quchen (u/quchen) - Readit News

quchen commented on PCs refuse to shut down after Microsoft patch theregister.com/2026/01/1... · Posted by u/smurda

ArcHound · 23 days ago

I mean... At this point, what even would make people switch from MS? End users don't care, companies don't care so MS just gets away with piles and piles of slop.

quchen · 23 days ago

In my recent experience, a new culture of "I switched to Linux and it's fine" is establishing itself. It's on HN, sometimes on YouTube, sometimes my friends are unhappy with ads in their OS. It takes a very good reason to switch OS (most workflows break, after all), and I think the reasons are piling up into mainstream unhappiness.

quchen commented on Xfce is great rubenerd.com/xfce-is-grea... · Posted by u/mikece

kstenerud · a month ago

I really wanted to like XFCE, but the tiny tiny window grab area for resizing is just too damn frustrating.

quchen · a month ago

You can configure a window resize hotkey. I use Win+(drag the window with right mouse) and it resizes it i the way you expect, moving the corner closest to the cursor. Left click would move the window instead of resizing.

This is by far my favorite way to resize and I don't know why it's not an industry standard.

quchen commented on Never Use Pixelation to Hide Sensitive Text (2014) dheera.net/posts/20140725... · Posted by u/basilikum

quchen · a month ago

Flameshot (a screenshot tool) in its newer versions (!!) uses random noise for pixelation, and colors it based on the un-noised surroundings so it blends in reasonably.

It's a nice mix if optically unobtrusive, algorithmically secure, and pleasant to look at.

quchen commented on A Century of Noether's Theorem arxiv.org/abs/1902.01989... · Posted by u/fanf2

quchen · a month ago

Noether is one of my heroes. Rising through the ranks to one of the greatest minds we've known, recognized in spite of being a woman in a time where that was unthinkable in science, all odds against her. And yet here she is, the name of one of the most basic, and most beautiful, concepts in physics. The inventor of abstract algebra too (which I hear is as significant, it's just not my domain).

So many great minds have had to fight an uphill battle, but few had it as steep and even fewer were as successful as her doing so.

It really is a shame that she's not as recognized as the Bohrs and Feynmans and Paulis and so on, but at least everyone with a passing interest in theoretical physics ought to know about her.

quchen commented on Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo blog.mozilla.org/en/mozil... · Posted by u/recvonline

miki_oomiri · 2 months ago

If I were the CEO, I would:

- focus 100% on Firefox Desktop & Mobile - just a fast solid minimalist browser (no AI, no BS) - other features should be addons - privacy centric - builtin, first-class, adblocker - run on donations - partner with Kagi - layoff 80% of the non-tech employees

I worked for them for many years, I guarantee you that Mozilla will be fine without all the non-sense people, just put engineers in charge.

quchen · 2 months ago

To expand on Firefox mobile: if you haven’t tried it, give it a shot. uBlock Origin works just like on desktop. I have seen maybe five ads on my phone browser (including Youtube!) since buying it in 2019.

quchen commented on Microsoft has a problem: lack of demand for its AI products windowscentral.com/artifi... · Posted by u/mohi-kalantari

thm · 2 months ago

Just remember what SPJ said what the problem with Microsoft is.

quchen · 2 months ago

Which is what?

quchen commented on What's the deal with Euler's identity? lcamtuf.substack.com/p/wh... · Posted by u/surprisetalk

zkmon · 2 months ago

This is just scratch on the surface.

* Enter quaternions; things get more profound.

* Investigate why multiplicative inverse of i is same as its additive inverse.

* Experiment with (1+i)/(1-i).

* Explore why i^i is real number.

* Ask why multiplication should become an addition for angles.

* Inquire the significance of the unit circle in the complex plane.

* Think bout Riemann's sphere.

* Understand how all this adds helps wave functions and quantum amplitudes.

quchen · 2 months ago

Any hints towards the answers? I've spent a lot of time with complex numbers, and my answers would be

Quaternions: not profound, C is complete, quirky but useful representation of SO(3)

Inverses: fun fact coincidence

1+i/1-i: not sure what to experiment with here

i^i: gateway to riemann surfaces.

Adding angles: comes out like this, that's the point of exp(i phi)

Unit circle: roots of unity?

Riemann sphere: cool stuff!

Quantum stuff: mathematical physicist here, no need to sell this one!

quchen commented on Löb and Möb: Loops in Haskell (2013) github.com/quchen/article... · Posted by u/fanf2

quchen · 3 months ago

I did not expect this to surface after all these years, but here we are! o:-)

quchen commented on Affinity Studio now free affinity.studio/get-affin... · Posted by u/dagmx

johnhamlin · 3 months ago

Love to see this the day Adobe emailed to say it’s hiking my Photoshop/Lightroom subscription by 50% ($10/mo -> $15/mo)

quchen · 3 months ago

One of the reasons I stopped doing photography was that I realized I’m locked to using Lightroom where all my previous pictures are, and without a subscription it’s such a hassle to gain access to them again. I miss the days when I just bought Lightroom and that was it. :-(

quchen commented on MAML – A new configuration language maml.dev/... · Posted by u/birdculture

reactordev · 4 months ago

I just can’t anymore with this stuff. TOML, JSON, YAML, JSONC, HJSON, MAML…

I’ll just stick to environment vars or something code

quchen · 4 months ago

I love that in the end, everything still comes down to using bash (and env vars), because for all its footguns and strings, it's still the most reasonable choice when giving up on the zoo of newer formats. I expect it to outlive us all, like our unergonomic keyboards, and having to deal with null values.