Hacker News Reader

Xerox9213on Crows are even smarter than we thought

Maybe not surprising, but exciting! This kind of pessimistic take is what really surprises me. Crows can make mental templates, this is something we didn't know earlier, and is really neat, as far as I can tell.

Xerox9213on Euclid's Proof that √2 is Irrational

Ahh, that would explain why the intersection of algebraic integers and Q is Z. I wasn’t convinced of that when I had the notion of algebraic numbers in place of algebraic integers.

I like teaching this kind of stuff to my grade 9 and 10 advanced math classes. It’s not that hard to understand and yet it gives students a sense of wonder about how math works. I might try to show the grade 10s algebraic integers now.

Xerox9213on Southwest flight came within 400 feet of crashing into the ocean

For some reason I pictured Mario 64 with the wing cap while thinking out your examples.

Xerox9213on Show HN: Synthesize TikZ Graphics Programs for Scientific Figures and Sketches

As a teacher who regularly rips off large expressions from textbooks and test generators with MathPix, this would allow me to also capture diagrams into my exercises.

Xerox9213on How terminal works. Part 1: Xterm, user input (2021)

Kitty is great. I started using it because I like cats. But I am learning more and more about how robust it is.

Xerox9213on Not an iPad Pro Review: Why iPadOS Still Doesn't Get the Basics Right

I’m a high school classroom teacher and I use the iPad Pro for note taking, and sometimes AR to visualize systems of linear equations in 3D using Geogebra. I use Desmos all the time for 2D stuff as well.

All of that can be done on a non-pro device but I got the pro for the screen. Having a 13” screen with a high refresh rate is huge. Last year I asked the school to buy me an iPad because I didn’t like that I was using my personal device for professional use. But they bought a base model with a small 60hz screen. I find it completely unusable and haven’t touched it since I loaded my note taking software on it. Now it’s a glorified timer for exams.

Xerox9213on Microsoft PlayReady – Complete Client Identity Compromise

Whose demise?

Has there ever been a time where piracy hasn't "won"?

Xerox9213on Cold brew coffee in 3 minutes using acoustic cavitation

But how do you waste time in the morning if you’re not concocting some over complicated drink?

I feel like my morning coffee is the one part of my day that I can control. You bet I’m gonna take my time and make it enjoyable.

Xerox9213on Monitoring energy usage with smart plugs, Prometheus and Grafana

Correct. My mistake.

Xerox9213on Monitoring energy usage with smart plugs, Prometheus and Grafana

Yeah, not to mention the ability to automate things.

My latest automation: when the white noise machine is on for the baby, the doorbell volume is turned down.

Xerox9213on YouTube has a new design on desktop and everyone is mad about it

How much of your $9.99 does a content creator actually receive? I much prefer to block ads, and donate or buy merch from the creators who I follow with intention. I reckon that the $20 or so that they receive directly vastly outweighs the amount they would get from ads or a Premium sub, even after several years of dedicated viewership.

Xerox9213on Mathematical journeys into fictional worlds (2021) [pdf]

Isn’t that referred to as the Dust Theory?

I just finished Permutation City for the first time since it’s come up on HN a few times so I thought I’d give it a read. (Mild spoiler alert) I found that once everything was in the autoverse I stopped caring about the characters’ copies. Maybe that’s an intended perspective, or maybe it says something about me.

Xerox9213on Bluesky and the AT Protocol: Usable decentralized social media

I think what matters even more to most people is not even how easy it is to use, but who else is using it.

Xerox9213on How I'm able to take notes in mathematics lectures using LaTeX and Vim (2019)

https://castel.dev/post/lecture-notes-2/

It’s not just Inkscape, it’s well configured Inkscape.

Xerox9213on Show HN: I made a website to find best bus seat to avoid the sun while traveling

As someone who suffers from EPP, thank you!

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

Xerox9213on Google Maps now looks more like Apple Maps

My least favorite thing about Google Maps is when they don’t display the street names in a place that makes sense. Sometimes I just want to look at the route and then drive there without instructions, but have to scroll halfway across the city just to see the name of the street I turn on.

Xerox9213on RavynOS Finesse of macOS. Freedom of FreeBSD

Absolutely. It's the only PDF editor that holds a candle to Acrobat Pro.

Xerox9213on The new Paris métro

I am yet to meet a fellow Canadian who hasn’t complained about our health care system. It seems to be one of the main discussions around provincial elections.

