Login
2022-09-16 23:01:11 apache virtual hosts Apache has an "Add Virtual Host" form, where you can add 2 values: New Virtual Host Name and New Virtual Host Directory. Submitting this form will edit *vhosts.conf* in the Apache configuration files, as well as the system *hosts* file.

On windows the *hosts* file is located in: "C:/Windows/System32/drivers/etc/hosts"
2020-03-20 21:22:32 good grammar The importance of grammar

There is not much to be said. Reading bad grammar is like being
invited into a house and led on a tour only to trip on missing
floorboards and to hit your head on unfinished wall corners. I
have to put up extra time and effort to evade mistakes done by
my host. It is like if he or she does not care about my time.
2020-03-15 19:13:02 The Greatest Impact What company/business is having the greatest impact in the world today, either
positive or negative? Explain your response.

I am a staunch advocate for reading and writing. You can practice on a
computer, but real reading and writing is done only on paper. Sure, there are
multiple industries that have been created and will be created thanks to
'writing' with a keyboard and 'reading' through a screen, but these are mere
simulations.

With this in mind, I would argue the company that is singlehandedly having the
greatest impact on our reality is Google. Some of that impact is through the
success and ubiquity of it's products: search and Android are two of many that
dominate the field. Still, Google's 'on the ground' products are not how they
exert their power. Instead it is the Google backend and the analytics it
produces. To continue drilling down, the monolith that is known as the backend
is composed of what all modern systems are composed of: hardware, software and
the workforce that builds and maintains them.

All I will say about the hardware is that it is easily the most impressive
system that any group of humans have built. I know less about the workforce,
but from what I have heard about the interviews and the types of challenges
they aspire to solve, the best word to describe them is 'indomitable'.

To examine the software, on the other hand, we need to understand that there is
probably no physical structure (say a building, for example) that can serve as
a good comparison. If you could build a building, and then reduce it to the
size of a coin, then build another building made of those coins, then repeat
the same process each year for at least 20 years, then you might have an idea
of the scale of certain projects at Google. One of those projects is the Google
artificial intelligence (AI) system; the public version of which is DeepMind.

If you are not convinced that AI threatens our current way of life, I probably
will not able to convince you. But I will mention a good example of an impact
that is already old news: AlphaGo Master and AlphaGo Zero. These are the
chinese chess-like game version for DeepMind. For a glimpse of the power of
the system, take a look at it's progress. AlphaGo Master, the final version
of the first iteration, beat the number 1 Go player in the world in 2017.
To do this, AlphaGo Master spent many hours, possibly on the scale of weeks, to
learn how to play well.

AlphaGo Zero, on the other hand, was designed to learn from AlphaGo Master. It
did so in three days. To put that into perspective: a self-learning system
was able to condense all human knowledge on a specific subject to be able to
outperform the *best* performing opponent in less than 72 hours.
2020-03-08 23:50:55 harmony "Harmony. That is the truth of what you must seek" - Street Fighter V's Gill
beginning of battle quote.

I have been struggling with the concept of balance throughout my life. It
implies paying attention to multiple things, in varying amounts depending on
the importance or the priority of each thing. Instead of just concentrating on
one thing, to achieve balance you must essentially do the right thing at the
right time in the right place constantly. Even thinking about it is taxing.

Isn't it better to just concentrate on one thing? It is my experience that the
concept of multitasking is simply not achievable. Even in a computer there is
mostly the illusion of executing multiple actions at the same time. Multi-
core technology has certainly permitted different instructions to be executed
simultaneously, but then again, we are only talking about sand.

For a person, having multiple focuses makes no sense. I think no one will
dispute that we are only able to focus on one thing, and change to another
thing once we are satisfied with that thing's current state. Then again maybe
there are superhumans who can perform the feat. I am just not one of them.

If there is anything that I am truly learning about after becoming a father is
the inordinate amount of time that I used to have and waste. It is possible
that no time is truly wasted, but I cannot believe that. Now I spend most of
my time taking care of things that I need to take care of and dream of the
days when I spent most of my time doing things that were not really necessary.

I suppose it is true that you do not ever really know of the value of something
until it is lost.
2019-07-05 11:22:29 metametaphors "to understand is to see how 'yes' is 'no'" - i.
"to understand is to see the line that connects 'yes' and 'no'- i.

Someone said there is a price to pay for using metaphors. I go on further to echo: If you use metaphors in politics, the price to pay is truth.
Which is where we are at. They are so powerful, concise and effective that we initially would not even bother trying to understand the consequences of misusing them.

Some word-keeping before I go on: metaphors and similes are both figures of speech used when comparing two "things" (stuff (stuffs?)). Analogies are usually longer, as a good analogy will underline how two things are similar and in what context. I just read that a simile is an explicit metaphor, in that it uses a specific word to underline __likeness__ instead of what a metaphor does which is to posit the possibility of __equalness__.

Did anyone ever get hurt by using or hearing a metaphor? I am now understanding that the answer to this question is: probably yes.

A metaphor is the literary parallel of a physical model. Like any proper model, it needs to come with clear reading labels: "You should know this model is a reduction of the known and unknown complexity inherent in the set of circumstances it is attempting to explain".

Take the example that I just used: "A metaphor is the literary parallel of a physical model"[1][2]. After hearing someone say it we may end up thinking that the metaphor and the physical model are somehow equal. The fact that the metaphor is used as a figure of speech and the physical model is used to understand physical phenomena doesn't really pose a barrier to this notion of contextualized equality. Just as long as we are not hurting anyone, we can probably get away with exchanging the two terms in any given scenario[3], so we will attempt to avoid engineering proposals.

A disguised thing is not disguised until or unless it is revealed. If the reveal does not happen, there is no notion of disguise or deceit. If the reveal does happen, the disguised thing stops being a disguised thing and is just a thing with the answer to the question: why the disguise?

But a metaphor's disguise is cunning: it is so light it is practically transparent. "A thing is another thing in another context". Well then I am an astronaut and I have twenty space ships, yes?

So on to monitoring metaphors in politics...

[1](In all fairness we may argue it is actually a __simile__ because it uses the explicit word 'parallel' which highlights *likeness* not *equalness* (*sameness*?); but for argument's sake we will keep with the most simple and literal definition of simile: when you use the words 'like'.)
[2](I just found the wikipedia term conceptual model. FML.)
[3](although we notionally do this so that when we find a scenario that doesn't "smell" appropriate is a scenario that may highlight how the two terms are not contextually equal)
2019-02-03 05:13:02 finally tangerinelaboratories.com/blog/rss is up to spec so this will be my first official micro.blog post
@manton @Rosemary thank you for your help
2018-08-30 02:12:47 tmux! i finally feel i found the reason why the command line is absolutely worth my time
2018-05-08 13:07:46 apache! php! mysql! on a chromebook! Hello! It is frustrating that sometimes you have to revisit a problem with a good load of patience. If you don't understand something (linux) you must surrender yourself to bash snippets you find on stackoverflow. It's not bad, but it in the real world, if you have trouble with a specific skill, you are usually able to self-correct through observation, criticism and practice. This does not seem to be the case for some types of systems at all.