ssttoo (u/ssttoo) - Readit News

ssttoo commented on The GitHub website is slow on Safari github.com/orgs/community... · Posted by u/talboren

The Github website is slow everywhere. It is truly a piece of shit software both in terms of performance but also UX/UI and everything in between.

It's a product of many cooks and their brilliant ideas and KPIs, a social network for devs and code being the most "brilliant" of them all. For day to day dev operations is something so mediocre even Gitlab looks like the golden standard compared to Github.

And no, the problem is not "Rails" or [ insert any other tech BS to deflect the real problems ].

ssttoo · 3 days ago

After 10 years of using Phabricator at a previous company I am still shocked how bad GitHub is. This the industry standard?!

Too bad Phabricator is maintenance-only now https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phabricator

ssttoo commented on What's happening to reading? newyorker.com/culture/ope... · Posted by u/Kaibeezy

MichaelRo · a month ago

Well, when I was a kid in the 80s in communist Romania, life was a lot similar to 19th century than what someone in Western countries was experiencing. No TV (obviously no computers), so most significant form of entertainment came from reading primarily. I never read "classics" or the books that were on school's compulsory list but I did read anything I could get my hands on and looked entertaining. I recall seeing the movie https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065207/ first time, some time after the fall of communism and invasion of cable TV and thinking, "I know this story!" because I read the book like 5 times, without knowing there's a movie too.

Anyhow, short answer to: "What's Happening to Reading?": it's being replaced by video content as primary source of entertainment. Main drive behind mass reading was amusement, not practicality. Now that amusement no longer requires (much) reading, the general level of literacy of the public is not exceeding that.

ssttoo · a month ago

Similar experience in neighboring Bulgaria. I remember my dad being upset with me for wasting my time reading “readable little books” (my best effort at approx. translation) meaning fiction, as opposed to proper textbooks.

ssttoo commented on Four years of sight reading practice sandrock.co.za/carl/2025/... · Posted by u/chthonicdaemon

EvanAnderson · 3 months ago

Bartók... >shudder< You have a point.

ssttoo · 3 months ago

As a counterpoint, Bartok’s Mikrokosmos [1] was the “textbook” for a piano sight reading class at my community college. He does have a lot of accessible, even pedagogical, pieces.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikrokosmos_(Bart%C3%B3k)

ssttoo commented on A Secret Trove of Rare Guitars Heads to the Met newyorker.com/magazine/20... · Posted by u/bookofjoe

lenerdenator · 3 months ago

The original Fender prototype. Arguably the most important artifact in the development of amplified music.

ssttoo · 3 months ago

It will sit nice in the company of Les Paul serial number 1

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/843062

ssttoo commented on Standard Ebooks: liberated ebooks, carefully produced for the true book lover standardebooks.org... · Posted by u/tosh

contact9879 · 5 months ago

Yes, you signal your intent on the mailing list subject to approval by the editor-in-chief

ssttoo · 5 months ago

Exactly, you do get approval before you start, as step 4 says: https://standardebooks.org/contribute/producing-an-ebook-ste...

In my case I picked a title from the project’s wishlist and almost started but searching the mailing list showed that someone has just started. I found another title by the same author: https://groups.google.com/g/standardebooks/c/IP0emhSQ6Bw/m/B...

ssttoo commented on Standard Ebooks: liberated ebooks, carefully produced for the true book lover standardebooks.org... · Posted by u/tosh

ssttoo · 5 months ago

I recently started on my first title contribution to the project, it’s a rewarding experience https://github.com/stoyan/edith-wharton_the-custom-of-the-co... It’s HTML all the way down

The step-by-step: https://standardebooks.org/contribute/producing-an-ebook-ste...

In a nutshell: start with a Project Gutenberg text, clean it up to a high standard, have it peer reviewed and published

ssttoo commented on Study finds solo music listening boosts social well-being phys.org/news/2025-03-sol... · Posted by u/PaulHoule

ssttoo · 5 months ago

Confusing title, I thought there was something special in solo music, e.g. pieces for one piano or a single classical guitar

ssttoo commented on Minimal CSS-only blurry image placeholders leanrada.com/notes/css-on... · Posted by u/ChiptuneIsCool

ssttoo · 5 months ago

Another simple css-only solution as the article mentions is gradients. Like

  background: linear-gradient(
    to right,
    #51463e 0%,
    #28241f 100%
  );

Tool: https://tools.w3clubs.com/gip/

ssttoo commented on John Cage recital set to last 639 years recently witnessed a chord change spectator.co.uk/article/w... · Posted by u/pseudolus

gweinberg · 5 months ago

It doesn't make sense to me that the piece should start with a 17 month rest. Surely it doesn't really start until the first note is played?

ssttoo · 5 months ago

Beethoven’s 5th symphony (da-da-da-DAA) starts with a rest too, it’s not unusual to notate like this. Many pieces have “pickup” measures which are not complete and much shorter than a full measure. But when the pickup is more than 50% of a normal measure, it’s no longer much of a pickup and starting with a rest to make up the complete measure makes sense.