Hacker News Reader

Rendelloon Prisoner loses challenge to an Australian state’s ban on inmates eating Vegemite

Yeast is omnipresent, you can brew or brake bread with the yeast on your skin (as seen here [1]). The other part is getting a container and sugars to ferment, see /r/prisonhooch [2] for some creative and horrifying concoctions.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvrJu9dLmtA

2. https://www.reddit.com/r/prisonhooch/

Rendelloon 900-Page Pre-Pantone Guide to Color from 1692 (With Complete High-Res Scan)

The Wikipedia entry's section in the long s's decline is interesting. Once it started falling out of use, it fell hard and fast. I guess everyone was fed up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s#Decline

Rendelloon Demystifying Tufte's data-ink ratio

Italics are also a good option. They're annoying to read, but I think that actually helps when you're parodying that type of prose.

Rendelloon Giving friends custom text buzzes based on Morse code

This reminded me of something semi-related.

As a kid, I thought "SOS" officially stood for "save our souls", later learning that this was only a mnemonic. It was only in adulthood that I learned "SOS" itself was a mnemonic, since:

"SOS" (literal) = ... / --- / ...

S̅O̅S̅ (distress code) = ...---...

Where "/" is a longer gap. S̅O̅S̅ is a "prosign", and thus a symbol in its own right. From Wikipedia [1]:

> Although the well-known calling prosign for emergency messages SOS is always represented by the three letters "SOS", it could just as well be written VZE ( ...- + --.. + . ), VGI ( ...- + --. + .. ), or even 3B ( ...-- + -... ); all of these render the same single code ...---...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosigns_for_Morse_code#Notati...

(Which is actually similar to how a lot of compression schemes work)

Rendelloon Giving friends custom text buzzes based on Morse code

The reduction-and-pattern-matching (a kind of bloom filter, I suppose) reminds me of whistled Spanish:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silbo_Gomero

Rendelloon What is going on with ceiling fans

> Memphis Group primary school aesthetic

I had to look that up and found some pretty cool articles. I like that the vapourwave trend from the 2010s created a lot of focus on the different aesthetics of software and everyday things on the internet.

The latter two links are from a dedicated "aesthetics wiki". I tend to like the detailed user-created content on fandom.com wikis, but I loathe the site itself. At least a lot of the fan wikis have moved to wiki.gg, which has a much less intrusive design (speaking of aesthetics).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memphis_Group

https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Memphis_Design

https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Memphis_Jr.

Rendelloon Ask HN: What are you reading?

No problem, I've been talking about her work to everyone I know in real life.

On Youtube, you'll probably come across a lot of her podcast appearances like Dwarkesh Patel's (which is how I first came across her), but she also just started her own podcast 3 weeks ago that might not pop up in the results yet [1]. The latest episode [2] where she's talking about the church bells of Florence, which still ring today, was so cool to listen to. The way their schedule carried (and carries) the rhythm of life, the blood of tradition, and when something wasn't right in the city, the call-to-action (defence or riot, for example). So neat, it made me want to live there for a few years (something she did during her studies, in a tower that the medieval Florentines had ripped the upper levels off so noblemen couldn't garrison it and burn the city around them).

1. https://www.youtube.com/@Beforecast

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruDc0GynjSI

Rendelloon Ask HN: What are you reading?

I am not, looking it up it seems to be a Boston rationalist meetup, if that's the what you're referring to. I'm not in the US or even very rational!

Rendelloon Ask HN: What are you reading?

I'm considering checking it out despite not really being a science-fiction reader. Though I've been reading this terrifying slow-burn about superintelligent autonomous swarms breaking containment and stopping at nothing to complete the impossible tasks given by their feckless masters.

Rendelloon Ask HN: What are you reading?

Inventing the Renaissance by Ada Palmer [1].

I don't tend to be great at finishing (or starting) books, and this is a big one. I've also never had any interest in Medieval or Renaissance history, for me it's been a black hole between the fall of Rome and the modern age.

But recently I saw some Youtube videos of Ada, and her enthusiasm is totally infectious [2]. She's fun and paints these vivid pictures of Florence and renaissance Europe that are incredible, absurd, and relatable, which makes sense since given she's also an accomplished sci-fi writer. She also reminds me of one of my favourite high school teachers. So I ordered the book right away.

