finfinfin (u/finfinfin)

finfinfin commented on Music for Programming musicforprogramming.net/... · Posted by u/Group_B

nicoco · 3 years ago

I cannot listen to music whenever I do anything else than a braindead repetitive chore. I've always thought that the fact that I am a musician is related; I think I cannot help but try and analyze the music I listen to.

However, I enjoy playing 'strategic', puzzle-like videogames and the soundtrack usually is not a problem for me, although I rarely enjoy listening to it. Are the videogames I play braindead repetitive or should I try to listen to videogame soundtracks when I work?

finfinfin · 3 years ago

Same for me. As a sound engineer turned programmer I can not listen to any music as background. My mind instantly jumps into analyzing every sound.

Regarding playing games - I think it’s a completely different experience from working. Music + visuals (videos, psychedelic trips, etc) or music + exploration (games, hiking, etc) is a great combination because the elements enhance each other to make the total experience even more rich and absorbing. Which is, perhaps, not the right state for programming.

finfinfin commented on Theranos former president found guilty on all fraud counts wsj.com/articles/theranos... · Posted by u/cwwc

narrator · 3 years ago

Having read a lot about the whole Theranos matter I feel like Sunny really made some bad life decisions:

Imagine being in his shoes: It's the early 2000s. You're in China learning Mandarain, you're in your late 30s, you made $40 million selling your shares of your company in July 2000 shortly before it failed in the dot.com bust and you meet this 18 year old who you eventually have a romantic relationship with[3]. They did admit a romantic relationship in court documents, so this isn't making stuff up. Life's big decisions confront you, and what do you end up doing? Let's see how it worked out. All this is on the Wikipedia page for Sunny[1]:

Fails:

- Divorce wife.

- Loan $13 million, no interest to Theranos. [2]

- Become COO of biotech company even though you have no formal background in biotech.

- Waste many years of your life in fraudulent company.

- Be convicted of fraud, disgraced, and possibly spend years in prison.

- She throws you under the bus and testifies that her bad behavior at Theranos was largely the result of your abuse sexual and otherwise. Jury doesn't believe it, but her accusation is still out there.

- Have no kids, never remarry. Holmes gets married and has a kid as she was awaiting her criminal trial.

Wins:

+ Have romantic relationship with beautiful lady in her 20s.

Anyway, there's some big life decisions here that, IMHO, Sunny made very poorly.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunny_Balwani

[2]https://stylecaster.com/sunny-balwani-net-worth/

[3]"Holmes and Balwani met for the first time in 2002. The pair initially met in Beijing, China, while on a language immersion program with Stanford University. Holmes was an 18-year-old high school senior at the time, whereas Balwani was a married, 37-year-old university student completing his MBA at the University of California, Berkeley. All in all, the pair had a 19 year age difference" https://stylecaster.com/elizabeth-holmes-sunny-balwani/

finfinfin · 3 years ago

That’s an unusual way to summarize Sunny’s life in the context of this ruling. Judging his personal choices as wins/fails while he is being sentenced for a massive financial and medical fraud.

Who cares if he divorced and never remarried?

Did CEO of Enron fail in life because he divorced his first wife?

finfinfin commented on 9,000-pound electric Hummer shows we can’t ignore efficiency of EVs aceee.org/blog-post/2022/... · Posted by u/cwwc

chrisseaton · 3 years ago

> They’re very obvious status symbols.

Vast majority of people with a truck or off-road vehicle have one for work - they’re working vehicles.

finfinfin · 3 years ago

This definitely does not mean what you think it means. Owning a large car for work doesn’t mean it’s utilized as such. I know people who own trucks and large SUVs for work - but it’s “just in case” not because they need additional space on a daily or even weekly basis.

finfinfin commented on Salman Rushdie Joins Substack’s Stable of Cancelled Writers gizmodo.com/salman-rushdi... · Posted by u/paulpauper

finfinfin · 3 years ago

> if A made B and B made C, who made A?

