Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Burned

    **2024-12-05**: Two days ago I got myself a second degree burn about one inch in diameter from our Raclette oven. I hadn’t burned myself in about forty years, I think and I feel like a kid again, observing the body as it reacts. The healing powers are so weird.

    Also I’m thankful for these self-healing capabilities we have! And thankful for this accident to be a curiosity instead of an emergency. A good reminder to be thankful for all the good days we have and I hope you’re having a good day! Live long and prosper. Or, as I usually tell me wife: healthy, happy, and in love. Be well.

    **2024-12-07**: I went to the pharmacy and got a disinfectant cream and wound pads. This was Saturday afternoon and no more doctors were available. Since this isn't an emergency, there's no rush.

  • Little suns

    Little suns to shine on my days:

    - Oranges, bright, sweet, juicy and tasty oranges. A simple pleasure but that's all the better.

    - My friends who send me messages, friends who just want to talk for a while. Even those I haven't seen in a while, they want to see me, and catch up.

  • Playfulness as a Signal of Attractiveness

    During the 2020 COVID lockdowns, several cultural fads broke through around the same time: sea shanty music, Taylor Swift's cottage core aesthetic, and... "eating ass." It's what a real man does. It's what a good boyfriend does. You don't love her if you don't do it.

    I think there was a deeper motivation behind that meme: playfulness as a signal of attractiveness. Playfulness is a universally pro-social behavior, it works in both dating and doing business. The more playful a person is in socially aware ways, the more attractive they must be. Why? Vulnerability.

  • 🔤SpellBinding: AISMNPK Wordo: WAVED

  • Schadenfreude over my employer, Christmas Edition

    The Corporation at which I work, has just cancelled the Christmas raffle, due to very low attendance.

    My country, probably most western countries, have a culture of that you have to love your work and you have to love being at work, we have to feel like a family. They then refuse to give you raises, promotions or benefits and give you poor end of year reviews to justify it.

    So it just makes me a little happy, that in an office with 12000 employees, they couldn't get attendance to give stuff away. 😂

• Politics and World Events

  • Planning for an Uncertain Future

    I just want to make clear that this entry does not constitute a return to writing. I'm still taking a step back¹ from writing. I'm only writing this entry now because it's important for people to get this message now rather than later.

    [...]

    We are at a unique moment in human history. It's more likely than ever that one of the following occurs:

    * A global catastrophic event or existential risk to the human species is realized * New technology radically transforms society

    Given the combined probability of all the events in both of these categories occurring, certain courses of action and plans that were considered good common sense historically, might no longer apply in the modern world.

    Let's see an example.

    [...]

    I am 25 years old. If I retire at age 60, I will retire in 35 years. Suppose there is a 1% probability of global nuclear war in any given year.

    That works out to a 1-(1-0.01)^35 ≈ 30% chance that global nuclear war happens before I retire, meaning that I can't enjoy any of the money I saved and I would've been better off spending it instead.

    In this hypothetical, there's a 70% chance that global nuclear war doesn't happen and I still need the retirement money. So I'd probably save. But what if we factor in other risks? Let's pick one from the second category: new technology.

    [...]

    Imagine spending years compiling and organizing a large dataset. You finally finish it. Then, a week later, a new powerful open-source AI model is released which could've accomplished the same task in minutes, and done a better job.

    [...]

    If you commit crimes that could land you in jail or prison for years, you should consider stopping if you can. A few years incarcerated starting in 2024 could amount to a de facto life sentence due to the global catastrophic risk level.

    [...]

    I'm in a situation where it's critical for me to advance career-wise and any extra time/energy spent writing is not spent on my career. When I stopped writing prolifically a year ago⁴, I planned to come back to writing later after I'd made enough progress in my career and other personal life goals that I felt ready to return.

    [...]

    Understand that when it comes to global catastrophic risk, there are a very small number of people who will determine whether those risks are realized or not. Most of us aren't in a position to change the outcome. So just do what you can, and don't panic or worry excessively about it. That won't do any good.

• Technology and Free Software

  • Probably the best engineer's wristwatch of today

    As more and more circumstances out there are forcing me to stay home, I asked myself a question: "which watch out of my current collection would I really wear all day long with the least troubles?" To be honest, any of the watches in the collection wouldn't give me a lot of troubles (otherwise it wouldn't stay there), but some watches are still more suitable to the current lifestyle than the others. Of course, one doesn't need a diver's or a field watch for the activity happening mostly indoors. And this is when I remembered about the type of watches that I called "engineer's watch".

  • ed is the standard

    `ed` is a window in the past. This is a line-based editor, not a screen-based editor. It can be used with a line-printer instead of a screen. This also means that working with it is very different. I'll try to collect some interesting command sequences on this page.

    I use `ed` to send mail from the command line. One way I do this is by using `mail` on the server. It's a line-oriented mail client. You can use any editor with it, but the default feels very close to `ed`.

    When I started reading newsgroups again, I used `tin` and made it use `ed` as the editor.

  • Programming

    • I Failed

      Well, I failed. If you read my last post you know I was doing a short game jam with my friend to motivate us to get writing some code. My friend used Unreal and was able to get a nice MVP working with a single level. It was all very well done, and I feel very comfortable saying I lost. As I was going along creating my game, I ran into a few different road bumps.