Loading comment...
Readit NewsLoading parent story...
aaplok commented on World’s most powerful literary critic is on TikTok newstatesman.com/culture/... · Posted by u/insistey
Why are all these institutions so susceptible to bring led by so few people? Can't they figure out what books to get without being told?
> Can't they figure out what books to get without being told?
Probably not? People are not "being told" what to read, they are given some opinionated advice which they can then decide to follow or not.
According to Wikipedia, 275,000 books are published each year in the US alone [0]. Most people (even excluding the many that don't read) will read well under 0.01% of that. Deciding which books to read without taking advice from someone more informed would not be optimal.
Sometimes it makes a lot more sense to rely of expert advice than to just make all decisions on your own.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_published_per_country_pe...
aaplok commented on The string theory hype machine will never die math.columbia.edu/~woit/w... · Posted by u/headalgorithm
The first paper they link to is not about string theory. It's using math that was developed for string theory, and is perfectly valid outside it, to make predictions that can be (and are) experimentally validated.
It has exactly none of the problems of string theory, and I am not sure why it's clumped with a physics paper in the blog. How is it a problem to say "hey they used string theory tools!" in a press release? If anything it might get other people to look at the math and get something good out of it...
This quote explains why the author thinks that it is a problem :
> with string theorists now virtually unemployable unless they can figure out how to rebrand as machine learning experts.
Their issue is (seemingly) not with the paper, but with the claim that these headlines feed a hype that attribute to string theory capabilities it doesn't have.
To be clear this is OP's argument, not mine. I am not sure I buy it, except perhaps for the fact that every other academic is expected to rebrand as an ML expert nowadays. It has more to do with ML hype than with string theory hype.
Loading parent story...
Loading comment...
Loading parent story...
Loading comment...
aaplok commented on Web Browsers have stopped blocking pop-ups smokingonabike.com/2025/1... · Posted by u/coldpie
I'm often so flustered to be interrupted by yet-another-marketing-modal that I will just close the tab and abandon whatever task, or purchase, I was undertaking. They are actively harmful to my holistic state-of-mind and make me into a more agitated and cynical user of the web.
Who are the people who decided this is how 90% of web pages should act, and how did they win? Do so many people really sign up for newsletters when prompted?
Being obnoxious works well. Obnoxious people get elected to power. Obnoxious companies (and CEOs) generate hype that increases stock prices. Obnoxious youtubers call themselves influencers and make a good living out of it.
Or more charitably it is difficult to be successful without annoying many people.
This comment is a neat encapsulation of the hypocrisy in the “think of the children” mentality. We’ve gotta protect the kids, let’s push them around like obstacles and exclude them from society!
Meanwhile, social media is melting the brains of everyone over 45 into relitigating moon landing conspiracies. Maybe a bit less time in YouTube holes and a bit more time actually parenting would be good for both parties.
> a bit more time actually parenting
Well, "blame the parents" is as hypocritical as "think of the children". It just displaces the responsibility of excluding kids from society from the community to the parents.
Creating a safe society for everyone is one of the roles of the state/government. That is why they are granted a monopoly on violence. As you rightly say, children are members of the society and therefore they are included in that responsibility.
The Australian government should be rightly criticized for passing a law that makes being online less safe for adults. However, that doesn't mean we should dismiss the alleged aim of the law, protecting children from harmful online content. It is a real problem that deserves serious attention.
Loading parent story...
Loading comment...
aaplok commented on Zellij: A terminal workspace with batteries included zellij.dev... · Posted by u/ndr
I don't understand the idea to make everything terminal-centric. It should be one component of all the tools available to the programmer.
All text editors worth using have a way to open a terminal for that one time you need it, everything else should be a GUI (with all the advantages that come with it).
> It should be one component of all the tools available to the programmer.
> All text editors worth using have a way to open a terminal for that one time you need it.
Is this not somewhat self-contradictory? Having the terminal in the editor or having the editor in the terminal are both about having one tool that rules the others. The only difference is which one you choose to be the ruler.
- I have a HP 15C to take with me all the time (due to its small form factor).
- I have a HP 48 GX as main calculator, it is most feature complete and has a clock and alarms. I use it a lot for time calculations.
- I have a HP 48 SX, but did not use it much any more after acquiring the 48 GX.
- I have a HP 10bII+, which was a gift of my brother in law when he saw my obsession with HP calculators. I do not use it much, as I am not in financial stuff.
- I have a HP 41 CV, which is less capable as my 48 GX, but I somehow love it so much, that it resides on my desktop and is used a lot.
- I have a Casio Classpad fx-CP400, which I use when I tutor my nephew - it is the best fit for high school requirements (in Germany).
- I have a bunch of TI nspire and voyagers and a TI 83 plus, that I never use.
- I have a TI-92 plus which I used a lot in the past, but I do not like it anymore.
- I have a Casio FX-730P, which I like to write little programs for.
Not to mentions my collection of slide rules.
Do you have advice on how to use those calculators with modern tooling? For example I remember there were cross-compilers for the hp48 [0], do you use any of that (and how do you transfer data to/from the calculators)?
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20250124204959/https://sourcefor...