u/wordbit12

I remember when I first started reading seriously, I always had this temptation to share the quotes I was liking. At some point, I'd almost start to wonder: Am I reading this for me, or for the audience in my head?

It's an easy trap to fall into. Why not share good insights with others? Discuss them, maybe they learn something too. It's understandable, even generous. But somewhere along the way, you don't want to forget about yourself and start living just for others.

Hey, fellow humans are cool! I'm not promoting self indulgence, but these days and in this world we live in, it's clear that we've never been this distant from ourselves. And you can't really take care of others if you don't take care of yourself.

You see this a lot in parents (and people in helping professions, too). They read endlessly about how to raise kids, how to be better for them. But somewhere in all that, they forget to read for themselves.

Just think about it... when was the last time you picked a book just for you?

A nice person once gave me this advice: Keep a "secret" book for yourself. One that no one knows about. Just a single book. You never share your progress on Goodreads. You never post your favorite quotes. You find a nice quote, you just enjoy it. Maybe you don't even mention it in conversation. Just one book from time to time, only for you.

Not because sharing is evil or keeping it for yourself is the more noble thing, it's simpler actually. It's just about telling yourself: I didn't forget about you. I'm doing this for you. I'm reading this because I care about you.

Honestly, I literally almost fell asleep at some point, I felt it's so boring! It felt it's way too long for such a "simple" story.

There were some funny moments and some few scenes that put a smile on my face. The sci-fi elements were nice too, I'm not going to nitpick on small details or ask why such alien exists, it's totally fine for some things to go unexplained. At least that's how I like to approach stories.

But the reason I watch movies is because I like humans, I like human stories that are full of heart. But I got none of that, just empty characters with no soul. Like, every single character is like that.

I don't know if it's the same in the novel, but I found the characters in the movie to be so flat. There is not a single interesting side character. I ask you to remember any one of them, and think for a moment if you remember anything interesting about them, anything human.

I didn't like the main character either, it didn't feel like he was written to be an interesting human being, there is no self-reflection or any depth. He didn't feel like a real person, I can't imagine someone like that could exist.

I think it could have been better if it spent more time on characters and human interactions between them.

I'm not posting this to be different for the sake of it. I know most people liked this film, and that's totally fine. We're all here for some good stories and some entertainment. it's part of our human experience.

I literally almost fell asleep at some point, it's so boring! I think it's way too long for such a simple story.

There were some funny moments and some few scenes that put a smile on my face. The sci-fi elements were nice too, I'm not going to nitpick on small details or ask why such alien exists, it's totally fine for some things to go unexplained. At least that's how I like to approach stories.

But the reason I watch movies is because I like humans, I like human stories that are full of heart. But I got none of that, just empty characters with no soul. Like, every single character is like that.

I don't know if it's the same in the novel, but I found the characters in the movie to be so flat. There is not a single interesting side character. I ask you to remember any one of them, and think for a moment if you remember anything interesting about them, anything human.

I didn't like the main character either, it didn't feel like he was written to be an interesting human being, there is no self-reflection or any depth. He didn't feel like a real person, I can't imagine someone like that exists.

I think it could have been better if it spent more time on characters and human interactions between them.

I'm not posting this to be different for the sake of it. I know most people liked this film, and that's totally fine. We're all here for some good stories and some entertainment. it's part of our human experience.

I'm a Computer Science student who has taken some user experience (UX) classes, and I recently took an introductory web accessibility course. I really think it's important to take accessibility into account when building software.

But I kept wresting with some ideas in this course, especially as someone who had to learn that it's okay to ask for help, that it's not strength to think "I don't want to owe them anything", having been raised in a society that taught me that needing help is a weakness.

The course also promotes this ideas like:

"Disability is caused by a mismatch between the design and the person."

When I heard such statement I felt unsure how to feel about it, in some way it ignores the actual struggle, and it feels like it reduces everything into a design optimization problem. It seems to me that disability is much more than that, it an entire human experience, with its unique challenges and pains, with hopes and joys. The model certainly has good intent and may have some truth to it, but it doesn't seem to me that the model captures the complexity of disability.

This all reminds me of a discussion I had in the UX class, the professor gave us an accessibility problem: we want to design a tool to help a blind person to navigate a large place (like a Mall) using technology.
Everyone went brainstorming and there were plenty of ideas, some were ok, but many of them impractical and limited.
But at the end I kept thinking and then asked: "professor what about using human support instead? a human companion or caretaker? someone of their choice and they like and enjoy their presence?"
He was surprised by my question for some reason, and explained it's a matter of independence and autonomy. I didn't push further but the question stayed with me.

