Notices by clacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛 (clacke@libranet.de), page 9

Every visual programming tool, every wizard [ . . . ] [makes] the suggestion that the wizard is only taking care of things that are repetitive or boring. These are only tedious and mundane tasks, says the wizard, from which I will free you for better things. Why reinvent the wheel? Why should anyone ever again write code to put up a window or a menu? Use me and you will be more productive.

26 years later, we are busy taking the collective forgetting to the next level and eliminate even the human-written wizard, replacing it with the matching of two statistical models; one of what the collective of other programmers have already written (and forgotten), and one of what we're in the middle of writing.

[ . . . ] In March, the New York Times reported that IBM had told the Federal Aviation Administration that, come the millennium, the existing system would stop functioning reliably. IBM's advice was to completely replace the system because, they said, there was "no one left who understands the inner workings of the host computer."

No one left who understands. [ . . . ] A world floating atop a sea of programs we've come to rely on but no longer truly understand or control. Code and forget; code and forget: programming as a collective exercise in incremental forgetting.

The computer was suddenly revealed as palimpsest. The machine that is everywhere hailed as the very incarnation of the new had revealed itself to be not so new after all, but a series of skins, layer on layer, winding around the messy, evolving idea of the computing machine. Under Windows was DOS; under DOS, BASIC; and under them both the date of its origins recorded like a birth memory. Here was the very opposite of the authoritative, all-knowing system with its pretty screenful of icons. Here was the antidote to Microsoft's many protections. The mere impulse toward Linux had led me into an act of desktop archaeology. And down under all those piles of stuff, the secret was written: We build our computers the way we build our cities -- over time, without a plan, on top of ruins.

-- Ellen Ullman, "The dumbing-down of programming", part 1 of 2 salon.com/1998/05/12/feature_3…

/via social.coop/@eob/1124701033935… @Éamonn

So I tried just translating to English using the nearest translation tool. Maybe that would read the small-caps just fine, and output nornal text? It didn't. 🤣

Autodetected language: Vietnamese.

Output to English:
ᴄʜᴇꜱꜱ ʜᴀꜱɴ’ᴛ ʙᴇᴇɴ ᴜᴘᴅᴀᴛᴇᴅ ɪɴ ᴀʟᴍᴏꜱᴛ 200 ʏᴇᴀʀꜱ ᴀɴᴅ ɪᴛ’ꜱ ᴏʙᴠɪᴏᴜꜱ ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴠꜱ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ᴀʙᴀɴᴅᴏɴᴇᴅ ɪᴛ. ᴛʜᴇ ɢʀᴇᴇᴅʏ ᴄʀᴇᴀᴛᴏʀꜱ ᴛᴏᴏᴋ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴍᴏɴᴇʏ ᴀɴᴅ ʟᴀᴜɢʜᴇᴅ ᴀʟʟ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴀʏ ᴛᴏ ᴛʜᴇ ʙᴀɴᴋ.
I'm a 705 year old man. The first episode of the "Sunset" show was held in Seoul on April 14, 2018. I'm a Korean woman, I like to play sports. ɪ’ᴠᴇ ʙᴇᴇɴ ᴄᴏᴍᴘʟᴀɪɴɪɴɢ ꜰᴏʀ ʏᴇᴀʀꜱ ᴀʙᴏᴜᴛ ᴛʜᴇ ᴄᴏʟʟɪꜱɪᴏɴ-ᴅ ᴇᴛᴇᴄᴛɪᴏɴ ɢʟɪᴛᴄʜ ᴡɪᴛʜ ᴛʜᴇ ʜᴏʀꜱᴇʏ. The word “ᴄʟɪᴘᴘɪɴɢ-ᴛʜʀᴜ-ᴘɪᴇᴄᴇꜱ” means “ᴄʟɪᴘᴘ-ᴛʜʀᴜ-ᴘɪᴇᴄᴇꜱ”. English ꜱ ᴄᴏᴍᴘᴀɴʏ.

The ascii-compatible text is here, and reads well aloud:

outerheaven.club/notice/AkcRsn…

But before I had found that, I was wondering if there was a quick and easy way to translate the small-caps text into text-text.

This is a hilarious text, but unfortunately the aesthetic choice of writing it all in Unicode small caps makes it ... not quite text, not ASCII text anyway. It's unreadable to someone with a screen reader. I was curious and tried: "Read aloud" on my phone says "... 200 ... 705 ... X ... X."

outerheaven.club/notice/AkaYEg…

Not it, but also cool: Julia Wu, Chinese-Australian singer, performing "Faded" and "Different World" together with Walker at KKBOX Music Awards in Taipei.

farside.link/invidious/watch?v…

youtube.com/watch?v=n03IDJcsy5…

One of the shops in a nearby mall was playing Alan Walker's "Faded", but it was a version with another singer, and with more focus on the vocals.

I'm looking around a bit to see if I can find it.

It was an exciting game between two very strong and technical players, both Wunderkinder who were winning medals years before they were 20, but Fan is 5 years older and the longer experience shows. His performance was consistent and disciplined under pressure.

Möregårdh made some really impressive plays throughout the game, but only the first two sets were even. Once he started losing he started making more mistakes.

I'm watching the ping pong final, males' singles.

The Swedish guy is wearing Uniqlo. As a Uniqlo-wearing Swede, I can relate.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio [ . . . ] has led a right-wing crackdown on industrial independence — which is blatantly hypocritical behavior coming from the purported party of “free enterprise.”

It's modern-day McCarthyism.

msnbc.com/the-reidout/reidout-…

Are you, or have you ever been, the CFO of a corporation that is party to Climate Action 100+?

My bad, Möregårdh beat World #3 Hugo Calderano from Brazil in the semi, he beat Wang already in the round of 32 last week.

Calderano is 28, which sounds more normal to me.

Mikael Appelgren and Jan-Owe Waldner were world players almost into their 40s, but looking them up now, I see they started taking international medals already before their 20s. I never realized they went for that long. The inspiration from those two basically made Sweden the ping pong nation it is today.

World #1 male ping pong player https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Chuqin en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Chu… from China is only 24 years old!

World #26 male ping pong player https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truls_Möregårdh en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truls_M%…, who beat Wang in the semifinal yesterday, is only 22!! He won his first Swedish national championship as an adult when he was only 17.

#PingPong #TableTennis #OlympicGames

The HK government bought the Olympic Games rights for HK, so that people can watch it on any channel they like, whether it's Viu, TVB, Hoy, RTHK or something else.

But I can't seem to find anywhere online I can watch the table tennis semifinal that just finished. I found one place where I think I could have streamed it as it happened.

The United States, West Germany, East Germany, Yugoslavia, Venezuela, the Soviet Union, China, Uganda, Indonesia, countries from every alignment and continent, had signed it by 1989. By 1991 Chile, Brazil, South Africa, Iran and India had signed, and most of the world.

You couldn't get all these countries to agree on anything ideological, but this was just a no-brainer. We're breaking this part of the environment? Let's stop then.