whbboyd's recent activity
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Comment on Reminder to myself that my employer does not give a shit about me in ~life
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Comment on Emily Wilson’s critique of Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” in ~movies
whbboyd Link ParentI don't think so; or at least, that's not what I took from it. Wilson isn't critiquing Nolan's Odyssey for being an unfaithful adaptation of Homer's Odyssey; indeed, as she points out, Homer's...Whereas the rest seems to ignore many of the constraints, intentions, and effects that truly come with that and instead attempts to critique the movie's story in isolation against the 120k word original source.
I don't think so; or at least, that's not what I took from it. Wilson isn't critiquing Nolan's Odyssey for being an unfaithful adaptation of Homer's Odyssey; indeed, as she points out, Homer's Odyssey is itself already an unfaithful adaptation of earlier oral mythology. Rather, she's critiquing it for being internally inconsistent, in ways that Homer's Odyssey is not. You can write good literature about a lunkhead who gets lost at sea and beats everyone up until he gets home again, and you could even get away with calling it "The Odyssey", but you probably shouldn't have characters extol the lunkhead protagonist's scheming brilliance, as—apparently (I haven't and am not likely to watch it)—Nolan's Odyssey does, against everything it actually presents.
Honestly, I think the first paragraph ("like an elaborate Fourth of July fireworks display – and with about the same level of narrative and emotional depth") is the most savage part.
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Comment on Atari makes Universal movie deal for ten iconic game properties in ~movies
whbboyd Link ParentI'm somewhat disappointed ET isn't in here. It would make absolutely no sense, of course, but it would also be hilarious.I'm somewhat disappointed ET isn't in here. It would make absolutely no sense, of course, but it would also be hilarious.
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Comment on Your cookware got worse on purpose: who owns Pyrex and All-Clad now in ~food
whbboyd Link…This is whining about borosilicate, isn't it? read Yeah, sure is. Okay, so, here's the thing. There are clear tradeoffs between borosilicate and tempered glass cookware. Borosilicate has much...…This is whining about borosilicate, isn't it?
read
Yeah, sure is. Okay, so, here's the thing. There are clear tradeoffs between borosilicate and tempered glass cookware. Borosilicate has much better temperature resistance, but tempered glass is much tougher (and, when it breaks, tends to shatter into tiny square-edged pieces rather than big knife-like shards; more annoying to clean up, perhaps, but much safer). And, it turns out a lot more people break their glass cookware by dropping it than by thermal stress. Did Corning switch to tempered glass because it's cheaper than borosilicate? I mean, it almost certainly contributed to that decision, but I doubt it was the sole driving factor.
Is Pyrex crap since Corning switched to tempered glass? Maybe! But the answer isn't obviously yes or no.
The borosilicate discourse is especially frustrating to me because I'm pretty sure Corning has been slowly reducing the quality of their tempered glass. My newer glassware from them has had a lot more surface and finish imperfections than the stuff from just a few decades ago. I even had one container arrive broken in shipping (to their credit, they replaced it no questions asked). But I haven't seen any discussion of this because all anyone talks about is borosilicate.
Anyway, in general: be suspicious of anyone trying to sell you something, and recognize that "this product is crap now" is in fact a sales pitch (even if it may also be true).
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Comment on Give me your culture clash stories in ~travel
whbboyd LinkMy wife and I were spending a few days in Córdoba, Spain on a vacation. We are early risers, even by American standards, and had the absolute damndest time finding a place to serve us coffee...My wife and I were spending a few days in Córdoba, Spain on a vacation. We are early risers, even by American standards, and had the absolute damndest time finding a place to serve us coffee before we'd been up for hours and hours. We eventually found an American-style coffee shop that opened at, IIRC, 9, and was obviously the preferred haunt of all the expats and visitors getting up way too early for the locals.
We tried to get dinner at a nice-looking restaurant somewhere around 6:30 and the maître d' ("maestro del"?) told us to come back at 8. I asked if we could reserve a table and he told us that absolutely was not necessary; and he was right, the place was empty except for us for at least another hour. The food was delicious, but we were still eating way past our bedtime.
