hsitz

Thanks, yes, I would agree that a midi recording and a score to a large extent encode different types of information. The score has less of some of the kinds of information that are in fact present in midi. And the midi, of course, doesn't specify anything about ranges of interpretation; it simply represents a specific interpretation of a score.

I don't really follow the idea that "midi is lossy" in the sense described. Because it uses note-on/note-off pairs? I don't see the problem there. Certainly the idea that a score somehow has more information in it than a midi recording is ridiculous. A score always requires interpretation. The midi is, in contrast, fully specified, very little room for interpretation.

A midi recording contains pretty precise velocity info for each note (0-127) that is either not present at all in a score, or is present only in the form of a limited number of dynamic markings[1], which govern the flow of dynamics imprecisely, and almost not at all on a per-note basis.

With tempo it is similar to dynamics: midi will precisely determine when notes turn on and off, down to the millisecond, in the process resulting in the midi performance having a precise tempo. In contrast, musical scores have limited means to indicate proper tempo[2], necessitating (as with dynamic markings in a musical score) much interpretation by the musician.

All of this is not to say that a midi performance is somehow "better" than a score. There are good midi recordings and bad ones. A good recording will generally be made by an accomplished musician who in making the recording records fairly precisely a particular (and good) interpretation of the score. Likewise, a bad recording would generally be the result of a poor interpretation of a score. But whatever the case, the midi recording is far more precise than the score itself.

[1] https://www.aboutmusictheory.com/music-dynamics.html

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempo#Basic_tempo_markings

Where does the issue of higher drug prices in U.S. vs. lower prices outside of U.S. issue fit into this? Any links to info on that?

>The “Medicare is more efficient” argument is essentially predicated on the idea that physicians would be forced to accept the lower fee schedules for everyone, which essentially amounts to “price controls”.

If doctors/hospitals were forced to accept Medicare's lower fee schedules for private insurers, too, that would mean Medicare is not more efficient. Efficiency would lie partly in the ability of Medicare to negotiate lower prices because of its size. If private insurers could free ride and get the same prices, then Medicare would not have an efficiency advantage. I think the complaints back when this was set up (i.e., when Part D was created) were that George W.Bush gave up the farm and could have negotiated much lower prices.

Thanks for the clarification. Regarding the Medicare Part D provisions, which you call "price controls" . . . to many that term may imply that pharmaceutical companies have had to lower their prices for Medicare. My understanding is that a common complaint against Part D is that these prices are set at levels that are very favorable to the pharmaceutical companies (i.e., high), and that if there were free negotiation for drug prices the size and market power of Medicare would allow it to negotiate better prices. Curious if you have any comment on that.

I believe there are studies of the U.S. Medicare program that show it to be more efficient than private insurers. (Maybe someone knows a weblink to info on that issue offhand . . . ). Moroever, my understanding is that Medicare could be even more efficient if it were not handcuffed in various ways (e.g., legal inability to negotiate pharmaceutical prices).

The Z80 was the chip in the original Radio Shack TRS-80 computers. I got one back in 1979, when I was 15 years old. I had a book on the Z80, the text in this article brings back memories, and figured out how to do some simple machine language programming. Mostly simple graphics programs, storing values to the TRS-80's display memory buffer. Eventually I got the TRS-80 Assembler that made things a bit easier. I can't remember now how I actually input the machine language hexadecimal without using that assembler, but I'm sure I did. Or maybe not, my memory is sometimes not so reliable on these things, even when I feel certain.

I can hardly imagine how different things must be now for young kids growing up in internet era, where everything is at your fingertips. Information was much more difficult to get back in the old days, traveled much more slowly. But, still, kids had the energy to figure things out.

Org-mode is another package that is due to "non-professional" developers. Carsten Dominik, the original creator of org-mode, is a professor of astronomy. [1] A lot of people who've contributed to org-mode are academics in fields other than computer science. Not as unrelated as mountain guides, but certainly not professional developers.

[1] https://staff.fnwi.uva.nl/c.dominik/

> The claim that "whites" are going to become a minority soon is arrived at by redefining "white" to exclude white-identified Hispanic people.

You can look at the numbers in your chart and see that basically all of the U.S. Hispanic population is found under this "white" category, 55 million Hispanics. Total Hispanic population in U.S. is at most a few million more. 90%+ of all U.S. Hispanics feel like they are part of a "white" majority? You must be joking.

