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Ask HN: Teach me something new

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Re: Ask HN: Teach me something new

#291

Post by DavidSJ »

schoen wrote: post #132

In the 1800s, scholars who knew a lot of languages (including, often, several modern and ancient European languages, and increasingly also Sanskrit) started to notice some amazing patterns about similarities in words among all of these languages, including languages from very far apart and that had no visible connection at all from the point of view of their present-day speakers. As these patterns were explored, they…

On this general topic, I recently learned that the words undulate and water have the same origin in Proto-Indo-European:

wódr̥ (PIE) → udōr (Proto-Italic) → unda (Latin) → undulātus (Late Latin) → undulate (English)

wódr̥ (PIE) → watōr (Proto-Germanic) → *watar (Proto-West Germanic) → wæter (Old English) → water (Middle English) → water (English)

In fact, I'm now noticing that the t in the Proto-Germanic line corresponds to the d in the Proto-Italic line, just as you said.

Re: Ask HN: Teach me something new

#292

Post by DavidSJ »

chopsuey5540 wrote: post #153
schoen wrote: post #132

In the 1800s, scholars who knew a lot of languages (including, often, several modern and ancient European languages, and increasingly also Sanskrit) started to notice some amazing patterns about similarities in words among all of these languages, including languages from very far apart and that had no visible connection at all from the point of view of their present-day speakers. As these patterns were explored, they…

The book "The Unfolding of Language: the evolution of mankind's greatest invention" by Guy Deutscher explains this very well and has numerous examples. As a language noob, I found it fascinating!

I second this recommendation.

Re: Ask HN: Teach me something new

#293

Post by sbergjohansen »

hiisukun wrote: post #123

In a lot of terminals, Alt+. (or Option+. on Mac) will paste in the last argument of the previous command. $ mkdir hi $ cd You can hit . several times to cycle through earlier final args.

!! substitutes the last command:

  sudo !!
and

  cd -
takes you to the previous directory.

Re: Ask HN: Teach me something new

#295

Post by rawoke083600 »

andbberger wrote: post #147
SemanticStrengh wrote: post #122

Very few people know the potent facts about the brain: * your neurons are not in your "brain" 90% of your neurons are not in what you generally denote by brain. They are in your cerebellum. The cerebellum has a distinct neural architecture, that difference is in fact clearly visible with the najed eye. A very poor simplistification would be to call it our GPU. * the spinal cord is huge and is structurally a contiguou…

this is a terrible list of 'brain facts'. they're not interesting or constructive to a larger understanding, and analogizing the cerebellum to a GPU is naive and misleading to the point of being insulting. working neuroscientist don't think about consciousness, we look at neurobiology, develop experimental techniques to allow imaging of ever larger numbers of neurons, try to understand how the brain computes. I don't…

It would be kinda funny if it turns out our brains are all running LISP underneath. duck

Re: Ask HN: Teach me something new

#296

Post by kaz-inc »

beanlog wrote: post #223
ToJans wrote: post #110

I watched a piano/music teaching video from the 60s yesterday that made it all "click" [1] Most modern music chords patterns are easy to find out on piano. Start on any of the white keys, and play 7 white keys left to right. That is called a mode: a series of notes separated by certain intervals to compose a song. Different modes have different vibes. Atmosphere of the song ( sad or happy) is directly correlated by h…

Ever since I learned that the frequency ratio between adjacent keys on a piano is always a constant twelfth root of 2 regardless of whether you're going black-white or white-white, I've been sort of frustrated with the way pianos are designed. Transposing a song to a different key could have been effortless if keys were structured differently, such as with uniformly alternating white and black keys, rather than the 2…

Guitar and stringed instruments are easy to transpose because there are no "blessed" notes (other than the open strings, but even those can be turned nonstandard).

Re: Ask HN: Teach me something new

#297

Post by beefield »

In some editors (SQL server management studio, visual studio code, but badly), ctrl-shift-arrow keys lets you edit many rows of text simultaneously. Simplest example is multi-row comment, but if you align your code well, some repetitive tasks become surprisingly efficient.

Re: Ask HN: Teach me something new

#298

Post by myownpetard »

beanlog wrote: post #223
ToJans wrote: post #110

I watched a piano/music teaching video from the 60s yesterday that made it all "click" [1] Most modern music chords patterns are easy to find out on piano. Start on any of the white keys, and play 7 white keys left to right. That is called a mode: a series of notes separated by certain intervals to compose a song. Different modes have different vibes. Atmosphere of the song ( sad or happy) is directly correlated by h…

Ever since I learned that the frequency ratio between adjacent keys on a piano is always a constant twelfth root of 2 regardless of whether you're going black-white or white-white, I've been sort of frustrated with the way pianos are designed. Transposing a song to a different key could have been effortless if keys were structured differently, such as with uniformly alternating white and black keys, rather than the 2…

It is so annoying that standard guitar tuning isn't all perfect fourths and we've decided to throw in a major third between the G-B strings. Bar chords be damned, I want to be able to visualize it symmetrically and have chord shapes that work the same across the fretboard.

Re: Ask HN: Teach me something new

#299

Post by xml »

webmaven wrote: post #45

The scroll wheel on your mouse is probably a functional middle button. On Linux, you can usually left-click-drag-release to highlight some text, move your mouse cursor to a new location (in any window), and middle-click once to paste the text you highlighted there. No explicit keyboard or right-click copy and paste required.

If you ever use the middle mouse button to open links in a new tab, you should disable this "feature" because it is a security vulnerability which allows for grabbing the clipboard content.

Demo: https://randomforest.net/captureClipboard.html

Re: Ask HN: Teach me something new

#300

Post by caseyslaught »

idrios wrote: post #119

In drug development, a lot of the engineering goes into making sure the pharmaceutical compound -- having been developed -- actually reaches the target area of the body. If the compound is a relatively large particle that needs to get into the blood stream, a nasal spray might result in the compound being deposited at the bottom of a person's lungs without ever getting absorbed. If stomach acids break the chemical do…

Grapefruit juice can also increase the amount of a drug absorbed into the bloodstream. It blocks an enzyme in the small intestine that breaks down many types of drugs.
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