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andrewzah

3,095 karma · joined January 22, 2020

The best way to reach me is by email: zah@andrewzah.com.

My website and blog: andrewzah.com. I write about programming, language learning, and traveling. I have been studying Korean for ~4 years now.

My code: https://github.com/andrewzah. Currently remotely employed by Open Source Systems.

GPG: D87BD9DCF11BACD6CDB40CB213732FB13E61E0BE

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andrewzah··on Earn.com will ruin email if it succeeds (2018)
Nothing is going to kill email.
andrewzah··on I don’t know how to count that low
"when that's explicitly the wrong answer for that interview question"

So to clarify: You're asking some sort of an interview question that is to some degree subjective, and then penalizing people when they have an "incorrect" opinion?

A better approach would be to discuss why they have that opinion and why they would go that route over another one.

andrewzah··on Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)
Indeed. One actually useful case I found was using an rpi with shairport-sync + owntone to allow airplay streaming. I got a quality DAC from hifiberry [0].

Another use was running HomeAssistant, but I migrated that to my real server.

Another use is having an external InfluxDB + Grafana monitoring setup so I can view stats even if the server goes down.

Lastly, you can take X amount of raspberry pis and run a kubernetes cluster with k3s. [1]

Since I don't play with my cluster much, most of my pis just sit around gathering dust...

0: https://www.hifiberry.com/

1: https://k3s.io/

andrewzah··on The fatiguing effects of camera use in virtual meetings
I meant as in all the time; having them on by default. I updated the wording to clarify that.

Webcams do have uses but they're not necessary nearly most of the time. The few exceptions we've had are for pointing a webcam at a whiteboard and for presenting a meeting to some higherups in the airforce.

andrewzah··on The fatiguing effects of camera use in virtual meetings
What I'm saying is the assumption that cameras are necessary is just that- an assumption, and basically just an opinion. Not fact or even something that people are backing with empirical evidence.

We're not getting work done "in spite of" no cameras. We're getting work done, period, and don't have to deal with the fatigue of having a webcam on all the time.

andrewzah··on The fatiguing effects of camera use in virtual meetings
It’s interesting how people here are adamant that camera usage [all the time] is important or necessary.

It isn’t. It's an opinion, and in my opinion, a bad one that isn't justified by anything.

At my company we only use them if necessary, and I’ve been with them for over 3 years working remotely. We get work done quite well.

edit: update wording for clarity

andrewzah··on The fatiguing effects of camera use in virtual meetings
IMHO it’s rude to demand cameras always be on. You can get your social fix elsewhere.

For my company we’ve used zoom for the last 3 years, and never turn on our cameras unless there’s a specific reason.

andrewzah··on Major Linux Problems on the Desktop, 2021 edition
"What I also learned is I don’t care about configuring my desktop and rather spend time hacking on Web Application code."

This is fair, and it's a selling point for Windows and OSX. I also dislike having to tinker more than necessary. As long as you're on the happy path, those work pretty well for most people. But if you're not on the happy path, it can get real painful real fast.

With linux I'm able to set things like audio (pipewire), foreign language inputs (fcitx), etc exactly how I want it- and that means no desktop environment at all asides from i3. I had a macbook for a while and ended up getting frustrated in certain situations due to lack of freedom to configure things exactly how I want, even if other parts of the OS were more polished.

andrewzah··on Major Linux Problems on the Desktop, 2021 edition
I've used linux daily for the last ~4 years and I would not say mac osx is better. Every OS has issues, but with linux I understand what's going on and can configure it to my liking.
andrewzah··on Jack Dorsey mocks Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse plan, saying it's dystopian
I mean, I dislike zuck as much as anyone else, but I don't see what's so bad about this.

Zuck invites Dorsey over for dinner, and at the time he was doing a personal challenge to only eat meat that he himself had killed, to be mindful that it did come from a once living animal.

Y'know, if more people did that, we would probably have less people eating meat in general. We're so disconnected from how our food is actually made... Meat doesn't grow on trees or just magically appear in stores.

andrewzah··on About that time I had an outburst during the Y Combinator Interview
This is not a technical problem. If anything, what you would really need is a seminar or paid course to teach people how to interact with other humans instead of trying to rely on some app... Some people really don't know how to just talk to other people and express their feelings / figure out plans. No app is ever going to solve that.

Perhaps there's value in a business of "teaching humans how to human".

andrewzah··on I write code 100 hours/week, here's why I probably won't stop
My schedule was roughly similar a bit ago when I was ~20/21; I did my work and then spent the rest of the day working on random side projects.

Now at 25, it would take some major financial incentive to do so. I would rather do literally anything else that doesn't involve a computer screen.

