Salzberg states several times that one should browse in 'private' or 'incognito' mode to stop 3rd party tracking. This is false.
Incognito mode stops data such as web history and cookies being stored on the computer you are using - it is good (enough) for obscuring what sites you have visited from other people who may have access to your computer. (It may not defeat a deep forensic search, it might save you from family embarrassment).
Incognito mode does not hide any data at all from your ISP, your DNS server, or the web servers you visit - it does not do anything to defeat 3rd party tracking.
An error of this magnitude does make me wonder whether any of his other propositions are true at all.
Readit Newsmontgomery_r commented on I know genomes and I didn’t delete my data from 23andMe stevensalzberg.substack.c... · Posted by u/bookofjoe
montgomery_r commented on Ask HN: What were the best books you read this year? · Posted by u/christudor
Some politics books I've read or re-read this year:
Fall Out - Tim Shipman, on of his astonishingly detailed quartet on Britain's exit from the EU;
Robert Blake's biography of Disraeli, magisterial yet readable;
Boris Johnson's memoir Unleashed, great fun if you like his tone;
Colonialism, a Moral Reckoning, Nigel Biggar, an antidote to the more ahistorical versions of the BLM narrative.
The Notebook - A history of thinking on paper, Roland Allen - a joyful romp through the notebook's history;
Elusive - How Peter Higgs solved the mystery of Mass, Frank Close - a nice account of the discovery of the Higgs Boson, with perhaps too much biography of Higgs, who after all as a lecturer at Edinburgh was not a thrill-seeker.
Carlo Rovelli's White Holes, implausible but beautifully written.
montgomery_r commented on Ask HN: What are the best books you've ever read? · Posted by u/iambateman
I remember reading The Selfish Gene as a teenager and being struck by how it made evolution seem almost obvious.
Wodehouse is an embarrassment of riches of course.
Good recommendations!
Thanks! Wodehouse is one of those writers who almost never produces a bad sentence. An astonishing talent.
montgomery_r commented on Ask HN: What are the best books you've ever read? · Posted by u/iambateman
For the value of ‘best’ that includes (a) had a deep and long lasting impact on how I think about the world and (b) I consider beautiful pieces of writing in their own right, here are some in no particular order:
The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins
Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman
Naming and Necessity, Saul Kripke
Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus, Ludwig Wittgenstein
(These you might want to approach via a gentle introduction if you did not study Philosophy to degree level)
The Rediscovery of the Mind, John R Searle
Darkness at Noon,
Arthur Koestler
The Glass Bead Game,
Hermann Hesse
A Handful of Dust, Evelyn Waugh
Diaries, Samuel Pepys
Falling Off the Map, Pico Iyer
A Time of Gifts, Patrick Leigh Fermor
The Lonely Sea and the Sky,
Francis Chichester
The Way We Live Now, Anthony Trollope
Bevis, Richard Jeffries
The Diary of a Nobody, George and Weedon GrossSmith
The Inimitable Jeeves, PG Wodehouse
Hitch-22, essaysChristopher Hitchens Collected Essays, William Hazlitt Venice, Martin Gayford
The Ascent of Man, Jacob Bronowski The Fabric of Reality, David Deutsch
Too obvious a list, perhaps, but some gems for all that! Happy reading.
Aargh, Formatting! Try 2 :
For the value of ‘best’ that includes
(a) had a deep and long lasting impact on how I think about the world and
(b) I consider beautiful pieces of writing in their own right,
here are some in no particular order:
The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins
Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman
Naming and Necessity, Saul Kripke
Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus, Ludwig Wittgenstein
(These you might want to approach via a gentle introduction if you did not study Philosophy to degree level)
The Rediscovery of the Mind, John R Searle
Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler
The Glass Bead Game, Hermann Hesse
A Handful of Dust, Evelyn Waugh
Diaries, Samuel Pepys
Falling Off the Map, Pico Iyer
A Time of Gifts, Patrick Leigh Fermor
The Lonely Sea and the Sky, Francis Chichester
The Way We Live Now, Anthony Trollope
Bevis, Richard Jeffries
The Diary of a Nobody, George and Weedon GrossSmith
The Inimitable Jeeves, PG Wodehouse
Hitch-22, essays, Christopher Hitchens
Collected Essays, William Hazlitt
Venice, Martin Gayford
The Ascent of Man, Jacob Bronowski
The Fabric of Reality, David Deutsch
Too obvious a list, perhaps, but some gems for all that! Happy reading.
