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idleproc's comments

idleproc | 2 years ago | on: MiniDisc Hacking

Indeed.

I even had a MiniDisc car stereo. So much better than CDs, you could just let them rattle around in the glove box and they didn't get scratched.

idleproc | 2 years ago | on: A third of North America’s birds have vanished

I agree that cats kill a lot of birds and something needs to be done about this.

However, when you also have articles stating that migratory fish and insect populations have declined by 75% over the last 50 years [1,2] (which clearly isn't caused by outdoor cats) it would seem to me there are larger forces at work.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/27/migrator...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/25/the-inse...

idleproc | 3 years ago | on: Dreams are the default for intelligence

I read a book about lucid dreaming a while back, and it said something like: the easiest way to tell you are in a dream is to look at something mechanical or complicated.

The idea seemed to be: if you could get your dreaming mind to look at your hand and then turn it over to the other side, you didn't have the mental 'bandwidth' to imagine the opposite side correctly, and you'd realize you were dreaming.

Equally, if you were around a bicycle in a dream, and tried to look at the gearing mechanisms etc., it just wasn't possible for your brain to generate that level of detail; it would just change the bicycle into an elephant or what-have-you.

I never got to lucid dreaming, but did notice a similar thing happening. So, I always found it interesting how the mind might switch from internal 'concepts' to external 'reality' in a way that isn't readily available to 'conscious' thought.

Not really going anywhere with this, but if 'AI' can generate better bicycles than our dreaming minds, then…

idleproc | 3 years ago | on: How to draw dotted lines on chalkboards, MIT style (2021)

I too was at school in the UK during the 80s and 90s and don't have any fond memories. Maybe because it wasn't a school with Latin in the curriculum. I had two science teachers: a young one and one nearing retirement.

The young science teacher spent the whole lesson writing from his notes onto the blackboard, while the whole class just copied it verbatim. His only interaction was asking whether everyone had finished, before wiping one-half of the board clean to continue.

The other science teacher had us read from our textbooks all lesson, and his only interaction was to get annoyed when we made so much racket he couldn't read the newspaper. He always seemed the smarter of the two teachers to me.

I got the same grade in both exams.

idleproc | 3 years ago | on: Germany’s move to legalise cannabis expected to create ‘domino effect’

Why is this the case though?

Take coffee for instance, it's widely grown in South America--is most of the production run by cartels?

Or is it just that cannabis is a high-value crop, and it's easier to move the produce around the USA from within, rather than having to smuggle it over the border?

And if cannabis is a high-value crop, is it because not all states have 'legalised' it?

What if the whole world legalised cannabis, would it become like coffee?

idleproc | 3 years ago | on: Germany’s move to legalise cannabis expected to create ‘domino effect’

> we were afraid that we'd become a place where international criminals come to produce massive amounts of weed legally to then export it illegally

I remember a few years back, someone in the Dutch police claimed the Netherlands was on its way to becoming a narco-state [1].

I'm ignorant about the domestic issues there, so correct me, but it seems like the legality of drugs is a separate issue to the control of organised crime in the country.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-50821542

idleproc | 3 years ago | on: Taiyo No Tamago

The sushi guy and his tuna is totally a publicity stunt.

In this case, I think it helps to consider the mango as art rather than food.

It's a similar thing with Koi Carp.

idleproc | 3 years ago | on: The “just worrying” labelling technique [pdf]

I tend to think of the workings of the mind like those of the body.

Some people have minds that lack even basic personal hygiene. Others have minds that could run a marathon every week for a year. Most people are somewhere in-between.

This is partly nature, partly nurture. But just as 'do squats' is good advice for someone looking to improve their general health, this labelling technique is good advice for someone who wants to worry less often.

I'm not a doctor or physio, but I'd imagine that if you have heart problems you'd want to get those sorted before doing squats. Likewise, if you have suicidal thoughts it would be best to address those before anything else, for example.

So yes, I believe 'this actually works'. But depending on your current level of mental fitness YMMV.

idleproc | 3 years ago | on: How Crossrail was affected by the curvature of the Earth (2018)

I used CAD software back in the late 90's called Spirit. The floating point calcs were infuriating. You could draw a bunch of lines with exact length and offset them by exact distances and trim them and they'd all end up x.01mm etc. when you measured or dimmed them.

Hah, people used to say. We've always used drawing boards, that kind of accuarcy isn't important.

But I'd argue that it was. For my own sanity. Sadly, a standard UK brick is 215 x 102.5 x 65mm. Are bricks manufactured to a tolerance of 0.5mm? Can a builder measure to 0.5mm? No.

But when you're digital, and you have a large building, small errors start to accumulate. Next thing is you have the builder on the phone saying the overall length of your building on opposite sides don't match, which one is correct?

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