4oo4

This 100%. There's this quote I like from the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (I haven't read it in context or have any familiarity with his work, but it comes up a lot of other different places): "The limits of my language are the limits of my world".

You can't think critically if you let other peoples' reasoning (or their words) replace your own, and mainstream thinking limits your sense of what's posssible if it doesn't have the language to describe something new or unorthodox.

As ComradePhil says, question all assumptions (there are a lot you use to function every day you don't ever think about, as well as those held by people you disagree with) and seek out the furthest things from the mainstream you can find, including dissenting/marginalized opinions. Great idea about showdead, didn't know that was a thing!

Paul Graham turned me onto lots of great ideas, I greatly improved my work environment by sharing his 'Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule' with my boss, it also made me realize that I was putting pressure on myself to work unnaturally.

http://paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html

Avoid getting your news from corporate media as much as possible and avoid all forms of advertising. Try to form your own opinions instead of feeling like you have to join a tribe of like-minded people (social media makes it really easy to fall into this trap).

Though it's also OK to not have an opinion if you're not familiar with something, rather being tempted to defer to someone else's strong opinion.

And above all else, avoid mental clutter as much as possible so you can find your own clarity.

I just realized that I haven't thought about having to defragment a disk in a really long time since it's been almost 10 years that I've used a Windows machine (that's not provided by work), as well as a machine that didn't have an SSD/NVMe for the boot disk.

TIL this is indeed a thing for Linux.

It would be really cool like other people said if it defragged a real disk, but also up the stakes by wiping your drive if you do it wrong or not fast enough (à la Suicide Linux). Though that's totally against the spirit of the game :)

I can't stand how Google recommends this, as a dark pattern that their TOTP app is special and that users have to use it for 2FA for Google. There are so many better TOTP apps out there (like Authy or Aegis).

For a while, Google Authenticator was abandonware (despite them still recommending it for 2FA!), and didn't have any options for backup/restore. They have always been the worst 2FA app in terms of features and bugs, not surprised that they're getting even worse with time.

This law is a terrible idea, since it's overbroad and will be abused.

However I also think that the addictive design of social media is still something that deserves further scrutiny. I'm really curious how prevalent the phenomenon of people working at tech companies whose kids are raised "tech-free", it's almost a tacit admission that they know they've optimized their products to the point of being harmful (in the narrow sense of eroding executive function).

https://www.businessinsider.in/science/silicon-valley-parent...

Best case scenario, they would voluntarily build in small mechanisms to help people mentally breathe (like stopping an infinite feed after a certain amount of time and little reminders that say "hey, you've been on here for several hours, how about taking a break?") These could even be opt-in settings. But they never will do that, since it's all about juicing numbers at all costs.

Trying to use social media responsibly when you have ADD is a nightmare, since it's designed to exploit it against your best interests. It's silly to expect people to use social media responsibly when everything has thousands of hours of design in it to prevent that, especially for people that have issues with executive function (like kids and people with ADD).

Parents are the most responsible for how their kids use tech, but it's also a privilege to have the time and energy as a parent to counter all of this that's working against you. Parents that have to work long hours and multiple jobs to provide won't be able to do that, and that doesn't necessarily make them bad parents.

All that being said, I'm not sure how you go about improving the situation without resorting to terrible laws like this. There are too many bad laws that are passed under the guise of "for the children", and this smells like one of them. I really hope this doesn't pass and someone finds a better solution.

Yes! And this is all the more fun when you are a Windows sysadmin and need that deeper level of knowledge to solve a stupid Windows-related problem for work.

Php is a beast of an attack surface. On every php install I try to do as much hardening as I can, especially with `disable_functions`, since you can make it much harder for someone to get a useful reverse shell, or other nasty things, like the built in `shell_exec` function.

https://www.madirish.net/?article=229

I'm betting most WordPress shared hosting doesn't do that, nor give people the means to set up a web app firewall in front of it. Without these things I'd never want to expose a WordPress install to the internet :)

I missed that part of the article, but I'm not sure why they drew that conclusion. Based on the findings of the studies it cites further below, they don't really put forth an argument as to what's wrong with the findings, I think at best one could say based on those specific studies that there is maybe weak evidence that deserves further study, and I will admit the sample sizes are small. However 2 out of the 3 studies that she cites actually do back up Wim Hof, but just not in an extremely conclusive way.

