HN user
I'm a software engineer based in Toronto, Canada
its cool that it still works across all locales (US, UK) for words spelt differently between countries.
E.G. searching “aluminum” still got both US and UK results, even though the later writes it “aluminium”.
And which of those implications bare importance on string templating?
Of course there are examples of situations where this heuristic doesn't apply, but that doesn't mean its a bad idea that we should totally disregard. This kind of thinking has plagued engineering fields for a long time; Don Norman talks about it in "The Design of Everyday Things". Engineering teams get mad when users don't use their products the "right way", when really they just won't admit to themselves that they've implemented bad design. Simpler, cleaner designs and use patterns tends to win as time goes on.
This movie is incredible. To many people, its lack of characters and a traditional storyline makes it alienating and boring, but there’s such a deep beauty embedded within that. There might not be a story, but there is a narrative that is clearly commenting about our relationship to nature, and in lacking those traditional elements of mainstream cinema it exposes us to a new way of thinking. We see life on earth taken at face value; the scenes are familiar to us but without any characters or words to ground and bias us. I’ve always felt that its as close as we can get to observing earth for the first time from a distant place. It forces us to detach from all the basic axioms that fuel our day to day experience, and in doing so makes an extremely salient point about our societies relationship with nature. Paired with the words « life out of balance », its hard to complete a viewing without a sense of dread that we’re doing a wildly bad job of taking care of our planet.
Nice. Not only was I unaware that /leaders even existed, but the top profile has some great links to blogs and writers: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=tptacek
That's super interesting! I'd love get the names of some people working on that stuff.
This is true in principle, but the reality is more complicated. When we say “NP-complete is hard” we’re talking about worst-case complexity, and the average-case complexity is often much more tractable. Many industry problems are “well-behaved” and modern SAT solvers can solve them quickly.
This is a really cool point, no one ever mentioned this to me when I learned about this stuff at university. I wonder though, is there data for this ? Are businesses willing to take the risk and how do they mitigate ?
I'm not sure how popular they are in the wild, but there are a lot of approximation algorithms as well for solving version of these problems that are almost-but-not-quite the same. I wonder if that's just what lots of real-world use cases actually need.
Agreed.
He is presenting the list as "too be finished by X date", which within itself sort of implies trying to do it quickly, or at least that he is taking time into account while reading.
But it's not unreasonable that he make it through this list and enjoy everything. Half an hour a day really isn't much.
Phenomenal and related mini-doc on the subject of reading time and frequency: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIW5jBrrsS0
I should also add, page count is very much so dependant on font size.
Wow, thank you for sharing that. Most of us don’t like to discus death and we do our absolute best to pretend like it will never happen. It really pains me to read this and I hope you and your partner find some peace.
it’s nothing more than a decorated version of http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com but it does the job and works on mobile without me needing to understand much about css.
I’ve reflected on this argument recently but I struggle to see the real logic behind it. Putin claims he wants Ukraine as a neutral zone between russia and NATO. He then proceeds to invade Ukraine … if successful, territory under his control (whether explicitly shown or not, he could instil a puppet government) will now border NATO countries. How does that provide him with any security ?
There are recipes and sticky situations where having a near instant heat switch is a real convenience, if not a real life saver. That said, if you've made it this far you probably aren't going to get much out of them. I love gas because I love cooking with a direct flame, but I think from an environmental perspective we're going to have to start making due without them
Even though I can see the value in what you’re saying and agree completely, I can’t help but feel like my attention span has been ruined by my casual internet usage.
I’ve been reading again, before I go to bed, and after months of picking back up the habbit I still only feel half as able to concentrate on novels as I was as a teenager.
I agree with OP - the language seems to re-represent the languages key words in ways that are natural for Spanish speakers to understand.
I think the value this will bring isn't very high. I personally believe that early programming has less to do with reading the code as natural language and more to do with understanding what the individual constructs achieve. This is purely anecdotal, but I taught programming to a few students in French and the presence of English never came up as a blocker.
Fun story : for the hell of it, I once tried to code an entire project with some friends in French exclusively (that is, mainly variable/method/class names etc). As much as I love my mother tongue, its not always very concise. The whole thing became super bloated. We ended up reverting back to English.
I strongly believe that helping younger students gain strong intuition for these operators pays dividends towards their later success in maths.
I've always run into the following problem: I try to motivate multiplication as repeated addition, which does help with intuition, but then things totally fall apart when we move on from integers into fractional values.
1/2 * 1/2 -> 1/4.
Sure you can teach someone to simply multiple the numerator and denominator, but it doesn't necessarily help them make clear sense of what's going on.
Also, I learned that the french in school is nothing like the french they speak in France. Sure, you get by and they'll understand you, but french relies heavy on vernacular, sayings and expressions.
Virtually everyone who learns a language in school as you described will feel this way when they encounter native speakers in the target language's country(s) of origin.
The reality of school teaching is that it enforces prescriptive snapshots of the language. It teaches the grammatical "rules" of a language at a moment in time, but these rules are always changing. Common English has changed a lot since 1800; consider how different an English class in 1800s might be from one now, though they are both valid in being called English classes. The classes continue exist, but they are often lingering behind the real deal.
Language is developed naturally by our minds, and its inner workings are still largely unknown to us. The best way to learn it is by actual exposure to it, as it is meant to be used. You are always going to be removed from this reality if you are sitting in a classroom with minimal direct exposure.
Who are we considering to be google's customers here ? Someone will have to pay union fees and elect representatives, presumably. I can see this being a big hurdle for the idea.
In drawing the distinction between technologies that enable us to act on a decision we’ve already made versus those that try to make the decision for us, its interesting to note that the former is increasingly leading to the latter.
