pinusc

If you know the difference between em dash, en dash, and hyphen, you start seeing it everywhere—whether thet are used correctly or not. Books tend to have correct typesetting, so if you see a dash used as an em dash ought to be used, and if it looks kinda long, you can assume it's an em dash. AFAIK often manuscripts are submitted either with hyphens or --- in place of em dashes and then the editor or typesetter fixes it.

Also, it's called em dash because it's as long as the letter m (as a rule of thumb), so it's usually an easy visual comparison. Finally, a typeface with hyphens as long as em dashes would be terrible and quite noticeably wrong!

(To two-boxers) it's not half an analysis because once you walk into the room your choice is causally independent of the demon/AI/alien prediction.

There's something vaguely similar to the fallacy of proposed (Cooperate,Cooperate) solutions to the Prisoner's Dilemma. The arguments go as follows: (1) if we're both rational agents and we have the same information and same payoffs, we will make the same choice; (2) therefore, (Cooperate,Defect) and (Defect,Cooperate) are out of the question; (3) therefore, the only options are (Defect,Defect) and (Cooperate,Cooperate); (4) so I should Cooperate since it gives the better payoff. It seems to follow logically but (1) and (2) are problematic because you can't assume symmetrical solutions and thus eliminate asymmetrical outcomes, because that is essentially the same as saying "what I choose causally affects what my opponent chooses".

In the same way, one-boxing is irrational (for this argument, anyway; I'm undecided myself) because the prediction has already been made, and so your choice to one-box or two-box cannot have any causal relevance to the contents of the boxes. Even a perfect predictor cannot invert the flow of causality.

Units is a cool piece of software, but I have since switched to qalculate. Mostly units has some silly defaults like needing to type tempC(30) instead of 30C; and it's nice to have a full calculator.

I know it's a way to specify that the conversion is absolute rather than relative, but qalculate just asks you about it the first time you convert, and since converting oven and outside temperatures is most of what I do, I don't havr to bother with remembering a different syntax.

Also qalculate is an awesome piece of software in general, so if you're excited by units you should check it out!

I have been using breezy weather and I like it overall. But after reading this article I can't help but be bugged off that the information density in the main page is significantly worse here than in Dark Sky. Dark Sky showed hourly forecast with a 2h resolution. This is a negligible difference in precision IMHO (weather predictions are inherently imprecise anyway - and a more precise graph could be - is - one tap away), but it allows to show a time range that is twice as wide! On my screen, breezy weather is able to show me the forecast for the next 5h until I scroll - this is OK, but it's annoying. The hours are very spaced apart, and there is a 1h resolution. With tighter spacing and 2h resolution, 12 or 16 hours could be displayed at once - which is far more likely to cover the time I am going to spend outside, which as the article states, is the main reason why I might want to check an hourly forecast anyway.

All the other android apps mentioned here have the same issue.

I might try to open an issue in their GH, or even a PR... A toggle for "denser graphs" and a setting for hourly resolution could do wonders.

Recursion would work for that, you don't need goto.

The division by zero trick is pretty good too!

Although it wouldn't require a lot of work to allow side-loading apps on LineageOS and similar, LOS users would still be profoundly impacted by the death of the FOSS ecosystem.

LOS/AOSP/whatever users are a VANISHINGLY small minority of users, so "an app that only works on them" is an app that only works for a tiny minority of people. This would disincentivize developing FOSS apps altogether. A lot of projects will likely eventually die, and a lot that could have started will not.

Important to note that bamboo boards will dull your knives significantly faster than other woods. Other kinds of wood are still better than plastics at being bacteria-resistant (but still need disinfecting after cutting meat etc.—and so does bamboo)

It baffles me that this isn't mentioned in the page, but a deck like this is extremely useful for testing while designing a new boardgame. They are very versatile and can likely emulate whatever wacky system you come up with for your game, which means you can iterate without having to print a new deck new each time.

In some cases one can install a de-googlified version of android, and install whatever app (.apk) they wish through alternative app stores or directly.

For 99.9% of people, Android and iOS will be virtually identical in terms of freedom, as they will just install apps from the play store and use google-services on the manufacturer-provided (and -bloated) android install that comes with their phone.

That being said, for those who do care, the ability to take control of your phone and run AOSP, an actually FOSS distribution, and only run FOSS apps, or install whatever app you want, is unparalleled on Android vs iOS.

I would say using this app to try and surprise/do nice things for your partner is, in fact, making an effort: going out of your way to think of nice things to do with them.

People are all different. The idea of getting flowers for your partner, or leave cheesy notes for them, might come natural to some and not to others. Another comment pointed out how having ADHD makes it hard to remember to do the sort of stuff this app might suggest, so it can be a great help.

