2,078 karma · joined June 23, 2023
Submissions I've made that led to my favourite discussions:
1) AI Detection Tools Falsely Accuse International Students of Cheating (Aug 2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37127003
2) The Philosophy of Humor: What Makes Something Funny? (Oct 2023): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38049451
3) How to delete your data from data brokers (Jan 2024): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38990755
4) Hospitals that make profits should pay taxes (Apr 2024): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40032233
5) Grief is not a process with five stages. It is shattered glass (Jun 2024): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40717448
The situation should dictate the solution as decided by the user, instead of the OS dictating a solution and limiting options regardless of the situation.
On my iPad, it theoretically works the same, but the workflow differs when I take the screenshot. The screen gets filled entirely by the new screenshot interface instead of keeping to a small window that keeps other windows in view (like on MacOS), and often, text selection just doesn’t work on the iPad until I crop the screenshot further to just the text (versus working reliably on MacOS). So, it’s fiddly and takes a lot of time.
On the MacBook, I could even install free third-party software to skip a couple steps (Cmd+A, Cmd+C) and immediately save any text in the selection to my clipboard.
And that is the core of the issue for me. For the actual person using the device to get something done, many of the tasks I detailed are not possible to complete on the iPad as it is today, due to limitations on what I can install.
I would be happy if I could at least dual boot to another OS or run a virtual machine (even if touch becomes disabled) so I can install more software tools, as the hardware capability is there for the iPad. On Linux, at least I can run a Windows virtual machine to run Adobe Premiere Pro (or dual boot with Windows), but I cannot fully use the hardware of an iPad with the way its operating system is currently designed.
I really, really, really missed having an actual laptop. I lost the ability to:
* Listen to music while watching a video (iPadOS does not allow multiple audio sources at once; playing a YouTube video while playing a song on Apple Music wasn't allowed)
* Quickly edit photos (I had 400 GB+ photos to cull/cut down; Lightroom for iPad required me to transfer photos to internal storage before culling to upload to cloud storage first, and I didn't have enough room; and specialized software for culling on the iPad equivalent to FastRawViewer that may or may not have worked all had a subscription fee)
* Easily search for files (Files search was far slower and unreliable, especially with files split between OneDrive, iCloud Drive, and Google Drive), and manage files in general
* Edit videos with the features I needed (Premiere Pro lacked features on iPad and other video editor alternatives had no iPad equivalents), or simply easily edit videos due to friction in file management
* Use video-recording software like OBS to record a presentation
* Use all features of flashcard software named Anki; I could not export individual decks or use other features (desktop-only feature; the iOS and browser versions did not have this)
* Easily manage and resize having multiple windows on the screen at once (a two-second window arrangement took 10+ seconds, with constant hold-and-dragging and precise dragging at specific changing corners required)
* Quickly and easily extract text from images for translation elsewhere (which added difficulties for language learning)
* Run certain internet browser extensions
* Compile and edit source code for software
And so on. I'll grant that many users won't need many of these features. But at the very least, the ability to find files and manage windows is essential, yet it's still so cumbersome with iPads versus laptops years after the first iPadOS release.
I fundamentally think that computers should work for you, and you shouldn't need to change your habits and workflow due to OS limitations (losing the ability to simply listen to music while watching a video was the biggest one for me). Yet I ran into so many walls with the iPad.
But at the same time, after our natural relationship ran its course (due to graduations or leaving a student team), it felt like they disappeared. My relationship with them wouldn't linger like with other friends (even if weakened).
Another friend of mine directly described this view that "friendships have a time and place" in life. I thought about that perspective and didn't fully agree, but it still taught me that it's perfectly possible and even healthy to make friends quickly even if circumstances are temporary.
My view is that even if you become good friends with someone (at work or elsewhere) and they leave, you still end up with a network of friends across the country in different workplaces. Even when the nature of the friendship changes, you can still catch up with many of your old friends on occasion (like around the holidays).
And even if relationships completely fade, I believe that genuine relationships will always be a nice experience.
I wasn't happy at all to end up associating with people who were zero-sum, transactional, and only valued wealth and fame. That can promote a constant sense of insecurity and lack of trust, which prevents the formation of true connections to others (which I've found to be important).
