kacey's recent activity

  1. Comment on New EV batteries are making electric cars cheaper and safer in ~transport

    kacey
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    Lithium iron phosphate batteries are often also used in static, whole house battery systems too for much the same reason: they’re extremely difficult to set on fire, are cheaper, and specific...

    Lithium iron phosphate batteries are often also used in static, whole house battery systems too for much the same reason: they’re extremely difficult to set on fire, are cheaper, and specific energy density is not a concern.

    It’s definitely a neat piece of tech! Good to hear that the Chinese auto makers capitalized on it.

    7 votes
  2. Comment on Help finding shoes in ~life.style

    kacey
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    I’m not sure if the style fits your tastes, but Jim Green makes some excellent quality, durable, leather boots, for a reasonable price. I have a pair of the barefoot African Rangers that I hope...

    I’m not sure if the style fits your tastes, but Jim Green makes some excellent quality, durable, leather boots, for a reasonable price. I have a pair of the barefoot African Rangers that I hope will last a decade+.

    1 vote
  3. Comment on Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead in ~comp

    kacey
    Link Parent
    Nah, I think I can be annoyed at the Rust leadership folks leading in such a way that they burn out and take a decent chunk of their project’s credibility with them. I am, however, hundreds of...

    Nah, I think I can be annoyed at the Rust leadership folks leading in such a way that they burn out and take a decent chunk of their project’s credibility with them. I am, however, hundreds of times more annoyed at the Linux kernel devs for their behaviour and lack of foresight which could ultimately doom the project to corporate ownership within my lifetime.

    (edit) To clarify: getting Rust into the kernel in any capacity has never been a technical challenge. The issue has always — clearly — been the maintainers. Not understanding that, and failing to have a plan for dealing with it, is annoying. That said, Rust + an acceptable community is (imo) the best proposal anyone has come forward with for keeping the Linux kernel owned by humans rather than megacorps, so the kernel maintainers should be seeing the writing on the wall and helping see it through.

    4 votes
  4. Comment on Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead in ~comp

    kacey
    Link Parent
    Yup, agreed. I think the kernel maintainers have more to lose, and should be taking efforts like this more seriously (Rust was purpose built to enable more people to contribute to complex,...

    Both sides have good points, but those good points are being hidden by what it looks stubbornness and lack of communications skills

    Yup, agreed. I think the kernel maintainers have more to lose, and should be taking efforts like this more seriously (Rust was purpose built to enable more people to contribute to complex, non-GC’d codebases), but marcan has made some missteps too.

    As perhaps a separate note, it also sounds like the stress of being a public figure in charge of a popular product in the general population was also causing him a lot of stress (eg getting stalked, dealing with overwork), which couldn’t have helped matters.

    The whole situation sucks. Everyone loses, now.

    6 votes
  5. Comment on Overfitting to theories of overfitting in ~science

    kacey
    Link Parent
    No worries; my apologies for calling you out inappropriately! I'm just being overly sensitive, it seems. Makes sense! I suppose my (ancient 😅) education predated that graph, and my cohort seemed...

    I really didn't think I was coming off as that much of a hater, so sorry if my comment was worded that way. I'm working on my masters in CS, and I think it makes sense if CS people take statements more literally, due to the nature of their work. What you said is a lot more derogatory than anything I said, so I'd prefer not to go in that direction. However, maybe the fact that I didn't think I was perpetuating any harmful stereotypes is illustrative?

    No worries; my apologies for calling you out inappropriately! I'm just being overly sensitive, it seems.

    My reading of this article is that the main point is that bias-variance tradeoff is not really a good rule, because it's not always true. While this is technically correct, my understanding from masters level ML coursework is that this is usually taught to illustrate certain concepts, not serve as a rule. The author is correct that there is no inherent tradeoff based on the math, but whether it should be taught or not is a different story. If you understand bias-variance, even a cursory exploration of ML techniques will show you that the amount of actual tradeoff can vary a lot depending on the situation. He calls it a boogeyman, but the reason that boogeyman exists is because it seems like most ML learners go through a phase of thinking that if fitting is good, more fitting is better.

