I’m European and write it as a cross as well, although others don’t. For some reason I feel that “)(” is just an entirely different shape topologically, not an “x”.
> Put a hook on the x to distinguish it from a times sign
This is counterproductive IMO, because it makes it look like a chi. (The article notes the problem.) That seems more likely to cause issues than the possible ambiguity with the “times” symbol (“×”). If you need a multiplication symbol, use the middle dot (“·”) instead.
I make my x's with a backwards c and a c, like Computer Mondern and lots of fonts https://i.ibb.co/8LPsJKsj/image.png - doesn't look much like a chi or a times sign
No one in the target audience is using × for scalar multiplication.
I think it's important to consider audience. If I'm working with the intent that what I write is legible to folks who only have a basic understanding of math, I'll usually use the multiplication symbol (NOT the letter x, but ×, intentionally in the middle). Someone with more advanced knowledge of math, who may be more inclined to think it's an x, because my handwriting is shit, I will typically use the dot operator. But then there's the whole other audience where I need to define what the dot operator does. At that point, I'm probably pulling up something like LaTeX, because, again, my handwriting sucks.
Funnily enough, when I write for the purpose of math, my numbers are more legible than when I just write down a number. For some reason, I code switch in my handwriting. Kinda obnoxious when I'm filling out forms.
In Sweden, with scalars, we used vertically centered dot, but even that is pretty uncommon since most of the time, two letters or a letter and a number are mixed and then it is left it out altogether.
Humans do tend to remember thoughts they had while speaking, thoughts that go beyond what they said. LLMs don’t have any memory of their internal states beyond what they output.
(Of course, chain-of-thought architectures can hide part of the output from the user, and you could declare that as internal processes that the LLM does “remember” in the further course if the chat.)
The article states: “They also tested the possibility that it was poor mental health causing people to stay up late, not the other way around. They tracked a subset of participants who had no previous diagnosis of a mental disorder for the next eight years. During that time, night owls who slept late were the most likely to develop a mental health disorder.”
A diagnosis requires crossing a certain threshold of suffering to even get diagnosed, also stigma is a reason many people still refrain from seeking diagnosis. the night owls might just not yet have been diagnosed at the time of this study
The concept of files and file systems is useful to regular computer users, even when they have no interest in knowing how things work under the hood. The issue is with mobile OSs, and that software companies like their apps to be a walled garden for your data as much as possible, and therefore resist exposing your data as files living in a normal shared file system. Even if you already work with files, they have you “import” your existing data into their storage system, and you have to manually “export” (or “share”) any modifications as a new, separate copy.
In the name of low effort, tangential, golden era HN comments: the decision to hide file format extensions on windows (and maybe other OSs) sucks soooo much.
The point about mobile devices breaking the desktop metaphor and file system norms is really interesting.
Higher quality discussion question: Files, buffers,file systems, file explorers, and window managers seem like useful abstractions to me for the human computer user. Why did we not end up with something like “every app has a folder with your files” or “if you have a new iPhone, just send or recover your user files from the official Reddit app on your old device and import them to carry on where you left off on your new device. Welcome back to the Reddit app.”
Because that's anti-thetical to control. The biggest sin in a technology business is allowing your customers to stop using your product with no negative consequences for them.
The structure of the files an app uses internally is undocumented and not intended to be a user-facing API. Who wants to be responsible for handling every insane thing the users decide to do to those files?
Yes, also the curse of modern desktop os’s trying to trick people into storing data in the cloud. The notion of just having files somewhere accessible and organized in a reasonable manner isn’t clear to many (most?) of my students.
Access permissions are orthogonal to having a file system. In fact, mobile apps still use the local file system, they just hide it from the user. And password files should still be encrypted with a master key, e.g. application-private secure enclave key where available.
Files and directories are just one of many possible abstractions for storing data. You have files and directories. Directories contain files and directories. Your whole device is one big directory. Files are identified by name. There's absolutely no reason to think this is the best possible model.
Here's another: Your device contains a bunch of photos and videos. Photos are identified by looking at them. Videos are identified by a still image, or by playing the video within the video chooser.
Here's another: Your device contains a bunch of apps. Apps can organize their own data however they see fit.
... Microsoft's OLE really was the most well-integrated document-centric desktop we ever got, wasn't it?
I would use a checklist for that. Most wiki/notes/todo software supports checklists or checkboxes. It has the benefit that you can still see all steps at once, perform some steps out of order if the dependency isn’t linear, and it can be simply part of your process documentation instead of having to find and run a script. It’s also easier to edit.
The article even mentions “just another checkbox checked”.
On a scale of 'no-one has a bloody clue' to 'fully automated', having the process written down somewhere is closer to fully automated than nothing.
So, it is on the path. I've used checklist documentation to document the series of logical steps needed to deploy something. there were no docs left by the previous team, had to work it out myself. that checklist turned into an ansible playbook (which later got binned for something else, but we had all the steps worked out by then).
wikis / markdown checklists have the benefit of being easy to copy and paste into. don't need to worry about "does it run" just "did i paste it in yet".
having said that, for the SSH key example, I really like this idea. Not because it's a good example (who the hell shares the private key?!), but because I always forget the SSH commands I need as I use them so infrequently. so having a 'do-nothing' script laying around to make my dumb brain go to the right places and type the right things would be helpful.
reply