I've been very happy to find myself with groups of people, in work contexts and elsewhere, who try to care for others while pursuing their personal goals. There's a sense of belonging and security.
> "Finally, the Apple M5 showed its efficiency advantage under maximum load. The MacBook Air 15 M5 kept going for 4 hours and 10 minutes while gaming. The Dell XPS 14 could only hold out for 2.5 hours."
That about fits my personal experience. The dozens-of-hours-long battery life claims for laptops are based on streaming videos, but real-life battery life is always far shorter for me, as I usually use my laptop for more intensive tasks.
I'll also be missing the SAPIENS online magazine with its newsletter, which also shut down in December.
Eventually, people learn to include them out of habit—especially as most people see them as aesthetically nicer than a simple hyphen (-).
[1] https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/H...
The main advantage that UofT has for its undergraduates is related to funding. UofT’s engineering design teams tend to be better-funded than TMU’s, though TMU’s engineering design teams still perform very well—proudly outperforming UofT’s teams in certain years despite the funding gaps. In addition, some TMU students I’ve spoken with mentioned that UofT has more research opportunities. The name of the university also has a positive impact on admissions for students applying to graduate school. These advantages are not a reflection of the students who attend, but rather UofT’s ability to raise funds.
There is also a disadvantage I’ve seen at UofT. The TMU engineering students I’ve known have mentioned getting extensions approved easily for assignments and homework, to pursue professional opportunities such as hackathons and conferences. That is generally unheard of, from my experience in a STEM program at UofT. Policies are strictly outlined (with some leniency in many courses, such as dropping the lowest assignment mark), and I generally have not seen professors grant exceptions to these.
But the main difference I’ve seen between TMU people and UofT people is university pride. I’ve met several people who were proud to go to TMU and succeed, whereas I haven’t seen that at UofT (with the exception of UofT’s engineering department). I’m satisfied with the opportunities I’ve gotten due to attending UofT—especially as I was involved with its on-campus work program and an engineering design team there—but I haven’t met many UofT people fiercely proud of their school, in contrast to the TMU people I’ve met.
In any case, I am happy to work with people from either school. Work experience and personality has mattered more to me than the name of the university that a person went to, and both TMU and UofT offer great opportunities for students to gain relevant experience—though these are up to the students to pursue, outside of their required classes.
Though Computer Science and Physics are distinctly different from the mathematics courses, these are still directly useful for a mathematics student to learn—the problem-solving skills should also carry over. Key mathematical discoveries have been inspired by problems in computer science and physics, and many rigorous university-level mathematics books still draw from problems in these fields to motivate certain problems. At the least, they are less laboratory-heavy than Biology and Chemistry (the student could still attempt these subjects, though, and choose to omit the grades for university admissions).
That leaves a couple of other classes—or just one if English is required, as noted by another commenter. My school offered subjects like Grade 12 Drama, Visual Arts, and Music, where much of the grading was effort-based. In my school, most students in my classes saw these courses as a break from other intensive courses, with grades not being as much of a concern. This would allow the student to avoid using a grade for History, Economics, French (or another foreign language), or another subject.
The English requirement would then be a difficult challenge for the mathematics-focused student. I wish I could speak more about what it was like for most of my classmates who went on to study engineering, as many of them took the standard English course (I took a more demanding version of the course, due to personal interest). My classmates at the time did not seem to have an issue with university admissions to competitive programs despite not enjoying the subject at the time, but the other commenter makes a good point that minimum grades for admission standards have increased greatly since then.
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[1] As an aside: a past classmate—who was brilliant at mathematics and also great with people—later poked fun some years later about the Ontario government's naming for math courses. He said, "there's Grade 11 Functions... and then in Grade 12, there's Advanced (!) Functions." The last I heard, he went on to work as an investment banker at a top hedge fund by profitability in the United States.
I believe that any person here with an inkling of relatable technical experience can greatly appreciate the work you've been doing. Software development can be complicated and frustrating, especially when things don't work as you expect them to (but then, you learn and become better). Leading a business is very difficult, often due to sources of problems you don't expect (such as regulatory and legal requirements, accounting, and publicity).
