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oritron

350 karma · joined March 23, 2019

OriBarbut dot com
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oritron··on Ask HN: How can I rekindle my passion for CS after my so-so undergrad degree?
It sounds like you've felt motivated in the past to pursue study on your own terms, but now you no longer feel that same passion. That's a loss that you are truly regretting and I'm sorry to hear it.

Your list of possible directions exemplifies the diversity in topics that are all exciting to some people, but are meanwhile completely uninteresting to the average person off the street. In fact, the same person who can't stop thinking about A doesn't necessarily like B even if they're next to each other on your list. In this post you're looking for someone to tell you something to feel that passion about, but honestly: good, actionable advice would require the advice giver to know you personally and understand what sorts of things would have that sort of pull for you. Any specific answers to this question from strangers will be shots in the dark.

So with that, is there anyone among your close friends and family who you could pose this question to? If so, that should be your next step. If not, you've got the tougher challenge of asking yourself. Why do you want to address either of the problems you've outlined? What is captivating to you? These are very personal questions and deciding "none of the above" is perfectly valid as well, you might just need a break from CS. And that break can be indefinite or even permanent. Fortunately it's clear that you're introspective here and that will be an asset in figuring things out.

If it would help in any way, feel free to reach out directly and I'd be happy to chat. I just made sure my profile here points to contact information.

oritron··on BBEdit 14
I don't know about Vim, but Emacs will do this easily with `persp-mode`. To skip a bit of customization work, get doom-emacs and enable the `workspaces` module, which will save sessions for you by default.
oritron··on Roll your own minilanguages with mini-interpreters (1989)
Today the mini languages torch is most prominently carried by Racket. The most accessible ease-in to this I've come across is Matthew Flatt's 'Creating Languages in Racket' https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2068896
oritron··on Show HN: I am trying to start a webring for geeks
Is this not working? I don't see a site listing and the /random.html path doesn't load either…
oritron··on Teracube: Smartphone with a 4 Year Warranty
The basic idea of making a phone to last for longer than current contenders is appealing. No mention about the battery being replaceable though, which in my experience is the real limiting factor on current phone longevity. Edit: it includes a free battery change, impressive at this price

Not sure what the business argument is to have far better specs /and/ warranty than other phones at the low price point (early bird is $200 for an octa core with 6GB RAM). I wondered if they are subsidized by VC but didn't see anything on AngelList. Curious if anyone knows more.

oritron··on Mistakes, we’ve drawn a few
The most surprising conclusion was about the final plot discussed, regarding scientific publications. The author says that it contains too much information and is confusing for that reason, and postulates it might be better to summarize the different fields and plot as a single variable.

The truth is, it is not a confusing visualization. There is no rule that says to remove variables for the sake of reducing a variable count. It is useful to see that health sciences stands apart from other fields, and other points can be seen as a cluster or examined more deeply by the reader. It is actually one of the best plots shown in the entire article.

In effect it is a grouped bar chart, a visualization that many publications shy away from in favor of stacked bars. While that is good for showing a total, it is often a less effective way of visualizing data—it's difficult to compare magnitude of anything but the base bar. That fault can be seen in the stacked bars of the budget surplus example, which still exists for the improved version.

At any rate, I'm glad the Economist is looking to improve their visualizations and isn't afraid to share mistakes.

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