scelerat

Cassettes had a bit of a resurgence in the late aughts to 2010s among DIY/punk/indie bands due in part to the widespread availability of cheap (often free) old players, older used cars with tape decks, and cheap four track recording devices.

It would be very common for a new band in that time to have their first release on cassette, and then after they could scrape up the dough, press a vinyl single (CDs being very digitally uncool). There were several niche labels from that time whose bread was buttered with cassette sales.

You're absolutely right the sound quality sucks, but as a child of the '80s whose first music collection was purely cassette based and played back on a Radio Shack cassette dictation player, that sound has a nostalgia for me.

HTML5 is a long way from the simple hypertext document format embodied in early versions of HTML. It is that way from necessity: how the web and applications built upon it using HTML have evolved. HTML started off being very simple and very accessible. One just had to grasp the concept of a tag, and that tags had to be nested and closed (sometimes), and you could make a hypertext document to serve on the WWW. One influential cohort of users, application developers, ran hard with HTML, pushed it to its limits, and continuously revised it to be an application rendering language. Anyone who merely wanted to write a hypertext encountered a complex and growing language spec.

Markdown emerged to fulfill that "simple" hypertext document role. If you're writing READMEs and blog posts, you probably don't need more than that. And I think it's more accessible (certainly less error-prone) than HTML for most people.

If you need richer semantics, HTML5 is available. And if semantics are important to you, you're probably still using HTML5 as a rendering layer and your actual semantics are processed, stored and delivered in layers much more purpose-built for that.

I find myself spending so much time correcting bad -- or perhaps, more appropriately, misguided -- code that I constantly wonder if I'm saving time. I think I am, but a much higher percentage of my time is doing hard work of evaluating and thinking about things rather than mentally easy things the AI is good at, but what used to give me a little bit of a break.

Sometimes I liken the promise of AI to my experience with stereoscopic images (I have never been able to perceive them) -- I know there's something there but I frequently don't get it.

The Mac has had them as part of the standard keyboard layout since 1984. Using Apple kit since then, they have long been burned into my muscle memory:

option-[-] for en dash –

shift-option-[-] for em dash —

I liked this quote:

> I worked on the basic concept on my own. I found that if I started to listen to others, the concept tended to become diluted and unfocused. However, once the basic concept was decided, it was helpful to have open discussions with the team. There were many more ideas that were not used in the game, but I still got something out of all the different ideas that were brought up even if I didn't use them as they were presented.

The new policy’s notion of binary “biological sex” is completely divorced from genetic, biological, physiological, and psychological reality

I’m more curious about what you think the “large pain” the previous administration was inflicting on people than learning about your indifference to minorities

Examples, please.

If you are trans, you were just de-personed by executive order and your passport was invalidated. If you also happened to be an incarcerated female, you are being transferred to male facilities. These are actions which will have life-altering consequences.

That's only one thing among many others (ICE immigrant raids which also sweep up legal immigrants and citizens who don't "look American") just in the first few days. What "large pain" are you talking about?

Lately I just cant get the thought out of my head that 69% of Americans either directly or tacitly approved Trump's agenda.

A big chunk of those people now voicing concerns did not vote to prevent the course we are now on because "both sides are the same," or variations of that demonstrable falsehood.

Just surveying broadly what's going on I think it is wrong to assume the decisions being made are uninformed. I think they may be, unfortunately, very well informed.

Things just havent been the same since Jacquard's loom

same. to me, it's the immediacy that matters; I want as little getting in the way of getting my idea in draft form quickly. A real paper notepad and just the voice record feature of my phone are my main go-tos.

One of the biggest dangers of software solutions is that everything is so easy that it's super easy to just start playing with things that don't matter instead of actually working on the music itself. Sometimes keeping the tools simple helps keep the focus on the real work.

What’s magic about the Bering strait?

When I was at UCLA in the mid-‘90s there were computer science courses taught through the school of engineering, mostly limited to SEAS students. So computer science, computer engineering, ee, me, and the like. I think the intro classes were taught in scheme.

And then for everyone else the Math department of the school of Letters and Science had their PIC (program in computing I think?) series which had two or three courses in C++ and another course in Lisp. As a physics major I took the latter.

> This was already apparent

On edge? We're just talking here. I'm not trying to hold up MS Basic as some awesome programming environment, just describing how I experienced it

"single parent households" are precisely why these levers are important: among other things, they help reduce the disadvantages some kids have due to being raised by an impoverished single parent, and gives those kids a leg up in a way which will foster more stable home life and less likelihood of themselves becoming single parents.

It's why day care, head start, school lunch and the like are super important.

Even before we get to corporate demographics or college graduation, admittance, and application rates, there are millions of children growing up in poverty in the US. Relatively inexpensive social welfare investments can mitigate many of the worst effects, even for those who don't decide to become software engineers.

> It was a shame, since MacBASIC allowed users to write software that supported the features of the Mac UI and Microsoft's BASIC did not.

Practically speaking perhaps yes, but technically MS Basic on the Mac did enable you to make many Mac Toolbox/Quickdraw calls, enabling one to make buttons, shapes, draw, use fonts, etc. All of this ran inside the BASIC window, so it wasn't like you could open new windows or file dialogs.

I have no idea what Apple's MacBasic was like, but I did use MS Basic to make some very simple games. For junior high school me it was mostly using buttons in unsophisticated guessing or choose-your-own-adventure games.