To me, it seems like the author cherry picked those studies to support their conclusion, or it was written before additional studies came out that validate the physiology behind his method. Based on the date I'm going to say cherry picking. There are a few more listed on his own website, I was going to use that as a citation but was trying to use a neutral source.

https://www.wimhofmethod.com/science

I didn't know about Gordon Pugh, thanks for sharing.

Have you ever tried it? I've found it to be really effective for anxiety and other things, though I'm not a hardcore practitioner.

Even though it sounds like hippie bullshit, he accidentally stumbled onto a huge body hack to control his autonomous nervous system. It has also been validated in studies. It's also impossible to ignore all the extreme cold things he's done without getting frostbite.

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/wim-hof-the-iceman/

This guy went to go debunk him, but instead ended up following the method and climbed a mountain with him in winter in the nude.

https://www.fitdadnation.com/scott-carney/

Well said, it's insane the system is so poorly designed, it benefits the type people it's supposed to punish, while hurting the type of people it's supposed to help (according to the reasoning for why we have these laws in place).

"Homeless and poor people are so lazy and irresponsible with their money, they can't save it and invest it like smart and noble rich people. But also they save too much money and are cheating the system when they need assistance despite basic necessities being made as difficult and expensive to obtain as possible!" /s

This reminds me that I actually had a conversation with my soon to be former boss arguing that we shouldn't have a minimum wage because of its relation to the poverty level. His thinking was that upping the minimum wage means the government has to spend more on benefits, so we shouldn't have one and let the magical free market figure it out. I asked him point blank whether these things should be tied to inflation and the cost of consumer goods, but unfortunately I can't remember what his exact response was since I was a few beers in. I do remember though that it was a weaselly cop-out of wilfull ignorance and wishful thinking.

I really wanted to pick apart how stupid that was, but it wasn't worh it. I'm still shocked that an otherwise intelligent person could think that's a sound policy, but I think that same thinking underpins terrible laws like this.

No one actually wants to look at the numbers of what things actually cost (food, housing, healthcare, etc.), wages, inflation, or how expensive it is to be poor, compared with wages and public assistance. Nope, instead we'd rather just use arbitrary numbers and emotionally abuse people by telling them it's their personal failure when the system exploits them as designed.

The current system of applying for public benefits in the US is what Kafka would've dreamed of, had he been a sadist.

A great movie that explores this concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cl%C3%A9o_from_5_to_7

This is fascinating, thanks for sharing.

As someone who had classical training and learned analog instruments (guitar and bass) growing up, making music with MIDI controllers is starting to make sense to me after years of feeling frustrated and not getting it. Having the tech skills made it easier, and now that I started learning about software modular synths I'm really curious about the tech behind it all, like how someone implements the MIDI standard.

Great job for being so conscientious about responsible disclosure.

I agree with all this, except for offering them your time. If you're not careful a narcissist will waste all your time and attention for self-validation (or perhaps other malicious purposes, depending on the type of narcissist). At that point you're just feeding the beast and reinforcing their expectation that they can demand limitless time and attention from people for their own vain needs. They will teach you to distrust yourself to suit their own inner narrative if they think you are challenging it.

Time and attention granted to narcissists needs to be watched very closely. You're totally right that they need to be approached with empathy, and you don't need to completely ignore them or treat them as pariahs. However it's OK to disengage with them when you're being exploited for their self-validation.

Unfortunately, I've really recently come to the realization that a longtime friend of mine has narcissistic traits, I didn't really realize it until another mutual friend started to get frustrated in the same way that I had been from time to time. Then I realized that my intuition was right, and how much the friendship had turned toxic because of how much it caused me to doubt myself, in service of their ego.