All right. So if god made A, who made god?

finfinfin commented on Salman Rushdie Joins Substack’s Stable of Cancelled Writers gizmodo.com/salman-rushdi... · Posted by u/paulpauper

rg111 · 3 years ago

> But it also includes the New Atheist movement, which eventually spiraled into Islamophobia;

Like any movement that was created or survived into the social media era, you cannot say that a whole movement 'spiraled' into anything.

You cannot shit Feminism because some Feminists think that freebleeding is righteous, or all men are rapists. You cannot say that "Feminism spiraled into misandry".

Just like that, even if some of the "New Athists" have legitimate Islamophobia, that doesn't invalidate the whole movement.

Any and all criticism of Islam and Muslims tend to labeled as Islamophobia. That shouldn’t be the case.

And if you are an actual athiest, you should see fault, although in various degree, in all religions- bar nore.

If you limit your criticism to only some religions, you are painting yourself as a hypocrite.

finfinfin · 3 years ago

Agreed. This take is really shallow. Calling Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris Islamophobes is an attempt to shut down the conversation about the shortcomings of Islam, or any other religion in general.

So-called New Atheists are well-known for publicly debating representatives of all major religions, yet for some reason they are not branded as Christianity-phobes.

finfinfin commented on Meta is pulling the plug on its crypto payments wallet, Novi techcrunch.com/2022/07/04... · Posted by u/aruanavekar

syspec · 3 years ago

One thing about Meta and Google as well to a certain degree, is that they don't seem to see things through. A few quarters of sub-optimal results and they just trash the idea.

It's a shame, because often times sticking to something is what eventually makes it become a success if the market was not ready for it at the time that it was released.

finfinfin · 3 years ago

According to Wikipedia, Meta started exploring crypto as early as 2017. So ending the effort in 2022 after several rebrandings and a huge legal pushback is fairly expected.

finfinfin commented on Meta is pulling the plug on its crypto payments wallet, Novi techcrunch.com/2022/07/04... · Posted by u/aruanavekar

matthewdgreen · 3 years ago

Meta poured a ton of resources into Libra/Diem and Novi and got shut down hard by regulators. I don’t blame them for moving on from this idea: the political costs aren’t worth it.

Of course there’s a secondary implication: a lot of people clearly though that Libra/Diem/Novi would have been a serious threat to legacy payments businesses if it hadn’t been killed. I think that’s pretty interesting and I’m curious to see who steps into the void that regulators have just scooped out.

finfinfin · 3 years ago

I am not sure there is a void in the crypto space that otherwise would have been filled by Novi. Even a more centralized (federated?) coin like that would still inherit major shortcomings of blockchain-based digital currencies.

Also looks like even Meta eventually decided to pivot to a more traditional digital offering “Zuck Bucks”.

finfinfin commented on Project Helix by Adobe hlx.live/home... · Posted by u/thefilmore

kinglion75 · 3 years ago

Adobe entered the CMS business long time ago, currently it's for sure the leader in this category, leveraging the acquisition of Day Software in 2010.

finfinfin · 3 years ago

Which category? Adobe is not even close to being the leader in the CMS category. WP, Wix, Squarespace, Joomla!, Shopify… how does Adobe fit here?

finfinfin commented on Project Helix by Adobe hlx.live/home... · Posted by u/thefilmore

enlyth · 3 years ago

I will never give Adobe a penny again in my life after going through their abysmal cancellation process littered with dark patterns and manipulation for one of their subscriptions, on top of being charged a fee to cancel.

finfinfin · 3 years ago

I contested the cancellation fee in PayPal and Adobe didn’t bother to respond, so the case was auto-resolved in my favor.

Since then I switched to PixelmatorPro and it works for all my needs.

finfinfin commented on America Is in Denial theatlantic.com/ideas/arc... · Posted by u/jonathanehrlich

TigeriusKirk · 3 years ago

Can't say about the 1970s, but there's a chart in this article showing that total water usage for southern Nevada has indeed decreased since 2002.

https://www.watereducation.org/western-water/climate-change-...

finfinfin · 3 years ago

According to that graph 2020 usage is almost identical to 2003. So the only significant drop happened between 2002 and 2003. Not to nitpick, just to emphasize that the missing data from 1970 to 2002 could contain numerous large changes too.