I had a floppy with Pong-like game written in MS basic for the Mac. It used toolbox routines to draw the ping-pong-like paddle, the ball, the oval-shaped (iirc) bricks, and follow mouse movements while hiding the default pointer. I don't know who wrote it, but it came to me via a parent who worked at Jet Propulsion Lab and brought it home to run on our 128k Mac.

The hardest part about exercise is the mental aspect of pushing past the inertia of habit and comfort.

As Dr Ashley says in the OP, if you can just walk 30-45 minutes five or six days a week, you're already doing your health a great service. The hard part isn't the walk itself, it's the motivation to start, and the discipline to make it part of a routine.

Once you have ingrained exercise into your routine, it becomes easy. Not exercising feels uncomfortable; feeding your body with things which do not support your more healthful state will feel more innately uncomfortable. Once you establish a routine of exercise, you have the basis for a virtuous cycle.

I still have the original manuals from my Macintosh (1984), including those for MacWrite and MacPaint, as well as the 1st ed "Macintosh" book by Cary Lu. It's really something else to see computer books from that era. Beautifully typeset and illustrated.

I have many (and still use several) old O'Reilly books as well, including The Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog by Ed Krol... the Second Edition which adds a chapter about the World Wide Web. There is a quaint Catalog at the back listing sites on a number of topics from Science to Entertainment. Gopher, Usenet, FTP, WAIS, and yes WWW -- the "whole" internet.

For many obvious reasons, nobody makes hard-copy computer manuals anymore. I still enjoy reading books, even on computer topics I could otherwise be reading online.

I heartily recommend the Korg Opsix to anyone who wants to experiment with FM synthesis.

As the article mentions, the UI of the DX7 made programming it, modifying existing sounds or coming up with new ones entirely, difficult to say the least.

With the Opsix, much of the ability to tweak aspects of the operators, envelopes, LFOs and so on, are given dedicated knobs and sliders, or easily accessible menus whose parameters are tweakable with physical knobs. The hands-on UI of the Opsix turns what once was an ordeal of menu diving and incremental buttons into a much more rewarding, interactive experience.

I play one live in a band and use an old Yamaha KX76, the dedicated controller bigger brother to the DX7 as a controller for the Opsix. Best of both worlds. The feel on those old keyboards is superb.

Sincere concern for others exposed to scams is always appreciated, but I think you're still not considering the variety of needs and tastes. It seems clear you are not the customer Apple has in mind for the iMac, but that doesn't mean those customers don't exist.

It's clear to me both from the reviewer and some of the comments here on HN that some people don't understand that their bubble is a bubble inside of a bubble. most people I know who aren't technical would like a simple, no-nonsense computer.

Some people truly work on projects which progress and are ultimately completed.

Others are basically hoarders, and the junk simply accumulates.

It's hard to tell the difference from a single snapshot.

tuna plus mayo and umeboshi (tart, pickled plum) are my two favorite onigiri stuffings

How are they?

I'm in California -- I love the konbinis in Japan, and while 7-Eleven's recent announcements to offer more konbini-like food and experience sounds great, I fear it's going to fall far short of the mark because I think it's a combination of ingredients, supply chain, and employee processes and practices. Like, all those things need to be on point to deliver a quality onigiri or egg salad sandwich, and I don't have a whole lot of confidence in the US-based 7-Elevens to deliver without massive changes.

(And to be clear, I don't think there has been any mention of onigiri appearing at US-based 7-Eleven, they have have announced better/different prepared sandwich offerings)

"You can be forgiven for thinking that OD&D is a medieval European fantasy game. After all, Gary Gygax himself says so. "

At various points (the original Dungeon Master's Guide, for example, page 88), he also has said it's expressly not a European Feudal game, and goes at length to qualify that, saying that it is only one of many sources of inspiration, and describes a number of political systems possible in a campaign and explains ways a variety of societies could be woven into it.

So, yeah I suppose if you've only read a little about D&D you could be forgiven for thinking this, but there is a large body of in-game and supplementary official and fan-created rules and settings which should give no one the impression that at any point were game authors and players as a whole were going for feudal european verisimilitude (or opposing it, for that matter)

Blog post is interesting but the title and initial setup is kind of a strawman

Been looking for a year and a half for something full-time and permanent. No luck so far. Chopped about fifteen years off my resume, and that seemed to help get more interviews, but I think that backfired because then they were surprised by my wrinkles and bald spot and figured if I was lying about my experience, I was lying about other things too.

One thing that does not help was a string of startups I worked for which all eventually ran out of funding, so I have like four companies in four years. Also, no thanks to Patreon, who hired me to do one thing, went through a bunch of managers and could never get the ball rolling, then laid off a bunch of people nine months later. really hard to explain to a hiring manager without sounding like I'm mad and resentful. Because I'm mad and resentful.

Picking up odd jobs here and there. Small part time gigs, some substitute teaching, bar-backing and construction work.

The ease of creating, deleting and merging branches and patches is what sold me on git over subversion (which itself was a vast improvement over the only VCS I had experienced up until that point, CVS). When the author describes the literal jaw-dropping demos, I remember having a similar reaction.

I hit a speed limit of around 50-60 wpm years ago, even after taking a typing class in high school and doing multiple online typing tutor courses.

I don't know what it is; i've never been able to push past it without ruining accuracy.