redelbee (u/redelbee)

redelbee commented on Thoughts on Mechanical Keyboards and the ZSA Moonlander masteringemacs.org/articl... · Posted by u/TheFreim

redelbee · 6 months ago

First off, I appreciate the thorough explanation and review of the ZSA Moonlander. That said, I’m here to discuss the “visual ergonomics” of this post.

Why is justified text so bad on the web? And why do people still use it, despite how terrible it looks? When I was in journalism school I learned how to properly justify text with line breaks, tracking, and other techniques to make sure we didn’t have “rivers” of blank space through the text or other hard-to-read layouts. Is there no way to achieve the same readable outcome today with CSS, or otherwise?

If not, I beg of you: Please don’t use justified text on the web!

redelbee commented on How do interruptions impact different software engineering activities rdel.substack.com/p/rdel-... · Posted by u/kiyanwang

redelbee · a year ago

Interruptions are productivity and creativity killers. Middle managers are of questionable utility but that layer of an organization would be much more effective if it focused ruthlessly on removing distractions.

I worked at a small company where a significant portion of my effort went toward shielding my team from the distractions created by a CEO who couldn’t seem to help meddling in every aspect of the business. I think it’s because he started out doing, or at least being involved with, many of the functions of the company and had a hard time letting go as we grew. Even after the organization grew to 50+ people he couldn’t keep himself out of the nitty gritty details, but the format of the distraction changed over time. Instead of walking up to people and interrupting them in person (a double whammy according to this study, including both an “important” person and the in-person aspect), he would send what we called “Slack attacks” throughout the day. These were paragraphs-long Slack messages without any semblance of organization, punctuation, or line breaks. Fortunately, many of these messages were sent during the very early hours of the morning so they could be dealt with first thing in the AM, but that wasn’t always the case.

In the first phase I literally moved my team location and reorganized the desk arrangement so it was harder for him to get in and bug everyone. I had to “guard” the area and try to stop him from physically entering the space, which was always a strange dance. I couldn’t control his Slack messaging behavior so I worked with people to understand that while yes “the CEO is asking you for urgent work in Slack” seems like a valid reason to switch gears, but instead let me work to figure out what actually needs to be done and we’ll catch up later about what to do.

It was a weird dynamic but there was no doubt the distractions were a drag on performance. Every time he went on vacation we saw a marked increase in productivity, and more creative solutions seemed to come up as well. I don’t wish this type of environment on anyone but in a way I’m glad to have gone through it and learned some lessons about interruptions and how to avoid them.

redelbee commented on Philosophy Eats AI sloanreview.mit.edu/artic... · Posted by u/robg

redelbee · a year ago

So we’re back to the idea that only philosopher kings can shape and rule the ideal world? Plato would be proud!

Jests aside, I love the idea of incorporating an all encompassing AI philosophy built up from the rich history of thinking, wisdom, and texts that already exist. I’m no expert, but I don’t see how this would even be possible. Could you train some LLM exclusively on philosophical works, then prompt it to create a new perfect philosophy that it will then use to direct its “life” from then on? I can’t imagine that would work in any way. It would certainly be entertaining to see the results, however.

That said, AI companies would likely all benefit from a team of philosophers on staff. I imagine most companies would. Thinking deeply and critically has been proven to be enormously valuable to humankind, but it seems to be of dubious value to capital and those who live and die by it.

The fact that the majority of deep thinking and deep work of our time serves mainly to feed the endless growth of capital - instead of the well-being of humankind - is the great tragedy of our time.

redelbee commented on The Path of Our Lives steveblank.com/2014/07/08... · Posted by u/sblank

redelbee · a year ago

I too have survivorship bias that I try to explain away with self serving theories and ideas that pit my special nature against the tendencies of the inferior masses. In my case I literally survived alcoholism after I was lucky enough to come out alive after an accident. I used this as motivation to do the hard work of getting and staying sober. My brain sometimes tells me that I have some special power of “working hard enough to change myself” that has also helped me become an entrepreneur and make other positive changes in my life. I tell myself people sometimes fail because they didn’t go through this and can’t work hard enough to change themselves for the better. In reality it all comes down to luck and circumstance that I was fortunate enough to take advantage of.