At a different restaurant, on a different trip, in Vienna, we ordered a wine pairing with dinner, and they absolutely plied us. That was the drunkest I've ever been, and I went to some pretty boozed-up parties in college. It was a good thing Vienna is a very safe city! I think an American server would have been a lot more circumspect about it, and not just to save the restaurant money. Europeans really like their wine, lol.
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Comment on Of course viewers are giving up on Netflix shows in ~tv
whbboyd Link ParentFandom aside, I suspect one of the things that makes the Locked Tomb's hiatus more tolerable is that the books we have are fun to reread. They're silly, downright ridiculous in places. Harrow the...Fandom aside, I suspect one of the things that makes the Locked Tomb's hiatus more tolerable is that the books we have are fun to reread. They're silly, downright ridiculous in places.
Harrow the Ninth spoilers
For example, probably my favorite moment in the series is in Harrow when Harrow extracts her own bone marrow and cooks it into a stew in order to use it as a necromantic focus to murder another character. It nearly works, too, until God intervenes. Gruesome, obviously, but over-the-top in a way that wraps back around into being funny.In contrast, the thought of rereading A Song of Ice and Fire is just… uuuuuuuuuuuuuugh. Just thinking about it gives me ennui. The books are long and drag (especially the later ones) and a great deal of what goes on in them is… just unpleasant. It's shocking and subversive when you read it the first time, but when you know
A Storm of Swords spoilers
the Red Wedding… do I really need to spoiler-tag this?is coming up, it's just more terrible things happening to whoever passes for good characters in the setting.
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Comment on Modern, abstract art makes me angry in ~arts
whbboyd (edited )Link ParentNo, I actually think this is the point. Comedian (the banana piece) is art in part because it's novel. It makes you feel something because nobody had taped fruit to an art museum wall before. But...(I'm mostly joking?)
No, I actually think this is the point. Comedian (the banana piece) is art in part because it's novel. It makes you feel something because nobody had taped fruit to an art museum wall before. But now, if I sneak into the MoMA and tape a grapefruit up in the exhibit spaces, that's much less artistic. Cattelan had the thought "what if I taped a piece of fruit to the wall"; I would be having the thought "what if I copied this other thing". (And, of course, I chose to copy Comedian because execution of the copy requires a wall, a piece of fruit and a roll of tape. Nobody talks about bootlegging the Sistine Chapel or what that would mean, because it's obvious nobody's going to do it.)
Novelty isn't the only thing that makes art, but it is something that makes art. Modern art trades a lot on novelty, which tends to ruffle the feathers of the sorts of people who think the value of a piece of art is determined by the amount of effort that went into it.
(If I do my bootleg with a peach, does it become art again due to commentary on fruit as metaphor for human genitalia?)
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Comment on The end of [Marcin's] AArch64 desktop experiment in ~tech
whbboyd Link ParentBiggest criticism of this article series: no htop screenshot! ;)Biggest criticism of this article series: no
htopscreenshot! ;) -
Comment on The end of [Marcin's] AArch64 desktop experiment in ~tech
whbboyd Link ParentIt's actually an Atheros (a QCNFA765, specifically), and so I kind of suspect a hardware issue over software support, but who knows. It hasn't been bad enough for me to try to replace it, and...It's actually an Atheros (a QCNFA765, specifically), and so I kind of suspect a hardware issue over software support, but who knows. It hasn't been bad enough for me to try to replace it, and Thinkpads (even x86 ones) have a bad habit of putting hardware whitelists in the firmware, so a swap may not be straightforward.
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Comment on The end of [Marcin's] AArch64 desktop experiment in ~tech
whbboyd LinkLobste.rs thread I find this kind of interesting because I'm using an arm64 computer (a Thinkpad X13s) as my daily driver (I'm literally typing this on it right now) and… none of his complaints...I find this kind of interesting because I'm using an arm64 computer (a Thinkpad X13s) as my daily driver (I'm literally typing this on it right now) and… none of his complaints resonate. I think his problem is really with trying to daily drive an Ampere processor, which is neither designed nor intended to be used in a desktop system.
As a point-by-point comparison:
- I'm running vanilla Debian stable with Debian's kernel (I'm using the one from backports, but the stable kernel works fine as well). At this point, no shenanigans are required to run at least Debian on this device. (Some shenanigans are still required to install it, however.)
