>that the math done for its own sake is just not as beautiful to me as math that has applications.
The point that the person who you're replying to is making is that you dont know the distinction between maths done for its own sake and maths that has applications until potentially hundreds of years later.
>So I'm wondering yet again: why do people find C pointers so difficult to grok?
For me, understanding pointers to data types was not the hard bit(int* or some_struct*), but wrapping my head around *array being a pointer to the first part of a contiguous segment of memory took a lot of time. Once that idea(and what ++array_pointer really did) settled in my head, pointers felt fairly normal to deal with.
I'd like to offer a single datapoint(mine) on this too, I'm going to university soon and in the last few years, the fact that the internet exists has allowed me to solve interesting math problems that I would've never learnt in school
>From anecdotal memory, I think what happened was a shift from real problems to abstract concepts
Funnily enough, I am the exact opposite; I struggle with statistics and mechanics since they are very linked to the real world and I seem to thrive in understanding abstract ideas. The more abstract, the better :)
I like to think of abstract mathematics as a bunch of code in a library, the code on it's own is vast and has no real purpose when it is standalone, but it becomes immediately useful when a program with a purpose uses it in tangible ways. I would definitely love to make abstract mathematics make sense as a part of the project.
>To answer your question, I’d be interested in analytic geometry and similar concepts which would related to computer graphics.
Those are good suggestions that I didn't think about at first; function transformations and polar coordinates are definitely worth exploring, and a lot of computer graphics involves calculus and linear algebra that I do plan on covering already.
>Where would you post? Is there a feed we could subscribe to?
Still figuring details out, but probably on my .github.io domain(and if the project receives enough attention, I might move it onto it's own domain) and I'll likely use an email based system or an RSS feed after I tackle the "make good learning resources" problem.
>Part of the problem is that people don't know what they want. Another part of the problem is that people ask about really advanced things that they are not ready for, and where they don't have time to dedicate to learning the basics.
Yeah I do totally see that, and my idea is to make a resource that gives you the value that you extract out of it, although it's a fine line between making yet another boring textbook and a resource that is engaging but also informative.
>For your own interest ... what would you start with?
This is where I am a bit torn, because on one hand, I'd love to jump in to cool stuff that people learnt _how_ to do but were never taught the ideas behind them. For example, integral substitution seem to be taught in this rather boring way where you're told to mechanically execute a bunch of steps that people just need to memorise to pass their exam.
I'd love to jump right in and derive the idea of a substitution from the Reimann integral definition, and go into some detail about the intuition behind it. And then perhaps I can explore more calculus like the idea of limits(which are typically another terribly explained) and then move on to Taylor series expansions etc.
But at the same time I don't want the barrier of entry to be really high, so mabye starting with the idea of derivatives, and then approaching higher level topics might be a better structure?
Oh thanks for reminding me of SOME, I might try participating for sure. The reason I asked B) is because I need a starting point since there's so much I could talk about, so e.g. "limits always confused me", "integrals never truly clicked", "the idea of derivatives and really the whole of calculus went by too quickly", or "polynomials and their properties are still a mystery" would be the sorts of starting points I'm looking for.
I still think it's marketing because if it really is dangerous, why talk about it in the first place? (I don't doubt that it may be 'dangerous' if used for nefarious purposes, but if I have something dangerous, I wouldn't go announcing it to the whole wide world).
I think you're giving too much credit to the average user, empirically, we as humans tend to question less and believe more about things that are beyond our understanding, and LLMs are certainly way more of a black box than a search engine. The idea of a search engine is intuitive enough, but a large language model which involves maths that people likely haven't even heard of? and is the next big thing(TM) and will revolutionise the world? Yeah I have a feeling it will take some time before the average user understands the ins and outs of this tech.
Also the problem isn't necessarily about understanding the tech, but more about how it will be perceived at first. As long as every big player hypes up the tech as if it's perfect and revolutionary, I can't blame people for blindly trusting it at first(because it might as well work for most things they use it for, it will take some time before the pitfalls become apparent).
The experience I get as a user of the app? Is it that hard to believe that people at the very top can be out of touch with the average user of their product? I'd be surprised if any of those people have even seen the Reddit homepage once. We've seen plenty of companies go down because they made an incredibly out of touch change which caused mass migration to a better product(the example floating around is Digg). All this happening right as they prepare to go public is really all the indication one needs to deduce what's going on.
Make the API reasonably priced instead of making it effectively impossible to run 3rd party apps, make 3rd party apps a reddit gold only feature, make reddit gold better in general(the main complaint ive heard is "why do i even buy reddit gold?"). They've got 2000 employees, surely there's enough people to come up with better monetisation ideas than I could in a few minutes that don't involve pissing off a big chunk of the userbase.
