Recent submissions

Comment · 2 months ago
The article is indeed uncharitable. Nowhere does the article mention the fact that there are exercises AND that you can explore the website and the different resources in the way you like. You don't even need to watch videos if you don't want to.

You also do not need to linearly follow the topics/videos. You can take a few quizzes from some topic, notice you don't understand something completely yet and instead pick up more trigonometry instead.

I've worked through Khan academy in a way similar to what the author describes as a good flow, but then all within the Khan Academy platform. The platform even allows for discussions and questions.

To me the problem is much more that motivation or a destination is not something that Khan Academy will give you. Then again, so won't most teachers. I much preferred Khan Academy over most of my math teachers, but occasionally I've had teachers who helped me love a subject I barely knew beforehand.

Comment · 4 months ago
I think it's just a perception thing. I don't see emptying the dishwasher as part of the task that is filling it. My last task of the day is normally turning the dishwasher on and to me my task list feels finished. In some sense the tasks related to dishwasher for a day are "empty -> fill -> turn on".

You could use your same type of reasoning for food/cooking. When you buy food and put it in the fridge to cook later, you haven't finished the task. I think that's more a way of feeling permanently uncomfortable with things not being finished. There is no end state for most things in the house. Work is never done.

Comment · 4 months ago
Have you seen the Krazam fantasy FAANGball sketch? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIZt9YPAPZo

It's funny, but with the AI hires/moves it feels more like satire now.

Comment · 7 months ago
I'm someone who really enjoys the process of learning, and struggling, even when it doesn't immediately get me things. This sometimes pays off, but it also means I'm often slower at the start (which can be bad for jobs).

One thing I kind of argument I missed in the article however, is that I would also apply this learning and struggling to LLMs themselves. There is knowledge to be gained on how to use LLMs as a tool. Maybe similar how you can use Google or a calculator as a tool, while not losing the understanding yourself. I do think the chance of knowledge loss is more pronounced for LLMs as they can cover so much.

I also think Bob (from the article) will likely learn better how to use LLMs than Alice. Sure he might not understand physics as deeply as Alice, but he might learn how to write papers very well with LLMs that get accepted for conferences and that build his career.

Comment · 10 months ago
A similar but not as strong decline. Taking the one but last datapoint for both (stackoverflow/tex respectively): 4436 and 394. If you compare this to how it looked like between 2015-2020 you get (my guess from scanning): 160,000 and 1700. So Stackoverflow as a whole went from 160K -> ~4.4K. That's like a 35x drop, compared to tex, where it's a 1700 -> 394, 4x drop.
Comment · 1 year ago
I don't think this a fair interpretation of the parent comment as it's not about ownership of language. The website literally says "The next generation of ANTLR" and says "It's the successor of ANTLR4".

It's about a tool claiming to be the successor without seeming to be part of the ANTLR organisation. Are they completely different people, did the ANTLR4 owners stop writing it? There seems to be deliberately no clarification on this.

Comment · 1 year ago
They really wouldn't. Even people who BOUGHT VR, are barely using it. Giving everyone free VR headsets won't make people suddenly spend a lot of time in VR-land without there actually being applications that are useful to most people.

ChatGPT is so useful, people without any technology background WANT to use it. People who are just about comfortable with the internet, see the applications and use it to ask questions (about recipes, home design, solving small house problems, etc).

Comment · 1 year ago
Comment · 1 year ago
I think this is a good point. I found the following sentences of the article shocking:

> I am frequently asked for my PowerPoint slides, which basically function for me as lecture notes. It is unimaginable to me that I would have ever asked one of my professors for their own lecture notes.

It makes you wonder whether the lecturer actually values the time of the students. Having to take notes because they are not provided, rather than getting value from a lecture due to interactive participation sounds like a waste of time. This sounds exactly like the type of lecture I would have skipped.

Comment · 1 year ago
There are good devices for only music / audiobooks, but they're often aimed at younger kids. For example Yoto players (https://yotoplay.com/) or Toniebox (haven't used this one). Basically screenless, except for the number of the playlist.

You can use an app/website to create and upload playlist and couple them to your custom cards (so you don't have to spend money on buying loads of cards).

Comment · 2 years ago
Not really. Google tries to recognise it when you re-upload the same game using a different dev account, and will actually ban you for this.
Comment · 2 years ago
I get maybe 50 or so tomato plants in about 1 square meter in my garden, just from the seeds that are left in the ground from last year's tomatoes. (Of course I don't let all 50 grow and instead give most away.)
Comment · 2 years ago
Location: United Kingdom (near London/Cambridge)

Remote: Yes (or hybrid)

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Haskell, Scala, Java, Go, compilers, ad technology, theorem proving, functional programming, finance, automated trading.

Skills: Software Engineering management, team building, project management, hiring management, product strategy.

Résumé/CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/basvangijzel/

Email: [email protected]

Open to hearing about Software Engineering Management roles, Director level roles, or Team Lead positions with a considerable management/mentoring component.

I have multiple years of experience managing and mentoring teams, and a strong technical background in functional programming (Haskell, Scala). I enjoy directly working with product, and have a strong user focus. I also have 3 years of full-stack software engineering using Dart and Java. Happy to pick up any technology needed.

Comment · 2 years ago
I don't think that's a fair analogy. One forces 99% of websites to make a change, while the other is something that would need to be done by the big companies doing the scraping.

A Do Not Track flag being legally binding would force small websites, e.g. a local restaurant website, to implement something they likely are not aware of and secondly do not technically understand.

A company that is mass scraping data for their AI model is much more likely to understand and respect that scraping the data has legal implications, and would be technically capable in implementing a scraping solutions that accounts for a robots.txt.

Comment · 3 years ago
FYI: YouTube Kids does have ads, although a lot less so than YouTube. It also mainly shows an ad at the start, and often only after one episode (for me at least).

Live from the official Hacker News API

A modern reader for Hacker News · SvelteKit + Skeleton