Not for my Android phone, at least not by default (Pixel 9a a/ GrapheneOS). It leaves Bluetooth and WiFi on in airplane mode. I doubt this is specific to GrapheneOS and may say more about AOSP.
That depends on how you define "doomed". Most screwed up companies don't go belly up overnight. They get sold as fixer-uppers and passed between bigger firms and given different names until, finally, it is sold for parts. The way this works is that all parties behave as if the company is the opposite of doomed. It's in a sense correct. The situation hardly seems doomed if everyone has enough time to make their money and split before the company's final death twitches cannot be denied, in which case the company accomplished its mission. That of course doesn't mean everything from its codebase to its leadership didn't lack excellence the whole time.
I'm not sure that LLMs are going to [completely] replace the desire for JIT, even with relatively fast compilers.
Frameworks might go the way of the dinosaur. If an LLM can manage a lot of complex code without human-serving abstractions, why even use something like React?
Frameworks aren't just human-serving abstractions - they're structural abstractions that allow for performant code, or even being able to achieve certain behaviours.
Sure, you could write a frontend without something like react, and create a backend without something like django, but the code generated by an LLM will become similarly convoluted and hard to maintain as if a human had written it.
LLM's are still _quite_ bad at writing maintainable code - even for themselves.
People might still be reading, statistically speaking. But what are they reading?
Almost everyone I talk to offline either reads fantasy, trashy romance, or feel-good self help books. I gotta tell ya, we all have our cheap pleasures now and then, but rarely do I meet anyone who reads anything remotely profound or thought-provoking. The only exception might be my father who reads a lot of historical fiction and non-fiction.
Maybe I'm just hanging in the wrong crowds.
In terms of the sources the author cites, exactly how much should we trust them? For example, book sales may have increased in recent years, but are people actually reading them? I remember a recent statistic where it turned out most people who buy vinyl records don't even own a record player; what if people are buying books so they can sit on a shelf?
And what's so special about books in particular, anyway? What's wrong with reading articles and webpages? I'd be more interested in whether those are declining since they are less tethered to entertainment, like books are.
I know lots of people who read books and articles. The people I know may not be a representative sample either, and the article is about US numbers and most people I know are not in the US.
It can be, but there has always been a lot of garbage like any art form. "The Well-Tempered Plot Device" is more than 40 years old now. https://news.ansible.uk/plotdev.html
And even the best authors are infested with "series-itis" and especially the fatal malady "series incompletus".
My sci-fi/fantasy reading habit broke because I refused to start any series that wasn't finished. Suddenly, 99% of sci-fi/fantasy disappeared.
My only hope for David Gerrold to finish the "War Against the Chtorr" series is for him to have notes that he hands to someone else. The last book was 36 years ago! Don't complain to me about George R. R. Martin. Amateurs.
I have seen numbers showing kids are reading a lot less in the UK but I think that is the result of a deteriorating educational system that treats reading as a chore, not fun.
> And what's so special about books in particular, anyway?
Concentration is a skill that needs to be practiced. A book is the easiest way to practice that skill.
Concentration is a skill that is useful broadly in human endeavors. I'll leave it to the social scientists to document the general damage that a lack of concentration does.
I can tell how much damage gets done depending upon the length since I last read a book. If I go a couple of months between books because of interruptions, my reading speed drastically slows down and my patience is really compromised. I didn't notice this happen before the rise of cell phones. Back then, a couple months of interruptions didn't seem to slow my reading speed much at all.
>> And what's so special about books in particular, anyway? What's wrong with reading articles and webpages?
Nothing, really, but I suspect that is declining too. I read historical books mostly, some 4-5 per year. Like last time I ordered "Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying, The Secret WWII Transcripts of German POWS", in English because unfortunately it wasn't yet translated in my native language. But other than that I still read printed magazines. One that my father used to read so I picked the habit from him and used to be weekly but now it's bi-monthly because ... fewer readers. And I read a ton of online articles.
But you can notice the repeating pattern: read, read, read. Because I got good at it waay before there was an alternative, and because of that, the alternative has supplanted but never replaced the original. But my kid? Never read anything in his life that wasn't forced upon him. And the whole new generation is like this. He can read because can't function in the modern world without it but reading as primary source of gathering information? No chance.
I suspect this gets us back to medieval times where there are a few erudites and lots of imbeciles, my son included.
You know it’s really strange when I think about it. I no longer feel motivated to read books mostly, but I could easily spend an hour or two a day reading HN comments and Reddit threads.
Although part of that I’m sure is that as I’m visually impaired, reading physical books is far more tiring than reading off a screen where I can make the text the exact size I want.
Used to be a voracious reader as a kid (though 99% non-fiction).
