rlue

Fair point; to correct for this bias, ask n people to rate their experience with software reliability, then wait five years and do it again. The larger your n, the more you correct for individual variation (via the Law of Large Numbers)

The argument is that developers have a duty not to arbitrarily delete data on your system that you may have relied on that was produced by another program just because they’d like to replace it with something in their own format.

I don’t care if you’re volunteering your time; if you build something whose implied purpose and success depends on other people using it, you emphatically have a duty to those people not to silently destroy stuff that was there before your software was.

> Take all the numbers you have so far. Then, “spawn” a new number in every gap between the numbers you already have (crucially, “to the left of all” and “to the right of all” also count as “gaps”). Apply this step forevermore, and you’ll get surreal numbers.

I'm not a mathematician. Can someone explain to me how this approach gets you beyond the rational numbers?

Also, this was formatted as a blockquote, but as far as I can see, this blog post is the only instance of this formulation online.

Here’s a great series from Pace Electronics from 1980:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL926EC0F1F93C1837&si=srD8...

I have not found a modern resource that explains it better.

+1. I come online to discover new things because there's less friction online than anywhere else. What's more, digging through a mountain of content to find something that resonates with you is a form of work in its own right.

Micropayments are friction, and if you put friction on top of the work of discovery, I will do something else with my time.

I suspect all mammals depend on colonies of gut flora to survive. Humans are no exception.

Like all the other commenters here, I also devised my own solution—but AFAICT, it's the only other solution that's automated!

Requirements:

  * macOS
  * Zoom
  * Home Assistant
  * A signal light/sign on a smart switch (like [0])

The Procedure:

First, create a script that checks whether you're currently on a Zoom call, and then turns your signal light on or off accordingly. Remember to chmod +x!

  #!/bin/sh

  if [ $(lsof -i 4UDP | grep zoom 2>/dev/null | wc -l) -gt 1 ]; then
    curl \
      -H "Authorization: Bearer ${HOME_ASSISTANT_ACCESS_TOKEN}" \
      -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
      -d '{"entity_id": "${ENTITY_ID}"}' \
      https://${HOME_ASSISTANT_DOMAIN}/api/services/switch/turn_on
  else
    curl \
      -H "Authorization: Bearer ${HOME_ASSISTANT_ACCESS_TOKEN}" \
      -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
      -d '{"entity_id": "${ENTITY_ID}"}' \
      https://${HOME_ASSISTANT_DOMAIN}/api/services/switch/turn_off
  fi

Then, create a LaunchAgent that monitors your Zoom Application Support directory for filesystem changes at ~/Library/LaunchAgents/local.${USER}.on-air.plist:

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
  <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
  <plist version="1.0">
  <dict>
      <key>Label</key>
      <string>local.${USER}.on-air</string>
      <key>ProgramArguments</key>
      <array>
          <string>${PATH_TO_SCRIPT}</string>
      </array>
      <key>WatchPaths</key>
      <array>
          <string>/Users/${USER}/Library/Application Support/zoom.us/data</string>
      </array>
  </dict>
  </plist>

Finally, load 'er up:

  $ launchctl load ../Library/LaunchAgents/local.${USER}.on-air.plist

[0]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09NJ8ZCHF

Very informative, thanks

Very curious what other tripods you’ve found suitable for this purpose. At my own workstation, I use a pair of adhesive dashboard mounts, which allows me to achieve some pretty extreme tenting (see https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMechKeyboards/comments/1p1q5xz/), but while out and about, I worry that such light boards would get jostled around on a desk/table if tented as hard as I usually do.

I have also contemplated wearing a keyboard on my pants and using a pair of “XR glasses” (like those by X-Real or Viture) as a display.

I would absolutely never do this in a public place, much less a crowded one.

This guy’s figured it out though.

https://evantravers.com/articles/2023/04/06/magsafe-tenting-...

I use koreader, including its OPDS server support! While I'm always grateful for all FOSS (and especially for well-written FOSS), koreader's OPDS UI still has a long way to go to approximate what I'm imagining. It's basically a file browser in List view, whereas a good digital book storefront would include gallery views with cover art, synopses and other metadata when clicking into any individual publication, search functionality, recommendation carousels, and more.

My dream for an open e-book reader is to have some kind of graphical OPDS browser as a substitute for the commercial storefronts offered by Amazon/Rakuten/etc. If you could host and publish your own ebook library (using BookLore or something similar), then explore and fetch content off of it with the same UI polish as you can get from a corporate vendor (complete with cover art galleries, carousels for recent releases and recommendations and the like), I think that'd make e-readers so much more appealing and usable for diehard FOSS folks.

The better example for this design principle is the big green button on copy machines. The copier has many functions, but 99% of users don't bother with 99% of them.

For a little history on this design, see https://athinkingperson.com/2010/06/02/where-the-big-green-c...

Can you elaborate on or cite a source as to why this practice is incorrect? The Nitecore D4 battery charger supports recharging of this and other sizes of Li-ion batteries (in addition to NiMH), so I am skeptical that it is inherently dangerous.

I'm skeptical that new materials like this will meaningfully drive down the demand for virgin plastic packaging. The problem is not just the absence of good alternatives; it's the fact that plastic is the fossil fuel industry's backup plan for the global transition to cleaner energy sources.

