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stakkur

1,564 karma · joined September 25, 2019

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stakkur··on Why Is The Guitar Tuned Like It Is?
There are many guitar 'tunings', and many predate the 'standard' tuning the article refers to. Also, players make up different ones all the time, including using capos to temporarily change 'tuning' on the fly. The 'standard' tuning is by no means the only one.
stakkur··on Learning Is Remembering
If storing information and creating associations between bits of it were 'learning', then databases would be very smart indeed.

No, learning is not 'storing pieces of information in long-term memory and recalling them'. It's not the ability to recall information. At the very least, learning is information+behavior change+understanding+values and attitudes associated with the information. It's much more complex than memorization and recall.

stakkur··on Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring
Ah, cue the long thread of “No because my special combination of hardware/special configuration demands caused problems so Linux bad!”
stakkur··on Gen Z never learned to read cursive
* In order to write cursive legibly, you need to slow down*

And right there is one of the crucial cognitive and proprioceptive benefits of handwriting over ‘keyboarding’.

stakkur··on Gen Z never learned to read cursive
This is not true, of course. In the US, millions of students still learn and write cursive. Yes, even in public schools. Is it uniformly taught/practiced? No, but it’s far from ‘dying out’. My wife is a 20+ year public school teacher, and daughter attends a Waldorf school.

And all criticisms I read of cursive seem to utterly ignore the proven cognitive and other benefits of handwriting, instead focusing on ‘efficiency’ and ‘speed’ or—even sillier—comparing it to ‘keyboarding’ as if handwriting’s only value is its utility.

stakkur··on Privacy vs. “I have nothing to hide” (2019)
A: "I have nothing to hide!"

B: "Then stop wearing clothes."

A: "That's stupid, it's against the law to run around naked in public!"

B: "So what if we had privacy laws like that?"

A: "That's stupid, I have nothing to hide!"

stakkur··on Let’s make WordPress officially support SQLite
I would go further than the writer and say SQLite would be appropriate for almost all WP applications. Offhand, I can’t think of a meaningful use case that would make MySQL more preferable to SQLite.
stakkur··on Brickit scans your pile of bricks and gives you ideas, with instructions
Thereby defeating the fundamental benefit of playing with Legos. So much software tries so hard to replace what never needed replacing.
stakkur··on Queen Elizabeth II has died
As Queen, she met 14 US Presidents (15 total) and 16 Prime Ministers (17 total). Whatever our feelings toward the anachronism of hereditary monarchies, she's been a participant in (and witness to) a significant amount of modern history.
stakkur··on Reddit's favorite products in one place
frequency of appearance != favorite.
stakkur··on TIL: You can access a user’s camera with just HTML
Yep, I do.
stakkur··on TIL: You can access a user’s camera with just HTML
Reason #368 why I cover all cameras and disable mics by default, and only uncover/enable when in use.
stakkur··on Responding to recruiter emails with GPT-3
In fact, this is most recruiter inquiries.
stakkur··on U.S. life expectancy drops sharply, the second consecutive decline
Consider the dataset. Adjust expectations accordingly.
stakkur··on Mikhail Gorbachev has died
Russia didn’t ‘transition to democracy’. This seems to be a particularly American fantasy.
stakkur··on Welcome Home, Garry Tan
Based only on your comment, I'm guessing you're unaware of Palantir's work with intelligence agencies even when Tan was there. Also, Thiel's mission from the start was this kind of work.

I served in the Marine Corps. I've had some exposure to Palantir's 'offerings'. It's a fucking nightmare of a company, morally and ethically, and it always has been.

stakkur··on Welcome Home, Garry Tan
I have no strong opinion of Tan, but calling a person who happily worked for (and profited from) Palantir a 'moral canary in a coal mine' seems a bit of a stretch.
stakkur··on We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know
After requesting the crack pipe from my fellow traveler, I conclude that the answer doesn’t matter. The universe Is.
stakkur··on We compiled a library of realistic engineering take-home tests and ranked them
There’s no such thing as a ‘realistic engineering take-home test’. When will we admit tests are not only unrealistic, but an utterly useless predictor of…anything?
stakkur··on Investors bought a quarter of US homes sold last year
Every conversation about “NIMBYs” and “we don’t have enough affordable housing” needs to account for this. Building doesn’t lower prices, it creates a fat investment opportunity.
stakkur··on Ask HN: How do you organize or rename PDF files (books, papers, etc)?
I've used pikepdf (a Python lib) with success: https://github.com/pikepdf/pikepdf
stakkur··on Brian Kernighan adds Unicode support to Awk
It's somewhat comforting to hear even Brian K. say he doesn't understand Git well.
stakkur··on I love my GPD Micro PC
When I see expensive ($600+), small niche toys like this, I always think "what is that, a keyboard for ants?" I appreciate clever ideas, but it has to be practical--and my hands (and neck and shoulders) need a usable keyboard. Otherwise, it's a toy.
stakkur··on You can’t buy one square foot of land in Scotland and become a Scottish lord
But can you become a laird?
stakkur··on RavynOS – Finesse of macOS, freedom of FreeBSD
The challenge of course will always be hardware—notice the evolution of Asahi Linux on Apple hardware and how difficult it is. Then, throw in the device driver hellscape (wifi cards, drives, sound, video, etc.)

This OS sounds like a dream for me, but I have to imagine it will take many years and a lot of willing experimenters to make it usable. I wish I had that kind of time.

stakkur··on We need young programmers; we need old programmers
The part missing from all conversations about 'young' vs. 'old' programmers is: what about 'old' people who enter the field late, and aren't multiple-decade veterans of it?

That is where rampant ageism really happens. We don't just need old, highly experienced programmers; we need programmers of all ages.

stakkur··on The value of owning more books than you can read (2018)
For me, the problem is time, and the result that there's a finite number of books I have time left to read. https://jamesgill.net/pagecount/
stakkur··on Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok
“The prevailing opinions of my peers shows them idiots, while I walk enlightened but unheard” —Oscar Wilde
stakkur··on Why does anything exist?
Wrong question.
stakkur··on 'Too many employees, but few work': Pichai, Zuckerberg sound the alarm
A reasonable test of 'productivity': if you fire large swaths of employees and 'productivity' remains the same, was it a failure of management, or of the employees?

I'm just kidding. Measuring employee 'productivity' is one of the biggest hand-waving magical misdirection performances in business. The mistake is employees think it means 'working hard' or 'smart', or whatever. The truth is it doesn't really mean anything, but too many people are heavily invested in it being a thing.

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