Hacker News: boffinism

New comment by boffinism in "Ampersand (2015)"

boffinism — Tue, 18 Apr 2023 11:26:09 +0000

> Is there any reason to believe so?

Yes, specificially this article: http://haggardhawksblog.blogspot.com/2015/03/ampersand.html

New comment by boffinism in "Ampersand (2015)"

boffinism — Tue, 18 Apr 2023 11:25:37 +0000

Re "I doubt anybody has ever said I per se I" (in the context of alphabet recitation) may I draw your attention to this article[0]:

> Up until as recently as the mid 1900s, it was standard practice when reciting the alphabet to use the Latin phrase per se (literally “by itself”) to differentiate between individual letters of the alphabet—like A, I, and O—and single-character homographic words—like a, I and O.

> So the letter A would be read as “A per se A”, to ensure it was distinguished from the indefinite article a. The letter I, similarly, would be “I per se I” to differentiate it from the pronoun I. And the letter O would be “O per se O” to differentiate it from the interjection O!

[0] http://haggardhawksblog.blogspot.com/2015/03/ampersand.html

New comment by boffinism in "Ampersand (2015)"

boffinism — Tue, 18 Apr 2023 07:54:17 +0000

You're missing that "& per se &" would still have been called that even if it wasn't the last item in the list. If the order was "...y, & and z" you'd pronounce it "why and per se and and zed".

New comment by boffinism in "Ampersand (2015)"

boffinism — Tue, 18 Apr 2023 07:19:55 +0000

No it isn't. The first "and" in "and per se and" isn't a conjunction. So you could actually say:

I per se I, O per se O, and and per se and.

New comment by boffinism in "Stop whining about “The EU Cookie Policy” and improve your ways"

boffinism — Fri, 14 Apr 2023 09:55:10 +0000

Don't confuse cookie laws with data laws

New comment by boffinism in "Stop whining about “The EU Cookie Policy” and improve your ways"

boffinism — Fri, 14 Apr 2023 09:53:24 +0000

These two statements are not incompatible.

New comment by boffinism in "One of the world’s largest investment banks: ‘Greedflation’ has gone too far"

boffinism — Sun, 09 Apr 2023 10:24:42 +0000

Taking the question at face value, the answer is: massive amounts of capital. And barriers to entry like that make the 'the free market will solve this' argument less convincing.

New comment by boffinism in "Why Americans Care About Work So Much"

boffinism — Sat, 01 Apr 2023 06:20:13 +0000

Do you think other cultures, who care less about work, care less about food and shelter? Or would you care to elaborate on why work is more necessary for food and shelter in America than in other cultures (bearing in mind that America is one of the more developed nations on earth)?

ChatGPT banned in Italy over privacy concerns

boffinism — Fri, 31 Mar 2023 14:50:50 +0000

Article URL: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-65139406

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35387994

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by boffinism in "Women Aquanauts of the 1970s"

boffinism — Sat, 25 Mar 2023 09:34:01 +0000

"Aquanauts". "Water sailors". Since the water is implied by the sailor bit (astronauts and aeronauts being effectively "sailors but in space"/"sailors but on the air"), couldn't we just say.... "Nauts"? Or, to stick more closely to the Greek, "Nautes"?

New comment by boffinism in "Bard is much worse at puzzle solving than ChatGPT"

boffinism — Wed, 22 Mar 2023 08:07:53 +0000

> Twofer Goofer HQ's adherence to strict "perfect" rhyme can be tricky for those slant rhyme-inclined.

And yet one puzzle they hammer Bard for failing is "Cactus Practice". What accent do you have to have for that to be a perfect rhyme?

New comment by boffinism in "Punctuation Matters: How to use the en dash, em dash and hyphen"

boffinism — Sun, 12 Mar 2023 13:26:10 +0000

(These rules apply to American English, not British English. I can't speak for other languages and variants.)

New comment by boffinism in "Hype on Hacker News and Silicon Valley (2016)"

boffinism — Sat, 11 Mar 2023 18:26:57 +0000

there's nothing "bad" about phrases like "impressively easy" or "significantly larger". OP just has a weird phobia of utterly reasonable adverbs.

New comment by boffinism in "Hype on Hacker News and Silicon Valley (2016)"

boffinism — Sat, 11 Mar 2023 18:09:10 +0000

Oh cool, so adverbs are banned now, are they?

I make $156,000 a year at Twitter and have done nothing

boffinism — Thu, 09 Mar 2023 07:58:08 +0000

Article URL: https://twitter.com/pookleblinky/status/1633359031875039234

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079183

Points: 46

# Comments: 39

New comment by boffinism in "Identifying as an Artist"

boffinism — Sat, 04 Mar 2023 11:04:21 +0000

Being blunt, it sounds to me like you're using wildly inaccurate personality stereotypes to generalise horribly about both software engineers and artists. A software dev who is inclined to believe they have all the answers is a bad software dev. And the idea that artists all need to be intuitive, and flexible is, based on my experience of many artists, laughable.

Try finding a broader range of developers and artists to spend time around. Your world view may expand.

New comment by boffinism in "Could we make the web more immersive using a simple optical illusion?"

boffinism — Sat, 04 Mar 2023 07:39:52 +0000

No because:

> for the optical illusion to work, you must place the virtual camera at the position of one of your eyes and close the other one.

New comment by boffinism in "Nice account you've got there"

boffinism — Sat, 18 Feb 2023 13:08:22 +0000

Thanks! I'm never sure how the title guidelines (that prohibit editorializing) apply to tweets where there is no title.

Nice account you've got there

boffinism — Sat, 18 Feb 2023 12:16:32 +0000

Article URL: https://twitter.com/mrjamesob/status/1626878947018285056

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34846335

Points: 1

# Comments: 3

New comment by boffinism in "Ask HN: How can Netflix and Amazon Prime be this bad at recommending content?"

boffinism — Sat, 11 Feb 2023 18:14:19 +0000

If you spent 20 mins looking, it's not their recommendation system that's failing. It's that you don't like their content (or how their content is portrayed).

The recommendation system is the thing that shows you stuff without you needing to browse for 20 mins.