InfiniteAscent's comments

On: Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?

[InfiniteAscent]

> enough real-world feedback would have surfaced to identify the major issues

You think the real world has nothing better to do than test your shitty code?

On: We've made the world too complicated

[InfiniteAscent]

> I used to want to do many things. Make great art, build great machines, solve important issues.

Another pretentious man who thinks he could be a great artist. Great artists are born artists, and they devote 100% of the time and cognitive resources that society allows them to their art. They have no choice, it’s vital for them.

Jack of all trades, master of none. If you are an engineer and you truly love art, do artists a favor by designing goods and services that don't steal time and cognitive resources for a change.

[specproc → InfiniteAscent]

> Jack of all trades, master of none..

"..But sometimes better than a master of one", is the oft-forgotten coda. I'm mediocre at _a lot_ of stuff, and love it. Wouldn't run my life any other way, and it's far too late to change.

I'm, of course, in awe of folks who dedicate their lives to a single craft, but there's a rich, interesting, and productive life out there for us dabblers.

Different strokes for different folks, aye.

[InfiniteAscent → specproc]

I actually agree. But art (as in "great art") and craft are two different things.

[Paradigm2020 → InfiniteAscent]

Such a nature thing to say.

So what about Leonardo da Vinci and countless other "uomo universalis"... He was not an artist? And an engineer and...

I'm firmly in team nurture / choice and would only say that in our time it's harder to be an artist because to be an artist is to sacrifice a lot of other "great options"...

[InfiniteAscent → Paradigm2020]

I believe you are in team 'haven't found my true talent/calling yet' and it won't necessarily be artistic. You can have talent for many things and you don't have to call anything art.

Regarding Leonardo, and big brains won't like this: a great artist such as Leonardo can become an imaginative engineer as a hobby. The inverse is not true.

On: New arXiv policy: 1-year ban for hallucinated references

[InfiniteAscent]

100% agreed.

Doing your job poorly means giving more work to others and, consequently, stealing their time, their most precious asset.

Many here don't agree with this ban because they work in IT, where this immoral and antisocial behavior is normalized.

On: Laws of UX

[InfiniteAscent]

Users and designers should unite and beat engineers into submission.

On: Microsoft hasn't had a coherent GUI strategy since Petzold

[InfiniteAscent]

Use JUCE as much as you like, but please, stay away from those 'out-of-the-box' horizontal sliders it seems to prioritize (given how they swarm in the many VSTs made with JUCE).

If sliders are vertical in the real world, there’s a reason for it that Bruce “Tog” Tognazzini summarizes perfectly:

“Most of us […] have our forarms mounted on a pivot we like to call our elbow. That means that moving our hand describes an arc, rather than a straight line. Demanding that pivoted people move a mouse pointer along in a straight line horizontally is just wrong.”

Source: https://www.asktog.com/columns/022DesignedToGiveFitts.html

[rigonkulous → InfiniteAscent]

JUCE' GUI framework is extremely versatile - if that default irks you, its a couple lines of code to get pretty much any control to behave itself.

On: Daft Punk Easter Egg in the BPM Tempo of Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger?

[InfiniteAscent]

DJs routinely change the playback speed to match tempos.

It’s easier if a track’s tempo stays the same throughout its duration, but even if it changes, DJs will adjust the playback speed on the fly.

As far as syncing is concerned, the actual value of the tempos doesn't matter at all.

On: Daft Punk Easter Egg in the BPM Tempo of Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger?

[InfiniteAscent]

"Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" was built around a one- or two-bar loop sampled from Edwin Birdsong's "Cola Bottle Baby."

Daft Punk determined that this loop had a tempo of 116.527 BPM and played it a semitone higher.

116,527 * 2 ^ (1 / 12) = 123,456 BPM