stblack

I'm a huge fan of Mathematica; I've been a subscriber for many years. There's much to love about the product, but its AI assistant isn't among them.

Claude Caude is much better at Mathematica than Wolfram's own AI assistant. I think they flat-out acknowledge the very limited abilities of Mathematica's AI assistant in this version 15 announcement.

The Wolfram AI assistant is so bad I unsubscribed from it. By the sounds of it, a basic AI assistant is offered included with subscriptions now. I feel it's borderline criminal they were charging for their hallucinatory AI assistant in the past.

The answer is going to be, both. With ease.

A16Z is deeply MAGA.

TextEdit pet peeve: closing an empty window prompts the save dialog. Always.

An empty TexEdit window with a non-dirty buffer should just disappear upon close.

But I'm ready to learn otherwise from the HN commentariat.

Nobody has yet mentioned how certificates induce and support churn.

In 2025 it's not possible to create an app and release it into the world and have it work for years or decades, as was once the case.

If your "developer certificate" for app stores and ad-hoc distribution is valid for a year, then every year you must pay a "developer program fee" to remain a participant. You need to renew that cert, and you need to recompile a new version within a year. Which means you must maintain a development environment and tools on an ongoing basis for an app that may be feature- and operationally-complete.

All this is completely unnecessary except when it comes to reinforcing hegemony of app-store monopolists.

Bitcoin fixes this, too. And not in a lipstick-on-THIS-pig way.

Here's the url for that subreddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/VolvoEX90/

Edit: OMG!

At RustConf 2024 in Montreal, Cargo-mutants' creator Martin Pool's presentation was excellent. One of the best sessions of the conference.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjDHe-PkOy8

What so many commentators here seem to under appreciate, so far, is the following:

Financial power is a bad proxy for military power.

Military power is ultimately a bad proxy for industrial power.

The linked article is about the clear decline of US industrial power.

Excuse me, but if you're ever called upon to enumerate badass solid individuals, remember Gene Kranz.

Do you put him ahead of Neil Armstrong? History does, and always will, but I'm not sure that's a clear choice.

Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Kranz

In Bartender 4, Right-click the "..." in the menu bar, then

* Bartender Preferences...

* Advanced

* Uncheck "Check for Updates Automatically"

Mathematica's SolarEclipse[] function, introduced in v10 and seriously updated in v14, is a gem.

https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/SolarEclipse

Dude wtf?

Eleanor Roosevelt wrote, enlightened minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, and small minds discuss other people.

What you discuss is a choice.

The idea that everything presented here comes as builtins, or a call to a builtin repository, is actually fantastic. You’re forgiven for being jaded. But the attack on Wolfram for merely publishing this, including “with Wolfram” in the title, supposedly below your personal standards, is kind of whacked.

The disquisition would improve after an iteration to apply the following rule: one paragraph, one idea.

I am very worried about Evernote, and this is another clear sign that Evernote just doesn't "get" it.

50-notes is insufficient for any serious trial of Evernote, and clearly insufficient if you're considering switching any non-trivial note pile to Evernote.

This kid is alright. He’s going to do great. Keep doing what you’re doing kid.

Aristotle outlined two kinds of friendships:

1. Accidental friendships

2. Friendships of the highest order

He separated Accidental friendships into two types:

* friendship of utility

* friendships of pleasure

So three kinds of friends, according to Aristotle.

I always wonder what really happened with TrueCrypt. What’s the inside story, there?

I’m not interested in anybody’s guess. What happened? WTF actually happened?

Hi! I maintain that list and its variants.

The list is for people who don't want to be tracked by third parties. That's who we serve, and that's why we do what we do.

Based on this...

https://radar.com/pricing

... note the "tracked users" feature, unless I'm missing something, this isn't going to change.

I just read the whole thread, and nobody has mentioned the culture of .NET.

In .NET culture, few developers share, fork, or communally develop code, and you sit around waiting for great Microsoft mother to deliver features. There is no ecosystem; there is one provider, and provider is beholden to a couple of guys and, beyond them, investment fund shareholders.

I feel this is retrograde in several respects. Most notably due to wasted vertical space, there is now less information displayed than there was.

This might be fine if you are a very casual Github user with thin followings. But if you have interests in hundreds of projects, this is a disaster.

I am convinced that a good/great quality directional microphone with a pop-filter is a godsend for WFH. Here's why:

* Directionality matters because extraneous sounds in a home can be very distracting for listeners. For example, say the dishwasher is running. Or you answered a call before turning down the radio. Or a neighbor is mowing. Or, in a highrise, your balcony door is open.

* In conversation your semi-verbal cues like a tsk, a grunt, or an audible sigh can carry surprising weight. It's nice to know these can get through and convey how you feel without having to actually say it.

I consider my good microphone, mounted on an adjustable boom stand, complete with a pop-filter, along with some commonsense audio conveyance awareness, is my secret superpower.

Postgres became over-the-top cool for me the moment I started to realize what pg-cli could do.

Cory Docotorow puts all this in proper light in all his recent articles and appearances about "enshitification". Michael Geist is well advised to consider those angles, and think again about who the losers are, here.

Related to this, Cory Doctorow's appearance on Future Tense podcast (Australia) is truly excellent.

After being introduced, he goes on an 8-minute disquisition. We should all aspire to rap tech like Cory Doctorow can.

https://pca.st/yr3hd7f9

I personalize, you track across apps, they invade your privacy.

That's a shockingly low fine.

Hey this is my repo!

I'm happy to answer any questions arising.

I must say: the lists we offer — 31 variants in all — result from fine work by all our curators. Some are extremely diligent and maintain their lists every day. It's just remarkable what dedicated people can do together over time.

Because hard-coding HTML in source code is supposedly better?

What are you gonna do, recompile and ship new and different executables to all {1, 10, 100, 1000, …} of your customers or end users for each point release?

WTF? That’s bananas. No thank you.

Beyond Compare by Scooter Software.

Beyond Compare is perfect software (in my not so humble opinion). I use it every day.

https://www.scootersoftware.com/