kmtrowbr

This is a Rails tool I use: https://github.com/IFTTT/polo — it works well.

I see -- my apologies I must not have read it closely enough! :blush:

I thought this was a funny statement too. Text is the most powerful, original medium. It's difficult to overstate how powerful and valuable it is. Of course, text won't necessarily be the only UI exposed for interacting with these "Large Language Models." But that UI can be built on top of the text -- which wouldn't work in the other direction.

This is from one of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books. They're with Slartibartfast driving onto the factory floor for creating planets. Slartibartfast, as you recall, is a famous "world designer" who won an award for designing the Fjords of Norway.

On the seal: "melius simul quam solus" means: "better together than alone." On the scale of extravagant perks and celebrations of success it is a fairly minor and inexpensive one.

Lots of comments about small improvements to typing efficiency. It is an important topic.

One thing I do, is turn the key repeat speed up as fast as I can stand, and turn the delay to repeat down as low as possible. I have always done this and over the years I've experimented to find the fastest possible settings.

On the Mac, use:

defaults write NSGlobalDomain KeyRepeat -int 1

defaults write -g InitialKeyRepeat -int 7

See: http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=2009082319301814...

After getting so used to these fast speeds, when I see folks attempting to type with the slow default speeds ... it is quite hilariously slow and I must confess I feel a little pity for them.

https://www.etymonline.com/word/machine

machine (n.) 1540s, "structure of any kind," from Middle French machine "device, contrivance,"

contrive: to form or create in an artistic or ingenious manner

According to these definitions a machine is something that humans create.

We understand what we create. When trying to understand complex things, we form metaphors based on our actual understanding.

Whichever is the most advanced thinking of the age is used at a metaphor to describe life and nature. When it was steam, we used popularly understood concepts of steam engines to describe life. When it was electricity, we used electrical metaphors. Now that it is computers, we use those concepts.

We are also very overconfident regarding how well we understand and control the world. Having achieved smashing success in some areas, we then think we have total control. Chronological snobbery, if you will: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronological_snobbery

The danger is then, at a popular level, we take the metaphor literally and turn it around to be something reductive: "Life is no more than a machine." That is frankly not true: this is where the metaphor falls apart & it's the danger the article describes. Life is more than a steam engine, it's more than electrical circuits, and it's also not a computer.

Life may be a purely material phenomenon (i.e. no more than atoms, void, and time), but that does not mean it is "just a steam engine / computer" etc.

Yes -- my wife and I are both from the northern midwest. We live in San Francisco now. We are actually colder here in the winters, then we ever were in the midwest, because houses in San Francisco are not insulated, and don't have good heating systems. Whereas houses in the midwest are essentially little heating plants.

Life in the midwest is organized around staying warm and it works very well.

We do appreciate the blue skies and the sun of California, however. In the midwest in the winter, you can often go weeks without seeing the sun.

We also like the houses in California. They're historic and beautiful and in many cases greatly elegant. Also, easy (arguably continuous) outdoor access is a beautiful thing. But there is great irony in paper maché houses being, relatively, so much more expensive.

You have a good point. It doesn't necessarily need to be consciously programmed into people. Maybe it's just the hive mind forming memes. All those minds reading, thinking, looking, creating ... causes strange ideas (myths?) to percolate throughout society. Similar to the birth of religions perhaps?

It seems crazy to say but I think it may all boil down to a massive influx of inexperienced readers. That plus the fact that most content on on the internet is not to be taken quite at face value.

Counterintuitively I believe there are more people reading and communicating textually than ever before. Way more! That would be good except they are doing it all via the Internet which is an absolute free for all of weaponized content, created for commercial or political purposes.

Critical reading and thinking skills are needed to navigate the internet.

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This book is kind of funny: [The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind](https://www.amazon.com/Origin-Consciousness-Breakdown-Bicame...) ... but it is good for hypothesizing about how consciousness has evolved. The relevant part to this discussion is when he writes about people literally being driven insane by the birth of writing. They were just unable to integrate the new influx of information quickly enough. Imagine your dog for example, learning to read. It would be quite the experience for poor Fido.

The printing press, in time, caused the reformation, the enlightenment, etc. But it was a bumpy road along the way.

My point is that, everyone having the internet in their pocket will have a larger impact than anyone anticipates today.

