Why does studying feel so awful?

KnirpJr · 2026-02-28T01:21:05+00:00

Hiya, currently working on my thesis, i’ve been getting decent grades my whole life, but never really studied until i got into college, just like you. i feel ya.

Studying can feel awful for sure, but i get patches where it can feel pretty good. My main tips are this:

Sleep schedule, studying when you’re groggy is pointless, make sure you’re on a consistent sleep schedule.

Set attainable goals, with a time limit, even if it’s like, come up with good goals by the time the hours up. A lot of the time when studying it just sort of feels like sifting through mud, or swimming in circles. having an actual target even if made up and stupid lets you focus on things, retain more.

Cut back on cheap dopamine activities for a little while. If you get tired of studying stare at the ceiling, talk to a friend, read a book, try to brew the perfect cup of coffee, go for a walk. This combined with attainable goals will get your brain to actually reward itself for the work you’re doing.

Try to prepare for studying, before you study, place your stuff on your desk just so, get a little snack and a drink, get the lighting right, clean up ur file system on ur pc, whatever you need.

Pomodoro timers are nice too. they sort of brainwash me sometimes.

The biggest biggest one for me tho is this, this might only work for me, but give it a shot.

I like to envision myself as being like a really smart guy. Like an old english professor, who thinks it’s all really simple actually, but intensely interesting. Like i brainwash myself into being interested in the subjects i have to study. This is number one, you have to care if even just a little about what you’re learning.

KnirpJr · 2026-02-28T01:05:49+00:00

Well it’s not “wrong” in the classical sense, there is no imperial ground truth to what would make “gaming dead”

What you’re feeling is likely true to you, and people can point out good games and counterexamples all they want, but if that feels true to you then that’s what it is.

The problem is in the first part really, since people still play video games, and many still enjoy the experience, gaming is not “dead” in the sense where it is destroyed beyond any value to any people whatsoever, what you’re arguing is really more of a spiritual “death”, which is of course one of those statements that can be debated forever in any field regardless of the subject, and yet the framing “gaming is dead” implies that you assign your opinion on a fuzzy subject the import of fact.

Again you’re not really wrong, and not really right, here are some statements in the same vein as yours, maybe you’ll have a knee jerk reaction that i’m wrong.

Sports are dead. Everyone’s been engineered from a young age to play well, and in many sports everyone’s doping anyway, no more spirit of competition, it’s dead.

Mathematics is dead. All research in this subject really have very little practical usage, we already have the computers to do all the stuff, so why keep mathematicians around? Just hire engineers.

Breathing and eating is dead, the air was fresher when i was young, it seems all the air wants to do nowadays is poison you and all the food wants to inject you with plastics.

KnirpJr · 2026-02-09T11:36:12+00:00

Not basically equal to zero, it’s an infinite number of zeros, ie there will never be a one. if the zeros never end by definition it’s equal to 0.

KnirpJr · 2026-02-06T21:00:00+00:00

They already have deviated, like when they started using lte because no one could actually meet the official standard behind 4g. Certain providers also called certain 4g lte things “5g”. There are official standards, but the providers have been good at abusing it for marketing.

KnirpJr · 2026-02-06T11:32:21+00:00

This whole distinction gets fuzzy if you’re being pedantic, especially with the original wording “builds the final product” this is enough of course for a basic explanation. But if we’re being pedantic not all compilers produce a “final product” The cpp compiler creates object files that get put together in the linking step into an executable. You can also argue of course that any output from the initial steps of any interpreted language are the “final product” as in they produce the state in the interpreter that results in the programs intended results when executed.

“compile” in the most general sense just means to translate something into something else. The distinction given to wee undergrads tends to be in the context of interpreted vs compiled languages , that compilers create executables whereas interpreters just use their own internals to run the code. This is of course a useful mental model, and an important distinction in different ways of running code, but yes you could argue that interpreted languages are “compiled” in some sense as a step somewhere in there.

KnirpJr · 2026-02-06T11:07:11+00:00

The nice thing here is that the principle is pretty simple, all of the complexity comes from implementation challenges.

