Subject: Re: Friam Digest, Vol 180, Issue 3

[jon zingale]

I was being a little bit cheeky in my response to Microsoft's

acquisition of Github, though I am disappointed. Two salient

and moderate responses seem to be that:

1) One could always migrate to another cloud service, gitlab perhaps?

Another option could be to take the 30 seconds it takes to setup one's

own git origin.

2) There ought not be a difference whether those at Microsoft

(an undeniable champion of proprietary rights) and those at GitHub

(the developers of a service developed within the context of an

open-source community) manages what may be the world's

largest open-source collection of code.

For me, GitHub has been the only social media I have ever known.

I have often enjoyed browsing the stacks and seeing how fellow

programmers have come to express their ideas in code. To `pick

one's own code and go home` strikes me as reactionary (leftpad

anyone?), in that doing so dismisses the value of these commons.

The roles GitHub has come to play in the development world are manifold. Many software houses consider participation in open-source

GitHub projects as-valuable-if-not-more than having a CS degree. 

Collaborations outside of software, in the narrow, have found their

home in this community. For instance, the highly publicized (at least

for mathematics) development of `Homotopy Type Theory` had been

collaboratively written using this technology. In short, version control

is not just for programmers anymore.

While it is often an individually inexpensive position to give the

benefit of the doubt to Microsoft, I find it difficult to summon a

sense of good-faith. By analogy, Scott Pruitt may do wonders

for the environment. We will have to wait and see.

In the meantime, I anticipate the day I have to wait for software updates

when I go to git pull from origin. ;)

Cheers,

Jonathan Zingale

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[Russell Standish-2]

On Tue, Jun 05, 2018 at 11:41:13AM -0600, Jon Zingale wrote:

> I was being a little bit cheeky in my response to Microsoft's
> acquisition of Github, though I am disappointed. Two salient
> and moderate responses seem to be that:
>
> 1) One could always migrate to another cloud service, gitlab perhaps?
> Another option could be to take the 30 seconds it takes to setup one's
> own git origin.
>
> 2) There ought not be a difference whether those at Microsoft
> (an undeniable champion of proprietary rights) and those at GitHub
> (the developers of a service developed within the context of an
> open-source community) manages what may be the world's
> largest open-source collection of code.
>
> For me, GitHub has been the only social media I have ever known.
> I have often enjoyed browsing the stacks and seeing how fellow
> programmers have come to express their ideas in code. To `pick
> one's own code and go home` strikes me as reactionary (leftpad
> <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/23/npm_left_pad_chaos/>
> anyone?), in that doing so dismisses the value of these commons.

I wasn't implying that. Given the undeniable success of GitHub in
creating such a commons, recreating that same commons in the event of
some corporate overlord (doesn't matter who) destroying it should not
be difficult, and will be done. Particularly if someone has cloned a
copy of GitHub's sourcecode, which seems likely. As per point 1, it
will take 30 seconds to reattach your own code repository to the new
commons. The biggest loss will be in abandonware - some itty bitty
project code that someone dumped into Github and forgotten about, and
then nobody cared for. Should we care for such projects? Maybe, but
then we have collectively voted with our feet, so maybe not.

> The roles GitHub has come to play in the development world are manifold.
> Many software houses consider participation in open-source
> GitHub projects as-valuable-if-not-more than having a CS degree.
> Collaborations outside of software, in the narrow, have found their
> home in this community. For instance, the highly publicized (at least
> for mathematics) development of `Homotopy Type Theory
> <https://www.ias.edu/ideas/2013/bauer-hott-book>` had been
> collaboratively written using this technology. In short, version control
> is not just for programmers anymore.
>

The version controlled stuff is not of a concern. Any such material
can readily be rehosted in a new commons. Of more concern is
ancilliary material - eg issues and wiki pages. On Github, the wiki
pages are hosted as a special branch in the version control, so should
be around.

> While it is often an individually inexpensive position to give the
> benefit of the doubt to Microsoft, I find it difficult to summon a
> sense of good-faith.

My position is that I never extended good-faith to Github in the first
place. It was never needed, nor asked for. That's the beauty of it.

