Viewing profile — veddox

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I spent many fun hours there! It blew my mind to discover a game world that was so deeply player-driven and offered so many possibilities - my main character became a professional …

Very cool! I expected this would be quite a rudimentary map, but it actually uses OpenStreetMap, so you can zoom right in to the street level.

That depends on what threat scenario you're looking at. If your government wants to track you, they'll find a way, regardless of what phone you're using (or not). But the privacy g…

Replacing stable, working "low-tech" solutions with less user-friendly, unstable "high-tech" approaches is not "progress"! Just because something is newer doesn't mean it's better.…

I've been thinking about moving to a dumb phone again for the past few months, but so far I've decided against it, for three reasons: 1. Signal/Whatsapp/Threema: biggest reason by …

All through university and for several years afterwards I had an Online Vision Classic, which served me very well. Unfortunately I lost the first one at some point, and its replace…

Ditto for the fountain pen. For the past few months I've been trying to switch off the computer as much as possible and do as much writing as I can by hand. I can concentrate a lot…

I've begun thinking in that direction too, after seeing how my peers have been moving all over the country in the last few years - first for uni, then for a job, then another job..…

While I agree with your scepticism of our smart phone use, this comment doesn't do the article justice. (The author addresses that point and explains why he thinks that smart phone…

Hm, I think I understand your point, but I still disagree. For three reasons: First, Tolkien isn't writing another Grimms' fairy tale. His world has sufficient depth to it that we …

I still wish I could work in Lisp, but have also become very happy with Julia. Julia is not as elegant as Lisp and doesn't offer as many powerful language constructs. But it is a v…

Can you elaborate? I'm using Julia macros to help make my research software easier to extend for others, so would be interested in your experiences.

I partly agree. > Aragorn is not a ‘feudal king’, he is a king of legend. I was not using "feudal" to denote a time period in our world's history, but rather a system of governance…

If you think the Lord of the Rings is one big trope, you really haven't given it enough consideration. Yes, Tolkien has very clear moral and social ideals, but using this as ground…

I would rather take it at face value, as a perhaps surprising but nevertheless fitting display of magnanimity and mercy. Theoden has been restored to his right mind and character. …

Here's the tax policy quote in context: https://www.tolkiensociety.org/2014/04/grrm-asks-what-was-ar... > being a wholesome person is largely orthogonal to being a good king I disa…

Because this opinion has surfaced a number of times here: Yes, Tolkien did care deeply about the realism of his world. And because he spent his whole life studying pre-modern socie…

Speaking as a biologist, it saddens me every time I hear somebody say that they dropped biology as soon as they could in high school, because they inevitably do so just before it s…

Just to add as a caveat that Wohlleben's books are regarded quite critically by most forest ecologists I know. The general consensus seems to be that he picks up on real phenomena …

Aldo Leopold, "Sand County Almanac". In German: Josef Reichholf, "Mein Leben für die Natur".

You're doing to ecology exactly what the author complains teachers are doing to molecular biology. Learning about molecular biology often begins with memorising what the cell is ma…

A list of my favourites: 3. "Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon." 14. "In the long run every program becomes rococo - then rubble." 19. "A language that doesn't affect …

I've seen several of these before in SICP and other places, but happy to find a longer collection here! Perlis just has his own style and humour...

That's an unnecessary insult to what could well be an honest question.