anextio

I started smoking in university, and where I'm from a very high percentage of university students smoke (usually roll-your-own cigarettes, though).

I can remember the first time I had a puff of a cigarette, and I was quite drunk at the time. The thing about smoking while drinking is that, at least at the start, a cigarette seems to make you twice as drunk as you were before, while also making you feel really good.

Of course before this I had smoked weed a bunch of times, and here that is usually mixed with tobacco in a joint, so I was used to it at least in that aspect.

But most people here who smoke weed and not cigarettes are quite able to handle the occasional tobacco in a joint without making a cigarette habit out of it.

Anyway, basically it just started out as something that I would do while out drinking. I would get drunk with my roommates, and occasionally have a puff or two from a cigarette in that state. Eventually I would have a whole roll-up to myself. Eventually I started buying my own tobacco to use with my own weed, and at times I would occasionally have a pure tobacco roll-up with no weed, just for the nice feeling.

For a lot of people, it generally starts out with the connection to drinking. Drinking and smoking are very conducive to each other, and it's how many many people get started.

I don't think I need to go into the details of how alcohol affects your judgement.

How my addiction came about was a slower process. At one point for whatever reason I decided to have a cigarette in the morning just as I was walking to my college, and by god did it feel great. At this point I was still convinced in the back of my mind that I had it under control, and could quit whenever I wanted.

The tradition of a morning cigarette turned into a necessity. Within about 6 months, I had an awful nervous feeling in my arms and stomach until I had the first cigarette of the day, and once it gets to that point, you're screwed.

I was young and foolish, I was drinking, I was doing it with my friends, I was getting social satisfaction from it. I enjoyed the ritual of making the trek to the smoking area with a friend or two for a nice chat while everyone else was inside.

I was smoking up until early August this year. I'm not a drinker at all anymore, and it's always been completely clear to me the health risks of smoking cigarettes, but the excuses still pile up: stress at work, stress at home, no time, trying to find as much enjoyment from my free time as I can, etc.

I switched to an e-cigarette (I hate that term, by the way, much prefer vaporizer) then in August, and the difference has been night and day. I never had another cigarette after that day, and to be honest, I despise them now. I've never had a craving for one and the smell of the smoke disgusts me now like it never did before when I was a smoker.

My cravings have gone down as well. I no longer feel that nervous feeling when I wake up in the morning. My nicotine requirements have gone way down. I'll be moving to a lower nicotine % juice when my current bottle runs out. My blood pressure is great, I can run again, my circulation is better and I don't cough up gunk.

I still have no full intention of quitting. Nicotine for me, like caffeine for some, is an aid to my work pattern. Walking down to the curb for a cigarette or leaning back for a few puffs from my vaporizer are the things that get my mind past a difficult bug or coding problem.

Of course I have, and yeah, it is as effective. Sometimes I will still get up and walk around while doing it.

I'm not going to claim any scientific miracles from it (that would be dumb), but for me the combination of taking a break from the screen and having some nicotine is what gets my brain going.

> I can't fathom who thought these things were a good idea.

The millions of people who have quit tobacco because of them, for one example.

> I don't care if it's just steam, I don't want it in my face.

On behalf of the decent people in the vaping community, I'm sorry that you have to put up with people like that. There's a big movement in the community at the moment to severely discourage people from using them in inappropriate places like restaurants or around people who are disturbed by it.

However, I think that this problem can be solved by awareness raising alone. It's too risky for the sake of public health to ban them in certain places or outright.

If you come across someone doing this and you don't like it, tell them that propylene glycol vapor irritates you and ask them to avoid making clouds. Holding in the vapor for more than 5 seconds usually means that none at all will be expelled when they exhale. This is what I, and many others, do if we ever vape on public transport etc., which I try to avoid anyway.

> There should be four ingredients. God only knows what actually goes into the lower quality versions.

Then we're in agreement. I don't know of anyone (besides the usual anarcho-capitalists) who thinks that low quality ingredients should be used in any consumed product.

As someone who switched to an e-cigarette, I might be able to answer this for you.

The first thing is that the level and effect of nicotine that is absorbed though vapor is a lot less than a regular cigarette. The reason for this is twofold: firstly, the lungs/mouth/throat seem to simply not pick up as much as in a cigarette, and secondly, cigarette smoke also contains MAOIs, which increase the sensitivity of the brain to nicotine's effects.

In addition, users can choose the level of nicotine that they use. Most e-cig users who are regular smokers tend to start at around 18mg/ml. When I first started, I was using this liquid in a 1.6ml tank. One tank worked out to about 1 pack of cigarettes worth of nicotine, and I got through about a tank a day: the same amount that I used to smoke in cigarettes, except spread out through a longer period of time.