Why is independence always the primary goal? Why is needing someone almost depicted a something shameful. We all need each other's help, interdependence it's part of being human.
So why is needing help so bad.

I really think it's important to develop tools that help people, it's the best part of software development after all. but I feel the framing is problematic. Why not use technology to improve the interdependence experience instead of replacing it?

I'm still not sure how to think about this. Social problems are very complicated. I'm still trying to build an nuanced understanding, so I thought asking questions is the way.

Edit: After discussing this in comments, I realized something, and went to search and found this in my journal, I realized I have this "bias" a couple of months ago, it made me smile reading it, at the end of the day knowing the trap exists doesn't mean you won't fall into it.
"
A mistake I keep falling into....

for example, someone struggled for years to accept themselves, at some point, they read books or listen to good people of knowledge, and it helped them tremendously to accept themselves, their weakness, and have a more peaceful mind.

it's good, really, but one problem one may fall into is starting to think every single problem must be fixed that way, if only people accepted themselves!

I do think it's true, heck if more people accepted themselves and tried to be more self conscious of themselves, of their thoughts, and took action, it would be great, but it doesn't mean it's the entire solution, problems could be more complicated. one must... take it easy? and be humble, the world is very complex, and you're just starting our in the journey of seeking knowledge. don't assume you already figured it out. be glad you where you are, heck, be so happy, it's great you accepted yourself, you've grown emotionally, but to discuss such topics it much more work, and it's okay, it doesn't mean you should never give advice, if you see good opportunity to help someone, do it, but just be careful, and be humble and thoughtful about it."

I'm a CS student who has taken some UI and UX classes, and I recently took an introductory web accessibility (a11y) course on edX. I've been wrestling with something.

It took an introductory online course on web accessibility topics on EdX, it explores some important concepts in accessibility and dealing with disabilities.
I kept wresting with some ideas in this course, especially as someone who had to learn that it's okay to ask for help, that it's not strength to think "I don't want to owe them anything", having been raised in a society that taught me that needing help is a weakness.

The course also promotes this idea:

"Disability is caused by a mismatch between the design and the person."

I find it cold thing to say, in some way it ignores the actual struggle, and it just turns everything it into an optimization problem. It seems to me that disability is much more than that, it an entire human experience. The model certainly has good intent and may have some truth to it, but it doesn't seem to me that the model captures the complexity of disability.

This all reminds me of a discussion I had in a UX course, the professor gave us an accessibility problem: we want to design a tool to help a blind person to navigate a large place (like a Mall)
Everyone went brainstorming and there were plenty of ideas, some good ones, but many of them impractical and limited.
But at the end I kept thinking and then asked: "professor what about using human support instead? a human companion or caretaker? someone of their choice and they like and enjoy their presence?"
He was surprised by my question for some reason, and explained it's a matter of independence and autonomy. I didn't push further but the question stayed with me.

Why is independence always the goal? Why is needing someone almost depicted a something shameful. We all need each other's help, interdependence it's part of being human.
So why is needing help so bad.

I really think it's important to develop tools that help people, it's the best part of software development after all. but I feel the framing is problematic. Why not use technology to improve the interdependence experience instead of replacing it?
I'm still not sure how to think about this. Social problems are very complicated.

I'm still trying to build an nuanced understanding, so I thought asking questions is the way. So I'd like to hear how designers think about this

Hello, I’m trying to build an intuition for Wi-Fi and would appreciate a sanity check from people familiar with wireless systems.

I've been learning about wireless networks from the book Computer Networks: A Top-Down Approach. I find the topic fascinating, but I realized I didn't really have an intuition for how wireless communication works at the physical level.

I've watched several videos about radio waves, modulation, antennas, etc., and I'm trying to build a mental model. I know the description below is not rigorous and leaves out many details; I'm mainly interested in whether the core intuition is correct and whether the code analogies are a sensible way to think about Wi-Fi.

(As a programmer, pseudocode is often the easiest way for me to reason about systems)

Think about how a radio works:

There is a so-called transmitter with an antenna that sends information using radio waves centered around a particular frequency:

broadcast(data, frequency)

Usually radio stations use AM or FM modulation, which are some neat tricks electrical engineers do for reasons I'm still learning.