It's even worse: the views that folks are getting all worked up about, aren't their own personally formed opinions -- they are being programmed with these opinions via media, advertising, etc.

Then we hold these opinions so strongly that if we disagree about anything at all -- any nuance, out of the infinite menu of "correct" opinions -- we argue bitterly ... driving apart friends, families, etc.

We must learn to hold opinions more lightly and to value direct experiences & physical relationships with real people, more than virtual experience.

It's sad because at the end of the day we all have so much in common, but we are becoming convinced that we're so different and what's more, that others are in fact evil people. Great pain and trouble might come from this trend.

Thank you. I appreciate your comments. It does make sense that most of the heat from a gas stove does not go into the cooking vessel. In fact I often use the electric kettle to speed cooking by pre-boiling water, then adding it to the cooking pot. And I also can see that the unvented exhaust from the combustion of the gas is unhealthy. And also, that leaks of gas into the atmosphere from poorly maintained pipes adds significant further greenhouse gases, as we know natural gas is a far worse greenhouse gas than CO2.

Regarding, the timing of it all, I guess at the root my attitude here, is one of frustration, where ... we have known about this for literally 100 years, but we just don't care. Now we make theatrical laws, but current events are more of the same: warmongering and blowing one another up is more interesting than actually addressing our biggest problem: climate change.

But by all means I am all for whatever we can do and I agree we should do all the helpful things ASAP.

My concern with the law was that I honestly wasn't entirely convinced it's actually the right thing to do. But I certainly appreciate those three points you made above.

Do you feel this law makes sense as well for colder areas that require homes to be heated?

The internet has successfully changed my mind! A very rare event. No need to appeal to bad faith. I simply received an engineering education which taught me that a great deal of energy is lost along the way to delivering electricity to houses, so that, for the purposes of generating heat, it's usually best to simply generate the heat via the primary route. I also grew up in the Northern Midwest & had to pay electric bills of $800 / month for rentals heated via electric baseboards.

http://insideenergy.org/2015/11/06/lost-in-transmission-how-...

However -- thanks to the free further education I have received here, I now understand the argument for electric stoves (gas stoves less efficient due to heat loss around the sides of the pot and also unhealthy due to combustion in a living space).

Going a step further, do you think that heating houses (e.g. furnaces) as well should be exclusively done via electricity?

I am aware that these laws are for urban areas in California (which don't require much heating). But, I am curious to what extent the argument for greater efficiency & health holds up for the heating of houses and for colder geographic areas, considering that quantity of heat required is much higher, and also that the furnaces are vented much more aggressively.

I don't see how it makes sense: the electricity has to be generated, which is almost always via burning something to heat a boiler. Then the electricity is sent to houses via the grid, which involves further losses. So you burn something, make heat, make electricity, send the electricity though wires, to make heat. Vs, just making heat directly in the house to accomplish the job.

If all our electricity came from renewable power then sure, I agree. But most does not. So, this seems like putting the cart before the horse. Why not focus on improving how we generate electricity before we tear out all the gas?

My undergrad degree was electrical engineering. Basically, it seems visible to everyday people, and theatrical, but not that helpful or practical. Happy to hear how I'm wrong. I am certainly very concerned about the environment.

A useful, related website: https://explainshell.com/

I am not a violent person. I always seek to de-escalate at every turn & I'm very good at it.

Most incidents turn on the smallest details. A 4' metal pole with a sharp point on the end is a very meaningful thing to have in your hand. 99% of any incidents will be with dogs. So it's more about appearing big and formidable than it is actually needing to fight. Do not run. Stand, brandish your weapon, and make noise. People aren't that different from dogs. This is one of nature's strategies: appear big & scary.

If you were hiking and descending many challenging pistes with slippery rocks and whatnot, you would be happy to have a walking stick to help you.

You're right! That's benefit #4.

I suppose it's different for each person, depending upon their age their health.

For me, sometimes it's easier to just kinda, jog or sorta, "controlled fall" down the hill, in this case, the walking sticks should be held in your hand. But at other times, you go slow and lever yourself down with the poles.

Of course, the big downside of the poles if that you're constantly fiddling with them. They're noisy and take effort.

