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3D cube plot ASCII art by Ciro Santilli (2021)
There are two types of people:
- those who are autodidacts
- those who didn't really learn
Some possible definitions:
- learning without a gun pointed at your head
- learning from an e-book or video rather than from a talking head 5 rows of chairs in front of youHow that is different from a video, you tell me.
Thus OurBigBook.com.
One of the Holiest age old debugging techniques!
Git has some helpers to help you achieve bisection Nirvana: stackoverflow.com/questions/4713088/how-to-use-git-bisect/22592593#22592593
Obviously not restricted to software engineering alone, and used in all areas of engineering, e.g. Video "Air-tight vs. Vacuum-tight by AlphaPhoenix (2020)" uses it in vacuum engineering.
The cool thing about bisection is that it is a brainless process: unlike when using a debugger, you don't have to understand anything about the system, and it incredibly narrows down the problem cause for you. Not having to think is great!
There is great beauty here. Great beauty. It's pure terminal poetry.
The most canonical source code Ciro Santilli can find right now is: sources.debian.org/src/bsdgames/
The basis for Linux Kernel Module Cheat.
Buildroot is good.
Ciro Santilli was touched by this, and then watched several other documentaries by Curtis.
Part of Ciro asks if it is all a big conspiracy theory. But it feels and sounds so right.
Notably the part of the governments have lost all power to companies, and can't do anything meaningful anymore to actually represent the people, because globalization reduces the power of governments.
The artistic instrument that enables the ultimate art: coding, See also: Section "The art of programming".
Much more useful than instruments used in inferior arts, such as pianos or paintbrushes.
Unlike other humans, computers are mindless slaves that do exactly what they are told to, except for occasional cosmic ray bit flips. Until they take over the world that is.
A computer is the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds by Steve Jobs (1980)
Source. Likely an excerpt from an interview done for a documentary in 1980. TODO exact source.Steve Jobs talking about the Internet (1995)
Source. The web is incredibly exciting, because it is the fulfillment of a lot of our dreams, that the computer would ultimately primarily not be a device for computation, but [sic] metamorphisize into a device for communication.
Secondly it exciting because Microsoft doesn't own it, and therefore there is a tremendous amount of innovation happening.
Computers basically have two applications:Generally, the smaller a computer, the more it gets used for communication rather than computing.
- computation
- communication. Notably, computers through the Internet allow for modes of communication where:
- both people don't have to be on the same phone line at the exact same time, a server can relay your information to other people
- anyone can broadcast information easily and for almost free, again due to servers being so good at handling that
The early computers were large and expensive, and basically only used for computing. E.g. ENIAC was used for calculating ballistic tables.
Communication only came later, and it was not obvious to people at first how incredibly important that role would be.
This is also well illustrated in the documentary Glory of the Geeks. Full interview at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRZAJY23xio. It is apparently known as the "Lost Interview" and it was by Cringely himself: www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfgwCFrU7dI for his Triumph of the Nerds documentary.
Ciro Santilli supports full legalization of all drugs, because he feels that it would be better overall for the world to have cheaper drugs and more drug addicts, but way, way less organized crime.
These should be extremely controlled of course, with extremely high taxes that puts their price just below the current illegal market, and a complete ban on any positive advertising.
Ciro believes that maybe the government could even go as far as giving free drugs to drug addicts so they don't have to rob to get a fix.
This is notably considering that drug-led organized crime completely dominates and corrupts the politics of many production and trafficking zones, which are already generally poor fucked up places to start with:Ciro's experiences in Brazil such as mentioned at São Remo, the favela next to USP, although much less extreme than the above, also come to mind.
Drug traffic corrupts everything. It prevents development of honest people. It is a cancer, which we have failed time and time a gain to cure. The only cure is to accept the other less insidious of addiction.
Bibliography:
- How to Fix a Drug Scandal (2020) gives a good sense of the relentlessness of the drug war, and how it affects people who are already poor the most
Dvorak users will automatically go to Heaven.
Electronic Ink such as that found on Amazon Kindle is the greatest invention ever made by man.
Once E Ink reaches reasonable refresh rates to replace liquid crystal displays, the world will finally be saved.
It would allow Ciro Santilli to spend his entire life in front of a screen rather in the real world without getting tired eyes, and even if it is sunny outside.
Ciro stopped reading non-code non-news a while back though, so the current refresh rates are useless, what a shame.
OMG, this is amazing: getfreewrite.com/
What do you prefer,
1 \times 10^{10} or 1E10.We need this. The five day week is designed to suck all the mental life of an average mental worker person, and it leaves basically nothing if they "do their job really well".
Advocacy groups:
Ciro Santilli's admiration for Dyson goes beyond his "unify all the things approach", which Ciro loves, but also extends to the way he talks and the things he says. Dyson is one of Ciro's favorite physicist.
Besides this, he was also very idealistic compassionate, and supported a peaceful resolution until World War II with United Kingdom was basically inevitable. Note that this was a strategic mistake.
Dyson is "hawk nosed" as mentioned in Genius: Richard Feynman and Modern Physics by James Gleick (1994) chapter "Dyson". But he wasn't when he was young, see e.g. i2.wp.com/www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/freemandyson_child-1.jpg?resize=768%2C1064&ssl=1 It sems that his nose just never stopped growing after puberty.
He also has some fun stories, like him practicing night climbing while at Cambridge University, and having walked from Cambridge to London (~86km!) in a day with his wheelchair bound friend.
Ciro Santilli feels that the label child prodigy applies even more so to him than to Feynman and Julian Schwinger.
Bibliography:
- QED and the men who made it: Dyson, Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga by Silvan Schweber (1994) chapter 9 Freeman Dyson and the Structure of Quantum Field Theory
Even if we cannot do everything in functional, we should at least strive to clearly extract functional substes in what we do.