Viewing profile — kaiwen1

"But what about ?" That blank will not be filled in with today's technologies, but with technologies we cannot conceive of today and with an energy abundance that we can hardly ima…

Why functional programming languages are the future (again) Top comment: “The Quantum-Lazy-Linker in GHC 18.4 is actually a terrifying piece of technology if you think about it. I …

An easy prediction is that comparing articles will become standard practice for many people. I’ve already done that today.

Like many others here, I recommend giving org-mode a try. The main drawback is endlessly yak shaving it to your taste.

What's different is intention. A human would have the intention to blackmail, and then proceed toward that goal. If the output was a love letter instead of blackmail, the human wou…

RMB and Yuan are two names for the same thing. Maybe you're thinking of FEC? That ended in 1994.

I still use Quicksilver[1], the open source app that long predates Alfred and was the inspiration for it. I tried Alfred a few years ago but didn't see anything compelling enough t…

I still used Lynx as my default browser while working on ships until 2020. Satellite internet connections at sea were slow and very expensive which made Lynx a good choice. But it …

Upvote for the mockingbird. One fellow has for years perched himself in tree near the sidewalk tables at my favorite restaurant. His songs are as good as the food. > only three spe…

If human-like cognition isn't possible on digital computers, it's certainly is on quantum ones. The Deutsch-Church-Turing principle shows that a quantum Turing machine can efficien…

Tangential, but... when my daughter was 8 or 9, we read _I, Robot_ together, and both both cried when Gloria's parents decided to separate her from Robbie, her robot companion. Suc…

That article is dated 26 Feb 2025, not weeks ago.

Pre-print paper that concludes “may”, so by implication, also “may not”. And also may, or may not, be harmful.

No. My memory of the advent of the WWW was a sidebar in PC Magazine in Nov 1993 with an FTP link to download the NCSA Mosaic browser. It was a wow! moment to visit the few sites th…

On one hand, I know I should "invest" in this ridiculous thing because it's practically guaranteed to surge. But on the other hand, I know I shouldn't because, like all crypto, it'…

Is the "deadly" due to an increase in confounding factors related to social isolation – drinking, lack of exercise, etc? Or does merely being alone, while still maintaining an othe…

I live in org-roam nearly all day, every day, and the #1 feature on my wishlist is tagging. org-roam actually has a tagging feature, but it's very limited. org-supertag looks much …

I know a guy who owned a tropical resort on a island where competiton was sprouting up all around him. He was losing money trying to keep up with the quality offered by his neighbo…

This is not analagous. The sound of every English word give clues – and often precise guidance - on how to write it, but the sound of a Chinese word typically offers no hint of how…

Here's what Helen Keller had to say about this in _The World I Live In_: "Before my teacher came to me, I did not know that I am. I lived in a world that was a no-world. I cannot h…

Off topic, but eureka moments are my favorite go-to evidence for the absence of free will. No one chooses to have a eureka moment. They just arrive. And not just those moments, but…

I use Emacs Org Mode with Org Roam for journaling. I’ve customized it extensively to fit my workflow, but there is a risk. Unlike paper, in Emacs there’s a potential distraction lu…