So I don't think that "white identified majority" in the census numbers means what you think it does. The vast majority of Hispanics in it fully realize and are made to feel like they are part of a minority in the U.S.

True generally regarding tenant responsibility if new tenant can't be found, but good luck recovering anything at all from a tenant who was evicted because they couldn't pay rent.

It seems to me that any landlord who understood the economic situation would work with tenants to keep them on paying something, even if they couldn't afford full rent. I expect landlords will end up better economically in the end that way.

That's an interesting thought that I don't think I've encountered before; I'll think about that.

Python4Delphi project has been around for around twenty years now, allows using Python from within a Delphi/Lazarus GUI framework: https://github.com/pyscripter/python4delphi

A lot of the points in the article coincide with ideas from the blogger Mr. Money Mustache, who frequently reminds that overcoming hardships is a primary source of satisfaction in life. One example is his piece on the desire for luxury as a weakness, which we should reprogram ourselves to get rid of: https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/08/29/luxury-is-just-an...

Relevant Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_literature

It doesn't sound like this is for you. If "wife test" means the wife using and it and liking it, pretty sure it would fail. It's not what this is marketed for. An Amazon Kindle tablet would be more what you're looking for, if this is the price point you want.

Yes, so easy it doesn't really combine them. Compatibilism gives an explanation that essentially redefines what is meant by "free will". Compatibilism makes compatible a concept of determinism and a specific concept of "free will". Yes, it gives a coherent way of speaking about these two seemingly contradictory things; enabling us to avoid nonsense or self-contradiction. However, the compatibilist notion of "free will" is in fact incompatible with what most people mean (or think they mean) when they say they "have free will".

Maybe you're familiar with Yuval Noah Harari's position in the free will vs. determinism debate. He argues that, not only is the idea of free will a myth, it's harmful to society: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/14/yuval-noah-har...

Also, it seems you're getting at an interesting idea: we can understand determinism, and we can understand chance, but free will seems to want to combine the two concepts in some incomprehensible/nonsensical way, which nobyd can understand.

First, if you're talking about swabbing, then I think you're talking about the test to see whether a person is currently infected with the virus. That's what the article you linked was regarding.

The antibody tests are a different animal. They test to see whether you might have been infected in the past, by looking for antibodies in your blood. So these are blood tests, and, I expect, have less chance for user error.

But also, I think lots of covid antibody tests are not high accuracy even "in theory". It seems the FDA relaxed oversight on companies producing antibody tests: ". . . after being criticized for the fumbled rollout of diagnostic tests during the start of a global pandemic, the FDA swung hard in the other direction, waiving its usual requirements and letting firms rush self-validated [antibody] tests into the market."[1]

So there are antibody tests from over 200 companies out there. Some of these antibody tests are quite accurate, high sensitivity and specificity. Others, not so much.

[1] https://khn.org/news/hype-collides-with-science-as-fda-tries...

You seem to live in a different world than mine. In mine, social media would be much less of a problem if people tended to shy away from online confrontation. The online/social media problem is in large part one of people defending their own opinions too aggressively.

Just curious, what "history" are you talking about? Do you have some reference links?

The chromeos boot actually isn't quite instant, even if they call it that. But it is not at all suspend to ram; it's a full boot in the space of a few seconds. Of course, most of the time I just do a suspend, like an ordinary notebook. But the lighter-weight less resource-intensive chromeos is a benefit, snappier than Windows or OS X would be on the same hardware, that's for sure.

Ha, not surprised you don't believe security is better. Security is on the level of iOS or Android, everything is sandboxed. ( https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/3438631?hl=en ) And updates are as smooth and unobtrusive as they are on iOS or Android; don't get me started about problems with Windows updates.

Really, it's not bad. It's surprisingly really good. Of course, if it weren't for Crostini/Linux it would be too limited for many people to use as their main computer. But with Crostini, it's pretty great for the right users. Pixelbook hardware in particular has a quality feel, makes you feel good just to use it. And the software has a polished feel, too. It just works. Windows, in comparison, feels like a clunky mess; a complex, clunky, mess.

Well, I bought my first computer (TRS-80) in 1979, first laptop in 1990, and I've had lots of different computers. MS-DOS, nearly every version of Windows, Linux versions since 1995, never a Mac OS but I got an iPad last year. Right now I have one Windows laptop, one dual boot Windows/Linux laptop (mostly Linux), a Raspberry Pi running Raspbian Linux, the iPad, and the Pixelbook.

