cbsmith

It's not called a Code Red.

Not all catastrophes are immediate in nature. Most organizations have incident response protocol which works well enough for an immediate catastrophe. Non-immediate, gradual threats can represent a much greater risk, because there's no inflection point (beyond "way too late") where the threat becomes so imminent as to trigger that response. Code Yellows are a mechanism to artificially force that inflection point before it is too late.

> Left unsaid is that many human traders are subjected to similar Pavlovian "training" -- and are treated with about as much kindness and dignity as those rats.

I think it's pretty clear from subtext that that is the core thrust of the work. ;-)

The JDK doesn't include all the J2EE goodness: https://docs.oracle.com/javaee/7/api/javax/json/package-summ...

javax.json has been around since Java 7.

Thanks dad. ;-)

Job well done.

> maybe instead of relying on kubernetes DNS for discovery it can be closer to something like envoy.the control plane updates configs that are stored locally (and are eventually consistent) so even if the control plane dies the data plane has access to location information of other peer clusters.

That is generally how it is done... there's this never ending conflict between "push" architectures and "pull" architectures, and this scenario sure makes "push" seem better, and it is... until you're in one of those scenarios where "pull" is better. ;-)

Yeah, "script" is just an abbreviation of "manuscript", right? ;-)

Yeah, if I'm reading documentation to decide if there's a value proposition worth exploring, I've already made a mistake. You've got a make the value proposition, and then I'll read about the "why" to understand if that value proposition can be realized. Why would I read a tutorial or a HOWTO for something with no known value?

The reference is relevant to me too, though modern information retrieval tools make it much less so, as I can often get the reference information I want in context. The main reason the reference is helpful is that explanations often aren't as precise as you need them to be about the specifications for the tool.

In retrospect, I do get some value out of tutorials & HOWTOs, mostly as a check on my understanding. They're just not where I want to start.

I think a good way of framing it is that a lot of documentation these days starts with "getting started", and I've observed that more often than not, that actually makes everything more difficult. If I understand the tool first, I avoid going down a lot of blind alleys and misinterpretations. I have observed that people often use a tutorial or a HOWTO as a way to get something done quickly without ever reaching that understanding, but the reality is the understanding is reason you wanted a human using the tool in the first place.

:-)

Actually, it looks like it alternates between those two phrases.

If I'm in a rush to achieve a goal, using a new tool is going to slow me down, with or without a tutorial. I consequently find the tutorial of limited value and usually just something I scan through until I get to the "real" documentation. It's revelatory how this works for other people. I guess I always understood that, but didn't really "grok" it until now.

In hindsight, I realize my tone was off in that comment. I didn't mean it like it was the right choice or that there was anything wrong with Diátaxis. Since people find it helpful I presumed it was... and you're absolutely right about the clear labeling! This article was a really helpful insight for me.

I just hadn't really appreciated why other people wanted different kinds of documentation. I always feel like if I don't understand the "why" I really don't know the tool and therefore shouldn't use it until that was addressed.

Only has type 4 UUIDs. ;-)

I always want to jump right to the explanation documentation. The rest of it seems like a waste of time (well, the Reference bit can be somewhat useful later). I find tutorials and HOWTOs as misleading at best.

Indeed.

> Evidence is scarce and the article is talking about brains with active illnesses.

They compared them to control brains, which also had microbes.

> It could be that there isn't any microbiome normally but if the safety mechanisms fail and bacteria colonize the brain, that would cause the illnesses described.

That would describe a scenario where the blood-brain barrier isn't 100% effective, no? If it's not 100% effective (which we know to be true), it is also seems unlikely that 100% of the things that cross the blood-brain barrier cause something that we currently consider a disease. Heck, in healthy individuals, latent taxoplasmosis' effects are often so minimial I don't think we'd call it a disease (otherwise 30%+ of the world has the disease).

Contamination is possible, but it's hard to explain the results that way. Definitely needs replication, of course.

I don't see the point of the samples all being from older individuals. Even if it exclusively occurs in older individuals (unlikely), it would still mean that the blood-brain barrier is not 100% effective (which we already know to be true).

I mean, we know about all kinds of microbes that can be in the brains of "unhealthy" people, and we've known that for ages (taxoplasmosis and CJD come to mind).

The association in the article isn't a case of "we didn't find it in healthy people", but "we found it in more in unhealthy people".

From the article: "It found that, while there was a remarkable diversity of species in the control brains, there were often overgrowths of certain bugs in Alzheimer’s brains."

Short answer: yes.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/dec/01/the-bra...

You're going to have a lot of fans amongst con men. ;-)

Unfair coins very much do exist: https://izbicki.me/blog/how-to-create-an-unfair-coin-and-pro...

There's a "fair coin", and then there's a "fair flip". It's actually pretty difficult to do a truly "fair flip".

Yup. Really moved me.

