HN user
Don't offer them your typewriter(s) yet.
The results reveal that it is possible (around a 5% chance) for a single chimp to type the word "bananas" in its own lifetime.
https://phys.org/news/2024-10-monkey-unable-hamlet-lifetime-...
This reminds me- I gotta go back and reread Borges's short stories with ML theory in mind.
I've read the latest Weir book (Project Hail Mary) and the two prominent Watts books (Blindsight and Echopraxia) recently and they were all memorable but frustrating.
Weir writes like a blogger who also writes script treatments but doesn't actually read novels. He throws plot at you every page ("ok so this happened so I need to do this next") which makes his books readable, but he has zero character development. His characters appear, react to external stimuli and solve problems, but don't change over time.
Watts's books, on the other hand, could use some of Weir's plot juice. Very cool ideas and interesting scenes, but the plots were hard to discern. I had no idea what needed to happen to resolve conflict most of the time. Echopraxia was particularly confusing. Watts did a Reddit AMA shortly after Echopraxia came out where he was put on the spot to explain fundamental plot elements.
Watts Reddit AMA: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2enwks/iama_science_f...
Watts also gave a real-sounding lecture on vampirism, which is enjoyable if you liked that in his books: https://youtu.be/wEOUaJW05bU?si=6fTMtmf9yA8JT9at
I did not expect to read such a great story in this thread. Thanks for taking the time to write that. It was great.
Agreed. Also, look who they're learning from. Growing up in the 90s, I had my everyday IRL friends but also some BBS friends. In that latter peer group--pseudo anonymous and extremely online--edgelord morality prevailed.
For any Sergio Aragones fans out there, the Cartoonist Kayfabe interview he did where he told the story of how he first got hired at MAD is amazing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vm5jk2RadxU
The Corporate Memphis of AI models.
Both sides of the RTO bell curve (the abusers and the hyper dedicated) are taking a hit here.
For an example of the latter, it's the people who can stomach a long commute three days a week but not five.
I like this. And there's a time and place for everything. If I were inclined to try this boiled chicken, hell yeah I'm going to appreciate that I'm getting served the real chicken I saw earlier AND I believe in developing that kind of kitchen culture about caring for what you make. But I also still eat pizza from the shop down the street when hungry and impatient.
Other long, hard, stupid things I like to do: read novels, take walks, invest my time to learn fundamentals of a practice
Short, easy, stupid things I like to do: skip the occasional long post on hackernews and just read the comments, automate and simplify my work, watch short videos on how to fix broken things, send one-line emails instead of sit through meetings
I'm a big sci-fi reader as well, and I'm on a tear this year after neglecting the genre for about a decade. I find Stephenson's books to take a lot of headspace, and I don't always have that. But I do like giving books another shot at my time after a few years. I finally gave Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl another attempt and I'm enjoying it much more than I thought I would.
He knows exactly what owning a product means. His subtext is "if you're going to talk about owning something, please add specificity to your claim."
Interesting. I just found his channel. What does he lie about? Factual stuff or MS history?
Her Lucky in Love blog post (1) includes this premise:
Even after all her years of research, she’s still excited by love. “You’re trying to win life’s greatest prize — which is a life partner and a chance to send your DNA to the future..."
How novel! I met my now-partner a long time ago and we quickly agreed neither of us wants kids. 16 years later, we're pretty happy with each other. I guess you could call this a powerful extinctive adaptation.
(1) https://ideas.ted.com/what-does-it-mean-to-be-lucky-in-love/
I just finished Cahokia Jazz. Best novel I've read in the last few years. The prose, plot, and characters were all exceptionally excellent. And I was surprised to learn the author is British!
I think you mean perpetual license, unless you really do mean a license that covers the clitoris or penis.
Or accidentally let something egregious happen under his watch and then tried to cover it up, like a data compliance violation
Yes!! Chubby Emu is excellent.
It costs how much?!
The author's not wrong. Cost comes with lack of accountability in my experience. In turn, my devsecops dept (~20 people) has kept costs down by holding monthly AWS accountability meetings. "Who owns this and why does it exist?" is the leading question.
The all-you-can-eat buffet problem
Valid point. But I've gotten far in my career by specializing in AWS. It's not going anywhere soon. It's the one cloud provider I would say you should go all-in on. Azure maybe next. GCP? Come on. Conversely, I just got an email from Heroku saying they're retiring one of my free-tier databases that I still use.
