megameter

"Civilization is a Ponzi" is essentially my conclusion. The thing holding up government backing as the standard of real asset is simply its capacity as the just middleman enforcer. Subtract that and currency, real estate, stocks, bonds, contracts, credit ratings and IP rights all go poof. You're left with clothes-on-your-back and local community trust.

That's why I see crypto tokenization as an important step towards having another "financial material" to work with. It doesn't commandeer enforcement at a global level, so it doesn't compete with governments on their own terms, but it can help build trust at scale by being designed around the trustless scenario, which reduces reliance on enforcement and bureaucratic methodology in many applications. Crypto projects with a focus on achieving good governance are some of the most promising out there, even as they are hidden in the endless waves of scams.

This feels like a blogpost about graphic design using too many grids and tables. It doesn't really dive deep into the conundrum of what UI could be when the system is "symbolic all the way down", with the basic digital representation of 0 and 1 groupings primarily existing as a leveraging mechanism for defining other symbols.

With everything physical and freeform, the problem of measuring and aligning becomes primary. Tool precision drives what our built environment can look like. For UI to evolve likewise, it has to pay considerable attention to what documents are measuring. At the most primitive level this is always linear memory cell structures, even if they have some data attached indicating representation as a connected graph or other structuring mechanism. But time and again we opt to adopt something with higher level representation, which then creates the need for a custom toolbox, and I think that in turn drives the use of tabular and grid presentation as a way of putting the toolbox within reach. If you don't have more than one tool, UI disappears.

HN doesn't(as a rule) have economic philosophers in its userbase. What it does have are people who have built their livelihood within the familiar framework and set of rules abided by nations. The system has worked for them, and if it works for you, you're going to be deeply attached to it, in the "attachment theory" sense. When you are attached to an idea, you defend it like it's your kid while also denying that you are doing something exceptional and possibly risky to yourself in defending it. Right from the beginning, Bitcoin made its stance clear that it was going to attack the top-down framework of money. At first this seemed mostly hypothetical, even though the implementation worked. It could be easily dismissed and called dead. Now it's a whole industry with broad, complex impacts. It is winning the war.

The less toy-like crypto becomes, the more you see people freak out about it and try to push it back in the Pandora's box it came from. It's the same kind of thing that happens when people get deeply involved in politics and see an "us and them" and their side loses. They ghash their teeth and spread falsities to keep it from haunting them. And that is most cryptocurrency threads among crypto haters: deep down, they really want the state to enforce the market, because that is "how the world should be".

I am experiencing renewed optimism from materials technology lately. Graphene production is on the rise and the applications are huge. Mycelium is touted as the next plastic. Newer engineered woods like CLT hold a lot of promise as they get deployed into increasingly large projects. There are all kinds of smaller innovations with waterproofing, adhesives and insulation that are gradually being deployed and learned about by builders.

For my part, I took the step into ordering some kit for cardboard crafting just now. Modern wood glues(I am getting Elmer's Max) are unbelievably strong, and a pure shellac finish brushed on will add some rigidity and waterproofing which could be further enhanced through hydrophobic coatings. Corrugated cardboard itself is a limited material, but it's so easy to get and to work with - my first project will simply be to build a small workbench, and then I'll go from there. I have several ideas already planned.

Nobody on Alpha Centuari cares how much Jeff Bezos owns either. All ownership is contextual, it only looks like we have universal rights enforcement because of the powerful state acting as middleman.

Therefore I have to conclude that NFT usage is an extremely radical act against state power, because what it says is that the state doesn't matter, this blockchain(the one you are using at that moment) does. And you are accepting that your rights end where it does, too, so you had better trust the community.

It's easy. Copy-paste the blockchain and start over with a fork. When the system delegitimizes itself, a debt jubilee lies around the corner. This stuff is just glue now - a cheap way of making a financial system.

I started doing animal crawls every day recently after being tipped off by some YT videos to their benefits, and they seem to work even better than running for the goal of full-body maintenance. Every time I finish I feel like my spine has been gently massaged.

