xiande04

Well, I had zero idea you were a non-native English speaker, so it looks like you're doing pretty well!

How did you get on top of the cafe?

It's not just technology that's eating away at console sales, it's also the fact that 1) nearly everything is available on PC these days (save Nintendo with its massive IP), 2) mobile gaming, and 3) there's a limitless amount of retro games and hacks or mods of retro games to play and dedicated retro handhelds are a rapidly growing market. Nothing will ever come close to PS2 level sales again. Will be interesting to see how the video game industry evolves over the next decade or two. I suspect subscriptions (sigh) will start to make up for lost console sales.

I.e., the uncanny valley.

I like these types of interview problems. I did one in Python once. We also had it so that persistence to Postgres indicated that the DB was in a very de-normalized state, so they could comment on that for bonus points.

Yeah, that bit about each phoneme sounding exactly the same everytime really made a lot of sense. Even if the TTS phoneme sounds nothing like a human would say it, once you've heard it enough times, you just memorize it.

I guess sounding "natural" really just amounts to adding variation across the sentence, which destroys phoneme-level accuracy.

Thanks for the blog post!

I was wondering what TTS voices you use? I've heard from other blind people that they tend to prefer the classic, robotic voices rather than modern ML-enhanced voices. Is that true in your experience, too?

It's called "separation of concerns".

I've been saying this for years.

There's a section in the article titled, "WHAT DOES GOOGLE TAG MANAGER DO?":

> Whilst Google would love the general public to believe that Tag Manager covers a wide range of general purpose duties, it's almost exclusively used for one thing: surveillance.

This tracks with life around deep sea vents where there is no sunlight. It's mostly white and gray.

That's what I'm getting at. Green was needed to optimize energy absorption from the sun. AFAIK, there are no other advantages to selecting for green.

I think you're right. A specific example would be chlorophyll. Chlorophyll is green, not because green was selected for. Instead, it's just a side effect of the biochemistry needed to absorb energy from sunlight.

Ah, the old "it could be worse" fallacy.

So to recap, you're saying, "don't worry about what's going on in the US right now, because you still have it better than most of the world"

Just because something could be worse does not mean that 1. It's nothing to be concerned about 2. That we shouldn't take steps to improve the situation.

Things can always be worse, so this "logic" is always applicable. It's a vacuous argument. Even if you lived in the country with the worst homo/transphobia in the world, you could tell the person, "well, at least your alive."

Moreover, there's nothing constructive about this line of thinking. If people actually lived by this logic, we would live in a static world, because "it could be worse."

Reminds me of my AP chem class 16 years later. We were always mixing stuff up in the lab. Good times.

You just said all the things that you do while raising kids. What is it that you are doing differently that allows you to do all those things? Is it simply just a matter of hiring a cleaner?

Because otherwise, as the father of a 1 and 5 year old, I completely agree with OP and find your story unbelievable. Like OP I work/exercise/do chores from 6 am to 10 pm. I'm on HN right now only because it's Saturday and I'm relaxing.

Exactly. As ATP is broken down to adenosine and phosphate to produce energy, creatine re-phosphorolates adenosine.

So it gives you more energy at molecular level. But as you said, you have to actually use that energy.

If you like this approach, I highly recommend Mathematics: It's Content, Methods, and Meaning by Kolmogorov. He uses this same approach, but applies it to many more concepts in math (about 1,000 pages!). In fact, I think I actually heard about that book on this site, so I guess I'm paying it forward.

This approach was to align with the Soviet philosophy of dialectical materialism, which claims that all things arise from a material need. Not sure I'm fully onboard with the philosophy as a whole, but Kolmogorov's book was really eye opening.

What are you working on and how's it going?

I also started a solopreneur gig building apps.

Gamification and spaced repetition.

Duolingo is really just about combining gamification with spaced repetition.

The genre is called "sandbox" or "simulation". See Minecraft, Garry's Mod, The Sims, etc. Not all genres are for everyone.

Even without iodized salt, Japan is one of the highest consumers of iodine worldwide. [1]

But I agree. Even though iodized salt is pointless in Japan, so is the law banning it (assuming OP is correct, and it is in fact banned).

[1]: https://anaturalhealingcenter.com/documents/Thorne/articles/...

That's because the warmer the light, the less it is affected by Rayleigh scattering. In other words, shorter wavelength (i.e., bluer) light scatters more. This is the same reason that the sky is blue.

Animals are also more sensitive/more attracted to bluer light. These harsh white LED street lamps are a death sentence for moth species.

Aside: Fastmail was the best email provider I ever used. The interface was intuitive and responsive, both on mobile and web. They have extensive documentation for everything. I was able to set up a custom domain and and a catch-all email address in a few minutes. Customer support is great, too. I emailed them about an issue and they responded within the hour (turns out it was my fault). I feel like it's a really mature product/company and they really know what they're doing, and have a plan for where they're going.

I ended up switching to Protonmail, because of privacy (Fastmail is within the Five Eyes (Australia)), which is the only thing I really like about Protonmail. But I'm considering switching back to Fastmail, because I liked it so much.

Yep, this is precisely the problem I had with Milewski. It would have been nice if he included examples and definitions in a standard format.

No. Just because words are not needed for cognitive processes, does not mean that people still can and do think in language. The properties of that language could then influence thought. This is known as the Weak Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (note "hypothesis", not "theory").

I read The Cuckoo's Egg by Clifford Stoll (highly recommend btw) published in 1989. I laughed out loud when he described Cobol as an antiquated language that no one wanted to support. In 1989.

Do the numbers really add up statistically speaking? That is, the average height difference between women and men is exactly equal to the longevity difference you'd expect from the height difference?

If so, I wonder where the protective effects of estrogen and less risky behavior fit in?

Yes, that's an interesting and somewhat counterintuitive fact. Research has shown a correlation between height and lifespan, with taller people generally having shorter lifespans. One possible explanation is that taller individuals tend to have more cells, which may increase the risk of mutations and, consequently, diseases like cancer. Additionally, taller bodies require more energy, leading to greater metabolic demands that could contribute to aging.

>I think you're describing publishing and not academia as a whole. It's sad that the two have become so intractable in many minds.

Yes, exactly. I was specifically referring to publishing, because OP was specifically referring to publishing:

> I wish this idea would take hold in academia. So many papers seem to bury simple and often powerful ideas in jargon.

> If you don't ever cater to general audiences your field is less accessible in many important ways. Which seems like intentional gatekeeping given the economic realities of #1.

I never said to not ever cater to general audiences. I said that catering to general audiences is not the purpose of a research paper. Separation of concerns. Communication to general audiences is still necessary and worthwhile.

In fact, there's a feedback loop between science, technology, and capital. Not communicating results from academia breaks or reduces the effectiveness of this feedback loop. So, yes, you are absolutely correct that academic papers should be communicated to general audiences.