Anthony-G

1,646 karmajoined 12 năm trước

System administrator, living in Dublin, Ireland. Email: [email protected]

comments

3 ngày trướcdiscuss

Terrible article. As a European who grew up in a country that has banned¹ thousands of books, periodicals and other media for most of its existence, I was expecting this article to be about some campaign to unban books that were still being censored as a relic of the Salazar era. The headline is deceptive and the article itself is uninformative. It wasn’t until I came across a reference to “school districts” that I realised that this is just more American culture war bullshit being imported into Europe.

¹ literally banned, i.e. it was illegal to buy, sell or distribute such publications in the state: https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/1929/act/21/enacted/en/h...

16 ngày trướcdiscuss

Yesterday, there was a meta-discussion on the use of the word “boffin” on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48661535

Not being a reader of British red-top tabloids, I assumed that the word is mostly only used in an ironic or quaint way, similar to how The Register uses it. It turns out that the Institute of Physics researched the use of the word and found that the word, “boffin” has negative connotations and conjures an image of a scientist being male. They concluded that it puts young people off choosing science as a career so they campaigned to ask the red-tops to kindly refrain from using the word. Only the Daily Mirror agreed to stop using the word.

Institute of Physics campaign page: https://www.iop.org/strategy/limit-less/journalists/media-gu...

17 ngày trướcdiscuss

As soon as I saw this word, I guessed that El Reg was the source.

22 ngày trướcdiscuss

Similar experience here. I grew up in rural Ireland in the 80s where you said hello to everyone but had a culture shock when I moved to Dublin for college. I quickly realised that you don’t greet everyone. I put it down to a being a matter of scale: in the countryside, it’s easy to say hello to everyone when you’ll usually encounter only a small number of people. It’d be impossible to say hello to everyone in a big city.

I still say hi to people when doing things like hiking a trail that’s off the beaten track: we’re sharing a similar experience and have that one thing in common. If it’s a popular trail or busy weekend, it’s more akin to being in a large town where you don’t say hello.

Another rural-urban division in Ireland is that in the countryside, car drivers greet oncoming drivers – whether they know each other or not – by subtly raising a finger or two while keeping their hands on the steering wheel. Since the 80/90s, this custom has been dying out in the counties near Dublin but I still see it in the West of Ireland. A few years ago, we were holidaying in West Cork and my wife was driving but hadn’t realised we were being greeted by the locals. As a Dubliner, she’d never even heard of this practice.

Edit: By the way, I just noticed your username. Seeing that you’re from Switzerland, I was wondering if it’s a reference to the Celtic Frost album?

tháng trướcdiscuss

Upvoted your comment but my inner pedant can’t help but point out that’s more an example of whitewashing rather than greenwashing (which itself is a derivative of whitewashing).

tháng trướcdiscuss

I used to only rarely look at Youtube (repairs, cooking, the odd live concert) but since I started looking at it more often (for guitar and piano tutorials), I’ve found its UI to be too distracting. I added the following custom uBlock filters to make it less annoying:

    ! Remove the "Up next" sidebar (the #secondary container) so that the main content area (#primary) takes up the full width.
    youtube.com##ytd-watch-flexy #secondary:remove()

    ! Ensure the video takes up the full width when playing full screen.
    youtube.com###panels-full-bleed-container:remove()

tháng trướcdiscuss

> … smartphone reading produced overactivity in the prefrontal cortex, suppressed sigh generation, and led to general lower comprehension scores; the authors argued that the sigh inhibition and prefrontal overload were causally linked to the comprehension decline.

Does anyone know what’s the importance of sighing in this context? I notice one of my work colleagues sighs a lot when reading but I assume that’s due to the nature of the work he’s doing – or emails he reads.

On a related note, I recently read an article¹ by an Irish fiction writer who teaches her craft to others. While her article focusses on the stages to achieving mastery, the teacher found that even students who want to be writers don’t want to read. I found that to be a bizarre concept and hard to believe; it’d be like wanting to be a musician without listening to music or a film-maker not watching Hitchcock, Welles, Bergman, Capra, Truffaut, Kubrick, Scorsese, Lee, Spielberg, etc.

¹ https://www.irishtimes.com/life-style/people/2026/05/04/some...

tháng trướcdiscuss

I noticed that in myself. I’d read a chapter and be convinced that I’d absorbed the information. It wasn’t until I learned networking from a second-hand college text-book that I realised that wasn’t really the case. Each chapter concluded with questions to verify that the reader had understood the concepts. When I tested myself, I found that I could only answer around half of the questions and had to go back and re-read sections in order to answer the others. I had completely over-estimated how much I had learned while reading.

On Stack Exchange sites, I used to see questions and think “Oh! I know the answer. It’ll only take a few minutes to answer”. Invariably, I discovered that I didn’t have all the knowledge to provide a complete answer. While typing, I’d realise that there were gaps in my knowledge (e.g., is what I’m writing true for BSDs as well as Linux OSs?) or there’d be edge cases that I hadn’t previously considered (differences between program versions, how software behaves in different locales, etc.). A good, comprehensive answer ended up taking around half an hour but I found the effort was worth it: writing Stack Overflow answers was a great way to learn.

Speaking of “forcing functions”, I’m currently learning guitar and my goal for this year is to learn a song in full and record myself to objectively see how well I’m actually playing.

2 tháng trướcdiscuss

Agreed. Even if it’s not possible to know who created the images in the first place, anyone who “shares” them should be culpable.