While I have not used the Slimblade, I did consider it when I last shopped for trackballs and settled for the Orbit instead, which I've owned before and can use for hours at a stretch without issue. I believe the angles of the palm rest are substantially different between the two models and there have been complaints of worse ergonomic properties with the Slimblade, which was enough to dissuade me. It's something that could be adjusted with foam and cardboard(and given a nicer texture with vinyl tape) if you're willing to experiment.

I would also review desk/chair height and other major elements of the setup too. Pain in the extremities can have causation near the hips, back or shoulders so increasingly I favor looking for holistic solutions. Lately I have been doing animal crawl exercises(bear, lizard, crab) and have found that they clear up a lot of minor aches-and-pains issues, so that might be another thing to try.

It really does sound like the analogous statement about "only five or six computers in the world" from the 1950's.

I think all the arts eventually gain a calculated precision to them, just at different stages of the process. With music, structure arrives at the very beginning: rhythm and harmonic structure have some concrete rules to make them cohere. Likewise, visual arts usually require taking measurement from a reference to build up proportionate construction; if it's a cartoon this tends to be redefined into a composite of simple mathematical ratios of primitives, while a more realistic look develops from something more measured and scientific in nature(using a proportionate divider really is lab work).

Once you get past the preliminaries, play can begin...except, you can usually return to structure by adding another layer of it. Harmonization principles in music have layers of structure to them, and "expressive" pop harmony can often be seen as a very calculated thing of crafting maximal tension and release in a short period. Likewise, you can definitely go in the direction of technical visuals, either with detailed illustration or computer renderings. Often there's a desire to digitally emulate analog workflows without literally using those workflows, which results in some additional technical considerations around achieving that.

I think this is how all content creation software eventually grows into a spaceship panel UI - even if you have a specific thing in mind for each process layer and can reduce it to a preset or template, you have to configure the software to get there.

One lesson of the medieval period is that that when the previous society(Rome) breaks down, a period of mysticism sweeps in, from which the new society emerges. This happens on a smaller scale with e.g. "Great Awakenings". Mysticism normalizes a reality, and therefore it doesn't obey the rules of reason, rather, great efforts are made to rationalize its existence from a pragmatic beginning. Philosophers cannot reach agreement on what is good for people, so religious experiences fill in the gap, and that's always been the case with the economy too.

People used to believe that conquests made wealth; gradually they became convinced that productivity made wealth. Productivity is now on the chopping block, since it is seen as something that's killing the planet with inexhaustible resource demand. We're looking for the next way of seeing things. Crypto doesn't make sense now, and I say that as someone deeply invested in it, but it has that kind of potential to change our frame of reference after an awkward transition takes place. Maybe it makes sense if we go further with it. The experiment is in progress, but it's already exceeded the usual bounds of a cult or scam.

This typically comes from chasing after higher sources of recognition/prestige/clout, and it's especially prone to happen when you have a background in the "traditional" industry and saw the whole endeavor of producing Internet content as a stepping stone. "Finally, I can run a proper show with real production values", they say. Emulating an idol is the goal, but there's often no particular benchmark guiding it and their creative role suddenly shifts towards managerial elements, so the final product is invariably worse than whatever they did before. Plus the impulse to do it is pretty much always an indulgence running counter to market trends.

In my own assessment, fiat exchanges are just the tip of the crypto iceberg.

None of the cozy corporate firms want to go near privacy coins, to name one example. They know that those don't fit into the plan, so they're ignored. But so long as you can exit their exchange, there's a path towards trading them - and therefore a problem for regulators akin to digital media piracy.

Bitcoin never set out with the goal of being the currency that literally everyone uses - it had in mind the cypherpunk framing of being underground by default. So it's just totally unsurprising that upon its adoption by the existing power structure, alternatives would pop up. That's not a failing, just a step towards an arms race.

If I go on itch.io right now and pick something at random, the likelihood of it being both made by a teenager and involving written storytelling is quite high. Likewise a huge hit of the last decade was Undertale and it had the kind of success where I recall seeing kids draw the characters in chalk on the sidewalk. The evidence indicates that writing never went away, it's just not upheld by large productions(and even then, Nintendo regularly eschews voice acting).

To me, there's nothing sacred about text, it's just a medium.

