idiocrat

> Moncrieff argues that drug companies, doctors and psychiatrists benefit from this situation because it’s profitable.

I recently discovered low dose lithium for myself. (self-medicated OTC lithium orotate, 5mg 2x daily)

This has greatly improved my mood and attitude to life.

Lithium has removed most of my procrastination by eliminating negative thoughts (i.e. "that is a difficult task, so I better defer this to tomorrow"). Starting and finishing something has become so easy now.

All work and household related tasks are now lightweight (chores, washing dishes, making beds). All things I found annoying to do before.

I am generally happy, positive-minded and open-minded toward other people.

Lithium is not a sedative or a pain killer -- I am still normally tired after a day, but now I am prioritizing my time rationally, and not based on negative emotions.

Somebody said that Lithium is too cheap, no profit to make, so pharma companies will not spend much on further R&D.

P.S. Of course lithium is a psycho-active substance, and surely has some side-effects. All above is only my personal experience. Please consult your doctor and be extremely careful with self-medication.

I wish to know more about this time-capsule country.

Currently the country seems to experience an extraordinary construction boom (modern apartment buildings).

All we have are 20 years old pictures.

Somebody said: just live long enough to live forever.

On the other side the US Apollo rock samples from the moon are now lost somewhere in dusty warehouses, disinterested, neglected and unaccounted for.

There was an incident few years ago, where a couple had stolen some moon dust, spread it on their bed sheets and has sex on top.

For practice you can buy several fire extinguishers at a hardware store and then walk in your neighborhood trying to convince people to buy the extinguishers from you.

Such a field experience is very valuable.

One interesting/funny thing that Japanese visitors to Europe/USA observe is that people in bookstores and libraries are turning their heads to the side in front of the bookshelves.

Have not read this article behind the paywall.

I assumed that in India many buildings are not being finished, because there will be some kind of taxation upon finishing the building construction.

So it makes sense to keep the upper floor indefinitely unfinished. Keep some tools, bricks and cement bags lying around, in order to show to an inspector, if one shows up.

> Authorities reportedly believe the smuggler went to the lengths he did in an effort to avoid Japan’s 10-percent import tariff.

To my understanding, when selling in Japan, the smugglers will need to either declare the capital gain tax, or sell it (at some) the black market heavily discounted.

When determining the capital gain tax, if no purchase receipt (=purchase price) can be provided, the purchase price is set at 10% of the current market value, leading to a big capital gain tax.

In any case it will be difficult for the smuggler to make up the savings of the 10% import tariff.

To my understanding, that 10% tariff is actually an added 10% consumption tax, which can be claimed back when transporting gold out of Japan.

Chipping in dnGrep.

Allows to grep inside XLSX and Word files.

http://dngrep.github.io/

4:1

I know what you did here. I am taking my Mg/K supplements to keep up my attention.

Just imagine the air drag in that mesh/roost.

Waiting for the AI judges and the AI executioners. End-to-end fully automated pipeline.

Don't miss out on "Meet the Feebles (1989)"

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0097858/

Please take a look at this animation.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-the-speed-of-li...

A thought experiment.

It has been said that if a modern "average" human were transported back in time, it would be difficult for that person to build anything useful, because of the lack of material manufacturing (c.f. "Toaster from Scratch" and "Primitive Technology" channels) and lack of specific knowledge.

So goes my thought experiment. If I were transported 100,000 years back, I would big-scale industrialize the production of soap blocks and then build soap distribution networks over wast lands (the King of Soap). Soap is quite easy to produce with wood ash.

I would also mass-scale press-print porno comics (using wooden plate carvings).

I think these two what defines civilization and will give me a chance for not being killed as a practitioner of witchcraft.

The trick with my Lenovo 300W notebook in the airplanes is as following.

At first, with the adapter disconnected from the notebook, I charge the capacitors inside of the adapter by connecting and re-connecting repeatedly (1-2 seconds intervals). The first 5 times the breaker trips, but eventually the capacitors are charged, so no initial high current is drawn from the socket, and the breaker is happy.

Only then I connect the notebook to the adapter. I never tried to draw too much power from the airplane socket by playing GPU/CPU intensive games.

Wish you productive flights!

