It does, but it has to be particularly funny, and the author has to tike on the risk there. Otherwise, there are too many people who think themselves humourous, but otherwise have little to contribute. The result is current-day reddit. It's beyond cringe, it's just low-effort repatative humour. some think it's just dead-internet/botted-to-hell, but I suspect even bots can make a better effort.

I think the rise of take-away services corresponds with a working professional middle-class for whom time spent cooking isn't worth the hourly rate of otherwise staying at work. Home cooking, or even eating out is still a much better proposition if you can afford the time.

I think professional tooling falls in the same category, but the problem I have is treating a general internet service such as a serach engine, or even an online encyclopedia as if it is also in the same category, where as I see it as a common utility, more akin to the availability of a library.

The problem is that some things remain cheap by convention. Once you employ the above logic and show a willingness to pay for things, the rent-seekers will swoop in.

You can't break an imperial stout into parts and charge for each, and natural competition exist in supermarkets and/or even homebrew, limiting how much pubs/bars will charge.

The same is not true for computer service that can very easily become monopolised.

The addendum to "If you aren't paying for the product, you are the product", is "and if you are paying for the product, you are also still the product".

but how does that work? The money you pay on taxes, is on income - that money is now yours. On the other hand I'd assume a grant is the property of the company, not your friend. Where they able to just leach it all away as personal income?

Actually, it's a quote from the comment I responded to.

It, in turn, appears to be a promotion of one of the site guidelines. In turn I would promote the official guideline:

"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting"

as well as the not-official personal guideline:

"Guideline-lawering is boring, and uninteresting to any good hacker, or true codesman."

No it wasn’t quote from the original comment, i copy pasted from the guidelines - and the comment “why am I getting downvoted” is off topic in regards to EU and tech funding. The guideline exist precisely to avoid every post devolving into the (boring) conversation we are having now.

Yes, it was, I was quoting your comment - I'm the authority on that fact.

> is off topic in regards to EU and tech funding

cool, then it's a tangent to the original topic, as is your own comment policing. Who made you the voice of HN?

> Who made you the voice of HN?

The fact that I read and understood the guidelines? If I had not said that someone else would have.

BTW "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting" refers to submissions, not comments.

> without all the crap

as far as MS are concerned, that crap is their business.

Or, possibly, that crap is the multitude of little software empires build by the management layer now in control..

The moon thing might still not be literal, similar to "once in a blue moon" i.e. rarely.

There's a whole science of how natural sunlight differs from leds (and its biological effect) and how to recreate it. I believe SAD lights try to replicate sunlight, but generally modern LEDs, even "warm" ones are missing key wavelengths and have a different profile from sun/sky light. There are now LEDs much closer to real sunlight, but they are also more expensive (though arguable not more so than knocking out more windows.

What I'm surprised at is how rare fake windows/skylights are. I mean, such products/companies exist, but they seem to be relatively niche, and accordingly expensive (as in "call our sales team for pricing" expensive), not really ready for your usual DIY/domestic consumer.

I think what we really need is monitor/TV companies producing low-res, high lumen screens for this purpose, hopefully mass produced. I think Sony has produced a "passive" screen ("the Frame") , that is effectively a matt tv mean to display slow/static images to replace hanging pictures (and even stuffs the electronics in the wall to keep a low profile), but it's still a luxury niche.

My local IKEA has light boxes with a film sheet over them to make fake windows. They look surprisingly realistic.

yep, and for some reason they use them to sell blinds, but not the lightbox itself. I'm sure they'd sell like hotcakes.

> the possible number of such relationships are infinite

I think you need to be careful taking about "infinite" in the context of math. If the number of quantities, relationships etc is finite, so are all their combinations. Even things like the infinit-ude of available numbers might have fixed patterns that render their relevant properties effecively finite, and lead to further distinctions e.g finite vs countable, etc.

Personally, I feel like math has a bit of a legacy problem. It holds on to the conventions of an art that is very old, with very different initial assumptions at its conception, and this is now holding it back somehow. I lack the background to effectivly demonstrate this other than "Things I know/understand seem less intutive in standard mathenatical terms" e.g. generating functions and/or integrals feel easier to understand (to me) when you understand the, to be software-like 'loops'.

In fact, the idea of "constructivist math" seems (again, to me) to beg for a more algorithmic/computational approach.

The standard explanation of integrals as summing the areas of rectangles of decreasing width seems extremely intuitive to me without requiring the baggage of having to know some computer language. Generating functions in code are basically a rote repetition of the mathematical definitions, requiring that you also understand variables and functions and other things unrelated to the core idea.

But that "standard explanation" is a process, not a definition. Riemann sums can't be used with all integrals.

In any case, if we stick with Riemann sums, there should be a strong relationship to Generating Functions (which there is).

> Generating functions in code are basically a rote repetition of the mathematical definitions

GFs with a mathematical basis may have, for example, set-theoretic definitions that are not similar to, say, Turing machines. Any non-constructivist math is automatically not like code.

> nor the motor-car killed running

Is running an art/vocation comparable to photography and/or painting? We no longer have mailmen who run the length of the country afaik.

But running did heavily contribute to sedentary lifestyles in western countries, along with a bunch of other things.

> mathematical research isn't even a significant employment area

I agree, I think it will move from mathematicians "doing" math, to managing computerised system that do it instead. I'm sure we already have such systems.

I think far more important to humanity is improving mathemetical-literacy. From my perspective, math is made for mathematicians - it could be more accesible. As "pure" amth matures, there is still plenty opportunity in "applied" math (however you might define it).