> By analogy, Scott Pruitt may do wonders
> for the environment. We will have to wait and see.
>

Yeah, well by analogy, people have turned to state and local
governments to step up where federal systems have failed due to
conservatives. eg Paris climate accord being a case in point. We'll
have to wait and see if that works out, otherwise put up with
inevitable bumps in the road every 4-8 years in the collective
insanity pervading modern democracies. At least there's a chance Trump
will be gone in another 2 years.
 
> In the meantime, I anticipate the day I have to wait for software updates
> when I go to git pull from origin. ;)
>
> Cheers,
> Jonathan Zingale

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

Russell writes:

"Given the undeniable success of GitHub in
creating such a commons, recreating that same commons in the event of
some corporate overlord (doesn't matter who) destroying it should not
be difficult, and will be done."

People do this to themselves, like idiots.  Handing over their identity to Facebook or advocating the use of the cloud -- just a nicer name for centralized control.

Marcus


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[gepr]

philpapers.org alerted me, yesterday, to the forthcoming book "Extended Epistemology" by Carter, et al. In trying to find a downloadable copy of one of the already published chapters of that book, I ran across Chalmers TedX talk on the extended mind/self, wherein he called our cognitive investment into devices like the iPhone a "democratization" ... of knowledge ... or information ... or cognition or whatever he said.

This reminded me of my (postmodern) criticism of open source (in spite of any of my advocacy of it), that open source *can* be exploited by an elite set of people who are elite by their capability to know how to read, use, and think about code, or design google queries, or SEO. It's only "democratization" IF the skills and resources to use it are available to everyone.  Otherwise, it's yet another transfer of power from one elite to another elite (perhaps with a large intersection -- e.g. rich people are more likely to have the resources to push their knowledge out to the many $500 devices they can buy ... an iPhone for your pants, an iPad for your Sonos and Nest devices, etc.).

But the more important point is that we have a tendency to artificially discretize.  There are actually multiple *tiers* of elite.  The well-paid Republican, with a 2 story house, a Hummer, and a pellet BBQ, has enough money and crafty dexterity to buy several $500 devices, input his personal information, and keep working his "good" job.  Similarly, the 1st tier college student, privileged enough by their intelligence and/or parents' money to have access to such resources, is crafty enough to push their data out into their extended mind.

But such people are the fodder of a more rarified elite who knows how to harvest the data on those $500 devices.

What did Apple call this sort of "security" ... "differential privacy" or somesuch?

On 06/05/2018 05:35 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> People do this to themselves, like idiots.  Handing over their identity to Facebook or advocating the use of the cloud -- just a nicer name for centralized control.

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

Glen writes:
 
"This reminded me of my (postmodern) criticism of open source (in spite of any of my advocacy of it), that open source *can* be exploited by an elite set of people who are elite by their capability to know how to read, use, and think about code, or design google queries, or SEO. It's only "democratization" IF the skills and resources to use it are available to everyone."

How about bicycle racing.   Not everyone can achieve > 80 ml/kg/min VO2 max, but a few people can.    These are biologically gifted people, and then they train like hell too, and/or sometimes use performance enhancing drugs.   There are some people that can train like hell but always be beaten by someone than trains as hard or less.  They just don't have it.  

Open source as a meritocracy is attractive to its adherents because it selects for individuals that succeed in developing a particular kind of sustained intellectual productivity, based on nothing else but the fact that they do.    You can't just go through a particular training procedure and come out a productive peer in this community.  It doesn't matter if you are born a citizen of a hypothetical Code Nation.    People from all over the world end-up being recruited to major tech firms who can see the value of their work, and not just the bullet points on a resume.

It seems silly to say that one would democratize elite bicycle racing.  

Marcus

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[gepr]

On 06/06/2018 09:52 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> It seems silly to say that one would democratize elite bicycle racing.  

Exactly.  It's equally silly to talk of "democratizing information" or knowledge or whatever.  In fact, it may even be silly to talk of *democracy*, at all.  I think this is the core of the neo-reactionary intelligentsia (distinct from the moronic alt-right) defense of Philosopher Kings.

Of course, being a fan of silliness, such will never stop me.

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[Steve Smith]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron

In the year 2081, the 211th, 212th, and 213th amendments to the Constitution dictate that all Americans are fully equal and not allowed to be smarter, better-looking, or more physically able than anyone else. The Handicapper General's agents enforce the equality laws, forcing citizens to wear "handicaps": masks for those who are too beautiful, loud radios that disrupt thoughts inside the ears of intelligent people, and heavy weights for the strong or athletic.