Culture of simplicity eats strategy of complexity for breakfast
Orgs, please retire this saying. I hear this everywhere. It's lost a lot of meaning. Just spell out what your org does better than the rest of the pack.
Ha. The NSA or Amazon. Just log in through Amazon SSO and it matches your purchase history against a variety of candidates. Medical purchases excluded for a fee.
Such is the paradox of tourism. We want authentic experiences but depend on experts to define authenticity. Walker Percy captured this well in his essay "The Loss of the Creature." He wrote it in the early 20th century. Presently, it seems like people have a tough time enjoying something unless they gram it.
Your conclusion exemplifies the essay's argument that we pick facts that confirm our most compelling narrative.
what I feel are the worst parts of the mythologized "Russian soul."
I think I understand. I like reading postcolonial literary criticism because it asks us to consider any kind of national literary identification with skepticism. So I gotta ask: when you were growing up, what American literature did you encounter and what did you think of it?
FWIW I think I like Gogol's and Maxim Gorky's short stories most of all the Russian lit I've read.
Elves are almost eugenetically born all the same
Elves are fictive and have a long literary history--mostly publicized by white Europeans. Originally, they were described as evil creatures who infected people with diseases. Tolkien stepped into the folklore at a particular time and place and offered his interpretation. Sticking to a tradition in which they're all genetically similar--and white--is also just an interpretation. My point is that there's no elf manual that everyone needs to stick to.
You point out a good detail with Pinocchio. But again, Collodi offered his interpretation of a folk tale. In Collodi's text [1], the fish that swallowed Pinocchio is described as "Pesce-cane grosso come una casa di cinque piani e con un treno della strada ferrata in bocca" -- "huge shark [technically 'dog-fish'] like a five-story house and train on a railroad in its mouth." It was subsequent interpretations, like Disney's first version, that portrayed the fish as a whale.
So I don't think it's woke, or too liberal or whatever, to portray elves as different skin colors. We shouldn't keep them white just to avoid pissing off certain audiences.
1: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/52484/52484-h/52484-h.htm
Never heard of this guy, but I LOVE Breece Pancake's stories. Just read the first few pages of Waiting for Nothing, and I'm hooked. Thanks for posting this.
This reminded me-- years ago, I ran into an old high school friend and asked him what he had been up to. He had gotten into graphic design and wound up partnering with a couple of guys who had a recording studio. They had a niche product and needed cover art -- and lots of it. He explained to me that they would release albums of fart noises on iTunes -- like many, many albums -- and the tracks would get a ton of plays, and people would purchase the albums. The partners made enough to pay him a good salary for just illustrating fart album cover art.
To each their own! Before switching to app development, I was an English teacher. I moved several times with a ton of books and art and objects, but that shit is a bear to move with. So I gradually winnowed it all down to just a couple bookshelves and a Kindle.
These days, once I read a book, I usually divest myself of it unless it's absolutely amazing or I need to refer to it. I found out my neighbor has made a living by writing, and his house is full of books. It fits his personality as a historian. But I love my mostly bare, white walls. Keeping so many books around would feel to me like keeping a bunch of tabs permanently open in the browser -- ick!
My wife and I learned on manuals and thought it would be fun to return to one for our car, back in 2013. Well, it was fun for a few years, but then I switched jobs, and my daily commute had regular bumper to bumper traffic. That sucked the fun right out of it.
Not with that attitude!
I once got bedbugs at a hostel in Argentina. They were kind (?) enough to refund my money, but then I was left uncomfortably itchy and roomless. Plus I was freaked out that there might be bedbugs in my clothes and backpack. I bought some detergent and booked a room at the Hilton, put every belonging I had in the tub and filled it up. I've wondered at times what kind of gross stuff happens in hotels, but on this night, I was the gross one.
I'm sorry this happened. I sympathize with this guy! But a lengthy screed against a former employer is not going to open any doors, no matter how accurate it might be. Ideally, every nuanced interpersonal conflict could be handled by dialogue, but the typical hiring process doesn't allow for that. Personally, I wouldn't take the chance of ruining my own reputation by hiring a candidate with a site like this.
It's right after the second set of dashes.