sivers

Consider two pet mice instead. They're more portable. Kess could carry them in her pocket when going out to the playground and the mice are happy to stay in there. Get two girls because girl mice smell better and don't fight. My boy had three pet mice from age 6-9 and absolutely adored them. Took them everywhere out to play. To the beach, to friends' houses, to the playground, etc. And they're such a magnet for conversation. Everyone wants to come see and hold a pet mouse. They're so cute. Our mice lived to the old age of 3, and were very adored.

Rats have more personality than mice but are less portable, so better to have in the house instead of out in the playground. Kind of like guinea pigs. (A common pet where I grew up.) And their little claws can unintentionally scratch and hurt. Clipping their nails would help but that's hard. If you get rats, get two boys, and have them castrated ASAP. I have two boy rats now and love them.

To answer my biggest concern when I got them: they never ever bite. (Neither rats nor mice.)

My pet rats are here next to me as I type this.

I used to live in a basement apartment, next to the trash room. Rats were often blocking my door, and I could hear them walking in the ceiling right above me as I slept. I hated them so much that I happily killed as many as I could, with no remorse.

Last year, my boy (age 12) asked for a pet rat. I thought he was kidding, but he showed me YouTube videos of pet rats being adorable. So I said OK.

We adopted two twin brothers, which he named Cricket and Clover. They look almost identical but I can tell them apart by their personality. Full of energy and wants to climb to my shoulder? That’s Cricket. Mellow and wants to cuddle in my armpit? That’s Clover.

Rats, like cats, use a litter box. They’re very trainable, so they can come when called. They’re attached and affectionate. They have personality, which then makes us more attached and affectionate, too. Go search for videos of pet rats, and you'll see.

Many times a day, I go cuddle them and kiss their bellies, and they lick my nose. They’re wonderful.

As much as I love these rats, my deepest joy is that I'm loving what I used to hate. Cuddling what I used to kill.

Agreed. I've been using it for all DNS and CDN for over two years now. Great company, great support, great performance, great API. Everything. Love it. I'm a big fan.

Agreed. I just had that moment like the guy in the movie "Her", the first time he speaks to his OS. Laughing at myself for talking to a computer like a real person. Then had to hang up because it crossed that uncanny valley.

But then I thought of one more question to ask, reconnected to ask it, and it said, "Hey! You hung up just as we were just getting to the good stuff!" which threw me off, so I stammered gobsmacked for a minute, and it made fun of my stammering, imitating it. Whoa! So so SO good! Crazy good.

I'm creeped-out by this being on someone else's server, but if it was fully local-hosted-private, that might even get more creepy if I allowed myself to really talk freely to this thing.

Sorry for my dumb question, but the timing of this topic is perfect because I'm just now considering getting my first TV.

Can't I just get a nice OLED smart TV and NEVER connect it to the internet?

Put MP4/MKV movies onto a USB stick and watch them in "AUX/USB" mode? Or use HDMI from my computer, and just treat it as a big monitor?

It might ask me to connect, but I can just decline and keep watching the USB/HDMI inputs, right?

From an old David Letterman interview with her long, long ago, I learned a cool little life hack:

She moved to the big city and was getting into the entertainment industry, going around with her CV/résumé, trying to get jobs.

The most impressive things on her CV had an * next to them.

At the bottom of the page, it said, “* = l.i.e.”

Only once did someone interviewering her ask her what that means.

She said, “Oh those are lies.”

I like that. Shows it doesn't really matter, and if you're admitting up-front that it's a lie, then it's the interviewer's fault for ignoring it.

In case anyone comes across this in the future, I've posted my PostgreSQL version here:

https://github.com/sivers/srs

I know my up-vote of this comment is supposed to be enough, but I just have to add, as an extra praise @jl6 here:

That's the funniest sentence I've heard in a long time.

“Nobody ever thought to themselves: I sure could go for some content right now.”

Love it love it love it.

So weird how some minds think alike in more than one aspect.

I already loved your writing, but I never would have predicted that anyone else (besides me) was trying to put spaced repetition algorithms into SQL.

