mdhughes

joined 2 years ago
[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I have two.

Scheme. It's a fantastic language, you can cleanly switch from functional, procedural, or weird time machines (macros & continuations) solutions to any problem. Most Schemes (esp. Chez, CHICKEN, Gambit, Gerbil) compile to very fast binaries, close enough to C even with dynamic typing and garbage collection. C FFI depends on impl, but usually it's pretty simple; in CHICKEN you can just write inline C code. SRFI vary from essential libraries to angels-on-pinheads nonsense, but there's something to pick from.

Down side is the fractured, infighting community. R6RS was a practical batteries-included spec, which pissed off the teaching-only fans, so they made an inferior R7RS, and now committees are trying to make R7RS-large which is just bad R6RS. But if you pick one, and mostly stick to the spec language, it's not a problem for the developer.

BASIC. I know, ridiculous, right? And I mean line-numbered, Atari or TRS-80 BASIC. But there was never a better language for teaching programming, or for banging out a small interactive program. Turn on any 8-bit computer (or start an emulator), it prompts READY, and you can write something small & interesting. Your modern 64-bit giant machine is not READY.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 4 months ago (16 children)

Of course not. I am the guy in long coat, hoodie or toque, big black boots, and face mask.

Crime rates have dropped massively, you're being driven into a panic by pro-police, racist media manipulation.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (6 children)

You don't have to solve every problem in a single application. If you need privacy, use iMessage or Signal.

Public chat is by definition not secure, anyone can be sitting in the room logging, so it's not that essential as long as client-server uses TLS. Modern IRC does have SDCC chat, but not all clients will use it, so stick to secure messengers.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 4 months ago (15 children)

Don't use either, they're unreliable services and not enough people use them. Stick to IRC.

https://xkcd.com/1782/

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 months ago (1 children)

There's about 8 billion Humans, and about half of them suck more than any friendly domestic animal. The worst? I'd create an emergency.

[–] [email protected] 73 points 4 months ago (7 children)

"She". The gag of SwiftOnSecurity is it's Taylor Swift, posting infosec. Tho these days she mostly trolls like this.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

If they had "fixed" it, there would be a "My Computer" icon. No such thing exists, go TRY the Infinite Mac I linked above.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Yes your uncle who works at Nintendo ^W Apple told you about it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Governmental research. There was Project Blue Book, as I mentioned, which was inconclusive and then ended.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 4 months ago (2 children)

No such demo happened. They unveiled the 128K with that System 1.0 on stage at a special event. The Lisa has a different UI, but also can't do what's described.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 months ago (10 children)

This story is a lie.

There's no "computer icon". Dragging the System disk to trash ejects it on a classic Mac. If you burrow down into System, you can try deleting system files… which are locked and can't be deleted.

You can test this yourself on Infinite Mac

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago (4 children)

Is there other intelligent alien life in our Galaxy? Probably. Given how fast life formed on Earth, there must be millions of other life-bearing planets, and intelligence can't be that rare, but it might be short-lived.

Are there UFO sightings? Yes, people do see unidentified flying objects. Some of them can be explained, some cannot.

Are the UFOs aliens? I don't know, I'm a "curious agnostic" on the subject.

There's a LOT of UFO sightings, and evidence from good observers, including US Navy aviators. The US Air Force continues not to cooperate, and officially denies any sightings exist. The very enthusiastic refusal to look at evidence, aside from Project Blue Book, is suspicious.

It's technically plausible that someone within 50-ish light years of Earth could have heard our radio, sent a ship here, and use drones or manned ships to observe us without interacting. There could also be many other explanations.

We don't know, and until the last couple years there was no effort to investigate.

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