V17's recent activity
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Comment on Buying facemasks in the hope of avoiding becoming permanently disabled due to long COVID in ~health
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Comment on Buying facemasks in the hope of avoiding becoming permanently disabled due to long COVID in ~health
V17 Link ParentAs someone who's had chronic fatigue syndrome for over a decade triggered either by EBV infection or by damaging my gut microbiome: welcome. CFS and long covid seem to be similar, so my hypothesis...As someone who's had chronic fatigue syndrome for over a decade triggered either by EBV infection or by damaging my gut microbiome: welcome.
CFS and long covid seem to be similar, so my hypothesis is that the illness is actually several sub-illnesses with different markers, some of which we still either don't know how to check or checking them is way too expensive to be practical so nobody has done the research yet.
Example: chronic fatigue syndrome generally brings gut dysbiosis, but it's not one specific type, so you're going to encounter patients who have zero detectable amounts of (what used to be called) lactobacillus, but also patients who have more lactobacillus than 99% of population, because some lactobacillus species act as opportunistic pathogens which can create or exacerbate cfs-like symptoms.
Some very early research suggests that there are likely going to be some common issues between different types of dysbiosis, like different types of bacteria overproducing similar metabolites that become toxic in high amount and causing a change in intestinal permeability. So eventually we may find that these different configurations of microbiomes are different, but when you look at their metabolomes, they're all going to have one specific issue in common. But we cannot accurately measure and analyze that yet.
Another example: Some research found that all tested CFS patients, of which there were like 7, had specific clear and clearly problematic issue with calcium metabolism on a cellular level. The way to detect it is to watch calcium channels on an individual cell. And the reason why they only tested a small sample of people and why it's still not used as a biomarker is because this test is incredibly expensive and impractical.
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Comment on The deadliest of all dead ends in the 3D printing industry in ~tech
V17 Link ParentI'm still waiting for FreeCAD to get out of its Blender 2.5x phase. There's so much good work already done in the application, but it needs a drastic reshuffling around, probably both on the...I guess I should also mention FreeCAD. It's about the only cross-platform FOSS option out there but it's pure rage fuel. A lone vigilante developer has created a fork to overhaul the entire UI and fix some big issues but getting his work pulled into the main repo has been met with some aggression from upstream. Who knows if it will ever get merged.
I'm still waiting for FreeCAD to get out of its Blender 2.5x phase. There's so much good work already done in the application, but it needs a drastic reshuffling around, probably both on the inside and in the interface. If we could get to the Blender 2.7 phase of "non-standard, kind of awkward, but stable, usable and reasonably featured", perhaps a small portion of the industry would start considering it potentially useful and start donating money for development, which could slowly snowball just like Blender did.
But so far I'm not very hopeful.
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Comment on The deadliest of all dead ends in the 3D printing industry in ~tech
V17 Link ParentI'd like to share my absolute hate towards Autodesk that grew inside me after using Fusion 360 for a while. You see, Fusion 360 was actually a pretty good application relative to the extremely...What rubs me the wrong way is how the prevailing programs are either Windows-only or run like garbage even on high-spec machines (hello Fusion 360).
I'd like to share my absolute hate towards Autodesk that grew inside me after using Fusion 360 for a while.
You see, Fusion 360 was actually a pretty good application relative to the extremely expensive or not so great competition, in my experience it ran pretty well too and it had a generous pricing model for both hobbyists (free with a lot of features) and startups under a certain revenue (cheap). So naturally we used it with a friend on a couple projects that we aimed to make commercial. I hate cloud-based apps, but there weren't really many viable alternatives.
We were naive and didn't realize that the whole time Autodesk aimed to do a bait and switch. I knew many people hate them, but I thought it was like Adobe hate, where people dislike subscription models and cancellation fees, but the overall service is still pretty good.
They gradually removed features from the free version. Most of them we didn't need, but it started to be concerning after a while. Then they removed cheap startup pricing (and made the full price slightly cheaper, but not nearly as cheap - and it's a subscription, so it adds up). Finally, and this is where I swore to avoid Autodesk at all costs, they removed collaborative editing.