I got the Pixelbook on sort of a lark, on sale for $699 back in November 2018. The hardware is 8GB, Core i5 processor, 128GB ssd, 2.4 pounds, beautiful 2400x1600 (that's 3 by 2) touch-screen display, high quality construction, excellent keyboard and trackpad. 10 hours battery life. And fanless. (Also 2-in-1 form factor, flips around for use as tablet.) I didn't expect it to become my main computer, but it has.

Complex? Well, I don't know about that, but they do say the mark of a good product is that it makes complex things seem simple. Or something like that. That's what I'd say, anyway, about the Pixelbook. Best machine I've ever owned. I'd rather be running full Linux with i3 window manager, but it's not worth switching (and giving up instant boot and higher security of Chromeos).

I don't think I'd recommend Pixelbook/Crostini if you're heavily into x-window apps on Linux. I rarely use them; I'm mostly just on the console/terminal and it works well. I've tried Firefox in Crostini, works fine, but it's not as snappy as Chrome.

RE: Google. I'm not a fan of Google, so have to get past that when liking the Pixelbook. And it seems Google is not very good at supporting their hardware. Fortunately, I haven't had anything go wrong. At some point I will want to upgrade to a more powerful machine, I expect. Light weight (the closer to 2 lbs the better), good battery life, and fanless operation are important to me, and I'm not sure there's any machine out there that I'd pick over the Pixelbook right now. At least not for a reasonable cost. Pretty amazing given that Pixelbook came out in 2017 and I paid only $699 for it.

I'm not sure what you're talking about. Crouton is different from Crostini, and it's Crostini that is the default/built-in Linux container on Chromeos (on a Pixelbook). I've been using Crostini on Chromeos since November 2018 and I've never had "the hard drive wiped" or had to rebuild the environment. I'm trying hard to recall anything that's actually been a bug. I'm sure there've been some. Mostly they've been rolling out increased features on a pretty regular basis, with few hiccups. It's not a great solution for everything, but, to me, it's been surprisingly robust and useful.

It certainly is not "a toy". The Pixelbook is a beautiful piece of hardware, but I wouldn't be using it (at least not as a contented Chromeos user) if it didn't have the built-in Linux container.

I do follow Chromeos/Crostini/Pixelbook forums somewhat online. I know I've seen some people griping about problems caused by updates. From what I can tell, a very large percent of these people are ones who were using Chromeos/Crostini with the 'dev' or 'beta' branch, so they could get new features on their device sooner. I've been on 'Stable' and have had few complaints.

Not to mention he considers sneezing/coughing/breathing but not intermediate actions like talking.

That was not at all a dishonest response. And, no, the exceptions don't diminish the gravity of the order. But the exceptions, which I believe every such order has had, do diminish the severity of the restriction. It is a huge stretch, actually dishonest, to imply that any of these orders prohibited people from leaving their home. Many of them were accompanied with language that in fact encouraged people to get outside to clear their heads. I will eat my hat if you can find a single one that prohibits people from going outside simply to exercise.

I'm curious, was the official word always that even N95 masks didn't protect the wearer? Or just that "masks" in general (i.e., lesser masks) would not protect wearers?

Sweden is a country of only 10 million people, relatively homogeneous, and not a society where people have a distrust of experts and/or science. They are voluntarily limiting social interaction because they understand how important it is; don't need government to force them: https://reason.com/2020/04/17/in-sweden-will-voluntary-self-...

In addition, there's little doubt that the infection has spread far more widely in NYC area than elsewhere. The covid-19 death rate per capita in NYC is 3 to 20 times higher other areas of the U.S. So even if NYC area had 20% who had been infected, that would not mean the rest of the country was anywhere close to that; other areas would not be close to NYC infection rate unless there death rates were similar.

Yes, NYC had factors that made it particularly susceptible in a global pandemic of Covid-19: (1) high density (as you say), (2) lots of international travel to and from NYC, (3) heavily used public transit (covid virus lifespan on metal surfaces -- like poles people hang on to in subway trains -- is long).

Yeah, but the truth is in what you don't say. The top 8 density areas were all NYC metro area, all of them small small population cities (<70k) except for NYC at #6 with over 8,000,000 population!