Besides, is this different from scrolling through social media and seeing couples activities and deciding to try them? Is this different from seeing a florist ad while walking and deciding to buy flowers? If anything, going out of your way to install an app shows more care and effort than these "spontaneous" activities.

At any rate, spontaneity is overrated, especially in relationships (maybe because of Hollywood relationships?). Constance, effort, care, are more important... you still need to keep things fresh tho

Also keep in mind: 32GB of RAM is more than enough for normal usage, but it's useless for (this kind of state-of-the-art-) ML unless you also have a graphics card of the kind that won't fit in a laptop.

Unless of course you were talking about VRAM, in which case 16GB is still not great for ML (to be fair, the 24GB of an RTX 4090 aren't either, but there's not much more you can do in the space of consumer hardware). I don't think the other commenter was talking about VRAM, because 16GB VRAM are very overkill for everyday computing... and pretty decent for most gaming.

Regardless of wanting sane defaults, this is not something superfile can do on itself: it runs in a terminal, and normally terminal programs do not get to choose what font is used.

So the "best" it could do is bundle the font file, but then you would still have to configure your terminal to use it. At that point, it's easier to just tell you you need a nerd font and link to their repo.

That being said, I kind of agree that, since NerdFonts are pretty good and by now quite widespread, it wouldn't be a bad idea for major distros to patch their default monospace fonts so that you get NerdFonts out of the box in the default terminal.

But, in general, if you go out of your way to install a different terminal emulator, it's unlikely you'd have much trouble changing its font anyway; still, getting everything to look nice and pretty is sometimes harder, so I suppose wezterm is commendable for including fonts and colorschemes.

(The above really mostly applies to fonts as they are an additional dependency and also highly dependent on user preference. For pretty much everything else I agree that good defaults are under-emphasized in CLI/TUI utilities. Probably because options usually get added incrementally and breaking historical defaults is not a good idea.)

I'd say everything you described is true of vim as well, especially nowadays with LSP and tree-sitter and async capabilities in plugins. The plugin ecosystem is thriving. Neovim's lua api makes it even easier to develop plugins.

It does take a fair bit of configuration if you want to start from scratch, but there's also distributions (such as LazyVim [1]) which make it trivial to start from an editor basically as fully featured as VScode.

Of course, there's still the learning curve for a modal editor, but that's the whole point of using vim. I assume there are vi-style plugins for VScode, but then you're missing out on performance.

1: https://www.lazyvim.org/

You may be thinking of "So You Want To Abolish Timezones" [1]. It's not specifically about .beat time, but it has a pretty thorough explanation of why a universal time would be terrible (specifically, worse than timezones) for day-to-day communication

1: https://qntm.org/abolish

That's an interesting ethical question. I am tempted to agree that there generally is.

You can argue that the giving of a gift is a final act, that the gifted item belongs to the recipient now, and that since you're morally free to do whatever you want with what belongs to you, you are free to do with the gift as you please, including tossing it out.

But gifting is imbued with meaning beyond the mere transfer of ownership. This is obviously true in the case of gifts between people: tossing out a sweater hand-knit for you by your grandma is at the very least an asshole move, and I would argue that it's just wrong because it would cause her pain to know that. The sweater has meaning beyond being a mere sweater; particularly so because of the care with which it was made. A collection like the one we're discussing was likely accumulated with care, it held meaning beyond the economical value of the magazines or journals that constituted it.

Some donations (especially monetary?) are made with not so much care that it matters; but an extensive collection of magazines, by a person invested in the community, to an organization that is supposed to archive (and continue a legacy of looking after old stuff), to me fits in the same ethical landscape of the sweater gift - even if the receiving party is an organization rather than an individual, even if it's a "donation" rather than a "gift". I think we usually displace ethical agency away from organizations, especially for-profit companies, but they should be held accountable for their actions towards the community they supposedly serve (or service). A duty to not be assholes was violated.

True, but given that cardiovascular disease is one of the leading causes of death, I don't think that in this specific case it's negligible.

By far the bigger problem IMHO is not controlling by weight (at least, the article seems to hint that doing so might happpen in further research...), which is highly correlated both to cardiovascular disease and the chance of being on a restrictive diet plan. "Fat people more likely to have a heart attack, and also to be on a diet" doesn't have the same clickbaity ring to it.

A majority/totality of my IRL friends has a problem with spending too much time in front of a screen. Regardless of the political/liberation parts of the article, it is hard to argue against social media being designed to be addictive, and all forms of digital entertainment encouraging binging, from Youtube to Netflix to videogames.

