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thestephen

242 karma · joined June 14, 2017

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thestephen··on The Claude Delusion: Richard Dawkins believes his AI chatbot is conscious
Reads more like a dunk than a critique. When the interspersed commentary has to lift that hard for the criticism to land, it’s worth asking whether the Dawkins quotes actually support the reading or whether the reading is just being asserted around them.
thestephen··on Zed: High-performance AI Code Editor
Counterpoint: Zed wins me over because the LLM calls don't feel like magic - I maintain control over API calls unlike Cursor, which seems to have a mind of its own and depletes my API quota unexpectedly. Plus, Zed matches Sublime's performance unlike Cursor's laggy Electron VS Code foundation.
thestephen··on Desktop Windowing on Android Tablets
Emacs in its final form? Sadly, for those of us not versed in Elisp, such power remains a pipe dream.
thestephen··on Show HN: ts-remove-unused – Remove unused code from your TypeScript project
Great tool! It uncovered a surprising amount of unnecessary exports in our codebase. Really streamlines things.

One interesting observation: when using it with our Next.js project, it flags all page TypeScript files as unused. This inadvertently highlights a potential drawback of file-system based routing - it can lead to less explicit code relationships.

thestephen··on Ask HN: What are some tools / libraries you built yourself?
This solves a huge problem for me, and is easily worth three times the amount I paid for it. Thank you!
thestephen··on Best practices for remote software engineering
So I really enjoy the spatial paradigm with Muse. It feels like a digital whiteboard - I can paste images, resize them, throw them around, and ink over them, which makes it great for thinking. Compare this to Apple Notes, where each note acts like a document. I can ink, write and paste images into a note - but text, ink and images are all their separate blocks, flows from up to down, and cannot "interact" with each other.

Further, the Muse interface is very frictionless. Erasing ink is just holding a finger while using the Pencil. Switching tools is just swiping in on the screen with the pencil. Compare this to Apple Notes, where I usually need to chord several taps on different parts of the screen altogether just to change the tool or ink color.

thestephen··on Best practices for remote software engineering
ADHDer here. WFH was a nightmare the first six months, but the past few months have been working out great. My findings from this past year:

* Finding the right medication, in the right dose. Biggest QoL improvement. YMMV

* Whenever I get lost in the sauce and start spinning my wheels, I schedule a call with a colleague and ask them to help sort my priorities out. This also helps me with accountability, in a softer way than accountability-by-authority. This might require some self-awareness.

* Finding a note-taking/task management system that works for me. So far, I've been having the most success with a combination of Roam Research; Apple Notes and Muse for drawing/diagramming on my iPad; and Todoist for hard reminders.

* Getting enough physical activity. My headspace becomes awful if I don't get at least 30 minutes of walking in during the day.

* Finding my context shift to work mode. Most days, 15 minutes outdoors first thing in the morning after checking my task list is enough. For rougher days, I work from the café down the street.

* Avoiding social media before lunch, as it stresses me out.

* I found the eureka moments striking at odd times, like evenings or in bed. I rarely regret following these strokes of inspiration, but they can really throw my off my work/life balance. Cutting my days shorter (most days), and allowing myself to work when inspiration strikes (a couple times a week), has really helped in lowering my stress levels.

* A couple days a week without scheduled meetings. I can't focus if I know I'm going to have a meeting in 1 hour.

* Splurging on equipment. If I'm going to spend a lot of time in front of my screen, I might as well get that 4K 32" and a G915 TKL.

thestephen··on Ask HN: Do you create music? let's hear it
I picked up writing music a few years ago - something I had been longing to do since my early teens, but avoided because I hated the feeling of having no idea what I was doing.

I’ve been working on a track for the past few months. And for once, I’m really happy where it’s heading! Work and ‘rona are cutting into my energy levels hard right now, but I’d love to finish it up someday.

https://soundcloud.com/histeph/mstorsand-09

thestephen··on Me and ADHD
Consider trying elvanse / vyvanse.

While concerta did help in some sense, I had the same side effects as you. In my experience, Elvanse feels more like it "cures" my ADHD while retaining my personality and creativity. Oh, and (almost) no side effects!

thestephen··on Catalina is checking notarization of unsigned executables
Since 10.15.4, my 16" started having kernel panics while waking up from sleep. Disabling Power Nap seems to mitigate this.