> You can't stop talking - Once you've given the feedback, anything beyond that is... not feedback, it's something else.

So, so true. Early on in my career I was so nervous giving feedback that I talked for an hour after providing the feedback. Absolutely terrible. I remember that conversation every time I'm giving feedback now.

> The extremely wealthy like Bezos have contingency plans and systems for this situation.

Yes. That's the point, the ideal target is one that doesn't have contingency plans, not someone who has crypto.

It'd be trivial for Bezos to take out a loan for a ransom to buy crypto in a new account, and then transfer it to another crypto account.

It's logistically pretty easy these days for a wealthy person without an ounce of crypto to buy crypto and transfer it to someone else.

On the other hand, if your business was a scam and you needed to explain where $1 million went to...

Uber & Airbnb were really exploring a time-honoured model that has predictable effects. Taking underutilized resources and shifting to a "rental" model increases utilization of assets, broadening accessibility, and thereby increasing wealth... while simultaneously increasing the value of the underlying asset (making it less affordable). This isn't a new thing, or a surprising thing, nor is the scale of it the problem.

Where we get into a problem is when, due to lack of competition, you start extracting almost all (or perhaps even somewhat more than all) of the value that you're adding. That leaves everyone else in the same boat they were in before the rental model showed up, except comparatively worse off because there's a ton of wealth in there that has been concentrated in the hands of a few.

This is the kind of thing that having more competition would help with.

> The concern regarding a drug as a crutch is stil valid.

People with pacemakers can't get off of them either, but it doesn't have the same stigma. Diabetics often need regular insulin injections, but it doesn't have the same stigma. People with high-blood pressure often need regular medication, but it doesn't have the same stigma. It's mostly antidepressants and now Ozempic which have this stigma.

> A set of habits and lifestyle are pretty much the same thing.

I believe the DSM does not consider them "pretty much the same thing".

You're right. You didn't say that. You said (and I quoted) "I mean, medication won't actually solve what is caused by behaviour, right?" in commentary to an article about a medication used to treat obesity, while discussing the need for better awareness about food/nutrition.

> I'm suggesting the idea that maybe we as a society should better educate around our relationship with food. I believe it would make a difference - just not immediately.

It's a bit tautological that if we did something better things would be better. Better education around our relationship with food would start with people understanding that better education about our relationship with food won't help people suffering from obesity.

> From my subjective experience in life, what they very often lacked was parents who set the right examples around food.

No amount of education will change who your parents were or how you were raised. Have you observed a strong correlation between how well educated someone is vs. obesity?

> I speculate that better awareness of diet/nutrition might help to prevent passing on such behaviours, like not feeding the family exclusively a bucket of KFC or McDonalds, or using food as a reward, etc. etc.

I'd encourage you to talk to any reasonably intelligent obese parent to see if they need better awareness of diet/nutrition. Better still, do a survey of obese and non-obese people to compare awareness of diet/nutrition between the two groups.

> I mean, medication won't actually solve what is caused by behaviour, right?

Saying that obesity is caused by behaviour and therefore can't be solved with medication is a bold statement to make in the context of a story about a drug that has been clinically proven to help obese people to lose weight.

Medication is often prescribed to help people who suffer from behavioural problems with positive results. I wouldn't presume medication can solve all problems caused by behaviour, but there is empirical evidence that for some problems it does help. As near as we can tell, human behaviour is regulated by a electrochemical brain & nervous system. Dumping chemicals into that system can of course change human behaviour. We see evidence of that (for better or for worse) all the time. If you have doubts and you don't even need to get a prescription, try taking a hit of acid/cocaine/alchohol and see if behaviour changes.

> If parents know their habits around food are basically ensuring their kids will struggle with obesity, maybe they'll make the effort to do something different?

The US has had a dramatic increase in obesity within a single generation (as in, people who were not obese for much of their lives have become morbidly obese at a rate far exceeding previous generations), let alone cross generational. While food/nutrition/health habits can certainly have a profound effect on someone's weight, there are clearly other factors at play.

Consider, for a moment, the reality of an obese person living in the US today. You get negative feedback about your weight all the time. You suffer negative social outcomes, let alone all the physical ones, so few, if any, want to be obese. There is no lack of motivation to seek out information on how to avoid being obese. There's a $300+ billion industry diet/health/nutrition industry constantly seeking to inform you about products they offer to help with your diet/health/nutrition... and that's not counting the doctors that you are no doubt interacting with regularly. Of course, that's not counting all the education (solicited or otherwise) you get from friends, family, acquaintances and even random strangers. It's hard to get through a day without being "educated" about diet, nutrition and health.

There's a cultural bias to think the problem is simply about behavioural/willpower/education, much the same way we look at poverty. It demonstrates a profound lack of understanding of and empathy for the plight of people who are suffering from obesity.

Yes, because what obese people lack is education.