nappy

It's a surprisingly common error where someone picks up an old 35mm print and assumes it is somehow canonical... Besides whatever the provenance of these prints are (this gets complicated) the reality is that these were also made to look at best as they could for typical movie theater projector systems in the 90s. These bulbs were hot and bright and there were many other considerations around what the final picture would look like on the screen. So yeah, if you digitize 35mm film today, it will look different, and different from how its ever been been displayed in a movie theater.

you make it very clear that you have zero understanding of what republican democracy is in the United States.

English grammar also has features for expressing uncertainty, unreality, hypothetical, wishes, demands with uncertain outcomes etc. by use of the subjunctive mood.

"If I were a bird, I would be able to fly." (were, not was) "God bless you." (bless, not blesses) "The teacher demands that students be on time." (be, not are)

Though many native speakers, even very intelligent ones, fail to properly use subjective mood at a high rate. Or otherwise do not recognize it. As some of the other comments note, there are some interesting differences around what a languages grammar will strictly enforce, where as in English, proper use of the subjunctive mood is less strict. Obviously, this is also far less expressiveness in English around this in grammar than there is in other languages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjunctive_mood#English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_subjunctive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_mood

I'm glad to see so much interest in devices like this. I hope they succeed. I own an Onyx Boox Tab Ultra, which I've been enjoying tremendously, and specs seem to compare favorably to this.

https://shop.boox.com/products/tab

Doesn't seem to be for sale at the moment, but the version with a color epaper layer is: https://www.amazon.com/BOOX-Tab-Ultra-Pro-Digital/dp/B0CHM54...

Do you have more details on your display technology and how it performs? Any demo videos? It sounds like this is the key selling point?

I'd also be curious to see more on the software side of this product - stock android isn't perfect for an eiknk display.

There is a lot that is wrong in this article. Broad overviews are useful to people new to a topic - this would only mislead and confuse people.

Agreed. It's an excellent book. But perhaps a little long if you are purely interested in computer history and want an introduction in a shorter volume. I recommend these two: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Idea_Factory https://www.amazon.com/Dealers-Lightning-Xerox-PARC-Computer...

Not sure about academic history, but in a single volume, this does a good job on early 20th century computer history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Idea_Factory

I don't recommend reading this. There are many gaps and a lot of important history missing, including:

1. Computation before ~1800. Abacus, Napier's Bones, Slides rules, Pascal's Calculator, motivations from celestial navigation and astronomy.

2. Modern analog computers ~1900-1950. The author seems to refer to them as "math machines" and leaves it at that, without exploring much deeper than that they were used for besides calculating firing solutions for artillery. I think the author lacks a solid grasp of how mathematical tables were used from 1614 onwards, and that analog computers were used to create much more accurate and complex tables which could be used for more accurate firing solutions. And for other purposes as well, beyond code-breaking.

"It's hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that early, pre-general purpose computers (~1890-1950s) weren't computers in the way that we think about computers today. I prefer to think about them as "math machines"."

"But subsequent machines were able to do math. From what I'm seeing, it sounds like a lot of it was military use. A ton of code-breaking efforts during World War II. Also a bunch of projectile calculations for artillery fire."

3. Poor description of the advent of electronic computers.

"Then in the 1940s, there was a breakthrough.[10] The vacuum tube took computers from being mechanical to being electric. In doing so, they made computers cheaper, quieter, more reliable, more energy efficient, about 10-100x smaller, and about 100x faster. They enabled computations to be done in seconds rather than hours or days. It was big."

It was certainly a breakthrough, but the idea that computers immediately became quieter, cheaper, and more reliable is false. They were much larger, initially, compared to analog computers of the era. By almost any measure, they were also much less efficient with energy, though this may depend on what sort of calculations you are doing - I'm less sure of this.

4. Incomplete and incorrect descriptions of programming languages and the history of digital logic. No mention of information theory and Claude Shannon, digital circuits.

This is a poor analogy that misleads a reader who is unfamiliar with programming languages, it obscures the abstraction:

"Think of it like this. It's translating between two languages. Assembly is one language and looks like this: LOAD R1, #10. Machine code is another language and looks like this: 10010010110101010011110101000010101000100101. Just like how English and Spanish are two different languages."

5. Lack of understanding of digital hardware.

The author never describes why or how vacuum tubes and then transistors allowed computers to use logic that is both digital and electronic.

The author jumbles a lot of ideas into one and does not seem to understand the relationship and distinction between the evolution of transistor technology (point-contact -> BJT -> FET -> MOSFET) and the creation of integrated circuits.

"Before 1966, transistors were a thing, but they weren't the transistors that we imagine today. Today we think of transistors as tiny little things on computer chips that are so small you can't even see them. But before 1966, transistors were much larger. Macroscopic. Millimeters long. I don't really understand the scientific or engineering breakthroughs that allowed this to happen, but something called photolithography allowed them to actually manufacture the transistors directly on the computer chips."

