> The results reveal that it is possible (around a 5% chance) for a single chimp to type the word "bananas" in its own lifetime.
https://phys.org/news/2024-10-monkey-unable-hamlet-lifetime-...
Weir writes like a blogger who also writes script treatments but doesn't actually read novels. He throws plot at you every page ("ok so this happened so I need to do this next") which makes his books readable, but he has zero character development. His characters appear, react to external stimuli and solve problems, but don't change over time.
Watts's books, on the other hand, could use some of Weir's plot juice. Very cool ideas and interesting scenes, but the plots were hard to discern. I had no idea what needed to happen to resolve conflict most of the time. Echopraxia was particularly confusing. Watts did a Reddit AMA shortly after Echopraxia came out where he was put on the spot to explain fundamental plot elements.
Watts Reddit AMA: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2enwks/iama_science_f...
Watts also gave a real-sounding lecture on vampirism, which is enjoyable if you liked that in his books: https://youtu.be/wEOUaJW05bU?si=6fTMtmf9yA8JT9at
For an example of the latter, it's the people who can stomach a long commute three days a week but not five.
Other long, hard, stupid things I like to do: read novels, take walks, invest my time to learn fundamentals of a practice
Short, easy, stupid things I like to do: skip the occasional long post on hackernews and just read the comments, automate and simplify my work, watch short videos on how to fix broken things, send one-line emails instead of sit through meetings
> Even after all her years of research, she’s still excited by love. “You’re trying to win life’s greatest prize — which is a life partner and a chance to send your DNA to the future..."
How novel! I met my now-partner a long time ago and we quickly agreed neither of us wants kids. 16 years later, we're pretty happy with each other. I guess you could call this a powerful extinctive adaptation.
(1) https://ideas.ted.com/what-does-it-mean-to-be-lucky-in-love/
Hey HN, I'm looking for some opinions and/or experiences with tracking metrics for work other than code.One thing I work on is a security guidelines wiki, which is read by other employees in the company. The wiki records editing metadata, like name and history, and it also tracks visiting usernames and timestamps. I've been asked to set some SMART goals for the year, and I want to include my...
The author's not wrong. Cost comes with lack of accountability in my experience. In turn, my devsecops dept (~20 people) has kept costs down by holding monthly AWS accountability meetings. "Who owns this and why does it exist?" is the leading question.
> The all-you-can-eat buffet problem
Valid point. But I've gotten far in my career by specializing in AWS. It's not going anywhere soon. It's the one cloud provider I would say you should go all-in on. Azure maybe next. GCP? Come on. Conversely, I just got an email from Heroku saying they're retiring one of my free-tier databases that I still use.
> Culture of simplicity eats strategy of complexity for breakfast
Orgs, please retire this saying. I hear this everywhere. It's lost a lot of meaning. Just spell out what your org does better than the rest of the pack.
I work as a Splunk integrator and here's what I often see:
1. Customer installs Splunk with a qualified Splunk or third-party architect team. The deployment works well.
2. Customer adds infrastructure to the deployment. Splunk slows down. License costs go up.
3. Customer chooses between outside help or DIY. DIY rarely works.
4. Customer now needs outside help. Now Splunk is very slow and expensive, and now it will cost a lot to tune it.
Splunk, the company, is in a tough spot for several reasons: rotating c-level cast, unpopular changes to license model, bad acquisitions. The product is still best in class but tough to keep optimized.
I think I understand. I like reading postcolonial literary criticism because it asks us to consider any kind of national literary identification with skepticism. So I gotta ask: when you were growing up, what American literature did you encounter and what did you think of it?
FWIW I think I like Gogol's and Maxim Gorky's short stories most of all the Russian lit I've read.
Elves are fictive and have a long literary history--mostly publicized by white Europeans. Originally, they were described as evil creatures who infected people with diseases. Tolkien stepped into the folklore at a particular time and place and offered his interpretation. Sticking to a tradition in which they're all genetically similar--and white--is also just an interpretation. My point is that there's no elf manual that everyone needs to stick to.
You point out a good detail with Pinocchio. But again, Collodi offered his interpretation of a folk tale. In Collodi's text [1], the fish that swallowed Pinocchio is described as "Pesce-cane grosso come una casa di cinque piani e con un treno della strada ferrata in bocca" -- "huge shark [technically 'dog-fish'] like a five-story house and train on a railroad in its mouth." It was subsequent interpretations, like Disney's first version, that portrayed the fish as a whale.
So I don't think it's woke, or too liberal or whatever, to portray elves as different skin colors. We shouldn't keep them white just to avoid pissing off certain audiences.
1: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/52484/52484-h/52484-h.htm
These days, once I read a book, I usually divest myself of it unless it's absolutely amazing or I need to refer to it. I found out my neighbor has made a living by writing, and his house is full of books. It fits his personality as a historian. But I love my mostly bare, white walls. Keeping so many books around would feel to me like keeping a bunch of tabs permanently open in the browser -- ick!