I had a similar experience in Thessaloniki, Greece. In this city, there is a famous tourist attraction called The White Tower (which has grey color, by the way). One day, I had to wait in Thessaloniki for a couple of hours, and I decided that it would be a great idea to sit down near the tower.
Well, it turned out to be a bad idea. A few hundred meters from the tower, I was greeted by someone who self-identified as a "friend from Jamaica". He tried to advertise something, but walked away after I asked him politely. As I continued my journey, I met more and more of these "friends". When I eventually reached the tower, I discovered that about 10 of these guys were circling around it. They were all very polite, but they advertised their stuff every time they stumbled upon me, which happened about once per minute. After some time, I decided to find a different place to rest.
I tried viewing the article on 4 different monitors. All monitors had default settings except for brightness. Monitors A & B were on new laptops, monitor C was on a very old laptop, and monitor D was on a smartphone. Here are the results:
FIGURES 1 & 2. On monitor A, all bands of color in figure 1 were easily discernible. The first four bands of color in figure 2 looked identically. Figure 1 looked more evenly spaced than figure 2. On monitor B, all bands of color in figure 1 were easily discernible. The first five bands of color in figure 2 looked identically. Figure 1 looked more evenly spaced than figure 2. On monitor C, all bands of color except the last two in figure 1 were easily discernible. The first three bands of color in figure 2 looked identically. Figure 1 looked about as evenly spaced as figure 2. The result from monitor D was the same as the result from monitor A.
FIGURE 12. On monitors A and B, the color of (A) was closer to (B) than to (C). On monitor C, (A) appeared equally close in color to (B) and (C). On monitor D, the color of (A) was exactly identical to (B).
CONCLUSION: On monitor C, gamma correction had neutral effect. On all other monitors, the effects were negative. Unfortunately, I was unable to find a standalone PC monitor for my comparison. It is entirely possible that a PC monitor would give a different result. However, since most people use laptops and tablets nowadays, I doubt the article's premise that "every coder should know about gamma".
It's kind of silly how he says "everyone needs to know about this; it's so important" and then the first example he preceded by saying that mobile phone screens basically can't tell the difference and don't matter.
Looks like you missed all the other artifacts I gave examples for, which are all calibration independent (colour blending, compositing, rendering etc.)
In my opinion, getting used to living in small space is the simplest thing about surviving on Mars. It is much more difficult to maintain a steady supply of oxygen, water, food, and energy. Also, there is always a possibility that something important will suddenly break down and the colonists will need to repair it using only what they have at hand. I would be much more impressed if they tried to test how humans and current technology cope with these hard tasks.
True. If there is anything that can be considered an unambiguous benefit to this otherwise hollow era of ubiquitous entertainment, it is that living in a small space has become much easier to cope with.
Just go to 4chan and check out a lair thread. People will go to utterly squalid lengths to stay glued to their skinner boxes.
The planet in Nemesis had one major difference which may turn out to be crucial: it was not actually a planet. It was a moon. Since Proxima b is a planet, it is probably locked with one side always facing the sun. In Nemesis, Erythro was locked around the gas giant it was orbiting, but not locked around the star, allowing normal day-night cycle.
From my experience, the votes are rarely a sign of a constructive comment.
For example, my top comment is the one in which I basically said that learning natural languages is hard. Pretty original remark, huh? In my second most popular comment, I posted a link to a funny image that didn't have much to do with the conversation. And my most downvoted comment is a detailed explanation of why I'm not impressed with Twitter's plans to use advanced machine learning.
I am not arguing that we should abolish votes, since I don't see an alternative. But tweaking the existing system to see if it becomes better is a sensible idea.
Also, I would like to make a point that comments at the bottom of the thread aren't always off-topic and boring.
But mostly are. Lets assume 90th percentile rule - 90% of comments below half of the page are worse than comments on upper half of page.
While some comments might be quite good below, if you have limited time and want to be more successful at cutting "crap" you will hover only around top comments. Not a perfect thing, but this is what makes this place different from Reddit - you can be almost sure top comments will be valuable, cleverly funny, starting some interesting thought and not funny image, joke or offensive.
> Also, I would like to make a point that comments at the bottom of the thread aren't always off-topic and boring.
True. Which is why I make a point of scrolling down and reading them whenever I can ;-) Often those comments are simply made by people who came late to the discussion and didn't garner as many upvotes as the people who were there first, even though what they had to say was just as (or almost as) good.
I think if the votes are to be used to promote constructive discussion, then you need more information about the intent. Just plain good/bad won't cut it.
i remember a HN parody witch was quite acurate, where u find the thougtful comments at the bottom, maybe even downvoted because someone did disagree.
i do however think the hn comments holds supprisingly good quality compared to reddit and other forums.