6. Lack of historical context. No mention of the motivations for creating the vacuum tube or transistor: amplification and switching for use in telegraph and phone networks. No mention of the role the US government played beyond the 1860 Census, no mention of continued investments motivated by the Cold War, Apollo Program, ICBMs, etc. They briefly cover artillery firing solutions and mention code-breaking.

7. Over reliance on LLMs to research and write this.

Hard to take a history which includes this seriously:

"And from what ChatGPT tells me, it's likely that this would have been an investment with a positive ROI. It'd make the construction of mathematical tables significantly faster and more reliable, and there was a big demand for such tables. It makes sense to me that it'd be a worthwhile investment. After all, they were already employing similar numbers of people to construct the tables by hand."

"Anyway, all of this goodness lead to things really picking up pace. I'm allowed to quote Claude, right?"

seems like the longest thread is Windows by the same reasoning?

"starting at $3,499"

I wonder what the model that you actually want to buy will cost and what average sales price will be.

From the looks of it, I wouldn't be surprised if they sell a "pro" headband like Meta does for the Quest that has a battery pack that does better than the 2 hours of charge with the brick.

why does Knuth think Trump eats Betel nuts? Does he?

The most likely "end game" is not replacing all backend financial systems.

Any benchmarks on this? How long does it take to generate a batch of images, say with steps=100?

There's a reason Monero doesn't show up on exchanges that comply with US KYC rules.

Pure privacy, without limitation, in money transfers would be catastrophic. Despite the consternation of hyperextreme libertarians sitting in their armchairs, the ability for the government to collect tax revenue is a pretty good thing and has broad societal benefits. Also allowing free flow of funds to terrorist groups is bad.

Nowhere in this blog post: any discussion of money laundering, sending funds to terrorist groups, rogue states. Without mention of any of the legitimate reasons the US government is sanctioning Tornado Cash, this is merely propaganda from a financially interested party.

This is specific to pass through income like from LLCs. These are wildly undertaxed relative to ordinary income at the moment.

Which was overturned in Brown by a unanimous decision. Typically the standard for overturning a case is high: either it is recent and clearly wrong, or there is a high level of consensus on the case. This is neither.

They are categorically different. The issuer of an insurance policy does not bear risk upfront. Insurance policies are not collateralized.

Unless I'm missing something here, this is insurance, not lending.

It seems like the author must think that the private lenders were the schools themselves? Otherwise, I agree, this doesn't make sense at all.

I was interested in this and took a look. Pedestrian deaths in the USA are up a bit, up 10% since 2010, from 33k to 36k in 2019. [1] USA population over the same period has increased from about 6%, from ~309M to 329M. So it's definitely a real increase, but 4% adjusted is pretty moderate. More interesting to me is that over longer time periods, the pedestrian fatality rate was much higher, and the recent increase is far below historic averages. Also interesting is the relatively high rate of pedestrian fatalities (27%) are impaired by alcohol. [2] Generally, it's a very safe time to be a pedestrian, but has gotten slightly worse over the last ten years.

[1] https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/... [2] https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/historical-fatalit...

This is cool, but I really don't understand what the point of macro photography is on a smartphone.

Right, but there are at least many competitors to Best Buy all competing for your business, driving down margins. Running physical stores is costly. If Apple allowed competing digital stores, I would expect margins would be less than 30%, and even less than 22%, and the value would end up in consumer and developer's pockets.

Agreed. I'm not sure if you meant rose tinted glasses regarding the internet or search, but it's definitely both. People forget that google results felt amazing because they were so much better than other search... But also forgot how often they weren't great.

I honestly have no idea what the "best" results would be for chicken. Maybe the Wikipedia entry? Not sure what else. It's sort of just a lazy search.

This comment is a great example of why social media doesn't work. Factual, cited, but totally irrelevant to anything around the technology. It's the top comment because it brings up the controversial elements that spur more comments, and it's in a positive feedback cycle from there.

People tend to vote with their feet and their dollars. It's unclear to me how Elk Grove is "worse" than Davis from your description, besides that there are multiple places for lower income to shop closer to metropolitan areas, in this case Sacramento. Skunks aren't unique to Elk Grove, they're n very urban environments too. "Homeless coyotes" might be a unique phenomenon, most are wild.

I'm not sure if we are "permitting" anything, but I don't think it would be a bad thing if mathematicians and researchers in quantum computing explored the implications of this field with regards to previously stated problems.[0] Is there a particular justification you suggest a paper in math should have before exploring a problem besides that it's interesting?

[0] https://chaos.if.uj.edu.pl/ZOA/?which=people&lang=en&who=Ada...

The Prius had user benefits right away.