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3dprintscanner | 2 years ago | on: You Don't Batch Cook When You're Suicidal (2020)

Would it not be better if they spent more money on wholesome things like oranges and wholemeal bread or if they even, like the writer of the letter to the New Statesman, saved on fuel and ate their carrots raw? Yes, it would, but the point is that no ordinary human being is ever going to do such a thing. The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on brown bread and raw carrots. And the peculiar evil is this, that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food. A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits; an unemployed man doesn’t. When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don’t want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit ’tasty’. There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you. Let’s have three pennorth of chips! Run out and buy us a twopenny ice-cream! Put the kettle on and we’ll all have a nice cup of tea! That is how your mind works when you are at the P.A.C. level. White bread-and-marg and sugared tea don’t nourish you to any extent, but they are nicer (at least most people think so) than brown bread-and-dripping and cold water. Unemployment is an endless misery that has got to be constantly palliated, and especially with tea, the English-man’s opium. A cup of tea or even an aspirin is much better as a temporary stimulant than a crust of brown bread.

George Orwell - The Road to Wigan Pier

3dprintscanner | 3 years ago | on: I visited a friend who is watching Breaking Bad. Now clips appear on my YouTube?

I listened to a podcast which mentioned a relatively obscure topic in passing using the basic samsung music app on my phone which didn't have a SIM card in, location turned on or an internet connection.

Later that day I see an advert for said obscure topic served on a web page.

Is it possible that there is someone transcribing podcasts or at least scraping databases of their RSS feeds and somehow my music player app is broadcasting that I've listened to a particular file(after receiving an internet connection)? The alternative is that the machines really are listening.

3dprintscanner | 6 years ago | on: Luis von Ahn, co-founder and CEO of Duolingo

Duolingo works reasonably well when used as a supplementary aid to learning a language. I've found that it has reasonable utility when combined with taking a physical class as a low-effort boredom filler for building familiarity with the vocabulary of a language.

What I find pressingly missing is any meaningful way of learning about the grammar of a language. When learning German there was absolutely nothing in the lessons which even hinted at the rules of tenses, cases, conjugations etc and the lack of that content stunts the possibility of building much more than a rote-learning knowledge of a language.

The app does seem to have a great gamification mechanic and is good at driving user engagement, so I guess they have that though.

3dprintscanner | 6 years ago | on: The Road to Scala 3

Having recently jumped into a Scala team from a mainly OOP background, I'm starting to see the light with the language. Using the type system to handle code you would otherwise have to write defensively. Letting the compiler take more of the strain of the second order functional concerns of the program and leaving what's left to be an accurate description of your problem domain is a refreshing perspective on coding. Your code looks a lot more like the problem you are trying to solve rather than 75% if(x==null) and 25% business logic. That said, the learning curve is steep and the quasi-hidden nature of implicits never sits well with me. It seems like a way of adding semi-defined behavior to your code and is one of those language features that should be treated with care.

3dprintscanner | 6 years ago | on: Abu Dhabi Bets on Food Delivery Boom with Investment in Glovo

I wonder whether this constitutes a golden age of wealth transfer from oil states to the average persons pocket. Food delivery is notoriously difficult to make any money in with few market players able to turn anything resembling a profit in this area, however consumers get to enjoy effectively subsidised services at a great discount. This surely has to come crashing down when interest rates rise.
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