This is why Hackernews and all other social media are blocked on my phone which I now leave across the room all day long when at home, and at home when I go out a lot of times.
Now, I read the New Yorker which I had a pile of half read issues. There's one at the table where I eat, one in the loo, one on the couch, and when my brain gets tired of staring at the wall... I pick up a copy when I don't want to do anything particularly creative.
Finishing a good New Yorker article, or a book laying by my bed often expands my worldview, my vocabulary, and my understanding of current events. Reading a ton of comments online has never really produced that same experience even in a place like HackerNews which has (IMO) much higher quality comments than many places.
So you can get back into it! And it seems to be like riding a bike, very easy to get back into. And the more I read, the more I'm happy I'm reading.
For me, it's the realization of how much filler (tangents, embellishment, hyperbole, pretentiousness, ego, straight up BS, etc) is in long form content that makes it's really hard to make a commitment to anything new. Once you see it, it's ALL you see. I was rewatching some Feynman lectures this morning, and I couldn't get past it anymore. What I used to find engaging, was a major distraction. And the more I learn about stuff, the quicker I see when it's happening, even subjects I'm not familiar with.
This is a really interesting observation to me because it touches at something that I think is at risk of getting lost as the world leans further and further towards optimisation as a core goal. Get to the point, no deviations, transmit the information to me and on to the next.
I can objectively/rationally, see the appeal but I feel the world is a lesser place for it. There's a lack of something I can't quite articulate, maybe personality (not quite but something like that), that makes for a less fulfilling.
It's sort like Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, which is one of the finest texts humanity has imo. And the best bit for me is, the turtle crossing the road. Yes, there's some symbolism, but its largely a pointless interlude; in the sense that in another version of the universe, there's an editor out there who would have cut that bit, and it wouldn't have affected the story too significantly. Yet something incredible would have been lost.
Symbolism is great, it just have to serve a purpose. Constantly insisting "this idea blows your mind" is not that, especially when it doesn't deliver, or it only "blew my mind" because a key component of the idea was withheld until the end, like a murder mystery.
Pop-sci / self-help I feel is particularly egregious in this regard. Like you could take the entirety of many self-help books and summarise them into a few bullet points.
Though having said that, if the ultimate goal of writing is to transfer one person’s experience of human thought to another, then the filler often makes sense. They’re trying to take you on the same mental journey that they went on. At least that’s the good-faith interpretation.
I think filler is also akin to the difference in experience between listening to an audiobook at 1x speed vs say 3x speed. The slower pace gives your brain time to work.
But I totally agree, once you know a bunch about a subject the filler becomes unnecessary.
1) The problem with teaching is that "filler" often isn't.
Teaching is art and not science in spite of what so many tech folks think. If I'm teaching a hard subject, I don't know a priori what will click with each student. I'm trying to give you multiple tools for you to try to use while working on problems to get you to your next level of understanding. Some of those tools are idiosyncratic to my experience and not in the textbook. Most of my suggestions are going to wind up being useless to a particular student, but I'm hoping that at least one of them connects properly.
For example, the biggest complaint of linear algebra students is "This is boring and doesn't have any use." Well, I can talk about how its used in graphics, but the mathematicians will call that filler. I can talk about solving differential equation systems for the engineers, but the CS students will call that filler. The instructor, of course, thinks all that stuff is filler and would rather get back to teaching the subject, but understands that getting people interested and enthusiastic is a part of the teaching process.
2) The "filler" part of "traditional" media is completely different for each person while "social" media filler is useless to everybody.
This is something that so many people don't seem to grasp. Each individual will fixate on and take something different from a book or lecture. That's good. As long as each part of media resonates and has a purpose with somebody consuming it, it's not "filler".
The problem is that "social" media rewards behaviors that create useless "filler". So, social media is in a war--people get more sensitive to ignoring useless filler; the social media sites ramp more aggressive garbage; people get more sensitive; lather, rinse, repeat.
The problem is that your social media "useless filler" pattern matcher learns to be super aggressive and classifies anything that doesn't immediately engage with you, personally and immediately as garbage. That's fine when doomscrolling; that's not fine when reading a book or listening to a lecture.
That's not to say that there aren't poor lectures or poor quality books. There very definitely are. And you should definitely leave those behind.
However, you need to turn those super aggressive filler filters off when an author or lecturer is genuinely trying to engage you in good faith. If an author or lecturer did the work, is well-prepared, and is making solid points and progress, you need give them the leeway to do their job.
> And what's so special about books in particular, anyway?
About just every end of day, when I go to kiss my wife and my kid (11 years old) when they go to their respective beds, they're both reading a book.
