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I assume they mean "more habitable for humans". We're currently adapted for ice caps, abundant liquid fresh water, protective ozone layer and 21% oxygen levels, which is one moment in a 4 billion year history for this planet.

We also need tectonics, vulcanism and erosion. Just "not where I live, thank you" tectonics.


That's the is-ought fallacy. We know humans can survive on many different levels of oxygen saturation, and it's clear that very high oxygen content is sometimes helpful. We are not "adapted for ice caps", and they are clearly not a requirement for our survival. Sure, ice caps help maintain Earth in a climate that is favorable to us, but think about all the many different climates that humans have existed in for thousands of generations. There's no real reason to assume ice caps are necessary for a favorable climate. Not to mention the fact that ice caps seem pretty common in the universe.

Similarly, the ozone layer is not a requirement, the requirement is that we have some protection against harmful radiation. I don't know how many different possible ways there are to produce a world with minimal UV light, but I'm sure it's more than 1. And besides: are you seriously suggesting that Earth is clearly optimally habitable regarding UV light, when a large percentage of all humans have to take active measures to protect their skin from frying every time they go outside for more than 30 minutes? It's actually very easy to imagine worlds where it's much more pleasant to be outside.

Why would you even think humans require tectonics, vulcanism, and erosion? This is the most obvious is-ought fallacy. Humans cannot live on a planet unless it has earthquakes and giant death-gas-spewing lava mountains? What?

Abundant fresh water I'll give you. This is something that all our evidence suggests Earth is definitely S-tier at, and rare in our neighborhood of the universe.


I made a web-based multi-target screen recorder with talking head and teleprompt functionality because I fancied making an obscure tool to prove that I could. Maybe if I marketed it harder more people would know about it, but I'm not that guy.

I also made a image filter builder, hosted on the web so it runs locally, even though I knew that it was an over-saturated market. I saw those apps and decided to do better. It scratched an itch. Do people use it, or talk about it? Of course not - see above.

For both tools I did the initial coding myself, then let LLMs look at (but not change) the code so they could suggest areas for improvements. Engaging LLMs at that point, in that way, is fun work for me.

Just because things can do things faster, sometimes better, than me doesn't mean I should stop doing themselves myself. That's not a fun approach to life, for me.


Agreed. While copyright timescales are currently over-extended, copyright was introduced for a very practical reason: "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned"[1].

Personally, I Copyleft my poetry, and make it available to others to use, even for commercial purposes, from 15 years after the poem's publication. I see no reason to keep them locked in a cage long after I'm done with them.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright


If that was the reason, it should be completely abolished as the exact opposite was achieved.

See for example this article [1]

> unlike neighboring England and France, Germany experienced an unparalleled explosion of knowledge in the 19th century.

> it was none other than copyright law, which was established early in Great Britain, in 1710, that crippled the world of knowledge in the United Kingdom.

>Germany, on the other hand, didn't bother with the concept of copyright for a long time. Prussia, then by far Germany's biggest state, introduced a copyright law in 1837, but Germany's continued division into small states meant that it was hardly possible to enforce the law throughout the empire.

For a more contemporary view look at what became of China by ignoring copyright.

[1]: https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/no-copyright-...


Knowledge diffusion was definitely crippled in the UK after 1710, and significantly restricted innovation.

Most of the things that were invented after 1710 were pretty trivial. Things like the spinning jenny, the steam engine, water powered weaving, wrought iron, steam locomotion, the electric telegraph, the lightbulb, waterproof fabric, the hydraulic press, the telephone. Imagine what else could have been achieved if copyright didn't incentivise authors and publishers to disseminate knowledge by allowing them to sell books, magazines and news sheets.


> in 1710, that crippled the world of knowledge in the United Kingdom

How do you account for the industrial revolution under this framing, or the global dominance of the British Empire?

Its really hard to argue that 1710 onwards marked the downfall of Britain, given everything that happened in history after that.


How did the industrial revolution relate to copyright? Seems related to patents instead.

In the context of copyright we are talking about books in that century. Shakespeare predates copyright. Though, we are not only talking fiction, but also non-fiction. It's no coincidence that British inventors of that time were on to wealthy side, for the poor people couldn't afford to buy a whole lot of books. And neither did they write them.


It's not enough to invent (and patent) something. You also need to document it in various ways - so people know the invented thing exists, what it's for, how to use it, how to fix it, etc.

> poor people couldn't afford to buy a whole lot of books. And neither did they write them.