Some people cruise on to great careers without facing many barriers. But many others face unexpected setbacks and have to manage them. A close friend of mine was living an overall good life until it was profoundly disrupted by a civil war in his home country. But he made it to my country where he began his undergraduate degree at a great university that he loves. A past colleague of mine spent much of her early twenties managing physical disability, but successfully received treatment and went on to graduate with an engineering degree. She has since landed a position at a top aerospace company that she really wanted to work at.
You are setting up a good life for yourself. Many people lack that kind of drive or struggle with executing ideas; several people I personally know would be very proud to one day experience just a small part of your successes so far.
Most of these universities look at an applicant's grades for just six courses. After looking at the courses required for certain programs (such as calculus and physics for certain programs), the remainder of the six courses comprise the student's top grades for any courses at the Grade 12 (final year) level.
So, a high school student aiming for a top engineering or mathematics program will not be hamstrung by a poor grade in Grade 12 English, nor will a student aiming for a top international relations program be hamstrung by a poor grade in Calculus. At the same time, the student going into a STEM program will have an exposure to Shakespeare, which can provide inspiration and a rich set of works to explore later in life. The student going into international relations may later be inspired some years later to study mathematics for its beauty as a hobby, some years later.
I remember the feeling that I was wasting time with many of my courses in those years, despite having good teachers for many of them—I thought my time spent on mandatory humanities courses like music took time away from more practical subjects, and I wish I took a programming course (though I did love my English classes). Perhaps this remains true for many students, but I personally took an interest in music performance as a hobby years later in life, and the years-old lessons in music theory came back to me. My English classes also introduced me to literature, which has remained a very important part of my life that has guided me through highly consequential life decisions for the better. It is unlikely that I would have taken an interest in literary works without my exposure to English in school.
At least at the time of the article, there was no way to disable the auto-conversion of certain strings (like "SEPT2") into dates. A setting to disable this would have stopped many errors amplified by researchers working late at night or rushing to meet a deadline.
It's true that there has to be some point where the users of the tool need to put in the effort to learn how to best use it. But effort poured in from the other end by the developers, too, can go a long way to prevent common errors and save users time.
These people ended up paying avoidable expenses due to voluntarily sharing information that they were not required to disclose, which was used to change their health-care plan without consent.
A lack of individual privacy can cost people real money. In this case, this resulted in unnecessary costs for essential medical care.
A good, practical approach I've liked to use are the techniques in Benjamin and Shermer's "Secrets of Mental Math." One of the examples in the linked article shows a method of drawing for solving 42 * 21. But this is easier to solve mentally by converting this to a simpler problem, as recommended by the book: 42 * 21 = (42 * 20) + (42 * 1) = 840 + 42 = 882.
You can often split up these types of multiplication problems into an easier multiplication problem, plus an addition. You can then solve the entire problem without much or any paper for calculation.
I appreciate that the archive will be preserved: “[…] the Tula Foundation will support and maintain the Hakai Magazine website in perpetuity, continuing to make our archives freely available to everyone.”
Another quality publication that has ceased publication is Lapham’s Quarterly. At least Lapham’s on hiatus, though, instead of shut down permanently.
Consider a recent article in the Financial Times about rising sea temperatures [1][2]. The topic is vast and complicated, which is perhaps relatable to your perspective, yet it's the job of the writer to produce the linear narrative that you mentioned. How does the writer do this?
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The article presents the key idea up front with a headline ("The dangerous effects of rising sea temperatures"), and then adds context with a sub-headline ("Scientists are increasingly concerned that the world’s oceans are approaching the limits of their capacity to absorb heat").
To ease the reader into the topic, the author then begins by focusing on a human subject by writing: "In 30 years of studying the oceans, Matthew England has learnt to understand their irregular yet constant rhythms — the cycles of wind, temperature and atmospheric changes that interact with the masses of water covering most of the Earth’s surface.
The author continues: "But what he has seen in the past 15 months has shocked him. Global sea surface temperatures have reached and stayed at record levels, fuelling heatwaves and melting sea ice. Temperatures in the north Atlantic waters he has been studying, including around the UK and Ireland, were described last year as “beyond extreme” by the EU’s Earth observation service."
The author later "zooms out" as a narrative technique—similar to the one described in the submitted article—that provides wider context for the problem that the interviewee is describing by presenting cases of natural disasters.
