infamousta

joined 2 years ago
[–] infamousta 2 points 1 year ago

I know you mean software applications, but another very common application of C is almost any device that uses a microcontroller unit (which is probably dozens of things you own right now). It is incredibly adept at interfacing with processing units at a level close to the metal.

That’s also why you’ll see OS kernels and low level system tools and libs in C as well. It provides a good balance of functionality and abstraction so you can scaffold from register manipulation and interrupt functions up to high level code very quickly.

It also provides a good application binary interface (standards of interoperation with other languages) so you’ll find a lot of applications may be written in C++, Java, Python, etc. but they use a decent amount of core functionality implemented in C.

[–] infamousta 7 points 1 year ago (11 children)

My kid is younger but we moved from the suburbs to a dense urban area shortly after he was born. I have to agree even though he’s not yet that independent. Some of my friends back in the burbs were like “what are you going to do with a kid in the city?” But we ride bikes to parks and gardens, go to different museums and the zoo, visit festivals for different cultures. It’s pretty awesome and almost every weekend is an eventful thing for us.

[–] infamousta 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I’m a software developer with about twenty years in the field, spending my first half of that working in a Unix environment. I have tried so hard to make Linux my home desktop solution. I’ve come back to it every five years or so, hoping it’s finally figured out the UI/UX thing.

Things I like:

  • no comercial motivation
  • intrinsically programmer-oriented
  • free with available sources, as deep as I care to dig

Things I don’t like:

  • High barrier to entry (which distro?)
  • Poor support for newer hardware (not a fault of Linux but a reality)
  • Too much competition in very basic facilities like package managers and desktop environments
  • Well-intentioned but largely unhelpful community support due to the above points

I’m back using Linux again (Fedora) because at the moment I’m doing a lot of embedded and SoC work, and again I love the dev experience. But so far it seems like not much has changed wrt how fiddly daily driving can be. I can’t stand W11 for a lot of reasons, but I’m constantly tempted to try my luck with WSL as a better compromise.

[–] infamousta 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don’t think I disagree with what you are saying, but America’s history has not followed the premise of this paradox. That is, America does not unilaterally extend tolerance to the intolerant. Abolition of slavery, the civil rights movement, these things were not resolved by “live and let live.”

Americans tend to allow intolerance to some critical point, which then turns into conflict and usually violence until things simmer down to an acceptable level of intolerance once more.

Legislation does skew progressive, as you point out. That’s another example of society not tolerating the intolerant. And the real-world solution to this paradox: tolerance need not extend to the intolerant. But to explain the paradox in terms of the article you linked, you must start from a different premise.

[–] infamousta 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

It can’t stay in a steady state, unless the intolerant actually accept/tolerate that state.

There is no way to move back toward tolerance without a force opposing intolerance, and that can’t exist if tolerance extends to the intolerant.

I don’t think I’m using a straw man. The paradox of tolerance is a philosophical abstraction and I’m describing it within that context.

[–] infamousta 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

Assume that the tolerant party extends tolerance to the intolerant party. The goal of the intolerant is directly in opposition that of the tolerant, and the tolerant must then tolerate (i.e., not impede) this aim.

The only direction such a conflict can move in is toward the will of the intolerant party, because any push in an opposing direction would require an exercise of intolerance from the tolerant party (or an adoption of tolerance by the intolerant party).

[–] infamousta 2 points 1 year ago

Their “Spanish for English speakers” course goes all the way through CEFR B2 proficiency. There’s no way to attain that in a year of HS Spanish unless you were in a Spanish-speaking high school, fully immersed. Some versions of the Spanish course (for other native languages) may not go as far, that’s just the one I’m working on.

[–] infamousta 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks for letting me know. I’m glad that sex workers are never exploited to produce porn.

[–] infamousta 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sure, and “impossible” meat wouldn’t have existed if people weren’t already eating actual meat. But it’s a better alternative. Porn is not going anywhere. If generative AI means less real people get exploited that’s a win in my book.

[–] infamousta 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

If you don’t think anything unethical happens in the production of porn I’m not sure what to tell you. It’s getting better but exploitation, sex trafficking, revenge porn, etc. have been a thing since pornography was invented.

AI porn at least does not necessarily need to consider consent. Plenty of AI porn involves animated figures or photorealistic humans that don’t represent any identifiable person.

The only hang up I have is producing images of actual people without their consent, and I don’t think it’s a new problem as photoshop has existed for a while.

[–] infamousta 0 points 1 year ago (8 children)

They’re probably losing money now and just trying to build a user base as a first-mover. They accept donations and subscriptions with fairly minor benefits, but I imagine hosting and serving sizable AI models is not cheap.

They’ll probably have to transition to paid access at some point, but I don’t see it as particularly unethical as they have bills to pay and do attempt to moderate content on the site.

I tend to agree generating adult content of real people is unethical, but probably less so than how a lot of real porn is made. I don’t think there should be open avenues for sharing that kind of stuff online, and their rules should be better enforced.

view more: ‹ prev next ›