The book is in the same tone as her videos, so it won't be for everyone, but I've really been enjoying it and now I'm fascinated by Renaissance Italy, Machiavelli, merchant republics, etc.

1. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/I/bo246135...

2. (My favourite example) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68p3jVQQdFk

Rendelloon Everybody’s home. No one’s coming over

A few years ago I came across a HN comment by a guy who wrote "The 2-Hour Cocktail Party". I read his comments and then got the book, and it seemed fantastic, smoothing over all the painful issues that happen when you host.

I really wanted to try it out, but moved from the city just after reading it and haven't yet.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32879851

Rendelloon AMD's random number generator can't generate a 0?

You know, in BC/AD (or BCE/CE), there is no year zero, so in that one case zero is sort of undefined ;)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_zero

Rendelloon AMD's random number generator can't generate a 0?

Another random boundary case: SQLite's RANDOM() won't generate the minimum i64 value, because:

    i64 MIN: −2⁶³
    i64 MAX:  2⁶³-1

Since RANDOM() is used with ABS(), that floor value is lopped off. (Can you imagine if it weren't, and you got a bug 1 in every 2⁶⁴ calls?)

https://sqlite.org/lang_corefunc.html#random

https://sqlite.org/forum/forumpost/4c0b09747a670652

Rendelloon George Lucas Returns to Earth, Bearing Gifts

He pops up in the background of a random documentary:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC9RI8_QYmw

Rendelloon Markdown in /src

In terms of a documentation artifact, I love what `cargo doc` generates, but when I'm inside a source file, any plaintext solution seems so limiting.

I actually miss what I had when I was playing around in TempleOS. All text in the OS is rich (you can toggle between the markup and the standard WYSIWYG view), so comments could have formatting, colours, images (bitmap or vector, great for diagrams), hell, even (aggressively spinning) 3D models.

The thing I used most was the collapsible sections, think <details> and <summary> in HTML. Although I appreciate plain text and would hate WYSIWYG rich text in my serious source code (not to mention binary data appended to the end of the source file for images and models), I can't help but pine for those features. Being able to just draw a real diagram and being able to edit it later in seconds as opposed to making some horrid ASCII art was awesome.

Rendelloon Solitaire Alone Together

I tried the online one but I'm not too experienced with cards so I just got destroyed. Another fun, chaotic one that I used to play in person a lot is Egyptian Ratscrew, a game where you have to slap the pile first if certain criteria are met. I don't think I've won a single match of that, I'm usually still processing what card was put down long after someone already slapped the pile. I had fun regardless. Make sure everyone removes their rings!

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_Ratscrew

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2UMv5Jk8JQ

Rendelloon Paper Models of Polyhedra

I'm not deep into geometry, but one of my favourite web apps / UI designs is the Polyhedra Viewer by Nat Alison [1][2], which shows relations, properties, and transformations in a very natural way.

Tom7's video on polyhedra properties [3] is also great, and taught me about the best Unicode characters (sic) [4]:

    ︘ U+FE18 Presentation Form For Vertical Right White Lenticular Brakcet

1. https://polyhedra.tessera.li/

2. https://aperiodical.com/2018/09/polyhedra-viewer-meet-nat-al...

3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH4MviUE0_s

4. https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+FE18

Rendelloon Solitaire Alone Together

Beautiful. I've always loved the aesthetic of Windows Solitaire [a] but felt strangely alone when playing it (figures). I'm reminded of a non-solitary solitaire, Nerts Online:

https://www.zachtronics.com/nerts-online/

a. And this version too, the backs of the cards are very pretty.

Rendelloon UTF-8000: Unlimited UTF-8

Or UTF-∞

Rendelloon Ask HN: How do you interview devs in a post-AI world?

How many NFKC_Casefold('R')s are in NFKC_Casefold("strawberry")?

Rendelloon English: A vs. An

I didn't know about "an historic" until I heard it from American journalists. They did pronounce the 'h' and it did indeed sound very wrong. I believe I first heard it from Rachel Maddow. I can't find any clips, but there are a bunch of transcripts from her show if you search up:

> Rachel Maddow "an historic day"

For example:

- https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna47356492

- https://www.ms.now/transcript/2013-11-21-msna738766

Rendelloon English: A vs. An

Starting earlier today, I've been using Firefox's local translation feature to auto-translate every page to Italian (to learn). I just had to remove English from my language list and check an option to translate English to Italian.