Sorry to be that guy again, but can I have my "Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 4.0" back please? (When the world was still simple and the future was yet in the future).

Some time ago a fellow NH user has proposed an interesting idea to build an ML UI transformer, which will sit on top of the broken MS Windows 2030 OS and transform the UI experience in real-time to the UI of my choice.

Maybe spoof the RDP protocol?

I suddenly stopped worrying about both LISP and FORTH, when my CS professor mentioned (around 1995) that it would be trivial to write a transformer between the LISP and FORTH.

In a range of 100-150 US$ a piece.

Perhaps 500-800 US$ for 5 finished keyboards.

Similar to this Omnikey Ultra T, in a similar build quality, but with few keys rearranged. I wish the F11 and F12 on the life side to be below F9 and F10 keys.

https://www.thurrott.com/forums/general-discussion/hardware/...

I like the heavy metal bottom plate, but can be (cheaper) molded plastic.

My current Ultra T is at end of life, I am resoldering the gradually failing white ALPS.

Is there a way to ask for a reasonably-priced custom made keyboard?

I have a key layout in mind, and I just want a ready product, not to fiddle with hardware and firmware myself.

The order lot is very tiny of maybe 4-5 pcs.

The layout is quite simple QWERTY, based on Omnikey Ultra T.

Interesting. One of the few movies you can fully watch in both directions. The music character makes the distinct atmosphere.

I just made a small peek and I could find new some visual details, which I was glossing over on the forward version. (e.g. explosions in the windows of the demolished buildings)

Yes, thought the same.

Once the LLMs are going, why do I need to call anybody myself?

Let AIs personas do everything on my behalf.

Just make a good insurance policy, that if my AI persona screws something up, I will not be liable.

An interesting reprint in 2003

https://www.drdobbs.com/parallel/understanding-natural-langu...

"Computers still cannot understand natural language as well as young children can. Why is it so hard?"

Source: AI Expert, May 1987

"He saw that gas can explode."

This ambiguous sentence stuck in my head some 30 years ago, when the AI was popular at that time.

There was a research paper discussing the issue of ambiguity.

It still will be a timing game. What if I want to click on the new object in 300 ms time period? I need to wait 300 ms to do so, this is a flow issue.

If 1 billion current MS Windows users would make daily 1000 UI operations, but each time wait 100 ms for UI animations, the collective wasted time on the animations would be 3000 years of collective wasted time.

Fortunately most are just watching movies and shopping online, so not much collective _productive_ time is wasted ;)

- Multi-threaded UI updates, where the elements being shifted from the expected position (after a background update), causing the mouse clicks to miss the expected element. Need to delay the clicks and wait until the UI updates are settled, before clicking on an element.

I am "shocked" how much human collective time is wasted on inefficient software and configurations, including:

- UI animations sliding/folding (e.g. 1Hz interactivity vs 120Hz interactivity).

- MS Windows default keyboard settings with slowed down key repeat rate.

- corporate firewalls configured to DROP instead of REJECT the LAN traffic.

- latency to access office documents in the cloud.

- MS Teams bugs frustrations.

- increased number of mouse clicks in WIN11 to reach common functions.

- other software bugs/annoyances we cannot fix, c.g Jonathan Blow.

Interesting.

"KSUIDs are larger than UUIDs and Flake IDs, weighing in at 160 bits. They consist of a 32-bit timestamp and a 128-bit randomly generated payload."

TTTTTTTTRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

T-Timestamp R-Random

There are economy arguments against using this as quasi-sequential PKs.

For efficient index lookup and sorting, best is to use CPU's native register sizes. It would be great if the PK would be a DWORD (32 bits) or QWORD (64 bits), one would assume the DB engine will align the access for efficient handling of the L1-L2 caches and prevent page tearing.

Europa proposes the new law to protect online child sexual abuse.

An effective implementation will require installment of the Great European Firewall.

"(6) Online child sexual abuse frequently involves the misuse of information society services offered in the Union by providers established in third countries. In order to ensure the effectiveness of the rules laid down in this Regulation and a level playing field within the internal market, those rules should apply to all providers, irrespective of their place of establishment or residence, that offer services in the Union, as evidenced by a substantial connection to the Union."

Her camera's zoom has some bouncing bug.