I would like to point out that learning a computer language usually takes between a week and a month, while learning a natural one takes about a decade. I agree that knowing a natural language broadens the mind to some extent, but spending so much time to get such little reward seems a bit wasteful.
Exactly, that's why engineered auxiliary languages have always seemed like such a great idea to me (like esperanto or Novial). But, none of the offerings ever appealed to a critical mass of people. And, if I understand the history correctly, not-invented-here syndrome caused most moderate successes to splinter when people decided they could come up with something better.
I (sort of) agree that having many languages encourages diversity and coexistence of different cultures. However, I think that apparent drawbacks outweigh any potential benefits.
As a native Russian speaker, I know just how excruciating learning English can get. I have been learning it for 12 years, and most of the time it was no fun. For example, I once literally memorised 1500 words over a few months. Still, I cannot say that I speak as well as native speakers do. Most Russians never make it past learning to say "I don't speak English" with a funny accent. By the way, if you are an English speaker, you probably don't realise what it means not to know English. Let me assure you: it's horrible.
I'm a native English speaker who learned Russian. It has to be harder to learn English, though Russian was no picnic.
Though I was once maybe 75% fluent speaking (and could understand 90% of what Gorbachev said - he speaks pretty fast), I haven't used it for 25 years and so have forgotten most of it. I do remember that it was easy to spell, especially compared to English. I also remember that Russian verbs of motion were hard to get right, and declining numbers and certain adjectives correctly was tough.
English has become the new lingua franca (still cracks me up to pause and consider that literally), for better or worse. For all its faults, English is very flexible and can be precise, despite the fact that it's not often used for that feature. Most native speakers I know would be surprised to learn how many verb tenses English there are, and even more surprised at their proper use. The MLA and AP styles haven't helped that cause any.
>English has become the new lingua franca (still cracks me up to pause and consider that literally), for better or worse.
On a completely pedantic note, lingua franca doesn't actually refer to what I think most people associate it with (the use of French as the diplomatic language of the 18th and 19th centuries in particular). It actually means the language of the franj, the "Franks," or Western Europeans. The original lingua franca was a pidgin Italian with a lot of Arabic and Turkish loanwords, the result of the Venetian dominance of the Levantine sea trade. Of course, in a purely literal sense, using it in phrases like, "Gulf media Arabic is the lingua franca of the Middle East" is itself wrong.
It's funnier if you say "de facto lingua franca" :-)
But the strength of English is that you can freely mix in words from other languages and there is enough redundancy that your meaning will probably be understood anyway, and eventually the word will simply be absorbed - and that's where alot of the irregularity came from. There's no Academie Francaise equivalent to police it and no-one even wants one.
Yep. Russian speaker is always puzzled by North American obsession with "spelling". Spelling competitions etc. In Russian if you want to "spell" a word, just say it slowly. No big deal really.
Actually, declining numbers is something most native Russian speakers can't do. Even people on TV, whose job is to speak correctly, often struggle with it. Moreover, in the Russian translation of the Empire Strikes Back, C3PO's line "Sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately three thousand seven hundred and twenty to one" has the number declined a wrong way.
> For example, I once literally memorised 1500 words over a few months.
If you want to do things like pass the SAT, even native English speakers have to sit down and memorize about 6000 words over the course of a year or two.
I've been using Duolingo to learn Russian every day for a few months. I'm just finally getting somewhat confident about all of the Russian characters, and the "weird" sounds made through the various character combinations that change the pronunciation of the individual characters. I'm no dumbass, being able to speak two other languages besides my native English (which weren't learned through Duolingo, though I really like it). There just must be something tough about learning the other, between Russian and English.
Memorising is such an ineffective way to study language, it's like cutting down a big tree with a pair of scissors. Lots of research has been done on the topic, and many methods invented. The key is skipping complex grammar and working on comprehension and production from as early as day one, every day and trying to think in the target language. It seems silly, but does work.
I personally tend to think about languages a lot in terms of grammar. The reason might be that in German (my native language) grammar plays a much larger role (four cases and lots of rules for declination and conjugation) than in English (also in Russian grammar plays a very central role, as far as I know).
As I have often written on Hacker News when learning German I would strongly recommend to get the grammar by heart (yes, it is complex and ugly), until you don't have to think about it anymore (if necessary by rote memorization) since
> trying to think in the target language
for German means thinking in the German grammar. Any approach that tries to skip grammar at the beginning will soon confuse learners, because for example verbs are typically associated with some class of object (either based on a case or a preposition) and if you use it wrong often the meaning can change. For example :
auf etwas warten (to wait for something) has to be used with an accusative, so
"Ich warte auf den Zug" (I'm waiting for the train) is correct
If you use a dative instead, this is also yields a correct sentence, but with a completely different meaning
"Ich warte auf dem Zug" means you are on the top of the train and waiting, since "auf" followed by dative is a local adverbial.
