a liability. Engineers get bored too and it is obviously more fun to just code rather than to read a document that might aswell have been written by a lawyer.

This is also why car makers name their cars things like "Jeep Expedition" or "Ford Escape". The name doesn't change the car, but it does make it more exciting.

JohnLocke4 commented on My private information is worth $30 blog.melashri.net/micro/p... · Posted by u/elashri

Raesan · 3 months ago

What I thought was most interesting was the statement at the very end: "The poetic nature of writing in grievance in Arabic is much more effective than in English." Differences between languages are so interesting to me. Anyone here know Arabic and feel the same way as the author? What makes Arabic different in that sense?

JohnLocke4 · 3 months ago

I think almost all multilingual people would agree that writing cordially is easier in their native language - whatever that language may be. Expressing heartfelt messages in the language you spoke when developing your identity and emotional maturity is more about just that, rather than what the language happens to be.

JohnLocke4 commented on Project Euler projecteuler.net... · Posted by u/swatson741

SethTro · 3 months ago

I'm glad you enjoyed! It was a real game I played when driving around.

JohnLocke4 · 3 months ago

Is your real name also Seth? This is wholesome and hilarious