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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • This doesn’t look anything like a humanoid robot that’s being used in a factory. This looks exactly like a humanoid robot in a research lab (probably academic), attached to a safety harness for testing purposes.

    They were clearly running tests, probably trying out a firmware or software update, and they found a liiiiittle bug. This erratic behavior can easily be caused by a tiny subtle memory error in C/C++ code or by transcribing the wrong bits into the serialized joint motor commands.

    Please use safe languages and verifiable methods when developing software for humanoids, folks.







  • Probably the most important thing is keeping up with security fixes. I’m not an expert in web security, but my impression is that there’s a never-ending cat and mouse game between hackers and browser developers to find or patch exploits. And since browsers play such an important role in the activity of hundreds of millions… billions?.. of consumers, it has the largest possible attack surface for hackers to target.

    Then there’s things like better support for web assembly (how I would love the web dev world to break the JavaScript hegemony), and the constantly shifting web standards that are meant to make websites more capable, easier to program, and more performant. E.g. things like websockets and WebRTC.




  • This is exactly my point though: What if people with autism weren’t disadvantaged in society? Then the idea of “curing” it would be meaningless.

    I understand that you’re frustrated by the challenges you’ve dealt with in your life, and I acknowledge that I’m speaking from a place of privilege as someone that doesn’t have any disability. But personally I’d rather see a world where people don’t feel like they’re disadvantaged for not matching the status quo than a world where everyone is equal just because everyone is the same.


  • To what extent are those behaviors something inherent to the neurological condition versus something exacerbated by the conditions that society places on those people?

    There people who argue that transgenderism shouldn’t be tolerated because there’s a strong correlation between being transgender and being depressed to the point of suicide. They believe that “humoring” the “sickness” just leads to more suicide. But the reality is that transgender people aren’t generally depressed when they’re part of a supportive community rather than being alienated.

    I’m not an expert in neurology, and I acknowledge this is a large degree of speculation on my part, but maybe these outcomes can be different if we collectively approach the matter with more understanding and empathy. If the tantrums truly can’t be helped, then create space for the tantrums to happen in a way that minimizes disruption to others and doesn’t elicit judgment.

    As a manager I’ve been on the receiving end of a very aggressive tantrum directed at me from someone who reports to me that I suspect may be on the spectrum. He didn’t feel like I was paying enough attention to his work, and rather than bringing it up to me in a respectful and constructive way, he had an outburst one day where he scolded me in a very demeaning way, essentially accusing me of being negligent as his manager. I suspect a lot of people in my position would have escalated that to HR right away, but instead I took the time to listen to his grievances and acknowledge that I could have done some things better as his manager but also that he is accountable for communicating his needs to me in a timely and respectful manner. He acknowledged that he could’ve handled the situation better and we came up with a system that makes it easier to get what he needs from me.

    In the end no one’s feelings needed to get hurt, no one’s career needed to be damaged, and no one needed to deal with HR, because I was willing to understand the outburst for what it is and not take it too personally.




  • I think it’s debatable whether RAII should be called “memory management”. Whether dealing with Rust or modern C++, you don’t need to “manage” the memory beyond specifying a container that will determine its lifecycle behavior, and then you just let it drop.

    You could certainly choose to manage it more granularly than that in Rust or C++, but in the vast majority of cases that would be considered bad practice.

    That’s a qualitatively different user experience than C or pre-2011 boostless C++ where you actually need to explicitly delete all your heap allocations and manually keep track of which pointers are still valid. Lumping both under “memory management” makes the term so broad that it almost loses its significance.



  • I think it’s important to put it in context: the Democrats are hemorrhaging support from their base who thinks they should be doing more to resist this administration. That does not mean they are losing support in favor of Republicans.

    Meanwhile Trump is only losing a tiny amount of support because his base is a cult of personality that worships him. They won’t turn against him until he’s hurting them so directly that they can’t rationalize it as somehow being Obama’s fault. But many of them are delusional enough that they will never abandon their fealty so matter how much he harms them.



  • I’m directing my criticism specifically on the technological advancement which is devoid of communal spirit, not on all technological advancement categorically.

    Crediting human achievement to technological advancement is a mistake in my opinion. Technological advancement is not inherently good or bad. Communal spirit is what determines whether technology yields positive or negative outcomes. That’s the real ingredient behind everything humans have achieved throughout history.

    Sadly techno-optimism has become a prevailing mindset in today’s world where people and institutions don’t want to take responsibility for the consequences of their actions because of belief that as-yet-unknown technological advancement will bail us out in the future, even when there’s no evidence that it will even be physically possible.

    But what I said is that your view is a sad one, not an incorrect one. The truth is, technological advancement may truly end up being the defining characteristic of humanity. After all, when we think about extinct species, we tend to associate them most strongly with what made them extinct. Just as we associate the dinosaurs most strongly with a meteor, maybe an outside observer will some day associate humanity most strongly with the technology that sent us out in a blaze of glory.


  • What a sad view of humanity to think that our one defining characteristic should be pursuit of technology rather than the ability to intelligently collaborate and thereby form communities with a shared purpose.

    I can assure you that the success of human survival throughout the history of our species has had far more to do with community and resourcefulness than with technological advancement. In fact it should be clear by now technological advancement devoid of communal spirit will be the very thing that brings an untimely end to our entire species. Our technology is destroying the climate we depend on and depleting the soil that we need for growing food, to say nothing of the nuclear bombs that could wipe us out with the wrong individuals in positions of power.