Most vapers will puff way differently to cigarette users. We take one or two puffs at a time and then wait, while a cigarette user will smoke the whole thing quickly in one go.

Nicotine has been shown[1] to increase creativity in the brain, and I know from my own experience that I find it to be great while working. Most of my 'House' moments when tackling difficult coding problems have occurred on the curb with a cigarette in my mouth, and now I lean back at my desk and have a few puffs of fine-tasting menthol e-liquid.

[1] http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-08/uoc--bcw08150...

> I am starting to see people puffing on these stupid e-cigarettes in restaurants that ban cigarette smoking.

Most reasonable people in the vaping community discourage that kind of behavior. At the end of the day, there will always be assholes.

> The FDA is collecting reports of adverse effects and there are plenty

There are four ingredients in e-cigarette juice: propylene glycol, vegetable glycerin, nicotine, and flavoring.

Adverse effects generally come from an allergic reaction to PG, which is uncommon but well known. Those who are allergic are advised to use 100% VG mixtures.

Aside from that, PG is well known to be safe for human consumption as regulated by the FDA. It is an ingredient in inhalers for asthma and is used in smoke machines. It can cause a humidicant effect on the throat, which leaves it dry, but drinking liquids easily avoids this problem.

No one is arguing that e-cigarette companies should not be regulated to make sure that the juice they produce is of a high quality, but arguments to regulate them heavily (or like regular cigarettes) is based mostly on FUD.

> Why in the world are people starting to smoke today with everything we know about it?

Because humans aren't rational machines and there are many things that cause people to take up habits that aren't healthy. That's not something that's ever going to go away.

While long term data on e-cigarettes is not yet available, most experts agree that even in the worst-case scenario, they are nowhere near as bad for you as regular cigarettes. The FUD that exists in the debate can mostly be traced back to groups that have a temperance movement-esque attitude toward nicotine habits.

Nicotine is no more addictive or harmful to a person in a normal dose than caffeine, and its effects are similar also.

E-cigarettes are helping millions of people to get themselves off the dangers of regular cigarettes. That in itself is a public health miracle. The rates of cessation for cigarettes through traditional methods are frighteningly low, yet with the introduction of e-cigarettes, many people (including myself) will never touch a regular cigarette again after the first day.

I have a more advanced device than the ones you pick up at a gas station. It has variable wattage, variable voltage, an ohm-meter, a puff counter, and I can charge my iPhone from it via USB. As well as getting me off tobacco, it's also given me something else to geek out over, and I really enjoy it and the community around it.

Access to these devices must be made available widely and without encumbrance to as many people as possible. Regulations that come in should be about quality of product, not discouragement of purchase.

The backups stored on iCloud are encrypted with your Apple ID password.

> Most 'geeks' I know recommend that people not buy Apple because of the lock-in.

Most 'geeks' give horrendous advice to non-technical people when it comes to computers/smartphones/etc.

I was guilty of it for many years. You get so entrenched in the technical and philosophical underpinnings of something that you end up lacking basic understanding of the end user's problem.

The fact is that when you take someone who has very little technical understanding, and _no desire_ to _ever_ have a technical understanding of a computer, and put them in front of a Mac or an iPad or an iPhone, they are generally actually able to use the damn thing with very little hand holding.

As someone who has been one of those geeks, every time I see another tech head recommending Linux for their granny, I believe that a small kitten dies somewhere.

> We've come as far as we have because of open protocols and competition and Apple seems to be afraid to compete on a level playing field.

What important protocols and standards do you believe that Apple is shying away from? They made a decision in 1997 to drop all of their proprietary networking standards and put their weight onto TCP/IP. They've adopted standards in every field in which there is an obvious need. They contribute well back to the community for products that aren't a core business driver: clang, LLVM, WebKit, back ports to FreeBSD, etc.

One messaging app and one video chatting app being closed because they are profit drivers does not make the company evil, despite what Stallman and co would have us think.

If Apple were pushing their own standards for web content (and not HTML (incidentally they've been on the W3C for a long time now)), or their own standards for email, networking stacks, etc., then you might have an argument, but otherwise it seems to me that you're looking for an excuse.

> I have an algorithm that only takes 7 holes compared to your 12 which is seven bucks per sheep means make seven holes and shove 34 sheep into each money hole then count the total.

Good thing for the shaman's job security that there are more numbers that can be multiplied than 7 and 34, then. Try multiplying 34x34.

For large multiplications, using the method described uses a logarithmically smaller working space in a society where positional numbers didn't exist and paper was rare, expensive, or nonexistent.

That's a fine argument with 7 times 34, because you only need 7 holes of 34 stones.

But it breaks down when multiplying much larger numbers, because the number of holes you need increases by N. With this addition system, you only need log(N) holes.