In this post the author tries to set up an unassailable scenario where two very similar people end up with strikingly different life outcomes because of “how some of us have chosen to live their lives.” Conveniently, the author is the successful one because he is part of “a small set of humans who don’t act like their lives are predestined.” The majority, and the person he compares himself to, obviously couldn’t succeed without this special character aspect. In reality, it’s the “small set of humans” part that shows the way to the truth. The analysis that says successful people are different because they chose to act differently and not live a “predestined” life ignores all the people who also made that choice without getting lucky and achieving success. It also leaves out the people who lived a “predestined” life and succeeded despite their lack of willpower or special abilities or whatever else we can point to as an explanation.

Like I said, I am victim to the same fallacies in my own reasoning about my life, but I try very hard to overcome them or at least recognize them. The takeaway from this article isn’t that “you are the master of your own fate” but instead something like “be careful when trying to explain your own life’s circumstances, especially when your explanations put you in some special class that only few people have achieved.” Luck, by its very nature, is only for the few.

redelbee commented on I was wrong about the ethics crisis cacm.acm.org/opinion/i-wa... · Posted by u/bikenaga

efitz · a year ago

How do I reason ethically about this?

I am a security professional. My work directly affects the security of the systems I am responsible for. If I do my job well, people’s data is less likely to be stolen, leaked, intentionally corrupted, or held for ransom. I also influence privacy related decisions.

I work for a Mag7 company. The company has many divisions; the division I work for doesn’t seem to be doing anything that I would perceive as unethical, but other divisions of my company do behave in a way I consider unethical.

I’m not afraid to take an ethical stance; in a previous job at another company I have directly confronted my management chain about questionable behavior and threatened to quit (I ended up convincing them my position was correct).

So how do I reason about that? Really the sticking point is that large companies are not monoliths. Am I acting unethically for working for an ethical division of an imperfect company?

redelbee · a year ago

There are many ways to reason ethically about your situation, and you could start by using historical philosophers as inspiration.

Bentham might apply if you consider the overall outcome: is the work your company does positive or ethical for the majority of people the majority of the time? It seems like the “greatest good for the greatest number” would allow for some small unethical aspects so long as the outcome is good for the majority. This could also be seen as a shortcoming in that philosophy because it justifies some pretty terrible actions for the greater good (some of which, like the Manhattan project and its outcome, are mentioned elsewhere in this thread).

Kant might make you look at your company and imagine that all companies acted that way as a way to reason ethically. If all companies acted the way your company acts would that be good or bad for humanity? Kind of like the golden rule, but more rational.

There are many more to consider but it’s my view that most of them will get you to the point where you probably shouldn’t work for an unethical company, even if your particular work or area of focus is perfectly ethical. Mainly because you working for the company allows or helps it to exist in some way, and we don’t want unethical companies to exist. So maybe you could reason your way into working there if your sole focus was finding a way to destroy the company somehow. Otherwise it’s probably better to work elsewhere.

redelbee commented on Learn Exponentially saveall.ai/blog/learn-exp... · Posted by u/p-christ

redelbee · 3 years ago

I think a better title might be “Memorize Exponentially” because that seems to be the true gist of the article.

There are undoubtedly many areas in which memorization is useful. I tend to use memorization as a second-order tool, in the sense that it is only useful to memorize once I’ve learned that memorization would be necessary.

I memorize combinations to locks I unlock frequently. I memorize names of items I sell in my shop so I don’t have to look them up over and over again.

In school I often memorized equations just long enough to get by. The few that are still with me are not those I used most frequently; they are the equations I understood at a visceral level. Obviously this means I am more conversant in Newtonian happenings than quantum concerns, so maybe there is a place for memorization. Or perhaps I lack sufficient experience in the quantum to really feel the laws that govern the smallest realms.

