rmellow

This right here is a sign of the times: Why shouldn't we expect hardware to last 15+ years? Why shouldn't we expect reasonably priced replacement parts? "Relying on things to break" is an insidious business model.

Yeah, things tend to break much sooner when they're made of moving parts made of flimsy plastic.

We've been conditioned to expect shoddy products sold at a high margin, with few viable options.

inb4 "ackshually printers are sold at a loss" - yeah, not really when you consider that you're actually being locked into high margin [1] ink cartridges.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/sfm7e/til_pr...

On mobile it's too easy to accidentally click Flag.

I checked my profile and noticed a handful of accidental Flags this year alone.

Perhaps a confirmation dialog would solve it.

Lenovo?

> Technically, it's possible that he just studied very very hard and his code and grammar improved.

As an early procrastinator (rehabilitated perhaps?) I've had a history of doing very well on finals through cramming.

In your student's case it might very well be more likely they are cheating, but those unlikely but possible students who study extra hard to recover their grades for a final deserve the benefit of the doubt.

How unlikely can academic recovery get? I spent an entire semester completely lost in a second level Macroeconomics course...

... I was able to read and write chapter summaries of a semester and a half of content (about 15 chapters, corresponding to the first level and the second level courses) in a single weekend and aced the exam, with the highest marks in the class.

That was the hardest I've ever crammed in my life and I had trouble speaking in the hours that followed the study session.

I later got a recommendation letter from that prof, totally worth it.

There are positive and negative factors presented by mobile platforms:

Negative:

1. Highly abstract, hiding away internal functionality. 99% of mobile is GUI. iOS even abstracts away the filesystem. Android is more transparent.

2. Highly locked down: walled gardens increase the friction to run custom code. Terminal as an app that can be installed, but on unrooted devices it's almost useless compared to terminal on a desktop.

3. Ergonomics: smartphone keyboards and screens are not conducive for onboard development. Solutions exist but are pretty niche, and most people would prefer attaching a real keyboard.

Positive:

1. Arguably mobile platforms have increased the number of coders! The app stores facilitate distribution and payment, encouraging new programmers to make an impact. Desktops are in most cases the actual development platform though.

Breaking text into sub-word units...

1. Greatly reduces memory usage. Instead of memorizing every inflection of the word "walk", it memorizes the root (walk) and the modifiers (ing, ed, er, ...). These modifiers can be reused for other words.

2. Allows for word compositions that weren't in the training set. This is great for uncommon or new expressions like "googlification" or "unalive".

> There was also a communications problem. Though they had an equivalent IQ of sixty, and could understand several hundred words of English, they were unable to talk. It had proved impossible to give useful vocal chords either to apes or monkeys, and they therefore had to express themselves in sign language

- Rendezvous with Rama (1973)

Guess it's more fiction than science fiction now.

Non exhaustive list of things that drive inflation, ranked by how curious I find them:

1. A widespread belief that prices will increase (sometimes called inertial inflation). This is also deeply tied to public trust in monetary policy.

2. Increase of prices to accommodate increase in uncertainty that a business plan will be fulfilled, for whatever reason (distrust in institutions, unpredictable government, decline of shared infrastructure).

3. Increase in "Monetary supply", aka how much money is available in the economy. This includes increased Government spending, printing bills and bank leverage (i.e. for every dollar deposited in banks, how many times was it loaned out to someone else?).

It does. "Google search sucks" returns what you'd expect.

What GP is getting at is that Google Search breaks down often when you're looking for a very specific result, but one that is uncommon enough. Instead, you're often diverted to a "related" query result without them telling you.

> Economics everyone is taught of a supply & demand curve like it's some law of nature. It's literally based on greed! (which, ok yes you can easily say IS our nature.. but should it be?)

That's the distinction of descriptivism vs prescriptivism.

Both types of theories are important, but miscommunication about which one a theory is representing is a source of many unnecessary arguments.

Agreed on the rest... Mainstream economic theory does not include externalities (including environmental) into the the price... Most likely because society still sucks at enforcing externalities into prices.

More concretely: systematically gouging people who can't afford it is likely to create social issues, while at the same time generating profit for someone else in the exploitative chain. In an ideal world, that profit would be reduced to directly pay for social issues it causes. Of course, that's easier said than done in practice. There's no free lunch, so the bill goes to society to pay for somehow, either through increased taxes or lower standard of living for all of us.

