That's probably a great read based on what I've heard from Cal, but I don't think you need an entire book to know how to scale back on your social media use. Just hand your phone to your friend and have them put a lock on the addictive features.
It’s not just social media. Most people have their thing… the news, podcasts, music, books, games, etc. In the modern era we can always have something that allows us to distract our brain or provides external ideas to direct it. Being alone with our own thoughts, devoid of outside influence, is something that seems to take an intentional choice these days.
I find that just setting it to grayscale is enough. Its not that colors are actually an important part of my mostly text based social media experience, but when I use them without colors I get distracted with:
> What am I doing? This dumb.
And then I remember that it is dumb and I go back to leaving it alone.
It is so cool to see some bare metal OSs being built. Do projects like this pave the way for a better standard ISA and less driver code, like the problem described in Casey Muratori's video "the 30 million line code problem"? I'm a bit new to this space, but this seems like a step in that direction.
Hardware is getting more specialized these days. It's becoming more difficult than ever to write bare metal code. I don't think most (any?) software wants to manage the details a BSP solves for them.
Very cool. Currently working on the beginning of a small text editor so this part seemed interesting and was curious of any overlap. Thanks for the interesting post!
> Data can feel useless for 10 years until one day it becomes critical. The benefit is spiky and uneven.
Not sure if in your case the data was critical, since the doctor likely would have just had you wear a monitor for a while after to come to the same conclusion.
> The general public doesn’t perceive serif typefaces as professional and authoritative, a priori, before prioritizing their use in formal settings. Instead, people first observe that government, academia, and corporate workplaces disproportionately use serif faces — or are trained to use them — and only then infer that serifs must mean professionalism and authority.
A difficult to stomach claim followed up with evidence that I think supports the opposite than the author intended: the font being in used in The Times of London, which is indeed authoritative and professional despite it being written on cheap paper.
On another note, I would throw up if I had to read legal documents all day in a sans-serif font.
I too stopped when I read that sentence. It's like saying someone can't tell the difference in professionalism between someone in a well tailored three piece suit vs. a sweater and jeans until they've been taught.
Ornateness itself is associated with being attentive to detail and likely more wealthy.
And even if you take them at their word, it's a distinction without a difference. Serif is known to be more professional.
But! As many have pointed out, and he does about TNR in the article: the default font for documents tends to suggest apathy. That argument against TNR is just as strong for Calibri. And there are far better looking, more functional fonts than either of these two.
Completely agree. This statement is immediately disproven by the authors following points. Eg pointing out that the supreme court, and other authoritative bodies exclusively use serif fonts...
Of course there is no "a priori", the general public doesn't know what a letter is "a priori" until they are taught. At the same time they are taught which fonts are formal and authoritative and which are not.
Everyone knows Comic Sans is not appropriate for a legal brief. No matter if that is "a priori" or not.
Before I watched this I would default to thinking about most distributions as normal. It's really fun to think about whatever "game" you are playing - wether you are building a business or trying to win a carnival game - and consider if the results follow a normal distribution or a power law?
> As a technologist I want to solve problems effectively (by bringing about the desired, correct result), efficiently (with minimal waste) and without harm (to people or the environment).
I agree with the first two points, but as others have commented the environmental claim here is just not compelling. Starting up your computer is technically creating environmental waste. By his metrics solving technical problems ethically is impossible.
Perfect harmlessness is impossible. Thus, we cannot differentiate between harms, nor should we try.
This a stupid thing to profess and I do not believe you would defend it if pressed.
It's probably unethical to solve a problem you could do yourself in 5 minutes at the energy cost of a packet of crisps by using.....lets say....a kilogram of coal. Or two kilos or whatever. But you can't see the cost so it seems free. You might see the money but we haven't linked this to environmental cost yet.
I'm making a game that's inspired by the niche but adored "The Last of Us Factions", the multiplayer as part of the first Last of Us (only available on Playstation). I got a gaming PC a couple years ago and haven't been able to find anything quite like it.
Making it with the Rust game engine, Bevy and really enjoying it so far. Using Blender for making assets. I'm maybe a dumbass for making it as my first game, but I just don't really get excited by smaller projects.
Overall I've found modern games to be (1) overstimulating and (2) have algorithms in the background to keep me engaged that I don't trust (see: free to play model)
