On the otherhand, I greatly appreciate that we don't pretend everyone is 100% awesome all the time. We shouldn't hold people up as role models that we don't want to emulate, and whatnot.
One of them is legit a saint and the other almost as much. They absolutely are role models, and the way they are talked about now is exactly a lesson in the problem. If more people emulated them, the world would be a much better place.
I can't help but disagree with you 100%. Brilliant technicians aren't automatically role models, and both men have plenty of characteristics that shouldn't be emulated.
Their positive influence on open source is real; that doesn't make them, as people, role models.
Technical abilities are nothing more than big muscles. No one with any depth at all would mean anything like that when they say things like "role model" and "saint", and no one with a lick of sense would assume anyone else would.
If you're talking about Eric S. Raymond here, I'm having trouble not believing that this is just bait. Even in the Linux community, purely on Linux terms he's a problematic and polarizing figure.
I'm annoyed at the arc these discussions invariably take into Raymond's backstory or whatever, because I think CATB fails objectively, on its own merits (or lack thereof) and we don't need to wade into this other stuff. But if we're having the discussion: seems like kind of a wild statement to say he's any reasonable person's role model.
What "grudge" would I hold against him? If you mean I've long believed (like a huge portion of people who actively work on Linux, unlike me) that his output is enormously overrated, guilty as charged, I guess? It sounds like you're just accusing me of not having changed my mind about him.
He very literally said having sex with minors is not sexual assault
>The word “assaulting” presumes that he applied force or violence, in some unspecified way, but the article itself says no such thing. Only that they had sex.
> We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have had every reason to tell her to conceal that from most of his associates.
> I’ve concluded from various examples of accusation inflation that it is absolutely wrong to use the term “sexual assault” in an accusation.
Reminder that the subject of his writing is a 17 year old girl that was raped by one of Epstein's clients
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Some more of RMS' enlightened thoughts on child rape, a subject he just can't stop himself from writing about ad nauseum. And he insists on calling teenage girls "women" every chance he gets.
But, uh, "a saint" - Brian K White
> I expect that Sudanese law defines “rape” to exclude rape by the husband. That’s comparable to US laws that define “rape” to include voluntary sex with under N years of age (where N varies). Both laws falsify the meaning of “rape”.
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> the article makes it pretty clear that the “children” involved were not children. They were teenagers.
> What about “rape”? Was this really rape? Or did they have sex willingly, and prudes want to call it “rape” to make it sound like an injustice? We can’t tell from the article which one it is.
> Rape means coercing someone to have sex. Precisely because that is a grave and clear wrong, using the same name for something much less grave is a distortion.
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> The law is an ass again: a woman who invited a teenage boy to have sex (and he did, 4 times) has been sentenced to years in prison for “sexual abuse”.
> He did not live in her household. Evidently he repeatedly made arrangements to suffer this “abuse”. The code word “grooming” probably means, in this case, what we normally call “asking for a date”. While I can only guess the specifics, I speculate that he never complained about this “abuse”, and the relationship was discovered in some other way.
He very literally said nowhere in there that he thinks rape or non consentual sex or even statutory non-consent is ok.
He very literally spoke nuanced thoughts that were unwise to speak where idiots can hear them. That is his promary failing is failing to understand others well enough to manage his own appearance to them.
Or maybe not even that. Masybe he knowingly and willingly accepts what comes because he has 140x the integrity of you or I who very much manage our appearance to get a more comfortable life at the expense of a more honest one and making the world a better place for everyone else who suffers various things because of all the little injustices you and I and almost everyone else let slide.
Only maybe. Maybe he would happily take a more comfortable life and simply doesn't know how to manage it.
Either way, he never did any such thing as advocate for rape or pedophilia or anything like that. He just didn't repeat the unthinking chant, and even questioned the official gospel is all. You that thing people with the most integrity are supposed to do.
I think enough of us have imperfections that we can appreciate that people who've done wonderful things have also done some very $#!tty things. Someone doesn't need to be a saint to still have a wide, positive influence.