Since I had been giving them so much time and attention while trying to be a good friend, I realized that they were making me doubt myself so they never had to reflect on themselves or have their way of thinking challenged. They're not a bad person and I think it comes down to insecurities, but the past couple weeks that I'm actively tuning them out when things cease to be a conversation, and rather them just talking at me with no way to get a word in edgewise (sometimes for up to an hour at a time!), telling me the exact same story they just told me yesterday, or even a few hours ago, just to hear themself talk.

Since I started creating boundaries like that I have a lot more energy and focus for myself since I realized that it had convinced me to care about propping up their self-image rather than taking care of my own needs.

This really seems like an extremely long-winded way to say "money can't buy happiness". Which is partially true, in that after a certain point, once your essential needs are met you get diminishing returns for happiness on the additional money you make, in part from the additional exertion it takes to do that.

However I think this is a huge distraction from the fact that not having enough money to meet your basic needs is aboslutely an impediment to happiness, since this causes a constant state of fear, precariousness and helplessness. Fixing income inequality and helping more people gain access to food stability, healthcare, and jobs that pay a living wage would increase the happiness of many people.

You had me at cheese but lost me at blockchain.

I can definitely attest to this, I have two brother cats, and usually calling one of their names gets the other's attention to, as if to say "oh I see how it is, you invite him and not me".

I'm also really happy this is empirically validated, its's so easy to notice things like this and wonder if you're crazy.

Wow, that is a giant loophole, thanks for the info.

Power struggles like this between provinces/states and federal/national governments are fascinating to me. I studied a lot about how this plays out in US politics, but am totally ignorant about this dynamic happens in other countries.

This. Striking a tone of curiosity helps soften what you're saying, versus creating an accusation that they feel they have to defend against. Ideally, it'll open up the person you're talking to, so they can join in your curiosity and better see in themselves what you are seeing, or at least create more mutual understanding.

Unfortunately, people that are immature and deal with their insecurities poorly this doesn't tend to work on.

At a certain point, people have to want to work on themselves and you have to not concern yourself too much with how they react to information that triggers their cognitive dissonance defenses as long as you are approaching them from a position of empathy and curiosity. It's easy to want to keep helping people no matter what but at this point they will just drag you down to their level as a form of self-protection.

So I think the "solution" (or maybe it's a cop-out?) is that you can nudge people certain ways and expose them to new information, but what they do with it is entirely their responsibility and you have to let go if you make a good effort to communicate and they just aren't receptive. We only have so much emotional energy and should use it wisely.

> "Worse yet, when they go to France... the French will refuse to talk to them in french and default to English with them."

That's fascinating, so they pick up that it's Québécois French and then decide to do that? Is there something in particular that makes them look down on people from Quebec or Québécois French?

I lived in France for a while, and didn't experience very many people wanting to speak English with me since my French was pretty good, though I have a very thick anglophone accent (I'm American, but they always assumed I was British for some reason). Usually my experience has been that most French people don't want to speak anything other than French unless they are purposefully wanting to practice their English with someone (and not speaking any French and trying to beg people to communicate with you in English is a great way to make people instantly annoyed with you). The fact they would do the opposite with people that speak a slightly different variant of French is really surprising.

I don't know anything about the Canadian constitution, but I would find it surprising if this passed judicial review, forcing doctors to communicate with patients in a language they don't know is asking for terrible medical outcomes. Potentially having a dead patient because they couldn't effectively communicate with them (like a drug allergy for example) to preserve cultural purity does not seem "reasonable" nor "can be justified in a free and democratic society", according to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. However, with how much other democratic norms and rights are backsliding all over the place it also wouldn't be surprising if this was upheld somehow.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_expression_in_Canad...

I actually just stumbled on his work this week, he's amazing. His other music videos are some of the best I've ever seen, especially this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nO9aot9RgQc

It's really fun to watch this with element inspector dev tools open on a second screen and watch the element attributes change in sync with the music. It reminds me of someone programming electronic music on the really primitive DOS synthesizer/MIDI programs.

