There was a 1D Wolfenstein that was entirely played in the url bar, and yet made perfect sense and was quite playable.
3,243 karma · joined May 23, 2010
“Repeatable identifiable categories of dubious usefulness”
Yep, there’s a lot of this in modern science.
“Is this method of classification useful? wrong question! All you need to ask is, is it easy to write a reproducible paper (or shareable web content) on this method of classification? Yes, yes it is!”
There’s a lamppost problem at work here.
Same, same and same, here.
Good luck to you!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak:_Secrets_from_the_New_S...
> The book was written partly as a response to the misrepresented but increasingly commonplace idea of the "10,000-hour rule," popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his 2008 book Outliers and which Gladwell had based on Ericsson's own research.
“How to translate French words WITHOUT KNOWING FRENCH (3 clever tricks)”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3BGaA3PC9tQ
I learned a lot from this and continue to find words that these lessons apply to.
The “at least” is unwarranted, and even the “theoretically” is being far too kind.
Of course if you allow a monopoly to develop they will protect their own interests to the exclusion of others, and use their power to entrench their position. Even the oldest theories about markets point out the dangers of monopolies.
^^ this is possible because the ads are delivered digitally, not because of any magic power google has.
Even if every website was its own independent advertising space (an extreme opposite), they could all still be open to advertising companies big and small by using “open standards”.
The innovations are all technological.
“Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so.”
Footnote: on rereading your message, the sequence 2,3,7,43,1807 jumped out at me as being “Sylvester’s sequence” — sometimes called Euclid numbers — I definitely did not have to look that up in the online integer sequence database and simply know all these things intuitively.
But I re-read it and thought, “then again the commenter is saying ‘good’ not ‘great’… perhaps they are admitting to more nuance?”
Interesting concepts, thank you.
Personally, I would be quite adamant that the reason the word “chord” is chosen there — is for a much simpler reason: it rhymes perfectly with “Lord”. (At first I wrote, a more “prosaic reason” — then realised that while it is a simple reason it is the opposite of “prosaic” - it is literally “poetic”).
But the nature of this video — searching for meaning within a work of art - I think this is a great way to engage with art, and a special kind of joy all its own. Such interpretations are meaningful and can be “true” regardless of whether the author literally meant it the way you take it.
If a physics paper interpreted results of an experiment in this way, or if a jury interpreted evidence in this way, I don’t think it would be good science or justice, as the case may be. But for enjoying and experiencing art in a “meaningful” way, this kind of approach is well worth it.
Troubleshooting/problem solving, working backwards from symptom to problem etc — that’s another, richer and very rewarding “real world” type of skill that isn’t directly taught, (though often encountered incidentally).
Most people don’t get any choice at all about what operating system they use. And those that do get a choice have extremely limited options.
If I go to a coach to help me with running faster their advice won’t be “completely wrong” — it will be “by and large” correct.
But there are still opportunities for “marginal” improvements that can be found with better measurements. Eg in moneyball they weren’t showing that everything the scouts did was completely wrong. They showed that marginal improvements could give them an economic edge. Even a few percentage points of improvement of received wisdom v measurement meant their money was much better spent.
Database people were investing a lot of time and energy on doing things “properly” with EF, and this scrappy little useful tool, linq to sql, was seen as a competitor.
I agree with a lot of your bullet points, particularly your characterisation of faang, but the overall message that a single software developer can’t make much impact is needlessly negative.
Compared to any other worker throughout history you’ve got more access to being able to duplicate your work and to reach more people. A peasant in the 1500s could help just one person at a time. But what’s actually stopping you? You can publish open source software that is not limited to helping 1 person at a time, or create educational content that helps more than 1 at a time and so on, or contribute to existing open source software to do the same. It’s such a privileged position you’re in.
Different point of view —
If there are people that you care about and your goal is to help those people - you can be happy and you can succeed. If you only help a few, it’s still worth it, because you care about them. If you help a few more, even better.
If you’re hoping to get rich by helping people who you don’t care about, give it up, stop wasting time. Step back and think about it.
But in most any field, if you’re genuinely interested in the field, you will be aware of people who you consider to be better than you. Even if it’s a highly subjective field, as you learn your taste/appreciation grows and you get a clearer picture of what you consider “better”. Those are your potential pool of coaches/mentors. You don’t have to pick just one, either.
My general opinion is that a great coach/mentor can “see” your errors and doesn’t just know what you’re doing wrong but what the best next step is from where you are, to learn the thing that is holding you back.
Deliberate practice never feels easy. You’re always pushing the boundary of what you’re capable of. And you keep going back for more.
Where there are a lot of different styles of doing a thing “well” (e.g. first class lawyer, teaching, writing, 99% of things ) you’ll need to progress through a wider series of different mentors/coaches, sort of “earning” the mentorship of a “better” coach is a good goal in any field.
In fields like you describe it’s not a simple ladder, more like a branching tree of ladders. You’re goal is not just higher and higher but learning (by climbing) where and who is a mentor for you.
For SQL to Have a good/improved syntax for insert/update/delete/merge would be very nice (in theory)
In the browser (iOS Safari) I use an extension (dark reader) to give it a dark theme, and the formulas render just fine there.
But they do sort of acknowledge it in the paper. Eg on the first page it says:
> …we present a solution – adding pipe-structured data flow syntax to SQL. This makes SQL more flexible, extensible and easy to use. This paradigm works well in other languages like Kusto’s KQL[5]
Strange typo though, to say “Kusto’s KQL” instead of “Microsoft’s KQL”
Kusto is allegedly named after (sort of in reference to) Jacques Cousteau, so “Kusto’s” doesn’t make sense.