This was one of the main features of Fusion 360 and one of the main reasons why we used it. We could take turns working on a model and it would seamlessly synchronize. The number of shared projects in the free version was always limited, but that's not a problem, we only needed to work on a couple.
They completely removed this feature and revoked access to all models that were not created by you. I needed to edit some stuff a year after we finished the models and realized I cannot access anything that I worked hours and hours on, because the models were started by my friend, even though I had full admin access before. And since Fusion 360 is a shitty cloud app, where you have no real control over anything, you do not have any offline backups that you could reasonably get to. The files can be exported as .step for example, but the native versions are cloud only.
I don't think I've ever been more disgusted with a piece of software than when I found this. Do not use cloud apps you have no control over for anything important, especially not by companies like Autodesk.
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Comment on The deadliest of all dead ends in the 3D printing industry in ~tech
V17 (edited )LinkAs a semi-regular user of 3d printing who's not in the community or watching news much I was mostly surprised that people have been still trying to push plastic 3D printing as a legit...As a semi-regular user of 3d printing who's not in the community or watching news much I was mostly surprised that people have been still trying to push plastic 3D printing as a legit manufacturing process. I mean, I actually used to use it like that, 3D printed amplifier cases, but that was because we sold one piece a month.
It just seems so obvious that FDM was always going to be prototype only aside from very low volumes, and SLA seems like the same with maybe an order of magnitude higher volumes, if you're making small stuff, because it's faster and more accurate, plus it can do things that are difficult with FDM, like overhangs, complicated internal shapes etc. Guy I know produces some accessories for vape pens (stands I think?) that he sells with mild success, for example.
The situation is different with metal powder printers I think, because there you can do stuff like drastically reduce the number of parts when producing complicated engine manifolds for example - those are relatively low-volume anyway and the assembly cost is probably high, so it actually helps. And the parts can be relatively large too iirc. This is already used in some jet plane motors. But the printers are only financially accessible for non-small companies.
But as for FDM, it seemed obvious from the start that most home users will never need them and companies will only use them for rapid prototyping, where their value is very high. I use shared printers in our local hackerspace, and in a community of DIY minded people who like to build things of various complexity, they're used all the time, for non-commercial and commercial projects alike. Spaces like that seem to be where they work the best.
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Comment on US President Joe Biden announces that he will not run for re-election in ~news
V17 Link ParentThere were situations around the world where last minute campaigns worked because basically there's was not enough time to lose momentum or do significant missteps, so it made the candidate seem...The whole idea of the primary system and dates is so that whoever becomes the candidate has an actual chance of running a campaign. This is just too late.
There were situations around the world where last minute campaigns worked because basically there's was not enough time to lose momentum or do significant missteps, so it made the candidate seem as if they have a surprising rocket start. I don't doubt that the democrat's political marketers thought about this. I do doubt that Kamala Harris is good enough though.
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Comment on /r/nixos enables automated moderation with Watchdog in ~tech
V17 Link ParentI have and I occasionally still do, but I do believe communities like that are quite rare on reddit nowadays. No arguments from me here, I'm a big proponent of having some forms of soft...It is clear from your reaction here that you personally have not experienced that on reddit. But I did, it is exactly why I become involved in moderating on reddit at the time.
I have and I occasionally still do, but I do believe communities like that are quite rare on reddit nowadays.
That isn't unique to reddit. That is the sad reality of anywhere on the internet where people can interact with a relative low barrier of entry. The reason you don't see it here on Tildes is mostly because of scale and the fact you still need to have an invitation.
No arguments from me here, I'm a big proponent of having some forms of soft gatekeeping (can even just be using outdated looking webforums instead of something modern and inviting) for precisely this reason.
For OSS projects where you want user interaction, you do need a relative low barrier of entry.
