NicuCalcea

vorgesterndiscuss

Can you elaborate on what you mean? Why is it more difficult to deal with formatters, scales, annotations compared with other solutions? Unless I'm misunderstanding something, the defaults are similar to what you would get in Flint, and if you want to add or customise anything, it's usually just one extra line. That's kind of the entire point of the grammar of graphics.

NicuCalcea

vorgesterndiscuss

That's fair, I generally make charts for publication, so I spend much more time and effort on the details. But I can understand this being useful for quick exploration for some people.

Generally speaking, I suggest anyone interested in learning to make charts get familiar with grammar of graphics [0] libraries like Vega-Lite, Observable Plot, ggplot2, Altair. There is a bit of a learning curve if you're used to selecting chart types like in Excel, but once it clicks, it gives you virtually unlimited choices in the kinds of charts you can make. And with ggplot or Observable Plot [1], it's about the same number of lines as something like Flint.

0: https://data.europa.eu/apps/data-visualisation-guide/why-you...

1: https://observablehq.com/@observablehq/plot-gallery

NicuCalcea

vorgesterndiscuss

I agree that bigger cars are worse, but this seems like a different issue to me than the beeping.

NicuCalcea

vorgesterndiscuss

I'm sorry, but as someone who creates data visualisation as a big part of my job, I wouldn't say the charts on the website look good. Most aren't awful either, but by no means are they an improvement over what I'd get by telling any coding agent to make a chart with Vega-Lite or Observable Plot, and probably worse than if I had some decent instructions/skills.

I don't quite get what the goal of this is other than abstracting away a little bit of the complexity at the expense of flexibility. To me, the promise of LLMs is the opposite, I can get flexibility and customisation without the cost of complexity.

NicuCalcea

vor 3 Tagendiscuss

I would assume so since I've never driven a car.

That's still beside the point, unlike playing pinball, driving is an activity that involves risk to people besides you. If you have evidence these systems actually reduce pedestrian safety rather than just annoy drivers, I'll be happy to have a look. Otherwise, bring them on.

NicuCalcea

vor 3 Tagendiscuss

> What did you have shared with the man in Bangor or the pub staff elsewhere in England?

That's the point of being polite, treating people decently even if you have little in common.

Clearly we have different experiences and that's fine, we both seem to have found where we're comfortable.

NicuCalcea

vor 3 Tagendiscuss

That's fair, but what you want is not the only thing that matters. Your driving affects me as well, and I want you to be beeped at when you're not doing a good job.

NicuCalcea

vor 3 Tagendiscuss

I don't have any identical comparisons of politeness in London and the rest of the UK, but subjectively I do feel people in London are more likely to hold doors, let me skip queues, etc. There's just more of a feeling that we're all trying to navigate life in the city together, rather than gatekeeping each other's presence in it.

It's even more noticeable with people who are paid to be polite: bar and waiting staff, the folks working at Tesco, pub security, the kebab man. I walk into a pub in the middle of nowhere in England, they treat me like I'm intruding or inconveniencing them. I do that in London, they just ask "What are you having love?".

There is definitely a lot of veiled and outright racism and xenophobia though. I've heard things like "your English is actually pretty good" (I was a BBC journalist, it's better than theirs), "at least you're not on benefits", "at least your people are not as bad as X". I've never been told these things in London.

NicuCalcea

vor 3 Tagendiscuss

I agree with the breakdown of the social contract in London, but not with the unfriendliness. I've lived in the UK for eight years and have travelled to many parts of England and Wales.

I've never felt as unwelcome in London as I do almost every time I leave it. Constant suspicious looks, questions about who I am and what the purpose of me being there is, the occasional downright xenophobia.

To give you a recent example, just a couple of weeks ago I was in a supermarket in Bangor stocking up on some water ahead of a hike in the Lake District. My train was delayed, and I am now about to miss the last bus for the next two hours (still needed the water). I explain this to the guy ahead of me in the queue, asking if I could maybe jump ahead of him. He looks at me, says "No", laughs, and then proceeds to scan his items as slowly as he can. Not everyone is like that, but this kind of thing happens all the time.

I definitely believe that you'll feel more of a sense of belonging outside London if you're a local, but as a non-local, it is not friendly at all. And the further away from Britain you are from (geographically and culturally), the worse you are treated. I noticed the difference in reaction when I told people I am Moldovan compared with my ex-partner telling them she is Dutch, and my non-white friends tell me stories that are even worse. London can be unfriendly and isolating, but I'd never live outside London and a few of the other cosmopolitan cities.

NicuCalcea

vor 3 Tagendiscuss

Perhaps not everyone should be driving? This is not a criticism towards you, I don't have the patience to be behind a wheel, and I know of many drivers that are a danger to themselves and others. If the side effect of this system is that there are fewer people driving because they can't manage the alarms, then that's good enough for me.

NicuCalcea

vor 3 Tagendiscuss

I recently bought a camping tent from Naturehike, a budget but respected Chinese brand. I ordered on their website and, long story short, my parcel got stuck at a warehouse for weeks, presumably lost. They said they can't refund me before they retrieve the tent and "inspect the package", as if I somehow went to a warehouse in a different country, found it there, and damaged it.

It took me well over a month of back and forth to get a refund, and only after I repeatedly threatened them with a chargeback. I ordered the exact same tent on Amazon and had it the next day. As a bonus, it was now discounted on Amazon but not on the manufacturer's website.

I only order from Amazon a handful of times a year when I can't find an item elsewhere, but manufacturers are really doing their best to push me towards it.

NicuCalcea

vor 14 Tagendiscuss

Thats's absolutely fine, I will not tolerate fascists and they can not tolerate me.

NicuCalcea

vor 15 Tagendiscuss

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them."

"We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal."

Karl Popper

NicuCalcea

vor 18 Tagendiscuss

In spaces and interactions I control, the definition is up to me.

NicuCalcea

vor 19 Tagendiscuss

Same old tired arguments from Americans about how if you don't let fascists have free speech, it's not really free speech.

NicuCalcea

vor 27 Tagendiscuss

You don't even need to anticipate, you can just push him towards the bottom and follow, he just goes in a loop so eventually you'll catch up. I caught him first try without thinking of any strategy. The controls are horrid though.

NicuCalcea

vor 28 Tagendiscuss

If you can't have a conversation without hyperbole and belittling others, you shouldn't be allowed inside.

NicuCalcea

vor 29 Tagendiscuss

Some people are also old, or not very technically literate, or have poor vision, or aren't experienced flyers. I can navigate around the dark patterns despite being very lazy, but my dad who only uses a computer occasionally would really struggle with them. That is not a fairer world to me.

NicuCalcea

vor 29 Tagendiscuss

In this specific instance, this is the military of a country different from the one of the author. A country that is increasingly hostile towards its allies and does weird shit on the international stage that is difficult to justify.

NicuCalcea

vor 29 Tagendiscuss

> Other people who would like to have this bug fixed can't commit it from their name or reuse the code present in the mail list from assumingly sanctioned entity

> The bug is forced to be fixed in some other way, not in a way it has been fixed by the bug fix contributor

I'm not quite following, why is this the case? If another non-Russian contributor submits the same fix, why wouldn't it be merged? If the project is GPL-licensed, surely that means the author of the fix doesn't retain any "patent" rights as the author describes it?

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