Thanks for sharing this particular Feynman lecture. The treatment here, using what are basically the Peano postulates to derive the field properties of the real numbers and then the basic structure of secondary school mathematics, follows the treatment of Landau's Grundlagen der Analysis (Foundations of Analysis), a concise book that Feynman was probably aware of as he presented his lecture. Feynman of course added a sense of excitement and wonder that makes this lecture charming to read. Such treatments of the foundations of secondary school mathematics are fairly commonplace in the better university textbooks of mathematics. I first learned of Landau's book in a discussion of mathematics education in a Usenet newsgroup back in the 1990s, and bought the German edition on the recommendation of Michael Spivak's famous textbook Calculus, which follows a similar approach (but starting from the field properties of real numbers taken as axioms). In those days, I'm pretty sure, the standard calculus textbook at Caltech, where Feynman taught, was Apostol's textbook, which starts a little bit differently but also takes a theorem-proof approach.
Nice I was going to mention Spivak but you beat me to it. I stumbled on it in a library 20 years ago and was hooked. I bought the Differential Geometry books with the pretty covers and lost my book collection before I could do much with them. I'll have to check out Apostol, I only know the Number Theory book.
It's hard to take this generously. What do you mean by this, specifically? Are you saying "I didn't take out a pen and sign a physical piece of paper"? Or are you saying "I didn't click anything that says "I agree to the ToS"?
What actions are you intending which you feel are enabled by not signing anything?
My user experience on several recent trips is that Google Maps showed me the exit number for the exit I would use next very prominently on top of the display (where it shows the direction of the next turn). Maybe that isn't rolled out consistently for all trips.
Context is when you are not using GPS. (Personally I despise being talked at by a computer for an hour, especially one that's bad at directing a driver.)
With paper maps, you can just look at them -- a single page, no pinch zooming or scrolling! -- to see what exit is appropriate for your destination. Not possible with Google Maps -- you either have to zoom in until the exit ramp fills the screen, or make up a fake address near where you're going to get directions which you then have to read through to find the relevant exit. It's a needless frustration when I'm in a hurry and just what to know what exit serves town X.
I feel you on the talking part. Especially maddening to me is where it talks over an in-progress conversation to tell us things we already know.
I now generally turn the audio part off except for alerts. I like that better, not only is it more soothing, but it forces me to engage my brain a little more.
To access Post on my desktop computer, I just any browser to navigate to Post [dot] news. It's just a website. I have stored cookies on one browser I use, and I typically start up that browser with Post as one default tab. I have another browser I use for testing websites that shows me what Post looks like to users who have never logged in.
OP here. My apologies for the phrase "Twitter alternative" in the article title, which is NOT exactly Noam Bardin's vision for the Post startup.
I appreciate the comments here from HN users. I've hardly posted here in a long time, because in recent years I have posted mostly about politics, which is off-topic posting here on HN. A federated world of specialized online communities is an appealing idea, and I will be trying out the Fediverse as well. (A lifelong friend who is an infosec specialist has landed on a server about infosec, and that's probably where I will establish a lurker account, in the interest of being on a securely configured server.)
Information security in an online service is one of the features I look for, and why I prefer big, well invested commercial online services to home-brew solutions. I figure HN has enough back-end infrastructure to keep what data I share with HN safe, and Facebook does too. (One can dislike how Facebook allows advertisers to look at user data while still appreciating how Facebook keeps away certain kinds of criminal threat vectors.)
The user perception of the user experience ultimately decides what users think about online networks. Part of the user experience in any network is the other users. That's what I've long appreciated about HN. That's what I liked about Twitter as I took care to follow interesting people who post there. I'll see about the newest communities and who else is there, and decide based on my preferences as everyone else will.
Thanks again for the back-and-forth in the discussion here, which has been good food for thought.
The phrasing "Twitter alternative" is my fault in setting the title for the thread-opening post here. The "Twitter alternative" phrasing should not be attributed to the founder of Post.
I get the impression that the founder, Noam Bardin, DOESN'T think he's building a Twitter alternative but rather, in the beta welcome page's words, "a civil place to debate ideas; learn from experts, journalists, individual creators, and each other; converse freely; and have some fun. Many of today's ad-based platforms rely on capturing attention at any cost — sowing chaos in our society, amplifying the extremes, and muting the moderates. Post is designed to give the voice back to the sidelined majority; there are enough platforms for extremists, and we cannot relinquish the town square to them."
Twitter has never been quite like that. If the founder's vision succeeds, I might like Post very well indeed. In all such things, the proof is in the user experience as experienced by each user, but I think the goals sound good for Post.
I like the goals and intent behind it, that alone is worth it. Most comments here don’t even debate Noams welcome words. A platform that isn’t a wild west race to the bottom of ad revenues? Sign me up! Micro payments for valued content? Heck yeah!
Existing platforms that use micropayments just end up filled with content optimized for micropayments.
Just like reddit is filled with content that is optimized for upvotes.
I would start by largely imitating the courses that already exist in the country of Singapore. They are pretty good examples of international best practice, and they are available in English, the language of school instruction in Singapore.
A good framework for looking at careers and figuring out if your best trade-off is to do your occupation as a direct way to make the world a better place or to make your living and then donate money to make the world a better place can be found in the book Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Help Others, Do Work that Matters, and Make Smarter Choices about Giving Back by William MacAskill. In many ways, it is the best career planning advice I have ever seen in any book, and I'm applying for myself and encouraging my four children to use the same planning framework.
https://maa.org/press/maa-reviews/calculus-4