No that I know, but not insulting people just because you feel "edgy" doesn't mean you're making people "revered and protected" either. It's called decency.
Does anyone know of something similar for Emacs - a sequel to the Emacs tutorial? I have flirted mentally with the idea of doing one, even spun up a few notes planning it out.
This looks very cool! Vimtutor was great fun when I did it. Thanks to the author.
Philanthropy comes from philo and anthropos, so love of humanity, or thereabouts. A fun start would be looking up Greek and Latin words of a slightly more honest nature, things like hatred of humanity, love of self, love of control, reputation washing, fear of the mob, obsession with ego, obsession with public image, etc.
Modern day billionaire philanthropy is probably in most cases about maintaining one's range of options in the public and private sphere. Some of them may very well be petulant and needy enough to actually care what people think, and nurture a secret desire to be "loved", or at least respected, but presuming some of these billionaires are more intelligent and calculating than that, I can only guess that the desire in those cases is to hedge one's bets against any sort of public and/or political backlash to one's plans. Of course, some may very well sincerely believe that they're godlike entities who can solve humanity's problems, but I won't venture to attempt an analysis on the psyche of those people, if they do really exist.
Of course there's the tax-dodging element, but there's tons of ways for billionaires to dodge taxes, and only some of them deem it worth the effort to go down the route involving magazine spreads about their philanthropic largesse.
It's a way of absolving oneself publically from one's past villainies, real or perceived. Or, you could put it in more Nietzschean terms, things involving rebirth and phoenixes and Christ-figures, it could all get fairly poetical.
If anything is certain, it's that it's not about helping people, it's about the giver themselves. The issue and its sufferers are secondary at best - background details. It's the opposite of the old-fashioned Christian notion of charity to an almost caricatural degree.
People will talk about billionaire philanthropy as if it is charitable, generous, moral, and good, when in reality it's calculating, self-centered, life-negating, belittling, amoral, and even one could argue rejects ethics generally as naive and cloying. The name itself implies that it involves love directed toward humanity, when in reality it involves the desire to dominate and bully and no love, and humankind is a prop with the billionaire themselves centre-stage.
What to call that? I don't know. Misanthropic philanthropy made me chuckle, but it doesn't exactly name the new thing, rather it just pokes fun at it and highlights its Orwellian doublespeak nature. Pseudo-philanthropic ego-tripping / ego-washing? Obviously too wordy, but I feel that's at least some chunk of the essence of the thing.
> I find it breathtaking how profound his understanding was of the dramatic changes that were about to happen as the computer became broadly accessible. Of course, beyond just being prophetic...
The author of this article should consider not reading any more about the history of computing for health reasons.
If that takes their breath away, they're at serious risk of going into cardiac arrest if they keep going and discover some of the many other fascinating figures from the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s who were enjoying speculating about the direction things would go in.
Dang, could you delete my account? I've tried to look up how to do it and it seems to be possible only upon request from a moderator. I asked pvg below but got no answer.
I appreciate your polite intervention and that moderation is a hard job, but I've no interest in engaging further in the manner which I now understand from my exchange with pvg below that I'm supposed to have inferred from the guidelines.
I feel like my style of interacting is relatively consistent throughout my time on the site, but suddenly I get flagged twice when I'm making an unpopular point strongly. I refuse to go about softening my points because they're liable to be flagged, and would prefer to spare you the bother of having to step in. I'm just not interested in exchanging lowest-common-denominator type takes and worrying about flagging and popularity.
Anyway, no hard feelings, maybe a bit of cultural confusion, but I'll deal with that on my own side. If you could let me know if there's anything I can do to get the account deleted, that'd be great.
I wasn't attempting to be snarky or dismissive. I was framing my point in a playful, jokey way, sure, but it's not a snarky or dismissive point in itself.
I would like to think at least some people got that.
All I'm saying is that the 1980s (and the preceding decades) were full of people predicting and describing all sorts of things that then happened (as well as others getting it totally wrong). To find Jobs in 1983 "breathtaking" and "prophetic" is, to me, a bit of a hyperbolic take, considering the reality of that moment in history. Lots of interesting people were imagining the future, and making it happen.
One way to avoid this kind of misunderstanding - after you draft such a comment, imagine you were berated by a moderator (or another user, like here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40997406) then write the clarifying response (i.e. the "All I'm saying [...]" in this case). Throw away that first version and post the hypothetical response instead.
Is dang a moderator? Was there some way for me to know that?
In any case, if their comment was intended to "berate" me, I didn't take it that way. I believe the fear of my comment being intended as mere snark, though politely expressed, was misplaced, and have tried to lay out why.
The joke was meant to help to portray my point strongly, but there was no snarkiness - there's no indirect suggestion, or sarcasm.
A touch of hyperbole, yes, but it was intended to highlight the ahistorical and hyperbolic nature of the original claim in the article. Calling Jobs' comments in 1983 "breathtaking" and "prophetic" is, from my reading of the figures during that decade and the previous ones, grossly exagerrated.
The joke was meant to help to portray my point strongly, but there was no snarkiness - there's no indirect suggestion, or sarcasm.
You can't talk to people on HN like that, it's fairly straightforwardly explained in the guidelines dang linked you. Parsing out whether it's truly 'snark' or not is not that important. Another way to look at it is that things that work fine in some settings - like people more familiar with each other in a group chat or more broadcasty setups like twitter - aren't suitable for HN.
Ok, well thank you for taking the time to clarify all this. I didn't intend to cause any issues. I sincerely thought my comments fall within the guidelines, and have re-read them since, and think perhaps I was misunderstanding what is really being suggested by the guidelines.
I don't think it's straightforwardly explained, but as a non-American, perhaps I was missing or underestimating some cultural assumptions and insinuations.