So learn the grammar correctly from the beginning.
Grammar is a science, and it's not necessary to speak a language. My mother tongue is Turkish, an agglutinative vocal-harmonising beast with hundreds of suffixes, yet I don't need any grammar while speaking nor while reading or writing.
I'll start my archaeology double major in short, and German seems to be quite an important language in the field, so I'll have to learn that. I'll use my way and see if you and the others who agree you are right that German requires heavy grammar. Though I can reasonably guess that I'll start reading research by the six months mark.
It's not silly, that's how people learn to speak in the childhood and how foreign languages were learned before books even existed. There's also a te
I'm now learning Spanish and I just can't stand books with grammar exercises or using Memrise for more than 10 days.
The problem is that compared to English there's not enough Spanish content I like (Reddit, HN, non-fiction books). So I'm going with news, doubled cartoons, and flashcards for tough words.
I did Italian just like that, as a student of Italian philology. Made lots of research before starting the school (about 2 years ago) and devised a self immersion method, and followed it religiously. In about a couple months I was reading news in italian okay, in six months I started reading actual literature, now I'm quite close to a C1.
I also learned English a bit in primary school but the bulk of it while actively self teaching programming via tutorials and conference videos, and consuming other media in English too. And my English is near-native, which was the experience that encouraged me to do what I did with Italian.
Paraphrasing the X-Files, the content is out there. It might not be exactly what you are seeking, but it is out there. It's not going to be 'Running Kubernetes in Production on a Roller Coaster' (note: this is obviously made up) - e.g. hip and timely - but maybe some articles that were translated/paraphrased/borrowed from the original English news. The key, as you may already know, is consistency of action day after day. Don't just do it once a week for 2 hours, every day for 10-15 minutes will work much, much better.
> I just can't stand books with grammar exercises or using Memrise for more than 10 days... and flashcards for tough words.
I too dislike grammar books and I have stopped using Memrise. It was too much work to 'water the plants' and just answering a question required excessive game playing (multiple choice etc.). With flashcards, if it has not already been imparted to you, please write down the entire sentence. Context is so important.
> The problem is that compared to English there's not enough Spanish content I like (Reddit, HN, non-fiction books).
Yes, it is true that the overwhelming majority of medium and long-form content is posted in English. Because that is what the majority of the target audience can understand.
Here are some Spanish speaking websites for you to read:
Reddit/Digg like:
Meneame - Sort of like Digg, in that it has short article summaries across many topic areas (including technology and general interest news).
Register another Twitter account and just follow people/news who tweet in Spanish. It is quite easy to find these accounts - search for keywords like 'noticias' (news), 'ciencia', (science), 'creo que' (I believe), 'la crisis' (the 2006/2007 financial crisis), (your own keywords)
Warning, understanding the Spanish used in short tweets can be quite challenging as it is very terse and concise.
For the biggest challenge, microcuentos (also on FB, hashtags, instagram, etc.)
Thank you a lot, I'm going to check it out! I'm already reading many of my Spanish-speaking friends on FB, subreddits in Spanish, and https://twitter.com/pictoline on Twitter.
My macOS is also in Spanish. I'm doing as much as possible to get out from the English "vendor lock-in" but it's quite hard even in Spanish-speaking country since I work from home and my friends know English.
> since I work from home and my friends know English.
I'm going to give it to you straight. You're going to need to actively leave your comfort zone of your friends and your working from home. You're going to have to mess up again and again and eventually you will become correct and smoother. You don't need to speak grammatically correct Spanish right away. You can get to that along the way. For now, just 'abra su boca'. They will make fun of you and eventually you will be good enough that they won't make fun of you.
Even if you have friends who speak English (and prefer to), you can go out with them and speak Spanish to the people around you. You won't feel alone and they (your English-speaking preference friends) will eventually feel 'left out' and speak to you more in Spanish.
Even if you work from home, you can go out and have lunch or coffee in a public area. Just like you would in English, try to strike up a conversation by making an observation (try to avoid questions - in all languages, no one wants to be interrogated).
You: 'Me gusta este cafe porque hay demasiado tomas de corriente disponsibles.
Them: 'Si. Ayer fui un cafe y no tenía las mesas disponsibles.'
You: 'Algun veces, me levantaba y trabajaba con mi ordenador encima de la cabeza de alguien.'
Them: '¿En serio?'
You: <una pausa> No (laugh)
Hopefully they laugh
Make jokes, be self-deprecating. Never make fun of someone else. Especially with the translation difficulties.