To get deeper into the subject, the author then includes perspectives from various other researchers who study the phenomenon, and then dives deeper into competing theories about the immediate causes behind these environmental changes.
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So, in your context, you could begin describing how your software tool solves some problem by describing a human user who is facing a specific yet common issue that is frustrating. After the reader then grasps what the problem is, you could write about how your software tool fixes the problem.
But this is just one approach of many. Another author might have taken a "lede-nut graf" [3] approach, where the bottom-line conclusion is put in the first sentence as the "lede," followed by the "nut graf" of a paragraph providing additional context and motivation to read the rest of the article. With this approach, you could skip the focus on a human user, and instead jump right into a sentence that claims your software tool solves a specific problem (especially if the problem is a well-known one).
One of the best methods I've found to get better at a particular skill is to immerse yourself in high-quality exemplars of what you're trying to do. Even without taking notes, you can naturally pick up lessons from what you're experiencing. For this reason, a habit of reading well-written articles could help with your own ability to describe complicated concepts in a way that's more accessible.
[1] Link: https://www.ft.com/content/76c3747d-f068-467a-98f9-4ed687dcb...
[2] Gift link (viewable up to three times): https://on.ft.com/3LJJmBT
[3] More on nut grafs: https://www.theopennotebook.com/2014/04/29/nailing-the-nut-g...
Untools itself also inspired some good discussions on this forum (2020, 137 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23339830
I've recently read and greatly enjoyed a historical fiction novel called "Augustus" written by John Edward Williams and published in 1972. On the surface level, it's about the events of the life of Augustus Caesar (better known in the book as "Octavian")—but on a deeper level, it's about the rarity of longtime friends in life, and dealing with aging and one's mortality. I put the novel off for a year because I thought I had to read a non-fiction historical account of Augustus's life first, as I thought I couldn't appreciate the novel without doing so, due to the unfamiliar character names and events. But one day, I just decided to try it out—and I found myself naturally remembering the character names and events without special care in reading the novel.
Similar experiences have been reported by people engaging with various forms of media. I've seen readers take copious notes on the novel "Infinite Jest," which has a reputation for being a difficult read, only to burn out. In contrast, readers who have finished the novel said that they didn't need to take notes, and that the story began to make sense simply by reading more.
I've also seen a similar pattern from subjects as academic mathematics, where some learners spend too much time on textbook explanations instead of working on the textbook problems, to subjects as relaxed as computer role-playing games, in which some players end up dropping these games due to a perceived need to take notes to understand the story, before they can get immersed in the game's world.
I think a lot more understanding and enjoyment of various subjects can be attained by being comfortable with confusion for a while. While note-taking has its place in understanding a subject, I've personally found that immersion is the most important factor for understanding.
From the Universe Today (at https://www.universetoday.com/122715/what-are-white-holes/ ):
"Black holes are places in the Universe where matter and energy are compacted so densely together that their escape velocity is greater than the speed of light. […] Fully describing a black hole requires a lot of fancy math, but these are real objects in our Universe. […] So then what’s a white hole?
"White holes are created when astrophysicists mathematically explore the environment around black holes, but pretend there’s no mass within the event horizon. What happens when you have a black hole singularity with no mass? […]
"Now if white holes did exist, which they probably don’t, they would behave like reverse black holes – just like the math predicts. Instead of pulling material inward, a white hole would blast material out into space like some kind of white chocolate fountain. […] One of the other implications of white hole math, is that they only theoretically exist as long as there isn’t a single speck of matter within the event horizon. As soon as single atom of hydrogen drifted into the region, the whole thing would collapse."
And from Space.com (at https://www.space.com/white-holes.html ):
"White holes are theoretical cosmic regions that function in the opposite way to black holes. Just as nothing can escape a black hole, nothing can enter a white hole. […]
"To a spaceship crew watching from afar, a white hole looks exactly like a black hole. It has mass. It might spin. A ring of dust and gas could gather around the event horizon — the bubble boundary separating the object from the rest of the universe. But if they kept watching, the crew might witness an event impossible for a black hole — a belch.
