pradn

16 ms·

181.
by pradn 3y ago
There's a low-hanging fruit that I think would make ffmpeg more helpful for regular people. There's a million terrible websites that offer file conversion services. They're ad-ridden, with god-knows-what privacy/security
182.
by pradn 3y ago
The expense of saffron is overblown. You really don't need much for entire dishes. A few strands of saffron can flavor and color a whole pot of rice, enough for six people. A gram of saffron might have dozens of strands! You have to us
183.
by pradn 3y ago
It's probably better for society for people to frequent third-places more. More sociability, connections - the human touch. It's of course just selling overpriced sugar drinks, but there's also this aspect.
184.
by pradn 3y ago
In the past twenty years, the job of "software engineer" has taken upon ops/QA/DBA/support.
185.
by pradn 3y ago
Those are true statements in the exact same way, though! "Hinges" and "rests" are used in the same way as "critical". Ofc, this requires some interpretive thought - and that may be a lot to ask of a general rea
186.
by pradn 3y ago
We don't have the vocabulary to separate two ways people use "critical": "required for something's functioning", and "not substitutable". A tire is critical to a car's functioning, but there&#x27
187.
by pradn 3y ago
The legal regime just prevents the state from going too far in promoting one faith. But whether you encounter someone with a different belief system depends on geography, modes of transport, openness to other beliefs, etc. There's a lo
188.
by pradn 3y ago
Yes, America is one of the most Christian of the major Western countries. However, the geography of faith is quite varied. We run around in cars, jetting to exactly the institutions we want to patronize. So it's possible to easily stay
189.
by pradn 3y ago
That's true for nearly all folks who would tell you they're part of a certain faith. As in any time, only a few minority ever seem to want to contemplate creation, the nature of god, the particular logics behind faith, etc etc. Th
190.
by pradn 3y ago
There is this odd split in American society that makes this possible. You can go through your entire life, end up a professional journalist at the Times and not actually have asked someone about their sincerely held faith and practice. Kids
191.
by pradn 3y ago
Thank you - it's baffling to me that something as basic as saving some data to a file has become so convoluted!
192.
by pradn 3y ago
fsync() guarantees that writes have hit the disk. But is there a guarantee about what's written before an fsync()? Can it be anywhere between "nothing" and "everything"? I suppose this must be a loose guarantee if t
193.
by pradn 3y ago
Teens get bullied if they show up as green bubbles in group chats. I've had people tell me they wouldn't want to show up as green bubbles to potential romantic partners. The iMessage lock-in effects are real.
194.
by pradn 3y ago
Oops, you're right - I counted w/ Ctrl-F and that's not accurate with references.
195.
by pradn 3y ago
There's only ~34 paintings firmly attributed to Vermeer, and - fun fact - 11 of them are on 5th Avenue in New York (between The Met and The Frick). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_paintings_by_Johannes_...
196.
by pradn 3y ago
Sorry added a spoiler alert.
197.
by pradn 3y ago
== Spoilers for the first book == I tell everyone to skip the first one. The problem is that when you hear of the series, it sounds so cool. "What if humanity knew aliens were arriving in ~X hundred years?" But it takes until the
198.
by pradn 3y ago
There's levels to tinkering though. When I was running Ubuntu, a lot of the tinkering came down to searching for what config files to update. Sure, that freedom is nice if you care to use it, but it's mostly just searching, config
199.
by pradn 3y ago
Oops: Humira ($600/mo) -> Humira ($6000/mo)
200.
by pradn 3y ago
"Do they have 17 years of experience, or have they been repeating year one 17 times?"
201.
by pradn 3y ago
Wikipedia is an amalgam of a large number of humans editing w/ some guardrails provided by the guidelines and tech (clean-up bots, edit alerts). If there's a human problem (corruption, bias), there's no tech solution that&#x2
202.
by pradn 3y ago
Humira's biosimilars are roughly 20% of the cost of name-brand Humira ($600/mo). It can even be down to 10% of the original cost, or lower, in some shops. You can buy a month's supply for ~75 from an Indian pharam supplier on
203.
by pradn 3y ago
Wait, is it just me, or is it not wild that there's a company openly advertising their fingerprinting services? Their landing page implies it's primarily for fraud detection / abuse prevention. But one of their customer testi
204.
by pradn 3y ago
The baseline international volunteers need to demonstrate is that they provided benefit higher than just giving away the cost of their flights to get there. IE: American volunteer groups going to poor countries to build them schools.
205.
by pradn 3y ago
No, that would be your government or employer preventing you from using your specialized skills to earn a living. In theory, a competitor can hire you for your skills - but your new employer will make it clear they are "only hiring you
206.
by pradn 3y ago
Something like $X million an hour.
207.
by pradn 3y ago
Well sure, no political project is perfect. But you can't let perfect be the enemy of the good.
208.
by pradn 3y ago
Much of the time you have to call support to get them to do this they don't want to be easy to do - like cancelling subscriptions, or initiating a refund.
209.
by pradn 3y ago
In theory, there should be bipartisan support for this. Republicans say they love small business, bringing back manufacturing, self-sufficiency - and they also prefer adjusting policy via tax incentives rather than direct spending.
210.
by pradn 3y ago
Text generation using word/sentence/phrase-level ad-libs is so simple its a common homework assignment for first-year programmers. You really don't need much. There's even tools like Tracery that let you construct gramma

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