d-us-vb

The rule is referring to application plugins and extensions. In the early 90s, there was an antipattern in lots of large applications to evolve an extension language that was originally just a dialect of a config language of some kind. Then the developers would try to add if/else without changing the syntax of the config language, and then add functions, and before long, you have an overcomplicated yet poorly specified and slow implementation of something almost but not quite entirely unlike Lisp.

This same phenomenon is the reason why John Ousterhout wrote Tcl and the GNU project started Guile.

The view that addiction is a disease is still contentious. Addiction may really be the brain functioning normally, but with abnormal stimuli. Brains are learning organs. Addictive substances don’t rewire it any differently from “normal” stimuli, it just does it faster and it’s harder to undo.

But due to brain plasticity, the most effective treatment for addiction yet discovered is forgetting it, or more precisely, abstinence for a long enough period. (But that usually sounds trite because the problem being solved during treatment is more preventing voluntary relapse, starting the forgetting period over again.)

The fact that the effects don’t last for more than a few months is very concerning, and I have to wonder about the long term side effects of so bluntly changing something as complex as a brain. And even more concerning is the risk of predatory behavior of practitioners preying on the desperation of addicts.

Maybe this is already in everyone’s mind as they read this, but as someone dealing with an addiction, I would not volunteer for this treatment due to these risks. Imagine if the long term effects actually make the addiction worse. And that seems very possible based on how much we actually know about how the brain works.

"Again I saw that under the sun the race was not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all." -- Ecclesiastes 9:11 (ESV)

And somehow pedestrian scenery doesn't take one's attention?

Even a few tens of thousands of people is less than 1% of the people making an attempt.

He’s right in being skeptical that “people” (who?) thought that “being a creator” was a viable career path, as the article suggests was the case.

I hope you're joking. Spider-man is owned entirely by Sony. It is only by a tenuous contract that Disney was able to get Spider-Man into the MCU.

It could be because they're an enterprise dropbox user, which could be pricy.

What's the difference between Domain Driven Design and Problem Oriented Programming?

I feel like Chuck Moore was talking about this back in the '70s when he wrote Programming in a Problem Oriented Language. Forth has been largely overlooked probably because it lacks what people consider necessities in modern programming languages (like compiler enforced typing by default), but you can't deny the power of Forth and other concatenative languages for their ability to encode the domain.

The point is trying to make sure that the parser doesn't choke on the entire file just because one line is incorrect.

Emacs-fu: It tickles me every time I see someone doing something creative in Emacs, usually along the lines of making it more aesthetically pleasing, or experimenting with new ways of combining interactive graphics with interactive text in novel ways.

Mentioning concatenative programming gets an instant like from me.

He just needs to learn the Soleus Pushup.

When I was using macOS regularly, CotEditor was my go-to text editor before I learned Emacs. Compared to XCode, Netbeans, and Eclipse, it had a miniscule memory footprint (somewhere between 10 and 20 MB). It wasn't as fast as Sublime for some tasks, like regex search, but had built in syntax highlighting support for nearly every programming language still in use, and it was very easy to create your own themes, with an intuitive graphical interface for setting colors for different token types.

Emacs is a thing. =3

This comment seems almost right. The author implicitly declares the existence of "memetic inoculation" as something they're describing, although they didn't specify cases where it becomes difficult to separate a bad idea from a bad description of an idea.

As someone else pointed out, crypto is an example where there are obviously good and bad ideas: using cryptography for distributed and decentralized contracts is a at the very least quite intriguing. Using crypto for a scam is quite a bad idea.

But, then there are ideas that are really good, but who's outworkings are usually described poorly. Take Emacs as an example. "text editor that does everything, including email, accounting, browsing the web, file management, and much more" sounds like a bad idea to anyone with a modicum of appreciation for the Unix Philosophy. "An app that makes programming and using practical text-oriented, highly-integrative applications in Lisp" is a better description of what Emacs really is.

Notice that in the former case, crypto and scams using crypto are two distinctly different ideas. In the latter case, we have two descriptions of essentially the same thing, which was an implementation of the modern idea of Emacs, which is factually a Lisp interpreter with built in text display. Those two descriptions could in theory be the basis for creating different apps, and they'd probably look quite different.

Yes, everyone knows where motion blur comes from in a real camera, but in a rendering view, there is no real camera. The renderer is what applies simulated motion blur. There are some simulated optical effects must be accounted for in order to render a realistic motion blur, like depth of field. Motion blur is quite often added to stylized animation in an equally stylized sort of arcing cloud, which requires the renderer to also have knowledge of the literal 3d model that's being animated.

Slack (and teams, discord, skype) are all antithetical to the style of written communication outlined in the slide deck. They make difficult writing a long, well-structured document to record and transmit a complex idea. IM team coordination platforms are only good for the first phase of writing, that is, just getting ideas down in written format. The issue is that the tools built into those platforms do not aid in the other phases of the writing process, and in fact, they sort of make it difficult, actually. I speak from experience having to go back through thousands of Discord messages to condense the ideas into a collection of documents on different topics.

Someone should write an extension that makes it easier to convert IM thread to an organized document outline in slack or discord. That would be nice.

Seeing a bit of debate concerning the most defining feature: one post a week.

This is my favorite aspect of the site!

What this really brings up is the distinction made ages ago about policy vs mechanism. Every social media platform out there has or basically uses the same mechanisms: interactive, submit text/photos/video, add "friends", and so on. You'll notice that Slow Social implements the mechanism of a social network.

So... what makes every social networking site different? It's the Policy! Most platforms had a few defining policies.

- Twitter: "tweets" must be quite short, originally emulating SMS, all tweets show up in your feed (not sure if this is true anymore).

- Facebook: add friends, must use your real name

- Quora: must use your real name, posts must take the form of either a question or an answer to a question (but comments may also be made)

- Reddit: Upvotes and Downvotes are first class citizens, users submit an idea, and the interface encourages lively discussion in the comments (this isn't technically policy, but more like culture).

And so we add Slow Social to the mix: must add a friend to your list for them to see your post or add their email, may only post once per week.

It's also just cool to experiment with new policies and see if they work.

So, Slow Social adds a new, perhaps daring policy so as to make things more enjoyable overall. As an aside, if I'm only allowed to post one thing per week for my friends, I can't help but think that that would encourage my writing to be more impactful, thoughtful, and polite. It would encourage good habits in written communication.

So needless to say, I'm signed up and looking forward to where this goes!