cryptopian

4 ms·

1.
by cryptopian 14d ago
~ A D V A N C E D ~
2.
by cryptopian 14d ago
Doesn't even have to be anything that harsh. Narrow, twisty tree-lined lanes, speed humps, paved road surfaces that are louder inside the car
3.
by cryptopian 15d ago
Worse than that, driving can be a partially subconscious activity and people tend to drive at the speed that "feels" right. It's why the best approach to slowing motor vehicles in places with people walking is to physically d
4.
by cryptopian 15d ago
I think that example's more a practicality of pronunciation. The two vowels in ce est are the same, and French runs the vowels together between words, so you'd end up pronouncing it the same either way. That's not to say that
5.
by cryptopian 15d ago
The thing with standardisation bodies is that as much as certain organisations and journals can have their grammar mandated, regular folk will still continue to evolve the language as it does. For example, The Academie and French teachers w
6.
by cryptopian 20d ago
I caught that the last time it went around Bluesky, and much as I like to dunk on awful genAI, it seemed pretty clear that it was a fictional poster designed to sucker in people who want to dunk on awful genAI
7.
by cryptopian 20d ago
Sure we do. Remember when the ozone layer had a massive hole in because of CFC use in refrigerators? It didn't fix itself out of some natural law of the world. Regulators in democratic societies restricted the use of CFCs and then engi
8.
by cryptopian 20d ago
It's important to remember how radical a change to electricity generation is. Apart from just new plants, you've got to keep the existing grid going, create new distribution infrastructure, reorganise supply chains and labour forc
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by cryptopian 22d ago
As an example, Tantacrul made a video about developing a sheet music font for Musescore ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGo4PJd1lng )
10.
by cryptopian 1mo ago
London's also been putting effort into improving safe bicycle routes lately. I visit London every few weeks and if I'm going somewhere in central, I'll often just grab one of the Santander hire bikes instead of the tube. Well
11.
by cryptopian 1mo ago
On the other hand, plenty of art can lean into being intentionally brash and be all the more memorable for it. The phrase "bad MS paint blog" immediately makes me think of Hyperbole and a Half[1] where the style feeds into the zan
12.
by cryptopian 2mo ago
Wait til you find out that in Northern England, we call the evening meal "tea", not to be confused with "tea", the delicious leaf water.
13.
by cryptopian 2mo ago
I can't find it sadly, but somebody made an 80s style industrial control panel for a SQL server deployment, with all the clicky radio buttons and 7-segment displays you could wish for.
14.
by cryptopian 2mo ago
> start with a one-sentence definition, then a couple paragraphs of summary, then go into short specified sections, and keep links to the "Citations" at the end. It's been refined for 25 years, it's older than most of
15.
by cryptopian 2mo ago
And for the record, it's fine for people to set their boundaries wherever they want. All the author loses in this case is a bit of time writing one email
16.
by cryptopian 2mo ago
Something I really grew to hate over my time at various software firms were complex and flaky stacks with big test loops, and it's exactly this kind of reason why. Ideally, I have a problem, I want to put my head in the problem space a
17.
by cryptopian 2mo ago
I enjoy software more out of a love of maths than a love of technology. My favourite class of problems are the times I can boil a problem down to a simple equation without even touching a keyboard, and I seem to be one of the few people who
18.
by cryptopian 2mo ago
Let's say you managed this. Say you designed trains and safety protocols for coupling/decoupling at 100mph, completely reconfigure the signalling system, solve the inevitable accessibility issues for embarking the fast train... Yo
19.
by cryptopian 2mo ago
I find that when selling people on the idea of network upgrades, people find the solutions unintuitive because issues in one place are often caused by bottlenecks very far away. Half the North West and services as far as Scotland, Wales and
20.
by cryptopian 2mo ago
I was discussing railways to somebody and noting how at-capacity the British network is. He was adamant that we just hadn't optimised the system enough and that more maths and more software was needed. I tried my best to explain that
21.
by cryptopian 2mo ago
And like cookie clicker, once you're watching the number going up long term, it's hard for your mind to accept a point at which you have "enough".
22.
by cryptopian 2mo ago
It's why I prefer not to get bogged down in litigation over what counts as social media. It's far more productive to look at the individual mechanisms that make web platforms bad for socialising.
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by cryptopian 2mo ago
One of the most insidious aspects of social media is how the reward and discoverability mechanisms train users to become their own marketing department. It's most obvious on LinkedIn, where your presence is materially tied to career gr
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by cryptopian 3mo ago
> So if they stumble into random niche subreddit because the algorithm suggested it or someone linked to it or it popped up in a search result, in two clicks they can be posting their own new posts or replies in that very niche community
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by cryptopian 3mo ago
Most importantly, modern platforms are optimised to maximise your attention and engagement, and nothing's more engaging than fear, anger and superiority. Your comment sorting algorithms find that the statements most reacted to are the
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by cryptopian 3mo ago
This is quite a common linguistic phonomenon, where a word is rebracketed to form a new suffix, even if it doesn't make sense with the original etymology. See also -holic (alcoholic -> workaholic), -thon (marathon -> danceathon)
27.
by cryptopian 3mo ago
> But I actually think the majority of the backlash has nothing to do with stock valuations. I think it exacerbates the points you make. "You mean, you want to take all the IP, immediately force the tech on us, maybe make my job red
28.
by cryptopian 3mo ago
Somebody already linked 1053, but https://xkcd.com/2501/ also applies. When you're wrapped in an information bubble, it's easy to forget that this could be new, exciting/important information to people o
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by cryptopian 3mo ago
I really enjoyed her talk "Making Difficult Things Easy"[1]. She's got a real talent for taking complex technical subjects, recognising the difficulties in understanding them, and explaining them back in a friendly way that d
30.
by cryptopian 3mo ago
In software too, it feels like there's been a shift to a more individualistic "learn-on-the-job" attitude in companies. If you're not the kind of person who knows how to structure learning a new field, it's easy to

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