    Makes sense! I suppose my (ancient 😅) education predated that graph, and my cohort seemed to grasp the concept of overfitting well enough -- but the entire field has been flipped on its head in the meantime. So I've really no notion of what a modern learner's experience is like.

    Best of luck with your degree, btw! Hope grad school is treating you well.

    1 vote
  6. Comment on Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead in ~comp

    kacey
    Link Parent
    I think that's missing a lot of nuance, but yeah, that sounds like Marcan? IMO: I'm annoyed by both sides. If a coworker called something I'd worked on for years "cancer", then moved to block any...

    I think that's missing a lot of nuance, but yeah, that sounds like Marcan?

    IMO: I'm annoyed by both sides. If a coworker called something I'd worked on for years "cancer", then moved to block any contributions I was trying to make, I'd want nothing to do with them. For an organization which is literally slowly dying (aging out) due to its community being so toxic that no one -- except for corporations -- will put up with them, facilitating all of this heated bickering is absurd.

    13 votes
  7. Comment on Overfitting to theories of overfitting in ~science

    kacey
    Link Parent
    Please note that I'm not involved in anything machine learning related, I just like math and dislike overly broad statements 😅 I had upvoted this post a while back because it's nice to see...

    Please note that I'm not involved in anything machine learning related, I just like math and dislike overly broad statements 😅 I had upvoted this post a while back because it's nice to see educators in technical disciplines share their experiences, but your comment made me go back and properly read it to understand whether it truly "deserved" my updoot.

    I dug into the article proper, and I'm not sure I understand your concern? It looks like the author has two theses:

    1. "Model Complexity" is not a well defined term, so using it in a technical context is problematic: students could draw a lot of conclusions from it, including incorrect ones.
    2. One such incorrect conclusion is that model "size" is equivalent to model "complexity", which per the author's cited examples, has empirical evidence to the contrary: increases in parameter count decrease prediction error on the test set.

    That seems reasonable on the face of it, but maybe you have some evidence demonstrating that model complexity has a well understood meaning in the general public which could motivate using that graph ...? And I didn't get the impression that the author is arguing against teaching about overfitting, just that said graph doesn't explain it in a way that sets students up for success.

    [...] is this one of those situations where the kind of people who are attracted to computer science are often the kind of people who take every statement as an inviolable rule?
    [...]
    I wonder if it's the case where he is smart and all his students are smart, so he feels like he can skip the generalizations and go directly to the more advanced concepts.

    OK so moving away from article critiques, but I'm getting the vibe that you have a personal bone to pick with this author? Even if so, it'd be cool of you not to perpetuate negative stereotypes about "people who are attracted to computer science" and focus on the author instead of generalizing? I'm often proximate to colleagues who dunk on autistic people, and that statement sounds like a neighbour to the very common "all these autist CS nerds can't read the room" line. It's not terribly pleasant to encounter IRL, and I'd prefer not to see more of it in tildes.

    Totally fair if I'm reading between the lines incorrectly; I'm sure you weren't trying to paint with such broad strokes.

    2 votes
  8. Comment on Breakfast for eight billion in ~enviro

    kacey
    (edited )
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    That’s an excellent article; thank you. It’s always disheartening to me when people think of farming as something one does with a dozen hens and an acre of leafy vegetables (or else, a heard of...

    That’s an excellent article; thank you. It’s always disheartening to me when people think of farming as something one does with a dozen hens and an acre of leafy vegetables (or else, a heard of cattle on unproductive grassland). Civilization has grown strong primarily on a diet of rice, wheat, and potatoes, so romanticized notions of feeding the world alone with nut trees and goats would doom the poorest of us to starvation.

