elb2020

He could be autistic. Autists will have problems, severe problems, with grasping the concept that someone else can have different views, and they will struggle with seeing the virtues of trying to understand those views. They will, indeed, perceive it as if they're being asked to 'bend over backwards'. I'm not sure how common high functioning autism is within academia. But I don't see it as entirely implausible that a high functioning autist could also be a professor.

I got 83, but I notice that some of my words were not included in the summary on the result page, including 'fright' and 'stupor'.

I keep a diary for some projects that I work on. It's basically one large, never ending text file that I keep versioned in git. I like the simplicity of the scheme. It's rare that I need to go back and look at something that I've written earlier. But when I do need to do it, it's there, and easily available. I think I'm going to continue using this scheme for all projects through the rest of my career.

As for logging of structured data, I've sometimes thought of coming up with some kind of annotation scheme, so that, if I need, in my writing, to log a measurable quantity of some kind, I could just annotate it in a special way. And then, later on, if the need should arise, I could just extract the annotated data from the text document. I've not taken it any further, but I think it could be useful. A sort of a "hybrid approach" that would let me focus on the writing and the flow of thoughts, while also letting me log tidbits of structured data in between.

Yet, people do seem to think that DALL-E 2 is going to be able to make sensible "long-form" illustrations and paintings.

It's a bit sad to ponder. On the other hand, the volume of white matter is still rather close to it's maximum, even at 60 years. And probably there are also individual variations, both when it comes to the timing of the onset of the decline, and the rapidity of it.

I read about Stradivarius the other day. His "golden years", the years when the quality of his work was considered to be at it's peak, was from he was 50 until he was around 80.

I'm not an AI expert, at all, but can the neural network of an app like Otter run locally on a phone? Is it even possible, processing power wise?

Apart from that, I'm assuming that there's an enormous cost sunk into the training of the network. I imagine that alone would make Otter hesitant to let the trained network out of the house, even if it was technically possible.

Judging from his book, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman, he was not a very modest person himself, with regard to his own accomplishments and ideas, maybe that's why he was shocked by the modesty and restraint of other men with (presumably) similarly great talents.

I feel that the solution to this would be some kind of generic online storage solution. Like Excel, but for the whole web, where you can put any kind of data in, get an address (a web-ified pointer) to it, and be sure that you can look it up again at any time, from anywhere, using the address key.

A generic online storage system with Excel-like properties.

If that existed, then people would use it for bookmarks, and probably also for a host of other types of online storage needs.

I think they will always be limitations.

Software is, ultimately, always about humans. Software is always there to serve a human need. And the "intelligence" that designs software will always, at some level, need to be intelligence that understands the human mind, with all it's knowledge, needs, and intricacies. There are no shortcuts to this.

So, I think AI as a replacement for software development professionals, that's currently more like a pipe dream. I think AI will give us powerful new tools, but I do not think it will replace, or even reduce, the need for software development professionals. In total it might even increase the need for software development professionals, because it adds another level to the development stack. Another level of abstraction, and another level of complexity that needs to be understood.

Grammarly ads say that they will help you to appear more articulate than you are, so that you can land jobs where articulacy is required. It stumps me a bit, always.

"These sharks have an estimated lifespan of 400 years and they spend their time swimming around looking for mates."

I will not complain about my own 50 year search, then.

A consultant should at least voice his opinion, I think, and not actively stay silent just to generate more billable hours. It might be slightly different for a contractor, but a consultant is, generally, hired for his knowledge.

Another ancient but still supported protocol is the finger protocol. For the current weather on the South Pole, try this from the command line:

finger south_pole@graph.no

Or, if you want the weather in Boston, Massachusetts, try:

finger boston@graph.no

It seems to me, that once a company reaches a tipping point of more than 50% non-engineers in upper management, it's the demise of the company as an engineering company, and it will slowly drift in the direction of being a technology holding company only.

"Different things are obvious to me than are obvious to you."

I think this observation, while correct, is a bit too generic, since it's something which can be said about all people.

I have close relative who's on the autistic spectrum. I notice that what I find obvious, he may not find obvious. And what he finds obvious, I may not neccesarily find obvious.

I've spent many, many years pondering over it, and I've narrowed it down to the social communication. I've come to realize that a certain part of inter-human communication is of the "non spoken" kind. This includes facial expressions, body language, tone of voice, etc., but also tiny, tiny differences in how things are said or phrased.

