The "Playing different pitches" section plays "The Final Countdown", arguably the greatest synth riff of all time. If you know it, just click the rhythm on that section.
I understand the thinking behind some of this but I don't think it's right. My first language was GW-Basic so I grew up and enjoyed this era. However, if I want to start working on Javascript today, all I need to do is open a browser and start playing around in the console or set up a directory to point my browser to.
You don't need NPM, Github, Vite, React, etc. to do any of that. I'd also say the vast amount of documentation, sites like Codecademy, seemingly infinite amount of Youtube videos, etc. accelerates learning light years beyond what we had with GW-Basic, assuming you even had this reference guide!
JavaScript is a painful first language, full of gotchas. Even worse code bootcamps introduce it with react. I always recommend anyone starting programming to just make command line programs at the beginning in something like python. I might be wrong but at least it introduces a fundamental universal programming tool.
You are deliberately missing the point and confusing X with ‘something that looks like X’.
For eg., using QBasic, you can pick some random spot on the monitor and have a white dot show up at that spot. What you end up doing is directly writing to the vga buffer address of that spot. That’s the X. You can directly talk to LPT1 and directly get the dot matrix printer to print an ascii character. That’s the X.
All these things were possible because the synergy between the hardware and the software was extreme. QBasic was just a shim. You were directly talking to the hardware in as few steps as you possibly could. The assembler code for your BAS file could be inspected and you could even muck with that.
All of that has gone out the door. What you have with javascript is something that looks like X. So I can use a html canvas element and get its drawing context and do an arc with the right parameters and fill and hide the scrollbar with some css and pretend that what you now see is like the X. But its not! To actually get rid of the browser window and only have the white dot, you would need a full blown electron install or worse. And it still wouldn’t get you to the X. We already had X. Now we have something that barely approaches X after a great deal of effort.This is supposed to be progress ?!!
My workaround to this has been to email the company telling them I want to cancel. Once I either don't get a reply, or get a reply saying "just call us and we'll cancel!", I dispute the next charge with American Express and have the email record of trying to cancel. I believe they also offer a "stop allowing charges by this merchant" feature that cuts off future charges.
> I believe they also offer a "stop allowing charges by this merchant" feature
If they have this it's another reason to use them for automatic billing. I have tried to do this with a VISA card and they said they cannot do it; the only way to prevent future charges would be to close that account entirely and even then I might still get billed for some period of time.
American Express is a very special card that typically comes with annual fee that is very much worth it. I would never book any hotels, buy plane tickets or signup in any form of membership with any other card because I got burnt way too many times with Visa and MC is even worse. Also that's why businesses typically do not like AE because how easy it is to dispute the charge.
But to add - I discourage you from using chargeback as a feature to stop future charges. Most banks will report it to your credit bureau - you won't see it in form of points being withheld BUT it might be adverse for you when you try to get a loan, etc. My mother disputed way too many things (memory troubles at her age) and they did not renew her CC after expiration date and MasterCard told her she is not eligible for card with her excessive CB ratio.
> Most banks will report it to your credit bureau - you won't see it in form of points being withheld BUT it might be adverse for you when you try to get a loan, etc
I never knew this! I have heard about companies banning you if you request a CB, which would be really bad for things like Google, Uber, etc.
I usually end up having to dispute a charge only once a year or so. It has surprised me over the past few years how lacking AMEX seems to be in its "investigation". It at least used to take a few days and they'd sometimes ask for documentation. The last one I did got turned around in maybe an hour.
I use one of those banks that allows me to generate sub-accounts easily, each of which has an account number for e-checks and Debit card number. So I can use that for subscriptions, either fund it once, or fund it regularly via automated transfers from my main balance, or you can set it up to just automatically pull from your main account. Then when you're done with it, you can close that sub-account. It's worked very well for these sorts of subscriptions.
Specifically, I'm using Qube, but at this point I'm looking to move away from them and do not at all recommend them.
Check out Privacy.com for card generation. You can set monthly/yearly/all-limits, pause and cancel cards, create single-use cards, etc. And their virtual cards accept any billing information. As a result I don’t bother unsubscribing directly anymore and instead just pause the card. Less hassle. More control.