It is very similar to the role of walking sticks (trekking poles) in long distance walking -- the poles serve a few functions, in reverse order of importance: 3) Potent threat / weapon agains dogs or strangers (this has only been useful a few times in many years but, still it's nice to have a big stick in your hand sometimes). 2) Keep yourself from falling if you slip or on challenging terrain, which means you can take more risks and move faster.

... but by far the most useful is: 1) As you are walking, you push yourself forward at the top of your stride. There is a moment where the big muscle in your arm can be put to use, basically making walking "feel" about 15% easier. It makes walking into more of a whole body effort, so you can go faster and further without getting tired.

There are morning w/coffee books and, nighttime books. For me, history works well for night time. The 18th or 19th century. Ancient works. YA novels. Something which will take you out of your day and into another place mentally. Examples of bad books to read before bed: business books, technical books, self-help.

The reason that comprehension is decreased, is that when using a smartphone, you are mentally in the "world" of the smart phone, no doubt different for each person, but for me involving a bunch of unconscious behaviors such as: swiping, changing from app to app, scrolling, etc. The phone is a focal point & battleground of the attention economy. So many forces attacking your attention, few of which are in your best interests or serve your goals.

An iPhone can be configured to work in your interests, but it takes quite a bit of effort. Aggressively curate the notifications. Turn most of them off. Put the phone on silent. Turn on all the "humane" features Apple has developed: the focuses, "wind-down," the sleep aids, etc. At night, leave your phone on your desk. Do not take it into your bedroom. Read a book in the bedroom.

Try to use the phone to achieve specific goals, which you pre-mediate. That's the goal.

Paper books exist in a totally different and simpler economy. It's not that they're perfect, but they're simpler. They're more about authors genuinely communicating their thoughts directly to you. There's an innocence lacking from smartphones.

You can feel this if you pay attention. A smartphone gives me a stimulated, "something cool around the next corner," "on the verge of fulfillment" kind of feeling. That's why it can suck you in for literal hours if you let it. The feeling in many cases is a lie. You'll find yourself just swiping and tapping for no reason at all, just automatically, unconsciously. That's the trick of "variable rewards" e.g. a phone is a slot machine. A book is a quieter more peaceful feeling. You're just reading the author's words, one after another. You have no option to switch to something else. The magic of books is created by your own active attention & focus. Some people can probably achieve this on a phone, but it's definitely harder.

The point of the external hard drives is really just to have a backup. I don't have a 1TB collection of files that I need to access from multiple places. So I would never try to access my big backup from my phone. I don't do that kind of work from my phone, ever. If you're in that situation, something like Dropbox might help, provided that it doesn't eat all your CPU. Good for you! Glad it's working out.

Dropbox works well for small files that you need to share with others. However, if you use it to back up large amounts of data ... say >100GB, the experience of using it is very poor. It consumes large amounts of CPU continually. It takes forever to run to completion (literally in some cases, in my case it ran for weeks before I gave up on it). An external hard drive is of comparable cost to Dropbox, and a one-time cost, not something you need to pay for, forever. It runs to completion in 20 minutes. You can keep multiple versions of it in different physical locations. It's conceptually simple with fewer points of failure.

Personally I tried using several different cloud backup solutions, but I gave up on them. A few encrypted external hard drives, updated every month or two in a repeatable way (e.g. a bash script), one at home, one at work ... and backup is a solved problem. Of course, to each their own.

The human mind is designed to solve problems, and so this is its mode. It perceives death as a problem & in doing so, sets itself an unsolvable problem. Also, consider that human language can describe things and situations which are nonsensical. Yet we have a very hard time imagining "not existing." There is no experience associated with nonexistence. Time will not "zip forward." If we are "reconstituted," as imagined here, we will have no memory of any prior existence. Or if, in the infinite permutations, we do remember, how odd and what a perverse reality that would be. This all may have already happened many times. These are the boundaries of our experience. You can have any attitude you like towards this, but why not a positive attitude which will lead you to enjoying this existence as much as possible, and also helping others to do the same?

Lucretius laid out The Nature of Things very well in 79 A.D.: https://philosophybreak.com/articles/why-death-is-nothing-to...

Yes! I love this one. It's my favorite too.

This is not true -- he does give good advice, it's just that it can be summarized in a single page. In fact the last page of the book has his 12 tips. They are widely shared across the internet -- here is one such place: https://fastlifehacks.com/matthew-walker-12-tips-for-good-sl...

