palpitations's recent activity

  1. Comment on How do you keep up with version changes in downloaded software? in ~comp

  2. Comment on Your ideal smartphone in 2019? in ~tech

    palpitations
    Link Parent
    Give me that with a better SoC, screen, and RAM, and I'll pay whatever they ask. It's a shame the basics on there are so poor, the stuff you can't get anywhere else is pretty interesting.

    Give me that with a better SoC, screen, and RAM, and I'll pay whatever they ask. It's a shame the basics on there are so poor, the stuff you can't get anywhere else is pretty interesting.

    1 vote
  3. Comment on What songs are there about computers? in ~music

    palpitations
    Link Parent
    Computer Love by Zapp & Roger as well.

    Computer Love by Zapp & Roger as well.

    1 vote
  4. Comment on How do you deal with stress? in ~life

    palpitations
    Link
    For me, how I relax is less important than recognizing I'm stressed in the first place. Learning what I feel physically when stressed has helped me to catch it earlier and get out ahead of it...

    For me, how I relax is less important than recognizing I'm stressed in the first place. Learning what I feel physically when stressed has helped me to catch it earlier and get out ahead of it before it grows to the point of being self-sustaining.

    3 votes
  5. Comment on Why meat is the best worst thing in the world in ~food

    palpitations
    Link Parent
    The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations releases a few reports that may be of interest to you in answering that question... The most directly related that I'm aware of is The...

    The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations releases a few reports that may be of interest to you in answering that question... The most directly related that I'm aware of is The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture, though there is a ton of statistical information provided for those who want to dig deeper.

    To directly answer your question, though, take a look at this graph.

    3 votes
  6. Comment on Elon Musk Settles SEC Fraud Charges: Musk to Step Down as Tesla’s Chairman; Tesla to Appoint Additional Independent Directors; Tesla and Musk Agree to Pay $20 million each in Penalties in ~finance

    palpitations
    Link Parent
    I'm actually hoping this is a positive for Tesla, SpaceX, and Elon himself. For Musk's sake, I hope this is a bit of a wake-up call. He has clearly not been well, and has been working beyond his...

    I'm actually hoping this is a positive for Tesla, SpaceX, and Elon himself.

    For Musk's sake, I hope this is a bit of a wake-up call. He has clearly not been well, and has been working beyond his limits. The whole toxic, work-yourself-to-death, startup culture should probably take note. Sprints are one thing -- hell, I'd even argue it's good for you to bust your ass and push yourself from time to time... But it isn't sustainable, and attempting to keep that going for too long can be disastrous for mental and physical well-being.

    In the short-term, Tesla's stock price is likely to take a bit of a hit, and I imagine we'll hear a fair amount of smugness from shorts and those betting on Tesla's volatility. If they can weather that, they'll hopefully come out the other side with some improved corporate governance and a bit more stability, so the question becomes if that is enough to attract some more risk-averse investors who may not have seen Tesla as a good fit. If they can do that, I could see this being exactly the change Tesla needs in order to really scale. It is worth noting that Musk will remain CEO, which may assuage some of the investors who are really just there for him. I think that also means getting a solid COO in place is vital to help relieve some pressure.

    On the SpaceX side, I get the impression a lot more work has been done on continuity planning, and I recall Musk saying something about Shotwell being all-in on the mission of making humanity a multi-planetary species. SpaceX is also privately held, profitable, and the clear market leader, all things which should reduce any potential impact if Musk decides to step away for a little bit to get his shit together. This whole situation could also just mean there's more time to focus on SpaceX and BFR. My big concern with SpaceX is that it might be used to prop up Tesla if things get really bad over there, and that could end up being a big gamble.

    12 votes
  7. Comment on Learning to pentest in ~comp

    palpitations
    Link
    I'm far from an expert, but I do know a few good resources at least... OWASP PTES Penetration Testing: A Hands-On Introduction to Hacking by Georgia Weidman The Web Application Hacker's Handbook...

    I'm far from an expert, but I do know a few good resources at least...

    OWASP
    PTES
    Penetration Testing: A Hands-On Introduction to Hacking by Georgia Weidman
    The Web Application Hacker's Handbook by Dafydd Stuttard and Marcus Pinto

    2 votes
  8. Comment on What goes on outside Trump rallies is an American nightmare in ~misc

    palpitations
    Link Parent
    I seriously considered several options to make some money off the crazy... In a normal political environment, I may have felt a little dirty about it, but I'd probably just donate a good chunk of...

