NikolaNovak

Joined 10 years ago

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15,542
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2,858
Member since
Feb 24
Computer Geek, Photography Geek, Driving Geek... all around geek :)

About: www.nikolanovak.com

(sometimes I try to type on work-mandated iPhone; apologies for occccasional aWfu l typoes:)

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Recent submissions

Comment · 1 day ago
I'm in the other boat, I've been pondering de-Googling to either FastMail or ProtonMail, and struggled to make a decision.

Now it's been made for me and I can plan my migration to FastMail :-).

Comment · 1 day ago
The problem is how do you define a "purchase"?

The agent crawls some websites and reads some stuff and pushes some buttons. It's my limited understanding that you have

1. Hard limits like "file system permissions" (* never mind it going around for sake of this conversation)

3. On other hand of spectrum, fundamentally soft limits like a prompt "and ask me before you purchase "

2. And then in the middle you have harness enforced limits like "it won't do X with approval"... Those are being sold as hard limits but frequently they have classifiers and heuristics that essentially try to figure out which button on some third party website constitutes a "purchase" and triggers the harness limit.

Bottom line - I don't think such limits are as 100% fool proof as they are advertised / interpreted.

Very happy to be explained wrong :).

Comment · 4 days ago
... why the blockchain? And which one? That seems a needless techno-complication, especially if you're trying to spread this advice wide.
Comment · 4 days ago
Right; what I don't recall - once we had the 486 DX/2 and DX/4, I don't think Turbo button did anything about the multiplier between CPU and mobo. I think to your point it would do overall clock and other things to try to slow it down, with limited success.

Ahh the good old times :-)

Comment · 4 days ago
I was a kid then but my memory of 80286 was:

* Turbo was default ON and was the regular marketed speed the cpu was designed to run on, for my (dad's:) PCs it was 12 and 16mhz I think

* Turning turbo off reduced speed significantly for software written with original cpu timing in mind (I think 8088 but that was just outside of my direct experience).

So perspective on turbo button is a little bit philosophic, is it half full or half empty:). But it did not give you any EXTRA boost, like over clocking OVER manufacturer design cpu speed.

Comment · 5 days ago
Appreciate that these things have orthogonal measurements; with that in mind, given that the name signifies size, what does version number signify?

I.e. are all version numbers independent and Model X 7.5 is not necessarily of the same generation or cut off as Model Y 7.5? Or do all of your 6.1 models have something in common - cut off data, generation, baseline technology, approach, architecture, or something else?

Thanks! :)

Comment · 5 days ago
So "Up to" 39 weeks of base pay, let's say 9 months.

In this job market, that may not be enough time to feel comfortable and safe taking the offer (if you're a super-employable hotshot with offers awaiting in your LinkedIn, you're probably not the likely target for the offer)

Comment · 5 days ago
I've never been involved in such a situation, but I assume part of individual's calculation is: If I indicate interest, but the company doesn't accept it or go through with it and keeps me... am I now viewed as a disloyal, detached worker?
Comment · 5 days ago
Fair - thank you for that context! :)
Comment · 5 days ago
That's the thing - I genuinely don't understand the user or usage Venn diagram : when and who will 1. Have an expensive ipad with them and require a good big camera, but 2. Not have an equivalently competent phone with them?

Don't get me wrong, I understand it happens - back when I did wedding photography, one of my massive pet peeves were the uncles and grandparents who stepped into the aisle with their massive tablets just as bride is starting her walk... But I do not understand it at all :-/.

I'd absolutely happily completely kill the rear facing tablet camera. I've had at least a dozen android and ipad tablets and I genuinely don't think I took a single photo with them - it'd feel weird and awkward and so ostentious.

