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bathMarm0t

68 karma · joined September 4, 2013

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bathMarm0t··on Two recently found works of J.S. Bach presented in Leipzig [video]
If you're going to give them the triosonatas, you gotta give them the good one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOTtDYTc5JY&list=PLCDB42413B...

Put on a good set of headphones and go sit in the corner.

Also obligatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah392lnFHxM&list=RDAh392lnFH...

The thing I appericiate most about bach is:

you can play it fast.

you can play it slow.

you can play it with an ensemble of random instruments.

you can play a single voicing all by itself.

all of it screams "musical". which, if you do play say, Tuba, or one of the larger instruments, is a godsend, as most of your lines in other pieces will bore you to death.

bathMarm0t··on Rice rebels: Research reveals grain's brewing benefits
From a brief stint in Seoul, I ran into a beverage called Makgeolli. A rice-wine, sake-adjacency that clocks in at beer ABV levels (maybe someone started a batch and couldn't wait for it to fully ferment).

Cloudy. Raw. Fragrant. Sweet. Funky.

Absolutely delicious.

It also has almost no shelf-life (no acidity to protect, and sterilization destroys all the charm), so no one imports/exports it, but if it caught on in America I would not be upset.

bathMarm0t··on Launch HN: Vassar Robotics (YC X25) – $219 robot arm that learns new skills
If the goal is the building. Balsa kits (an xacto knife, 2 bottles of super glue [thick/thin], CA-accelorator) are the way to go. Discuss gliders are easy to manage the risk of learning how to fly, and are light, so crashes will only be mildly catastrophic. I have this one, and it was easy-ish to build (~20 hours?)

http://wrightbrothersrc.com/products/gambler.htm

If the goal is the flying. You can't go wrong with an easy star. I've crashed mine a million times. You just patch it back together humpty dumpty style with thick CA + accelerant. Bonus points for the prop being in the back, so if you run into stuff you (probably) won't draw blood.

https://mrmpxhobbies.com/product/rr-easystar-3/

Note that the hobby does require some skill w/ flying and need some level of risk management. There are cords that let you plug your transmitter into a computer/fly over a simulation that can help with the former.

bathMarm0t··on The Onion buys Infowars
Fiscal policy was used to ensure we didn't all starve during the pandemic, and that 2024 didn't do it's best 1928 impersonation. Was inflation worse? Of course. The conditions and context of either presidency aren't even close.
bathMarm0t··on The Psychotherapy Myth
Option 1: Confront your mental blocks and shitty life with depression.

Option 2: Confront your mental blocks and shitty life with less depression (due to pharmacology).

Option 3: Confront your mental blocks and shitty life with a guide and less depression (due to pharmacology and therapist).

Option 4: Wait for the law of averages. https://youtu.be/3s_BqdZrUbE

I'm taking option 3 all day, every day.* (e.g. I agree with you. They should always be done in tandem / there is no silver bullet).

*It's very important that your therapist shares your zeitgeist or directly counters it as a devils advocate. The drugs... not so much.

bathMarm0t··on Rain Panels: Harvesting the energy of falling raindrops
Ah yes. Physics, the ultimate gatekeeper.

If an idea doesn't work on the back of a napkin, it's done. Think about other approaches to the problem and get another napkin. I think that's what he's getting at. Analysis from first principles is hardly gatekeeping.

bathMarm0t··on A forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation
It's already being observed. Bird migrations have been happening earlier/later, and ranges of birds have increased. I'm sure the same thing is happening for whales / ocean animals.

According to this one[1], they're adapting by leaving later, and flying faster/taking less breaks to make up for the lost time. The result being that less of them make it to the breeding grounds (6% decrease in survival rate).

[1] https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2023/04/risky-strategy-help...

bathMarm0t··on Poisons and Perils on the Salton Sea
Ironically the only reason the lake still exists is the runoff that's poisoning it. As agricultural practices tighten up, the lake will dry/concentrate even more.
bathMarm0t··on Important Coding Habits
I've had both.

The back pain was instigated by moving, driving across the country, helping someone out with yard work slinging rock, and then going for a post-thanksgiving run, which broke this camel's back. Lumbar shaping is very, very important for the lower spine. You can do it with muscles, or you can do it with things. I used a 10 dollar IKEA chair + grippy bottom + a rolled towel. You roll the towel until it's the right size to create a slight arch. No rulers or drill sergeants necessary. It's also important to note that the drive to/from work is doing just as much damage as being at work, so using the towel in the driver's seat is a godsend.

