gfour (u/gfour) - Readit News

gfour commented on Rack 2 (Virtual Eurorack) github.com/VCVRack/Rack... · Posted by u/tosh

icambron · 4 years ago

Question for music folks (I've played with modular synths but only in a superficial, toying-around way): is this skeuomorphic paradigm really the best way to do this? With a physical system, running wires everywhere might be the only way to do it, but it seems like in software you have more options on how you manage to connect all your components together, and how those components are laid out on the screen. But since this tangle-of-wires design is popular, perhaps it really is the way to go?

gfour · 4 years ago

This isn't just skeuomorphism as found in e.g. a VST plugin with a sci-fi UI or a patching language with a UI resembling studio-like effect chains. This is a simulator of a real implementation of modular patching (Eurorack), for example signals mimic real Volt scaling and the dark mode is like actually dimming your room lights. So, questions of how to "develop" in this mindset can also be directed to users of the actual hardware, who do not go through a computer UI.

gfour commented on Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names (2010) kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/... · Posted by u/MikusR

wodenokoto · 5 years ago

I wish these things came with examples.

I'd love to hear more about how a culture that doesn't name children under 5, do their child rearing and generally go about their life.

Also, who registers to a website, but doesn't have a name?

At some point you need to choose an identifier if you want to interact with other people or their services, and you might even need to conform your identifier to something that someone can comprehend and reproduce.

And at that point most of these falsehoods disappears.

Illegal characters? Yes, you can't write your name as じゃわØÆÅ?+ on your boarding pass. No, your name on your boarding pass won't match your name in your passport, because the name in your passport conforms to whatever writing system in use in the country of your passport and the boarding pass accepts only ASCII letters.

And airports still runs 24/7.

gfour · 5 years ago

> I'd love to hear more about how a culture that doesn't name children under 5, do their child rearing and generally go about their life.

(Christian Orthodox, majority) Greeks don't name babies when born, only when baptized (usually during the first year, but could be later). Until then, they appear on formal documents as either "male"/"female" or as "AKO" ("no first name"). In practice, people either call a baby "the baby" or may sometimes use the (future) name informally.

gfour commented on Anthropomorphism Gone Wrong: OOP loup-vaillant.fr/articles... · Posted by u/StylifyYourBlog

gfour · 11 years ago

This confuses OOP/procedural semantics with low-level "CPU" work. The argument seems to be that the programming model of a language does not always expose the efficiency of the underlying implementation. And this is also true for "anthropomorphic" models.

gfour commented on FreeBSD: the next 10 years slideshare.net/iXsystems/... · Posted by u/microtonal

bsder · 11 years ago

> Great ideas but ...

The problem is the comparison point.

When original Gtk/Gnome came out, it was a WAY worse BPOS than Unity or Gnome 3 are today.

The trick was that when Gtk/Gnome came out there was no existing solution. So, even a bad one was okay.

The problem is that the new solution is competing against an existing solution that has more than a decade of development behind it.

It would take a Herculean effort to win that comparison.

gfour · 11 years ago

> The trick was that when Gtk/Gnome came out there was no existing solution. So, even a bad one was okay.

There were existing solutions, e.g. Motif or Athena widgets if you wanted a GUI library, or FVWM if you wanted a desktop environment. Of course, GTK/GNOME was a significant improvement.

gfour commented on The peculiar status of PhD-employees crookedtimber.org/2014/08... · Posted by u/wslh

neltnerb · 12 years ago

I disagree that it truly needs to be "competitive", because the people in the PhD program are receiving value other than monetary compensation for their work (i.e. a PhD!).

I do think that PhD students need to be paid a living wage, because of practical considerations, but you definitely don't need to pay anywhere near a normal wage. Your job as a PhD student is to get your degree and graduate, not to make anyone else money directly with your labor.

gfour · 12 years ago

True. By "competitive" I didn't mean "same money", but "an equally good choice for enough people to fill the PhD ranks". Bad or non-existent wages are almost never an easy choice, no matter how much one wants to do research or become a professor (unless they already have money and can be self-funded during the PhD). Lack of funding can lead to part-time PhDs or extra day jobs, making it more taxing, lowering the quality of the research, and even leading to failure to complete the degree (in which case, the person just wasted their time).

A PhD student should get a "living wage" as you say -- enough compensation to be able to continue and finish. Industry wages and research wages are different: being paid to work on a product which has a financial plan behind it works differently from trying to improve the state of the art, which can lead to small contributions or even a mathematical proof that it cannot be done :-)

gfour commented on The peculiar status of PhD-employees crookedtimber.org/2014/08... · Posted by u/wslh

gfour · 12 years ago

Starting a PhD means someone has already mastered the basics of a profession, and is at an age that could work productively in the industry. At this point, doing a PhD is a choice between academia and industry for the next 4-5 years. If an industry really exists (e.g. STEM fields), PhD programs must be competitive with it; they must offer something like a job. Of course, there are fields where PhD programs have less funding and the status of PhD employees is less frequent: a PhD in literature may have less funding available compared to a PhD in bioinformatics and will attract people that have different expectations.

About the freedom of choosing a thesis topic, I think this depends on both the style of supervision (controlling boss vs. laissez-faire situation) and the funding project (some have vague goals and can accept a wide range of topics, while others are very focused on mini areas).

And I think danieldk is right about the money: you are welcome to accept less of it, this doesn't mean that the money saved by the state is really going where you want it to go...

gfour commented on Isobuild: why Meteor created a new package system meteor.com/blog/2014/08/2... · Posted by u/Mandar

chubot · 12 years ago

Nitpick: does the term "isomorphic JavaScript" to describe JS that runs on both the client and server annoy anyone? Where's the isomorphism?

When I think of isomorphism I think of two things that look different but have the same structure. If you had a set of functions that are synchronous and a set that are async, then maybe you can call the sets isomorphic. Or if you have a Python library that mimics a command line tool, then they could be isomorphic.

gfour · 12 years ago

When talking about programming languages, "isomorphism" also brings to mind the Curry-Howard isomorphism between programs and proofs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry%E2%80%93Howard_isomorphis...)...

gfour commented on Lisp CPU frank-buss.de/lispcpu/... · Posted by u/auvi

wes-exp · 12 years ago

I'd like to see a modern CPU that handles dynamic typing in hardware. Registers can store values as well as the type, e.g. 32 value bits and a few type bits. Basic arithmetic like addition can automatically compare the type bits and just do the right thing with a single instruction (fixnum add, float add, bignum add, etc.).

Would this be cool or am I dreaming?

gfour · 12 years ago

You may be interested in this article: "Tagged architecture: How compelling are its advantages?", http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=327070.327153 (unfortunately behind a paywall).