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I bought an encyclopedia

optoutproject.net

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Re: I bought an encyclopedia

#91

Post by bowsamic »

n3storm wrote: post #59
michaelt wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Thinking back, I'm not sure why the library did not have an encyclopedia... Different libraries often have very different collections, depending on the community they're serving. A university library might have 10 copies of the same undergraduate introductory physics textbook, a copy of a few dozen other undergraduate introductory physics textbooks, and a load of more advanced texts in the same area. A community li…

USA is deeply different. Looks like antigeneralizationism. I live in Spain and I lived in Limerick and libraries are mostly similar, both university and municipal ones.

That is very strange. Local libraries subscribe to Elsevier journals, for example? What would be the point in that? If not, then they are not similar, since that’s the main purpose of a university library

Btw in Germany and the UK it’s like in the USA

Re: I bought an encyclopedia

#92

Post by aidenn0 »

082349872349872 wrote: post #89
aidenn0 wrote: post #67

> For one thing, my kids were increasingly being asked to "do research" for their school projects. As far as I could tell, this meant just Googling materials, copying and pasting what they found, stealing photos on the internet, and generally neither digesting nor evaluating anything that popped up in search results. The degree to which my children's teachers actively don't care about this is hard to overstate. I was…

> The degree to which my children's teachers actively don't care about this is hard to overstate. Where are you? In the US, education is "free to play"; to win, you need to pay to live in a good school district. (ancient china worked similarly, if the anecdote about Mencius' mother is to be believed)

Southern California. I'd estimate the median household income at my kid's elementary school (which is the most local) to be over $200k. The public secondary schools cover the entire area, so are more economically diverse.

Re: I bought an encyclopedia

#93

Post by rytis »

082349872349872 wrote: post #89
aidenn0 wrote: post #67

> For one thing, my kids were increasingly being asked to "do research" for their school projects. As far as I could tell, this meant just Googling materials, copying and pasting what they found, stealing photos on the internet, and generally neither digesting nor evaluating anything that popped up in search results. The degree to which my children's teachers actively don't care about this is hard to overstate. I was…

> The degree to which my children's teachers actively don't care about this is hard to overstate. Where are you? In the US, education is "free to play"; to win, you need to pay to live in a good school district. (ancient china worked similarly, if the anecdote about Mencius' mother is to be believed)

https://pressbooks.nvcc.edu/eng255/chapter/the-mother-of-men...

> At first they lived near a cemetery, and Mencius amused himself with acting the various scenes which he witnessed at the tombs. “This,” said the lady, “is no place for my son;”—and she removed to a house in the market-place. But the change was no improvement. The boy took to playing the part of a salesman, vaunting his wares, and chaffering with customers. His mother sought a new house, and found one at last close by a public school. There her child’s attention was taken with the various exercises of politeness which the scholars were taught, and he endeavoured to imitate them. The mother was satisfied. “This,” she said, “is the proper place for my son.”

Re: I bought an encyclopedia

#95

Post by int_19h »

pixelmonkey wrote: post #31
globular-toast wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to take advantage of the browser's "work offline" functionality. This started to work less and less reliably, even by the early 2000s, but Wikipedia still worked nicely. I would dial up at night when everyone was asleep and click through to all the pages surrounding some topic, like internal combustion engines. Then the next day I'd work offline and digest it all. I was sad when I clicked a link that hadn't be…

On Android, the official Wikipedia app is surprisingly good at marking articles for offline reading, organizing them into collections, and downloading them, including related assets like images. When I'm traveling I install the app on my "travel phone" (which is Android / Google Fi) and take advantage of it along with Kindle app offline reading for Lonely Planet guides, and the Google Maps offline maps feature.

Keep in mind that offline Google Maps expire. If you want something that is guaranteed to work indefinitely, use OsmAnd+.

Re: I bought an encyclopedia

#96

Post by int_19h »

jhbadger wrote: post #51
Neywiny wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I think at one point I either saw that you could get an offline kindle-esque Wikipedia device or I contemplated what it would take to make one and saw it wouldn't be terrible. If I didn't hallucinate that product I'd expect it to be the better answer. The world changes so rapidly (unless all you need to know is stuff from an old game) that I don't ever consider using printed materials as reference anymore.