I learned that you can grasp English without learnig grammar (this is what they do in UK). But while it works for some people, it might not work for others. And it definitely wouldn't work for some more grammatically complex languages...
They do so because it's impractical to do one on one lessons with a classroom-ful of people. You can believe what you want but there is a lot of research on the subject that supports me instead of you. See e.g. Krashen.
While I agree that Tesla's article is not perfectly logical and its marketing campaign is not impeccable, I would like to demonstrate that people at Tesla Motors have a point.
1. "STATISTICALLY SAFER" CUSTOMERS. Yes, this statement makes no sense. One fatal crash is not a large enough sample size to make such conclusion. However, this article was aimed not at Hacker News readers, but at average buyers. Most of them do not have a firm grasp of high school math, so for them "statistically safer" means just "don't worry." And indeed there are reasons for them to worry, given that independent news agencies continually publish hysterical things (It is a “a wake-up call!” “Reassess” self-driving cars! The crash “is raising safety concerns for everyone in Florida!” [1]). Tesla's response was nothing but a necessary defence. Or did you expect them to say, "You know, there are not enough data yet, so let's wait until 10 or so more people die, and then we will draw conclusions." This is much more logical, but I feel that customers wouldn't like it.
2. WHY IT IS CALLED "AUTOPILOT." This is just marketing. They couldn't sell it under the name "The Beta Version Of The System That Keeps Your Vehicle In Lane As Long As You Keep Your Hands On The Steering Wheel And Are Ready To Regain Control At Any Moment™." And honestly, I do not think that even relatively stupid customers will just press the button and hope for the best without reading what the Autopilot is all about in advance.
In my opinion, it is now a difficult time for Tesla, and we should not criticise it for trying to stay afloat.
EDIT: You might think that the phrase "trying to stay afloat" is unnecessary pathos, since a single crash, even coupled with a bunch of nonsense news articles, cannot lead to anything serious. However, the history shows it can. In 2000, Concorde crashed during takeoff, killing all people on board [2]. The event was caused by metal debris on the runway, not by some problem with the plane itself. Nevertheless, Concorde lost it reputation of one of the safest planes in the world. The passenger numbers plummeted, and Concorde retired three years later. That crash is the number one reason why it now takes 12 hours to get from Europe to America.
The #1 reason why I moved from Facebook to Twitter was that the latter service used straightforward algoritms for deciding what to show me. When I opened Twitter, I could be almost sure that the timeline would only contain posts from people I followed, arranged in chronological order.
Of course, there were some exceptions. Firstly, they always had ads. I see how many people here get angry about it, but I think ads on such site is perfectly normal. After all, they have to make money somehow, right?
Secondly, there were times when I saw "While you were away" box. This was the thing I found annoying from the beginning. How did Twitter infer that I was interested in these five posts more than in those five posts? It got worse over time. In fact, now this box shows up after a few hours of my absence, as if I am expected to check Twitter 10 times a day.
And it appears that they are planning to take these features to a new level. I really hope they don't do everything they talk about, but if they do, maybe I will have to seek a new social media service.
I can't laugh hard enough at this. I agree I (sorta) hate the Facebook filtering algorithm, but I find Twitter even more impenetrable. It's just impossible to figure out what's going on. Here's my timeline, just opened it up for this comment:
* Account I follow, 15s ago.
* PROMOTED post from 5 days ago.
(here I've already run out of browser real estate on a 27" display because the tweets take so much damn room. Scroll down a page)
* While you were away: post from 3 days ago
* While you were away: post from 4h ago
* While you were away: post from 1 day ago
* While you were away: post from 3 days ago
* While you were away: post from 6h ago
* While you were away: retweet from 2 days ago
* While you were away: post from 1 day ago
* Actual twitter post from user I follow, 2h ago.
* PROMOTED from 18 days ago
For all intents and purposes, the Twitter feed is less chronological, less useful, and less content-dense than Facebook, and that's saying something considering that Twitter is supposedly a 140char service.
I had to scroll through 3 pages of crap before I got to the actual chronological twitter you speak of.
Also, they have this horrible habit of making tweets with a white background, then a tiny grey divider between tweets so it can be hard to tell at a glance when you've moved from one section of content to another -- much like when GMail went from colored message threading to all-monochrome.
Well, it turned out to be a bad idea. A few hundred meters from the tower, I was greeted by someone who self-identified as a "friend from Jamaica". He tried to advertise something, but walked away after I asked him politely. As I continued my journey, I met more and more of these "friends". When I eventually reached the tower, I discovered that about 10 of these guys were circling around it. They were all very polite, but they advertised their stuff every time they stumbled upon me, which happened about once per minute. After some time, I decided to find a different place to rest.