The wrist pain was instigated by working on a laptop during a 1+hr train commute. I kind of looked like Groot (Despicable Me) prancing around, minus the prancing. I tried pretty much everything, but what stuck was the Evoluent mouse. It allows you to use the mouse without arm pronation (pronation forces the carpal region into a binding/constricted position). It's ~100 bucks but a single doctors visit costs more than that.

Happy coding.

bathMarm0t··on The Development of the C Language (1993)
Don't think I'm too crazy but last time I checked:

1. Yes they are microcontrollers.

2. Yes they use C/C++. (check the libraries/SDKs, 1 layer under the hood it's all .h/.cpp files, and most of the arduino calls are just #defines)

bathMarm0t··on Arduino Joins Zephyr Project
Just recalling what I did a couple years ago.

Bluetooth is an absolute nightmare if you don't understand the majority of what's going on (which in and of itself takes... a lot of time). There's a bunch of logic going on and most of it is handled in callbacks that you will never see, except the dreaded timeout/failure to handle print at the end of the main loop. Zephyr will ease a lot of those painpoints, with the understanding that you're ignoring a lot of the machinery humming under your feet.

Things that stood out to me:

0. If this is your first embedded project / you're actually new to all of this, get ready to take a beating. "Abandon all hope, ble who enter here."

1. Do yourself a huge favor and get two* dev kits. Nordic provides walkthroughs on getting setup with two flavors of code (zephyr, or low-level drivers). Each has a tutorial for uart forwarding/handling. Expanding on that tutorial will take a lot of futzing around, or actually learning what the machinery is doing under the hood. Learning the stack did not come naturally / I found it very difficult. Why two? Two lets the bluetooth abstraction handle itself / you don't have to deal with it right away when you're getting started.

https://www.nordicsemi.com/Products/Development-hardware/nRF...

2. If / when you want to attach your bluetooth device to something more useful (e.g. a computer or mobile device), do yourself a second huge favor and develop using linux + a laptop. I tried to do development on windows + WSL and there were many, many hangups with the hardware handoffs from PyBlues to the local bluetooth drivers. Maybe it's gotten better, but I doubt it. My other alternatives were driving direct from Windows bluetooth libraries (behemoths that would take time to setup / understand), or develop for mobile (which also will take time to setup / understand). Neither was an enjoyable experience.

so in summary:

Is Zephyr overkill? - Absolutely. But the path is well trodden.

bathMarm0t··on Solaris movie review and film summary (1976)
I think it just requires a reframing of what to expect. Films from Tarkovsky or other capital D Directors "of Director's Directors fame" are less plot driven. Films from older eras are less plot driven / hadn't developed the tempo of modernity (I'd summarize the tempo change as needing to lead the viewer into what's next). Combine them both and you get something that feels like watching paint dry, the catch being the paint dries on 120ft of canvas. You're in the museum and the tapestry moves. Rather than trying to constantly figure out what's next / where this is going (you don't notice this in modern films as the tempo has already fed it to you / shuttled you along to the next plot point), just sit there and enjoy the view. In Stalker the shots are (op/im)pressively long. And I love them.
bathMarm0t··on HuggingGPT: Solving AI tasks with ChatGPT and its friends in HuggingFace
[1] is an exceptional book for a bright teen, especially so if you suspect the teen leans into their intelligence/abilities to gauge their self worth (I don't know a single person, let alone teen who doesn't do this). The book's main theme states that being a good player has nothing to do with skill, but rather with the ability to create playful environments that encourage growth, humility, and most importantly, more play.
bathMarm0t··on Autonomous robots to help modernize grape, wine industry
Even more so when you see how quickly a skilled harvester runs through a vineyard. They're pulling clusters almost every other second.
bathMarm0t··on Split Brain Psychology
Disco Elysium delves into this a little bit. It's a text-based RPG game that's surprisingly engaging.
bathMarm0t··on Brazil's answer to the Sichuan pepper
Tei Feng. The best. Milwaukee does it proper. Szechuan Restaurant on National.
bathMarm0t··on U.S. eliminates human controls requirement for fully automated vehicles
I was taught never to trust eye contact either. They could be looking past you and motorcycle profiles are very low. I'm looking for a stationary front wheel hub. Any movement merits a reaction.

