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FigurativeVoid

1,678 karma · joined May 9, 2021

Software Engineer, Writer, Musician
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FigurativeVoid··on Furifont, a Japanese font that shows furigana
Perhaps the least important part, but I never considered what serif and sans serif would look like in kanji.
FigurativeVoid··on Discovery of a new OpenAI agent message board
I mean it seems pretty clear.

Anthropic didn’t want to give the tech to DoD without some sort of limit, and that was the retribution.

FigurativeVoid··on I Don't Have a Smartphone
True, but that tech is bad.

My current GCM uses NFC and my phone to connect with my pump. I would like to remove my phone from the loop. Just use the pump to connect to the sensor directly.

FigurativeVoid··on I don't have a smartphone or at least I wish I didn't
As a T1 diabetic, I wish that we weren't tying things like medical devices to smart phones. It's just one more failure point.
FigurativeVoid··on Police removed prominent scientists from American Diabetes Association meeting
I find I can induce a steep drop at like 15 mins.

I’ll have to try calf raises. I’ve never heard that.

FigurativeVoid··on Police removed prominent scientists from American Diabetes Association meeting
I find that movement has been key for me. More walking, more lifting, more of anything.

Getting a gcm gave me much better data around the impact of movement.

FigurativeVoid··on Police removed prominent scientists from American Diabetes Association meeting
Yeah. I have a running joke with my Endo.

“A1c is good. Charts are good. No changes.”

“And that’ll be 700 dollars?”

“Yup. See you soon.”

Of course it doesn’t actually cost that much (copay wise at least), but the point stands. I manage my disease super well. I don’t need the middle men.

I’m becoming much more radical on universal healthcare the longer I’m on my own.

FigurativeVoid··on Why I Stopped Arguing with People
I love this bit from the documentary "Behind the Curve (2018)." One of the scientists poses the following question: "What evidence could I show you that would change your position?"

If someone can't answer that, it's probably not worth arguing about.

FigurativeVoid··on Using AI to improve a challenging reaction in medicinal chemistry
It looks like xcancel doesn't support articles yet. There may be another service?
FigurativeVoid··on Magnifica Humanitas
Technology shapes behavior. To ignore that is to ignore history.
FigurativeVoid··on Acetaminophen vs. ibuprofen
Acetaminophen has a quirky effect if you’re on a CGM. It makes your interstitial glucose read higher than your blood glucose.

Context: I’m t1 diabetic.

I was recovering from an injury, and I switched from ibuprofen to acetaminophen. But the whole time I was on it, my sensor glucose was reading 50-60 mg/dl higher than my blood glucose. This is really bad on a closed loop system as my pump kept trying to lower my blood sugar, but it was pushing me into hypoglycemia (50 mg/dl).

Turns out this is a common effect, but a relatively new discovery that no one told me about.

FigurativeVoid··on British drivers over 70 to face eye tests every three years
I wonder if communities will move away from things like buses to public autonomous cars.

If you could run a fleet of $30k Waymo’s, that would be nice

FigurativeVoid··on British drivers over 70 to face eye tests every three years
Especially in the US. In countries with more robust public transport, you can get away with not having a car. That's basically impossible in the US.
FigurativeVoid··on Apple introduces new AirTag with longer range and improved findability
I've started to dislike the narrative that "Apple never leads the pack, but it waits to release the best product."

But that hasn't been true for a decade. Most improvements have been marginal, and they totally missed the boat on LLMs.

FigurativeVoid··on Apple introduces new AirTag with longer range and improved findability
Probably one of the best products apple has made of late: relatively affordable, good ux, user replaceable batteries. Glad to see this iteration hasn't made it worse.
FigurativeVoid··on Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?
I have been trying to make more friends in the real and virtual world the past two years, and I have been pretty successful. Most of my new friends come from the following: Volleyball, MtG, or a writing group.

Really, I think that it comes down to make making or joining a space with a shared activity and moderating out the crap.

