When I was young, I thought I could be an electrician. But I couldn't because I'm red-green colorblind and at the time wasn't allowed to go down that path (I think this is still the case in Germany but not in other countries). Interestingly I also couldn't apply to the police for the same reason. For electrician it makes sense to me as there is a certain risk, same for flight-controllers (another job I am banned from) but for police it never made any sense to me.
Seems pretty ignorant. If you take a historic perspective, the WWW and things like HTML, HTTP, URLs etc. are technically from a British guy working in Switzerland (CERN) but I suppose crediting it to any country is kind of pointless. These days a lot of it runs on machines that run on a Linux kernel, also technically from Europe. Python/C++/PHP/Erlang/Prolog/Pascal and many others I'm probably forgetting on the programming language front.
If you're talking about current VC-backed hyper accelerators...there's probably also plenty. I think there's also a lot going on in the non-IT sectors (medicine, pharma, genetics, energy etc.)
But the bigger question is...does it really matter which country innovation comes from these days? As an end-user/customer I certainly don't care too much.
> the WWW and things like HTML, HTTP, URLs etc. are technically from a British guy working in Switzerland (CERN) but I suppose crediting it to any country is kind of pointless
A postdoc at CERN coming up with a text format isn't quite the same as what is invented elsewhere, though.
> These days a lot of it runs on machines that run on a Linux kernel, also technically from Europe
True, although much of the development is funded by American companies, who give their work away.
Nvidia is being smart. They see that AI-paddlers are currently in a strange our-doomsday-is-the-worst race and offer to sell an anti-doomsday chip. Clever play.
Spoken like someone with no friends or relatives that live far away. Screens can also be extremely connecting. They are a tool and as such value neutral. Is it evil that I can have a weekly video-call with family members on another continent when the alternative would be...simply no contact at all, super expensive phone calls or letters. I don't think so.
I think even with family and friends that live far away, screens are often an excuse as well. Well sorry we aren't going to be able to visit gas is just too much, we can FaceTime instead! And I think it's ignoring the bigger problem, is perhaps you talk to your family members once a week, but do you have your community around you that you talk and do things with 'off screen'? Its easy on the internet to say you do, but the reality is most people would rather doomscroll than be bothered with trying to know their neighbor.
Before screens you visited even less. Well if you compare the 1960s to today - but the 1960s had the phone as well. Compare 1700 to today and you realize quickly that "visiting your sister who married just one village over is a big deal and it couldn't happen often".
Tools are not value neutral, and it’s time we internalise that. Tools are designed with a purpose. An AK-47 is a tool. Its purpose is killing. Its creator was acutely aware of it and by the end even expressed remorse.
Yes, screens can be enabling, but your parent comment is obviously talking of the norm we’re facing. Facebook isn’t value neutral, neither is Instagram, nor TikTok, nor a myriad other insanely popular services which command too many lives. Those are tools designed explicitly to suck up your time, to feed the bellies of their owners at your expense.
Digital tools are made even more not value neutral by the fact that other humans are actively influencing them even while you're using them, via "the algorithm", "dark design patterns", etc.
At least with an AK-47 or a hammer, once you own it physically, it's yours and the original creator isn't sending you subtle psychological nudges to utilize it one way or the other.
I would argue the purpose the tools are designed for is only loosely correlated with their overall value. Secind-order effects and unintended consequences are common with any disruptive technology.
>Spoken like someone with no friends or relatives that live far away. Screens can also be extremely connecting.
Most my family is scattered. Screens can be connecting. But it doesn't replace local connection and my experience seems more to delay the inevitable drifting away of such relations due to distance. I suppose it at least tests how much your loved ones care to keep in contact with you.
I mean... you are substituting your family on a little screen for going out into the real world and making some new friends. I'd argue that, yes, just because you wrap it in "I love my family don't question me" it doesn't change anything.
Seems a bit too dogmatic. I can nudge someone into intrinsic motivation with extrinsic incentives. It's hard to discover something you're not really looking for but if some other incentive lets you discover it then bingo.
Some examples from my own life: Paying someone's first climbing session -> lifelong climbers. Offering 5$ if you can beat this bot in chess -> obsessed with chess. Etc.
Interesting. Singapore certainly tries many things to nudge their citizens to a better life. I also recall from a documentary I watched that they have a system where you get shopping vouchers for logging certain sports activities and similar things (I think there was also some incentive system for healthy food).
This is really cool at first glance and very HN worthy. I've bookmarked it and will look into it deeper. Recreates roughly my first PC setup though I think I had a Matrox Mystique so that makes it even more interesting. And I've been looking for a "I build something cool with an FPGA" kind of project to look into for a while now.
Myself as well, the itch for: "I want my own accelerated VGA adapter" is something that's been on my bucket list for a while.
Something that can output video and this fits the bill. I'd rather make my own video pipeline than use existing and if this can render triangles and polygons, than that's all I need.
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