While this is an awful stopgap solution, at least I can get back to work.

thestephen··on How Swedes were fooled by the book “Surrounded by Idiots”
> Is unconscious bias training the worst example of bullshit you have experienced in your professional life or the thing that has aggravated you the most?

I can't see the parent making this claim at all; are you sure that your interpretation is in good faith?

thestephen··on Differences Between Dating in Sweden vs. the States
> Homosexuality was legalized in 1944 in Sweden, compared to the U.S., where it was legalized nationwide in 2003.

While homosexuality was legalized in Sweden in 1944, it was classed as a mental disorder until 1979 and it wasn't until 2009 when same-sex marriage was legalized; five years after the first state in the US legalized it.

thestephen··on Google Just Gave 2B Chrome Users a Reason to Switch to Firefox
Safari hasn't been supported for Windows since 2012.
thestephen··on Why Evernote failed to realize its potential
I pull out my phone and use Beorg, which syncs with my Dropbox. The next time I'm at my computer, the notes are right there in Emacs.
thestephen··on The ups and downs of porting 50k lines of C++ to Go (2015)
I'm curious in what way static languages are "designed for developers who aren't good at coming up with abstractions", are "more work" and "slow down progress".

Those are quite strong statements to not be backed up by strong examples, and I personally find that your example does not clearly illustrate how that would make statically typed languages have the attributes you ascribe them.

thestephen··on BlazingSQL – GPU SQL Engine Now Runs Over 20X Faster Than Apache Spark
Further down in the article:

In our original demo, we ran a V100 GPU against 8 CPU nodes. The new T4 GPUs cut our cost in half, which meant we reduced the Apache Spark cluster to 4 CPU nodes in order to maintain price parity. Even with the reduced GPU memory, the whole workload ran significantly faster.

thestephen··on Ask HN: Tools for rational decision making?
Consider getting screened for ADHD by a professional.

While it's impossible to build a case from one anecdote, some aspects of your story are all warning bells – the hyperfocus on "unproductive" parts of the decisionmaking process, getting lost, decision fatigue, analysis paralysis, and lack of action unless there's external accountability.

Understanding these underlying problems are very helpful to be able to stick with the other tools provided in this thread.

thestephen··on Sweden Has a 70 Percent Tax Rate and It Is Fine
As a Swede, it is interesting to see people using Sweden's tax policies for arguments without fully following the studies on our tax policies. There are studies showing that the highest margin taxes in Sweden actually lose more money than they make, due to dynamic effects. In other words, Sweden is far to the right on the Laffer curve.

Even low and medium income people – for example, assistant nurses straight out of school – pay half of their wages in tax – even at the 2000 USD post-tax a month range.

And since the 20% margin tax on top of that kicks in already at the equivalent of ~50k USD a year »pre-tax«, this creates a situation where it is very hard to build capital just by working. Basically, you can only get wealthy by:

* Earning money with money (tax on capital is a flat 30% - or potentially even way less, if you use a special savings account),

* Founding the next iZettle or creating the next Minecraft,

* Or have bought real estate when it was 50-90% cheaper (that is, 5+ years ago).

In practice, this creates a system which hampers class mobility in Sweden. Even if you are in top 1% of wages, it will take decades for you to catch up to the capital gains of someone who bought an apartment close to Stockholm five years ago.

So perhaps it's safer to say that Sweden is fine _despite_ our 70% tax.

thestephen··on Second Canadian 'missing' in China
China is actually doing something similar right now, albeit in a different way: https://nordic.businessinsider.com/china-swedens-bizarre-feu...

Chinese tourists visiting a Swedish hostel in Stockholm sparked an international incident when they appeared on video screaming and crying and accusing local police of trying to murder them.

The "graveyard" they were dropped off at is more of a park, with a train station 8 minutes from the city.

thestephen··on Why Use F#?
While this was definitely true five years ago, I'm happily writing C# on a Mac with Rider today, having a great experience. Except for when looking up old documentation mostly relating to .NET Framework, I never feel like a second class citizen anymore.