Boredom, I think, is a key motivator for fulfillment. Anecdotally, I find myself in a city where I have very few IRL friends; you could say I'm lonely, and yet I am not seeking out activities or "third places" where I could meet more people. I think it's plausible to say that's because digital entertainment keeps me busy enough, but that's a (very) local maximum

So what's the "nonsense" these people have not heard about? Maybe "terminally online" evokes images of reddit and 4chan hardcore users, but it should also include people who spend hours a day scrolling instagram, tiktok, and what have you. The _average_ screen time per day among internet users is almost 7 hours [1]; of which 3 hours on average spent on social media (which does not include entertainment such as youtube/netflix) [2]

The amount of "real human beings embroiled in online communities" is extremely high. They might not be engaging in niche collectivism outrage, but that's only half of what the article is about... I took it to be complication, an additional stake: if you _do_ care about, say, liberation, then note: this is also controlling you in that specific regard.

1: https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2023-global-overvie...

2: https://www.statista.com/statistics/433871/daily-social-medi...

Thank you for sharing this! I've been searching for a good open-source handwriting app with pen and pdf support on android, and this is by far the most functional I've seen. Actually good enough to start taking notes on my tablet.

They're also effectively creating a market for linux gaming, which will encourage developers to actually officially support linux.

Note that I use "will" instead of "might" based on personal anecdotal evidence of seeing more and more games support linux natively (not on Proton) since the steamdeck launched. Granted, it's more indie games than AAA, but the latter will never care until the market becomes actually sizable.

Linux has already had decades of long-term "strategy" that did not in any way shape or form bring gaming to linux... except of course for the tireless effort of wine, which is the basis for proton. In other words, even if you're right, and you well might be, I feel that the point is moot since there's no linux gaming market otherwise, and valve can't kill what's already dead.

Unless you have alternative strategies in mind that have not been tried and failed already

An involved alternative is to access whatsapp through a matrix bridge. It requires either paying for hosting or figuring out how to host a matrix server and the whatsapp bridge [1]; I do the latter and can attest it's not very hard if you have a technical background (and you're on hn, so you probably do), but YMMV. There's a lot of matrix clients, all of which open source; and the whatsapp bridge works really well nowadays, enough that I've been using it almost exclusively for my texting (no whatsapp calls tho).

In fact, I recently bought a non-smartphone running KaiOS, and use whatsapp through a matrix client, chooj - which, although in early alpha, works well for my use case of accessing whatsapp while outside the home without having to carry an addictive smartphone with me. KaiOS does have a native whatsapp app, but it does not support whatsapp web at all, and that is an absolute necessity for me, especially when typing requires (bad) T9.

My point is, matrix bridges afford A LOT of freedom with how to access whatsapp (and other closed-source communication apps), if you're willing to deal with some friction. And now they're stable and mature enough that they work pretty darn well - no doubt thanks in part to support from beeper [2], which funds development for several major bridges. Within the android ecosystem, beeper is probably the easiest way to gateway all your communications through matrix, though I have no experience with it. Sounds like paid matrix+bridge hosting, plus a generally much nicer and frictionless experience.

[1] https://github.com/42wim/matterbridge

[2] https://www.beeper.com/

Does it support increasing playback speed without affecting pitch? I'd like to get a capable mp3 player that I can use for podcasts, but I need to lidten tkm some of them at 1.5x/2x.

I tried an old samsung mp3 player I had lying around, but for some reason they thought implementing playback speed without adjusting the pitch was fine, so my podcasts sound like chipmunks. Needless to say, I abandoned the idea of using it.

Link is broken for me (I get a "welcome to nginx" page).

https://archive.is/wRdWf works

Update: it seem they fixed the page so that it reads "X+ views" instead of "+X views". Maybe they read this hackernews comment chain!

I believe you're being downvoted because you missed the point of the comment you're replying to, which is not (necessarily) trying to imply the convention is that X+ means exactly "more than X" (i.e. >X). You're right that "X or more" (>= X) is an acceptable interpretation. This is not what the comment is nitpicking.

The page we're discussing lists PyCon talks next to the number of viewers. It writes "X or more viewers" as +X; this does not follow any variant of this "convention". It's as if you wrote that you are +30 years old, instead of 30+. The problem is the placement of the +. That's just weird/incorrect.

A "link to higher chance of depression" does not mean that 100% of the people with 1 hour commute develop depression. Even if it meant that 99% do, your belonging to the remaining 1% does not invalidate the study. Personal experience is anedoctal evidence, i.e. not science, not _true_ in the sense that it generalizes beyond yourself. People are different from one another, and what might be neutral or enjoyable for you might be depressing for other people. All this study is saying is that on average, a long commute is more likely to be depressing.

Also, there is some arrogance in assuming that all those depressed people just _haven't thought about_ cycling to work, or listening to a podcast, and should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps to start feeling better.

Not everyone gets to make lemonade out of lemons. For one thing, you need to be able to afford sugar (_but it's cheap to me!_). For another, you need to like lemonade in the first place.

