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pcblues commented on Windows XP Professional   win32.run/... · Posted by u/pentagrama
CrimsonCape · 19 days ago
You know talking about progress bars, it takes a lot of confidence to program a linear progress bar. You think you know when loading will be complete and think you know can break down the incremental progress made during loading.

Instead we get these spinning wheels that are like "maybe in the future this wheel will stop and we will have a return value." No confidence whatsoever.

I know this is true because Apple tries to implement progress bars in IOS like real chads. But their progress bars are just fake. They are a cheap animation all the way up to 90% and just stop moving until the progress is actually complete which could be 5 seconds of 90% and 40 seconds of the last 10%. So they think they are chad but lie.

pcblues · 18 days ago
A CorelDraw version from the 1990s I used had an honest progress bar. Sometimes it went backwards, but by the time it got to the end, it was truly finished.
pcblues commented on Getting AI to write good SQL   cloud.google.com/blog/pro... · Posted by u/richards
herrkanin · 3 months ago
Same reason as why it's harder to solve a sudoku than it is to verify its correctness.
pcblues · 3 months ago
I should have made my post clearer :)

There isn't one perfect solution to SQL queries against complex systems.

A suduko has one solution.

A reasonably well-optimised SQL solution is what the good use of SQL tries to achieve. And it can be the difference between a total lock-up and a fast running of a script that keeps the rest of a complex system from falling over.

pcblues commented on Getting AI to write good SQL   cloud.google.com/blog/pro... · Posted by u/richards
pcblues · 3 months ago
A question: Does anyone know how well AI does generating performative SQL in years-old production databases? In terms of speed of execution, locking, accuracy, etc.?

I see the promise for green-field projects.

pcblues commented on Getting AI to write good SQL   cloud.google.com/blog/pro... · Posted by u/richards
pcblues · 3 months ago
Can someone please answer these questions because I still think AI stinks of a false promise of determinable accuracy:

Do you need an expert to verify if the answer from AI is correct? How is it time saved refining prompts instead of SQL? Is it typing time? How can you know the results are correct if you aren't able to do it yourself? Why should a junior (sorcerer's apprentice) be trusted in charge of using AI? No matter the domain, from art to code to business rules, you still need an expert to verify the results. Would they (and their company) be in a better place to design a solution to a problem themselves, knowing their own assumptions? Or just check of a list of happy-path results without a FULL knowledge of the underlying design? This is not just a change from hand-crafting to line-production, it's a change from deterministic problem-solving to near-enough is good enough, sold as the new truth in problem-solving. It smells wrong.

pcblues commented on 108B Pixel Scan of Johannes Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring   hirox-europe.com/gigapixe... · Posted by u/twalichiewicz
cgriswald · 4 months ago
When viewing this I was captivated by the girl's lips. In the full view, the bottom lip looks not just full and moist, but slightly wet. Zooming in, it's a bit of a muddy mess with only a splash of white giving definition to the (anatomical) left of the girl's mouth.

In my current incarnation I'm a fledgling novelist and one of the things I've learned is to trust the audience to 'fill in the gaps'. Although this is probably obvious already to many, the parallel between that and the way that we sort of do that when we look at paintings suddenly hit me.

pcblues · 4 months ago
Not sure if anyone here saw the movie Clueless, but a great quote was, "That guy is such a Monet. From a distance he looks great, but up close he's a real mess."
pcblues commented on Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal   bbc.com/news/live/c9wpq8x... · Posted by u/lleims
pcblues · 4 months ago
A line that disturbed me with just how widespread the outage is. (And also people will die from it in all sorts of weird ways)

"In an update, Spanish power grid operator Red Electrica says it's beginning to recover power in the NORTH and SOUTH of the country."

pcblues commented on Why I don't discuss politics with friends   shwin.co/blog/why-i-dont-... · Posted by u/shw1n
ulnarkressty · 5 months ago
> 1. become truth-seeking

How does one even begin to do that? Looking at people I know who describe themselves as "truth-seeking", it seems that it is a one way ticket to Conspiracyland.

pcblues · 5 months ago
Tim Minchin said it well when he said to be hard on and critical of your own opinions. Among many other things :P

https://www.timminchin.com/2013/09/25/occasional-address/

pcblues commented on Why I don't discuss politics with friends   shwin.co/blog/why-i-dont-... · Posted by u/shw1n
rdegges · 5 months ago
I'll provide an opposing viewpoint. In the last 10 years, I've lost friendships and family because people in my life have voted for candidates that stripped rights away from women, minorities, etc.

Having a vast difference between opinions is fine, but some of their decisions are fundamentally against my core beliefs and have done literal harm to many people I know.

For that reason, terminating family and friendships has been absolutely worth it for me.

Until we can live in a world where fundamental rights are protected and respected, we have no common ground, and it's pointless to tiptoe around these insanely harmful beliefs while maintaining a facade of friendship.

pcblues · 5 months ago
If you remove yourself from a group, how will they change their minds without a dissenting opinion? I had to do it myself eventually, for my own sanity, but I believe this is still a real problem I am no longer addressing among my loved ones.
pcblues commented on Why I don't discuss politics with friends   shwin.co/blog/why-i-dont-... · Posted by u/shw1n
pcblues · 5 months ago
Name-calling by commentators dehumanised the debates. I still don't understand why it is considered OK.

"They do it" should not be enough of a reason, but it affects youtube income for individuals, so let the market work, I guess? /sarcasm

pcblues commented on Why I don't discuss politics with friends   shwin.co/blog/why-i-dont-... · Posted by u/shw1n
pcblues · 5 months ago
I'm 52. For me, there was a time when it was considered impolite to talk about sex, religion and politics. Then it became super fun when done with open/questioning/rational/critical minds, and a lot of progress in my own thinking was achieved from the usually non-threatening but lively debates and fights among friends and family for ideas. Then it shifted in the last ten or fifteen years. When social media started having friends of friends, the tribalism kicked in. It was explained very well in a talk between Maria Ressa and Jon Stewart. She is brilliant, and well worth listening to. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsHoX9ZpA_M

u/pcblues

KarmaCake day307July 11, 2016
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