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zmk5

328 karma · joined April 9, 2020

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zmk5··on Freedom is not simple
> Either way, the article wasn't intended as a complete in-depth examination of the concepts of freedom and liberty (and the possible distinction between them), but rather offer some commentary on the state of the public debate surrounding these things as I see it.

Respectfully, habibi, your argument can be easily broken down because you conflate the two concepts in your piece, so you should expect push back on that aspect of it.

What the GNU philosophy advocates is that these freedoms are necessary to make sure YOU are free from corporations, governments, etc. What you keep conflating freedom with in the piece is with the liberty to do as you please. In the GNU argument, the liberty to do as you please with code is contingent on you being free from oppressive structures that are made by those who write it. A good example is why the press is able to do as they please being contingent on a government guaranteeing a "freedom of the press", i.e. freedom from their interference.

From the "Freedom or Power?" GNU argument:

"We believe you should decide what to do with the software you use; however, that is not what today's law says. Current copyright law places us in the position of power over users of our code, whether we like it or not. The ethical response to this situation is to proclaim freedom for each user, just as the Bill of Rights was supposed to exercise government power by guaranteeing each citizen's freedoms."

Hopefully, I was able to show you the connection between the two now.

EDIT: Grammar

zmk5··on Swift: Google’s Bet on Differentiable Programming
I really believe so too! I just hope that goes downstream to the undergrads in the fields too.
zmk5··on Swift: Google’s Bet on Differentiable Programming
Yeah I know what you mean. I'm mechanical engineering (Controls) and the vast majority of them still use MATLAB, but they are slowly moving towards more open computing languages. I can only consider this a great thing! :)

The issue I see is with the undergraduate curriculum in many Universities. This is where I see the legacy use of MATLAB is really hurting the future generation of students. Many still don't know proper programming fundamentals because MATLAB really isn't set up to be a good starting point for programming in general. To me, MATLAB is a great tool IF you know how to program already.

zmk5··on Swift: Google’s Bet on Differentiable Programming
I'm not denying any of this and agree with your analysis about MATLABs use. I'm just saying that it's still used a lot more than people on Hacker News like to think.

The University I work at still teaches MATLAB to new engineering students still.

zmk5··on Swift: Google’s Bet on Differentiable Programming
I apologize :-/ I should have been more clear. What I was referring to was in a little more broader context than just Data Science or ML. Many of the Engineering and Math PhDs I work with typically use MATLAB or Mathematica.
zmk5··on Swift: Google’s Bet on Differentiable Programming
MATLAB and Mathematica are the primary tools I see used by people at my uni. People are just starting to warm up to Python.
zmk5··on Swift: Google’s Bet on Differentiable Programming
Being in academia myself, I have to disagree as well. Academia has it's own languages and tools it prefers. They have just recently started warming up to Python.
zmk5··on Swift: Google’s Bet on Differentiable Programming
None of them use Python either. A lot just use MATLAB.
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