dandelion_lover

Researcher

> That may be counterintuitive, but it's a mis-extrapolation from the fact that being poor really sucks.

I don't think it is so simple. Consider a totalitarian country. The people in the government have no skills which would help them achieve anything in a democratic country, but they are loyal to their leader and therefore are paid very well and do whatever they want. In a world without a meaning, such people chose the best path, because nothing else would make them (and their families) live so well. The oppressed people are suffering and revolting, but the police is also paid well and keeps them from changing the political situation.

In a world without a meaning, the best strategy here would be to join the oppressive government and get the profit, but some people still choose to revolt, even endangering their own lives. Are they stupid? (This is of course just one example of many similar ones).

> All I can offer is to note that you haven't given up already and therefore have some intution that there is some emotional state you might look for -- even though I assert that "meaning" isn't actually it.

Actually, I believe in the meaning of life, see my other post here. I cannot imagine why I would struggle through life otherwise...

> Ask yourself just what it is you think "meaning" might mean, and why you're so interested in it. What is the actual problem that you're hoping "meaning" will solve?

The actual problem is finding the reason to overcome the life challenges and not giving up, helping other people and not choosing a more simple path by cashing on people. If the meaning is lacking, then the latter are probably the most reasonable behaviours in life, aren't they?

Why are you so sure there is no meaning of life? We cannot know it, because we do not know everything about the world.

Maybe we just did not find it yet? It's not inside the knowledge we have, so it might be beyond it. To find it, we may need to expand our knowledge about the world, i.e., do science. This is how science may (temporarily) replace the meaning of life.

And you don't have to be a scientist yourself. Instead you may help it in any way you like: spreading knowledge in humanity, preventing conflicts, providing necessary services, etc.

But does this badge influence the scientific profile / resume of the researcher in any way?

The second case. However I am hesitating to ask to look at the code of my supervisor. How would I explain why I need it (if it's not needed for my research)? It's also unlikely user-friendly, so it would take a lot of time to understand anything.

> the distinction between "production-ready" and "science-ready" code

In the first case, you must take into account all (un)imaginable corner cases and never allow the code to fail or hang up. In the second case it needs to produce a reproducible result at least for the published case. And do not expect it to be user-friendly at all.

Or Fortran.

Most of the codes I am developing alone. No one else looks at them ever. My supervisor also develops the code alone and never shows it to anyone (not even members of the group).

In other cases, a couple of other researchers may have a look at my code or continue its development. I worked with 4+ research teams and only saw one professional programmer in one of them helping the development. Never heard about a "dedicated software assurance team".

It won't happen until researchers are forced to do it. Please sign petition at https://publiccode.eu and have a look at my other comment here.

As a theoretical physicist doing computer simulations, I am trying to publish all my code whenever possible. However all my coauthors are against that. They say things like "Someone will take this code and use it without citing us", "Someone will break the code, obtain wrong results and blame us", "Someone will demand support and we do not have time for that", "No one is giving away their tools which make their competitive advantage". This is of course all nonsense, but my arguments are ignored.

If you want to help me (and others who agree with me), please sign this petition: https://publiccode.eu. It demands that all publicly funded code must be public.

P.S. Yes, my 10-year-old code is working.

The point is that there may be a meaning. You questions do not prove its lack.

I do not like your parallel. The question about the meaning of life can also have the answer "there is no". It does not assume anything under the hood.

The creatures you listed were necessary for the development of a human. They are also a part of the fragile balance of nature which keeps the living conditions on Earth. I am not saying everything has a meaning (I do not know). But I disagree that this is "an ill posed question".

I handled it logically:

If there is a meaning of life, we did not find it yet. Therefore it must be beyond our current scientific knowledge. Now, science becomes the new meaning, because it may give us the original meaning. Therefore I devote my life to science. (It is not necessary to be a scientist. Any possibility to help science counts for me.)

If there is no meaning at all, then I personally do not understand why people would continue struggle in life. I just cannot accept such situation. I would rather search for the meaning.

1. "Just like a steel door, when somebody else has the keys, you are not secure - you are imprisoned."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12751461

2. "Do not use the Internet. Do not use phones. Do not use bank accounts. Do not travel by plane. Do not enter public spaces. Do not show your face.

Otherwise you accept our Terms of Service.

Thank you for trusting us."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12958035

distributed, federated crawler and search engine that does not depend on a central point of failure.

here you go: http://yacy.net

You can probably just compare the budgets...

> p2p twitter alternative

here you go https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twister_%28software%29

When 99% of your friends use Facebook, it becomes very hard to avoid it [0]. If you want to advertise your new book among them, what would you do, for example?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect

"Do not use the Internet. Do not use phones. Do not use bank accounts. Do not travel by plane. Do not enter public spaces. Do not show your face.

Otherwise you accept our Terms of Service.

Thank you for trusting us."

(C) QuantumRoar, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12958035

See also: http://yacy.net, free distributed search engine.

Not necessarily https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_secrecy

AFAIK, for most tasks GNU/Linux is already good enough. Look for example, at a successful project in Munich to replace Windows for public employees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux.

The main problem is people do not want to learn a new interface or have programs running only on Windows.

Unless it's a theater reaction.

Take a look at http://yacy.net. Though the 'good results' part is missing yet, due to (I believe) too few nodes.

Upd: and https://github.com/asciimoo/searx

First, I am not the person you have been discussing with. I only responded to your concrete sentence which is in my view incorrect.

>But it's better to be hopeful when that's all you have. Stay positive always.

>We can choose to either rely on chance or hard-work/self reliance.

In this wording, I totally agree and am following the same path myself. However, it does not mean that everyone who follows it will be successful, or that we do not need to improve our system to increase the chances. There are definitely billions of hard-working people who deserve a better life but do not get it.

>Point is, if he can do it, anyone in the world can do it and people should just stop complaining.

https://xkcd.com/1827/ via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14163589

I disagree. I am using openstreetmap for everything and did not have any problems whatsoever. Of course, it depends on the location. In Europe the coverage is almost perfect.

Email provider: https://posteo.de; online maps: https://openstreetmap.org. More on https://prism-break.org (no affilation with those).

>I did have a Facebook account for about 6 months in high school before I deleted it and I've never felt the urge to re-activate it (afaik accounts are never permanently deleted).

Yes, you can permanently delete your Facebook account

http://www.wikihow.com/Permanently-Delete-a-Facebook-Account via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1291871