The emacs tutorial: ”Just type shit. Seriously. It’s a text editor. It works like you think it should. No autistic screeching required to enable edit mode to actually, you know, edit fucking text in a fucking text editor.”
Good heavens, you've managed to imbue a classic editor flamewar comment with a surprising extra dose of incivility. This violates the guidelines, so please don't post like this again.
> I chose the lozenge as the command character because a) it appears in almost every font, b) it’s barely used in ordinary typesetting, c) it’s not used in any programming language that I know of, and d) its shape and color allow it to stand out easily in code without being distracting.
> If you’re using DrRacket, you can use the Insert Command Char button at the top of the editing window to — you guessed it — insert the command character.
> If you’re using a different editor, here’s how you type it:
> Mac: Option + Shift + V
> Windows: holding down Alt, type 9674 on the num pad
> GNU/Linux, BSD: Type Ctrl + Shift + U, then 25CA, then Enter
> For more information on entering arbitrary Unicode glyphs, see Wikipedia.
> He also advocate not using underline to denote links.
>In his practical typography book he practically hides all hyperlinks.
I think that's a fine, defensible stylistic choice. When reading a paragraph of prose, I find it INTERRUPTS MY FLOW if there is a jarring style change in the middle of a sentence, as in this one.
The visual style of a hyperlink is only relevant to the point that you know the hyperlink is there and can find it when you want to click on it. Most of the time, that's not a goal, so you want it to fade into the background unless the user has indicated that is their goal.
So my preferred style for hyperlinks in prose is a color that's right at the just-noticeable difference [1] relative the normal text. When you mouse over the paragraph, which indicates you are intending to click, the contrast increases.
> hyperlinks in prose is a color that's right at the just-noticeable difference
The problem with trying to achieve JND for online publishing formats is that you have to account for variable monitor settings and lighting conditions. What stands out on my monitors at home might be barely noticeable on the crap displays at the office or my laptop under some lighting conditions or when I have it set to low power.
On top of technological differences, you also need to contend with variances in people's eye-sight.
Underlining is far simpler and more reliable. Perhaps highlighting with an underline as the link is drawn or scrolls into view, and fading the underline out soon after, to be drawn again if the pointer hovers over the paragraph or the page scrolls, would work?
Ooh, that's a great question. I haven't thought about that (though I do generally try to make my designs responsive and mobile-friendly). I like your idea of a slow fade after scroll.
Things blinking/fading/shifting/changing when I'm taking completely unrelated actions (or, worse, all on their own) is one of the most unreadable/unusable design decisions I regularly face. It's a good way to get me to close a tab, regardless of any other factors.
I agree. His book Practical Typography is very hard on the eyes, even looking at the text is uncomfortable. I think he fell into a trap of overdoing things. Like some people when they learn about what you can do with javascript and css add all sorts of annoying visual effects with no unified theme to the whole. They just enter some sort of trance and keep adding.
If you actually need to use this seriously there are ways of customizing keyboard layouts and text input on every platform and every reasonable text editor.
Sure, but it's absurd to have to set up custom text entry for an unusual character just to use a programming language. Especially when every other template language manages to do so with characters I don't have to customize my text editor to simply type.
Presumably your usage is limited enough not to cover the entire unicode space, and even if you hit the current operator, it should be trivial to update all previous work with a new character, since its prior usage was unambiguous (literally character replacement).
Tbh if you're assuming unicode input (which pollen does), and assuming its easy to write the character (which it is, given that system hotkeys for unicode are available or can be made available on most/all target systems), then it seems to me absurd to use the normal ascii character + escape character operators for embedding functionality in text
I say this because when installing a new OS and it defaults to en-UK locale, some of my buttons on the right side of the keyboard do unexpected things (US here), and I always have to look up where exactly the single-quote button is. I believe sometimes that angle pops up.
If conservatives care so much about wildlife why do they support things that lead to deforestation and desertification and loss of biodiversity and pollution and...?
Exactly. All these questionable concerns about the negative impacts of clean energy are straw men conjured up to protect the real devastating energy sources.
I'm pretty sure some people notice. I'm also reasonably sure that if we produce a substantial amount of our energy needs from wind, turbines will far outnumber any skyscrapers.
"Wind turbines kill between 214,000 and 368,000 birds annually ... compared with the estimated 6.8 million fatalities from collisions with cell and radio towers and the 1.4 billion to 3.7 billion deaths from cats, "
Well, the data is definitely questionable - but unclear whether the Ornithological Society (or TreeHugger) cites unbiased studies, I'll give you that. Here is a Stanford Study with some sources:
What I like about it, is that it cites avian mortality in terms of Mortality per MW, (though one might suggest MWh is a better number, but we can extract that by assuming 20% Capacity Factor) which is the more relevant number than total deaths, because are going to see a lot more MW in the future, and presumably deaths will scale linearly.
Total Average US was 4.12 Avian Deaths / MW. With California really leading the pack at a high 18.76 per MW.