    I seriously considered several options to make some money off the crazy... In a normal political environment, I may have felt a little dirty about it, but I'd probably just donate a good chunk of the money to progressive causes and candidates, make a joke about fleecing rubes, and feel just fine in the end.

    In this environment, though? I'd feel like I was exploiting people struggling with mental illness or cognitive impairments, and potentially furthering the divide in this country. I couldn't live with that.

    9 votes
  9. Comment on Daily Tildes discussion - how can we help people "acclimate" in a friendlier way? in ~tildes.official

    palpitations
    Link Parent
    Instead of not allowing them to post, how about displaying an interstitial for new users with a few key points? When "new" users went to post a comment, they could be presented with a page that...

    Instead of not allowing them to post, how about displaying an interstitial for new users with a few key points? When "new" users went to post a comment, they could be presented with a page that said something along the lines of: "Tildes values high-quality discussions. Click OK to post this comment or Cancel to return."

    This doesn't stop new users from contributing, but does provide a last-second opportunity to present some key info about the community before people dive in to posting. I think my preference would be for using a combination of post count and account age -- at the simplest, something like accounts under 72 hours old get the interstitial, but each post made counts for 24 hours.

    7 votes
  10. Comment on What's your favorite "treat yourself" meal? in ~food

    palpitations
    Link Parent
    If you haven't tried roasting them, I highly recommend it. I can't stand Brussels cooked with wet heat, but high and dry heat does great things to them. Kenji's take on them pretty well sums up my...

    If you haven't tried roasting them, I highly recommend it. I can't stand Brussels cooked with wet heat, but high and dry heat does great things to them. Kenji's take on them pretty well sums up my feelings:

    They don't need to be the sulfurous, mushy, repulsive cabbages that you might have grown up eating.

    2 votes
  11. Comment on Has anyone tried the keto diet? If so, would you recommend it? in ~health

    palpitations
    Link Parent
    This one point is misleading according to the latest research available. Dietary cholesterol has little impact on blood cholesterol for most people, though there are some people who do respond to...

    Meat and dairy are also loaded with the bad kind of cholesterol

    This one point is misleading according to the latest research available. Dietary cholesterol has little impact on blood cholesterol for most people, though there are some people who do respond to it. Here's what the Cleveland Clinic and Harvard have to say about it.

    I think you're also kind of overstating how easy it is to go vegan... Part of that comes down to how strict you are about things (if you're watching out for isinglass, bone char, carmine, and all the other things most people don't even know exist), and part of it is due to the challenge of getting complete proteins and nutrition from a limited subset of foods. Of course, keto has similar downsides, except instead of looking for hidden animal ingredients you're keeping an eye out for hidden carbs, and instead of hunting down lysine you're watching your electrolytes.

    It is easy to do either one poorly -- I should know, I've done a shit job of both. It's much harder to do them in a healthy and sustainable way. For me, a middle path has been the best -- lots of vegetables, almost no grains, a bit of meat. I don't think I could have gotten there without keto breaking my addiction to carbs, and without veganism to expand my taste for plant-based foods.

    7 votes
  12. Comment on Programming Challenge: creative FizzBuzz in ~comp

    palpitations
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    You can run COBOL in a modern Windows/Linux environment... Someone at my work apparently had the idea that this counted as modernizing our infrastructure. They then had the idea that modern...

    You can run COBOL in a modern Windows/Linux environment... Someone at my work apparently had the idea that this counted as modernizing our infrastructure.

    They then had the idea that modern anything was too much to hope for, so we're doing COBOL on Server 2008 R2, with a version of the COBOL interpreter that will be out of support by the time the project is ready to go into production.

    The good news is that I had nothing to do with any of that. The bad news is that as soon as it goes into production, the initial blame is going to fall on me if something breaks and people don't get their paychecks. You better believe I've documented the hell out of my objections.

    1 vote
  13. Comment on 2-factor authentication in ~tildes

    palpitations
    Link Parent
    Thanks, I updated the link to avoid any confusion.

    Thanks, I updated the link to avoid any confusion.

    1 vote
  14. Comment on <deleted topic> in ~comp

    palpitations
    Link Parent
    I just did this for my personal projects, it was about as easy as it gets. Here's GitLab's documentation on importing from GitHub.

    I just did this for my personal projects, it was about as easy as it gets. Here's GitLab's documentation on importing from GitHub.

