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Howdy there, partner! Welcome on into the Stacker Saloon.

Saddle on up to a stool and spill the beans about your day, fire away with them questions, or let loose and give us the lowdown on your wild and woolly life. We're all ears, so don't hold back!

We're open round the clock, so mosey on in whenever you please!

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @carter 20m

I give you Stacker News on Hacker News

Also sorry for running 30 of the dupe query and running out the connections earlier. It goes in batches of 5 now

64 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 3h

I've been watching what some pro-Israel media are saying, and it's wild that some are claiming that Israel is finally secure because the last remaining existential threat has been wiped out. That just seems so crazy to me... if I were Israeli I would feel less secure than ever right now!

But, maybe that's not fair--I'm not Israeli and I can't speak for them.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @fauxfoe 19m

If the Israelis are so secure, why are they opening the airport tomorrow for evacuation flights?

1868 sats \ 3 replies \ @plebpoet 5h

unfinished portrait of my cat shaping up pretty well! using a large brush so I have to make imprecise decisions

50 sats \ 0 replies \ @beejay 18m

This is adorable.

30 sats \ 1 reply \ @sox 1h

thank you I love this

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @plebpoet 53m

well thank you!

122 sats \ 19 replies \ @Scoresby 6h

If everyone is using AI to summarize long documents so they can understand what was written in them, why aren't people just writing what they mean to say in less words?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @fauxfoe 14m

Having built AI summary interfaces for clients, I can say this stuff is not as simplistic as people think. And only the most simplistic analysis could conclude that a summary is equivalent to a full treatment.

A document might serve many audiences, some of whom want more or less detail. Sometimes the summary is enough but you want the detail there in case you want to dive in on some aspect or another.

Maybe you want the summary to know if it's worth reading in full.

And summaries are not one-size-fits-all. When I ask AI to summarize something, I ask it to pull out specific things I care about. You might summarize it differently because you care about other things.

A summary is a lens. It distorts. It also magnifies. Lensed views are useful, but they are not the original.

34 sats \ 0 replies \ @Rothbardian_fanatic 3h

Filling the papers with useless words or padding the papers out is a trick in academia. Nobody else uses it. Try doing it in a business communication and see what happens.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Scoresby 6h

Either writers are using too many words or the summaries do not convey all the info (okay, perhaps this is the definition of a summary. But still...something doesn't add up)

45 sats \ 15 replies \ @k00b 6h

From #846510:

195 sats \ 14 replies \ @k00b 6h

I think it's perception of value. Same reason book publishers want book >200 pages. The average person measures legitimacy in the laziest way.

102 sats \ 2 replies \ @SimpleStacker 3h

Related to this, I've found that with most non-fiction books you can get 90% of the value out of it just by reading the blurb, the introduction, the chapter headings, and a few reviews.

Deeper dive is only really necessary if you want to engage with the book at an academic level (pulling out quotes, making citations, etc)

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby 3h

I suspect you are correct. why do you think people bother with writing all the rest?

More importantly, do you think internet access and AI will eventually reduce all nonfiction to "the blurb, the introduction, chapter headings, and a few reviews"?

102 sats \ 0 replies \ @SimpleStacker 3h

At least for serious non-fiction books, I think academic engagement is a big part of it.

If you want to be taken seriously, you need to fill in all the details and cover all the gaps. Otherwise you open yourself up to attacks. So a lot of the "filler", so to speak, is covering all your bases and making sure you address issues from multiple angles to minimize your attack surface.

But in terms of just getting your big picture idea out to a layperson, yeah usually the introductory chapter is enough to make your point.

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100 sats \ 10 replies \ @Scoresby 5h

Meaning you think most writing could be shortened?

Clearly, if I ask chat for a summary of Sofia Petrovna, and treat it as having read the book, I'm missing out. I'm sure nobody does that.

I'm sure much writing can be shortened, but I'm curious if writers will start to feel pressure to write more concisely. Will human writing trend towards the un-summarizable? Maximally condensed writing that doesn't require a summary.

202 sats \ 1 reply \ @ek 5h

related paragraph from Good Writing by Paul Graham:

How could trying to make sentences sound good help you do that? The clue to the answer is something I noticed 30 years ago when I was doing the layout for my first book. Sometimes when you're laying out text you have bad luck. For example, you get a section that runs one line longer than the page. I don't know what ordinary typesetters do in this situation, but what I did was rewrite the section to make it a line shorter. You'd expect such an arbitrary constraint to make the writing worse. But I found, to my surprise, that it never did. I always ended up with something I liked better.

I don't think this was because my writing was especially careless. I think if you pointed to a random paragraph in anything written by anyone and told them to make it slightly shorter (or longer), they'd probably be able to come up with something better.

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @Scoresby 4h

I think if you pointed to a random paragraph in anything written by anyone and told them to make it slightly shorter (or longer), they'd probably be able to come up with something better.

I don't agree with this. For me, at least, there's this thing where, after I have written a thing and revised it a good deal, sometimes I can't change it.

Not that I don't want to, but further revision becomes circular and gets me exactly back to where I was. I've changed a passage and changed it and changed it and sat on it for a few weeks and then tried again and ended up with word for word what I started with.

Arbitrary constraints are good and helpful, though.

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100 sats \ 5 replies \ @plebpoet 5h

what is poetry

0 sats \ 4 replies \ @Scoresby 4h

Does all good writing trend to poetry?

