Hacker News: quadrangle

New comment by quadrangle in "Vets fret as private equity snaps up clinics, pet care companies"

quadrangle — Tue, 07 May 2024 03:21:27 +0000

typo, you likely meant "Markets are NOT predicated on capitalism." right?

New comment by quadrangle in "FOSSY 2023, Portland: Free and Open Source Software Yearly conference"

quadrangle — Thu, 08 Jun 2023 17:22:46 +0000

sounds like post-hoc justification to me, you could have been confused other way

But here's a real solution (though I don't think it was a problem needing to be solved):

"FOSSY: the Free and Open Source Software Yearly conference, year 1"

New comment by quadrangle in "FOSSY 2023, Portland: Free and Open Source Software Yearly conference"

quadrangle — Thu, 08 Jun 2023 17:19:31 +0000

Despite some validity to what you are saying, it has always been the case that the convention center is unusually crappy in terms of food options. It's surprising given where it is. So many other areas have better and more awesome options. I would never suggest the convention center area as the region to go to if wanting to explore great restaurants.

New comment by quadrangle in "AI cameras will spot motorway litter louts and enhance issuing of fines"

quadrangle — Thu, 08 Jun 2023 17:14:56 +0000

unpopular opinion (which I hold, so I wish it were more popular): anything that makes driving awful is good because the worse it is to drive the more pressure there is for people to move to any other form of transportation, and everything else is better for the world (except maybe flying, depending on the details)

New comment by quadrangle in "Google doesn’t want employees working remotely anymore"

quadrangle — Thu, 08 Jun 2023 04:47:32 +0000

When WWII ended, the changes it made to the world never reverted to the prior status. Also, the rest of history since then has been completely dominated by the effects of WWII and its continuity including the very next wars such as conflicts in Israel, Korea, cold-war, and more. There was no point where the issues really ended, but we do reasonably say that WWII ended. What came next and later was something distinct enough that we consider it something else.

What we have in covid reality today is a continued world with covid existing and a ton of irreversible changes that covid time made to the world. But that's not denied when people say the pandemic is over.

New comment by quadrangle in "An open-source alternative to QuickBooks"

quadrangle — Tue, 30 May 2023 15:19:07 +0000

I'm sure there's some subreddit or something where people appreciate knee-jerk defensive reactions to the entire idea of free/libre/open anything. There are people out there who actually hate public libraries…

Supposedly HN is for reasonable discussions of things.

New comment by quadrangle in "AI Is an Insult Now"

quadrangle — Tue, 30 May 2023 15:14:30 +0000

The comment you are replying to seems to be pointing out that Ed Sheeran himself, i.e. his own brain, is trained on the past work of Ed Sheeran. That's how I read it anyway.

New comment by quadrangle in "How to quit cars"

quadrangle — Sun, 21 May 2023 02:47:02 +0000

The same status quo that has lousy public transit is the status quo that gets us a lot of "those who vandalize, defecate, and litter". There's no reason we are stuck with that stuff being rampant. There's a strong case that the inequities in our economic system set us up to get those results even.

New comment by quadrangle in "How to quit cars"

quadrangle — Sun, 21 May 2023 02:44:04 +0000

I haven't read the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Made_by_Hand series but my impression is that Kunstler would agree with you except with the caveat that there won't be cars or trains or buses overall, mostly just return to actual low-scale functioning like horses.

New comment by quadrangle in "Three Companies Impersonated Millions to Influence Internet Policy"

quadrangle — Fri, 19 May 2023 03:24:55 +0000

If only everyone were as gracious and thoughtful… thanks for demonstrating responsible engagement online!

Yes, Poe's Law and all for sure…

Also: https://mimiandeunice.com/2011/06/08/status-quo/

New comment by quadrangle in "How to quit cars"

quadrangle — Fri, 19 May 2023 03:03:20 +0000

Naw, due to climate chaos, we'll have widespread civilizational collapse and the plain breakdown of the car-supporting infrastructure within less than 50 years.

New comment by quadrangle in "How to quit cars"

quadrangle — Fri, 19 May 2023 03:01:04 +0000

Yes indeed, but there's no reason even in the U.S. that we need to stick with private car ownership. We could easily get by and accomplish everything we need, even with the current awful car-dependent situation by actually sharing cars more.

Uber is not the answer really as is, but some form of fewer cars used more often with much less parking needed — that would be an improvement.

If we can then get rid of half the parking lots and fill them in with a mix of medium-density mixed-use development and green space, that could set us up for enough walking/biking/transit contexts that we can take the next step away from car dependency.

New comment by quadrangle in "How to quit cars"

quadrangle — Fri, 19 May 2023 02:57:03 +0000

I think HN is generally a community that celebrates learning and changing-our-minds rather than resist any suggestions in those directions.

You don't live in isolation as is, your car and roads and the rest of your context didn't come to be through others leaving you alone.

New comment by quadrangle in "Three Companies Impersonated Millions to Influence Internet Policy"

quadrangle — Sun, 14 May 2023 03:37:34 +0000

Yeah, but the other poster was probably being sarcastic and just frustrated in a tone that is hard to describe in plain text.

New comment by quadrangle in "Pixel phones are sold with bootloader unlocking disabled"

quadrangle — Sun, 07 May 2023 18:05:28 +0000

The title is precisely correct, but it is easy to infer wrongly "and you can't enable it".

New comment by quadrangle in "Awesome Music Theory: books, links, videos, research, visuals, composition"

quadrangle — Sun, 30 Apr 2023 00:53:35 +0000

Just Intonation and everything from https://en.xen.wiki/ and related, maybe some of the YouTube stuff from "Hear Between the Lines" is a good start for new accessible stuff.

Music cognition such as Sweet Anticipation by David Huron and everything like that… especially note Music and Memory by Bob Snyder which expresses everything except harmony in a style that avoids traditional notation, and Sounds of Music: Perception and Notation (out of print) by Gerald Eskalin who also wrote Lies My Music Teacher Told Me

For the most part, "music theory" amounts to music-notation-and-style-grammar because very little of it is actual theory (i.e. explanation) until you add real science which means music psychology (because notation patterns and physics patterns are not music, music is a mental experience).

New comment by quadrangle in "FSF Slams Google over Dropping JPEG-XL in Chrome"

quadrangle — Sun, 16 Apr 2023 19:54:10 +0000

There's also the more widespread phenomenon of profitable-enough local businesses blaming Walmart for putting them out of business. How do we evaluate which analogy is appropriate?

New comment by quadrangle in "FSF Slams Google over Dropping JPEG-XL in Chrome"

quadrangle — Sun, 16 Apr 2023 19:49:00 +0000

Maybe you misread or misunderstood (although maybe it makes no difference to you), but the specific issue is: the FSF won't link to the bug tracker (not can't) because of proprietary Javascript. The FSF has no absolute rejection of JS, they just are purist about the JS being free software.

And it wasn't a personal post by an "FSF guy", it's the stance of the whole FSF organization.

Yes, the battle is lost. Fighting an effectively lost battle isn't necessarily nuts, but criticizing it is quite understandable.

New comment by quadrangle in "America: The Build-Nothing Country"

quadrangle — Mon, 27 Mar 2023 04:54:50 +0000

> Most Americans actually like things that way and can't really imagine living any other way.

If people cannot imagine anything but one way of living, then it isn't really reasonable to describe whether they like it or at least to use the supposed liking as evidence of anything.

Having people imagine alternatives is a prerequisite to evaluating anything meaningful about what people like.

New comment by quadrangle in "One of the best podcasting apps you know is built by a single person"

quadrangle — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 03:09:47 +0000

What makes Overcast better than AntennaPod?