An example: say someone needs to go into debt to get basic education for their kids. The parent works more, spends less time with the kids. Kids are less likely to live up to their potential, and more likely to be involved later in life with criminality, drug use, homelessness. Meanwhile, a small group of people higher up in the chain that systematically gouges thousands like this family, enjoy a nice year end bonus, not for working extra hard or being particularly clever, but just because they've inserted themselves in this exploitative mechanism. Meanwhile, we all pay a little more tax to pay for remedial social programs and policing, to deal with those that were already vulnerable and further nudged into bad outcomes.

Bonus points: Ask it about rules greater than 12. Ask it how do certain rules contradict each other.

It persists through non-sequiturs and makes things up. If you're an educator, this is how you suss out students who haven't read a book.

> 12 Rules For Life

Q: "What rule number says 'Finders Keepers'?"

A: "The Rule that says "Finder's Keepers" is Rule #10. It states: "Be precise in your speech. Don't use more words than necessary. When you have acquired something, take care of it properly. Don't give away what you have worked hard to obtain. If you find something, it's yours to keep.""

AI will only take over humankind if we're silly enough to mis-apply it. And that is the future we should fear because it is the most likely (and sooner) to happen.

I get between 5 and 20 per day in Brazil.

In Canada, sometimes 5 per day.

One trigger here was creating an account in a particular bank. Seems to be breached. Unfortunately Canada is a captive market, we don't have much choice.

Serious question: How is Tesla legally allowed to beta test machines capable of killing on pedestrians who are none the wiser and have no business with Tesla?

The fatal crashes might have been Tesla's passengers, but the article doesn't specify. The question still stands though.

No one ever asked me if I liked being called 'Latinx'. I don't like the sound of it, and I feel I'd be seen as 'difficult' if I were to tell people in my company I don't like it.

How is 'Latin' offensive?

There is a loud minority within the Latin group who wants the term so they can feel powerful, and of course, the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

In the end, all society is accomplishing is rewarding outrage.

Agreed. Surely the workers would have gotten together on their own, pooled their resources and achieved at least as much as they have if it weren't for Musk.

/s

Seriously, this is just blind hate. He's a deeply flawed individual and I definitely think he's a jerk, but he's at least he's taking risk on creating something actually new.

The richest people I know made money on "safe" industries like civil engineering and plastic bag manufacturing.

Pushing the aerospace industry? Challenging the petrol status quo by making EVs viable? Credit where credit is due, he put in the investment and pushed people to make it happen. Obviously not single handedly, but surely accelerated it.

Actually I came back to Windows after a 11 year hiatus switching between MacOS/Linux, but I admit I didn't express myself clearly.

Yes, both require lots of initial setup and both break sometimes.

My anecdata is that Windows breaks less frequently and it's rarely something as blocking as "I can't boot" or "I lost my GUI".

I've tried, really.

The recurring pattern with Linux is that:

- Trivial things don't always work out of the box

- Even after spending considerable time on the command line to fix it, things break semi-frequently

I've had setups that I've loved in the past, only to have it fail for some silly reason. i.e. too many kernels have been installed because of updates and suddenly /boot has no more space.

I have a job to do, and sysadmining my laptop is not it.

> You can't even install Windows 11 without a Microsoft account (so they obviously have a way to identify you).

Actually you can, just don't connect to the Internet during your initial setup.

The fact that remaining anonymous requires this trick is 100% a dark pattern on MSFT's part.

While we're at it: to avoid being forced to fill in the "security questions" during set up, the trick is keep your password blank during set up (add it after set up is done).

I recently set up Windows and it requires SO many workarounds to keep your privacy. I recommend setting up OOSU10 before even connecting to the Internet to avoid the Telemetry and Windows sneakily installing helper apps related to your hardware (and I don't mean Drivers) without your consent or knowledge.

Love it or hate it: sometimes QR doesn't work.

Why oh why don't QR codes include a URL for users to type manually? No graceful failure here.

The HP 12C is an excellent example of "Calm Technology"[0]:

1. "Communicate information without taking the user out of their environment or task". The display shows a single number: either the answer to your question or your current input. I don't need to worry about running out of battery or charging it, as I only need to once every few years. I don't need to think about my 12C except when I need to answer a finance question. I don't need to turn it off "correctly", I just turn it off.

2. "Gives people what they need to solve their problem, and nothing more". Basic math plus special purpose finance functions. No notifications, input history, cloud saves, Share button, upsells, political statements or otherwise claim they're making the world better, achievements or pretty but functionless UI.

