cultural reviewer and dabbler in stylistic premonitions

  • 303 Posts
  • 758 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
cake
Cake day: January 17th, 2022

help-circle





  • i don’t usually cross-post my comments but I think this one from a cross-post of this meme in programmerhumor is worth sharing here:

    The statement in this meme is false. There are many programming languages which can be written by humans but which are intended primarily to be generated by other programs (such as compilers for higher-level languages).

    The distinction can sometimes be missed even by people who are successfully writing code in these languages; this comment from Jeffrey Friedl (author of the book Mastering Regular Expressions) stuck with me:

    I’ve written full-fledged applications in PostScript – it can be done – but it’s important to remember that PostScript has been designed for machine-generated scripts. A human does not normally code in PostScript directly, but rather, they write a program in another language that produces PostScript to do what they want. (I realized this after having written said applications :-)) —Jeffrey

    (there is a lot of fascinating history in that thread on his blog…)


  • The statement in this meme is false. There are many programming languages which can be written by humans but which are intended primarily to be generated by other programs (such as compilers for higher-level languages).

    The distinction can sometimes be missed even by people who are successfully writing code in these languages; this comment from Jeffrey Friedl (author of the book Mastering Regular Expressions) stuck with me:

    I’ve written full-fledged applications in PostScript – it can be done – but it’s important to remember that PostScript has been designed for machine-generated scripts. A human does not normally code in PostScript directly, but rather, they write a program in another language that produces PostScript to do what they want. (I realized this after having written said applications :-)) —Jeffrey

    (there is a lot of fascinating history in that thread on his blog…)




  • IMHO free speach is let people write what they think, moderate misinformation only when there already is no clarification from others so that it’s clear to everyone that a message is misinformation.

    imho “free speach” is a typo, and one often made by people with the funny idea that free speech means any form of content moderation is a violation of their rights 😏

    I don’t see any misinformation on the deleted messages, if you can see in the ones that I’ve screenshotted, please tell me which one.

    look again; two of the comments in your screenshots (and many more that i deleted) are explicitly claiming that futo makes open source software:

    click to expand for screenshots of your screenshots

    and, the rest of them are discussing and/or promoting futo, which, again, is a commercial product which many people incorrectly believe to be open source due to its maker’s now-recanted false statements to that effect, and therefore offtopic (“spam” would also be a fair label for some of it) in a community about open source.

    also, note that i did not even delete 100% of the comments about futo in that thread! i left enough that any good-faith reader should be able to see why further discussion of futo is offtopic there, and, i even linked to this thread you started, to give anyone who wanted to discuss it further a place to do so.

    if you still believe that deletion of (most, and not even all in the thread) offtopic/spam comments is a free speech issue… ok, i don’t know what else to tell you. all the best to you too.


  • But over that, I think that deleting those messages is censorship. I still believe in free speech and I can’t see any hate or misinformation in those messages.

    I believe in free speech too, and I think moderated spaces for discussion help enable it. (Think about this…)

    Nobody claimed there was hate in any of messages in that thread; you observing that there wasn’t is knocking down a straw man, and using the word censorship here is just hyperbole.

    There are however unambiguously factually incorrect assertions in some of the offtopic messages I removed from that thread.






  • removing the comments to leave only the remnant of it that is “truth” is often not the best way to handle it

    i totally agree that it is often preferable to allow misinformed comments to remain so that they can be refuted.

    in the case of futo, though, i feel like there are often actually some bad-faith actors who just want to keep the discussion going, and will continue to repeat their misinformed arguments in the face of any and all evidence.

    and, in this particular case, it is even a thread in the Open Source community so any discussion of Futo is inherently offtopic. (and all of which is also effectively promotion for them; again see succès de scandale.)

    The way the conversation looks right now is just confusing

    the thread as it is now has lots of comments about open source keyboards, and a link to this thread for anyone who wants more information about all the deleted comments than they can find in the modlog. if you think it would be better if that thread was still mostly people arguing about Futo… well… i’m glad you’re not a mod there.




  • That was me. I’m tired of FUTO fans derailing discussions about FLOSS with advocacy for their obviously-not-open-source software and insisting that it is open source.

    Every time Futo comes up, someone will insist it is open source, others will correct them, and soon more than 50% of a thread that is supposed to be about open source is people arguing about them.

    I’m pretty sure that Futo’s (now recanted) position that they were open source (despite the term having a clear definition which is very internationally recognized and which Futo’s license obviously does not meet) was an intentional marketing gimmick - “there is no such thing as bad publicity” and every time a bunch of people are arguing about them there is a chance they’ll get more customers (some of whom might even believe it is open source).

    I’ve counted 19 messages moderated

    Probably more than that even; more than I want to count. The modlog is public.

    and the post has been locked.

    The What’s the best open source keyboard for android? post where you commented has not been locked, but most of the futo-related comments in it are deleted. Note that while your comment was not advocating for futo per se, it was (successfully) encouraging others to continue the offtopic discussion. You could have answered your question by reading the modlog.

    I did lock another post in the same community (the topic of which is, again, Open Source), which was What are your thoughts on FUTO? (and I left a comment there explaining why).

    I generally try to assume good faith but I’m pretty sure some Futo proponents are actually just trolling at this point.

    I hope this answers your questions.





  • I used that link to look up the source. It wasn’t here so I posted it here. I do the same with archive links.

    Do you post MBFC links on articles from outlets they classify as “unbiased” too, or just the “biased” ones?

    As others have pointed out many times before, the entirely flawed premise behind MBFC is that centrism correlates with credibility and/or factualness.

    I didn’t report this and don’t have a problem with it.

    cool 👍

    In general, the fact that they don’t disclose the country they operate out of is problematic

    Who doesn’t disclose where People Dispatch operates out of? MBFC? Yeah, they don’t, because they’re lazy hacks who’s job it is to impugn the reputation of anyone doing any journalism that isn’t in service of the status quo.

    since we can’t know if they’re operating from a place where telling the truth is illegal.

    A couple minutes of research shows that (although their contributors are all over the world) their legal entity People’s Dispatch Ltd. is registered in New York. So, the way things are headed, I guess actually you might be on to something here soon 😬

    Edit: I should also say that it’s important they’ve never failed a fact check. I don’t really care about them having editorial bias as long as we know what it is.

    The notion that any outlet could have no bias in what they decide is and isn’t worthy of reporting on, especially the people MBFC says are unbiased, is ridiculous. And it’s usually not difficult to see what an outlet’s bias is without relying on a 3rd party using their own bias to classify someone else’s.


  • Wow, a lot of people emotionally disagree with that quote. You can tell because 30+ down voted and you maybe see 1 of them commenting to take a stance.

    Cowards who are afraid of reality deserve no respect.

    Maybe… it got all those downvotes because it was a ridiculous thing to post in reply to an article which is simply reporting facts without any bias whatsoever, and posting that comment here in this context appears to be an attempt at discrediting Petro (who is, in fact… a leftist 😱 …watch out) in response to his standing up to to Trump?

    And maybe all those other people downvoting it didn’t bother replying because I had already posted my reply (which adequately pointed out the absurdity of it) right after the comment was posted? 🤔

    principal skinner out of touch meme, top panel "Wow, a lot of people emotionally disagree with that quote." bottom panel "Cowards who are afraid of reality deserve no respect."