- The single-core performance of the Snapdragon 8cx gen3 CPU in this thing is… fine? It's not noticeably slow, and beyond that, I really don't care. In terms of gross CPU, performance is roughly comparable between this thing and my Ryzen 5 2600 desktop for compiling Rust code. Because the laptop is fanless, you will get thermal throttling if you try to run the CPU at 100% for an extended period, though.
- The integrated Adreno GPU… works? To be fair, I have made no attempts to really exercise it (that's what the desktop is for).
It's definitely not perfect. There's no real sleep mode (the kernel parks all the threads and shuts down at least some peripherals, but the CPU is still running; it'll get something like 24hr on battery in this mode. But this doesn't really have anything to do with ARM, some recent-model x86 systems are also defective in this manner); integration with the system firmware is kind of limited; the wireless card is weirdly flaky. Also I have complaints about the industrial design of the laptop, which you can read about at length if you really want. But I'm definitely sold on the concept of a fanless, efficient ultraportable, which is at best really hard to swing with x86.
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The end of [Marcin's] AArch64 desktop experiment
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Comment on Steam Machine prices revealed, starting at US$1049.00 in ~games
whbboyd Link ParentI put 32GB of RAM in my desktop for $150 in 2012. (This was a patently ridiculous thing to do at the time.) I got a good deal on it, but RAM definitely shouldn't be more expensive fourteen years...I put 32GB of RAM in my desktop for $150 in 2012. (This was a patently ridiculous thing to do at the time.) I got a good deal on it, but RAM definitely shouldn't be more expensive fourteen years later.
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Comment on Singer Oliver Tree dead at 32 following tragic helicopter crash in ~music
whbboyd Link ParentIt's the birthday paradox (in this context, sometimes also called the "big sky theory", with the implication that it's not a great theory). Sure, there's a lot of sky up there, but the risk of a...It's the birthday paradox (in this context, sometimes also called the "big sky theory", with the implication that it's not a great theory). Sure, there's a lot of sky up there, but the risk of a collision is between every pair of aircraft in it, a number which grows as the square of the number of craft and gets high enough to make mid-air collisions concerningly likely fairly quickly.
There's also the fact that the sky may be big, but the set of runways and helipads people take off from and land on are not, and every flight (ideally) starts and ends at a runway. The vast majority of collisions happen near takeoff and landing, when craft are far denser in the air than mid-flight.
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Comment on The "go fix a minor annoyance" togetherness topic in ~life
whbboyd Link ParentCould you switch to a non-smoking form of nicotine (i.e. gum, patches)? That would let you satisfy the nicotine addiction without the smoke, though it obviously wouldn't replace any of the other...Could you switch to a non-smoking form of nicotine (i.e. gum, patches)? That would let you satisfy the nicotine addiction without the smoke, though it obviously wouldn't replace any of the other aspects of smoking. At least in the US, both gum and patches are available over-the-counter.
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Comment on Earth’s east–west albedo symmetry in ~science
whbboyd Link ParentAs @updawg mentioned, the paper's conclusion is actually that three separate albedos have coincident symmetries, something which is not guaranteed by the IVT. The function here isn't literally a...As @updawg mentioned, the paper's conclusion is actually that three separate albedos have coincident symmetries, something which is not guaranteed by the IVT.
The function here isn't literally a sine, but it is periodic (we're just revolving the plane around the Earth's axis) and symmetric (for half the revolution, the values are inverse in sign from the other half; the plane is in the same place but "the other way around"). As you note, we do need the albedo field to be continuous to guarantee this function is continuous and the IVT applies, but… I guess it's a question of philosophy, but I'm not sure I'd accept that mathematically discontinuous objects can physically exist. Given all that, the detailed shape of the function is irrelevant; we know enough to apply the IVT and conclude that a plane of symmetry exists. Finding it is left as an exercise. =)
I like the IVT because, again, it seems really obvious, but has some very surprising consequences.
