lordhumphrey

They provide funding for "Drupal, Gentoo Linux, Debian, Fedora, phpBB, OpenID, Buildroot/Busybox, Inkscape, Cinc and many more!". There was a drop in corporate funding, so they had to rely more on the OSU College of Engineering. Now the College is having its funding cut, so the Open Source Lab might have to close down, if nothing comes up.

Extremely interesting! I did ask myself if all those people would like having their photos online, what with the PRC across the pond. But perhaps I'm being "old-fashioned" there.

Very much appreciate the insider story. I've had a quick browse of your blog and will go back to it when I get a bit more time. Kudos to you for pursuing your interests boldly.

Just read the Wikipedia page - holy sh*t, if you'll pardon my French, what a figure! I haven't done anything with Perl, or Haskell, so this figure was just outside my view. Will definitely check some stuff out, I appreciate the pointer.

What's amazing is the cynical moral calculus people like yourself engage in when you completely discount some types of human lives, but then display this theatrical shock at the notion that the lives of your personal mythological figures - Presidents and "literal" CEOs - might not be utterly sacrosanct in everyone's eyes, the way they are in yours.

How many lives is a CEO's life worth to you? How many lives is "the life of the President" worth?

Yes, and the name for this behaviour is called "being scientific".

Imagine a process called A, and, as you say, we've no idea how it works.

Imagine, then, a new process, B, comes along. Some people know a lot about how B works, most people don't. But the people selling B, they continuously tell me it works like process A, and even resort to using various cutesy linguistic tricks to make that feel like it's the case.

The people selling B even go so far as to suggest that if we don't accept a future where B takes over, we won't have a job, no matter what our poor A does.

What's the rational thing to do, for a sceptical, scientific mind? Agree with the company, that process B is of course like process A, when we - as you say yourself - don't understand process A in any comprehensive way at all? Or would that be utterly nonsensical?

Excellent name! BULLSHIT really captures the spirit of the whole thing.

Marshall McLuhan called, he said to ask yourself, who's driving who?

I strongly encourage anyone who finds Meta's repeated crappy behaviour objectionable to delete their accounts on Whatsapp, Instagram, Facebook, etc. Or, at least, to delete as many as they can get away with, given their personal constraints and obligations, and otherwise minimise as much as possible the interactions with this company.

Personally I do somewhere between one and three strikes with companies. Of course I still must use certain things at certain times, but generally a lot of them can be avoided if you develop the habit of looking for other solutions. It's great fun, actually, once you accept the challenge.

It's only a small action, but it's good on a personal level to practice any kind of resisting.

I think you may be being downvoted for the exclamation mark, which I also found a tad over the top, although I didn't downvote you.

Particularly when the mistake you're correcting was so reasonable and charming. It's an excellent example of an "eggcorn".

If you haven't heard of eggcorns, fear not: the word "eggcorn" is itself an autology, i.e., a word that is an example of the phenomenon it describes. So if you remember the word, "eggcorn", you should be able to remember the concept. An eggcorn is a type of malapropism, but one that could plausibly fit the context of the misheard original word or phrase.

So, for example, "eggcorn" could plausibly have been the word for the object which we actually call an "acorn".

Similarly, when I read "into death hears", I immediately knew what the writer meant, and had a little chuckle to myself thinking about how it actually made total sense. So perhaps we could point out to them nicely the lovely eggcorn they were using, rather than text-shouting.

The comment you're resonding to didn't say one thing about not punishing "actual criminals". What in the world are you responding to?

> It's why I'm here - it's one of the only countries on earth for which I'm politically optimistic.

My curiosity is piqued by this. Do you mean to say you've moved there from somewhere place? And what do you mean, why is it the only country for which you're politically optimistic?

I don't mean to pry, and have no ulterior motive or point in asking. It just seems like a strong statement, and I cannot guess what you mean, or if I'm missing some cultural insinuation here or something. Taiwan does sound like a very interesting place to me, generally, though.