That being said, the fact that there's an NFT associated with this is extremely stupid. Aside from that this is perfect.

This one is fun because it wasn't a conspiracy, just a simple human mistake, but then became one when the coverup started.

Yeah I get that, I also am pretty OCD about taking good care of my LP collection. It just seems silly to prioritize that over accurate reading of the groove. Though it does make a lot of sense for archiving where media is already really damaged and you'd probably be doing digital cleanup on it anyway.

Also once you go beyond a certain price range in audiophilia, it's diminishing returns and a slow descent into madness.

I want to say I read something once about some kind of filament stylus, that still made contact with the grooves but with less friction and force than a normal stylus. I can't seem to find it now but that seems like a better solution than this.

I really don't know why these were/are a thing. The laser is a lot more sensitive than a stylus so it ends up picking up a ton of extra surface noise. You could do some noise cancelling I suppose but that defeats the purpose of analog.

I'd be really curious to talk to someone that actually owns one to see what they think.

Not cancelling student loans is also a political play, because of the securities that depend on this unpayable debt (SLABs).

https://www.natlawreview.com/article/rmbs-to-slabs-history-r...

So right now we are prioritizing SLAB investors' profits over giving consumers more spending power. If college graduates suddenly could spend their loan payment money on other goods and services, it would be great for the economy. Loan repayments have been frozen for years now and nothing bad economically has happened.

But instead we're just protecting the rent seeking of the wealthy, which isn't really worthwhile economic activity.

Personally I think SLABs are extremely unethical, but even if you disagree with that, SLABs are unsustainable and look a lot like the subprime mortgage bubble.

I agree that there needs to be something to drive the cost of education down, but I don't know if a tuition price ceiling is the way to go. I think a good start would be punishing schools that spend elaborately on buildings, athletics and excess/overpaid administrators while also paying their grad students doing a lot of the teaching work starvation wages (or if you're UCLA, don't even pay them at all!) and neglect spending directly on education and tuition. I think an endowment cap is a great idea in this area, to force schools to lower tuition by having to spend a certain part of their endowment, rather than letting them hoard money.

Some other things that are extremely good ideas is letting the interest rate be renegotiable/refinancible. For example, why did I have to continue paying 6.5% on my loan when rates everywhere else were near zero? And also letting people discharge loans in bankruptcy like pretty much every other debt.

The bubble will burst any day now, since enrollments have been declining for years at this point. Until then, the only people benefiting are student loan servicers, useless and overpaid administrators, plutocratic athletics departments, and investment bankers, NOT students or people doing the actual educating.

If you keep a piece of old denim or cotton fabric around, you can keep resharpening the cheap cartridge razors for an extremely long time. I can basically keep using them until the plastic parts start to fall off. A pack of cartridge razors can easily last me more than a year when I do this.

This is a cool list, I hadn't heard of most of these.

Here are mine:

- Nextcloud - files, calendar, todo, contacts syncing

- Tiny Tiny RSS - RSS reader

- Wallabag - read it later, also a database of interesting things I've read so I can recall later

- Photoprism - photo organizing/tagging

- CheckMK - monitoring

- The Lounge - IRC client that connects to my ZNC bouncer

- Plex - media streaming

- Airsonic - music streaming (since Plex sucks at that)

- Gitea - git repos/issues

- Code-Server - VSC instance hosted in the browser

Glad to see this guy finally got it reattached. I had read about this before and for whatever reason he chose not to or wasn't able to have that surgery for a while, even though it was ready to go.

    There’s a catch for this free service, though. Data use is limited to 1GB per month, and users will need to be signed in to a Microsoft account so the company can, well, ironically track their usage. 

Virtual Private Network --> Virtual Profiteering Network

Innovation!

My code is great when I'm writing it, but becomes crap when I run it and find all the bugs. Code I wrote any day other than today was basically written by a different person, and thus also crap.