Could I have my account deleted then? I'm not interested in engaging in the manner which I now understand the guidelines to be suggesting, and would therefore much prefer to not have the account.
The parenthetical remark about the other user "berate"-ing me I find really a bit at odds with reality - it remains to be seen what that user intended, the whole comment was quite neutrally put I thought. I've responded at length attempting to answer their question(s), and am looking forward to seeing if a fruitful discussion develops.
I certainly don't see any scolding or criticism in their comment, and think it's quite possible that it's a misunderstanding.
Can someone PLEASE try to find and link me to the audio interview with an early computer pioneer (maybe Alan Kay but I forgot exactly who) on a radio show, I think it was a British one, where he tries to explain to the interviewer why general-purpose computers are important. Like how we will be able to find whatever file we want quickly, and I think he speaks about music playing as well, and maybe knitting
Like the interviewer doesn’t get why we need it and keeps talking about how we can already do the things like find books using the Dewey Decimal system.
I remember listening to it and I can never seem to find it again. Anyone on HN know at least what the name of the show and/or interviewed person was?
It is like Bill Gates on Letterman but it was a radio show from the 60-80s? and took place for 10-30 minutes or so.
Honestly, I remember now getting this interview, but it isn't it. I looked through the whole transcript and the interviewer was not skeptical of computers, there was hardly any mention of the Dewey Decimal system etc.
Is there anything else? That one I had only audio, it a radio show I believe. And the guy was talking about music and dewey decimal system etc. Must have been 80s or 70s. It wasn't Alan Kay
For Finnegan's Wake - I find it's best to open it up at random and shout it out as you pace around. Maybe peer at yourself now and again in a mirror. If you can work it up to a roar, then you'll really be flying, but it'd depend on what you had for breakfast.
All joking aside, there is a lot of literature that really needs to be spoken to be grasped.
I learned this in college taking a middle English literature course. The Canterbury tales really need to be read out loud. They have a cadence that needs to be spoken.
I would actually argue that Joyce is in the same category. His work isn't meant to be internal. It's storytelling in a group and meant to be spoken. It helps understand the DENSE writing.
So many (snooty) people treat audiobooks like a cheap substitute for reading, when in reality, reading is the cheap substitute for oral storytelling. Sure, you've got Infinite Jest where page structure and end notes are part of the aesthetic design, but I think more people would consume more literature if audiobooks were more normalized.
Most literature we have today was written with a reader in mind, not a listener.
I don't even think audiobooks are necessarily bad, it's people consuming them like a hamburger while they multitask so they aren't even really engaging with the text. Let alone not really having the ability to stop, think and relisten very easily. With a text you do it basically automatically if necessary, with an audiobook you've got to fumble around for your device and hope you get back to the right spot and not break your train of thought in the process.
Audiobooks are a cheap excuse for oral storytelling. People listen to audiobooks as they sculpt their muscles in the gym, as they walk to the shop to get groceries averting the eyes of all strangers who pass by, as they fold laundry, alone.
Oral storytelling used to happen in small intimate groups around fires with a couple of lamps lit, total silence, wind howling, drinks and sometimes other delights, with no conceivable distractions. Even saying "no distractions" isn't accurate, as it was moreso the case that they'd a completely different conception of time. The stories would be told live by another human, with their voice and body and eyes looking at you.
Reading is different than oral storytelling - it doesn't pretend to be the same thing, at least not anymore. Creating a hierarchy between the three is, I find, a bit odd, in general.
This is also true of Homer, whose stories were meant to be shouted out to a large crowd.
A much later and much more obscure American writer, R. A. Lafferty, was deeply influenced by ancient Greek poetry and philosophy, and his prose is better understood if you think of it as being read loud to a large crowd.
The Wake didn't really click with me until I heard the recording of Joyce reading the episode with the two washerwomen. I realized the references, puns, and in-jokes are basically just bonus material for me. It's the dream images and the sound of the words that engage me and make me want to learn about the rest of it.
I wish we had a recording of him reading it cover to cover.
B) "From then on, Joyce lived in Europe." Isn't Ireland in Europe...?
-- technically yes, of course. In reality? Eh, it's complicated. There's probably a few reasons, but if you told an Irish person they were European, people would be bemused, at least.
Ireland tends to top the list of countries happy to be part of the EU. Which would be an odd position if European was a touchy identifier. It’s also not unheard of for people to refer to the mainland as if it were the whole continent.
> Which would be an odd position if European was a touchy identifier
They said "bemused", not that it was touchy. The comment seems to imply that Ireland sees itself as a very non-central example of the category "European".
Sort of like ostriches and birds. If you told me that there was a bird nearby, and I rounded a corner to find an ostrich, you'd be technically correct, but I'd still be surprised and probably not trust your warnings nearly as much as I had 10 minutes before.
TL;DR accepting intellectually that we are technically Europeans has very little to do with feeling like European-ness is a part of one's identity.
I thought it'd be obvious that I didn't mean every Irish person would be bemused, but I should have been more explicit.
There's a difference between accepting Ireland as legally and bureaucratically part of Europe, or thinking it's politically or culturally useful to be in the E.U., and feeling that European-ness - however you choose to define it - is a part of our identity as a people.
My anecdotal experience (have lived in two European countries and one non-European country, learning the local languages and diving deep) is that European countries are about as "foreign" to Irish people as any other countries. There are exceptions, and it depends on the country, e.g., we're closer to the Poles now, and have a few fun stories about crates of Prazsky at the wedding in Gdansk.
Try out the experiment - ask an Irish friend or relation of yours if they feel like them and a Finnish / Belgian / Romanian person have something in common, or what they know about that country. My experience is that a lot of people (not everyone, and again, anecdotally) are very uncomfortable even with the idea of imagining that other places really exist.
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