I'm not entirely convinced. I think the question here is "do people who require a super low barrier of entry contribute to a relatively nerdy tech project in a meaningful way?". My experience says "probably not", but I have no real data to back that up. Purposefully making contribution mildly more difficult may raise the average quality, but it may also hurt the public image even if it does - in other words I don't hold a firm opinion that this should be the way, but I'm not convinced that what you say is definitely the way either.
Does that mean that there are no instances of people on those roles becoming assholes or going on a powertrip? Of course not, that does happen. But it does really irk me that for a lot of people that seems to be what mods are by definition.
I don't think it's by definition. After all, I'm using a platform made by an ex reddit admin. But it seems to me that as soon a subreddit grows over certain size, the mods become jaded, heavy handed and hard to deal with. And after some subreddits became de facto unmoderated for a while as a protest against the API changes, I watched various discussions on whatever topics (since basically everything was allowed) in subs frequented by mods like /r/theoryofreddit, and thanks to that I realized that there really are moderators of 10+ huge subreddits who have a savior complex and are every bit as delusional and in too deep as stereotypical reddit haters claim. So the mod sanity spectrum is really wide and the ones on the wrong side just stand out much more.
Then again I don't think this has to be the case for something as small as /r/nixos. It's just that specifically with community mods on a platform like reddit, the quality really seems to be quite hit or miss.
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Comment on /r/nixos enables automated moderation with Watchdog in ~tech
V17 Link ParentI agree with you in theory, but in practice I think it heavily depends on the type of community. Volunteers are great when they run good and interesting communities where they personally value the..."Volunteers can't be trusted", ignoring the thousands of organizations, clubs, etc over the world that literally run on volunteers. Even more baffling of an argument when you consider it is made in an OSS context where a majority of decisions are made by volunteers.
I agree with you in theory, but in practice I think it heavily depends on the type of community. Volunteers are great when they run good and interesting communities where they personally value the community and enjoy being part of it. But this is often not the case on reddit, where discussions tend to be less deep and interesting because they're short lived and you get a constant influx of newbies, and a lot of the time spent moderating is just shoveling shit. That seems to attract or create stereotypical jaded reddit mods.
Then again, I'm of the slightly radical opinion that if a community needs to have a CoC (that the bot is supposedly enforcing), it's already fucked, so maybe I don't exactly represent the common opinion.
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Comment on /r/nixos enables automated moderation with Watchdog in ~tech
V17 (edited )Link ParentGentoo was cool before Linux as a whole was (mainstream) cool? I remember it being the trendy thing before social media became super mainstream and before reddit-like annoying people and bad faith...Funny that I was a Gentoo user for years and to this day Gentoo has a pretty good and civil community. Wonder why Linux elitists with "strong opinions" never got there.
Gentoo was cool before Linux as a whole was (mainstream) cool? I remember it being the trendy thing before social media became super mainstream and before reddit-like annoying people and bad faith arguments became common. There were always overly aggressive people in linux and dev communities, but imo it wasn't that bad anywhere at that time.
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Comment on Sweden paying grandparents to babysit in ~finance
V17 Link ParentWorth noting that this paper does not compare deaths among the elderly specifically. It looks at excess mortality in general, which does not tell the whole picture. Lowered excess mortality was...Worth noting that this paper does not compare deaths among the elderly specifically. It looks at excess mortality in general, which does not tell the whole picture. Lowered excess mortality was not entirely uncommon for example in zero covid countries at that time - it definitely indicates some success though.
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Comment on Sweden paying grandparents to babysit in ~finance
V17 Link ParentYeah, sorry, that was meant as tongue-in-cheek.Yeah, sorry, that was meant as tongue-in-cheek.
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Comment on IVF alone can’t save us from a looming fertility crisis in ~health
V17 Link ParentI realize you're expressing frustration with the current economic system, but I believe it's unreasonable to call a situation that already brings real problems in some societies (Japan, UK),...I'm so, so sick of hearing about this fake "crisis". It's literally only a crisis because our economy is constructed so as to require perpetual growth.