Either way the article paints a dull picture of learning. What of the feeling in the minds and hands of those future carpenters swinging their first hammer blows? What of the deep learning of the pianist that happens only after the transition from the first concerto as audience to the latest as featured virtuoso?

An exponential increase in the type of “learning” furthered by spaced repetition might be useful to some. I still prefer the linear road to understanding.

redelbee commented on The Death of Personality (2017) tdarb.org/blog/death-of-p... · Posted by u/popcalc

q7xvh97o2pDhNrh · 4 years ago

> I was a newspaper layout designer in a previous life.

Such a cool-sounding job! Any fun stories to share from those days?

> Reading anything of length on this screen is decidedly uncomfortable when browsing HN.

Agreed. I always browse HN in a window that's half the width of my monitor.

There is something nice about the ultra-simplistic CSS that goes as wide as your window, though. Then, the user can just resize their window to find the sweet spot for themselves. The sites that force a fixed width for reading on everyone really miss the point, I think.

redelbee · 4 years ago

It was a cool job until the newspaper business imploded.

I have yet to experience anything even remotely close to the buzzing productivity of a newsroom minutes before the press deadline. Election nights were always fun because all the information was coming in later so we had to scramble. Obviously we knew about the time constraints beforehand so we could plan for it to the best of our ability, which of course usually fell to the curse of best laid plans.

I’m nostalgic for slower paced information flow and newspapers remain a near-perfect example.

redelbee commented on The Death of Personality (2017) tdarb.org/blog/death-of-p... · Posted by u/popcalc

chaos_emergent · 4 years ago

Au contraire: HN’s interface. I know no one who is displeased with the simplicity of design except designers themselves*. Just like premature optimization for engineers, it feels like designers are building for themselves rather than their customer.

In character, in manner, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity.

-Hendry Wadsworth

redelbee · 4 years ago

I was a newspaper layout designer in a previous life. The only complaint I have about HN is the line length on large-ish screens.

In my newspaper days we stuck to around 60 characters as an optimal line length for readability. I've seen up to 80, but even that seems to be pushing it. Once you stretch out the lines so much it's hard to track back and forth from the end of one line to the beginning of the next line.

I'm reading the parent, top-level comment on a Macbook Air with a 13 inch screen and the first line is a whopping 194 characters long. Reading anything of length on this screen is decidedly uncomfortable when browsing HN.

I agree that simplicity is a noble and useful goal, but when it comes at the expense of usability it's hard to swallow.

redelbee commented on What We Gain from a Good Bookstore newyorker.com/culture/cul... · Posted by u/pseudolus

redelbee · 4 years ago

I love used bookstores and my retail business is right next door to one that I mostly despise. The shelves are literally overflowing and there is no rhyme or reason to shelf organization. The prices are high, which I normally wouldn’t mind because usually it comes with great curation or presentation or a point of view. But this shop has none of those redeeming qualities. The employees also don’t seem to care about reading or books, other than to point out how quickly some categories of books fly off the shelves. It’s all very transactional.

It’s the weirdest experience because I want so badly for it to be like other shops I’ve browsed and loved. I’ve even considered opening my own bookshop down the street to fulfill my desire for a great used book shop in my city. Maybe someday.

redelbee commented on Elizabeth Cotton’s Fingerstyle Ragtime ethanhein.com/wp/2022/eli... · Posted by u/brudgers

rozab · 4 years ago

This article omits perhaps the most unique aspect of her playing style: She plays left handed, but with a guitar strung right handed. So she plays the bass line with her fingers and the melody with her thumb. This is part of why her arrangements skip along so nicely, imo

redelbee · 4 years ago

The article explains this but the link scrolls to the third paragraph. For anyone who missed it:

> If you are a guitarist, you might notice that there is something strange about her technique. She was left-handed, but rather than stringing a guitar in reverse the way lefties usually do, she just played a standard-strung guitar upside down. She had to learn her own idiosyncratic chord shapes, and she played them by alternating bass with her fingers and playing melody notes with her thumb. This must have required some dedication! But none of it is as important as her sound and her material.