zdc1 (u/zdc1) - Readit News

zdc1 commented on Show HN: I Made the Hardest Focus App apps.apple.com/us/app/poc... · Posted by u/Dhikshith12

tummler · 20 hours ago

Side note, but does anyone else have this thought process when faced with yearly subscription vs lifetime purchase?

1. If I buy a subscription and end up not using it, I've wasted money. 2. If I buy a subscription and end up using it, that means I should have just bought the lifetime purchase. So now I've wasted money. 3. If I buy a lifetime purchase and end up not using it, I've wasted money. 4. I don't want to waste money. I'll find a free alternative or build my own. 5. Exit app store, no sub or purchase made.

Talk about loss aversion...

zdc1 · 19 hours ago

It's another version of how gym memberships get you. Everyone errs on the side of over-committment and they get to make more money.

I've found I'm better off paying extra for a shorter duration until I've validated that I'll be using my subscription in 3/6/12 months from now. E.g. recently with Duolingo I ended up only paying for it on a monthly rate for about 4 months, and that wasn't even because I'd quit learning, I'd just found a much better app.

zdc1 commented on A statistical analysis of Rotten Tomatoes statsignificant.com/p/is-... · Posted by u/m463

mxxx · 3 days ago

Regardless of the introduction of sycophantic reviewers, the 3/5 = fresh thing has always been a pretty half-ass threshold imo, and that a fact that a film can be "100% fresh" on RT on the basis of every single reviewer saying "yeah it's nothing special but it's fine, 3 stars" is fairly easy to misinterpret.

zdc1 · 3 days ago

Yeah, I'd love a personalised Tomatometer. I'd only get out of bed for something 4 stars (8/10) or above, so I'd love to know the percentage of audience/reviewers that scored like that.

This would also give "cult classics" and interesting/creative films that are more love-it-or-hate-it a bit more of an edge in ratings over the lukewarm Marvel slop we see these days.

zdc1 commented on The electric fence stopped working years ago soonly.com/electric-fence... · Posted by u/stroz

lordnacho · 9 days ago

This is right. People ask my how on earth I know what every one of my high school classmates is up to, when we were the last class of the millennium. Along with a number of old teachers and other randoms from years ago.

I just stopped having a filter. When I think of someone, I just fire off a message. The message doesn't have any warnings on it like "oh I know it's been a while" or "you might not remember me". I write to everyone as if we are best buddies who just had lunch last week. People I've known since the age of 4, to people I've known for four days.

If I see someone I know at a wedding, I just go and talk to them about whatever we have in common. Normally someone we know.

I really think it's the guarded, tentative, "you don't have to talk to me" that turns people off. Of course people are free to not talk to me, but I don't lead with that. If you lead with that, people feel awkward, like "is he just being polite?". If you just pretend you are best buddies, people play along and they end up quite comfortable quite quickly.

zdc1 · 9 days ago

"Assuming rapport" is hugely important for developing and maintaining connections. People often are not sure how they feel about you or where your relationship stands, so they look for hints in how you feel about them. If you are polite and formal, you are telling them the two of you are not close. If you excited to see them and tell you about the hotdog you ate yesterday, you're taking the lead and setting a tone that's close and familiar.

We're basically wired to consider social cues and signals. Maybe 10% of the time we make a logical judgement of "I really do/don't want to be friends with this person because xyz" and the other 90% is just reading/sending vibes.

zdc1 commented on I used to know how to write in Japanese aethermug.com/posts/i-use... · Posted by u/mrcgnc

lyall · 9 days ago

When learning Japanese, I purposely chose to _not_ learn how to write any of it by hand. As the author notes, writing (by hand) is in fact a separate skill from reading. So I decided I would not invest my limited time, motivation, or brain space to writing.

Overall it's been a successful approach, and I recommend it to new learners unless they have a particular interest in being able to write by hand or they feel strongly that writing the characters helps them remember them.

It's only rarely that I have to write anything other than my own name in Japanese. I've practiced my address but writing it in English is fine in 99% of situations. Being able to write properly would save a little embarrassment, but I still believe my language learning time would have a much higher ROI in other areas.

zdc1 · 9 days ago

I'm learning traditional Chinese and found that writing helps me recognise the components and strokes when reading the same characters.

If I just try and visually pattern match with flash cards, anything that's hand written or in an stylised font will throw me off. If I can sympathise with / recognise the stokes used, I find it easier to tell what character they're trying to show.

zdc1 commented on I tried every todo app and ended up with a .txt file al3rez.com/todo-txt-journ... · Posted by u/al3rez

Igrom · 13 days ago

Reading through the comments under this thread, there are many users who swear by a plain text file, but who then build quite a lot of snowflake software to regain functionality offered by more structured TODO applications. That includes:

- having your computer alert you to things that come up

- being able to tag notes

- being able to add events to a calendar

- being able to set priority of tasks

- expecting prioritized/currently relevant tasks to be at the top of the agenda

- being able to add recurring tasks

- full-text search (grepping)

- formatting features (markdown)

Some of the laborious (or, in my opinion, plain unholy) solutions include:

- feeding TODOs to an LLM to filter for the currently relevant ones and send Telegram notifications

- hand-copying currently relevant tasks to the top of the TODO list

- running a script on a VPS to sync notifications

- set up cron job with git commit

- writing post-it notes by hand

I would encourage everyone to try out emacs with org-mode. It takes some time to get used to the editor and its keybindings (though provisions exist for vim users), but _every_ item on the list above is handled out of the box, or is offered through a free and maintained plugin.