(As always as a consumer, clearly I'm in minority here :-})

Comment · 5 days ago
* I don't feel that's a charitable interpretation of the OP's comment. I have seen people print emails just to read them, including a page of CCs they discard, or 37 version of the draft slide decks, etc. And that's on their own printer - the office printer pre-COVID was just always printing random pointless stuff (as witnessed by the volume of it that was never even picked up!:). I don't have particular urge to print randomly, so I probably fit into the "unless absolutely necessary" group, but goodness there's a lot, and I mean a LOT of paper waste that doesn't provide entertainment value of nascar or B&N.

* (Bitcoin, I'll agree, is an even more massively irrational and wasteful human endevour, but that doesn't mean all printing is awesome:)

* This is not to say that some webpages shouldn't be printable, I agree that they should - for a lot of the webpages focused on displaying information rather than interaction, making them print consumable is good. Just that parent's comment doesn't make them the buzz-kill party-pooper, necessarily :)

Comment · 6 days ago
That's awesome.

I just purchased commodore 64 ultimate last month, for myself and my 8 year old to geek out on.

I miss the days of:

1. Platform you can understand and own fully with some effort

2. Hacking hardware through software and doing weird things to it.

I never owned a c64 as a kid, so this is new to both my son and I. I loved his joy when he did the most basic loop of two print statements (10 print "bey blades", 20 print "rule!" 30 goto 10) and saw something that he did work :).

I'm excited that the community is growing just as we are joining it!

(A lot of what I am seeing is of course AI assisted, ranging from pure AI slop with no real human value, to experts of old using AI to speed up some truly amazing works of craft and art. I'm personally at a stage where I'm using AI as a mentor to learn and supplant books, while crafting code by hand, until I have enough knowledge and confidence to involve ai more fully while still feeling in control)

Comment · 7 days ago
Same here in Ontario Canada fwiw
Comment · 8 days ago
Absolutely agreed that effort is needed to reach ranks above beginner; my main point/peeve is the steepness of the curve from "nothing" to "beginner", not the work definitely required to go from "Beginner" to "intermediate" let alone "Expert".

My approach, from "nothing" to "beginner", is to give a taste of the "target" - how fun and rewarding it can be. A 7 year old kid who learns how to play Mario Galaxy theme on piano, gets motivated and excited, and then goes through the effort; vs the 7 year old who's sent to music lessons and they spend 2 months on perfect finger positioning for C-major scale. Similarly for adults and guitar - I find teaching them 4 simple chords and strumming which cover 40% of pop songs in 2-4 weeks, gets them hooked and willing to then invest the effort, vs starting with notation and theory and picking hand positioning etc on day 1.

As specific to singing matter at hand, it is my understanding that pitch training will have an immediate, early, quick, and lasting benefit (which is, however arguably, benefited by the app in the post), vs saying "well you can't sing if you don't also do these 5 intermediate-level things right away" (unfair representation, but I've been on the receiving end of it:).

I have a close friend who's an opera singer, and absolutely did proper training from early age, daily, for years -- but, most of us aren't and won't be; my primary point is that early stages of training/learning shouldn't necessarily be the same.

Comment · 8 days ago
If you're willing to elaborate - For what goals and stages, do you require these?

----

Background to my question: I was looking for music teachers for myself and my kids (guitar and piano), and I found two types:

1. Royal Conservatory Curriculum, Lesson 1, Page 1, firmly, formally, and without deviation: You MUST learn notation, theory, and proper everything, first. THEN, 5 years later, you get to have fun :)

2. Let's have fun! If you like it and stick with it, we can tackle advanced topics in a customized manner and see where it takes us :)

I find approach #1 is only valid for people who know they will go far and stick with it (either because their parents force them, or for some other, rare, intrinsic motivation); but it hugely discourages huge number of people who don't have such long-term motivation and dedication yet - it postpones the rewards and makes the initial curve super steep.

So my question is: For a completely casual, random person who sings terribly and wants to get "a little bit less embarrassing / dip their toes"; isn't pitch training usually the first step for them to enable their hearing, rather than the complex vocal techniques?

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