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helterskelter

1,996 karma · joined October 4, 2025

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helterskelter··on Mathematics: Its Content, Methods and Meaning
I've been relearning trigonometry lately by myself for navigation and astronomy; not for work, just curiosity I guess. One book I've really enjoyed is Heavenly Mathematics by Van Bremmelen. It's a spherical trig textbook, but it's written by a math historian who describes how trigonometry was gradually developed over human history and he discusses its early proofs, methods and applications. I have to confess that the historical approach has really helped me develop a more complete mental picture and appreciation of the math itself. Understanding the "how" and "why" of its development, and seeing the early practical need and implementation for some of this stuff has made the topic a lot more engaging.
helterskelter··on The CEO of Mullvad is the main financer of the Swedish Örebro party
I think I wasn't as clear as I could have been in that last part. The irony I was referring to is that this guy is doing more than most people to support freedom online, and that very freedom he supports is being used by people who disagree with his political position to potentially organize a boycott of Mullvad and possibly deprive everybody of a tool which helps protect freedom online.

It's like people who think Americans shouldn't shouldn't have first amendment rights. The irony is that the first amendment protects their ability to criticize the first amendment.

For better or worse, the internet and all its collective outrage is now the world's HR department.

helterskelter··on The CEO of Mullvad is the main financer of the Swedish Örebro party
This is about what customers are comfortable supporting. This guy doesn't just have what many consider to be unpalatable political beliefs, he's one of the biggest funders of what many consider to be an unpalatable political party. Lots of people don't want to give money to something which they feel will in part be funneled to an organization which is antithetical to their views. Realistically, I kind of doubt Mullvad is rolling in swimming pools filled with cash getting syphoned to neonazis, but that brings me to my next point...

For many, it's not just an intellectual position but an emotional one. This doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong, but you probably won't be able to reason them out of it. It's the same reason I don't listen to Michael Jackson. He's dead and none of that streaming revenue would go to him or to raping children but...yuck.

At the end of the day, there's an irony in this guy supporting the very freedoms on the internet which are being used to disseminate criticisms against him, and perhaps inducing people to starve one of the vehicles which helps maintain those freedoms.

helterskelter··on Historical memory prices 1960-2026
At this rate somebody's going to get killed over three megabytes of hot RAM any day now.
helterskelter··on The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online
Yeah but if you say "sustained" at the end of your own objection you might really confuse whoever is reading the transcript and get a free appeal.
helterskelter··on A Farmer Arrested for Going 5 Seconds over His Time Limit at Data Center Meeting
Depends on what X is worth to them and how badly Y may want that data center. X may have better infrastructure, but Y is offering to build theirs out and waive taxes for ten years, so X has less room to negotiate.
helterskelter··on A Farmer Arrested for Going 5 Seconds over His Time Limit at Data Center Meeting
I don't disagree with you. I'm just pointing out that you can make all sorts of demands but you aren't in a very good position to negotiate, and you'll probably still have to pay higher rates even if you stonewall them. Basically, "I drink your milkshake." A lot of local govts would look at this and say "we might as well get some jobs out of this" and approve.

It's a good example of why we need some form of regulation to keep corrupt or incompetent local politicians from selling a community and potentially their neighbors down the river.

helterskelter··on A Farmer Arrested for Going 5 Seconds over His Time Limit at Data Center Meeting
Problem is that there's always some poorer community, or one with more corrupt government officials, willing to allow a buildout for next to nothing. And when they plug into the grid the next county or state over you're electric rates are going up anyway.
helterskelter··on The US Army Issued Ocarinas to Soldiers in World War II
This reminds me of my very first internet purchase. Back in the late 90's, when Ocarina of Time first came out, there was a website that a friend of mine found (back when you really felt like you found something on the internet) that sold basically perfect replicas of the titular ocarina, it even came with a silk pouch and a booklet that showed you how to play all the songs from the game. I think it was just some rando making clay instruments out of their house and figured they'd try to sell them on this new marketplace. I've still got it somewhere.

It feels like the internet is missing stuff like that now, or it's at least harder to find. Nowadays Nintendo would shut that seller down, or the seller would just be drop shipping them from Alibaba for a 500% markup.

helterskelter··on U.S. government will decide who gets to use GPT-5.6
So much of everybody's infra depends on FOSS. I think every industry giant would dogpile whichever politician tried to go after FOSS as a whole.
helterskelter··on Ford AI hiccups push carmaker to rehire ‘gray beard’ inspectors
Okay so this was actually about a year or two ago, but I remember the infotainment system glitched out a lot for no discernible reason, which prevented me from accessing a lot of the controls, and I had some difficulty with the hardware controls which just felt poorly thought out from a UX standpoint.

Some of the things an owner would obviously get used to, but it felt like you were constantly struggling with it to do simple things that you don't even really notice doing in most vehicles.

The infotainment system was constantly having trouble, like freezing up or just shutting down for no apparent reason and not turning back on. I remember a lot of issues with the backup camera. Not unique for a modern car, but this one had more than its fair share of glitches. I think I had to reset it twice. It also developed an issue (sorry can't recall what it was exactly) that persisted for a day or two which spontaneously resolved itself while I was driving back to the dealership.

I want to say it had hardware AC controls (which is good), but I think I had it for three days and only figured out how to adjust it the way I wanted it on day three. I don't recall if I didn't understand that something was a button, or if a button actually had several different "modes" which weren't readily apparent, like being a combo rocker/push button. Normally these sorts of things are obvious from how the dash is deaigned, but my wife and I took three days to puzzle it out.