I think "neurotypicals" will observe and accumulate these small, small signals, and they will use the accumulated values when they pass judgement on a social situation. At least that's how I perceive the differences between me and my relative. Whenever I judge a social situation differently from him, I find that the difference usually comes down to these fine-grained cues and signals. He passes judgement without taking them into account, because he simply does not observe them. And I pass judgement taking them into account.

From his side, his conclusion is correct, because of what he sees. And from my side, my own conclusion is also correct, based upon what I see.

If std::vector, std::array or std::unique_ptr could somehow have been implemented better without the use of templates in the C++ standard library, I think you'll find that they would have been implemented that way.

I don't know what you mean by "essential semantics", but the fact remains, as ncmncm says, that templates is the feature that allows new types of type safe generic abstractions to be built and added to the arsenal of C++ programmers. It's the feature that, most of all, has kept the C++ language alive and thriving over the past 20 years, in my opinion. Without it, the language would probably be dead.

"The problem? Convenience. Who wants to type std::unique_ptr<Foo> when instead you can write Foo *?"

I think this is an imagined problem. If you use Foo * for ownership, you will need to write new Foo() + delete foo. I don't really think that's more convenient than just writing std::make_unique<Foo>(). It's more a matter of old habit, I think.

Still, if C++ was designed as a new language today, I think there's a chance that unique pointers would have made their way into the native language specification, together with for instance std::tuple, instead of being library features, like they are today.

I personally like his stuff from before Diamonds and Pearls, mostly. After that I think he got further and further removed from his original funk roots, and I think he sort of drifted off into a sea of wishy-washy new age stuff that he never fully re-emerged from. I know his later stuff will, still, be endorsed by hardcore fans, but I do not think it's for the casual listener.

And the corollary; never try to insert too much tone into the same.

"It looks like you forgot to do X; that's needed to do Y."

"It looks like you forgot to do X. That's needed to do Y."

I would actually prefer the second one here. It's neutral and to the point.

I guess the problem with the first one is that the reader might interpret the semicolon exactly in the way that you intended it, as an attempt on your behalf to "control the tone". Depending on the personal disposition of the receiver he or she may or may not like it.

The book Born to Run by Christopher McDougall should probably also be mentioned here. It has this theory as one of it's central premises.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6289283-born-to-run

It's got a good grasp on the difference between Norwegian and Swedish, I see; it defines Norwegian as "very light, quiet, or peaceful; tranquil", as in "we live our lives Norwegian in a quiet quiet city", and Swedish as "wicked or excessively wicked", as in "his swedish exploits". Haha...

I agree. It does the same with for instance "ballsy", which it defines as "stunning and stylish", as in "the ballsy pink dress".

I think it's sort of self-fulfilling when it comes to the economy. The economy, after all, is the system of all of us using the maximum of our brains and abilities to compete with each other in the making of money. I think it's a chaotic system by it's very definition.

Maybe it sounded a bit elitist. I myself am not a game programmer, and I would indeed be among the 95 struggling to get out of the starting blocks. I do like low-level stuff, however, and I choose to be impressed by projects like this!

Or incredibly low expectations for programmers in general, which is fair. If you pick 100 random run-of-the-mill programmers from any corporation, and ask them to repeat this exercise, 95 of them would not even get out of the starting blocks. I liked it.

My dad says the same. But it's been five years since I quit tobacco, and I do not get the cravings anymore. I might get faintly reminded of it, still, connected to certain situations, but nowhere near what I'd call a craving.

> By the way, why there is no author?

Because it's the Economist, they never run a byline on any of their published content, normally.

> Companies dump so much money into the [golf] purse because there are enough eyes on the game, and I think disc golf can get to that point.

Maybe, but traditional golf also has the image, historically, of being a sport for the wealthy. I think this becomes sort of self-perpetuating, since it automatically attracts new wealthy people to the sport.

I think the spending power within the group of people that practices the game also affects the size of the total purse.

I've read somewhere that BMW and Audi have internal regulations in place, which dictate that at least half of the top level leadership group should always consist of people with engineering backgrounds.

I have not been able to confirm if it's true or not.

But it sounds as a healthy regulation to have in place for a technical company, since gravity seems to work in the opposite direction. Non-technical leaders will, in my experience, have a tendency towards hiring other non-technical leaders, and towards trying to mould the company operations into something which can be run without the need for technical knowledge.