I’m also using Qube and looking to get away but I really like having the sub-accounts. What have you found? Envelope seems to have really nice features but lacks the sub-accounts.
Privacy.com has been increasing neutering their free tier and you cant fund with a credit card, their cards have reputation problems at merchants. They're one if the problems imho if we're talking about what's being sold if different than what's being bought.
Although in practice I don't think it will be an issue, in theory issuing a chargeback on your credit card does not release you from any financial obligations you agreed to with a contract. And if that contract specifies that you must "call to cancel" I don't think "I emailed" will hold up in court (but IANAL). Of course with this FCC ruling that could very well not be the case, but in any case always be wary of issuing a chargeback and thinking the matter settled if you did actually have legitimate commerce with the business in question.
This is good to know. I had Dropbox billing through PayPal and could never cancel charges in anyway through the Dropbox site. Realized I had to disassociate PayPal and the recurring charge said “payment failed”. Finally effectively canceled.
AmEx is great for this. I've used it twice, no issues that I can tell. I had my personal card attached to a BrowserStack account that used a work email address. Forgot to cancel it when I left the job and BrowserStack support was completely useless. One chat session with AmEx later and I receive no more charges from BrowserStack.
Of course I have to remember that they are blocked on that card, should I ever need an account again in the future.
The best workaround (imho) is just using virtual cards. My Venture X allows me to create a virtual card on the spot restricted to that merchant where I can also enter an optional lock date. If I want to try something, I just create a new card and set the lock date to the next day. Even if I forget to cancel, good luck charging my card :)
I notice this one a lot. My sense of time is attached to how much I’ve changed, and my rate of change—-at least for music consumption—-attenuates as I age, dilating time. A couple years can seem like an eon when you’re 14 and each new album transforms you. Now a decade of music feels static and irrelevant and I barely notice it go by.
Related: it sure seemed like the mid-90s were special for rock music; I was 13 when Dookie came out and I felt (still feel) like I was in a sort of alternative renaissance, just crammed with amazing new music. But I’m sure every generation feels that way about whatever happened to be popular when they were teenagers.
Oddly enough, several professional sports gamblers were aware of a NBA referee manipulating game from their data analysis, well before the NBA became aware of it.
That was probably 10+ years ago and I suspect data analysis by the leagues is much stronger now. Still an insane line that needs to be walked between the leagues getting revenue from the sportsbooks and gambling not impacting that play.
I don’t know how much cheating by referees has got to with it. But many years ago I found the NBA to be a foul shooting contest and gave up on it. It is unwatchable.
Travel from DC through New England is about the only convenient use of Amtrak. Travel times in the midwest are an absolute joke. 12 hours from Pittsburgh to New York City vs. a 1-hour flight to Newark and <30 minute ride to Penn Station.
The Cascadia corridor is pretty decent, too. The train between Seattle to Portland is time-competitive with driving, and much more comfortable. (Amtrak also goes north to Vancouver, but it's been over 20 years since I've taken that route, so I can't attest to its current convenience.)
Be happy if you're even on the network. I'm in Nashville and we're not connected at all. Amtrak has proposed a plan of eventually putting it on the end of a route which would be convenient for going to Chattanooga or Atlanta and likely nowhere else.
Most of the state-supported routes (e.g., the trips between DC and other points in Virginia) are also pretty decent. But any long-distance route is pretty much a crapshoot.
I used to ride Empire service all the time. Very comfortable ride, especially after about half of the train got out at Albany and I could get some quiet time in the dining car, along with one of those disgusting hotdogs or meatball subs or cup noodles. The long delays between Albany and Buffalo were annoying, but apparently that's no longer a problem. I loved the train compared to the bus or flying or driving, great way to travel. Although nothing beats the flexibility of driving, especially if you don't have a pickup (or a reliable taxi) waiting for you at the destination. And that's a big problem in the USA -- no connecting transit in most places, once you get off the train you're basically stranded.
This seems like such a grim value prop. Even if you have a private bedroom, a table service dining option, and bar, you're still on a train, not a hotel. A hotel is not, unless it's a resort, what you're going to the destination for. So rather than spend as little time as possible getting to the destination, trading some amount of comfort, you instead spend about as much time as possible getting to the destination and get very little back from the experience, other than "views".
