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justinjlynn's comments

justinjlynn | 1 year ago | on: EasyOS: An experimental Linux distribution

Yeah, people - in general - tend to do this with anything novel, sadly - especially novel design. See what Steve Balmer said about the iPhone for a commercial example. For Engineering examples, well, see the controversy around anything by Poettering (Systemd, PulseAudio, etc., etc.).

justinjlynn | 1 year ago | on: Here comes the Muybridge camera moment but for text

Are you certain that you're not playing with words to arrive at a predetermined conclusion? What is this "I" to which you're referring and how can you demonstrate that "I" does not or cannot exist within systems such as these? Further, if you are to find something which qualifies as an "I" elsewhere, what makes that elsewhere fundamentally different and therefore capable of supporting and being an "I" and is that elsewhere such simply by definition or in and of itself? Further, if the language usage is indistinguishable from the language usage of an "I", is the difference of source meaningful? If so, why?

justinjlynn | 1 year ago | on: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

Pratchett really got technology, imo. Sometimes it really is high energy magic, but most of the time it's just labourers you can't see being exploited. I especially enjoyed the line "money dangled is far more effective than money given" or something like that... it's true.

justinjlynn | 2 years ago | on: Releasing my tools under the MIT License was probably a mistake (2023)

Yes. The (A)GPL is there for a good reason (in part, this one - ensuring one's work and other's work on it remains free and open source and commercial freeloaders can't get a free ride), and trademark law ensures you retain control of your software's brand. MIT and BSD... well, look where they come from - they're not designed with those purposes in mind. If you care about an aspect of a licensing solution, use a license designed and fit for purpose - just as you'd use a library designed and fit for purpose.

justinjlynn | 2 years ago | on: K&R C compiler obtained from Research Unix v5, v6 and v7

IIRC In git, the earliest possible commit date/timestamp is the Unix epoch. Interestingly enough, for this application (the .gitignore file) I'd imagine the offset from the epoch is set to zero. This would result in the commit timestamp you're seeing.

justinjlynn | 2 years ago | on: Apollo 11 vs. USB-C Chargers (2020)

What's wrong with that? They are. We can always make the finer distinction of "Von Neumann architecture inspired digital electronic computer" if you wish to exclude the examples you've given. After all, anything which transforms a particular input to a particular output in a consistent fashion could be considered a computer which implements a particular function. I would say - don't confuse the word's meaning with the object's function and simply choose a context in which a word refers to a particular meaning, adapt to others contexts and translate, and simply deal with the fact that there is no firm division between computer and not-computer out in the word somewhere apart from people and their context-rich communications. If the context in which you're operating with an interlocutor is clear enough for you to jump to a correction of usage ... simply don't; beyond verifying your translation is correct, of course. As you're already doing this - likely without realising it - by taking care in doing so consciously you're likely to find your communications more efficient, congenial, and illuminating than they otherwise would be.

justinjlynn | 2 years ago | on: Apple has seemingly found a way to block Beeper Mini

Apple rarely delivers on promises that involve allowing people out of their walled garden.

Remember that, for the longest time, just disconnecting your phone number from iMessage was... very much not easily done or guaranteed to work at all.

"Switch to Mac? If you did, good luck ever switching back."

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