I realize you're expressing frustration with the current economic system, but I believe it's unreasonable to call a situation that already brings real problems in some societies (Japan, UK), cannot be solved quickly and exists within our very real political and economic systems that most people do not wish to change and most people who tried did not succeed as "fake".
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Comment on IVF alone can’t save us from a looming fertility crisis in ~health
V17 Link ParentMaybe you realize that and you're only talking about the US, but this is an extremely western-centric (and mostly specifically USA-centric) point of view. The problem of "who will pay for pensions...I understand the concern, but I think it's a very solvable problem, particularly given that the aging people currently hold an enormous amount of wealth relative to the younger people.
Maybe you realize that and you're only talking about the US, but this is an extremely western-centric (and mostly specifically USA-centric) point of view. The problem of "who will pay for pensions and healthcare for the elderly" exists in many countries where what you say is not the case and the elderly are already relatively poor.
Also aging population brings other issues, like the healthcare needs suddenly become much higher for the same number of people. Brits often blame Tories for irreparably screwing up the NHS, and there's a point to it, but the core problem is not attempts at solving problems through partial privatization, the core problem is nobody prepared the system for significantly increased needs of an aging population. And it won't get better any time soon because it cannot be solved just by throwing money at the problem.
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Comment on Microsoft laid off a DEI team, and its lead wrote an internal email blasting how DEI is 'no longer business critical' in ~tech
V17 (edited )Link ParentI think it's fair to say that for most studies saying the DEI increases profitability you're likely to find one that says it does not. One of your citations is McKinsey. My country is currently...Basically all research shows that diverse companies are more profitable, innovate more, make better decisions, are more likely to grow market share, more likely to capture new markets, and attract better and more talent. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 It's a bit of an irk of mine when people talk about DEI as not being profitable or justifying something being cut because an executive decided it wasn't making them money because those are objectively incorrect statements, it's just that most business isn't run by purely objective individuals. They cut DEI because they didn't like DEI, not because it was costing them money.
I think it's fair to say that for most studies saying the DEI increases profitability you're likely to find one that says it does not.
One of your citations is McKinsey. My country is currently considering implementing gender quotas for boards of large state companies and I happen to be friends with a guy who sits in a government expert committee for analyzing the potential main and side effects of proposed laws (his field is economics and regional development). As part of his work on this proposal he talked to one of chief consultants at McKinsey who told him that whether specifically gender diversity brings any positives with relations to profitability and better decisions is unknown and unprovable, the data as a whole does not point significantly either way.
If I recall correctly, the actual numbers that McKinsey publishes reflect this, though for some reason not the conclusion that their DEI consultants write based on the data.
I do not know anything about other types of diversity, like ethnicity, since my country is very ethnically homogenous and this is not a topic here.
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Comment on Sweden paying grandparents to babysit in ~finance
V17 Link ParentTo be fair, babysitting will expose the grandparents to more illnesses.To be fair, babysitting will expose the grandparents to more illnesses.
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Comment on Sweden paying grandparents to babysit in ~finance
V17 (edited )Link ParentThere is a line beyond which if you ignore competent people in relevant fields telling you "this is a bad idea because you will be killing off old people", it should be said that you threw the...It failed but afaik it wasn't about throwing elderly under a train.
There is a line beyond which if you ignore competent people in relevant fields telling you "this is a bad idea because you will be killing off old people", it should be said that you threw the elderly under a train as a part of the responsibility you have when setting up public policy. As I remember it there were enough warnings that this was going to be the result and that the healthcare system won't be able to help.
To be clear I don't think that's this is in opposition with this new law in any way, it's not like they're both part of a systematic long term plan.
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Comment on DuckDuckGo seems like a significantly worse search engine than Google despite SEO bloat, and I think community discussions mislead people by omitting that in ~tech
V17 Link ParentI wonder if this is language specific as well. I just tried looking up statistics about public transport use in a czech city, and Google was more accurate - found more articles and press releases...I wonder if this is language specific as well. I just tried looking up statistics about public transport use in a czech city, and Google was more accurate - found more articles and press releases on the topic. However most of my searches are in english and I still find DDG to be worse.
