O hai, frendz. Music, with new Nils Frahm smoothness.

News:

• Saron: I am not a tinkerer. I am not a tinkerer either 🙂! Via jvns' tech blogs.

  I don’t code for code’s sake. That's just not me. I code to build something, to solve a problem. I don’t really do hobbies, because I find them pointless. I am not a tinkerer.

  So when I hear things like “curiosity drives innovation”, it really bothers me. Not because it’s wrong, but because it’s exclusive. It’s exclusive to the tinkerers, to the type of people who do things just because.

  Without the context of a clear problem to solve or a goal to achieve, answering the question “How does this work?” doesn’t speak to me. Because frankly, I just don’t care. My driver is not curiosity. I don’t ask questions for curiosity’s sake. I ask questions because I need the information to achieve a goal. [...]

  If you’re a tinkerer, and you found coding because you poked and prodded, that’s awesome. But that’s not the only, or even necessarily the best, way to have found it.

  Curiosity can indeed drive innovation, but it’s not the only driver.

• [fr/qc] IRIS : L’exportation d’électricité devra être collaborative ou ne sera pas.
• 3Blue1Brown: A visual introduction to the Fourier Transform.
• Scott Alexander: The invention of moral narrative.
• Kottke: A choir imitates a thunderstorm.
• Tech:
  • How Google Chrome’s new ad blocker works, interesting. HN. EDIT Feb. 6: good analysis by Don Marti. EDIT Feb. 13: more HN comments.
  • Nearly half of US households are now Amazon Prime subscribers, waaaat:

    While the cost of Prime membership —$99 per year for nonstudents and $12.99 per month— certainly adds to Amazon's bottom line, the company also sees a bump from Prime members in other significant ways. [...]

    Amazon Prime members spent an average of almost $1,300 per year on the platform, compared with $700 for nonsubscribers. [...]

    31% of Prime members visited Amazon on a daily basis, compared with 11% of other shoppers, according to Feedvisor. In addition, the firm found that 24% of Prime subscribers made a purchase on Amazon at least twice per week, while just 4% of non-Prime shoppers did the same.

• Comics:
  • jakelikesonions - Bazooka roulette: nobody wins.
  • SMBC: The fundamental [kids] equation.