2 tháng trướcdiscuss

It would be good to hear examples of this effect, alright. I’d like to hear how something sounds with 1) no reverb, 2) with reverb applied and 3) with the reverb gated.

The Wikipedia article goes deeper into the history; the featured article has no mention of Steve Lillywhite and others who were using similar techniques before Hugh Padgham worked on Peter Gabriel’s third album. It also has a good explanation of the three different ways of creating this effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gated_reverb

2 tháng trướcdiscuss

For those with Apple TV+ subscriptions, I’d recommend Watch the Sound with Mark Ronson, a six-episode series which explores different technologies used in music production.

Episode 3 covers reverb and delves into its history and how it’s implemented using modern digital technology. The presenter gets to visit the famous reverb chambers in Capitol studios – and then a room that was designed and built to have no reverberation whatsoever. He also visits the disused underground oil storage tanks at Inchindown, Scotland which holds the record for having the longest reverberation time for a man-made structure¹.

The episode also features Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight” which was cited in the featured article as an example of a gated reverb drum sound (I don’t think Ronson mentioned that this effect was created by combining reverb with a noise gate).

¹ https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/now-we-ve-heard-it-all-ac...

2 tháng trướcdiscuss

I first came across Abelard and Héloïse from an episode of The Sopranos: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentimental_Education_(The_Sop...

The episode title itself is also a literary reference. I’m sure there are many cultural references that went over my head while watching the show; I really should watch it again.

2 tháng trướcdiscuss

Great advice but that may not always work in Ireland. The expected answer is “grand” or something similarly neutral and succinct. The asker may not even stop to listen to your answer so you won’t have enough time to provide a decent response.

Your suggestion would work when both people are in the same place for some time, e.g., waiting in line for a coffee, or for a meeting to start or for a lift (elevator) to arrive, etc.

I sometimes go to concerts by myself and like to arrive early to catch the support act. There’s usually a gap of at least half an hour before the main act comes on stage and I make a point of looking around for other people who aren’t on their phone so I can start a conversation. In that situation, I already know we have something in common.

2 tháng trướcdiscuss

I had to click on your profile to see if there was any clue as to whether the ‘G’ stands for “Gillian” or not. :)

2 tháng trướcdiscuss

> Heroin only impacts one individual

I have to disagree with this. Having talked to heroin addicts in the past, I was told that the heroin addiction destroyed their relationship with their families and their friends, causing heart-break in the process (particularly for mothers). They use everyone around them so that they could get their next fix: borrowing, constant cajoling and stealing results in alienating them from everyone in their social circle – other than fellow junkies.

When cut off from family and friends, junkies resort to begging, stealing, street prostitution, shop-lifting and other petty crimes, all of which have a negative effect on their community. Some junkies end up committing violent crimes which has a more destructive effect on society. They often end up in debt to their dealers and commit other crimes at their behest.

All these things are much worse when the junkie is a parent or has others depending on them for a safe and secure family life.

Also, in my country (Ireland), heroin junkies also place a huge burden on the health service. Their chaotic lives result in multiple health issues and they take up a significant portion of hospital beds.

2 tháng trướcdiscuss

I can see how system-wide blocking would be useful. I’m personally very conservative and wary about apps that I install on my iPhone (I don’t use any ad-supported apps) so the browser is the “attack surface” that I’m most concerned about.

I already use uBlock Origin and iCloud Private Relay (as advised in your original post). I also use Private Browser tabs and regularly remove all “Website Data” from Safari (minor inconvenience in that I have to re-login to sites that I have an account on).

I’ve just installed AdGuard on my iPhone to try it out but see that the DNS protection requires a Premium subscription (it now occurs to me that I could possibly install Wireguard to connect to my VPS where I’m already running my own DNS server). I’ve also `never looked into supervised mode; I always assumed it wasn’t relevant for personal devices.

Thanks for the reply.

2 tháng trướcdiscuss

This sounds like good advice so upvoted. I’m a big fan of Raymond Hill¹’s products so I am curious about how much benefit Adguard provides if uBlock Origin is already blocking online trackers, ads and other annoyances.

¹ In this case, the developer – not the musician. I really liked the user interface of uMatrix.

3 tháng trướcdiscuss

Off Topic: when I came across the journalist/writer, Anne Cadwallader, I used to wonder about the origin of her surname. After reading this comment, I finally decide to look it up and found that her About page at https://www.annecadwallader.com/about explains it well:

> “Cadwallader” comes from the Welsh/Briton from Cadwaladr, meaning “battle leader” or “warrior” (cad ”battle” + gwaladr “leader/ruler”). The name dates back to the 7th century, notably held by King Cadwaladr of Gwynedd.

3 tháng trướcdiscuss

Also:

> Trump Responds To Controversial Image Of Himself As Jesus, Says It Actually Depicted Him As A Doctor & Slams “Fake News” For The Misinterpretation

Had I not already heard this story via the mainstream media on this side of the Atlantic, this could easily be another satirical headline. With Trump as President, Poe’s law now covers reporting on facts – not just expressions of opinion.

3 tháng trướcdiscuss

Given the huge environmental cost involved in manufacturing a car, 20 years seems fair.

I’m still driving a 26-year old Nissan Micra – though it’s now on its last legs: the Irish climate isn’t kind to steel and we’ve had to have the under-carriage re-welded three times in the past five years. :(