I *personally* think there is room for seemingly contradictory ideas.

The acknowledgement that many advantages (of birth, circumstance, etc) are amplified by our culture... those with the most aptitude for a given activity are usually those given the most support (material, emotional, financial) to continue to exploit/capitalize/pursue the honing and application of said aptitudes.   To those whose parents were literate, or were native speakers of the lingua franca of the lands they live in, or who were aware of and supported the activities and propensities their child(ren) were adept at, and/or were highly valued by the community, it is *natural* that they would be much more likely to excel (and be rewarded for said excellence) by the community which is in some sense selecting for the "good of the group".

Whether we call it democratization or egalitarianism (I prefer the latter, as the former implies the "will of the majority", while the latter implies equal opportunity and support to every individual in a group),  paying attention to these strong positive feedback loops and adjusting them to feed some of the less *obvious* candidates for excellence would seem not only like a good strategy in support of pure egalitarianism (of which Vonnegut presents the background/complement/dark-side) but also potentially a more optimum strategy for the "good of the group". 

If we consider *both* strategies to be something like a search over a landscape, the latter has benefits for very rugged landscapes while the former would seem to operate best on smooth landscapes.   I propose that "ocracies" have generally been put in place (at least partially) TO smooth the landscapes and thereby allow for more simple (and effective?) search/optimization strategies.  

The argument of *diversity* is most often used to promote the latter strategy, which in my estimation is another way of acknowledging the rough landscape as a simple fact, attempting to respond efficiently and effectively to it, rather than trying to ignore/wish/legislate/regulate the complexity away.

- Steve Bergeron

On 6/6/18 10:52 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

Glen writes:
 
"This reminded me of my (postmodern) criticism of open source (in spite of any of my advocacy of it), that open source *can* be exploited by an elite set of people who are elite by their capability to know how to read, use, and think about code, or design google queries, or SEO. It's only "democratization" IF the skills and resources to use it are available to everyone."

How about bicycle racing.   Not everyone can achieve > 80 ml/kg/min VO2 max, but a few people can.    These are biologically gifted people, and then they train like hell too, and/or sometimes use performance enhancing drugs.   There are some people that can train like hell but always be beaten by someone than trains as hard or less.  They just don't have it.   

Open source as a meritocracy is attractive to its adherents because it selects for individuals that succeed in developing a particular kind of sustained intellectual productivity, based on nothing else but the fact that they do.    You can't just go through a particular training procedure and come out a productive peer in this community.  It doesn't matter if you are born a citizen of a hypothetical Code Nation.    People from all over the world end-up being recruited to major tech firms who can see the value of their work, and not just the bullet points on a resume.

It seems silly to say that one would democratize elite bicycle racing.   

Marcus

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[Robert Wall]

 

It seems silly to say that one would democratize elite bicycle racing.

This reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut's satirical and dystopian science-fiction short story Harrison Bergeron (1961).  😊  Full text (20 pages).

Remember that Oracle acquired MySQL.  It is now a free product (likely with no meaningful updates, not sure) but with an option to upgrade to supported Oracle extensions at a premium.  Hopefully, PostgreSQL, which can compete with Oracle, will remain open.   ESRI accommodates PostgreSQL for geodatabases. I always appreciated that along with their replacing Visual Basic scripting with Python.  Anywho ...

On Wed, Jun 6, 2018 at 10:52 AM, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

Glen writes:

"This reminded me of my (postmodern) criticism of open source (in spite of any of my advocacy of it), that open source *can* be exploited by an elite set of people who are elite by their capability to know how to read, use, and think about code, or design google queries, or SEO. It's only "democratization" IF the skills and resources to use it are available to everyone."

How about bicycle racing.   Not everyone can achieve > 80 ml/kg/min VO2 max, but a few people can.    These are biologically gifted people, and then they train like hell too, and/or sometimes use performance enhancing drugs.   There are some people that can train like hell but always be beaten by someone than trains as hard or less.  They just don't have it.   

Open source as a meritocracy is attractive to its adherents because it selects for individuals that succeed in developing a particular kind of sustained intellectual productivity, based on nothing else but the fact that they do.    You can't just go through a particular training procedure and come out a productive peer in this community.  It doesn't matter if you are born a citizen of a hypothetical Code Nation.    People from all over the world end-up being recruited to major tech firms who can see the value of their work, and not just the bullet points on a resume.

