Many computer hackers – that is people who write or hack together their own software don’t have internet at home. That might seem odd but actually that’s not uncommon as many hackers have a real aversion to technology or how it’s used for social control and advertising. Hackers, while benefiting from the internet as a source of knowledge often find things like social media and the internet a distraction from their work, so they are glad to keep their homes internet free.
Few skills scare people away like coding. Television portrayals make it seem like writing computer code is a genius-level activity, as weird symbols race across the screen and techno music blares in the background.
But the truth is that coding is actually pretty easy.
I’m not saying this to dismiss the work of brilliant programmers. A skill can simultaneously be fairly easy to get the basics in, while also being really difficult to master. Everyone learns to write, few people learn to write well. There’s no contradiction, therefore, in saying that basic literacy is an “easy” skill to acquire (in that the vast majority of us are able to do it), without dismissing the efforts of talented writers.
For decades, anyone wishing to work with CSV files and awk had to “roll their own” solution. (For an example, see Defining Fields by Content). In 2023, Brian Kernighan decided to add CSV support to his version of awk. In order to keep up, gawk too provides the same support as his version. To use CSV data, invoke gawk with either of the -k or --csv options.
Fields in CSV files are separated by commas. In order to allow a comma to appear inside a field (i.e., as data), the field may be quoted by beginning and ending it with double quotes. In order to allow a double quote inside a field, the field must be quoted, and two double quotes represent an actual double quote. The double quote that starts a quoted field must be the first character after the comma. Table 4.1 shows some examples.
I am kind of glad that I grew up in an era before modern technology. While it’s kind of neat that my two and a half years old niece can figure out how to call me over Duo (even though I lack the app), I’m kind of glad I’m not dependent on such technology.📵 It’s kind of nice not feeling like I have to have internet or television 📺 where I live but are quite happy with the solitude and doing what I need on the internet or bandwidth intensively either down at the public library or other public hotspot.📚
I am very concerned about proposals to require licensing and regulations on artificial intelligence and all that might fall under that umbrella – machine learning, natural language models. Look who is putting forward proposals to regulate artificial intelligence – it’s the big incumbent players like Chat GPT and Facebook.
Maybe commercial products for sale should be regulated but free, open source projects should not be. Frameworks should be widely available to the public for any purpose they want, good or bad. Let the people play and innovate. If harm exists, go after the harmful commercial users, not the everyday people experimenting with the technology for non profit purposes to see how they can innovate.
Stopping bad actors seems like a good idea but you can’t stop a technology from moving forward in a global internet. If the US bans innovation, another less regulated country is likely to move it forward – China, Switzerland or some other place. I’m okay with regulating Meta and Open AI but not what goes on inside people’s basements.
This interactive map shows area codes in New York State. In most of the state now you have to dial the full ten digit number, as there are multiple area codes overlaying the area.