Presuming a 20% capacity factor, and assuming the united states uses about 10 million MwH/day, that means the United States will need 10 million * 5 / 24 MW in capacity, or about 2 million MW capacity (Sanity Check - 2 million MW = 2000 GW which is about 400 GW of nuclear power plants @ 100% Capacity factor - about 400 Reactors,- seems within the realm of reason given the US has about 100 Reactors right now), which means that on average, we'll see about 8 million bird deaths in the future because of wind farms.
That compares to (in 2009) - 4 million due to communication towers, 14 million due to fossil fuels, 72 million due to Pesticide, 97 million due to Building Windows, and 110 million due to feral cats.
And bird deaths from cats and skyscrapers will be many orders of magnitude greater. This is well-reasearched, and it's not hard to find the journal articles on this topic. We need not guess.
How is “protecting birds” a conservative straw man? Non-conservatives routinely block all sorts of projects because of endangered fish or frogs. How often do non-conservatives use the Endangered Species Act as a tool to prevent projects with which they ideologically disagree? It’s like they oppose a project and then find whatever legal means they have available to block it. It isn’t like non-conservatives in California have a profound desire to protect the delta smelt; if they did, then why wouldn’t they oppose the Altamont Pass wind farm that kills 114 golden eagles each year? How about the death of highly endangered condors because of of California wind farms? A skyscraper has never killed a condor but a wind farm has.
Non-conservatives use the same straw man by somehow suggesting fossil fuels harm wildlife. But their own pet projects seem to escape the same scrutiny with which they apply to fossil fuels. My theory is that by restricting fossil fuels they can redirect the balance of economic power towards a direction that is more in line with their particular ideology. My point is that “environment” itself is being used as a straw man with the ultimate goal of changing wealth distribution.
Oil spills definitely harm wildlife and windmills also definitely harm wildlife.
It’s fair to point out the ecological effects of fields of windmills just as it’s fair to point out the harms of oil spills.
Also, we aren’t talking about skyscrapers— we are talking about energy generation. Whether or not skyscrapers harm wildlife and to what degree isn’t relevant because skyscrapers already exist and people aren’t suggesting we cover the countryside with skyscrapers. If that were the topic under debate, then the effects of skyscrapers on wildlife would be a relevant point.
Various international bird (and bat) societies support wind power as a net positive for their particular species, while contributing expert guidance on siting and design to minimize bird casualties and opposing individual projects that they feel are poorly designed or sited. (Of relevant interest to HN are computer vision projects that track rare birds and stop nearby turbines when they come too close)
So, if conservatives are really opposing wind power on the basis of "saving birds" then they're massively misinformed and ignoring the relevant experts.
Since they don't actually care about the birds, it's obviously a cynical ploy to protect fossil fuels that on balance are a greater threat to the very birds they claim to want to save.
And in doing so they're choosing not only an environmentally destructive option, but one which is more costly to society, just because the special interests who receive the benefits will provide kick backs to politicians that help them.
You couldn't really summarize modern conservative thought better if you tried.
I wouldn't describe lending club and prosper as junk loans.
I have money invested there because I feel it's a better social use than gambling on the stock market. I see good solid 5% returns. Most of the loans are repaid quickly.
> I'd have a hard time imagining a good workplace rejecting him if an actual human saw his resume.
Then you haven't ever worked with someone like this. All the resume says to me is "internally motivated engineer with resources". That doesn't mean he will work well on any of your teams or on the projects you need done.
Well, the "post making-friends stage". Friendships you already have can last a long, long time, and if they don't, you'll definitely enter post-friendship.
Of course there's a market for it. Do you not have at least a few friends who are holding out with their candybar dumbphones or antique iPhones to this day, citing reasons that include but are not limited to 1) I'm not wasting money on a new phone that will have to be replaced every year 2) I hate how much trash electronics generate 3) I want to be more engaged with the people around me so I want my phone to be less capable/less distracting 4) I don't like facebook and the NSA spying on me and I won't get a smartphone unless I'm sure they can't.
I have a good handful of such people in my social circle, ranging in age from 23 to 58, usually higher education levels, and usually non-technical. The biggest common factor amongst them is that Android doesn't work for them.
It exists. Desktop Linux exists, works well and maybe has some single digit market share but in a market basically consisting of everybody and their dog this is still an impressive number. It may not be enough for global megacorps but enough to be sustainable.
The most successful business created industries for themselves. In ollieparanoid's case, he's creating a secure and supported OS that runs on any phone, and when you consider that 90% of phones are missing a secure and supported OS, then that market is pretty huge. If this works then his OS dominates any old, unsupported phone.
People don't care about open source and sustainability but they care a lot about not being hacked and having a phone that runs, and runs fast.
>People don't care about open source and sustainability but they care a lot about not being hacked and having a phone that runs, and runs fast.
You overestimate non-technical people. They're not afraid of getting hacked, they don't understand why they should be, and they don't get why unmaintained software is bad.
People don't give a shit to the extent that the device works well. Security is of course a huge part of that but you don't understand people well enough if you think there's a significant group that will sacrifice good UX and reliability for security and rapid updates. That's what nerds like us do.
Do you know the command to quit vim?
CTRL-Z
sudo killall vim
sudo apt uninstall vim