Thus the rise of circulating libraries in the 18th century, and the public (lending) library system in the 19th century. Especially after the establishment of mandatory education for children.


The industrial revolution and the British empire are both extremely clear proof that Britain was in no way 'crippled'. Particularly not in the world of knowledge, given the countless inventions involved.

If the creation of copyright was so harmful to the nation, why was there no harm?


Oh, it's about avoiding LLM-generated slop. I was hoping it would be about the increasing trend over the past 20 years for writers to stop trusting their readers, and instead insist on telling the readers how they should read and interpret a piece of writing, as the reader is reading that work. Framing and triggers and stuff. Which I find really, really annoying, and leads - in my view - to safe, unadventurous and, yes, boring writing.

Of course I wrote an essay about this[1]. Here it is: https://rikverse2020.rikweb.org.uk/blog/how-not-to-train-you...

[1] - Trigger warnings: discusses poetry; touches on using LLMs in the research phase of essay writing and poetry review.


Late to the thread, but I agree with everything in this comment. The best way to build a website (especially any sort of transaction and/or form) is with the standard tools: HTML, CSS, the smallest amount of JS necessary.

I've been working for a number of years to make the HTML canvas element more accessible for those situations where using a canvas element makes better sense (allegedly) than using standard tools - because there's always those special edge cases, and if people are going to use canvas elements then I want them to build them in the most accessible and responsive way possible.

I'll not spam my product, but as part of my work I have produced a webpage where I try to list the things a HTML canvas element needs to do to meet WCAG requirements. These are my own, personal views so challenging my claims is entirely justifiable, and correct!

https://scrawl-v8.rikweb.org.uk/docs/reference/sc-accessibil...


Oh, excellent! I thought I was the only author (idiotic enough) to give away my books for free. I choose to call it altruism, but the truth is that I got sick of the whole marketing-and-promotion meat grinder a long while back and decided I wanted to write books I wanted to read, rather than writing what someone else thought they could sell. I am now proud to call myself a Hobbyist Indie Author. Perhaps we could start an insurgency together?


Vive la révolution :-)


It turns out that adding noise to gradients is a really useful thing to do - so many new effects can be created with just a few additional parameters. Sadly, CSS and Canvas API gradients (linear, radial, conic) are very basic implementations (and SVG is not much more advanced).

Recently I did some work to add software gradient enhancements to my canvas library. Because these run on the CPU rather than GPU they're computationally intense, but still worth the effort just to see what can be done with different spreads (pad, repeat, reflect, transparent) and noise engine operations inserted while calculating stuff like gradient color selection, and pixel positioning.

Linear gradient demo test - https://scrawl-v8.rikweb.org.uk/demo/canvas-003.html


Speaking of gradients and noise, adding "Interleaved Gradient Noise" to gradients can get rid of the color banding that you'll often see on gradients displayed over a wide area.


I learned last year that "translation" can be a very tricky thing. Because there's never a one-to-one correlation between one language's words, phrases, structures and metaphors, and another language's equivalent stuff. And LLM translations may not be the actual translation you want, or need.

I wrote up my experiences of translating Lorca and Cavafy poems here[1]. tl;dr: I have developed a massive new respect for translators; however much they're being paid, they probably need to be paid more!

[1] - https://rikverse2020.rikweb.org.uk/blog/adventures-in-poetry...


I give my side projects away for free because I have a $job to pay for the roof over my head, food, etc. and don't feel the need to make more money from my hobby work.

I create my side projects in the first place because I like to prove to myself that it is possible to do mad stuff in the browser - like a screen recorder with canvas composition, teleprompter, live annotations and talking-head overlay[1]. Or an SVG-inspired image filter builder for local batch application to images (still a WIP but almost there)[2].

It doesn't cost me any money to host the results, so: why not?

[1] - https://kaliedarik.github.io/sc-screen-recorder/

[2] - https://kaliedarik.github.io/sc-filter-builder/


> when it's much easier to just build a nice website using JavaScript

I'm currently building a web-based tool that uses dynamic forms for UI, without the help of of a framework (yeah I know; I have reasons). This is the result: https://github.com/KaliedaRik/sc-filter-builder/blob/main/js...

It's not "easier" using Javascript; raw Javascript websites are a nightmare to build, maintain and reason about. It is "easier" with Javascript + current-favourite-framework-of-the-day.

Also: accessibility, SEO, the all-new Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) thing, etc.


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