cultural reviewer and dabbler in stylistic premonitions

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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: January 17th, 2022

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  • i don’t usually cross-post my comments but I think this one from a cross-post of this meme in programmerhumor is worth sharing here:

    The statement in this meme is false. There are many programming languages which can be written by humans but which are intended primarily to be generated by other programs (such as compilers for higher-level languages).

    The distinction can sometimes be missed even by people who are successfully writing code in these languages; this comment from Jeffrey Friedl (author of the book Mastering Regular Expressions) stuck with me:

    I’ve written full-fledged applications in PostScript – it can be done – but it’s important to remember that PostScript has been designed for machine-generated scripts. A human does not normally code in PostScript directly, but rather, they write a program in another language that produces PostScript to do what they want. (I realized this after having written said applications :-)) —Jeffrey

    (there is a lot of fascinating history in that thread on his blog…)


  • The statement in this meme is false. There are many programming languages which can be written by humans but which are intended primarily to be generated by other programs (such as compilers for higher-level languages).

    The distinction can sometimes be missed even by people who are successfully writing code in these languages; this comment from Jeffrey Friedl (author of the book Mastering Regular Expressions) stuck with me:

    I’ve written full-fledged applications in PostScript – it can be done – but it’s important to remember that PostScript has been designed for machine-generated scripts. A human does not normally code in PostScript directly, but rather, they write a program in another language that produces PostScript to do what they want. (I realized this after having written said applications :-)) —Jeffrey

    (there is a lot of fascinating history in that thread on his blog…)








  • IMHO free speach is let people write what they think, moderate misinformation only when there already is no clarification from others so that it’s clear to everyone that a message is misinformation.

    imho “free speach” is a typo, and one often made by people with the funny idea that free speech means any form of content moderation is a violation of their rights 😏

    I don’t see any misinformation on the deleted messages, if you can see in the ones that I’ve screenshotted, please tell me which one.

    look again; two of the comments in your screenshots (and many more that i deleted) are explicitly claiming that futo makes open source software:

    click to expand for screenshots of your screenshots

    and, the rest of them are discussing and/or promoting futo, which, again, is a commercial product which many people incorrectly believe to be open source due to its maker’s now-recanted false statements to that effect, and therefore offtopic (“spam” would also be a fair label for some of it) in a community about open source.

    also, note that i did not even delete 100% of the comments about futo in that thread! i left enough that any good-faith reader should be able to see why further discussion of futo is offtopic there, and, i even linked to this thread you started, to give anyone who wanted to discuss it further a place to do so.

    if you still believe that deletion of (most, and not even all in the thread) offtopic/spam comments is a free speech issue… ok, i don’t know what else to tell you. all the best to you too.



  • But over that, I think that deleting those messages is censorship. I still believe in free speech and I can’t see any hate or misinformation in those messages.

    I believe in free speech too, and I think moderated spaces for discussion help enable it. (Think about this…)

    Nobody claimed there was hate in any of messages in that thread; you observing that there wasn’t is knocking down a straw man, and using the word censorship here is just hyperbole.

    There are however unambiguously factually incorrect assertions in some of the offtopic messages I removed from that thread.













  • removing the comments to leave only the remnant of it that is “truth” is often not the best way to handle it

    i totally agree that it is often preferable to allow misinformed comments to remain so that they can be refuted.

    in the case of futo, though, i feel like there are often actually some bad-faith actors who just want to keep the discussion going, and will continue to repeat their misinformed arguments in the face of any and all evidence.

    and, in this particular case, it is even a thread in the Open Source community so any discussion of Futo is inherently offtopic. (and all of which is also effectively promotion for them; again see succès de scandale.)

    The way the conversation looks right now is just confusing

    the thread as it is now has lots of comments about open source keyboards, and a link to this thread for anyone who wants more information about all the deleted comments than they can find in the modlog. if you think it would be better if that thread was still mostly people arguing about Futo… well… i’m glad you’re not a mod there.





  • That was me. I’m tired of FUTO fans derailing discussions about FLOSS with advocacy for their obviously-not-open-source software and insisting that it is open source.

    Every time Futo comes up, someone will insist it is open source, others will correct them, and soon more than 50% of a thread that is supposed to be about open source is people arguing about them.

    I’m pretty sure that Futo’s (now recanted) position that they were open source (despite the term having a clear definition which is very internationally recognized and which Futo’s license obviously does not meet) was an intentional marketing gimmick - “there is no such thing as bad publicity” and every time a bunch of people are arguing about them there is a chance they’ll get more customers (some of whom might even believe it is open source).

    I’ve counted 19 messages moderated

    Probably more than that even; more than I want to count. The modlog is public.

    and the post has been locked.

    The What’s the best open source keyboard for android? post where you commented has not been locked, but most of the futo-related comments in it are deleted. Note that while your comment was not advocating for futo per se, it was (successfully) encouraging others to continue the offtopic discussion. You could have answered your question by reading the modlog.

    I did lock another post in the same community (the topic of which is, again, Open Source), which was What are your thoughts on FUTO? (and I left a comment there explaining why).

    I generally try to assume good faith but I’m pretty sure some Futo proponents are actually just trolling at this point.

    I hope this answers your questions.