After reading Hail Mary, I wondered how reasonable it was for someone to truly be able to understand a language based in tones / chords alone. Maybe 60 words per minute would be enough to communicate but it sure would be frustrating.
My first thought was: “oh, that’s an interesting concept, I wonder how hard it would be to learn?”
Then I saw the frequency/time graph, and realised that didn’t seem to have been a consideration at all. This was obviously designed by a sighted person who cared more about what the pictures looked like!
Blind person: “But how do I know which letter is which?” Designer: “Oh, that’s easy! Just look at the picture!”
Take a look at when this was invented, it's a critical detail in evaluating all this, it was 1913! They were working with the very limited technology they had, they couldn't detect the letters and map them to a particular new tone or chord that might be easier to understand, that tech just wasn't possible [0]. They had to directly translate the image of the letters on simple photo receptors into a corresponding frequency value.
[0] As I was writing this I did have the wild thought that in theory if you had the weights already you could, in theory, implement a very basic character recognition neural net with analog circuitry using vacuum tubes that could recognize letters for direct mapping to sound but it's entirely impractical to create from scratch in reasonable time frames. Maybe over the span of decades you could manually tune one?
IIRC from reading the paper years ago, they chose the tones for each row in the column so they would provide distinct combinations of concordant and discordant sounds.
My old 3DS is broken, and I've been trying to find a 2DS XL for months now. I am floored with how much they are selling for on ebay. Regularly $100 more than a Switch Lite retails for. I'm guessing the volume is low, but I'm surprised to see Nintendo continuously take moves to stop supporting old consoles when there's clearly still demand.
> I'm guessing the volume is low, but I'm surprised to see Nintendo continuously take moves to stop supporting old consoles when there's clearly still demand.
I'm surprised too, but I would point out that the Switch came out six years ago! Nintendo did keep supporting the 3DS, with new games even, for a long time after it was succeeded.
Beyond | Backend / Frontend / Fullstack Engineers | FULL TIME | REMOTE N+S AMERICA & EMEA | https://beyondpricing.com
Beyond is the #1 revenue managment platform for Short-Term and Vacation Rentals. We help price and distribute rental properties across sites like Airbnb and Vrbo. We power billions of dollars of bookings each year.
We are building tools previously only available to big airlines and hotels and putting them in the hands of small business owners around the world. Our customers love us - before they were setting prices by gut - now we provide a real, measurable benefit to their businesses.
We are hiring remote positions across multiple engineering teams - both on our core products, and on greenfield projects - in most countries across US and European timezones. We have offices in SF, Chicago, Lisbon and Barcelona if you are interested in working from an office.
Our stack is Django and React + Ember.js, but experience in any specific technology isn't required. We're well-funded and often profitable. We offer flexible work hours, equity, competitive salary, equipment budget, and location-dependent medical and retirement benefits.
Beyond Pricing | Senior Backend, Frontend and DevOps Engineers | FULL TIME | REMOTE USA | https://beyondpricing.com
Beyond Pricing is an automatic pricing system for vacation rentals. Our software has priced over $1b in bookings made on sites like Airbnb and Homeaway. We are building tools previously only available to big airlines and hotels and putting them in the hands of small business owners around the world.
Our customers love us - before they were setting prices by gut - now we provide a real, measurable benefit to their businesses.
We are currently building out teams focusing on algorithm improvement, on improving the customer experience, and on building greenfield projects. It's an exciting time to join a fast-growing team, where you can contribute and make an impact from almost anywhere in the world.
Our stack is Django and Ember.js, but experience in any specific technology isn't required. We especially would love to hear from you if you have experience with startups and building products from the ground up.
We're well-funded and profitable. We offer flexible work hours, significant equity, competitive salary, equipment budget, medical, dental, vision and 401k.
> They did a study at the Chronicle of Philanthropy years ago where they asked people who inherited money, “What amount of money would you need to feel totally secure?” And every single one of them, no matter what they had, named a number that was roughly twice what they inherited. So that’s what you need to know about money, right? If that is your primary measure of success or value in life, then good luck with that, because it will never feel good.