The system exists to remove cumbersome aspects of multiplying large numbers by counting. Consider 34x34. While one fellow is out digging 34 holes, making sure not to make a mistake, or finding a piece of wood that has 34 holes marked in it, the other guy never needs more than 10 holes if his numbers are less than 1024. This keeps his working area small, and he can see all of it at the same time. It's less cumbersome this way.

> insecure systems are preferable (as a user)

No they’re not. Religious issues should never come before security.

As an engineer with no background in economics, do you have any sources that discuss the pitfalls of Austrian economics from a layman’s perspective?

It seems nowadays that the internet is so rife with neo-Libertarians that it’s very difficult to find content discussing Austrian economics that is not biased towards it. I’d like to see a more balanced perspective, or at least a rundown of reasons why Austrian economics has failed to correspond with reality.

I’m not John Gruber, but having read the blog for many years I feel I can safely say that the guy does not hate Microsoft, nor does he hate Google.

I couldn't help but cringe at the author's continual use of the term "stupid cow" to refer to the woman in question, or the reference to someone with ASD as "stupid".

The response to racism should probably not be a needlessly gendered and sexist attack ("cow") on a woman, or an ableist attack on someone with ASD.

> The gender battle has existed for as long as we have. An unending competition as to which sex is better. This is no different, we're just changing the rules and bringing in a few different twists with this contest.

Wow. No thank you.

This kind of thing might be fun and innocent if we were not already living in an industry rife with sexism, inequality, and bro-culture rudeness.

A fantastic talk by Meredith L. Patterson on this very topic at 28c3:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kEfedtQVOY

> Computers can compile things really fast nowadays.

Tell that to my fecking codebase.

And also like... the XNU kernel?

There's no evidence that the Game Center issues that arose the day Letterpress was released had anything to do with the game. iMessage had connectivity issues earlier in the day.

18 U.S.C. § 873

Whoever, under a threat of informing, or as a consideration for not informing, against any violation of any law of the United States, demands or receives any money or other valuable thing, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.

---

No, it's not blackmail and no legal action will be taken. The ability of some reddit users to be completely blind to either facts or any kind of realistic analysis continues to amaze me.

> Nokia produced far better phones under the Symbian banner

The problem here is that you appear to have no idea what the word "better" means to a consumer, as opposed to a hacker.

And that's why you can't understand Apple's success and write it off to "marketing".

Because Google and everyone else in the Android ecosystem* don't care.

*EDIT: I don't mean third party developers when I said 'ecosystem'. I mean the manufacturers.

They're in it for a profit like everyone else, and "open" is just a good a marketing strategy toward tech-minded people as any other. Consumers, on the other hand, still do not care.

It amazes me how many people continue to misunderstand App Store rules and quote bullshit on a daily basis.

In-App Purchasing rules apply to purchasing books in an e-reader, levels in a video game, or music in a player, etc.

It doesn't apply at all to real-world items. (This includes something like train tickets via Passbook because they are not consumed in the app, they are consumed by the train conductor scanning your phone.)

None of those things apply anymore.

No. Google want people using their services. They don't care if people are using Android or not - Android is simply a platform upon which they can get users to use their services. That is their only vested interest.

To quote Zed Shaw on how enterprise software gets sold: "steak and strippers".

Ugh.

I hate the "bros" that inhabit many startup companies these days.

> people with a preference for form over function

People who keep using that phrase as an excuse to hate on anything designed that they don't like are the truly revolting people.

Stifling discussion, silencing opinions, and perpetuating engineer-elitism.

It searches for a keyword in the manpages and tells you what page contains the text.

    $ apropos printf
    fmtcheck(3)              - sanitizes user-supplied printf(3)-style format string
    format(ntcl)             - Format a string in the style of sprintf
    fwkpfv(1)                - FireWire kprintf viewer
    fwprintf(3), swprintf(3), vfwprintf(3), vswprintf(3), vwprintf(3), wprintf(3) - formatted wide character output conversion
    printf(1)                - formatted output
    printf(3), fprintf(3), sprintf(3), snprintf(3), asprintf(3), dprintf(3), vprintf(3), vfprintf(3), vsprintf(3), vsnprintf(3), vasprintf(3), vdprintf(3) - formatted output conversion
    wprintf_l(3), fwprintf_l(3), swprintf_l(3), vwprintf_l(3), vfwprintf_l(3), vswprintf_l(3) - formatted wide character output conversion

Actually you can do it with:

<cmd>-<right>, <option-left>, <option-shift-right>, baz

And considering you didn't have to press <mode>: beforehand, it can be just as fast.

I'm a vim user, but using it for something like Objective-C in place of the wonderful autocomplete in Xcode would be a totally dumb thing to do. It's simply not smart enough to improve my productivity, even with the slight speed increases with text-manipulation.