"Physicists describe a white hole as a black hole's "time reversal," a video of a black hole played backwards, much as a bouncing ball is the time-reversal of a falling ball. While a black hole's event horizon is a sphere of no return, a white hole's event horizon is a boundary of no admission — space-time's most exclusive club. No spacecraft will ever reach the region's edge. Objects inside a white hole can leave and interact with the outside world, but since nothing can get in, the interior is cut off from the universe's past: No outside event will ever affect the inside."
To add on to this, this is actually an existing project founded by Sal Khan in 2021 called "Schoolhouse" at https://schoolhouse.world/about. There was a recruitment drive to try and encourage undergraduate students at my university to volunteer as tutors, in exchange for a letter of reference and tutoring experience. I suppose that the program was effective at recruiting volunteers at my university, as it had official support from my university's administration—students received recruitment emails from a faculty member, rather than from an external email address.
But I'm unsure about the quality and effectiveness of the program with tutors as volunteers, as I wasn't involved in the program myself. I also predict that it's hard to retain talent, as professional tutors can earn a very high hourly rate—I've seen many independent tutors charge more than $60 per hour.
The limitation is price. Many listings for reputable math tutors are greater than $60 USD per hour. If you go by the CAP's minimum for "high-dosage tutoring" of a 30-minute session three times a week, that sums to at least $360 USD per month. Many parents do pay for this for children, but it's an unaffordable expense for many people. There is an initiative to provide free tutoring (via the "Schoolhouse" project founded by Khan Academy's Sal Khan to have volunteer tutors, who are often university students), but it's not yet clear to me whether the quality of volunteer tutors will be sufficient to make a difference in the success of students.
I've also read elsewhere that one of the most important factors in tutoring effectiveness is the frequency of consistently meeting with the tutor. An AI tutor would help with frequency via lowering the price—though then again, there may be more feelings of accountability with meeting a human person at a scheduled time, versus using a software tool consistently.
[1] https://www.americanprogress.org/article/fact-sheet-scaling-...
What qualifies as a major change can be subjective at times: there have been controversies where newspapers change an inaccurate headline without notice and larger controversies where there is a "stealth edit" that many readers believe should have been publicized. But this expectation that there should be transparency with edits should be the norm.
I believe that articles on personal websites and blogs can only gain by following the practice, too, as it's an indicator to the reader that the author cares about transparency and accuracy.
I haven't seen Uber or Lyft effectively go down the route of having their service be a part of a user's identity. But Waymo could make an effort, if they wanted to: they use a distinctive car model, and they could offer incentives to make carpooling with Waymo cheaper (to try and make a user 'known' in their social circle for using the service).
The ability to easily (and privately) double-check emails for typos and grammar mistakes before sending them out will genuinely be helpful (who hasn't sent a late-night message with a typo?). And if the quality of the text summaries is high, easy summary creation will also be useful for many people.
A principle I've tried to follow is to minimize regrets over one's life. In your case, it sounds like you will live with the full experience of moving to a new place—you won't have the regrets expressed by some who didn't move away. Some people who give up opportunities out of passiveness have grown to truly regret that decision. In my situation, closeness to parents was one of several reasons: if it were the only one, it’s likely I would have regretted not taking an alternate path.
You can also call your parents often over the phone or video. I was very close to a person who moved to the opposite side of the globe from the person’s parents for more than five years, but spent a lot of time video calling them (nearly every day). The person confided in them and talked about plenty of subjects. This person truly has a great relationship with them: I wouldn't be surprised if the topics of conversations were often deeper than those with my own parents, despite being half a world away.
It also may not be too late to move later in life (though understandably, sometimes there are barriers, such as a partner who can't easily move, or restrictions in either country that make a move difficult). Many people in my country move to the US to earn money and gain experience, then decide to move back home after a number of years to raise children and care for family members. From another perspective, I've known other people who moved to my country, then worked with immigration services to bring their family to move with them.
Though I don't know your parents, they might also have regretted or been heartbroken if you gave up on your dreams or plans in life just to stay closer to them. If I were to become a parent one day, I would also hope my children would similarly be able to live a full life, even if that meant an empty nest at home.
I think it's good that you are actively considering the question. A future step may not involve any person moving in the future, but a starting point could involve deepening the relationship with your parents by calling them and sharing more about your life.