There were some other minor problems, but altogether it felt poorly thought out and kind of low quality, which clashed with some of the "luxury" accents my model was equipped with, like wood paneling and the lights which spelled out "WAGONEER" on the ground at night when you opened the door, which felt gimmicky. That money would have been better spent on refining the UX.

I actually don't think it was a bad drive, if you were just driving. I was just constantly frustrated trying to do anything else with it.

helterskelter··on A Herculaneum scroll has been read for the first time
Also, Aristarchus.
helterskelter··on An entire Herculaneum scroll has been read for the first time
I'm hoping for a complete(ish) Heraclitus. Also Eratosthenes, whose methods have been described but we don't have the original work where we calculated the circumference of the Earth. Also Hipparchus and Thales.
helterskelter··on A Herculaneum scroll has been read for the first time
Thanks!
helterskelter··on Ford AI hiccups push carmaker to rehire ‘gray beard’ inspectors
Jeep Wagoneer, I just remember the Stellantis logo on the infotainment boot screen. I thought it was a Stellantis Wagoneer because the Jeep logo was almost completely absent, at least in memory.
helterskelter··on A Herculaneum scroll has been read for the first time
Given the current rate of progress, how long do you think it will take to decipher the entire collection?
helterskelter··on Dostoyevsky isn't difficult
Will = William

Ipso facto:

Bill = Billiam

Mutatis Mutandis:

Jim = Jimothy

helterskelter··on Ford rehires 350 engineers after AI fails to preserve expertise or train juniors
On the topic of Stellantis, I rented one recently (through no fault of my own) and when I returned it the guy asked me how it was. I told him I wouldn't drive one of those things again if they paid me, and the guy said "yeah we get that a lot, let me get you the discount".

It sounded like they had a "Stellantis discount" for people who said something.

Nice guy, actually.

helterskelter··on Big AI labs are hiring philosophers
ENGINEER: (n) Someone who does precision guesswork based on unreliable data provided by those with questionable knowledge.

- an offscreen on my new calculator

helterskelter··on Journalism is rearranging the deckchairs. It needs to reinvent itself
How are you going to do that when the audience is braindead and can't focus their attention for more than a paragraph or watch a video longer than 30s? There's just not much room for reinvention unless everything becomes a Tiktok feed.

Arstechnica did some testing, years or maybe even a decade ago, and found that most people don't even read past the first page of their multipage articles. And I imagine their audience is at least slightly above average for these sorts of things.

helterskelter··on Ask HN: What home printer do you use/recommend?
Yeah I've got a Brother laser printer, never had an issue. Maybe it's just the inkjets?
helterskelter··on F* file system – file search that reads SSD directly bypassing OS kernel
Real men run as root:

https://www.garyshood.com/root/

helterskelter··on Ask HN: What home printer do you use/recommend?
Can't say I've had an issue with my Brother. Works great with Linux and ink is available at the office supply store.
helterskelter··on A Short Guide to Celestial Navigation [pdf]
Author's home page:

https://www.celnav.de/page2.htm

Unfortunately he serves a zipped PDF, which is slightly incobvenuebt so I linked to a mirror of the actual PDF file.

helterskelter··on A Short Guide to Celestial Navigation [zipped pdf]
Direct link to (zipped) PDF:

https://www.celnav.de/astro.zip

This is probably the most thorough and concise guide to celnav I've encountered, but it leans very technical. Just wanted to share.

helterskelter··on 1,700 free online courses from top universities
interweave*
helterskelter··on 1,700 free online courses from top universities
Actually, some of the research they base their advice on was performed on elementary school students, and college classrooms which had poor attendance; ie, not the most engaged students. Simple things like giving elementary students an ungraded quiz right before class (to force recall) two or three times a week raised grades substantially, and a college class that switched from midterms/finals to 9 quizzes plus a final not only had higher attendance, but also had much higher grades on their finals with basically none of the students falling behind. Another experiment had young kids practice throwing beans bags into a bucket, one group alternating practice between 2 and 4 feet, and another only practicing at 3 feet. After a month or two, they were tested on throwing the bag into the bucket at 3 feet and the kids who practiced at 2 and 4 feet performed significantly better than the kids who only practiced at 3. Anyway, my point is that small, simple changes to how you study can have big implications for retention, without too much extra effort.

Sorry, I'm still reading this book right now and it's super interesting.

helterskelter··on 1,700 free online courses from top universities
The book Make It Stick by Brown, Roediger and McDaniel is helpful. tl;dr of it is:

- lots of low-stakes quizzing and practice

- spaced repetition

- reflect on what you've learned and what you could do better next time, and apply these lessons in different contexts

- interleave practice of different but related topics

- try to solve a problem before being taught the solution

- distill the underlying principles to different problems

- remember that if learning is easy, you probably aren't engaging you brain very much

This will help streamline the process, but obviously there's just a limit to what you can take in.

helterskelter··on 1,700 free online courses from top universities
https://openstax.org/higher-education

^^ Good resource for textbooks

helterskelter··on Everything is logarithms
Anytime, and thank you for the rec, I just ordered it. I might also suggest to you "Make It Stick" (by Brown, Roediger, and McDaniel) if you are ever in want in another book on pedagogy.
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