Personally, I would go for a "power tower" type of setup(dips plus pullups) plus some mats, boxes and light weights to flesh out calisthenics routines. And if noise isn't a factor, I'd go for a Stepmania setup first over more traditional gym equipment - way broader appeal when it covers "video game", "exercise", "customizable jukebox" in one package.

I find that a lot of fitness advice for the "ordinary overweight" adapts something from either athletic training, or physical therapy. Dietary advice likewise tends towards weighty, religious entreaties like "avoid all carbs". These things do not slot into a modern lifestyle easily - what we need a lot of is "passive fitness" measures akin to the "take the stairs instead of the elevator" or "bike instead of using your car" advice. When the availability is good, on average you end up taking the healthy option more often.

But, to get there we will have to have a built environment and social norms that support it. The trends have been positive, but much more is still possible. "physique = fitness" is a particularly bad normalized metric(with understandable origins), and we should be encouraging people to use a real fitness test to judge themselves.

Lots of things, but almost always the same concept: Divisions of space. Not just "I'll remember to put that there," but making a place to put it. No "piles" allowed - a tray, binder, folder, bag or bin for everything, labels optional. Making spaces for different kinds of work, duplicating your workstation if necessary. "This is the type of place where I do X" is a powerful behavior shaping tool. This can also take the form of reconfiguring the same space in slightly different ways.

The computer can make a mess of organization simply because it's too easy to hide away everything and the system will oftentimes impose the method on you. Notes and documentation can help. Make a habit of daily self-talk, a "standup meeting for one" when you have a break. The exercise of speaking it aloud jogs the memory and creates a form of engagement that isn't had by thinking it or writing it. If done habitually you won't have to physically record much, because your priorities will remain stable day by day.

A key analogy that went unused in the article is the Red Queen's Race: "it takes all the running you can do to stay in the same place" applies to car traffic precisely because cars are large and powerful and are persistently required to make slow turns and smooth stops relative to their size - think of all the roads where you have to carefully inch out, keep deliberate pace and stopping distance, and so on. Spaces that are "for cars" correlate to spaces that are unsafe "for people". If you add more than a small topping of car traffic to a road, they will impede each other. Therefore, to make large numbers of cars move quickly you have to add disproportionate amounts of car infrastructure, which creates car-centric land use patterns, which inhibits alternatives and makes cars the default by dint of being the smallest unit that can safely use a road. "If they get bigger, I must get bigger too" is applicable thinking for someone who wants to feel safe on the roads.

If you reduce the scale, the speed, the headways, you have greater ability to adjust. While car pileups are expected, bicycle pileups are a thing usually only seen in races when the limits are being pushed. Ordinary bike commuters can navigate safely without rules when given a mixed bike/pedestrian space of sufficient size. Bikes don't get bigger to feel safer. The resulting infrastructure scales better for the cost, and the Red Queen's Race is averted. When bike lanes reach capacity, the failure mode is crowded-stadium, not stand-still freeway. Traffic slows down gradually instead of creating roadside bloodbaths.

Transit does experience more of a headache from induced demand pressure since it also uses large vehicles, and the entire trip experience is contingent on not holding up that one train or bus - while Tokyo's system works, the crowding is notorious, and the train stations have sizable footprints. But as a collective effort, it can also be much more coordinated and deliver useful results from capacity increases.

You did all that in a few months? That actually sounds like something that went quite smoothly. The time needed to engineer that kind of high-scale system at the outset is also going to enter the multi-month range, and with less background info to inform it. The phase-shifts of scaling are by no means easy, but they respond well to effortful, issue-by-issue grinding away at the problem.

The worst-case overengineered projects generally have organizational issues that preclude ever making concrete progress or result in a Juicero-style "why did you even make this" product. Those are the projects that burn people out.

Lately I have returned to using a gamepad with Joy2Key for browsing and productivity in Windows, something I last did in the 2000's. It's not perfect(some mouse events just don't work right through this method so I may have to try other software) but it's reminded me of what gamepads are good at relative to mice, which is - almost everything except whipping around the cursor, which isn't useful in productivity apps anyway. Precision and speed can be had by using multiple sticks and dpad, you can hold it at many angles and aren't chained to the desk, the grips have been ergonomically refined, and there's a decent selection of sticks, buttons and triggers. I wish gamepads had some wheels or dials too, but the options already there are aplenty and I am testing a few out right now.