Besides... Correlation is not causation, and the depression might not be a direct consequence of being bored on transport. Perhaps it's because they get to spend 30 fewer minutes with their family, pets, or hobbies. Perhaps it turns out people with longer commutes tend to have worse paying jobs, or live in areas with less opportunities for recreation (even a local park counts). But I think it's at least plausible that lengthening your already-too-long workday by an hour can't possibly make your life happier.

Could you point me to any sources that discuss how the program "has no basis in science"? They have a section on effectiveness citing a few studies and the Cochrane review. I'm not well-equipped to determine if that's conclusive, of course. Is there overwhelming evidence to the contrary? As someone else pointed out, there is a section on thirteenth stepping. Do you find it insufficient, or is it a recent addition..?

I am not invested either way, I am just curious. If what you're saying is accurate, it's a stark reminder that Wikipedia articles may _look_ well-researched and still ignore or hide enough evidence to fundamentally change the story.

This is something I have a hard time coping with: that no matter how many sources are cited, there is no way of knowing how many are missing... in some cases a few minutes of research can uncover obvious lies (and it's already a titanic effort to cursorily check most of your beliefs), but in others it takes actual expertise in the topic to know.

Edit: After a better look at the Criticism section, the article seems less-than-neutral in listing critical sources. "In the past, some critics have criticized 12-step programs as pseudoscientific". I would object to the use of "In the past" here: the sources cited are from 2015 and 2010 (although both of them are prior to the 2020 Cochrane review, which the Wikipedia page seems to consider conclusive. Still, unclear wording which spins the opinions as outdated). Similarly, two sources of criticism are listed under the "Popular press" section. Perhaps a better wording would be "Non peer-reviewed". If you believe that AA _is_ ineffective, then this wording is certainly a misdirection. If you believe that the sources in its favor are conclusive, then it's adequate. Neutrality is tricky, and while it's extremely important in some topics, it should not be entertained in others (should the article on Earth be "neutral" and faithfully cite flat-earthers as a reasonable side?) Again, I don't know which way this should go, as I don't have any degree of certainty either way, because I know absolutely nothing about the subject.

That's fair to point out. However, I don't think it detracts from the point: the definition is in some sense a detail, because there is a connection between "bubbles forming" and "the temperature water will not rise beyond", but it's subtle and assuming that one equals the other leads to error. The very reason we have that definition is that it's more precise, because in the real world there's details that escape narrow definitions as seen in school or in the kitchen.

As an aside: I love the bubbling patterns of water as it heats, and it's actually a useful skill in the world of tea-making (especially in the gongfu tradition) to estimate the temperature of water based on the amount and size of bubbles. Nowadays I use a temperature-controlled kettle, but in the past I would get by with a clear borosilicate glass kettle and paying attention to the details, which is fun and rewarding in itself—if far less precise.

Precisely. If your job is a legislator, competence (or ability to delegate it) is part of the job description and, if you believe in democracy, a moral imperative. Thus, incompetence IS malice in such cases.

There is such thing as wilful ignorance, as Aristotle condemned it millennia ago, and it is morally reprehensible.

Do you have recommendations for modern "factorio meets Minecraft" modpacks? The more hardcore and complex the better.

I am very out of the loop with Minecraft, not having played in quite a few years. Meanwhile, I have been getting into factorio... but the thought of going back to my Minecraft roots is appealing

You are right to point out that in my comment I talk about bash in terms of a language rather than just a shell; but I did have its shell-nature in mind while writing it, and in fact your example is exactly what I meant when I said that python is not good enough unix glue... there's a certain level of script complexity where python starts making more sense than bash, but because the ergonomics of calling other programs (unix glue!) or building pipelines are pretty poor, that threshold is pretty high.

Some of bash syntax makes perfect sense in the context of a shell-but-also-scripting-language. Some of it makes perfect sense in the context of "everything is a string", which I think is an absolutely great abstraction---for example, unset variables being equivalent to empty strings. Other parts are just jargony, and might make the life of a few experienced shell-slingers slightly easier, while complicating many users' interactions with the shell.

I suppose part of my point is that succintness here comes at the cost of readability. A shell could very well be _slightly_ more verbose than bash (say, requiring assignment operators to have two sides, so `foo=''` instead of `foo=`), still be plenty succint as a shell, but being slightly more explicit and readable in a scripting context. `foo=''` is only _two_ characters longer than `foo=`, and is already-implemented behavior. But the `foo=` syntax has certainly confused generations of unix users... that's just not a good tradeoff imo. I feel pretty comfortable calling this lack of foresight, or suboptimal design; that's not bashing (!) the language or its creators, rather, merely noting that we can do better.

And if you don't think so... check out fish shell! It's a beloved and successful shell, and they forgo the use of = entirely (instead, you have to `set foo bar`, which is more verbose and a lot more explicit!)

Edit: fish does allow `foo=bar echo $foo` to override variables, so they actually manage to keep bash ergonomics while avoiding mistakes while scripting.