musicale · HackerLangs

Customer service was already replaced by rubbish automation; AI simply adds to the endless voicemail maze and the "your call is very unimportant to us..." delay before "all representatives are currently busy ignoring other customers - please go to our web site or call back next year."

musicale

5 dni temudiscuss

One Immovable Fact that AI Companies Hate!

musicale

5 dni temudiscuss

"Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible; and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer."

musicale

7 dni temudiscuss

The schematics tell you how things are wired together, which is maybe useful if you are building compatible hardware.

The ASIC specifications tell you how to operate and program the chips, which is what device drivers need.

Better for Linux would be for Apple to provide open source drivers.

(Linux would also benefit if NVIDIA provided open source drivers, for example.)

musicale

7 dni temudiscuss

Both are true. Apple's official qualification, continuous integration, bug fixing, backporting, etc. takes more effort than a hobbyist getting things to (mostly) work. But the main issue for Apple is focus: Apple wants its product development organization to focus on the next new thing, not on the past.

I'm mostly OK with Apple's 7-10 years of support, but I also have older Macs that still work fine and that I wish were safe to connect to the internet while running macOS - without relying on various hacks or workarounds.

musicale

7 dni temudiscuss

> The entire point of Intel Macs was for running Windows on a Mac

That wasn't the point for Apple. After pointing out that PowerPC hadn't hit 3GHz (as he had promised two years prior) and that there was no PowerBook G5, Steve Jobs clearly explained the rationale for intel Macs:

> As we look ahead, we can envision some amazing products we want to build for you, and we don't know how to build them with the future PowerPC road map.

https://allaboutstevejobs.com/videos/keynotes/wwdc_2005

musicale

7 dni temudiscuss

Stocks have reached "what looks like a permanently high plateau."

musicale

7 dni temudiscuss

> “Apple should certainly be blamed for deteriorating the supply and demand cycle in the global NAND flash market,” The Korea Times quotes an un-named industry official as saying. The article goes on to say that the Apple iPhone is proving less popular in China, Japan and South Korea than it has in the West.

musicale

7 dni temudiscuss

The American Revolutionary War began [1] in 1775:

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shot_heard_round_the_world

As I understand it, America250 is the official organization/celebration [2] established [3] to commemorate the signing of the Declaration of Independence [4] in 1776:

> America250’s mission is to celebrate and commemorate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, marking America’s Semiquincentennial.

[2] https://america250.org/about-america250/

> The U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission was established by Congress in 2016 to plan and orchestrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

[3] https://america250.org/about-america250/a250-leadership/

> We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness

[4] https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcrip...

musicale

8 dni temudiscuss

This is a very good point. DRM is not the same as digital.

There doesn't seem to be a lot of clarity though around reselling digital downloads the way there is with physical media (first sale doctrine, etc.)

musicale

8 dni temudiscuss

Many Switch / Switch 2 games can still be played offline with just the game card.

musicale

8 dni temudiscuss

> Official PlayStation Used Game Instructional Video

this is how you don't share games on playstation :(

musicale

9 dni temudiscuss

What a difference a space makes.

musicale

9 dni temudiscuss

I just have to say when I saw BMOW 1 I was delighted.

Also Magic-1, another homebrew CPU, also made out of 74LS TTL chips from the 1970s.

Fantastic trend, really.

https://www.bigmessowires.com/bmow1/

https://homebrewcpu.com

(Of course it's a lot easier [but still quite fun] to make your own homebrew CPU/system on an FPGA.)

musicale

12 dni temudiscuss

I miss them.

musicale

12 dni temudiscuss

(Serious answer in spite of the punch line at the end of my parent post which perhaps addresses your first point.) I think it's good for people to be educated, and to have the opportunity when they want it, but it can be self-defeating to force people to be there who don't want to be.

musicale

12 dni temudiscuss

FPGAs are great - it's like writing software to create hardware, magically and on demand.

I wish it were easier to get started with them - the toolchains are usually designed for professional engineers rather than beginners, and the debugging experience is poor vs. any typical software IDE like VSCode or IntelliJ (even though Vivado seems to be based on Eclipse or something.)

But don't let that discourage you - working with FPGAs is incredibly fun once you get over the initial learning curve, and there are many resources available on youtube etc.

musicale

12 dni temudiscuss

I guess it depends on the program, but at my university an undergrad EE major, even though it had more units than any other major, didn't get to the best and most interesting stuff (perhaps because engineering majors also had to learn about things other than engineering, which seems like a pretty good idea.) Personally I wish more CS grads (including many people I worked with) had a better understanding of compilers, programming languages, databases, operating systems, distributed systems, networks, and computer architecture, as well as applications programming and interaction design. It's hard to get all of that while working at a single job, but readily achievable at a university, and an extra year of coursework really helps.

Business majors should take physical science courses with a lab component! How else are they going to learn anything about reality?

But there is no excuse for bad teaching, anywhere (especially given how insanely competitive faculty positions are - even crummy adjunct and lecturer positions.)

Unfortunately research universities prioritize fundraising > research > teaching. And sometimes grad students are selected to teach based on financial need or departmental requirements rather than interest or ability.

musicale

12 dni temudiscuss

A master's in CS can teach you interesting and very useful things, like how OS kernels, distributed systems, networks, and microprocessors work. A master's in EE will teach you things like signal processing and analog circuit design as well. Knowing these things helps you to design, build, and evaluate systems that are reliable and efficient.

A master's in science helps you understand how the physical world works and how to reason quantitatively as well as qualitatively. A master's in humanities gives you knowledge and understanding of human culture, such as literature and the arts, and history - subjects that can be deeply enriching and can provide insights that transcend disciplines. A master's in social science will teach you about how humans behave in groups and how they interact with their environment, and about statistical analysis.

Writing a master's thesis will also teach you a lot and make you a better writer - if you actually write it yourself and don't rely on AI.

Any of these degrees will certainly qualify you to be a more interesting, knowledgeable, and insightful barista or Uber driver.

musicale

12 dni temudiscuss

Apparently some students aren't actually interested in learning and view the diploma as a meal ticket rather than a meaningful credential. Or perhaps the university is just seen as a networking opportunity.

If students don't want to be there in the first place and/or don't see any value in learning, it is unsurprising that they'd take the easy way out. Or maybe they cheated their way into Brown and are just continuing.

But I was always interested in learning, and understood that cheating was a method of learning avoidance. Why waste the amazing learning resources - faculty, teaching assistants, courses, labs, libraries, studios, rehearsal spaces, interesting speakers, arts and culture events, computing facilities, maker spaces, etc. - that are available at a place like Brown?

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