A typical ActivityPub+Lemmy post.

I’m sure Microsoft would be supportive of that point of view. And with their wealth and lobbying power … … Lets not mention it again, and hope for the best.

Yes. GOG. itch.io. Direct from some other website. That’s right.

Steam is very good; but the hidden cost is that you depend on them maintaining their service. If they turn evil, you’re screwed. You either have to bend to their will, or you lose your library of games.

On the other hand, GOG and itch.io are arguably not as good as Steam right now, but they don’t have any kind of lock-in. So if they start to backslide, you can still walk away with your full library of games. I do think it’s a good idea to ‘not put all your eggs in one basket.’

I’m sure you’ll be thinking about this conversation for longer than it took to make the original post.

Look, I don’t know exactly. I don’t think it’s an easy problem.

But I think the first stages would try to help the aliens understand how we communicate with each other. If people are waving their limbs around and breathing and poking at devices, and making all sorts of noises, it may be unclear which of those actions is meant to be communication. So the first thing is to have very clear correlations and patterns that are easy to recognise. Bring in the white-board to write words is a decent idea; but writing the word ‘human’ and then just standing there doing nothing with no follow-up is pretty much useless. There needs to be a couple of different words shown with very concrete context. ‘Human’ is not terrible, but it isn’t a great choice because you can’t really draw attention to what a human is when there is literally always a human there while you are trying to communicate. So it might be a decent word if the aliens already have the concept of words - but as a starting point… not really. Better to just say nouns for concrete things and point while doing it; with repetition and clear patterns. Writing just a list of counting numbers wouldn’t be a bad idea either. If you write all the numbers up to 100 or so I think there would be a clear pattern, so that at least the aliens would know that you are trying to communicate by writing stuff.

Regarding my criticism of the movie, it’s not so much that the whiteboard idea is bad, or that their attempts were bad; but rather that these are supposedly the attempts of experts - after other experts have tried and failed; and then the meetings with the project coordinators have weird discussions like “this method will take too long.” - as if they think you can somehow side-step the need to establish a common language. And the description of the plan from the scientist talk about teaching the different meanings of the word ‘you’, and some grammar rules - as if that’s somehow a core priority. I just think it’s a really shallow level of discussion. Their strategy is super basic (but not unreasonable), and the criticism of it from the other characters is somehow even more shallow. They were even questioning why the scientist wanted to bring in the whiteboard. Like, isn’t that extremely obviously? Do you really need to have a discussion about that? I really just felt like it was not a convincing set of smart people talking about the problem.

When I said anyone off the street could do a better job, I guess what I had it mind is that people would typically just point to things and say what they pointing to. They could bring in props and talk about the props; and perhaps try to give something to the aliens to interact with - if possible. Just basic ideas like that would be a decent start. I reckon that would be better than just holding up a whiteboard with a single word on it then just standing around. Like, how are the aliens meant to even know that it is a word at all - let alone what it might mean?

I stopped watching this movie after this scene (which is pretty close to the start). The way the scientists and world leaders were discussing how to communicate was just so absurdly shallow that I couldn’t take the movie seriously.

Like, I can easily suspend disbelieve to watch a movie about aliens doing all sorts of weird things that are inconsistent with basic physics; but it just really bugs me when a movie makes a point of bringing together the smartest and most capable people to solve some issue, and then utterly fails to show even a faint glimmer of that knowledge or intelligence in what they do. I reckon a random person picked up off the street would do a better job of first-contact with aliens compared to these clowns.

Perhaps you just have a different view on what is or is not an ad. For example when I see a link in the start menu for an app that I did not install, I consider that to be an ad. The most common time this happens is for Office. (Or Microsoft 365 or whatever it is called now.) Also, when I see a ‘suggestion’ to sign into a Microsoft account to use OneDrive - I consider that an ad. Microsoft aren’t telling me about OneDrive to improve my life. They are telling me to improve their profits. And when I type something in the start menu to launch an app, any result that comes up that is not something I put on my computer is an ad. It often will suggest particular websites for example.

These are the kinds of thing that we’re talking about. I’m sure if you’re using Windows on a home computer you will have seen these things. (I assume you’re talking about ads in Windows. It would be quite something else if you’d never seen any ad anywhere.)

I don’t believe these are genuine interview answers.

I would have agreed with that before C++11. But since then, C++ has improved a lot. Its like the vision of what C++ suddenly became more clear. So I wonder if Linus would still say that today. (Unfortunately, there have been a lot of missteps in the development of C++ though, and so there is a lot of cruft that everyone wishes was not there…)

CATS, as in “you have no chance to survive make your time” ?

If we are separated from our parents shortly after birth, and grow up in isolation from other humans - then we would not learn to talk anyway. Note that that’s what happens with most pets that humans keep. Maybe we get to walk past some other humans in the park a couple of times a week, but that’s it.

The examples given are not problems with science and time-scales. They are examples of the corrupting influence of money. Companies push their product as being fantastic, and deliberately cripple any science that would challenge their profits. Cigarettes are probably the most famous example of this.

gpl does not prevent the owner from changing the licence later. (Unless it is also making use of someone else’s gpl components.)

For example, Qt has a free version which is under the GPL; and a paid version which is not. So if you were making software with Qt, if you were using the free version, you’d be compelled to also release your product under GPL. But you could then later switch to a paid subscription and rerelease under some other licience if you wanted to.

I like the meme - but the identity of the villain hasn’t yet been revealed. I’m sure lots of people are keen to see who’s behind the “Jia Tan” mask.

And so the microkernal vs monolithic kernal debate continues…

Over the years, Microsoft has been quietly taking away control from the users.

There’s been a transition from normal settings that you can do whatever you want with, to “yes / remind me later” settings that Microsoft uses to badger you until you submit, to finally just no setting at all - just quiet compulsory data collection and surveillance; with various bits of mysterious software that you can’t uninstall or disable or halt - because you’re not the admin - Microsoft is.

It wasn’t always this way.

Yeah, it’s a minor annoyance… another minor annoyance on top of all the others. And another personal data leak (or siphon) to go with all the others.

This on its own is not worth switching OSs for - but as a piece of a larger picture it’s yet another reason to consider it. And for some people this may be what tips the scales in their evaluation.

I find it amusing and interesting that a heap of people work hard to create Debian, then a bunch of other people build on it to create Ubuntu, then a third group of people do a heap of additional work to wind back some of the changes to create Mint.

“… and then just keep giving them that same choice over and over again for as long as it takes for them to finally do what we want.”

Better still, stick with DRM free games.