Firefox's local translation is pretty decent but not amazing. It did render this article's title as "Italiano: A vs. An", which I found pretty funny.

Rendelloon Roman Timekeeping

Japan had some pretty interesting traditions in the Edo period:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sangaku

Rendelloon Roman Timekeeping

I've always been interested by the κλεψύδρα, water clock. Searching that term now brings up hourglasses, which is a connection I've surprisingly never made.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_clock

Rendelloon Chopping up books when they're physically too big

> My natural bent is strongly focused on reading and words.

I wonder what mine is. I feel like I don't take to reading in a foreign language too easily (though I have trouble focusing on reading generally), but I definitely struggle mimicking as well. Some times I really wonder how I learned French at all, I got to my current level of ability quite quickly, though I'm sorely lacking a lot of fundamentals both in writing and in speech.

I agree though, you can see a big difference in language learners on Youtube between those who practice speech vs those who mostly read. For example, Alexander Argüelles [1] is a famous polyglot who's written quite a few foreign-language grammar books, but the few videos of him speaking show his heavy accent.

For Korean, I wouldn't bother with Latin letters. Hangul is simple:

> A wise man can acquaint himself with them before the morning is over; even a stupid man can learn them in the space of ten days.

– King Sejong on (what would become known as) Hangul

Reading in Korean would have been quite difficult historically, when it was mixed with Chinese characters à la Japanese [2], eg.

> 悠久한 歷史와 傳統에 빛나는 우리 大韓國民은 3⸱1 運動으로 建立된 大韓民國臨時政府의 法統과 不義에 抗拒한 4⸱19 民主理念을 繼承하고, 祖國의 民主改革과 平和的統一의 使命에 立脚하여 正義⸱人道와 同胞愛로써 民族의 團結을 鞏固히 하고, 모든 社會的弊習과 不義를 打破하며, 自律과 調和를 바탕으로 自由民主的基本秩序를 더욱 確固히 하여 政治⸱經濟⸱社會

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Arg%C3%BCelles

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_mixed_script

Rendelloon Chopping up books when they're physically too big

I learned French mostly through conversation and immersion. This next language is pretty simple phonologically, and I'm not concerned about having a good accent in it, so the reading-puzzle route is something interesting to try.

Rendelloon Chopping up books when they're physically too big

I recently wanted to try one of Kató Lomb's [1][2] preferred language-learning methods: getting a book in a foreign language and reading it (and re-reading it), figuring out words and phrases as if it's a big puzzle and writing them in the margins. From her book "How I Learn Languages" (1970):

> I recommend buying your own books for language learning. They can be spiced with underlines, question marks, and exclamation points; they can be thumbed and dog-eared, plucked to their essential core, and annotated so that they become a mirror of yourself.

> What shall you write in the margins? Only the forms and phrases you have understood and figured out from the context.

> Ignore what you can’t immediately understand. If a word is important, it will occur several times and explain itself anyway. Base your progress on the known, not the un- known. The more you read, the more phrases you will write in the margins. The relationship that develops between you and the knowledge you obtain will be much deeper than if you had consulted the dictionary automatically. The sense of achievement provides you with an emotional-affective charge: You have sprung open a lock; you have solved a little puzzle.

I can't really bring myself to write in the books themselves though, so I've been using separate paper. It feels wrong, even in a cheap book, like I'm defiling it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kat%C3%B3_Lomb

https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Kat%C3%B3+Lomb

Rendelloon I can't stop thinking about Papua New Guinea

I didn't say "a grand time". It would also be fascinating to live through the Fall of Rome, the Pazzi conspiracy, the Black Death, or any number of other unpleasant things. I'm pretty on-edge about the interesting times I'm living in right now, but they are certainly interesting.

Rendelloon I can't stop thinking about Papua New Guinea

Tribal warfare is often ritualized [1]. I remember reading that the tribes on what is now Canada's West Coast practiced real, brutal warfare compared to their eastern counterparts, due to the scarce resources.

In Burden of Dreams [2], the documentary about the making-of Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo, some of the tribal extras would occasionally go off in their motor boats for raids on neighbouring tribes. It's so interesting to me, tribal life would be fascinating to experience.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritual_warfare

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_Dreams

Rendelloon Ask HN: How can I browse HN in dark mode?

The suggestion has been brought up and dang has commented on it over the years. He doesn't seem opposed to it per se. It's possible your descendants may live to see dark-mode HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23199062