When I started using platforms like Netflix and Uber Eats, it was because I already knew the things I wanted to watch and eat, and they provided an easy way for me to act on those desires. As they became normalized parts of my day to day, it only seemed natural that I should start following their recommendations as well. Now it feels increasingly like I go to them to give me answers, unlike when I started out.
In the 1970s, a Canadian composer named Mort Garson composed a full electronic album meant to be played to house plants. It's called Mother Earth's Plantasia, because it was primarily distributed at plant boutique in L.A. named "Mother Earth".
My dad had a copy lying about that I used to listen to in high school when I'd be studying. It turns out its become a cult classic online, as a sort of pioneering electronic work [1][2]
Anyways, included with the original album is a wee book suggesting that plants benefit hugely from listening to music. Whether that claim has any basis in reality aside, Garson also names 15 hassle-free plants for the home. I can attest to the fact that they are easy to take care of as a relatively new indoor gardener.
They include:
Chinese Evergreen, Sansevieria, Spathiphyllum, Palm, Nephthytis, Philodendron, Boston Fern, Piggyback, Maranta, Dracaena, Dieffen-bachia, Aspidistra, Pothos, Ficus and Grape Ivy.
[1] https://www.sacredbonesrecords.com/collections/mort-garson
[2] https://www.dazeddigital.com/music/article/44931/1/mort-gars...
... deleted deleted, or soft deleted ? I guess there are probably many complications preventing hard deleting, other parties investigating abusive material might need or want access.
some impartial account of what really happened
This can be very hard to acquire, especially for events that we are far removed from. Then again, maybe it isn't necessary. Simply reading about a story twice with a deliberate bias on each side can be extremely revealing.
Would more people be inclined to do this if we taught it in schools? I hope so. These days it feels like the reporting of the news is more real to the general population than the news itself ..
I would recommend Joshua Foer "Moonwalking with Einstein" for those interested in memory. Spaced repition is effective to an extent, but I find the techniques explored in his book to be much more effective. The tl;dr is that you are much better off constructing "memory palaces" in your head. You pick a place you know extremely well (like your family home), and you imagine yourself navigating that space and "placing" reminders of the things you'd like to remember along the way.
It's like inventing a very surreal dream to help you avoid forgetting things. I use variants of it for things like people's names and ideas I'd like to explore all the time, it's super helpful.
Thanks for the great resources. Are you aware of any online communities that an amateur/hobbyist-linguist may benefit from?
Dang's done a super great job, especially recently with some huge threads related to the election.
I would like to raise one point that's tangentially related: why is it not easier to find a page explaining the community guidelines ? AFAIK you have to look them up yourself.
The navbar has links to new, threads, past, comments, ask, show, jobs and submit, but none of them even give a clear redirect link to get to the guidelines ... wouldn't it make sense to add them to nav, or configure the site such that they're displayed the first time you visit ? Always seemed a bit funny to me from a design perspective.
You can get a chart and hang it up in your kitchen. Moving to europe really opened my eyes up to following the seasons. The vegetables taste better, and you feel better knowing they didnt have to be imported from extremely far away
Is there a music buff's roadmap, some sort of a chronologically-ordered list of the best and most influential albums that gives a coherent picture of how music evolved over the 20th century?
This is a huge undertaking as a LOT of music has been made during that time period, covering a huge amount of genres and cultural movements. I think you're going to get overwhelmed.
Is there a reason why youre more concerned with the history of the medium than current releases ? We are living in one of the best times in history to access new music. It can be as simple as finding a reviewer/website you like and following their recommendations.
With that said, there are a lot of amazing albums that have been released in the past, this goes without saying. But like other people have mentioned, the best approach is an organic one. Find compilations of famous albums or singles, listen to them, focus on what you like, read up about the genre and find other recommendations. I find youtube is especially good at taking you down rabbit holes.
If you dont know where to start, you can look at 4chans music boards "essential" albums [1] and see what appeals to you. Never thought I would recommend something from that site but it actually did expose me to a lot of new stuff 10 years ago. Other popular sites like Pitchfork and Sputnik music tend to write articles about influential albums or genres.
If you are interested in the "why" behind some of the history, David Byrne (formerly of the Talking Heads) wrote a phenomenal book on the subject called "How Music Works", that explains a lot of important shifts in the mediums history.
I agree. Ultimately it was Facebooks decision to enact this policy. Why do people gravitate towards blaming him ? Is it just because they feel he’s lied to them and should be held accountable even though he may have only been naive ?
Its funny how in situations like this one, where one person facilitates another’s wrongdoing, they (Palmer) are put under the spotlight more so than the bad actor (Facebook)
This is why I was quite sad when IBM announced that RedHat would be continuing with “business as usual” ...
If motivation and ability are both already there, I usually find the easiest way to move past procrastination is to choose a small-mid sized task and set a 15 minute timer.
Committing to working on that task for 15 mins, even if I really dont feel like it, is usually enough to get the ball rolling.
I agree with you and I’ve been repeating this point to my close circle, though this article did (for the first time) make me sort of excited to see what will stick, if anything.
Take the searches for yeast and recipe, for example. I don’t think its totally farfetched to imagine that a sizeable handful of people have wondered, maybe for the first time, how to bake things like bread and cookies or how to make meatballs. It would be really cool if we actually saw these things’ growth in popularity persist in some tangible form into the future. These things have definitely existed for a long time, but I feel like we North Americans have been trending towards fast food and delivered meals for a few decades now.
For books it is usually just the same story told over and over again with the character names and forms changed.
I assume you’re referring to fiction ... there’s actually a whole field of study around this rooted in psychology, they’re called Jungian Archetypes. There’s a really fantastic book by Joseph Campbell called The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
I’m not sure what the current state of study is, its been a few years since I personally studied the concepts. It might be a nice change from the mundanity you seem to be describing