The receiver also has an antenna, and can be tuned to a particular frequency (or frequency range?) and decode the information:

tune_radio(frequency)
read_data()

Now let's consider Wi-Fi:

We have a Wi-Fi Access Point (AP).

The AP can both transmit and receive radio signals (it has an antenna).

The Wi-Fi standard (probably some long boring PDF that describe how to implement the protocol) defines a set of allowed channels. My understanding is that a channel is a range of frequencies centered around a particular frequency.

The network administrator configures the AP with settings such as:

• SSID (fancy way to say network name)
• Security settings
• Channel

The AP periodically broadcasts so-called "beacon frames" containing information such as the SSID and capabilities of the network:

while True:
    broadcast_beacon(ssid, other_settings)

A wireless station (phone, laptop, etc.) also has a radio.

The client does not initially know which channel an AP is using, but it does know the channels defined by the Wi-Fi standards.

So my mental model is that it scans through the available channels looking for beacon frames:

for channel in wifi_channels:
    tune_radio(channel)
    listen_for_beacons()

When it hears a beacon frame, it can display the corresponding SSID to the user.

I know this skips over a lot of details, but as a first-order mental model, is this roughly correct?

Are there any major misconceptions here, especially regarding frequencies, channels, beacon frames, or the scanning process?

Hello,

I've been learning about wireless networks from the book Computer Networks: A Top-Down Approach. I find the topic fascinating, but I realized I didn't really have an intuition for how wireless communication works at the physical level.

I've watched several videos about radio waves, modulation, antennas, etc., and I'm trying to build a mental model. I know the description below is not rigorous and leaves out many details; I'm mainly interested in whether the core intuition is correct and whether the code analogies are a sensible way to think about Wi-Fi.

(As a programmer, pseudocode is often the easiest way for me to reason about systems)

Think about how a radio works:

There is a so-called transmitter with an antenna that sends information using radio waves centered around a particular frequency:

broadcast(data, frequency)

Usually radio stations use AM or FM modulation, which are some neat tricks electrical engineers do for reasons I'm still learning.

The receiver also has an antenna, and can be tuned to a particular frequency (or frequency range?) and decode the information:

tune_radio(frequency)
read_data()

Now let's consider Wi-Fi:

We have a Wi-Fi Access Point (AP).

The AP can both transmit and receive radio signals (it has an antenna).

The Wi-Fi standard (probably some long boring PDF that describe how to implement the protocol) defines a set of allowed channels. My understanding is that a channel is a range of frequencies centered around a particular frequency.

The network administrator configures the AP with settings such as:

• SSID (fancy way to say network name)
• Security settings
• Channel

The AP periodically broadcasts so-called "beacon frames" containing information such as the SSID and capabilities of the network:

while True:
    broadcast_beacon(ssid, other_settings)

A wireless station (phone, laptop, etc.) also has a radio.

The client does not initially know which channel an AP is using, but it does know the channels defined by the Wi-Fi standards.

So my mental model is that it scans through the available channels looking for beacon frames:

for channel in wifi_channels:
    tune_radio(channel)
    listen_for_beacons()

When it hears a beacon frame, it can display the corresponding SSID to the user.

I know this skips over a lot of details, but as a first-order mental model, is this roughly correct?

Are there any major misconceptions here, especially regarding frequencies, channels, beacon frames, or the scanning process?

I've solved some problems before on Leetcode and studied some algorithms and data structures, but recently I decided to study them more seriously. I took an algorithms course on Coursera (the one by Stanford).

When I studied BST before, it seemed like some fun puzzle, just something you need to improve your problem-solving or something for interviews. All videos and courses would just focus on how to implement the operations.

This course was different. The instructor, Tim Roughgarden, started with the API (that is, the functions) and was basically like: meh, don't think about how it's implemented, it doesn't matter now. Here is the API, imagine you import it from a library and start using it. (It has to be a balanced search tree, like a Red-Black Tree, which is a balanced variant of BST, needed so that the performance is guaranteed):

bst.search(key)  # O(log n)
bst.select(k)    # O(log n) ; find the k-th smallest element
bst.min()        # O(log n)
bst.max()        # O(log n)
bst.pred(key)    # O(log n)
bst.toList()     # O(n)
bst.succ(key)    # O(log n)
bst.rank(key)    # O(log n)
bst.insert(k, v) # O(log n)
bst.delete(key)  # O(log n)

Not bad, like, seems usable to me. But honestly, if lookups are what I'm caring about, I'd just use a hashmap (dictionary). And I could simply use a sorted array to do pretty much all of those operations! I could implement this *exact* API using a sorted array, and in fact, it would be faster! I could find the k-th smallest element, the minimum, and the maximum in O(1). So why would I need an entire Binary Tree?