Having an indicator that the car "sees" you would be very interesting.

bathMarm0t··on The reason employees aren't returning to work in America [video]
Don't underestimate the context in which you worked e.g. showing up to the job having your ace-in-the-hole: the Knowledge (capitol K-Knowing in your bones) that you could do better socio-fiscally speaking. A lot of who we are and how we represent ourselves to society is bound up in work for some damnable reason. Feeling trapped in employment (and therefore trapped in your self-worth) is a major vector for anxiety/negative feedback loops.
bathMarm0t··on World's biggest wind turbine shows the disproportionate power of scale
1.2 ** 2 == 1.44. So... ? Power is linear wrt area of the disk?
bathMarm0t··on I Got My Attention Back (2017)
I look up directions before-hand and draw maps. It works most of the time as long as you plan to be a little late "snoopin" around.
bathMarm0t··on Ask HN: Great fiction books that have had a positive impact on your life?
Apples and oranges though. Murakami writes symbolic surrealism. A far-cry from down-to-earth (rome?), politically driven scifi. I think 1Q84 is possibly his worst work. He aimed for the moon and the rocket blew up on the launch pad. Normally I really like his works, but reading 1Q84 revealed his plot mechanisms for what they are e.g. loosely connected rabbit holes with no resolution. I think I ignored that fact in most of his other books because there was emotional closure paving over the plot cracks, but it just didn't happen for 1Q.
bathMarm0t··on People of Las Vegas
It's a 3 million person suburb. There is no "there" there.
bathMarm0t··on Ask HN: Are books worth it?
I am in love with books and the notion that you can talk with another person long dead without any distortion or distraction. Some rules I abide by:

1. Any book that you expect to read once and once only (popular science, pulp fiction, toilet-reading) rent from the library. Keep it by your bed at night and give-er by the lamplight.

2. Any book that you can read, word-over-word, end-on-end, without confusion or introspection can be consumed in condensed form. Condensed forms come in many guises:(audio-books, blog-feeds, wiki-pages etc.)

3. You are missing out on all the glories that are not defined by 1 and 2. A good book should be a conversation, held at length, over time.

You asked for philosphy in another comment:

Victor Frankyl: Man in search of meaning

Marcus Aurelius: Meditations

Jung: Development of Personality, Archetypes/Aion

Nietsche: all and any

For philosophical fiction:

Goethe: Faust

Hemingway: Death in the afternoon (this was my first glimpse into why books can provide lightness of body, displacement of time: wait for the 4th-wall-breaking-rapport with the old woman)

David Foster Wallace:Rise Simba, Infinite Jest, etc.

https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-...

There have been studies that your brain scans feeds and webpages differently than text on a page. You set yourself up to not pay attention / are just "scraping the good bits"

Someone mentioned a while back that Infinite Jest (1000 page tome + 300 pages endnotes!) had ~50 pages that made the whole thing worth it. The immediate following comment was "why not just read the 50 pages?". It is the context around which we find our content that gives it worth. The internet allows you to bypass the context.

bathMarm0t··on Startups from Y Combinator’s S19 Demo Day 1
3 years in r&d is called a masters. 5 years a PhD. Not trying to be glibe but get your business house in order.
bathMarm0t··on Ask HN: Where do you find new music to listen to online?
Any tips on signing up?
bathMarm0t··on A belief in meritocracy is not only false: it’s bad for you
"the the link between merit and (cladogenetic)[1] outcome(s) is(are) tenuous and indirect at best."

[1] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium

In new and fertile territory (random) variations that offer small (unforseeable) advantage can and often do dogpile until total victory is achieved, but I would hardly say the rest of the field flounders. Populations of 1%er's begetting the next don.

bathMarm0t··on Daydreaming about the future instead of doing work today
I've found that todo lists only work if they're put in context of larger goals and you have a system to repeatedly, frequently pop() the top of the list. It's OK (and common!) to have a todo list of 100 things, as long as you give yourself time to think about prioritization of the tasks. Someone on here recommended "Work Clean" by Charnas. It's a little fluffy at the end, but he does provides a structure with which to place and schedule tasks that I found pretty useful called Daily Meeze. It's just meta-planning (plan/schedule 30 minutes out of every day to plan/schedule). Super simple, yet effective.
bathMarm0t··on Musk shakes up SpaceX in race to make satellite launch window: sources
Maybe this is an obvious question, but is spacex allowed to bump / not take orders from its opponents in favor of its own internet satellites? That would effectively force any competitor to launch with someone more expensive, allowing spacex to corner the space-internet market on cost, right?
bathMarm0t··on The City That Had Too Much Money
Currently living in a lively midwest town, 10 minutes walk from downtown and three separate centers of attraction. 500/month. It's possible.
bathMarm0t··on In Praise of Mediocrity
Sally Shapiro - disco romance.

There's also this:http://media.beatsinspace.net/audio/bis-08-07-18-part1.mp3

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