I currently mix gamepad with a split keyboard(Freestyle 2) and a Kensington trackball as the backup mouse; having the controller in the center of the split makes it smooth to pick up and put down. And if I really needed more dedicated controls - well, why stop at one gamepad? Maybe I should try a flight stick too.

The SF Bay Area allows this possiblity, though it would be most feasible by including local rail; a walk-on north-south trip between Santa Rosa and Monterey could be done by going SMART->ferry->BART->Caltrain->Hwy 17 Express->SC Metro bus. If you were very patient there are bus routes that would cover the SF-Peninsula leg.

I would have to check to see if Sacramento is possible without resorting to rail or coach.

Edit: actually, going to Big Sur looks to be possible with the MSC bus system. It's been a while since I rode in that region and Monterey isn't part of the SC Metro system anymore. From Big Sur I could imagine it's possible to get even further down the coast.

For the demographic in the mindset of "America = good, whomever makes it look bad = evil"(which is going to be a big demographic within the US so long as it's a going concern, and applies to US allies to a lesser extent), the Afghanistan exit is a must-win.

Normally, in the SF summertime, the prevaling wind is east by mid-afternoon and continues strong well into the evening. Thus the city hardly ever heats up or experiences bad air until August, when the weather system changes and the winds calm down.

This also leads to a distinct pattern with wildfire smoke; so long as there isn't a buildup over the ocean, the city gets some relief until there's a day with no wind, at which point it gets as socked in as the rest of the Bay. Last year was particularly bad since the ocean air eventually did get polluted and it circulated until precipitation cleared it. So far things are holding up better this year, but we have a few months to go.

I am definitely on the same track. When the gym reopened I tried going back and doing higher intensity routines again after mostly sticking to smaller daily ones. Within about six weeks I had managed to blow through my fatigue threshold and it had a ripple effect on everything else(motivation, ability to learn, etc). Lesson learned, I now strive to hit "maintenance" workouts most of the time and then only do "training" occasionally so that I still experience some overload while also leaving myself some leftover energy. There is an 80/20 type of rule to be had.

I have been applying the "maintenance" attitude to a lot of things as well as exercise too. My whole approach to household matters is informed by this now - I think about most my consumer purchases in terms of the "low intensity, high volume" use case, and measuring what improves my life by looking for benchmarks that would improve passively by having the item. Best ROI here is to spend on storage, organization, and ergonomics, because that lets you assemble a workspace for something much quicker. Assigning some things to a tray or bin can make all the difference. If it's shoved in a pile, the activation energy goes way up, rendering everything you already have relatively less useful. This is true even if you barely have any stuff to begin with!

The last time I implemented a timing loop I came up with an approach that would mitigate jitter and oscillation artifacts occurring due to OS overhead (though not solving the aspect of video refresh itself being misaligned). One of my major assumptions was that I could run the game at higher frequency than refresh and therefore rely on downsampling my output, vs the norm of many higher-end games where the base tick is interpolated up to refresh rate.

1. Derive ideal number of elapsed frames using elapsed time from start divided by framerate.

2. Run updates to "catch up" to ideal frames.

3. Observe "rubberbanding" artifact as game oscillates between too slow and too fast.

4. Add limits to how many catchup frames are allowed per render frame to stop the rubberbanding. Implement a notion of "dropped frames" instead, so that our ideal time accounting has a release valve when too much catchup is needed.

5. Now apply a low-pass filter to the amount of catchup frames over time, e.g. if you have a tick of 120hz but your monitor is at 60hz you are likely to see an occasional high frequency oscillation in how many tick frames are supplied per render frame, like [2,3,2,3,2,3]. Filtering can make this [2,2,2,3,3,3]. (It's been a while since I did this, so I don't recall my exact algorithm)

The end result of this effort is that wall-clock time is obeyed over the long-run(minus dropped frames) but the supplied frames are also able to maintain the same pacing for longer periods, which makes the moment-to-moment experience very predictable, hence smooth.

