Friday, 23. September 12016
p3k dots

Farewell, etaoin shrdlu.

The last day of hot metal press before computers come in at The New York Times.

Source: alpha.aeon.co

Coding is not ‘fun’, it’s technically and ethically complex.

In an ever-more intricate and connected world, where software plays a larger and larger role in everyday life, it’s irresponsible to speak of coding as a lightweight activity. Software is not simply lines of code, nor is it blandly technical. In just a few years, understanding programming will be an indispensable part of active citizenship. The idea that coding offers an unproblematic path to social progress and personal enhancement works to the advantage of the growing techno-plutocracy that’s insulating itself behind its own technology.

不気味の谷現象

A theory of creepiness.

Now, here’s the kicker, the real key to creepiness: essences don’t come in degrees. It’s part of the notion of essences that if a thing possesses an essence, it possesses it completely. In our ordinary, pre-theoretical ways of cognising animals, if we think of something as a dog, we are inclined to think of it as completely a dog, and if we think of something as a lizard, we are inclined to think of it as completely a lizard. Now, consider the example of a dog with a lizard’s head. According to the implicit logic of essentialism, such a creature must be completely a dog and completely a lizard. But that’s impossible, because each of these excludes the other.

Opposition to Galileo was scientific, not just religious.

Anti-Copernicans such as Locher and Brahe show that science has always functioned as a contest of ideas, and that science was present in both sides of the vigorous debate over Earth’s motion.

I swear by Apollo Physician and Asclepius and Hygieia and Panaceia and all the gods and goddesses…

Medical students revise their Hippocratic oath to reflect modern values.

Relevant: The Declaration of Geneva.

Caveat, male feminists.

The Easy Failure of Professional Male Feminism.

The professional white knight is a male feminist who makes workplace feminism a vehicle for their own self-congratulatory complacency.

Made in Austria.

Pepper – A friendly contact widget for your website.

10 Tricks to Appear Smart During Meetings.

Hacker-Proof Code Confirmed.

The technology that repelled the hackers was a style of software programming known as formal verification. Unlike most computer code, which is written informally and evaluated based mainly on whether it works, formally verified software reads like a mathematical proof: Each statement follows logically from the preceding one. An entire program can be tested with the same certainty that mathematicians prove theorems.

Thursday, 22. September 12016
p3k dots

web2web – server-less & domain-less websites updatable via torrents and bitcoin blockchain.