The key is the last two operations. To maintain a sorted array, when you insert or delete you'd need to shift the array elements, and that would take O(n). Our BST is much faster in this case!

So basically, the use case of a BST would be when you have a stream of data, i.e., new data keeps coming and you insert it, and each time you'd need some of those operations. It just seems useful, pretty fast, tons of operations, clean API!
I really like this approach of teaching data structures, thinking about the API first (I heard it's called Data Abstraction), then later we can spend as much as we want talking about the nitty-gritty implementation details! I just feel so happy that I finally get it.

I HATED memorization in high school because of bad teachers who had zero understanding of good pedagogy. But I've realized the problem was never memorization itself.

There's this tendency in education where "memorization is evil" and what matters is "problem solving" and "learning by doing". I've heard professors use "internalize" and "commit to memory" because the word memorization is so stigmatized. It's kind of ridiculous.

I'm a CS student, I care about "deep understanding", like, I really do, I genuinely do, more than most people I know, I do enjoy digging deep and learning how things work, it's just something I like, for example I do socket programming projects to understand how servers work, etc.

And I'm telling you -- dude, memorization is just so great, it's not one or the other, it's not either memorize or understand!

I have around 5000 flashcards, been using Anki for 3 years, constantly top 3 in my class. I made flashcards for fish types, flowers I identified, names of countries and so much more. Memorizing country names doesn't make you good at geography, but it helps A LOT when you read a serious geography book or hear the news. It reduces the cognitive load so the actual thinking can happen.

I heard a literature professor once explain why students should memorize the poetry they study and analyze. Once you memorize something it kind of becomes part of you -- you start recalling verses when you see related things in your daily life. It improves your experience of being alive honestly.

Flashcards are just one tool in your arsenal as a learner, but it's a powerful tool... it's just.... our brains are so cool! Let them hold things!

Last year, around two years into my CS studies, I was reading Computer Networking: A Top Down Approach, at the end of chapter 2 it contained a list of project ideas to do. I was hooked.

I still remember the thrill I had, disabling the firewall (in the settings) on my laptop (later I realized the client doesn't need to disable the firewall :D) Creating a python script that sends "hello" via TCP, and running the "server" (which is just a python program) on my friend's laptop, the server makes it uppercase, and sends "HELLO" back. a week later I had built a simple multithreaded http server. I changed the router setting to do port forwarding to my laptop, so that anyone can use my (insecure) HTTP server anywhere, successfully putting all the files on my laptop in risk :D

At that moment everything started to click, everything is bunch of files and programs. I thought... "I love computer science", and I literally had tears in my eyes.

In high school I studied some introductory computer science classes, in one of them we were taught some very basic PHP and MySQL, we installed MySQL just by pressing "next" in the setup, and suddenly, our PHP code is storing data in the "database". I was puzzled... like "professor, where is the database", he didn't understand my question, "I mean where is this stuff stored?" It was kind of tough question indeed, but he answered me "don't worry it's just some files". I didn't buy it, but it set my heart at ease at least... at least it's on the hard disk!

After studying operating systems, databases and computer networking, I finally understood where the database is. in some sense, it's just bunch of files and some TCP socket on the top. In fact, pretty much everything is just a bunch of files and running programs. he was correct.

This all also reminds me a quote I read in one of Barbara Oakley's articles

> we rapidly remember what interests us, but what interests us takes time to develop

Passion is never a pre-requisite for learning programming, in fact passion is the fruit of your efforts. Good teachers, good books, and small projects slowly built that passion over time.

I've started to learn Docker recently, I'm really enjoying it, it's such a powerful tool!
I've managed to create a mental model of docker.
We package software and dependencies into something called an image, which is just a bunch of files on the hard disk, we have a background docker process (daemon). when we ask the daemon to run the image, it creates an isolated process, called a container. It's a clean abstraction.

But Docker docs say "A container is a standard unit of software", and I hear a lot of people say "standard unit of software", but what does that mean? what does "standard" mean?