RE: https://infosec.exchange/@lcamtuf/117462621729916895

@demofox
I started out with a dim view of philosophy, but over the years I began to see that, for starters, every subject has its own innate philosophy that is the basis of that subject.

It's not the usual way the subjects are described, but it's inescapable.

It's also not the usual way that philosophy is described; everyone likes to talk about the most abstract forms of metaphysics (and to argue about whether metaphysics is a kind of philosophy or vice versa).

It occurs to me that you may have a unique take on philosophy, unless you were burnt by the subject, as many are, and therefore avoid it. "Take a dim view" as I said above. :)

My own answer doesn't match the thread quoted in the quoted post.
So I answer here (I'll leave my own dim views for another time).

When I was a university student of mathematics, we studied The One True Philosophy, namely, dialectical materialism (that was on the east side of the Iron Curtain).
To illustrate with a joke:

A student leaves an examination in philosophy _very happy_, shouting:
"I failed! This is great!"
The others waiting outside don't understand.
"Of course it's great! The student before me was _arrested_!"

Quoting <https://mathstodon.xyz/@dougmerritt/117462654987443093>.

@screwlisp @caminante at first glance I didn't even realize that is not xemacs. Is good old text terminal emacs. I still fire up emacs on the regular or work. It is far more responsive on rhel than vscode is.

@cwebber @screwlisp @jn @researchfairy

I love the idea of a federated MUD ecosystem.

The fictions of Gibson's cyberspace, "Ready Player One", and many others port something like this interconnectivity in graphical forms.

But yeah, the object and capability transfers between incompatible systems becomes an admin headache even more than a technical one.

Still, would love to see it. Portable identity, digitally signed resources available on compatible systems.

Good stuff

@jackdaniel @screwlisp @hipsterelectron @stuartyeates for the last few years I've been working on a programming system (not calling it language, because even though it is, it's more of an interactive tool for working with arrays of data).

It is 100% slop-free. Including documentation, tests, and to as great degree possible, external dependencies.

https://kap-lang.org/

@screwlisp @hipsterelectron @stuartyeates both #ecl and #mcclim do not admit llm generated code and other content, including usage of llms in bug reports and discussions.

is it structurally impossible for cream cheese to be a hard cheese

@screwlisp @vnikolov @sgharms @llewelly @futurebird it's still finished software and has been for 20 years

@screwlisp @jn @researchfairy You're on to me!!!!

Building an ocap-secure federated MUD has been a background goal (really a test-driver to make sure the rest of the tech is good enough) since Mudsync. See the talk on https://www.gnu.org/software/8sync/ which wasn't distributed or safe, but was live.

@llewelly @vnikolov @screwlisp @futurebird ratpoison was an achievement.

I remember asking how that was possible — and their super lo-fi web site.

The first time gaim popped up a new message as a whole screen took some adjustments but all the superiority of this approach both in design and productivity won me over.

Later I moved to ion, ofc. Then years of tmux-as-ion is OSX. And now sway.

So that’s 25 years of least-mouse use for me 😆

Yes and yes.
To put it in yet another way, the value of such an assignment (problem, puzzle, etc.) is in _working out_ the solution oneself, not in _having_ the answer.

@djl @kentpitman @screwlisp

Yet another book worth reading.
And more than once!

Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.
The Design of Design
Essays from a Computer Scientist
(2010)

«Front Cover: John Constable’s design (painting) for his view of Salisbury Cathedral, the design of Elias de Dereham and Nicholas of Ely.»
Needless to say, Constable was a master of detail as well.
There are three people and four cows in the foreground.
One thing about them is that the cows are more prominent 🙂.

#ComputerScience
#Design
#MetaDesign
#SoftwareEngineering

For everyone following my journey finally becoming a #lambdaMOO programmer even a little bit (#medium article)
https://medium.com/@screwlisp/fancy-lisp-interaction-in-moo-vr-7a750797412d

#lisp #commonLisp #emacs #MOO #MUD #programming #VR

The *last* thread was interesting:
https://gamerplus.org/@screwlisp/117453378218512240

What if emulating Twitter was a bad decision for federated social media

What if, instead: Federated MUD's

You spawn in a text-based adventure MUD on your own server, and you can go to other servers' text-based MUD's via in-game mechanics depending on the server in question

> look

You are in a room

> exit

You can't do that

> go door

You leave the room, and you are at a bus stop. List top 10 federated servers? (y/n)

> :t_blink:

@kentpitman @screwlisp

Exactly. If you work the homework problems yourself, you'll learn the technical terms, what they mean, and how they work together.

Then when someone suggests brazing high-stength aluminum you'll remember how said material is made and realize that that's a seriously bad idea. But if you just coppied Chatty's answers when you were taking 3.091 at MIT, you won't remember, your part will fail, and your company will get sued.

For everyone following my journey finally becoming a #lambdaMOO programmer even a little bit (#medium article)
https://medium.com/@screwlisp/fancy-lisp-interaction-in-moo-vr-7a750797412d

#lisp #commonLisp #emacs #MOO #MUD #programming #VR

The *last* thread was interesting:
https://gamerplus.org/@screwlisp/117453378218512240

@screwlisp

> that would reveal they were cheating!

Seems like it.

Plus the purpose of doing homework in school isn't because the professor thinks you have an answer to something they've been wondering about, it's that it's believed that if you let the thoughts go into your head, mix around awhile, and try to come back out, you'll learn by side-effect. All this biz where people are worried about the answers LOOK like misses the point that it's hard for the professor to see whether it went through your head at all.

I posted an essay to my blog last night titled "Dogs in our midst". It's not really about dogs. (Sorry, I know that would have been way more popular.) It's more a critical comparison of the "AI" boom to the dot-com boom that it is sometimes compared to. I would not say "AI" stacks up well. (Did you expect otherwise?)

https://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2026/10/dogs-in-our-midst.html

#AI #history #society

Thirteen years ago since this golden email arrived in my inbox:

https://daniel.haxx.se/email/2013-10-16.html

@gemlog @claudiom @bstuf @ghostdancer @sennomo @seninha @maperal @Maya @smalldog @screwlisp @stebby @mnw Hope you all enjoyed the show. You can enjoy the archive here: https://molleraj.homelinuxserver.org/recordings/202610180000_guofu.mp3