Yes, there was at least one physical Wikipedia device (the Wikireader, released in 2009 and discontinued in 2014), but these days a more practical solution is to put an offline Wikipedia app like Kiwix on an old phone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiReader https://kiwix.org

One of Kiwix subprojects is a Raspberry Pi image creator. Once set up, it acts as a simple server you can connect to over WiFi with any device that has a web browser (and Kiwix serves pretty basic HTML so even very old stuff works fine).

Re: I bought an encyclopedia

#97

Post by userbinator »

emmelaich wrote: post #75
aidenn0 wrote: post #67

> For one thing, my kids were increasingly being asked to "do research" for their school projects. As far as I could tell, this meant just Googling materials, copying and pasting what they found, stealing photos on the internet, and generally neither digesting nor evaluating anything that popped up in search results. The degree to which my children's teachers actively don't care about this is hard to overstate. I was…

Some teachers are spectacularly ignorant about internet things too; my students were given urls for movie editing on PCs and Macs. For the Mac the link for iMovie was not the Apple store but something like coolapps.ru.cn.cx/blah.

That's either ignorant or enlightened, depending on what else they do...

Re: I bought an encyclopedia

#98

Post by userbinator »

contingencies wrote: post #65
ClosedPistachio wrote: post #2

Similarly, I purchased a copy of "Bosch Automotive Handbook" [1]. For $65 it will literally walk you through every component of a vehicle, from the metals required, the fuel, to the electronics. It's presence on my bookshelf is meant to be aspirational. https://www.sae.org/publications/books/content/bosch10/

Thanks! Looks like a great book, and it's on libgen (11E). However, the English is positively atrocious . The next edition would be wise to invest in a competent editor. Very first page: The International Convention on Road Signs and Signals [1] defines a motor or power-driven vehicle as a self-propelled road vehicle. Rail-borne vehicles and country-specifically mopeds which are not treated as motorcycles are excepti…

It likely being a German translation, I'm not surprised.

Re: I bought an encyclopedia

#99

Post by userbinator »

aldanor wrote: post #77
aidenn0 wrote: post #67

> For one thing, my kids were increasingly being asked to "do research" for their school projects. As far as I could tell, this meant just Googling materials, copying and pasting what they found, stealing photos on the internet, and generally neither digesting nor evaluating anything that popped up in search results. The degree to which my children's teachers actively don't care about this is hard to overstate. I was…

They say that modern LLMs have reached intelligence of older kids. Perhaps it's the other way around...

That's the same thought I had --- if humans are doing no better than LLMs, it won't be long before they'll be replaced with one. I've seen many similar instances with much older humans (adults), unfortunately.

Re: I bought an encyclopedia

#100

Post by 082349872349872 »

aidenn0 wrote: post #92
082349872349872 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The degree to which my children's teachers actively don't care about this is hard to overstate. Where are you? In the US, education is "free to play"; to win, you need to pay to live in a good school district. (ancient china worked similarly, if the anecdote about Mencius' mother is to be believed)

Southern California. I'd estimate the median household income at my kid's elementary school (which is the most local) to be over $200k. The public secondary schools cover the entire area, so are more economically diverse.

People can have many different priorities. In some affluent neighbourhoods, the priority is McMansions and cars; in others, the golf course and its dues; or a marina; or bridle paths[0] and a covered jumping ring.[1]

In other neighbourhoods —maybe (perhaps often?) not so affluent— the priority is education, and people tend to move there with either the explicit or implicit idea that in paying a premium for their house, they are helping to guarantee that the parents[2] of their children's likely friends, having paid a similar premium, also value education.

Maybe things have changed; I haven't been in the Old Country for a couple of decades, but in the XX the easy way to spot "the good district" was that all the real estate ads (by way of explaining the premium on the ask) explicitly mentioned "${DISTRICT} schools".

[0] the least interested person in her children's education I knew was a horsy friend, but even she hoped, that upon finishing their senior year and should they have learned nothing else, her children would be capable of reading and understanding a contract.

[1] southern california examples, which may be horribly dated (cf supra): Thousand Oaks, Westwood, Newport Beach, Rancho Mission Viejo

[2] I owe the start of my tech career to this correlation in the reverse direction: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40531987

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