The author of the OP claims to have tried _every_ todo app, and has afterwards moved (regressed?) to writing notes in a plain text file, but there is a path extending from this point that the author has not walked yet. I strongly suggest that, especially for people with a computing or technical background, it is an undisputed upgrade. https://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html being the bible, of course.

zdc1 · 12 days ago

Obsidian is my happy medium. Does many of the above while also doubling as my journalling tool.

zdc1 commented on "This question has been retired" learn.microsoft.com/en-us... · Posted by u/1970-01-01

observationist · 18 days ago

The point isn't to resolve user problems, it's to reduce the number of people taking up the time of support agents. Letting people vent in a pseudo-official channel accomplishes that. Whenever something gets resolved that was being fixed anyway, because the "industry partners", enterprise and high level customers wanted it, they can mark an issue as resolved, and generate the appearance of responsive service.

It's like standing up complex automated phone menus, you're going to frustrate a certain number of callers into giving up, and reduce the overall number of customers you have to interact with.

We need a scale reform for modern businesses - platforms and companies like Microsoft are logistically incapable of providing good service to their customers, or moderating hundreds of millions or even billions of users, effectively separating these companies from all the harm they cause.

If you can't responsibly operate a business past a certain scale, you shouldn't be allowed to continue growth. I don't know what that looks like, legally speaking, but it's necessary, for what should be reasons obvious to everyone.

zdc1 · 18 days ago

The market has solutions to this, but they are mostly for businesses. E.g. You can purchase "support" either from Microsoft, or other third parties that will then deal with MS for you if they can't fix it themselves. And whatever software you buy also has it's own support terms too. (I've had good experiences with paid AWS support under both models.)

On the flip side: if you're an individual, you're at a poker table with a $50 chip—you don't have leverage—you either just take the bet or don't. So you're basically forced to research the laptop/hardware/software you intend to run to verify it's a happy path, or it at least has vendors (or a local PC store) that will help you if something breaks, and hope for the best.

So I guess the question is, would people be willing to pay for good support? Would people even pay for an OS anymore?

zdc1 commented on Documenting what you're willing to support (and not) rachelbythebay.com/w/2025... · Posted by u/zdw

paol · a month ago

> a giant social network. You know, the one with all of the cat pictures

This really doesn't narrow it down.

> and later the whole genocide thing and enabling fascism.

Still not helping.

zdc1 · a month ago

The funny thing with social networks is they all have both of these cohorts, so long as you go down the right rabbit-holes and engage with the right content creators

zdc1 commented on AWS Lambda Silent Crash – A Platform Failure, Not an Application Bug [pdf] lyons-den.com/whitepapers... · Posted by u/nonfamous

zdc1 · a month ago

Taking a step back, this is an interesting reality of choosing platforms. Lambda ain't Node.js. Yes, it runs JavaScript, but that doesn't make it Node.js. JavaScript-land is full of frameworks and platforms that let you do less work in exchange for using a particular set of patterns or architecture.

This also shows the best and worst of AWS: things are documented, but not always when/where/how you need them. You will still need to learn a few things the hard way when getting your toes wet (so use those "innovation tokens" sparingly).

zdc1 commented on Show HN: Ten years of running every day, visualized nodaysoff.run... · Posted by u/friggeri

bob1029 · a month ago

Very impressive work.

I've been on an unbroken rowing streak (Concept2) since December last year. Half hour per day mandatory, no rest days. Typical distance rowed is 6.5-8km. There are days where I "take it easy" but I still force a minimum distance of 6.5km regardless of how long it takes. My rationale for using the C2 is the lower impact and the fact that it resides inside a climate controlled building. These factors help reduce the possibility of excuse making.

I found that taking even one day off is all it takes to throw my discipline into a death spiral. Making it a required thing no matter what changes the psychology and game theory. It has become entirely a background concern after day 90 or so. There are days where I have to row and then do hours of yard work. The first two weeks of Texas summer almost got to me. But, this too has become a background concern. I can wake up, row 30 minutes, landscape for 2 hours, and then write code or post on HN until the sun goes down. No naps, stimulants or motivational speeches required.

zdc1 · a month ago

A lot of the comments are raising how unsafe it is to be exercising through 10 years of life without a day off, but as someone who also tends to let a day off turn into a year off, I can appreciate the wisdom of slowing rather than stopping / having a slow day rather than an off day.

zdc1 commented on Are we the baddies? geohot.github.io//blog/je... · Posted by u/AndrewSwift

nemothekid · 2 months ago

I’ve come to realize that dating apps are just outright hostile to honest newcomers who don’t know the implicit rules.

It starts with picking the “right” pictures, then saying the “right” things then choosing the “right” place and then confirming at the “right” time. Eventually you are just going down a checklist rather than being your authentic self. If you find yourself minmaxing in this way, take a break.

zdc1 · 2 months ago

To be fair, society and social interactions are full of implicit rules. Put a bunch of people in a room(/train/company/island/club/cult) and they will make up some rules along the way.

Someone catch your eye at a party? You'll probably take a moment to choose what you want to say to them there too