It seems silly to say that one would democratize elite bicycle racing.   

Marcus

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

Steve writes:

< Whether we call it democratization or egalitarianism (I prefer the latter, as the former implies the "will of the majority", while the latter implies equal opportunity and support to every individual in a group),  paying attention to these strong positive feedback loops and adjusting them to feed some of the less *obvious* candidates for excellence would seem not only like a good strategy in support of pure egalitarianism (of which Vonnegut presents the background/complement/dark-side) but also potentially a more optimum strategy for the "good of the group".   >

I prefer to separate the notion of the individual & group to the dimensionality of a space.   Dominant individuals in a group are accustomed to working in the established dimensions and have an incentive to prohibit new dimensions.   These are what we call conservatives.  An unfit individual, from the perspective of the group, may simply be operating in new dimensions the group does not yet recognize or understand.    It is not a question of just rough or smooth landscapes, it is a question of who gets to define the fitness function.

Marcus

 

 

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

Robert writes:

 

“Remember that Oracle acquired MySQL.  It is now a free product (likely with no meaningful updates, not sure) but with an option to upgrade to supported Oracle extensions at a premium.”

 

MySQL is distributed under the General Public License, so all it takes is someone to fork it and distribute their own version, like MariaDB.

Such a group can take whatever work Oracle does on the core and put it in their fork.

Finding a motivation and money to do that is the problem.  I haven’t used either for years because I came to the conclusion that Postgres was better.

And if you want small and fast, there’s Sqlite3. 

 

Marcus

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[gepr]

Not to pile on to MySQL or anything.  But I just landed on this:

https://medium.com/@adamhooper/in-mysql-never-use-utf8-use-utf8mb4-11761243e434
> My [Hooper's] take-away lessons
>
>  1) Database systems have subtle bugs and oddities, and you can avoid a lot of bugs by avoiding database systems.
>  2) If you need a database, don’t use MySQL or MariaDB. Use PostgreSQL.
>  3) If you need to use MySQL or MariaDB, never use “utf8”. Always use “utf8mb4” when you want UTF-8. Convert your database now to avoid headaches later.



On 06/06/2018 11:10 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Robert writes:
>
> “Remember that Oracle acquired MySQL.  It is now a free product (likely with no meaningful updates, not sure) but with an option to upgrade to supported Oracle extensions at a premium.”
>
> MySQL is distributed under the General Public License, so all it takes is someone to fork it and distribute their own version, like MariaDB.
> Such a group can take whatever work Oracle does on the core and put it in their fork.
> Finding a motivation and money to do that is the problem.  I haven’t used either for years because I came to the conclusion that Postgres was better.
> And if you want small and fast, there’s Sqlite3.


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[Prof David West]

One of the best books on data management and databases that few have read: Data and Reality by William Kent. first published in mid-1980s, Third edition published in 2012.

davewest


On Thu, Jun 14, 2018, at 10:17 AM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:

> Not to pile on to MySQL or anything.  But I just landed on this:
>
> https://medium.com/@adamhooper/in-mysql-never-use-utf8-use-utf8mb4-11761243e434
> > My [Hooper's] take-away lessons
> >
> >  1) Database systems have subtle bugs and oddities, and you can avoid a lot of bugs by avoiding database systems.
> >  2) If you need a database, don’t use MySQL or MariaDB. Use PostgreSQL.
> >  3) If you need to use MySQL or MariaDB, never use “utf8”. Always use “utf8mb4” when you want UTF-8. Convert your database now to avoid headaches later.
>
>
>
> On 06/06/2018 11:10 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> > Robert writes:
> >
> > “Remember that Oracle acquired MySQL.  It is now a free product (likely with no meaningful updates, not sure) but with an option to upgrade to supported Oracle extensions at a premium.”
> >
> > MySQL is distributed under the General Public License, so all it takes is someone to fork it and distribute their own version, like MariaDB.
> > Such a group can take whatever work Oracle does on the core and put it in their fork.
> > Finding a motivation and money to do that is the problem.  I haven’t used either for years because I came to the conclusion that Postgres was better.
> > And if you want small and fast, there’s Sqlite3.
>
>
> --
> ☣ uǝlƃ
>
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