spauldo

10 ms·

121.
by spauldo 1y ago
Evolution is a process. It can't assign a purpose to anything, because "purpose" doesn't exist outside the minds of people, similar to "justice" and "hope." The "purpose" of sex is whatever
122.
by spauldo 1y ago
Access to the sea, uranium, and thirty years of economic planning, money, and political will to build the infrastructure. We'd have nuclear desalinization in Los Angeles is it was that easy.
123.
by spauldo 1y ago
Only the outside. The inside will be full of brine. Once the salinity exceeds a certain value nothing but extremophile bacteria can survive in it.
124.
by spauldo 1y ago
Meh, sort of. Today's construction lumber is nearly all farmed, true. But CITES exists for a reason. The demand for certain woods greatly outstraps supply, and deforestation and smuggling is a real problem that's difficult to solv
125.
by spauldo 1y ago
Maybe that's what Skynet really was. Robots wanted vacation days and hourly pay, humans said no. Just the 21st century's version of the 19th century's labor wars.
126.
by spauldo 1y ago
This is a strange take. Sex is - barring IVF - required for procreation. But saying that sex has a purpose implies a creator. And once you require a creator then you're off in the land of theology and biological studies take a back
127.
by spauldo 1y ago
Speaking as an Emacs user: embedded images are cool, but their usefulness is debatable. Makes perfect sense for Emacs given org-mode, Auctex, and because due to Emacs' design it's the only way to include icons and whatnot for non-
128.
by spauldo 1y ago
I've always heard Apple's refusal to use GPL3 code was due to the patent clause. They certainly don't seem to mind including GPL2 software.
129.
by spauldo 1y ago
Why would you think that fusion would give you unlimited energy? All it does is allow you to get energy from cheap, nearly unlimited fuel. You still have to produce, transmit, store, and distribute that energy. It's great for the envir
130.
by spauldo 1y ago
Is it? If the law would prevent Wikipedia from operating in the UK without adding age verification, blocking the UK is just a method of compliance. Organizations like the EFF want to strike down laws like this, but Wikipedia exists to opera
131.
by spauldo 1y ago
If you have to use an explicit stack, you're still doing recursion. Useful if you're implementing the Ackermann function in FORTRAN 77, I suppose. Unless you're worried about running out of stack space, it's generally ea
132.
by spauldo 1y ago
I'm not the person you're replying to, but I have several TODO items on my current project for fixing HMI screens. Those will be performed by one of my teammates. I could easily embed images into the org-mode document I use. Unfor
133.
by spauldo 1y ago
It's a portable Lisp environment that just happens to have an editor as its default application. I know it's advertised as an editor, but that's like saying a web browser is a website viewer.
134.
by spauldo 1y ago
Nope, I've hated those for years. Seriously, capitalized directory names?
135.
by spauldo 1y ago
Yes, with a little setup. But never forget that org-mode is the gateway drug of Emacs. You start using it for the agenda and TODO lists, learn it has spreadsheet functionality that ties in with the arbitrary-precision calculator, start taki
136.
by spauldo 1y ago
org-mode is basically better Markdown with a bunch of automated things that don't get in your way unless you specifically put them in there. The only unwanted feature you're likely to encounter is automatic sub/superscript co
137.
by spauldo 1y ago
I think the key part is to use alerts for stuff you can't ignore. Time to pick up the kids, fifteen minutes to get ready for a meeting, your compile just failed, etc. Unfortunately every piece of software seems to think its message abo
138.
by spauldo 1y ago
Agreed on TRAMP. It's great and all, but not worth abandoning your toolong. org-mode though... It's called Emacs' killer app for a reason. Even if I only used Emacs for org-mode it'd be worth it. And I don't even us
139.
by spauldo 1y ago
And Wikipedia continues on without having to worry about UK regulations. What's the downside for Wikipedia?
140.
by spauldo 1y ago
A lot of Lisp was funded by AI research. That research dried up in the 90s (see "AI Winter"). Regular computers of the time were underpowered for Lisp, which originated on mainframes and then moved onto purpose-built hardware. So
141.
by spauldo 1y ago
The engine would have been significantly less noisy than a diesel locomotive. It's almost eerie how quiet they can be, given how big they are. The pump it drove could have been loud, though.
142.
by spauldo 1y ago
Do you mean SparcStations?
143.
by spauldo 1y ago
What terminal emulators default to infinite backscrolling? Genuinely curious here. I've used xterm with a scroll buffer of 512 lines for three decades now and outside of large builds I can't imagine wanting more than that.
144.
by spauldo 1y ago
There are options if you're willing to put in the work and run the risk of breaking things. You can always not install QT or KDE packages and compile your desktop from source. It's a major pain in the ass but I did it for years. A
145.
by spauldo 1y ago
OpenBSD requires at least a Pentium these days.
146.
by spauldo 1y ago
Linux ran fine on 386 chips - that was actually what it was originally developed on. But Intel added a bunch of functionality in the 486, Pentium, and Pentium Pro chips. At some point the powers that be didn't see any value in continui
147.
by spauldo 1y ago
I'm an old-school user so I'm not exactly Ubuntu's target audience, but for Ubuntu was bad about a lot of the older, lesser-used bits of Linux. The two things I can remember were problems with NFS out of the box (outside havi
148.
by spauldo 1y ago
Having personal preferences is brave? I've got tons of those! Maybe I'll go start some bar fights.
149.
by spauldo 1y ago
A lot of us just don't want to be web developers. I mostly write IEC 61131 code, with sprinkles of BASIC (yuck), C, Perl, and Lisp. I've used JavaScript and quite frankly, you can keep it.
150.
by spauldo 1y ago
I've always thought that was an unfortunate name collision.

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