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Comment on Earth’s east–west albedo symmetry in ~science
whbboyd Link ParentAh, when I skimmed that portion, I read it as explanation—"here's why we think the symmetric meridian is here in particular". If they are in fact three notionally-independent values whose symmetry...Ah, when I skimmed that portion, I read it as explanation—"here's why we think the symmetric meridian is here in particular". If they are in fact three notionally-independent values whose symmetry happens to align, that's definitely an interesting finding.
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Comment on Earth’s east–west albedo symmetry in ~science
whbboyd Link ParentNo, I think the IVT gets you a guaranteed equal division for any adequately-large set of hemispherical divisions. Consider, for the case of longitude, the function from meridian angle to...No, I think the IVT gets you a guaranteed equal division for any adequately-large set of hemispherical divisions. Consider, for the case of longitude, the function from meridian angle to difference in albedo between the hemispheres. This function is a distorted sinusoid (it returns to its original value after a full revolution), and it takes on the negative of its original value at a half-revolution. Therefore it crosses zero, therefore by the IVT there is guaranteed to be an angle of longitude which divides the Earth into hemispheres of equal albedo.
Note this argument doesn't depend on the choice of poles, so it holds for any such revolution of dividing planes, though obviously the longitudinal divisions are more interesting to humans for non-mathematical reasons.
The IVT does tend to be like that. It's a remarkably powerful theorem for how obvious it seems on its face.
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Comment on Earth’s east–west albedo symmetry in ~science
whbboyd Link(I didn't actually read the whole paper, it's possible this is addressed.) …Is this not just a case of "oops it's the IVT"? The equator is non-arbitrary, so albedo symmetry across it is notable;...(I didn't actually read the whole paper, it's possible this is addressed.)
…Is this not just a case of "oops it's the IVT"? The equator is non-arbitrary, so albedo symmetry across it is notable; but if we presume that the Earth's albedo is continuous (in the mathematical sense, a reasonable enough assumption given the granularity of possible measurements), I'm pretty sure the IVT guarantees the existence of a plane of longitude which divides it into equal hemispheres.
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Comment on What internet discussion sites remain? in ~tech
whbboyd Link Parent…I mean, that seems apropos? ;) I was never on MeFi (only ever saw the "hits" that escaped onto other discussion sites), so I can't speak to quantity, but qualitatively, a lot of web-2.0-era sites...discussing Metafilter, defining Metafilter and codifying Metafilter.
…I mean, that seems apropos? ;)
I was never on MeFi (only ever saw the "hits" that escaped onto other discussion sites), so I can't speak to quantity, but qualitatively, a lot of web-2.0-era sites had that problem. Reddit definitely had a decade-long (totally undeserved) superiority complex, now dead mostly because the old self-superior portion of the userbase has been totally diluted by new users only there for the memes.
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Comment on What change would make you quit Tildes? in ~tildes
whbboyd LinkI quit Reddit (deleted all my comments and wiped the account password from my password manager; I don't see any reason not to keep squatting the account name) when they started explicitly selling...I quit Reddit (deleted all my comments and wiped the account password from my password manager; I don't see any reason not to keep squatting the account name) when they started explicitly selling all their content to LLM vendors. I was sort of surprised that was the line in the sand; I really expected it to be when they dropped or finally completely broke old.reddit.com (which is actually still up).
I quit lobste.rs after one too many instances of unaddressed bigotry (the specific straw was holocaust denial, but the pile of hay on the camel's back was all sorts). Reddit obviously had (and has) waaaaaaay more bigots than lobste.rs, and at a much higher concentration, but the siloed subcommunities created by the subreddit structure made it a lot easier to keep them out of sight. (Is that hypocritical? Probably, but "not reading nazi drivel" is high on my list of mandatory self-care activities.) That one I've regretted more than Reddit, but I still see enough bigotry while lurking not to try to reactivate it. (Also the site is currently absolutely gripped in a culture clash of biblical proportions around LLMs, which I have no real desire to wade into.)
So there's two potential lines: doing business with slop vendors, and letting nazis into the bar.
The bigger thing for most companies than the fact that people tend to take less PTO on unlimited plans is that they don't have to pay it out when people leave. Accrued PTO is part of an employee's comp, and if they quit with a balance, it needs to get paid out like the last paycheck. For a larger company with reasonably generous PTO policies, this can be a substantial liability.