    Flip side: although that article only mentions it in passing, just to underline it, we’re burning through non-renewable resources and massively affecting the ecosphere. I only learned this recently, but it shouldn’t have been surprising: by fixing more nitrogen than ever has been before (and dumping it into the ocean) we’re throwing enormous wrenches into the nitrogen cycle. Further, many aquifers that we’ve tapped for agriculture are drying up — that deep water took thousands of years to get where it is (or even longer in the case of confined aquifers), and we’ve pumped it dramatically faster than it can be replenished. Finally, we lean extremely heavily on phosphorus fertilization, which is nearly entirely sourced from mines (ie non-renewably). Problematically, we then dump all that phosphorus into the ocean (either via agricultural runoff, or by not capturing it from out sewage streams) where we’ll never get it back.

    (the above is basically a digression on planetary boundaries; that Wikipedia article does a better job of motivating them than my paragraph, for anyone interested)

    I suppose my thesis is that I’m concerned that there isn’t much education on this topic. Consequently, people aren’t concerned about known, extremely dangerous factors, and instead fixate on issues that can safely be deferred or ignored until we’re done addressing the immediate problems. To analogize, it often feels like people are worried about what colour they’ll paint the dressing room while the house is burning down, which as a resident of the house is concerning.

    7 votes
  9. Comment on Looking for guidance: Cost of ADHD medication in ~health.mental

    kacey
    Link Parent
    In case it’s a helpful resource to folks, Brian David Gilbert wrote a good, comedic overview of a lot of this terminology.

    In case it’s a helpful resource to folks, Brian David Gilbert wrote a good, comedic overview of a lot of this terminology.

    4 votes
  10. Comment on The American physicians are healing themselves with Ozempic in ~health

    kacey
    Link Parent
    Just quoting your article: And quoting mine re. deaths attributable to obesity: So in response to your statement, malnutrition is bad but obesity is worse (thousands vs hundreds of thousands...

    Eating nothing but mozzarella sticks and cookies also creates a large amount of long term harm. I'm certainly not qualified to say which is worse - it's just a different type of harm. In theory, semaglutide on its own could be a form of harm reduction (assuming malnutrition is less harmful than obesity).

    Just quoting your article:

    Between 1999 and 2020, 93,244 older adults died from malnutrition.

    And quoting mine re. deaths attributable to obesity:

    The estimated number of annual deaths attributable to obesity among US adults is approximately 280000 based on HRs from all subjects and 325000 based on HRs from only nonsmokers and never-smokers.

    So in response to your statement, malnutrition is bad but obesity is worse (thousands vs hundreds of thousands dead/year). And after skimming your link I didn’t see any notes on separating out comorbidity of obesity and malnutrition, so they could have obliquely been measuring the same factors.

    But if, like all the anecdotes I've seen, it just results in worse eating patterns, then that's a much bigger problem in the long term that needs to be addressed.
    […]
    someone will point to this in 5-10 years and say "see? It doesn't work", because no one put in the effort of fixing the overall issue(s) while the harm was being reduced.

    Fair concern imo. I feel that unhealthy people living to see 2035 is better than ~2000000 to ~3000000 fathers, mothers, siblings and friends dropping dead from a preventable illness, so I’m firmly on the side of giving everyone drugs while we figure out how to help them long term, since the alternative is literally letting them drop dead.

    To be clear, here are my positions:

    • every person afflicted by obesity that is not responsive to lifestyle change treatment should immediately start pharmaceutical treatment for it (if eligible),
    • in the long term this will cause fewer people to be dead, but those people will now be unhealthy and suffer from other illnesses,
    • all moral panic about pharmaceutical therapies in obesity treatment are inherently unethical,
    • we need to figure out how to help people long term. That requires difficult changes, but it’s better to have the opportunity to change than to be six feet under.

    ^ totally fair if you disagree on any of those points, but I’m happy to back them up as necessary. I think your position is that semaglutide is bad because people are ill (but not dead) after taking it, and I disagree that death is preferable to illness. Definitely probable that I’m misreading your statement though, because imo that’s a brutal stance to take. I’m almost certainly reading what you’re saying incorrectly.

