News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

stakkur

Re:Why Is The Guitar Tuned Like It Is? on Friday October 07, 2022 @11:59AM (#33123093)
There are many guitar 'tunings', and many predate the 'standard' tuning the article refers to. Also, players make up different ones all the time, including using capos to temporarily change 'tuning' on the fly. The 'standard' tuning is by no means the only one.
Re:Learning Is Remembering on Monday September 26, 2022 @10:48AM (#32983851)
If storing information and creating associations between bits of it were 'learning', then databases would be very smart indeed.

No, learning is not 'storing pieces of information in long-term memory and recalling them'. It's not the ability to recall information. At the very least, learning is information+behavior change+understanding+values and attitudes associated with the information. It's much more complex than memorization and recall.

Re:Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring on Saturday September 24, 2022 @06:24PM (#32967086)
Ah, cue the long thread of “No because my special combination of hardware/special configuration demands caused problems so Linux bad!”
Re:Gen Z never learned to read cursive on Sunday September 18, 2022 @10:42AM (#32887953)
* In order to write cursive legibly, you need to slow down*

And right there is one of the crucial cognitive and proprioceptive benefits of handwriting over ‘keyboarding’.

Re:Gen Z never learned to read cursive on Sunday September 18, 2022 @10:40AM (#32887941)
This is not true, of course. In the US, millions of students still learn and write cursive. Yes, even in public schools. Is it uniformly taught/practiced? No, but it’s far from ‘dying out’. My wife is a 20+ year public school teacher, and daughter attends a Waldorf school.

And all criticisms I read of cursive seem to utterly ignore the proven cognitive and other benefits of handwriting, instead focusing on ‘efficiency’ and ‘speed’ or—even sillier—comparing it to ‘keyboarding’ as if handwriting’s only value is its utility.

Re:Privacy vs. “I have nothing to hide” (2019) on Wednesday September 14, 2022 @01:47PM (#32840658)
A: "I have nothing to hide!"

B: "Then stop wearing clothes."

A: "That's stupid, it's against the law to run around naked in public!"

B: "So what if we had privacy laws like that?"

A: "That's stupid, I have nothing to hide!"

Re:Let’s make WordPress officially support SQLite on Monday September 12, 2022 @04:24PM (#32816384)
I would go further than the writer and say SQLite would be appropriate for almost all WP applications. Offhand, I can’t think of a meaningful use case that would make MySQL more preferable to SQLite.
Thereby defeating the fundamental benefit of playing with Legos. So much software tries so hard to replace what never needed replacing.
Re:Queen Elizabeth II has died on Thursday September 08, 2022 @02:46PM (#32770153)
As Queen, she met 14 US Presidents (15 total) and 16 Prime Ministers (17 total). Whatever our feelings toward the anachronism of hereditary monarchies, she's been a participant in (and witness to) a significant amount of modern history.
Re:Reddit's favorite products in one place on Thursday September 08, 2022 @12:24PM (#32767838)
frequency of appearance != favorite.
Re:TIL: You can access a user’s camera with just HTML on Tuesday September 06, 2022 @03:35PM (#32742136)
Yep, I do.
Re:TIL: You can access a user’s camera with just HTML on Tuesday September 06, 2022 @11:58AM (#32738929)
Reason #368 why I cover all cameras and disable mics by default, and only uncover/enable when in use.
Re:Responding to recruiter emails with GPT-3 on Friday September 02, 2022 @01:49PM (#32693656)
In fact, this is most recruiter inquiries.
Consider the dataset. Adjust expectations accordingly.
Re:Mikhail Gorbachev has died on Tuesday August 30, 2022 @08:39PM (#32656968)
Russia didn’t ‘transition to democracy’. This seems to be a particularly American fantasy.
Re:Welcome Home, Garry Tan on Monday August 29, 2022 @12:00PM (#32639782)
Based only on your comment, I'm guessing you're unaware of Palantir's work with intelligence agencies even when Tan was there. Also, Thiel's mission from the start was this kind of work.

I served in the Marine Corps. I've had some exposure to Palantir's 'offerings'. It's a fucking nightmare of a company, morally and ethically, and it always has been.

Re:Welcome Home, Garry Tan on Monday August 29, 2022 @11:25AM (#32639404)
I have no strong opinion of Tan, but calling a person who happily worked for (and profited from) Palantir a 'moral canary in a coal mine' seems a bit of a stretch.
After requesting the crack pipe from my fellow traveler, I conclude that the answer doesn’t matter. The universe Is.
There’s no such thing as a ‘realistic engineering take-home test’. When will we admit tests are not only unrealistic, but an utterly useless predictor of…anything?
Re:Investors bought a quarter of US homes sold last year on Tuesday August 23, 2022 @08:22PM (#32573443)
Every conversation about “NIMBYs” and “we don’t have enough affordable housing” needs to account for this. Building doesn’t lower prices, it creates a fat investment opportunity.
I've used pikepdf (a Python lib) with success: https://github.com/pikepdf/pikepdf
Re:Brian Kernighan adds Unicode support to Awk on Saturday August 20, 2022 @05:26PM (#32535264)
It's somewhat comforting to hear even Brian K. say he doesn't understand Git well.
Re:I love my GPD Micro PC on Thursday August 18, 2022 @06:04PM (#32515433)
When I see expensive ($600+), small niche toys like this, I always think "what is that, a keyboard for ants?" I appreciate clever ideas, but it has to be practical--and my hands (and neck and shoulders) need a usable keyboard. Otherwise, it's a toy.
But can you become a laird?
Re:RavynOS – Finesse of macOS, freedom of FreeBSD on Wednesday August 17, 2022 @02:21PM (#32499864)
The challenge of course will always be hardware—notice the evolution of Asahi Linux on Apple hardware and how difficult it is. Then, throw in the device driver hellscape (wifi cards, drives, sound, video, etc.)

This OS sounds like a dream for me, but I have to imagine it will take many years and a lot of willing experimenters to make it usable. I wish I had that kind of time.

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