I remember watching a lot of popular minecraft creators make detailed videos on why it's bad and long story short, it seemed pretty disruptive(although that's of course merely an opinion of mine and not something objective).
>motivated by immense pressure to keep Minecraft kid friendly
ultimately it's about profit though isn't it? Minecraft servers have been fine on their own(as evidenced by servers having their own ways of dealing with everything mojang decided they want to deal with directly), if it ain't broke, why fix it? Because keeping minecraft child-friendly will keep those with their money on the line more happy since it certainly is catered towards younger children among other demographics. Also not sure how much experience you have with minecraft but there is a MASSIVE difference between technical(power users) players and casual players and you certainly can cleanly fit users in the dichotomy.
And I agree they've done a decent job all these years, but since the MSFT acquisition, things are slowly going downhill with every update and it feels like MSFT is indeed taking minecraft down the enshittification route.
Funnily enough your description of your issues makes me think you're more likely to have ADHD than you think.
>don't think this is ADHD as I can focus on things I'm more interested. But now I need to focus on things that are less fun but more important. I think throughout my previous 40 years of life I have been haunted by this inability of focusing on important things.
Being able to focus on things one finds interesting and losing that focus for important, less interesting things is indeed the problem one faces with ADHD.
Although I digress, as someone with ADHD I struggle with a similar problem and I think the best thing you can do is to pursue those little impulses, but tell yourself that you'll pursue them once you've completed your task that you're engaged in at that moment(basically procrastinate following your curiosity).
Whenever you get that impulse to get on a side quest, tell yourself "I definitely will get on that side quest as soon as I finish the main one", that way either you may be more motivated to finish your course and you get to dive into things you find interesting too, or sometimes I personally end up losing that impulse if I spend too long without pursuing it, which might work out for you as well.
Yeah they're just taking away access from the exact set of people who'll benefit the userbase most(mods, indie devs etc.) and still reserving it for corporations with the money to pay. It's not wrong to expect enterprise prices for enterprise use but surely it shouldn't be unfeasible for individuals either. Spotify does it well, by restricting use of 3rd party clients to those with a paid subscription, I think people would be less worried if they did something similar.
Lots of ways to do what Reddit is doing and it almost feels like they've picked the worst one.
edit: feels eerily similar to Twitter, which has changed for the worse at this point.
It's anecdata but I certainly understood the value of money enough to not blow off 64 grand(or really any money without asking always my parents) when I was 13(which was not very long ago for me), and my friends certainly never did such a thing either. She clearly either did know what she was doing, or it's a very unfortunate failure in terms of maturing and acting like a 13 year old. I can't attest to what could cause such a failure but I can't imagine a world where most 13 year olds think it's ok to spend 64 grand on a game(regardless of how predatory it is) with no concern about their activities.
The issue goes far beyond just alternate frontends, mods of a popular subreddit for discussion of esports related to a game I play said that the API changes would greatly impact how the subreddit runs to the point where it may well be impossible(they make heavy use of bots and moderation tools to facilitate discussion etc.). Also consider accessibility and the problems that have surfaced related to it.
>you can't just give away the community's content to train LLMs
The API has always existed, it's just a lot more expensive so if OpenAI really wanted to, they still could train their LLMs on Reddit comments just fine.
And as other users said, this is yet another platform catering solely to shareholders and giving no second thought about the users of the platform before making decisions that only maximise profits, which is a discomfort to lots of users to say the least.
>But do 99% of users really care?
I use the website and official mobile app, but if a subreddit that I really enjoy stopped being enjoyable because of these changes, I do indeed care(and so do thousands of users across so many different subreddits).
>Most people browse Reddit through an official UI. Instagram, Snap, a bazillion other private social networks don't have 3rd party apps
Well atleast their UI is better than Reddit's, and as far as I can tell, a lot more accessible than Reddit's official UI . Also those platforms went down the "maximise profit margins by not caring about users" route a long time ago, this move from Reddit feels like the last straw for a significant enough amount of the userbase to participate in these blackouts.
You may not have a horse in this race but I think it's worth understanding exactly how this impacts you as a user before bringing out the "but I don't care" take(which is fair enough, but I would be slightly surprised if that was still your take after fully understanding the implications of these changes).
>classic underestimating a domain you have no understanding of
to be clear I'm not a hw eng myself so I don't have a deep understanding of hw eng, but I have a friend who's studying EE and from what he asks/tells me sometimes, there's a non-trivial amount of coding involved depending on what it is you're working on. So mabye it's because hw engineers may have experience writing lots of code which is non-trivial, but nowhere close to what a sw eng does still, hence giving a wrong impression.