I think it is a great insight that every ideology can be turned violent. I first heard this where Zizek cites the book has a story from: "During World War II, Zen Buddhism provided a strong foundation for Japanese militarism, including Imperial Japan's use of suicide warfare."[1] Where a Japanese soldier in WW2 wouldn't do the killing, but his sword (?) This is seen that all ideology can be turned violent.
[1] Brian Daizen Victoria, Zen at War (New York: Weatherhill, 1997).
Yes, and the project can be criticised by reducing until there's no value anymore. Well known instances of this process:
- Predicate Fronting in Free Relatives: In sentences like “What John saw was a surprise,” labeling the fronted predicate is not without problems, Merge doesn’t yield a clear head.
- Optional Verb Movement in Persian: Yes-no questions where verbs can optionally move (e.g., “Did you go?” vs. “You went?”) messes up feature-checking’s binary mode.
- Non-Matching Free Relatives with Pied-Piping: Structures like “In whichever city you live, you’ll find culture” mess up standard labeling, needs extra stipulations.
- Some Subjects in Finnish: Nominative vs. non-nominative subjects (e.g., “Minua kylmä” [me-ACC cold]) complicate that Minimalist case assignment.
I think it is important to realize, that we need to understand language on our own terms. The logic of LLMs is not unlike alien technology to us. That being said, the minimalist program of Chomsky lead to nowhere, because just like programming, it found edge case after edge case, reducing it further and further, until there was no program anymore that resembled a real theory. But it is wrong to assume that the big progress in linguistics is in vain, the same reason Prolog, Theorem provers, type theory, category theory is in vain, when we have LLMs that can produce everything in C++. We can use the technology of linguistics to ground our knowledge, and in some dark corner of the LLM it might already have integrated this. I think the original divide between the sciences and the humanities might be deeper and more fundamental than we think. We need linguistic as a discipline of the humanities, and maybe huge swaths of Computer Science is just that.
I teach programming to designers and architects at the local university. We're using Processing quite successfully, because it skips a lot of steps. My daughters are too young and are still doing Scratch (with the great micro:bit). But I think next would be Processing, or Arduino with Micropython. But yes, typing is a problem. My older daughter inputs almost all her text via voice input. At work we're doing a lot of low code for new architectures. I think agentic low code tools for kids would be nice.
I missed out so much. When I was a college student, I rejected photos, as digital cameras where everywhere, and I was a snob, in my high school times taking analog camera photo. I read a lot of books about Zen, living in the moment, but now I regret this. The view photos I have I cherish as very dear memories.
Don't believe them. I was also going to university in Germany and had to work so much to compensate for bad lecturers. Until now I can say I needed 100% of what I learned in university. Even the most esoteric stuff came back to bite me. For LLMs, they are close to useless if you can't review the stuff. Maybe at some point in the future they are better and can reason about their code, but as in fusion, self-driving, etc., you never know when this is. And there will always be people who have to develop this.
To be fair, Java Swing was my first GUI programming experience, and is still the best I had. For Desktop, fast iteration, no budget, and works anywhere, it's basically Swing or Electron.
For me it is only the visiting family use case, where rental doesn't make sense. We have car sharing in the city (Miles) which fixes almost all use cases. Driving to the airport only when without kids, as they both still need car seats, that I can't leave. Otherwise car sharing rental is perfect to get to the airport.
Seriously, with the number of invites, slots, to juggle. Might be better to work again like a dev and with text files in an IDE. Would be funny to send invites with raising a PR. Merging, reviewing, ... what a beautiful mess.
this might be in the way of alan kay's core idea, sending messages with interpreters. if we want to go all the way of the snowcrash pipe dream, then imagining objects with programs thrown around is more realistic than making it somehow work with html. on the other hand, in brings back bad memories of flash silverlight, java applets, that almost destroyed the open web. there is a beauty in easy-to-read text rather than binary blobs.
this is a fun exercise. but I saw it a lot of times in big companies where people are too afraid to make changes. where also the open-closed principle comes from. something I don't like anymore in practice. because one has to get away from the fear of breaking things to maintain clean code, and clean architecture.
I did OR in my Bachelor thesis, and then at my first project at my first job. It worked like magic, and business was sure it wouldn't work. Still one of the projects I always talk about. It was for organizing screens unto pallets unto trucks. Then I never anything with OR ever since. Even for a few early AI products 8 years ago, in the end they didn't go for it. I think you are spot on with the expertise. Even though quite a lot of businesspeople heard about it in university.
I was doing this, and then it is confusing for people to follow. Nowadays I do this, too. But when I am ready, I write up everything once, then add in the details.
Prolog is AI, so whenever I see such a problem, I use miniKanren, implementing Relational/Logic programming in a light-weight way. Bleeding edge AI it is.
Germany anyway is a special case, because at this time it was quite heterodox. And even in protestant countries like Prussia, you could have a positive effect from Catholic countries surrounding like Poland. Also the quoted articles don't really support the position.
I am going to work by bike, and in the beginning, I could still get to zone 2. Now this is really hard to achieve. It becomes really hard to push yourself enough.
One has to be careful not to backdate our current understanding of identity. Identities were rich and very fluid, being German was an identity, which the Dutch ("Deutsch") had until very recently. But for example religion was very important as an identity, as well as even European once like being a Frank. The Roman Empire was much more important than often credited in German/Prussian history, because it was precisely part of the nation building process to downplay the Empire, to build a Prussian Germany. My parents are boomers, and I remember how my mother was complaining about Prussian coffee. Also in Highschool I was learning Saxonian history, right now my daughters are also learning Hamburg's history.
Junior's are so fast seniors nowadays, at least in my world of management systems, e.g., Salesforce, SAP. One year, and they are senior. But it takes courage and guidance from the company. I think it is a real weakness to concentrate on losing out on the young devs, that have a new perspective on things. Also it is quite hard to get good senior people, but someone really good fresh out of college is quite easy to hire.
I had to sign off that I am not concerned of the likely undetonated bombs underneath my home when buying my apartment this year. In Hamburg, Germany, there are so many bombs still under buildings, because buildings were put on top hastily.
I would say an analog synthesizer is an analog computer. The input are for example voltages to simulate notes, and the computational output is a waveform. I prefer analog because digital synthesizer, at least for Subtractive synthesis, are only a simulation of the real instrument. The downsides are not unlike other analog computers, noise and dependence on temperature distort the output.
On the West Coast (Izmir, Dikili, Cesme, Bodrum) it is custom. It is sometimes called Italian or Roman ice cream, even though I never ate this ice cream in Italy. My two little girls picked this one even up, so it is custom right now, and I think since at least 30 years.