montgomery_r commented on Ask HN: What are the best books you've ever read? · Posted by u/iambateman
For the value of ‘best’ that includes (a) had a deep and long lasting impact on how I think about the world and (b) I consider beautiful pieces of writing in their own right, here are some in no particular order:
The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins
Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman
Naming and Necessity, Saul Kripke
Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus, Ludwig Wittgenstein
(These you might want to approach via a gentle introduction if you did not study Philosophy to degree level)
The Rediscovery of the Mind, John R Searle
Darkness at Noon,
Arthur Koestler
The Glass Bead Game,
Hermann Hesse
A Handful of Dust, Evelyn Waugh
Diaries, Samuel Pepys
Falling Off the Map, Pico Iyer
A Time of Gifts, Patrick Leigh Fermor
The Lonely Sea and the Sky,
Francis Chichester
The Way We Live Now, Anthony Trollope
Bevis, Richard Jeffries
The Diary of a Nobody, George and Weedon GrossSmith
The Inimitable Jeeves, PG Wodehouse
Hitch-22, essaysChristopher Hitchens Collected Essays, William Hazlitt Venice, Martin Gayford
The Ascent of Man, Jacob Bronowski The Fabric of Reality, David Deutsch
Too obvious a list, perhaps, but some gems for all that! Happy reading.
montgomery_r commented on Ask HN: What are your favorite parables, anecdotes, idioms, etc.? · Posted by u/squircle
Ah, but it’s an idempotent joke, so it’s funny no matter how many times you tell it!
Every tome I try to learn what idempotent means, it’s as though I’m starting from scratch.
montgomery_r commented on Ask HN: What are your favorite parables, anecdotes, idioms, etc.? · Posted by u/squircle
The more I hear about inverse proportionality, the less I like it.
montgomery_r commented on Ask HN: How have you used a printer in your home or office? · Posted by u/JasonSage
We have an HP bw laserjet at home with PostScript and crucially a duplexer. I bought it used about 10 years ago for £200. We don’t print much, around 15,000pp so far. Generally I print:
- in the last month, a lot of past papers as my son prepares for Summer exams
- PDF articles for reading on the train
- multiple drafts of documents I write to scribble edits on ( could I do that on the iPad? Sort of.)
- address labels
- bookplates
- online recipes ( easier with messy fingers than the iPad!)
I’d guess we print something every week, sometimes more frequently. Printing 2-up duplex for the most part has saved a lot of paper. Replaced the toner for the second time in feb ‘22 ( the printer tells me) - with an off brand cartridge; print quality noticeably but not disastrously worse, but the cartridge was £30 rather than £130. Amazon Basics 80gsm paper better and cheaper than the HP or Canon versions.
“At first you don't know much, so you’re not much use, and then you have to work really hard, and if that’s a shock to you, you’ll find the spot on the team is given to somebody else”. Sounds like most walks of life. If only I had been born as an international playboy!
montgomery_r commented on Digital Wood Joints openup.design/we-learn/50... · Posted by u/montgomery_r
There’s a wonderful little carpentry museum in Kobe, highly recommended:
https://www.dougukan.jp/exhibition?lang=en
It focuses a lot on the evolution of precise woodworking tools, like saws and planes. They also had examples of complex joints, made without nails or glue.
Lovely!