I am healthier and happier now that I do things other than code, and I'm thankful that I found other hobbies early on. I'm sorta "burnt out" in that regard, although I still like programming for work.

andrewzah··on We Tried Baseball and It Didn't Work (2006)
That is an archaic, prescriptivist opinion, not an actual grammar rule in English. There are many style guides but those are opinions, not rules.
andrewzah··on Google adds a guitar tuner to Search
Tuning off of a reference note isn't that hard, almost anyone can learn to do it. It's just more convenient to use the tuner for each string.
andrewzah··on State of Digital Nomads
This is moreso a failing of states to capitalize on remote workers. Plenty of people would just get a visa if possible. But it's very complex for most countries, and especially the USA.

edit: Estonia is the only one that I know of that explicitly considers the position of being employed by a company located in a foreign country. https://e-resident.gov.ee/nomadvisa/

andrewzah··on State of Digital Nomads
Yeah, the above posts don't make any sense. Nomads have to eat and sleep, just like everyone else. When I was in Korea I stayed at various Airbnbs owned by local Koreans and got food at local places owned by Koreans. I paid for the metro system (which I used just about every day) and for KTX bullet train tickets. I fail to see negatives here from a financial perspective.

I would gladly get a visa and pay taxes to enroll in the healthcare system... but it's quite difficult. That's another discussion, though.

andrewzah··on Investigators say they've finally identified the Zodiac Killer
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/circumstantial

1. belonging to, consisting in, or dependent on circumstances

2. pertinent but not essential : incidental

The original comment used the word correctly. Because dictionaries describe how people actually speak, not prescribe rules on how to use words. That's why they get updated every so often as word usages change.

andrewzah··on Twitch source code and customer data has reportedly been leaked
Our societies do regulate how people can spend their time and money in certain regards. I don't think that's necessarily wrong. Smoking is banned, some countries have labeling for unhealthy products, and so on. Things can end up affecting other people in the long run, so I don't think it's unreasonable to contemplate addressing stuff like this.

I think the main issues overall are encouraging parasocial relationships, and also the problem of selling sex to kids. I'm no prude but I think it raises some ethical questions when you have gaming content and sexual content in the same spot. If I had kids, that would matter to me.

andrewzah··on Sunlight affects whether languages have a word for ‘blue’
It's interesting that 푸르다 (blue/green) uses a very similar character: 靑, with 青 listed as a variant. Red is the same, 赤 (붉을 적) and yellow (누를 황 / 황색) uses 黃/黄.

Green (녹색) uses 綠. There's also 초록 which is 草綠.

赤: https://hanja.dict.naver.com/#/entry/ccko/ad2ad1893b5c49f8ab...

黃: https://hanja.dict.naver.com/#/entry/ccko/17a2b69699474d5bb8...

andrewzah··on Twitch source code and customer data has reportedly been leaked
Cry? Realistically speaking, this isn't going to happen without physical access to your computer or malware, though. So don't leave your computer unattended and don't download sketchy things.

Expecting people to simply memorize a unique, strong password for every single website that they use is unrealistic. Of course, no solution is perfect, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't improve the current situation of people reusing passwords with maybe slight modifications per website.

andrewzah··on Twitch source code and customer data has reportedly been leaked
That doesn't make any sense. Password management isn't really that complicated:

Use a password manager, and reset your password if the service has been compromised.

andrewzah··on Twitch source code and customer data has reportedly been leaked
Comparing bridges to a streaming service is nonsensical, frankly.

People die when bridges collapse. People get mildly inconvenienced if twitch is slow or down.

Accordingly bridge construction takes security & safety much more seriously throughout the project. And it's orders of magnitude more expensive to build and check bridges for safety issues, etc.

andrewzah··on Twitch source code and customer data has reportedly been leaked
Use a password manager.
andrewzah··on Sunlight affects whether languages have a word for ‘blue’
There is 푸르다 which can refer to green or blue. Specifically “맑은 가을 하늘이나 깊은 바다, 싱싱한 풀의 빛깔과 같이 밝고 선명하다”.

I have no idea what’s up with that article title though. Clearly there is 파랗다/파란색 etc? Edit: the title should be “languages don’t map colors exactly the same and can have more or less words for a color” would be a better title. But I think most people already know that.

andrewzah··on Completely different languages tend to group colors in roughly the same way
John McWhorter on Lexicon Valley has a great episode about this phenomenon.

https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/09/john-mcwhorter-on-t...

andrewzah··on Jellyfin: Free Software Media System
Check out mpd+ncmpcpp, or Navidrome. I use the latter.
andrewzah··on Reactive Clojure: A web language
Yes, that's why I manually input 1s and 0s - no time wasted on learning, only outputting practical things.
andrewzah··on Please stop closing forums and moving people to Discord
Only if the guild allows nicknames to be set manually. Not all do. And your actual username when @ mentioned still is the same.
andrewzah··on Ledger of Harms
Clear your watch history and only watch things that are positive or educational. My youtube recommendations are purely music albums and different educational channels.
andrewzah··on Ledger of Harms
The reality is that it means both of those things, because people use them interchangeably. That's just how it is.
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