I've been in touch with the guys making Open Spaced Repetition: https://github.com/open-spaced-repetition

... specifically the Free Spaced Repetition Scheduler (FSRS), of which they recommended if we're going to copy one of the implementations it should be the TypeScript one, since that's the best documented: https://github.com/open-spaced-repetition/ts-fsrs + https://open-spaced-repetition.github.io/ts-fsrs/

I've been working on it the last few days and was working on it this morning, then I saw this/your post on HN. Jaw dropped.

I always enjoy making things from scratch as a way of getting to know them, but in this case it seems wise (and a bit of a new experience for me) to copy someone else's open source work and try to do a real implementation of the FSRS-5 scheduler in PostgreSQL PL/pgSQL functions.

Then cards and their data-logic can stay together in one place, and anyone can use whatever language they want for UI/API.

https://nownownow.com/ is still hand-made by me, not automated.

The only way a website gets added there is if the owner emails me, and I checked out the /now page, and decided to add it.

Every now and then I get a submission that's like "We here at XYZ widgets are currently focused on quality, service, and low prices." I don't add those.

And there's absolutely no monetization on the website, and never will be. It only takes a few minutes per week to do this.

Point is: please don't worry about enshittification of /now pages. What Akash is doing here is a fun project, and /now pages in general are not going the listicle direction.

PAYMENT TANGENT for my fellow entrepreneurs here that take Visa/Mastercard payments:

I tried to sign up to Lambda Labs just now to check out Hermes 3.

Created an account, verified my email address, entered my billing info...

... but then it says they only accept CREDIT cards, NOT DEBIT cards.

I had never heard of this, so I tried it anyway. I entered my business Mastercard (from mercury.com FWIW), that's never been rejected anywhere, and immediately got the response that they couldn't accept it because it's a debit card.

Anyone know why a business would choose to only accept credit not debit cards?

I don't have any credit cards, neither personal nor business, and never found a need for one.

So I deleted my account at Lambda Labs, which was kind of disappointing since I was looking forward to trying this.

I'm a fan of the Little Schemer, so I'm happy you're trying this format. I hope you keep trying more than once. Sometimes these things take a while to get right and find the sweet spot.

Little Schemer was instantly appealing because it starts so simply:

    1. Is it true this is an atom? : atom
    2. Is it true this is an atom? : turkey
    3. Is it true this is an atom? : 1942
    6. Is it true this is a list? (atom)
    7. Is it true this is a list? (atom turkey or)

I came to your page wanting to learn P5.js, but it started a little too involved.

Consider starting with a few simpler questions and answers like this, which also helps just teach the format and interface, before asking the reader to work their brain much harder.

Maybe DAW workflows are like programming languages.

Some say language X is elegant and productive, while language Y is awful.

Some say language Y is the great one, while language X is unusuable.

Some workflows just make more sense to some brains than others.

For what it's worth, it's not just you. I had the same experience with this same machine. I used Logic and other DAWs for many years, and used to be super-productive with them while running a professional recording studio in NYC. But even after all the AKAI MPC manuals, 3rd-party manual/"Bible", and videos, I just never could get used to the mindset of the AKAI MPC way. Sold it.

(hi Vincent.) I've lived in New Zealand for the last 12 years, and still also appreciate the the sounds of the birds every day. It never gets old, for me. The tui birds, bellbirds, saddlebacks, and grey warblers in particular.

When I lived in England for a year, I'd play recordings of New Zealand forests in the background because I was so homesick for these bird sounds.

Great summary. Thank you.

Wow, Eggy, you have a really interesting background and even more interesting continued pursuit. Consider connecting: https://sive.rs/contact

Very cool. I've got all the /now pages from https://nownownow.com/ in my PostgreSQL database (I'm the creator/admin of it) so feel free to contact me if you'd like a more direct data connection. https://sive.rs/contact

I'm currently going through every site on nownownow.com by hand, removing the dead and spam ones, since after years of automated scripts it deserved a personal visit to verify. While doing that, I'm updating things like when each site was last-updated and last-visited.

Anyone reading this, if you've got a /now page on your site, please email me so I can add you to nownownow.com

> How did he encode what the neighboring countries are?

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria#/media/File:Syria_(ortho...