I went looking to refresh my memory, and Wikipedia reminded me about the brief window where ESR lent his voice to the Great Slate and helped raise money for progressive campaigns.
> you may be worried about which box you belong in. ;)
There’s also the risk someone very loud decides to put you in a box you don’t belong in. Eventually you are able to demonstrate it, but, in the meantime, you need to deal with the consequences.
Your post may be insinuating that you put ESR and RMS in such boxes, although you did not actually say that. You might want to clarify that point. (And I say that as someone who has neither upvoted or downvoted you.)
I'll also say that there are enough aspects of our personality and behavior that you might use to justify placing someone in the "bad box" that almost everyone would be in one; and if you were to relax the criteria so that you "average badness" along multiple axes, that comes with its own problems.
I like the concept, but I bailed at "GPT 5". The only thing that has given me peace of mind and the ability to journal honestly and successfully is Obsidian, because it lets me own my data (as text files).
Thanks for the feedback. I love Obsidian. All your data is stored on device i.e., in calendar entries (a Dlog is saved in your default calendar, that's why you don't need to sign in to use Dlog; the title and text of a calendar event are repurposed in Dlog to be a journal; much like the reminders have been repurposed to comprise projects) and on the in app on device Rag database, it is not stored in the cloud etc., so you do own all the data; and it is not shared to the Dlog server which is only used to track token usage. GPT 5 is necessary for the moment; Dlog uses the enterprise API, so it doesn't train on your data. However, I know this is a major concern for many, so, in the short term I will be adding an anonymiser; and the ability to approve and edit prompts sent. If you do decide to sign up to use Dlog send me a DM with the email used to register and I'll send you a free perpetual license so Dlog will always be free (excluding tokens for AI use) and 1 million free tokens. Thanks again!
There is good anti-AI content. I love reading articles concerning AI's limitations and the negative externalities of a world where we're increasingly outsourcing thought, and maybe even taste and authority, to unfeeling, soulless, unaccountable computers. What does wealth disparity look like in a world of billion dollar infrastructure rollouts?
"HackerNews AI Slop" is not that. HackerNews AI Slop (tm) is "Dropbox won't succeed because its just a wrapper around SFTP". It is low-effort drivel written by people who know a lot about one domain (software), and that gives them authority to speak on all domains (marketing, macroeconomics).
I read and appreciate articles that leave a mark on my heart; that raise novel viewpoints, or that are researched extraordinarily well. Yapping for the sixteenth time "they spend so much money markets crashy crashy bad bad" is so deeply boring, just another parroting voice in the echo chamber of ideas that everyone already knows. Challenge yourself. Be original. An AI could have written this article.
but it is strange that people have bought into the Sam Altman AGI marketing so much that this moderately useful but (in my opinion) not revolutionary tech we're calling AI is so controversial. it'll all good and well to talk about pros and cons of industry initiatives but we've gotten to a stage of hyperbolic paranoia right now that's coming from this, in my opinion, duality of anti-tech broader society contrasting with the carpetbagger AGI hype
FWIW as someone with only a pinky toe in the Zig community, it's quite engaging and interesting to see a blog post like this. It makes me want to learn more, and reminds me that there's a wide tent here (that might even include me!), not just a tight-knit "inside" group.
The revisions and updates are safety tested on roads for months before they are released. Tesla also has models that are too big to run on existing production hardware that perform better than the release versions in test cars.
Updates are not git pulls and no engineer would ever think that they were.
I don't know the bank they are referring to, but I can cite an example for me: RBC Royal Bank of Canada requires the mobile app. There is nothing you can do on their website without first 2FA via their specific mobile app, and even then only in limited transaction sizes. If you want "full access" (e.g. up to $10k daily transfer via e-transfer) then you MUST use biometrics and the mobile app.
One of the best parts, IMO, is the feeling that comes from contributing something to the community that will last--possibly for decades or centuries. To me, using Linux is an experience of gratitude.