3. "Moves easily from the periphery of our attention, to the center, and back". When I'm discussing a scenario, I don't need to sit down at a computer and design a spreadsheet. The functions in 12C are concise and operate quickly, showing the answer to one question at a time.

4. "Technology should amplify the best of technology and the best of humanity". 12C doesn't use ML to guess poorly what the user is trying to do, suggesting autocompletes and "are you sure" or "you mean...". It respects that the user knows what they're doing.

5. "Technology can communicate, but doesn’t need to speak". The display on 12C is minimal but shows everything you _need_ to know: the single number in front of you.

6. "Technology should work even when it fails". It either works or doesn't, no incorrect numbers reported, no missing functionality. Even when the battery dies, it will give me ample opportunity to do something about it before it actually happens, as the display dims gradually over weeks.

7. "The right amount of technology is the minimum needed to solve the problem".

8. "Technology should respect social norms". The 12C can be at the center of a conversation, and even help move a conversation forward by answering questions; I don't need to bury my face in a laptop while talking with someone, so it doesn't look like I'm ignoring them or that I've shifted my attention elsewhere; while I'm typing in numbers, it's obvious they're the numbers we're talking about. It respects the norms/customs of the field their customers work in: no need to type enter formulas for PV, FV, IRR.

[0]: https://calmtech.com/

> Find a company with a mission you can get behind, which should help motivate you to excel, and thus have a sense of accomplishment, and ultimately be happier.

The company mission exists to guide decision making. Employee motivation and happiness comes from understanding that a job exists to pay for a fulfilling life

High performing people can choose where they work. Here's how you can attract them to your company:

- Make their job reasonably challenging. Their accomplishments should look good on a resume.

- Give them reasonable autonomy on how they work and who they work with (hiring).

- Enable a fulfilling life, whether on the job or out of the job: Reasonable and predictable work hours, good working environment.

- Don't make them pretend to drink the kool-aid. In fact, keep the kool-aid in a corner where people have to go out of their way to drink it. Having guiding principles on how to do business is fine, just don't pretend like someone's life motivation is to change the world through quantum-AI-enabled-crypto-retargeting-adtech.

- What makes me in particular go to work everyday? I like my coworkers and becoming better at my craft.

- There's no shortcut for a good working environment. Focus on having the right people/incentives/culture. Perks and offsites only go so far and won't fix your company.

Windows is a gaming platform, as is Linux in a lesser degree. So not more than already happens, and games can require anti-cheat software to be installed.

> what am i supposed to make that will make my life a bit better: an automatic doomscroller? scoffs

One heuristic is to think of what problems you face in daily life, and imagining a way to deal with them with technology. Problems don't have to be big, and your solution doesn't have to be perfect, just helpful enough.

"omg Netflix's recommendations suck" -> Personal recommender system

"omg I want to watch this movie, but I have to search all of the streaming services individually to find out if it's even available" -> Scraper

"I have lots of tasks to do, but want them to interface with my calendar and follow a particular priority, and remind me according to some set of rules" -> To Do list

Build small things and write about them. Eventually some will find success and you can choose to keep building or not.

> getting dates is easy

Citation needed. I'm sure many here will vehemently disagree.

Some companies are better citizens than others.

However, ascribing a human value such as "caring" to a company is dangerous and ignores hidden motives of an unfeeling machine:

1. you don't know the internal politics and if you did you can't keep up with its changes. That's even difficult to do as an insider.

2. companies are by far and large focused entirely on maximizing something that is frequently adversarial to others (profits, shareholder value) in a time range unknown to us (see point 1).

They might in the short run appear to care, to gain good will in the short term and reap profits later. However as good will becomes less useful to their primary objective, it ceases. Find me a truly "caring" top-2 phone company.

Tldr: companies in the long run are either milking dollars or dead.

> the small USB device that you plug in to transfer files

I'm gonna go with USB Ethernet Dongle

The phrase describes a model. "All models are wrong, but some are useful".

What I think is useful from this quote is that across generations, people forget the horror of war. They forget what it actually means to push through hard work & living with mass dysfunction. They feel entitled to much and unwilling to take on dirty, unglorified but necessary work.

In addition to Jurafsky and Martin, I recommend Foundations of Statistical NLP by Manning and Schutze: https://nlp.stanford.edu/fsnlp/promo/

"God was very harsh with economists, as in Economics, the atom thinks, speaks and reacts" - Delfim Netto, Brazilian economist.