That map of the globe is what we use as the front of the card

He sees that and knows the answer is Syria.

But because we also do that for the other countries around it, he knows Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, etc. He knows where that country is, in context of its neighbors.

We have some little mnemonics to remember things like, "I packed my bags in Pakistan. After that, Afghanistan. Then Iraaaan all the way til I hit a rock in Iraq."

His decks:

* computer

* culture

* English

* math

* music

* nature

* where

I don't think we've ever pulled anything out of the deck. There are some cards that it says, when we mark [easy], that it will ask him again in 6 years. We joke about how at the age of 17 it will be asking him how to spell "sing", or whatever.

If you care enough, you'll do it. Every day I brush my teeth, write in my diary, do my Anki, check email, eat something, etc. It's only a few minutes a day.

We do it together, just 2-5 minutes a day. When I'm away he does it on his own maybe 50/50.

It's not perfect, but it's better than not doing it. He enjoys it.

Not at all, and not particularly smart. Just a normal fun-loving kid, and this is something we do just 2-5 minutes a day.

About 1000 cards now. We do it daily. It's often just a few cards per day, so it takes 1-5 minutes.

Spelling is the biggest category. I record myself saying a word that I've seen him spell wrong. The answer is the written word.

Many of his old life-memories are saved. A picture of a playground he loved, where we used to live. A frame from a movie he liked. Asking for the name of the hero in a book he loved. Anki makes him recognize these things, which keep his memories of them alive. Often ilicits an "Oh yeah!" nostalgia.

Recognizing countries on the map is not trivial. On the playground, he met a kid from Syria. He asked the boy if he lived closer to Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, or Lebanon. My jaw dropped, but the boy was touched and yelled, "Mom! He knows where it is!" and they became friends (for the day). Other times he'll decide out of the blue that he wants to know more about Azerbaijan or some other country that he only knows by shape.

The rest, he's just really proud to know. A kid at school says the moon is a million miles away. He was proud to know the more accurate distance. He wants to know the actual distance to the beach from our house, instead of just "takes forever".

Yeah sorry, I started writing the comment, then had deja vu, so I looked at my HN history, realized I'd already said it better before, and thought it was worth just pasting the previous one. Not automated.

My boy is 11 now. We've used Anki with him every day since he was about 5.

Examples of things he's memorized, for fun:

* every country, recognized by unlabeled shape on the map

* spelling

* many body parts, names of bones and organs, from illustration

* chemical elements, by symbol (Na, Fe, Zn, etc)

* unix filesystem commands

* numeracy references (km from here to Japan, earth to sun, meters from home to school)

* recognizing/naming photos of places we've been since he was born

* recognizing musical instruments or musical pieces by listening

* notes on a piano

* religious facts (when Judaism began & who started it, when Muslims pray & towards what, where Jesus was born & died, etc)

* names of characters in books he's read

* wise aphorisms

He enjoys it, and dances around while answering, proud of himself. Sometimes when learning something new on YouTube, on his own, he'll say, "Dad can we add this to Anki? I want to remember this."

We use the app on whatever device is around: iPad, Mac, Linux, etc. They're synced through https://ankiweb.net/

We do it together. It's just a few minutes a day. Like brushing teeth, something you just have to do, but he usually enjoys it.

Regular Anki for iPad, Linux, MacOS, synced. Whatever device is handy.

I do the card entry. He just answers.

My boy is 11 now. We've used Anki with him every day since he was about 5.

Examples of things he's memorized, for fun:

* every country, recognized by unlabeled shape on the map

* spelling

* many body parts, names of bones and organs, from illustration

* chemical elements, by symbol (Na, Fe, Zn, etc)

* unix filesystem commands

* numeracy references (km from here to Japan, earth to sun, meters from home to school)

* recognizing/naming photos of places we've been since he was born

* recognizing musical instruments or musical pieces by listening

* notes on a piano

* religious facts (when Judaism began & who started it, when Muslims pray & towards what, where Jesus was born & died, etc)

* names of characters in books he's read

* wise aphorisms

He enjoys it, and dances around while answering, proud of himself. Sometimes when learning something new on YouTube, on his own, he'll say, "Dad can we add this to Anki? I want to remember this."