    13 votes
  11. Comment on The American physicians are healing themselves with Ozempic in ~health

    kacey
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    No comments on the comparison to paraplegics. Yep, it is. Having obesity creates a large amount of long term harm to your body. Doctors will first tell a patient to eat better and exercise,...

    No comments on the comparison to paraplegics.

    If that's the goal, and the patient starts eating less healthily when taking the medication, is the medication really achieving it's goal?

    Yep, it is. Having obesity creates a large amount of long term harm to your body. Doctors will first tell a patient to eat better and exercise, because the side effects for that treatment plan are minimal, whereas the benefit is extremely large. If that treatment plan does not work (for example, roughly all of the time in the US), they move on to alternative plans, such as prescribing semaglutide and exercise. Presumably if that is ineffective they will move on to gastric bypass surgery.

    Just underlining this: obesity is a disease, which kills several hundred thousand people yearly in the USA. Any argument that a treatment which cures obesity is more harmful than obesity needs to contend with the fact that leaving it untreated kills you. Most side effects are less severe than death.

    Here is a document intended for practitioners to explain how and when to prescribe semaglutide. The section titled “ Enhancing Healthcare Team Outcomes” explains that a comprehensive treatment plan also involves a dietician, for what it’s worth, so doctors are trying to make long term change for folks. It’s just that we can’t cure the ills of modern society with a pill.

    9 votes
  12. Comment on Inside inventor Simone Giertz’s small Los Angeles home, 58sqm/630sqft in ~design

    kacey
    Link Parent
    Fwiw, I live in a ~400 sqft apartment in North America, and it’s pretty small (but I make it work — a foldable bed helps a lot). I’m not sure if this is the case elsewhere in the world, but we...

    Fwiw, I live in a ~400 sqft apartment in North America, and it’s pretty small (but I make it work — a foldable bed helps a lot). I’m not sure if this is the case elsewhere in the world, but we report cabinets, countertops, and the inside of interior walls as “floor space”. Effectively, everything from the exterior walls in is counted. Newer units often come with their own washer/dryer, too, which takes up some additional space (ours tend to be enormous and require venting to the outdoors).

    Not sure if all that’s common elsewhere too, but it could contribute to the numbers seeming off.

    3 votes
  13. Comment on The American physicians are healing themselves with Ozempic in ~health

    kacey
    Link Parent
    As an aside, I’ve heard of similar sentiments re. blood pressure medication and anti-depressants. In both cases, though, afaik it’s generally acknowledged that the medicine is there to prevent the...

    As an aside, I’ve heard of similar sentiments re. blood pressure medication and anti-depressants. In both cases, though, afaik it’s generally acknowledged that the medicine is there to prevent the immediate and permanent damage that the illness can cause (eg organ damage and life-altering behaviours), and that long term change has to result from someplace else. For example, if the blood pressure is due to dietary concerns, taking statins buys time for people to seek out support in finding more sustainable ways to keep themselves fed healthfully.

    In practice, though, many of the factors which cause people to require those first line treatments are systemic (eg being crushed by debt, work, family, etc. is not solved by taking a pill a day) so people stay dependent on medication much longer than is advisable. Still, the principle is that they would be dead or severely injured otherwise, so it’s still preferable.

    Anyways, just figured I’d bring it up since the topic is a smidge close to heart for me. I hope you two can find a way to live healthy, longer lives, however that’s accomplished.

    5 votes
  14. Comment on Ground source heat pump to ductless five-head mini-split in ~life.home_improvement

    kacey
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    As a person who was trying to find an air-to-water heat pump a few years ago, my takeaway is that, when there’s a very limited number of companies interested in an area, products become a lot more...

    This seems hard to find, and I'm not sure why.

    As a person who was trying to find an air-to-water heat pump a few years ago, my takeaway is that, when there’s a very limited number of companies interested in an area, products become a lot more scarce. Effectively no non-commercial/industrial customers want to run ATW systems, so they barely exist.