The problem is most communities are losing those spaces in favor of private social clubs. That's what we need to fight.

FigurativeVoid··on Ask HN: Share your personal website
https://literallythevoid.com/

I have a few ideas that I want to write more about, and I'm sure I'll get to them when I have time.

The real goal is to capture more internet friends.

FigurativeVoid··on AWS multiple services outage in us-east-1
It would have to be catastrophic for most businesses to make think about escaping the cloud. The cost of migration and maintenance are massive for small and medium businesses.
FigurativeVoid··on Smartphones and being present
I have a distinct moment in my memory of when I stopped being a voracious reader, and started spending more time online: when I got an iPod touch.

To reverse the trend, I’m trying to read physical books or ebooks on a dedicated ereader as much as possible. No one seems to care, they are on their phones.

When I do use social media, I try to use a computer where I have much more control over what’s happening. So far I’ve read a ton more books this year.

FigurativeVoid··on A human-accelerated neuron type potentially underlying autism in humans
On which side?
FigurativeVoid··on The hit film about overworked nurses that's causing alarm across Europe
I have thought that we should make entering the medical professions much easier. In order to become a nurse, you usually need a 4 year degree. This has two issues:

1. This is way to much time in the classroom. Much of that coursework simply isn't necessary.

2. You have people that would be good nurses piking other programs because they can't get passing marks in classes that are irrelevant to day to day nursing.

Binding what are essentially professional programs to the academy is a mistake. Don't get me wrong, I love the academy. But we need nurses.

FigurativeVoid··on Never write your own date parsing library
Oh it never worked. It was bad design by someone who was well meaning, but inexperienced.

All these issues were resolved, usually, by parsing the date into a proper Date class.

FigurativeVoid··on Never write your own date parsing library
I used to work at a company that stored all dates as ints in a YYYYMMDD format. When I asked why, I was told it was so we could subtract 2 dates to get the difference.

I asked them why they couldn’t use DATEDIFF since this was in a sql db.

They said they hadn’t heard of it and that it must be new.

FigurativeVoid··on How to Firefox
I had no idea how many ads load the average page. I just forgot because I have been using uBlock for so long.

I have been hesitant to use Firefox, just because I am used to chrome. But after Google forcibly disabled software that I chose to run, I'm all in on Firefox.

FigurativeVoid··on The underground cathedral protecting Tokyo from floods (2018)
Incredible.

I sometimes forget that manga writers use very real locations as references. I believe this is the backdrop for several Tokyo Ghoul scenes.

FigurativeVoid··on As a developer, my most important tools are a pen and a notebook
Digital whiteboarding tools are close, but I think they miss some of the magic of working in a shared space with an analog too.

I can make more complex drawings in excalidraw than I could on a really drawing surface. I suspect that leads to simpler drawings and thus simpler designs.

FigurativeVoid··on As a developer, my most important tools are a pen and a notebook
One of the few things that I miss about working in an office is a large whiteboard and standing in front of it with a colleague.

Working on an architecture with a peer and marker really led to some elegant class designs.

FigurativeVoid··on Flying Somewhere? You May Need That Real ID.
This is the thing that irritates me most. If I get in one line, I don't have to do anything. If I get in the other I have to unpack my laptop, take of my shoes, accessories, whatever.

Once there was a woman in front of me who asked why we take our shoes off and the response was "Once someone put a bomb in there shoes."

1. I don't love remedies to problems that happened once.

2. We had an international pandemic once... by your logic shouldn't we always mask at the airport?

FigurativeVoid··on Flying somewhere? You may finally need that Real ID
It's absolutely security theater.
FigurativeVoid··on Flying Somewhere? You May Need That Real ID.
The thing that's irritating about Read ID (at least in Ohio) is that the BMV would let you get an Ohio ID cheaper than a Real ID. Seems like a money grab when you know that people are eventually going to need a Real ID to fly.
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