While I haven't tried it, I think the equivalent thing when interpolating would be to freeze a certain issued delta time pace for some number of frames.

Another way to frame the dichotomy for the CS-inclined is greedy versus backtracking solutions. A penny-pincher is taking the best locally optimal choice at each step, just like a greedy matcher. A "backtracker", while not always able to exhaustively explore, approximates it by testing alternatives when given multiple runs.

In the realm of direct interpersonal credit, greedy solving often seems like "the answer:" you study for the test if you want to pass it, follow the polite mannerisms of your society, and take logical steps presented to you by your environment(like following signs and signals to navigate traffic). Situationally, it can work. And top performers in competitive fields are extreme examples of the greedy solution working: monastically training to be the best at what you do with regular drills, harsh lifestyle modifications and risky medicine does get results.

But everyone who's lived long enough without losing their head knows that the greedy path falls off a cliff eventually. You can't "just" follow the advice of professionals and scholars to be healthy, wealthy and wise. And neither does getting the gold medal give you the happy end. But as the article points out, there isn't an easy story to apply to a complex framing of life.

Atari BASIC used 48-bit BCD floats and the routines were not well optimized, making it one of the slowest at the time(later retrohobbyists have made various patches as well as faster BASIC implementations). It was also Microsoft-incompatible which made it an odd duck among the microcomputer BASICs.

Access to sexual experiences is something I would count as a great liberation of the past decades. When a man got desperate for release not all that long ago, they didn't hop online for an outlet, they drove to the seedy part of town and visited a strip club, went to a porno theater, solicited hookers, etc. Those things are still around, and there were some possibilities to "phone date", but lack of options made things overall less secure and discreet for everyone involved relative to today where the man can just look up an Onlyfans or prowl Tinder profiles. 1980's teen movies like "Sixteen Candles" were OK with date rape as a concept, and that was just the tip-of-the-iceberg. We're doing better.

This goes even more so if we speak of the spectrum of LGBT identities, which in 1991 was in the midst of losing all continuity with the past because so many died from AIDS; many folks then would stay closeted and quiet because coming out was just too threatening. Casual homophobia was everywhere, and the "gay neighborhoods" of larger cities were somewhat exceptional even within that city. Now it's hardly unusual to be out, though generational acceptance remains rocky.

Tables of a static size, or small dynamically generated ones, are fairly straightforward because you just pay the entire cost of layout upfront. The layout algorithms themselves are a feature farm - CSS is complex because it supports so many ways to do things across a multitude of assets. If it's something like a game GUI, the layout can be bespoken to a particular stylistic choice and specific asset types. It's still not a trivial endeavor(headaches always abound when trying to align graphical elements in a top-down composition), but more of the programming load goes to text rendering, selection and input than layout once you drop CSS-style flexibility.

Lists and tables with both dynamic sizing and scalability requirements(think the "infinite scroll" style of presentation plus insertion and removal of elements plus nesting plus accordion folding) create all sorts of challenges in trying to amortize the processing costs. That's where layout code can get really out of hand.

However... if you opt to paginate by a fixed element count, most of the challenges go away because there's only so much layout you can fill a single screen with, and that lets you revert to brute force. At that point it's a question of "OK, how much scrolling do we need?" Scrolling itself has gained a reputation for being mostly detrimental to UX, so in terms of cost-benefit for productivity it would be one of the first things to go.

In a lot of ways frameworks create the problem for themselves by trying to do everything.

Supine posture isn't really all that static if you're awake and on a surface at least as hard as tatami - you can shift around on the floor much more than in a chair, especially if the monitor can adjust a bit with you. Add a pillow anywhere and your entire force distribution changes. I would be a little more suspicious of the hammock idea, or soft beds. If you're sinking into it, it's obviously immobilizing.

Floor desking is my go-to for maximum variability though. It just needs "enough" monitor height/size that you don't hunch over to peer at the text. The rest happens naturally.

In both cases I use only a wireless keyboard/trackpad combo now. When I started out doing this I quickly realized it was the peripherals that were the problem.