A book is compliant with a "no screens before bed / no screens in the bedroom" policy and that's very particular.
It's also a real physical item that shall working without needing to be recharged, that shall keep working when the Internet is down, that won't disappear when the site is blocked for whatever reason, etc.
Ironically, I've found that blocking the attestation API for some apps that supposedly require it (such as the latest versions of Waymo) might make them work anyway. lol
> There’s only one problem with the Bloomberg Terminal — it’s fucking expensive. And old. And clunky.
Yes and no.
Obviously I have nowhere near the wealth to afford a Bloomberg Terminal, but an ex of mine had a father who has one. He told me that the terminal itself is kinda bullshit but the real value from it came from the fact that it essentially provides a way for you to network with other wealthy investors. The terminal itself, according to him, is pretty ornamental these days.
I won't actively defend his opinion if someone here knows better, but what he said made sense based on what I saw of it.
I recently was convinced by colleagues to try Cursor at work for project planning. At first I was excited for something even better than Copilot Chat, but then I quickly realized it's just a shitty VS Code fork with maybe a few improvements that are by no means a moat for that company. Worse yet, it makes lots of bizarre mistakes, deletes lines for no good reason, and sometimes even deletes the entire project plan. The scroll on the chat history gets laggy very quickly, and I've found the whole program to be glitchy as hell.
The hype around Cursor is unreal. My suspicion is this company is little more than a parasite with no qualms about getting you to waste your tokens. It's one thing when a product is new, but Cursor has been around since 2023 I guess? The quality of their software is unacceptable.
I can confirm that you really don't want to breathe in any of that crap.
A year and a half ago I developed symptoms of what was some form of bronchitis. Lots of mucus, constantly coughing, etc. I was pretty freaking sick. I tend to wait some things like this out, but it wasn't going away so I went to a doctor and got some medications including albuterol and some kind of steroid (prednisone, I think). It got a little more manageable, but didn't seem to be getting any better.
One day, I realized how much of a dumbass I was the whole time.
The apartment I was living in had a laundry room, but it was tiny and I got tired of both hauling laundry up and down multiple flights of stairs and having to fight for time with the few machines that were there. I bought a small washer and dryer pair from Black & Decker which were designed for apartment living. Kinda off topic, but there were no hookups in my unit, so I had to jerryrig a water connection using some collapsible garden hoses that connected to my shower and its drain. Was kinda hilarious but worked great.
I made the mistake of thinking that I could just allow the dryer to blow through two sets of lint traps and have a fan blow air out of the window to manage moisture and remaining lint making it through. What I didn't realize was how inadequate the traps were. Because I worked from home, I spent a lot of time in that bedroom, including when the dryer was running. I was breathing in all sorts of stuff without knowing it.
Once I stopped hanging out in that room while the dryer was running, bought an air purifier, and made sure to frequently clean my apartment of dust, my symptoms rapidly started to go away.
If I had to do all of that again, and I couldn't just have the dryer blow directly out the window, I would find some way to have it do a second pass through a HEPA filter, perhaps after drying the air with something like calcium chloride.
I shudder to think of all the microplastic fibers that remain somewhere in my body.
We have a washing machine that also has a drier function. It dries much slower than a standalone drier as it consumes water during the drying circle to cool and condense the hot air from the clothes. But the big plus is that it works in mostly closed cycle reusing the air. And there is no need to clean the filter, just unclog the sink pipes once in few months.
Heat pump dryer. Basically, an HVAC system but instead of pumping the heat from your house outside, it pumps it into your clothes. Slower than an old-style dryer but way more efficient.
Also definitely look into ventless dryers - while not as quick as a vented one, the heat pump versions have come a long way from the classic condenser styles of the past.
Our ventless dryer is great. Maybe it takes 50% longer, but we're not running multiple loads a day so who cares? Smaller to medium sized electric ventless dryers are the most efficient dryers out there. (Of course we also just use clothes racks to dry stuff.)
I got a drying closet. It's basically a heater in a tent with a few vents. It takes almost twice as long as a similarly sized tumble-drying machine, but absolutely nothing but warm, moist air is exhausted into the room. I even use it to supplement a space heater.
I'd be interested to know why buying, installing, jerryrigging, and (presumably every time you did a load of laundry) hooking and unhooking collapsible hosing for a washer and dryer in a bedroom you worked from, was in any way more convenient or cheaper or useful than just using the communal laundry room or a dedicated laundry service?
Don't forget "almost dying from toxic air pollution" too
I was in a similar situation and my solution was to just buy enough clothes and not get them dirty when wearing so that it would last me about 2 months between having to do laundry. But I didn't have communal laundry, I had to drive across town to a public laundry.