That is: in preparation for a decrease in global demand for energy from fossil fuels, the industry is ramping up production of plastic to compensate so that it can maintain profitability (instead of, you know, just slowing down the extractive capitalism). Plastic production is set to triple over the next few decades as new facilities are built to support this transition.

(Source: Paraphrasing from my vague recollection of A Poison Like No Other by Matt Simon, and also articles like this one https://www.ecowatch.com/plastic-production-pollution-foreca...)

Grassroots protected spaces for/by oppressed classes != institutionalized segregation.

Yes, this naming is really unfortunate. It appears to be inspired by a fictional river from the LOTR-iverse:

https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Anduin

Selective access to a set of user-specified photos is a native feature of iOS. Any time an app prompts you to choose some photos from your photo reel, you are first given the option to explicitly choose which photos the app even has access to.

It technically doesn't say "self-contained", but it does say "portable" and "self-updating", which I must agree is misleading.

Your prediction is about a hardware product, and your examples are both software products (one is a browser and another is a mobile OS, both of which are platforms for running other software, and thus extremely well-suited to the task of reporting user data back to Google).

I'm not an expert, but baking telemetry into the hardware (or at least the kind of telemetry that I assume Google is interested in) seems like skipping a few levels of abstraction, and thus more trouble than it's worth.

Great concept. But author, if you're reading this: a piece like this could be so much better with a quick summary of what it does somewhere in the first two paragraphs. Something like:

"I've leveraged my home automation system to limit my access to social media to 15 minutes at a time, no more than once an hour. Using the built-in adblock feature, my router black-holes DNS queries to social media by default—which I can now disable temporarily by pushing the button on any one of several smart outlets around my house."

How is the latency? All mainstream chat apps have low-enough latency that a live conversation feels fluid and natural, whereas I frequently encounter situations where I have to wait up to five or ten seconds for an email to come through. That kind of latency would kill the experience IMO.

The one time I ever rode in a waymo (in Los Angeles), I had a contradictory experience. My Waymo was attempting to make a right turn at a red light. We were stopped behind a human driver who was waiting for pedestrians to finish crossing before proceeding to make the turn. This was a college campus (UCLA), so there were lots of pedestrians. After a few seconds of waiting, the Waymo decided that the driver ahead of us was an immobile obstacle, and cut left around this car to complete the right turn in front of it. There was only one lane to turn into.

Luckily, no one was hurt, and I generally trust a waymo not to plow into a pedestrian when it makes a maneuver like that. I also understand the argument that autonomous vehicles are easily safer on average than human drivers, and that’s what matters when making policy decisions.

But they are not perfect, and when they make mistakes, they tend to be particularly egregious.

Am I the only one who thought the lead photo should have included Gen 1 iMac vs. latest lineup? Even the 2021 anodized aluminum version is comparatively muted!

This sounds uncharacteristically earnest for anything coming out of the Trump administration, but don't let that distract you from the irony here.

Trump attempted a coup of his own four years ago. He may have legitimately won the election this time, he owes that victory in part to the partnership he courted with the man here accused of the same.

Such was the price of his victory: Donald Trump sold this country to Elon Musk for a second term. It might turn out to be a short one.

On the contrary, I think it could make perfect sense: What's written in the law is one thing, and how it's enforced is another; I would argue that the former should be done with consideration to the latter.

Based on my own experience, I'd estimate that well over 99% of traffic infractions go entirely ignored by the law: minor speed violations, unsignaled lane changes, rolling stops at stop signs, expired tags, cell phone usage, and yes, running red lights.

When the letter of the law is broader in scope or errs on the side of caution, that enables the police to exercise their judgment in enforcing it (with the obvious caveat that some police will abuse any power you give them). You could imagine a scenario where someone technically runs a red light but it's totally justifiable and safe (heavy load + moderate speed + short yellow + no other traffic) and another where someone technically makes it into the intersection on a yellow light but senselessly severely endangers public safety (busy intersection + rapid acceleration + traffic backed up on the other side of the light).

I would be okay with someone evading a ticket in the first case and getting one in the latter.

This is the subject of a fun little ditty on Vulfpeck’s upcoming live album:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=T7ahw2jhpdE

You’re right; what I should have said was “everyone who disagrees with me is operating from a morally inferior value system!” but that’s not as pithy.

In case you’d prefer something more prosaic: there is a difference between stating a contrary position and implying that other people’s positions indicate a defective worldview from which they should seek to free themselves. Or, more simply, there’s a difference between attacking a point and attacking a person.

I would also add that your last point is a bit of a straw man. I can scarcely clarify except by restating my point: spamming a thread with kneejerk retorts instead of taking the time to reflect on someone’s criticism is a dialectical red flag.

“Everyone who disagrees with me is wrong. But if you take this irreversible life choice that lots of people actually regret, I sincerely feel that you are likely to see the light.”

People shouldn’t have kids to soothe their existential malaise; they should have kids because they actually want to devote their lives to nurturing another living thing. They are not a prop for your personal growth. This is really, really harmful advice.

FWIW given the rigidity of your thinking, I would really hate to be your kid by the time I started having opinions of my own.

P.S. You being out here responding to every single comment without hesitation and not reconsidering your position in the slightest is a sign of bad thinking.

That’s called a ring chart or a sunburst chart.