Google image search is nearly always better in my experience. Anything I try to look up, the results match the query more and they're more diverse, whereas DDG sometimes shows 10+ copies of the same image that I'm not really interested in.
Often times when I'm looking for one specific thing, where there's a ton of semi-related results that I don't want to see and one correct one, Google is the one to find it and put it somewhere around the top. Can't remember a specific example right now.
Where DDG is almost always better is searching for torrents. But I don't need that too often.
I use DDG as the default search engine, but I'd say I redo about a quarter to a third searches with !g.
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Comment on u/RNG investigates bitcoin town in ~health
V17 Link ParentIn my experience this is not exactly true, though I know very little about MEMS microphones, which I assume are used in all decent phones now. Even with cheap electrets for a few cents you usually...In my experience this is not exactly true, though I know very little about MEMS microphones, which I assume are used in all decent phones now. Even with cheap electrets for a few cents you usually get response < 20 Hz, it's just attenuated (but with 17 Hz it can be just a few dB), imo the question is more how steeply the ADC on the MEMS chip filters it out.
Personally I believe anything over 50 Hz is safe, especially with something more expensive like a Pixel.
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Comment on u/RNG investigates bitcoin town in ~health
V17 Link ParentI know, but the insulation can have a pretty decent effect and I have no idea how well it works in those houses specifically. It depends on more factors and I know very little about that.I know, but the insulation can have a pretty decent effect and I have no idea how well it works in those houses specifically. It depends on more factors and I know very little about that.
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Comment on u/RNG investigates bitcoin town in ~health
V17 Link ParentMade just a simple spectrum analysis. Due to the method of obtaining the noise it's hard to say whether the peaks at 17 Hz and 116 Hz are real - and take any observation of the sound in general...- Exemplary
Made just a simple spectrum analysis.
Due to the method of obtaining the noise it's hard to say whether the peaks at 17 Hz and 116 Hz are real - and take any observation of the sound in general with a grain of salt, we do not know the frequency response of your phone's mic and the video recording application does some sound processing itself. The peaks specifically may just be phone handling noise or wind noise. If they are real, the 17 Hz peak is likely too quiet to matter (this borderline infrasound can have very weird and unpleasant effect on humans, but it has to be really loud, much louder than this).
But the 116 Hz peak is bad and looks like it may be real since there's a smaller harmonic peak at approximately double the frequency. That's very audible, travels through walls and possibly ground and is difficult to block with stuff like large acoustic (outdoor) walls, the type that's sometimes put around noisy roads.
But even if it's not real, the spectrum clearly shows that the sound is relatively bass-heavy. The non-bass content in the broad hill from 500 Hz up can be attenuated by good windows and walls (possibly not much by cheap wooden houses, don't know much about US construction, around here almost everything is made with bricks) and also by common earplugs. May be annoying, but doable.
The large hill between 40 Hz and 400 Hz is the issue. That part of the spectrum is difficult to block both by obstacles, because they need to be proportional to the sound's wavelength in size (the wavelength at 50 Hz is almost 7 meters), and by absorption (acoustic treatment on/in house walls), because you just need a ton of mass or hitech solutions, so it's expensive. A portion of it is likely going to travel through ground nearby. Most earplugs also block these bass/midbass frequencies almost 10x less than high frequencies, so that won't help you sleep well either.
It's impossible to really explain why in a short comment, but it's basically what the other person said.
The tl;dr is that apart from needing a different treatment for each person there are other problems: for example most probiotics do not colonize your gut, so they're only effective as long as you're taking them. This can still be useful because they often affect the abundance of other bacteria in your gut (positively or negatively) and this change may persist. But it seems that often targeted prebiotics and changing your diet in general are more effective. And sometimes antibiotics are the best course of action.
I think the situation is going to change a few years (to accumulate data) after accurate nextgen sequencing of the gut microbiome becomes financially viable enough for both common people and scientists, and we're quite close to that.