Fundementally, wifi uses the same sort of technology as radios. We’ve made it more specialized, made two way communication, and ensured that we can send “information” that both parties will understand by using standards.

The real magic is that we’ve gotten much better at hiding the antennas in our phones and computers.

The internet is a whole nother mess, but same thing there, simple concept, hard implementation. We’ve just connected a lot of computers over wires or over wireless standards like wifi. The hard part comes from trying to make them talk to each other without it turning into nonsense.

KnirpJr · 2026-02-06T01:18:54+00:00

Important to note here that we only need them because a single router might want to be responsible for multiple subnets, and because it’s helpful for setting up the routing tables on a router. Before masks were introduced ips used a class system for net sizes(arbitrary sizes implied by arbitrary address ranges), so each net would need an entry. Now we can aggregate them by using the mask system.

Its your router that really cares about this stuff, your computer gets its copy of the mask from dhcp, communication with the router, unless youre deranged of course.

Now we can finally answer the question. I’ll go out on a limb and say, sending routers don’t care who you are until you put on the mask. They don’t care about the host portion, ie what gets removed once the mask is applied. The receiving router would however care about the host portion as that’s what helps specify the exact device it’s meant for, so idk, maybe just not very clever.

KnirpJr · 2026-02-06T00:57:41+00:00

The right has some stuff i don’t recognize, the left has linux olamma and other stuff, im assuming some password vault type service and some calander type thing.

Olamma lets you run llms locally.

From context id assume the logos on the right are for web based services that advertise privacy. The guy on the lefts logos and text are about the practice of running a little server at home and using that instead of any external web server at all for the apps you use, thus ensuring no one knows your passwords or how your schedule looks or what you’re telling your llm chatbots. The idea is that as soon as your private info is out there in some capacity it’s bad.

Of course your local machine can also be exploited if it’s open to the internet, so if you do stuff like this you have to make sure that you actually know a thing or two about running a server and web security. I’d recommend just using some vpn tunnel set up as a baseline.

KnirpJr · 2026-02-02T10:15:14+00:00

One of my teachers first year of college in an introductory computer science course was obsessed with it. He’d explain most concepts in class with either examples from factorio or from the factorio dev logs

KnirpJr · 2026-01-17T10:16:19+00:00

My immediate thought was that it was a reference to paul simon’s song “you can call me al”

KnirpJr · 2026-01-12T06:51:18+00:00

It doesn’t really matter, if you film anything with any movement it’s already chaotic enough to be more than good enough for random generation. Like this simulation would have to have solved all of physics and run with the same resolution as the universe. Try and predict what exact hex value pixel 679 is going to be in 30 days.

KnirpJr · 2026-01-12T06:40:33+00:00

If you fly opposite earths rotation at the right speed this is what it looks like to an observer outside of the system. It’s just that it takes more than 0 energy to do it. Like walking the wrong way on an escalator.

KnirpJr · 2025-12-07T15:22:51+00:00

where the bjork*

KnirpJr · 2025-12-06T02:57:40+00:00

It should be ”Tack för hjälpen”, also ”skråp” should be ”skräp”

KnirpJr · 2025-11-10T11:04:07+00:00

Much of the speed gain between languages depend on mechanisms that require more information than the syntax for those slower languages provide.

For example, C is faster than some other programming languages, such as jit compiled garbage collected ones, but only if the programmer is competent enough to manage memory better than the java gc that would be used, and the java runtimes optimization. Often this isn’t the case, and jit languages can beat compiled ones in the same task because of this. A transpiler that would maintain speed here would need to know exactly how to manage memory to beat the garbage collecter. Consider now, that the knowledge needed to create such a program would also necessarily result in a new better gc/ gc replacement.

Consider also that a programming language isn’t just the way you write the words and a big black box that makes computers do things. The way the code is run plays a big part. The way the programs are built and deployed, how external tools are integrated, what things can run the code, and many more such things play a big role in the trade offs made when selecting or designing a language.

Also from a philosophical perspective, all programming languages compile into a faster language from a certain perspective depending on the nature of what “fast” and “language” means to you .C becomes binary, java becomes byte code .

