__del__ (u/__del__) - Readit News

__del__ commented on Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help blog.jim-nielsen.com/2025... · Posted by u/ArmageddonIt

vasco · 12 days ago

I disagree, pictures are easier to remember than words and I'm much faster (several hundred miliseconds) at quickly spotting an icon in the 12th place down a list and clicking it because I memorized it visually than reading the actual words.

So icons make power users faster. It's not "clutter". Your argument about "don't use it for aesthetics" is ironic because you're making it because of aesthetics. For me it's about user speed.

__del__ · 12 days ago

an icon for "save" will suffice to help me find the portion of the menu with "save as", "save a copy", and "export". when all four have the same icon, or slight variations, i'm back to reading each one to discern the difference.

__del__ commented on The consumption of AI-generated content at scale sh-reya.com/blog/consumpt... · Posted by u/ivansavz

spoiler · 12 days ago

Tangentially related, but I'm low key miffed that em dashes get a bad rep now because of AI.

They're a great way to "inject" something into a sentence, similar to how people speak in person. I feel like my written style has now gotten worse because I have to dumb it down, or I'll be anxious any writing/linguistic flourish will be interpreted as gen AI

__del__ · 12 days ago

i'll never give up the em dash. and i will continue to evangelize the en dash from now–forever (hint hint, ranges should use en dashes instead of hyphens).

__del__ commented on The "confident idiot" problem: Why AI needs hard rules, not vibe checks steerlabs.substack.com/p/... · Posted by u/steer_dev

lkbm · 12 days ago

There a recent(ish: May 2025) paper about how drip-feeding information is worse than restarting with a revised prompt once you realize details are missing.[0]

[0] https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.06120

__del__ · 12 days ago

this has been my casual finding as well. why would i want all that conversational crap in the context window?

__del__ commented on Cassette tapes are making a comeback? theconversation.com/casse... · Posted by u/devonnull

Cpoll · 12 days ago

I estimate renting over 1200 VCR tapes in my lifetime, and I've never had one unspool. The cassette problem was common enough that fixing it with a pencil was part of the zeitgeist, but I can't remember anything like that for VHS.

__del__ · 12 days ago

i had ONE cassette unwind. my less careful friend was always winding them with a pencil. the culprit? button mashing between fast-forward and play.

__del__ commented on 1D Conway's Life glider found, 3.7B cells long conwaylife.com/forums/vie... · Posted by u/nooks

somat · 16 days ago

One of my favorite calculations of pi is to pick random coordinates in a unit square and count how many of them are in a circle. it's so stupid and so clever at the same time.

This was recreated from memory. I think it is close but I may have a bounding bug.

    import random

    def pi(count):
      inside = 0
      for i in range(count):
        test_x = random.random() 
        test_y = random.random()
        if test_x ** 2 + test_y ** 2 < 1:
          inside += 1
        return inside / count * 4 #above is a quarter circle
    
    print(pi(2 ** 30) )

__del__ · 14 days ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Carlo_method

__del__ commented on Have I been Flocked? – Check if your license plate is being watched haveibeenflocked.com/... · Posted by u/pkaeding

7e · 15 days ago

You have no right to privacy in public, at least in the US.

__del__ · 15 days ago

clarity is good. i believe that was a reference to the futility of posting "i do not consent" messages on social media.

__del__ commented on It’s time to free JavaScript (2024) javascript.tm/letter... · Posted by u/pavelai

GoblinSlayer · 16 days ago

For normal people Java is a short way to say JavaScript.

__del__ · 16 days ago

sometimes we make silly errors for years or decades and no one spots them. if you've been saying you hate java bloat/frameworks/whatever and meaning you hate javascript bloat/frameworks/whatever, people would probably agree with both. no one would be the wiser.

__del__ commented on 1D Conway's Life glider found, 3.7B cells long conwaylife.com/forums/vie... · Posted by u/nooks

tombert · 17 days ago

I think it appeals to the same itch that languages like Brainfuck scratch.

There's something exceedingly interesting about how you can model complexity with something extremely simple. Brainfuck is fun because it forces you to think extremely low level, because ultimately it is basically just a raw implementation of a Turing machine. I wouldn't want to write a big program in it, but it is fun to think about how you might express a complicated algorithm with it.

Similarly with CGOL, it is really interesting to see how far you can stretch really simple rules into something really complex.

I've written CGOL dozens of times, it's a common project that I do to "break in" a language I've learned, since it's not completely trivial but it's simple enough to not be frustrating, and I completely understand why math/computability-theory folks find it something to dedicate brain power to.

__del__ · 17 days ago

for those who think brainfuck is too pedestrian, have a browse through the esolang wiki:

https://esolangs.org/wiki/Language_list

__del__ commented on X210Ai is a new motherboard to upgrade ThinkPad X201/200 tpart.net/about-x210ai/... · Posted by u/walterbell

rkagerer · 20 days ago

Anyone know if there's anything like this for the Dell Precision M6600?

(Or upgrade suggestions for someone who loved that laptop? Framework? Thinkpad?)

__del__ · 20 days ago

i'm also curious. i used that thing until last year.

__del__ commented on Google Antigravity just deleted the contents of whole drive old.reddit.com/r/google_a... · Posted by u/tamnd

EGreg · 20 days ago

I remember they prepended the word “Microsoft” to official names of all their software.

__del__ · 20 days ago

"My Documents" comes to mind. it seemed somehow infantilizing. yes, yes i know whose documents they are.