Xerox9213on Running Windows 98 in the Browser

I always assumed that the briefcase was for stuff my dad did. I don’t think he knew what it was either.

Xerox9213on Ask HN: Any comprehensive courses on Auth?

That’s how I’ve learned about authentication, and most other things too. I do worry, sometimes, that I’ve missed a big detail that opens my server to a vulnerability of some kind. That’s where education can help.

Xerox9213on Calibre – New in Calibre 7.0

This looks really cool!

I started getting into ebooks again after not using them for a few years. When I fired up my kindle it auto updated to a new version. Now it’s unable to run KOReader. If only I had changed my WiFi password in the past 5 years!

Xerox9213on Saying Goodbye to OpenSubtitles.org API

As far as I can tell they are just changing their API? Can someone tell me what makes that less open?

Xerox9213on Tenacity 1.3.3 – Audacity Fork

From the readme:

Motivation

Our project initially started as a fork of Audacity as a result of multiple controversies and public relation crises, which you can find out more about here:

-Privacy policy which may violate the original project's GPL license -Contributor's License Agreement (CLA) which may violate the same GPL license -Attempts at adding telemetry using Google services for data collection

Nevertheless, the goal of this project is to pick up what the original developers of Audacity the decades-long work by the original creators of Audacity and create an audio editor that is fresh, more modern, convenient and practical to use, with the help and the guidance of our users and our community.

Xerox9213on Library Genesis in Numbers: Mapping the Underground Flow of Knowledge (2018) [pdf]

Interesting. The authors focused a lot on competing with market vs archival purposes. For me, and I reckon a lot of other people, I used libgen because I just want a PDF or epub that is not muddied with DRM or behind a university wall. Most of the books I download I already have a paper copy of, but want to be able to use it digitally. For me it’s all about convenience. I guess that would be pretty hard to measure.

Xerox9213on Food and Generative AI

I don’t remember the recipe but one of them told me to sauté one thing, and put it in a bowl to cool. Then in another bowl soak something else. Then drain and combine.

Instead I soaked one ingredient, while sautéing the other ingredient. When I drained the first ingredient, I just added the sautéd stuff to that bowl, saving one bowl from washing.

Another thing is the order you cut stuff. If you cut your produce first and then meat you can use the same cutting board. But if you cut meat before veggies (that will stay fresh) then you need a new board, or at least a flip.

Xerox9213on Food and Generative AI

An aunt signed me up for a few free meals through some promotion. I tried it with an open mind but I found the entire experience infuriating.

Most of the meals came with poor quality produce (e.g. tiny unripe avocado — something I never would have grabbed at the grocer) and a silly amount of waste for items I had already.

My least favourite part was the recipes. I’m not sure if it was just the small selection of recipes we got, but it seemed like each one was designed around a template with six photos. As if they had a spreadsheet of all their recipes and required each one to fill six columns so they could just print it out in a predictable way. This meant that if you followed the recipe you would wind up doing several redundant tasks and creating unnecessary dishes. It drove me wild. By the last meal I just read the recipe, looked at the ingredients, and improvised.

A high quality recipe should not only result in a delicious meal but also be efficient and thoughtful about order of operations and clean-up. Having full control over ingredients, HF has no excuse providing low quality recipes, never mind the ingredients.

I would recommend a NYT Cooking subscription and using a grocery delivery app instead.

Xerox9213on Food and Generative AI

When you register for your meals they could ask if you have some of the ingredients.

Xerox9213on SumatraPDF Reader

Acrobat Pro is pretty incredible. One of my favourite features is the following: on a scanned PDF after performing OCR you can edit the text and it will match the font. As in, it will create a new font based on the characters it found in OCR.

I’m a high school math teacher and scan dozens of textbooks every year. Adjusting a few words before printing to match what we did in class is a huge time saver for me.

Somehow my school division was able to buy me a one time fee perpetual license. I’m very happy with it.

Xerox9213on Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

Also lights with more than three bulbs, some indicating left or right turns, of which will take on two or more colours themselves. Some lights have a bulb above red for cyclists and transit. Some lights called beacons are a single bulb that take on several colours.

https://www.ontario.ca/document/official-mto-drivers-handboo...

Xerox9213on Retroactive: Run Aperture, iPhoto and iTunes on macOS Ventura, Monterey, Big Sur

I’m curious if you tried Lightroom.