  15. Comment on What are you passionate about? in ~talk

    palpitations
    Link Parent
    That pretty well sums up my feelings too. I've found that as I get older, and my tastes change, doing exactly that is becoming easier and easier. Hopefully, combined with an effort to eat more...

    That pretty well sums up my feelings too. I've found that as I get older, and my tastes change, doing exactly that is becoming easier and easier. Hopefully, combined with an effort to eat more locally, my impact continues to fall.

    2 votes
  16. Comment on What are you passionate about? in ~talk

    palpitations
    Link Parent
    It's worth pointing out that some people are vegetarian or vegan for environmental reasons as well, given the generally lower resource usage needed for production of plant-based foods.

    It's worth pointing out that some people are vegetarian or vegan for environmental reasons as well, given the generally lower resource usage needed for production of plant-based foods.

    3 votes
  17. Comment on 2-factor authentication in ~tildes

    palpitations
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    SMS isn't recommended for security reasons, not just usability concerns. Really, aligning with NIST 800-63B guidance on OTP devices is probably the best way to handle this... Tildes is already...

    SMS isn't recommended for security reasons, not just usability concerns.

    Really, aligning with NIST 800-63B guidance on OTP devices is probably the best way to handle this... Tildes is already doing a great job of this on the password side (no complexity requirements, checking against a list of known-bad passwords), so it makes sense to follow those recommendations for MFA as well.

    My personal preference would be for both TOTP (using Google Authenticator or similar) and Yubikey support, but I'd prioritize the first as it is much more widely available.

    15 votes
  18. Comment on Let's discuss politics in ~talk

    palpitations
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Yeah, that one threw me as well... And apparently a lot of other people, it's actually one of the things they address in the FAQ:

    Yeah, that one threw me as well... And apparently a lot of other people, it's actually one of the things they address in the FAQ:

    It’s true that a one party state has a significant advantage; even so I wouldn’t support it. So how can I respond?
    From classical Greece onwards, discussion and, inevitably, argument, has been viewed by democrats as essential for considering all viewpoints and consequently reaching the best informed and most representative decision. For such people, the replacement of polemics with speedy dictates would definitely not be seen as any sort of “significant advantage” or “progress”.

    4 votes
  19. Comment on On the upcoming trust system in ~tildes

    palpitations
    Link
    I've been thinking about the trust system a fair amount since I joined here, and my biggest concern is that it could easily lead to an echo chamber type of effect. For example, let's say we're...

    I've been thinking about the trust system a fair amount since I joined here, and my biggest concern is that it could easily lead to an echo chamber type of effect.

    For example, let's say we're looking at political discussions, where that type of echo chamber tends to be the most prevalent. You may have broadly left-leaning and right-leaning people who tend to vote for content that aligns with their views, while mostly ignoring the posts that they fundamentally disagree with. Let's also assume that left-leaning people outnumber those on the right, as seems to be the case based on the small sampling of people who have responded to this post.

    Without any further intervention, that could quickly lead to a liberal echo chamber (I say this as someone on the pretty-far-left myself). I'd love to see something done to address this, and to really allow quality content from a diverse set of perspectives to bubble up to the top. In my mind, that could result in the sort of genuine, respectful, and informed discourse that is sadly missing from a lot of sites, and it seems like something that could really help distinguish Tildes from the rest of the communities out there.

    I wonder if something clever could be done by clustering users with similar voting patterns, and weighting the votes from each of those clusters to ensure a greater variety of content (this could also allow votes that cross clusters to be weighted more favorably, as they demonstrate broad appeal). Done in a reasonable way, it seems like this could give a voice to those outside of the site's mainstream.

    I wouldn't want this sort of thing applied with too heavy a hand, there's a very fine balance that would need to be struck... And this all relies on each of those clusters voting for quality, substantive posts... But I've yet to think of a better way to avoid the problems that come with group-think.

    3 votes
  20. Comment on What have you been listening to this week? in ~music

    palpitations
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Do yourself a favor, watch this, and then go listen to some Aesop Rock, MF Doom, or whoever else catches your ear. And don't forget, hip hop is more than just rap... As a techno/psytrance fan, you...

    Do yourself a favor, watch this, and then go listen to some Aesop Rock, MF Doom, or whoever else catches your ear.

    And don't forget, hip hop is more than just rap... As a techno/psytrance fan, you should already have a healthy respect for DJs, so turntablism might be a good fit for you as well (though it's definitely not for everyone!) You can't go wrong with the Invisibl Skratch Piklz.

    1 vote