I'm in the midwest, so rail is not remotely convenient but Amtrak recently announced a three-day ride from Ohio to Florida that I was amazed at because it somehow seemed less appealing than just grinding out the 15-hour family road trip, let alone a 2 hour flight.
If you want more people riding trains, make them faster.
Rail travel on Amtrak is a novelty. The trip is the destination. Outside of a few routes that are essentially commuter routes, it's not cheaper or faster than alternatives, so I'm not sure why anyone considers it. "Ooohh it would be fun to take the train" is basically it, and that's fine. Amtrak is fun if you've got the time and never tried it, as long as you aren't delayed for 12 hours, which is actually pretty common. I tried it once. I was 24 hours late to my destination, and the train experience wore thin pretty quickly. I have not and will not consider it again. I'd rather drive and sleep in my car at rest areas.
The only time I've bought a train ticket is when the wife and I took a trip to see a musical in New York. We're only a four hour drive from New York, but I hate driving near it, and really hate driving in it. So we booked a hotel four blocks from the train station and just rode an early morning Amtrak. That was worth it. It took longer than a drive, but we slept through half the ride anyway.
But it was definitely a luxury "vacation" purchase. I looked at tickets while planning our last trip, going to Boston. It was insane. Hell, it was this past Labor Day weekend, when New Jersey rail was free for almost a week. Even then, of we'd have driven into NJ, took a free train into New York, then took an Amtrak to Boston, the tickets from NY to Boston would be so more than flying from Baltimore. How is New York to Boston not a cheaper line?!
I bought a NYC to Boston ticket for a few weeks from now for $35 this morning. Depends on many factors but once you know you can easily buy the cheap tickets.
I want them to be less expensive and faster; there’s no reason to take a train over airplanes when the trains take an entire day and cost the same or more than airfare.
Think cruise ship which is a hotel on water. However cruise ships are full of activites for when you are stuck on them while a train doesn't have room for a broadway show.
ohio to florida is too far for a train to make sense, but you are correct trains need to move faster to be useful. But faster needs expensive track work (at 300 kmh you look both ways see the tracks are clear and then get killed by the coming train you didn't see) so amtrack tries to cheat with slow service that is more evpensive than flying
Views are pretty great, to be honest! If your job allows remote work and the train route has cell or Wi-Fi coverage, I highly recommend giving it a try. I've had some of my most productive workdays on trains. (Not being able to schedule too many meetings certainly helps.)
> If you want more people riding trains, make them faster.
Amtrak passenger trains mostly run on rails which are owned by big RR corporations - running when, where, and if the corporation doesn't have some more-profitable freight train using the rails. And don't expect construction & maintenance standards (especially maximum speed & roughness of ride) to be any better than what the freight trains need, either.
There were tons of red flags that were completely set aside.
The largest are probably mobile betting and allowing for instant credit card deposits.
There is also the fantasy of being able to win money but the reality that if you actually win money in a consistent fashion, you will be either kicked-off or your action will be severely crippled.
I'd like to think the emerging prediction markets, like Polymarket, are much fairer systems, especially for winning players, and would be much better than sports books like DraftKings, FanDuel, etc.
Polymarket works on mobile and allows instant USDC deposits. Are these somehow red flags elsewhere, but not here?
Not to mention the Pandora's box that prediction markets open, when the order book can begin to influence real life events - from match fixing, to assassination markets.
It's not like that box has been firmly closed until now. Every time someone stands to profit from one outcome over another they already have an incentive to influence the outcome, prediction market existing or not. And stock markets already act as a sort of prediction basket about future events that will influence the trajectory of a company (e.g. the outcome of trade negotiations, wars, court decisions, elections, the health of their CEO etc. etc.)
The upside of prediction markets is that it incentives people with information to make their honest estimates legible to society. E.g. an opinion piece in a newspaper has little skin in the game, other than the author's reputation.
> There is also the fantasy of being able to win money but the reality that if you actually win money in a consistent fashion, you will be either kicked-off or your action will be severely crippled.
This does not apply to all bookmakers. Also, betting exchanges exist where the players bet against each other therefore there is no incentive for the operator to ban winning players.
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