So the book is mostly documenting his research into the negative effects of a lack of sleep. Totally worthy and interesting. But the great thing for YOU is that you don't need to read the book. Just those 12 tips.

I'm 41. Over the years I have tried lots of ways to sleep well: various herbs, pills, etc. Ultimately I found, for me, there's no way to hack it. Good sleep is a part of lifestyle. Matthew Walker says the most important thing is routine: now I get in bed at 9:30pm, I read for an hour, I fall asleep around 11pm, I wake up at 6:55, etc. Almost every day, I allow some flex on the weekend. And a party is a party, I give myself a freebie on those (sadly increasingly rare) occasions.

You must get reasonable daily exercise. You can't drink a lot of alcohol and expect to sleep well. Don't bring your devices into the bedroom, read a paper book. Try to get cozy at night. Chamomile tea is wonderful. Look into sleep masks as I found as I got older I became more sensitive to light & a sleep mask helps. Spend some money on your bedroom: a good mattress, fan, blinds, the right temperature, etc.

It totally works! I sleep fantastic these days! Best of luck to you in turn.

I always use Occam's Razor: the simplest explanation is the likeliest. It's one of the foundations of how I think. I often see people spinning off with increasingly improbable theories as to why something happened, and I try to explain this principle, but it's surprisingly difficult to teach. It's a sort of circuit breaker that helps you think straight.

I also use "assume good intent." This is similar to Hanlon’s Razor referenced elsewhere in this thread, it's a bit simpler though. Most people are trying their best. The modern world is extremely complicated. The result of "assume good intent" is that you have a bit more patience and empathy when working with others.

Well, thank you -- I shall endeavor to better contain my enthusiasm in the future, and also to correctly attribute the invention of windsurfing to Polynesian tribes.

Yes -- Newton WAS employed to combat currency counterfeiting: https://www.uh.edu/engines/epi2380.htm

I adore Benjamin Franklin and I've read many many books about him.

This is my favorite biography of Franklin: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0300095325/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...

It is also very worth reading his actual writing -- one anthology is "The Portable Benjamin Franklin" -- it's quite long, but it gives you a much better sense of who he was. Benjamin Franklin himself was a better writer than ANY of his biographers: https://www.amazon.com/Portable-Benjamin-Franklin-Penguin-Cl...

Ultimately he is a very amorphous, playful, and loving individual. In some ways you might think of him as being like David Bowie or the Beatles. A person, who having achieved wealth and fame, used it in the best possible way. If you have read the book "Finite and Infinite Games," he was playing the Infinite Game.

Not that he needs more adulation! But as you dig deeper in Franklin becomes more mysterious & that part of him is not appreciated enough. The icon is not the man, if that makes sense.

My favorite Franklin anecdote: "Did you know that Benjamin Franklin invented windsurfing?" It's not strictly true, but he loved kites, and loved swimming (he was one of the first swimming educators as, in the 18th century many people had a deathly fear of water and many many people drowned) and one day, he was swimming on his back, while flying a kite, and he noticed it dragged him through the water very quickly. "I believe this could be a mode of transport, or of recreation," (paraphrased) he wrote in a letter.

I drive, walk, and bike often in San Francisco. I rode a 650cc motorcycle for 10 years when I was in my 20s.

In the Panhandle, for example, there is a mixed use bike / walking path. It is very dangerous for the walkers even with normal bikes, as the bikes are whizzing by the walkers at 20mph. However one day I was walking, and a HUGE mutant E-bike with massive fat tires & very heavy frame, flew by me at what seemed like 30-40mph -- and to me, it felt exactly like a near miss from a motorcycle.

There are other safety concerns with recent trends, with the Slow streets. Everyone walks in the middle of those streets & the pedestrians treat them as their exclusive domain: kids playing, etc. But the drivers long ago stopped respecting the "slow street" concept, and whiz around the traffic cones, and then go 30mph down the street. The city is still treating them as an experiment, which is a part of the problem.

I love both E-Bikes and the Slow Streets, and they should be a huge part of our future: * Cities should make the Slow Streets official and modify them to make them impractical to use for driving a car (perhaps making them have a single curving central lane). * Likewise the E-Bikes need a bit more regulation and limited strictly to bike only lanes, not the mixed biking / pedestrian paths.

As it is currently the progress of society and technology has created a bit of a dangerous situation.