tdeck (u/tdeck) - Readit News

tdeck commented on The End of Handwriting wired.com/story/the-end-o... · Posted by u/beardyw

kqr · 4 days ago

This is a common myth, but from what I understand of people who write in the more logical shorthand systems (without abusing custom abbreviations etc.) it's eminently skimmable, even long after the information is no longer fresh in mind.

tdeck · 2 days ago

I don't know what you'd consider the more "logical" systems - there are only a few non-machine English shorthand systems with any degree of popularity. My own experience with Teeeline shorthand (which is a bit easier to learn, and I'm by no means good) is that I simply can't read quickly because I don't get much reading practice. Think about it: most of us read much more than we write. With shorthand, I only end up transcribing what I myself have written. So I'm slow at it.

tdeck commented on The End of Handwriting wired.com/story/the-end-o... · Posted by u/beardyw

IAmBroom · 4 days ago

How old are you? The rare teachers I remember writing in cursive were very readable.

tdeck · 4 days ago

I'm in my early 30s so I never got used to reading it.

tdeck commented on The End of Handwriting wired.com/story/the-end-o... · Posted by u/beardyw

XorNot · 4 days ago

Teaching cursive seems like a weirdly American obsession, because during school in Australia it just...wasn't a thing. Like teachers did take you through what "running writing" was, but we were never required to actually master it the accomplishments level was just "can you write? Good let's move on to how sentences are structured".

tdeck · 4 days ago

It's also fun because every few decades there's a new fad in school penmanship so each generation learns a different cuesive and it's all a mess.

I had one teacher who wrote in cursive in University, and her penmanship seemed pretty good. But I always struggled to read it. We are just not used to seeing cursive writing on a daily basis.

tdeck commented on The End of Handwriting wired.com/story/the-end-o... · Posted by u/beardyw

kqr · 4 days ago

When going through the effort to re-learn how to write, why would one learn this rather than one of the more logical/easy shorthand systems?

(To clarify, I mean in this day and age! I would understand if one needed to send 300 letters a day to a non-shorthand reader.)

tdeck · 4 days ago

The shorthand systems are mostly designed to be transcribed by the writer or someone very familiar with the writer's particular style, preferably while the information is still fresh in someone's mind to resolve ambiguity. Shorthand is mostly not a great system for long term information storage and it's not easy to quickly skim documents written in shorthand.

tdeck commented on The End of Handwriting wired.com/story/the-end-o... · Posted by u/beardyw

noosphr · 4 days ago

Cursive as taught in schools today is useless at best and dangerous for your health at worst.

The cursive that made the world run between 1850 and 1925 was called business penmanship and it lets you write at 40 words per minute for 14 hours every day for decades on end without pain or injury.

If you're interested here's the best book about it: https://archive.org/details/tamblyns-home-instructor-in-penm...

Note the advice given:

>following lessons will make of you a good penman, if you follow instructions implicitly. The average time to acquire such a handwriting is from four to six months, practicing an hour or so a day. Practice regularly every day, if you want the best results. Two practice periods of thirty minutes each are better than one period of sixty minutes.

After two months I can comfortably write at 20 words per minute for four hours without stopping.

tdeck · 4 days ago

I was about to reply that that most people probably can't easily read this hand anymore, but after looking at the book examples they're pretty readable to me, despite always struggling to read cursive (e.g. in birthday cards from my grandparents).

tdeck commented on Ask HN: Services for packages not delivered to your country? · Posted by u/pomdevv

stop50 · 6 days ago

Should an package not come from an company i follow these steps:

- unbox it on camera (if the package came)

- complain to the seller

- if the seller doesn't react in an reasonable time, i buy the product from another seller and i contact an lawyer to get the difference i paid too much back

Since i check the companies before buying an product, i never had any use for the videos.

tdeck · 4 days ago

How expensive are these products that it's worth paying a lawyer, even to write a letter?

tdeck commented on What services or apps did you see abroad and wonder: why don't we have them? · Posted by u/ekusiadadus

jamesdhutton · 5 days ago

In the USA, the postal service picks up outgoing mail from your mailbox. I wish they would do that in the UK.

tdeck · 4 days ago

This is only true in rural areas and most suburbs. In the city, you often have to take it to a blue post box.

Although some carriers will pick up outgoing mail in an apartment building if you leave it where they can see it and indicate it clearly.

tdeck commented on What services or apps did you see abroad and wonder: why don't we have them? · Posted by u/ekusiadadus

preya2k · 6 days ago

Swiss/Danish/Finnish Mobile Payment alternatives like TWINT and MobilePay.

Also: physical lockers with PIN/Code instead of keys (in basically every country aside from Germany). It's just completely bonkers to me, that German train station lockers still use physical Keys EVERYWHERE.

tdeck · 4 days ago

I like the keys. The key has the locker number on it, so you don't have to remember anything. And there's no way to screw up setting the pin because of a language barrier, since there are basically no instructions needed for key lockers. FWIW the key lockers are more common in Japan as well.

tdeck commented on What services or apps did you see abroad and wonder: why don't we have them? · Posted by u/ekusiadadus

yen223 · 5 days ago

Sydney lets you use your credit card to tap on to trains and buses, which is very nice

tdeck · 4 days ago

Vancouver does this too, at least on the SkyTrain. Very convenient when you're a visitor.

tdeck commented on Cursos not being truthful again How do folks deal with cursor lying? · Posted by u/cintusshied

tdeck · 4 days ago

Don't assume the output of the LLM is correct? You always have to verify these things, Cursor is no different.