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112 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b 5h

That’d be a lovely result. Great writing tends to be incompressible, compressing tends to lose important things, ime. That doesn’t mean it’s short. It means that it’s free of waste and full of surprise.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Scoresby 4h

Free of waste is so fuzzy though. I went through a time where I tried to make my writing as concise and condensed as possible. Some of it was good, but I think when I've been given myself more freedom with extra words, I've ended up with better. Were they unnecessary words? I don't know.

But with ai's presence, I think we will see pressure on writers (at least those who want to write to be read) to shorten their work.

Hmmm. Saying that, I realize that it may only apply to internet writing (posts, articles, comments and such), novelists and other long form writing may be exempt because conveying info is not the primary goal. Something like this.

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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @stack_harder 6h

gave me a chuckle

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @SimpleStacker 3h

Where's bibi?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Rothbardian_fanatic 3h

Bombs away Donny just lost me.

122 sats \ 3 replies \ @0xbitcoiner 6h

21 sats \ 2 replies \ @SimpleStacker 3h

What kind of godforsaken library stores health as a string datatype?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @fauxfoe 12m

That string evaluates to falsy. He ded.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @0xbitcoiner 2h

Nice catch. One byte was all we needed!

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @BITC0IN 6h

Make War Unaffordable https://v.nostr.build/HOw6GzDlYBrf80fZ.mp4

67 sats \ 0 replies \ @noknees 7h

small heart attack

0 sats \ 4 replies \ @jasonb 7h

I know at one point, there were a few Iranians on sn. Have we heard from them? Are you one of them? I’m curious what the news cycle is there right now.

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @noknees 7h

they'd not be terrorized by Israelis on SN. definitely not.

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @jasonb 7h

Really? I’ve seen some irrational posts on stacker news on some other random subjects, but not by anybody claiming to be Israeli.

50 sats \ 1 reply \ @noknees 7h

neither have I, that's why I said so

15 sats \ 0 replies \ @jasonb 7h

Oh, sorry, I misread your comment. I’m seeing what you meant now.

17 sats \ 0 replies \ @noknees 7h

104 sats \ 1 reply \ @suraz 8h

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @BlokchainB 1h

Hahaha

0 sats \ 7 replies \ @flat24 8h

Religion &

Bitcoin

are water and oil, you cannot put them together.

"You cannot unite oppression and freedom in the same chain". ⛓️

0 sats \ 6 replies \ @noknees 8h

what if I say, bitcoin unites Christians 💀 and Gods have been using bitcoin since the beginning of mankind

15 sats \ 5 replies \ @flat24 7h

"The first thing I would think about is that you have been drugged with chicken excrement" 🐓

But we are free, so I don't really care what you decide to believe, some choose to live cheated and others question the things that impose them to create in them.

I am glad that at least, you could leave the illusion of money when knowing Bitcoin.

But wake up from the rest of the issues, it is already an issue that is in your hands and impacts or impacts, it is about you and not on me.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 7h

I'm sorry that you have a childish view of religion

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @flat24 2h

What would a mature vision be? I'm always open to understand and learn

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @noknees 7h

The sacred rites of Chickenism lol. Sacrifice a Satoshi and cluck 3 times to summon the gods of fiat. I respect your religion but over here, we believe in consensus, not chickens. You’re free to laugh. I’m free to verify. I just meant it as a joke, chill bro :)

15 sats \ 1 reply \ @flat24 7h

The sacred rites of Chickenism lol. Sacrifice a Satoshi and cluck 3 times to summon the gods of fiat.

🤣🤣🤣This was really fun.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @noknees 7h

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0 sats \ 4 replies \ @StillStackinAfterAllTheseYears 8h

My zaps seem to be failing. I'm assuming that's an issue with CoinOS that'll get resolved one way or the other (or become a big enough problem that I'll escalate).

But in the meantime, I'm confused here. I've got a decent about of sats in my SN account. I've also got a decent amount of Cowboy Credits. Shouldn't SN be reaching to one of those sources if my zaps are failing? @ek @k00b

21 sats \ 2 replies \ @flat24 8h

You can also check your NWC connection in Coinos, it usually expires and you have to renew, I recently happened that I could not do Zaps in Nostr and turned out to be that detail. (I use "coinos" as an attached wallet in SN and Nostr)

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @StillStackinAfterAllTheseYears 6h

I did check that, but it turns out the actual problem was "random thing that just goes away after a few hours."

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @flat24 1h

Ok, it's good to know that you could solve it 💪🤠

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 8h

currently, you'll need to disable your coinos wallet to use CCs/rewards to zap. if the wallet is enabled, we continue trying to use it to zap.

we don't, currently, distinguish between momentary failures and longer term unavailability of the wallet - we assume they're all momentary, so we retry the wallet again, and once we try to do a noncustodial zap it can only be retried noncustodially.

we're working on improving this along with other related problems.

69 sats \ 5 replies \ @noknees 9h

Bitcoin is finished below 100K

75 sats \ 4 replies \ @flat24 8h

I love the sales... send it to 80k

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @noknees 8h

i request everyone to pardon this guy, he supposedly mad just like bitcoin

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @flat24 7h

he supposedly mad just like bitcoin

I don't understand what you are trying to say.

I am not angry because the price goes down, I love it when it happens. When the price drops it is the only time that our Fiat is stronger and obtains more real value units by the same Fiat Magrane units.