chrisjharris (u/chrisjharris)

chrisjharris commented on Tea Chemistry (1997) researchgate.net/profile/... · Posted by u/aabiji

wcfrobert · 12 days ago

> "First of all, one should use Indian or Ceylonese tea. China tea has virtues which are not to be despised nowadays—it is economical, and one can drink it without milk—but there is not much stimulation in it. One does not feel wiser, braver or more optimistic after drinking it. Anyone who has used that comforting phrase ‘a nice cup of tea’ invariably means Indian tea."

These are some of the worst tea-making tip I've ever seen. I get that taste is subjective and all, but come on... This is like saying:

"Al Pastor street taco in Mexico has its virtues - it is economical, and one can eat it without salsa - but there is not much stimulation in it. One does not feel wiser, braver or more optimistic after eating it. Anyone who has used that comforting phrase 'a great taco' invariably means Taco Bells"

CTC tea [1] is inferior in quality. They are mass-produced, brews quick, and tastes way too strong (hence the milk). Tea was invented in China and tea culture goes back thousands of years. India and Sri Lanka only started producing tea in the mid 1800s. Robert Fortune literally dressed up as a Chinese merchant, snuck into some rural village in Fujian, and smuggled some teas back so the British East India Company can cultivate it in and around India.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crush,_tear,_curl

chrisjharris · 11 days ago

He's writing from a certain time, place, and culture, in reference to the teas that were available to him at that time. I'm not sure what you're arguing - that black tea didn't subjectively make him feel wiser, braver or more optimistic? And his tips for making black tea are perfectly sound.

If I remember correctly, he actually wrote that essay because there was a world event that his compatriots were getting outraged about, and this was his way of being provocative by not covering it. But I may have that wrong.

chrisjharris commented on Japan's Creepiest Station tokyocowboy.co/articles/d... · Posted by u/ewf

minebreaker · 6 months ago

I believe the number is correct. The source from the government: https://www.mlit.go.jp/tagengo-db/common/001556845.pdf

I assume you've never been there. 一ノ倉沢 is really impressive and dangerous.

chrisjharris · 5 months ago

I've climbed routes in ichinokura a few times. It is impressive, and some of them are quite poorly protected. But 800 climbers seems like an exceedingly high number, and that report seems quite vague and unsubstantiated, even if it does come from the government. So I remain sceptical.

chrisjharris commented on Japan's Creepiest Station tokyocowboy.co/articles/d... · Posted by u/ewf

chrisjharris · 6 months ago

This is a creepy station, green filters notwithstanding. The article repeats this statement that I've seen elsewhere and always found pretty questionable - that 800 people have died on Tanigawa. I've no idea where this data comes from but it seems very unlikely. If you just want to get to the top by the simplest route then it's a non-technical day hike up a not-very-high mountain. It's also a multi-pitch rock climbing area but I'd struggle to imagine that 800 rock climbers have killed themselves there over the past 100 or so years.

chrisjharris commented on Typed languages are better suited for vibecoding solmaz.io/typed-languages... · Posted by u/hosolmaz

chrisjharris · 6 months ago

I've been wondering about this for some time. My initial assumption was that would be that LLMs will ultimately be the death of typed languages, because type systems are there to help programmers not make obvious mistakes, and near-perfect LLMs would almost never make obvious mistakes. So in a world of near-perfect LLMs, a type system is just adding pointless overhead.

In this current world of quite imperfect LLMs, I agree with the OP, though. I also wonder whether, even if LLMs improve, we will be able to use type systems not exactly for their original purpose but more as a way of establishing that the generated code is really doing what we want it to, something similar to formal verification.

chrisjharris commented on Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election statmodeling.stat.columbi... · Posted by u/kgwgk

cmg · 2 years ago

[flagged]

chrisjharris · 2 years ago

How should they be funded, for you to consider them impartial?

chrisjharris commented on Helix: A post-modern text editor helix-editor.com/... · Posted by u/thunderbong

nitsky · 2 years ago

Helix is my daily driver. I love it! Kakoune's editing model, built in tree sitter and LSP, works great with zero config. My only gripes are I wish it had Kakoune's client-server model and collaborative editing.

chrisjharris · 2 years ago

I agree. If Helix had a client/server model like Kakoune, I'd move to it right away.

chrisjharris commented on Amber: Programming language compiled to Bash amber-lang.com/... · Posted by u/weaksauce

orthecreedence · 2 years ago

Quick note to the creators: the website looks almost exactly like every other "here try this cool command-line utility so we can hook you and start charging a service fee for it" startup website and I instantly distrusted it. The design communicates that you're selling a product, not providing an open-source utility.

That said, very interesting syntax. I agree with others about the $...$ being kind of odd, but other than that this is really cool.

chrisjharris · 2 years ago

I agree. I think that these fancy visuals are not the right way to appeal to the target user base. I just want to read some text.

chrisjharris commented on Amber: Programming language compiled to Bash amber-lang.com/... · Posted by u/weaksauce

chii · 2 years ago

and i dont like how it's inconsistent that echo is not using the $ syntax (which makes sense internally, as it's a built-in, rather than executing the $echo command).

Overall, it is cute and neat, but i find that if you are looking to write bash scripts that require this level of programming, you'd be better off writing it in python, or perl. Only in very austere environments can this be utilized, but the requirement of having `bc` installed means you must also have the ability to run package installation, so might as well run the package installation for a full on programming language!

chrisjharris · 2 years ago

I think that this does fill a niche. You can still compile to bash outside of this austere environment, and run the scripts within it. And python isn't very ergonomic for running external shell commands (or, say accessing environment variables), the syntax for doing so in amber looks much neater.

chrisjharris commented on Dell tells remote workers that they won't be eligible for promotion arstechnica.com/informati... · Posted by u/Plasmoid

tecoholic · 2 years ago

As an investor, I have a question for you. Kindly answer if you have the time. I have always wondered why aren’t the shareholders encouraging WFH more? Clearly it’s cost savings for the company that would help the bottom line. Or is it because investors usually hold a bag of stuff and in them are REITs and companies that own the buildings and people don’t want their portfolio to suffer?

chrisjharris · 2 years ago

The people directly managing the investment are unlikely to also be holding REITs, so your assumption is valid. I think it's basically that: - The people who care about company profit are the asset managers, who will tend to implement their ideas by selling/buying shares, rather than trying to encourage a given company's management towards better practice - Corporate governance itself is therefore usually outsourced to proxy voting companies, who are quite conservatively-minded (and spread quite thin) and so won't tend to micro-manage, they'll assume that profit maximization is the job of management - The only thing the proxy voting companies will tend to have a say on is ESG-related, and WFH doesn't really fit into that

chrisjharris commented on Ask HN: What laptop are you using to daily drive Linux? · Posted by u/65

chrisjharris · 2 years ago

I'm using a System76 Lemur pro. I've had it more than two years and I only have good things to say about it, some of which are: - The battery life started off as spectacular and is still not bad, I get about 5 hours out of it for general use, including compiling code - When it arrived it had a dead pixel in the middle of the screen. They replaced it in a very low-fuss way, sending the replacement immediately (before I'd sent back the original, so that I didn't have any downtime) - The spec is well-suited for coding/general linux work. It doesn't have a fancy graphics card or a hi-res screen, but I don't want those things,they add weight and cost and decrease battery life. - I installed NixOS from the get-go so didn't ever experiment with PopOS so nothing really to say there