    I’d imagine something similar is going on for water or ground source heat pumps: as far as I know, that type of system is dramatically more expensive than an air source heat pump, but with relatively few advantages for a very large majority of consumers.

    2 votes
  15. Comment on Mindwave (an upcoming Kickstarter title w/microgames) in ~games

    kacey
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    Saw this one the other week. It’s easily made all of its Kickstarter goals, so there’s no need to feel pressure to pledge at this point. Still, the aesthetic and gameplay look pretty decent. Demo...

    Saw this one the other week. It’s easily made all of its Kickstarter goals, so there’s no need to feel pressure to pledge at this point. Still, the aesthetic and gameplay look pretty decent.

    Demo play through here, in case you’re interested but don’t want to download it.

    2 votes
  16. Comment on My hair is thinning. Tips and tricks, please! in ~life.style

    kacey
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    If budget allows, you should go see a proper doctor and have this conversation with them. One of the suggestions already listed here (oral minoxidil) has some potentially significant side effects...

    If budget allows, you should go see a proper doctor and have this conversation with them. One of the suggestions already listed here (oral minoxidil) has some potentially significant side effects on your physical health. Further, your hair loss could be caused by a non-hormonal source, which they could identify better by speaking with you one on one, and to come up with a treatment plan that doesn’t involve drugs.

    If budget doesn’t allow, it could be helpful to ask chatGPT about differences and considerations between options, then to find an online hair loss clinic to book a free “appointment” with. These tend to be pretty heck bent on selling you medication, so it’s best to cross reference anything they say with your other dubious source (chatGPT).

    Last thing I’d note: you seem to have a very good attitude about this, which is great to hear. I got sucked into too many people telling me that “it’s natural”, or “god wills this”, “it happens to everybody” and etc. I doubt you need to hear this, but in case anyone else reading this thread does: it’s your body, and it’s your choice. No one else — in the entire world — has to regretfully look back at your face in the mirror every morning, and their opinions on it should be (imo) valued accordingly. You can always choose to shave your head later anyways.

    18 votes
  17. Comment on Bluesky advertises itself as an open network, they say people won't lose followers or their identity, they advertise themselves as a protocol ("atproto"). These three claims are false. in ~tech

    kacey
    Link Parent
    Ah, that makes more sense. Apologies; I’d missed the title of the article while reading it.

    The original title of the article was "Bluesky is a scam" - scam implies that there's a difference between customer expectations and the product that is delivered to them.

    Ah, that makes more sense. Apologies; I’d missed the title of the article while reading it.

    1 vote
  18. Comment on Bluesky advertises itself as an open network, they say people won't lose followers or their identity, they advertise themselves as a protocol ("atproto"). These three claims are false. in ~tech

    kacey
    Link Parent
    I’m pretty out of the loop for this stuff — is there a reason to bring up how many people care about something in an article about it? I got the impression that the author was annoyed at some...

    I’m pretty out of the loop for this stuff — is there a reason to bring up how many people care about something in an article about it? I got the impression that the author was annoyed at some perceived misinformation on Bluesky’s part.

    Also why is FOSS advocate a slur recently? I saw that a lot on Hacker News, and between that and the anti-“tech person” sentiment elsewhere on tildes, I’ve started to get more aggressive about filtering out tech topics. This is hopefully the last one I’ll see for a while.

    As someone who genuinely cares about building usable tools for other people to enrich their lives, it’s a real crappy experience to see people vocally lump all my concerns and perspectives into a bogeyman.

    9 votes
  19. Comment on I hate 2FA in ~tech

    kacey
    Link Parent
    Fair enough. I don’t agree — passwords you need to write seem just as unintuitive as second factor backup codes — but I appreciate that intuitiveness and complexity are inherently personal...

    Fair enough. I don’t agree — passwords you need to write seem just as unintuitive as second factor backup codes — but I appreciate that intuitiveness and complexity are inherently personal experiences, so that must be the case for the people you’re often around.

    3 votes