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Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

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Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#251

Post by zeroimpl »

raffraffraff wrote: post #39

Without reading everything there is on the subject, I'd guess it's tilted for the same reason it's tilted to the left . Humans are tool makers and tool users. After enough time the tool becomes an extension of the body, even if the tip of the tool is mechanically or virtually detached from the hand that is controlling it. The tool maker designed this as a right-handed tool, coming into the frame in the right hand. If…

Also nobody is asking why it's pointed up, but it's the same reason. Your hand is usually below your eye-level. From a theoretical point of view, the most intuitive cursor would be a crosshair, but I've tried that and don't like it.

Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#252

Post by tpmoney »

dcow wrote: post #213
xur17 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The IRS already thought of this - they charge you interest on the money you owed them (with some exceptions, like waiving it the first year it happens, only charging you if you withheld less than last year, etc).

Not sure I understand. Taxes are due in April. You don’t get charged a year of interest on the amount you own when filing…

You owe taxes all year round. What you're doing in April is settling up and filing for the year. If you run your own business, you're required to pay a lump estimated taxes 3 times a year in addition to your annual filings. If you're too short, you owe and you owe interest. The IRS has a safe haven rule where if you pay 90% of what you owed this year, or at least 100% of what you owed last year, they won't penalize you. It's actually one of the reasons I personally do over withhold. I do some contract work on the side, and rather than calculating and sending in estimated taxes every quarter, I just have my regular job send in about 25% of the contracting income I expect to make. On years when I did as much contract work as I expected, I basically get nothing back or I might owe $200. On years where I don't, sure I gave the government an interest free loan but I also didn't have to think about my taxes for the whole year.

Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#253

Post by loeg »

dpkirchner wrote: post #229
loeg wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-w-4 Fill it out correctly and your employers will do the right thing.

I think the W-4 only applies to federal income tax. There's no field that instructs employers how much to pay in FICA (their share and yours). At best you can reduce withholdings to account for the excess FICA payments.

It's all total tax burden. Dollars are fungible.

Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#254

Post by teaearlgraycold »

Stratoscope wrote: post #44

It's a bit scary to see that one of the highest-voted answers to this question (188 points) is completely wrong. It says that the (0,0) hotspot simplified the calculations for a cursor position update, because you didn't have to add any (X,Y) offset. https://ux.stackexchange.com/a/52349/43259 The problem with this idea is that the arrow pointer was never the only cursor. On the first Macintosh, there were many others…

It’s obviously wrong, to me, because of how little latency performing two additions would actually add to the system.

Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#255

Post by wolverine876 »

Tagbert wrote: post #238
handsclean wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I internalize it: public voting selects for layman plausibility, not correctness. Because laymen massively outnumber experts, the layman vote always overwhelms the informed one, so the reaction of people who don’t know the subject is the only thing that matters. Truth only seems to matter because most subjects either can be somewhat intuited by non-experts, or are in a niche that you’re not, so “layman plausi…

In that way, it’s a bit like an LLM choosing the most likely answer based on the mass of training material.

And just think, its training material is all this upvoted - and then believed and repeated - BS.

Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#256

Post by adventured »

Tagbert wrote: post #238
handsclean wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I internalize it: public voting selects for layman plausibility, not correctness. Because laymen massively outnumber experts, the layman vote always overwhelms the informed one, so the reaction of people who don’t know the subject is the only thing that matters. Truth only seems to matter because most subjects either can be somewhat intuited by non-experts, or are in a niche that you’re not, so “layman plausi…

In that way, it’s a bit like an LLM choosing the most likely answer based on the mass of training material.

Humans are nearly all mimics, at least 98%+. They are LLMs. It's a survival optimization (energy spent copying the existing vs creating/innovating/distributing). It's only fitting that we'd create LLMs in the human mold.

LLMs are to human mimics what AGI will be to human creators/innovators (and then some of course).

Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#257

Post by wolverine876 »

waveBidder wrote: post #203
handsclean wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I internalize it: public voting selects for layman plausibility, not correctness. Because laymen massively outnumber experts, the layman vote always overwhelms the informed one, so the reaction of people who don’t know the subject is the only thing that matters. Truth only seems to matter because most subjects either can be somewhat intuited by non-experts, or are in a niche that you’re not, so “layman plausi…

there's another reason for some optimism about a voting-truth connection: wisdom of the crowds. As long as there isn't a strong bias to people's estimate, the average will converge on the truth.

> there's another reason for some optimism about a voting-truth connection: wisdom of the crowds. As long as there isn't a strong bias to people's estimate, the average will converge on the truth.

Hmmm ... that doesn't seem to match what actually happens. After false beliefs holding back humanity for its entire history, science came along and produced actual, working, truth. And science is the opposite of what you say: The crowds don't matter, only the facts. Newton was not a crowd, and the crowds didn't produce anything remotely as true and valuable for all those years. The crowds persecuted Galileo (and many others).

"In matters of science, the authority of thousands is not worth the humble reasoning of one single person." - attributed to Galileo

As someone pointed out, I think here on HN, the intuition of the crowds sucks. If it was any good, we'd have had the right physics in 5,000 BCE not starting in the 17th century.

Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#258

Post by wolverine876 »

nsagent wrote: post #141
speff wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only scary at the beginning. Then you get used to it. Every single social media site - including HN - has uninformed people agreeing that a correct-sounding answer must be right. My friend the tax accountant gets downvoted for clarifying how taxes actually work. My wife the linguist gets downvotes for explaining no that's not how language works. It's not scary - it's typical.

I think this also partly explains the LLM hype — people can be as confidently incorrect as LLMs, or maybe LLMs are as confidently incorrect as humans since they are trained on text from social media.

The LLM output matches what the crowd expects.

Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#259

Post by okamiueru »

nsagent wrote: post #141
speff wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only scary at the beginning. Then you get used to it. Every single social media site - including HN - has uninformed people agreeing that a correct-sounding answer must be right. My friend the tax accountant gets downvoted for clarifying how taxes actually work. My wife the linguist gets downvotes for explaining no that's not how language works. It's not scary - it's typical.

I think this also partly explains the LLM hype — people can be as confidently incorrect as LLMs, or maybe LLMs are as confidently incorrect as humans since they are trained on text from social media.

I hope we reach a collective maturity on this. LLMs have so far I've noticed, left a trail of mediocrity. I'll of course not notice the parts that are good, so there is some confirmation bias here.

And, I hate it. If not used appropriately, it's an automated output from left side on the Dunning-Kruger. Bullshit asymmetry has gotten more skewed, and it's tiresome.

Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#260

Post by poulsbohemian »

speff wrote: post #123
Stratoscope wrote: post #44

It's a bit scary to see that one of the highest-voted answers to this question (188 points) is completely wrong. It says that the (0,0) hotspot simplified the calculations for a cursor position update, because you didn't have to add any (X,Y) offset. https://ux.stackexchange.com/a/52349/43259 The problem with this idea is that the arrow pointer was never the only cursor. On the first Macintosh, there were many others…

It's only scary at the beginning. Then you get used to it. Every single social media site - including HN - has uninformed people agreeing that a correct-sounding answer must be right. My friend the tax accountant gets downvoted for clarifying how taxes actually work. My wife the linguist gets downvotes for explaining no that's not how language works. It's not scary - it's typical.

The difference is that (subjectively) there used to be less of this on HN. The herd moves much more aggressively now rather than granting for debate. The generational differences are much more pronounced; the politics not a match of Democrat vs. Republican, but something equally vindictive. It isn’t particularly pleasant, but what are the alternatives?
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