Today, the old "run visual studio on Windows" constraint is more of a "you probably want to code in something that understands the language well, so Visual Studio, VS Code or Rider – but you really don't have to".

thestephen··on Absolute Beginner's Guide to Emacs (2012)
The behaviour you have for Windows is available for Mac with Karabiner-Elements. It's tremendously helpful.
thestephen··on ‘I’m Broke and Mostly Friendless, and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life’
> Are you saying pills will fix that?

No, that's not what the parent is saying.

It's completely possible to be a neurotypical person and "getting into the wrong mentality", as you are saying. But that is why the parent suggested a -screening-, rather than diagnosing the person over the internet. Because if it is ADHD, there is help to be found that is much more effective than "just change your mentality around things". In fact, I'd personally suggest a more general screening, as there is a high comorbidity with ADHD and other psychological issues.

Further, getting a diagnosis is not only about the medical treatment itself. Understanding one's problems goes a long way in coping with the symptoms.

thestephen··on Microservices Are Something You Grow Into, Not Begin With
To be fair, here is a direct quote from the parent:

»In the end, it's absolutely the case that a movement to microservices is something that should be evolutionary, and in direct need to technical requirements.«

I would argue that what you did is exactly that. Perhaps with the caveat that it should have been done earlier.

I'm not reading tha parent arguing that one should stick with a monorepo/monolith until the end of time, but rather providing a few thoughts around what might cause a push in applying microservices incorrectly.

thestephen··on Quitting my job has been the best thing I've done for my career
Have you tried, or considered trying org-mode?

I found that once I got over the hurdle of learning emacs, the friction in managing tasks once you have learned the tool is nearly nil.

Further, it definitely supports embedded latex fragments, exporting to pdf, etc.

thestephen··on iOS 12 released
Although not _every_ product, such a thing exists! https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ikea-place/id1279244498?mt=8
thestephen··on iOS 12 released
I would guess that OP means that it is overly satured, and therefore that some color information is lost.

I noticed this sometimes happening for a few seconds when switching out from some apps that play video while having high brightness. I haven't had it occur permanently, though.

thestephen··on To Remember Everything You Learn, Surrender to This Algorithm (2008)
I assign a mnemonic to a composite (usually radicals, sometimes combinations of radicals). timerol's example in this thread is excellent; here's another example.

脂: Meaning: Fat. Consists of 旨 (tasty) and 月 (moon). However, mnemonically, 月 occurs in many characters referring to "flesh" of some kind, and as such is what I often use as a mnemonic cue. This creates the quite natural mnemonic cue of "tasty flesh". As such, when seeing this kanji, my thought process when repeating the character goes something like "the tasty part of flesh - the fat!".

thestephen··on To Remember Everything You Learn, Surrender to This Algorithm (2008)
This type of learning, combined with applying the knowledge learned, is easily one of the biggest lifehacks I've encountered.

Growing up, I (falsely) internalized that I somehow had a hard time learning languages. However, with the help of Anki, that has an algorithm based on SuperMemo, I realized that this wasn't the case - just that the traditional textbook methods weren't for me when it comes to cramming in "arbitrary" information.

While living in Japan, I used Anki to supplement my recognition of kanji. I averaged roughly 7 minutes of studies for a year, internalizing the meanings and readings of roughly 1000 characters with a 95% retention rate.

Judging from my peers, the only ones that managed to pick up this volume were those that studied the language full-time. Of course, they learned the language overall at a much higher level than I did - this methodology purely focused on the recognition aspect.

Naturally, I got to put the characters to use living in the country, and I also spent time making up mnemonics for each character. Your mileage may vary.

thestephen··on Open source tutorial for Hackintosh installation
I don't understand what you are "disagreeing" on. What OP is saying: The new Macbooks are very expensive, and it has quality issues (keyboard). Neither is it user serviceable. Most of the product line is also out of date.

It's not about performance, which in the terms of Apple's latest hardware (that is, only part of their product line) is perfectly fine. Yes, a specced Macbook is fast, but that does not relate to anything by OP.

thestephen··on Are My Friends Really My Friends?
I am in the same age group and had the same experience as you when it comes to friends in the childhood.

However, I have a different experience than you when it comes to adulthood. While I do have acquaintances I have great conversations with in niche areas, I have some very close friends I share a lot with.

This did not come for free. Intimate, strong friendships was something formed by engaging in self-disclosure and intimacy, and slowly escalating this behavior. This can be hard, and from my experience, men are less used to this form of bonding.

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