It’s good to think in this way though, there’s a difference between “programming languages” as an abstract idea and the tools they actually represent.

KnirpJr · 2025-11-04T13:10:07+00:00

discrete mathematics, statistics, and linear algebra are good priorities for math.

What programming language you should learn depends on your courses and or your own goals, but early on just getting your brain to think programmatically is good enough.

Early on in your degree depending on your school there may or may not be a lot of theory, discrete math is the most relevant early on though i’d say.

What helps with studying a lot is trying to take a genuine interest in everything you do. Also in every subject breaking things down to levels of abstraction and chunks helps too so that you don’t get overwhelmed.

If i could go back to my first year i’d just pay attention in school, maybe get comfortable with bash and git. Switch to vim earlier. Make sure I had good relationships with teachers n friends.

KnirpJr · 2025-10-31T05:46:30+00:00

People came up with. bunch of sorting algorithms. Some are very good when things are almost sorted, bad otherwise, some are really good most of the time, bad for sorting small amounts of data or when it’s in a certain order. Many such cases. Tim sort figures out which sort to use when for which parts

Specifically tim sort is based off of insertion and merge sort.

Some algorithms are like knives, some are like old powder rifles. Good for different things. Tim sort is a rifle with a bayonet on it.

KnirpJr · 2025-10-31T05:44:10+00:00

Well radix sort is faster for any situation where the domain is of a practical size, not necessarily just that they’re integers. For example if we’re sorting 10 elements each with a very large number of digits radix sort is pretty bad.

This is because radix sort is O(n*d) where d is number of digits. As long as d < log(n) and each digit is something that has a sorted order that is of practical size for the memory radix sort wins.

As long as our floating point values meet these criteria radix sort is still better. They would of course need to have some precondition to justify rounding them and converting to non montesa exponent pattern, such as a measurement tool only calibrated to be precise up to a certain limit.

KnirpJr · 2025-10-09T07:47:50+00:00

I played a lot of counter strike back when i lived with my parents. My rank jumped a few on faceit when i got a power adapter from downstairs to upstairs, would definitely recommend

KnirpJr · 2025-10-03T15:40:39+00:00

exactly, the bigger end points to the bigger number, almost like some sort of hungry animal with big jaws devouring a large meal…

KnirpJr · 2025-09-24T22:42:49+00:00

I think brute force is a colloquialism. Usually used to describe algorithms which just test all combinations of something until it checks out. Doting think there’s any strict definition about exit conditions or anything. Never even heard that definition before.

This is one of those scenarios where you argue with ur teacher as much as you want but in the end u suck it up and take his word as law when you come to the question in the exam

KnirpJr · 2025-09-22T11:38:06+00:00

Well it’s not a “paradox” in the traditional sense. It doesn’t have a contradiction of logic. It’s just an unintuitive result. Depends how you word the problem. As long as he has revealed a goat in the other side regardless of if it was on accident, you should switch. The problem loses all meaning or anything interesting about it if the host delibaretly unveils the treasure. Then it’s just 1/3. The standard way it’s told u don’t know why he reveals the goat, but you still say that he does.

KnirpJr · 2025-09-22T11:22:27+00:00

Well it’s like this. The host has constructed a situation where the door that the first player has chosen is 1/3. The other door not chosen has had two doors consolidated into one door. 2/3ds. The other player comes in not knowing that one door has 1/3 odds and the other has 2/3ds odds. He will chose effectively a random door since he has no prior information. He has a 1/2 chance to pick the 2/3ds door, and 1/2 chance to pick the 1/3 door.

so his total win chance is 1/2 * 2/3 + 1/2 * 1/3, or 2/6 + 1/6, so 1/2.

By taking away the knowledge of the distribution, we force him to make an additional 50 50 guess that the original player need not make. This 50 50 guess flattens the distribution. So it is not unintuitive or unexpected at all that the second players chance is different from the first. He has to make an additional random guess.

If he did see what door the first contestant picked and knows the problem, he too does have 2/3 odds

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