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reuben_scratton

256 karma · joined October 3, 2016

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reuben_scratton··on Apple mobile processors are now made in America by TSMC
I can't believe iPhone chips, almost the supreme luxury good, are considered worthy of Federal subsidies.

Surely a better path would have been to slap imported silicon with tarriffs at least equal to their gov't subsidies?

(Unpopular opinion: The people that spent the last 30 years giving away US & EU manufacturing to the Far East - no doubt with plenty of "10% for the big guy" type deals behind the scenes - should all be shot.)

reuben_scratton··on Brain overgrowth dictates autism severity, new research suggests
I have two severely autistic children who cannot talk and who need lifelong care. That's the REAL autism, the one Leo Kanner identified in 1943. Not the rebranded Aspergers with extra rainbows.

I wouldn't wish real autism on my worst enemy.

reuben_scratton··on The effect of deplatforming hate organizations on their online audience
Here's an example: The LGB Alliance in U.K. are routinely smeared as a 'hate' group for taking a dim view of male rapists in female prisons, males competing in female sports, and so on. Resisting that trend and arguing for sex-based rights is considered 'hate' by some.

It's a lazy, imprecise term that is only ever used in political spats, never to address actual intergroup violence. Personally I suspect the demand for hate groups to exist - thereby justifying the many orgs and careers built on countering it - far exceeds the genuine supply.

reuben_scratton··on Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death experiences
When my mother died she had been completely unconscious for a whole week, but just 30 minutes before she died she opened her eyes and looked around the room. I was later told by a nurse that this is quite common when people are about to die. It seems to fit with the notion of one last burst of brain activity.
reuben_scratton··on Researchers’ tests of lab-made version of Covid virus draw scrutiny
You must know that virologists routinely "serial passage" viruses through animal hosts? Evolving a candidate virus "through multiple, probably dozens of hosts" is what virology labs do.

And lab leaks happen All The Time. SARS-1 escaped labs on six separate occasions.

reuben_scratton··on Ask HN: How did you stop drinking?
Same here. Twenty-one years since my last cigarette now, and it's entirely thanks to the late great Allen Carr - may God rest and nourish his immortal soul.

(It was my 9th or 10th attempt to quit too, but my first and only with Easy Way)

reuben_scratton··on Ask HN: How did you stop drinking?
Guided introspection.

Despite not considering myself alcoholic, my wife nagged me into going to local Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meetings. I came to realise that I had somehow slipped into alcoholism without being the classic street-drunk, shop-doorway kind. I had the mental obsession with alcohol in spades... every day I'd count the hours until, after work, I could start drinking.

Once I'd accepted I was alcoholic it was relatively easy. The simple fact is I don't want to be an alcoholic, or any kind of -holic, so I was suddenly highly motivated to stop.

The AA way gets you thinking deeply about why you started drinking heavily in the first place: What are the exact feelings you want to drown in alcohol, and why do you have them?

reuben_scratton··on Ask HN: What's Your Biggest Regret?
Having kids.

I'm sure it's great for normies but my kids are mentally disabled and being their dad is grief and heartache without end. I have no close family to share any of it with - the little family I grew up with are all dead and I am looking forward to my own death.

I hope that one day genetic research will advance to a point where 23andme et al can help future young couples avoid these kind of outcomes.

reuben_scratton··on Finally, no bid on mortgage-backed securities
Does anyone (UK) even offer fixed rate more than 5 years ahead?
reuben_scratton··on Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne
"Taking full precautions against airborne transmission would require major changes at hospitals"

Major changes such as, er, occasionally opening a window to let some fresh air in? That's a basic, obvious precaution that's been known since the dawn of time that wasn't done at all in the UK hospital ward where my mother caught and then died from Covid late last year. I know because I was there. The cluelessness re. viral spread almost two years into the pandemic was just astounding and I'm still very, very angry about it.

reuben_scratton··on Hash collision in Apple NeuralHash model
"Verified by a human" - and that human will be an overworked, underpaid, overseas subcontractor who may well have an incentive to mash the "Confirm match" button from time to time to improve his performance.
reuben_scratton··on Ask HN: 90s programmers, what did you expect the future of tech to look like?
I thought Intentional Programming would be big by now : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentional_programming
reuben_scratton··on Fastly Outage
I'm sure it's just a coincidence that today is Patch Tuesday.

:-|

reuben_scratton··on The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?
Lab escapes are not that rare, SARS-1 is known to have escaped 6 times. It also doesn't matter how safe and secure the WIV's BSL-4 lab is, since coronavirus research was done at BSL-2 and BSL-3.
reuben_scratton··on The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?
The furin cleavage site in SARS-Cov-2 does not appear in any other SARS-related beta coronavirus (sarbecovirus).
reuben_scratton··on Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed
SARS-CoV-2 is spectacularly well-adapted for infecting humans, the original SARS and other animal-origin viruses are not.

The idea that this thing sprang out of the wild, in Wuhan of all places, perfectly adapted to infect human beings, is fucking laughable.

reuben_scratton··on Bats and the Origin of Outbreaks
This is why I feel the international community should somehow come together to agree to indemnify China against all types of future sanctions or prosecutions etc re Covid-19.

The critically important thing is to establish exactly what happened in order to prevent SARS 3, SARS 4, etc. Absolutely everything else is of secondary importance. In the absence of malicious intent - and I think everyone agrees on that - we should have no interest in appointing blame.

reuben_scratton··on Bats and the Origin of Outbreaks
Re. Novichok, if there wasn't video evidence of two known Russian agents the Porton Down theory might be more plausible. But Porton Down says they have nothing to do with it and we should just accept their word as fact, just as we have to accept the word of the Wuhan Institute of Virology that there was no possibility of lab leak there.

Or maybe given the global significance of Covid-19, and the obvious conflict of interest for WIV, and especially given that the original SARS escaped labs at least 6 times, maybe some independent auditing and investigation should be done?

reuben_scratton··on Bats and the Origin of Outbreaks
There is no direct evidence of zoonotic origin either. An entire year on and we don't even know the intermediate species, let alone where crossover occurred. With the original SARS this was worked out in a couple of weeks.

Also I've yet to see any slightly convincing explanation as to why SARS-Cov-2 emerged from the wild spectacularly well-adapted to human ACE2.

reuben_scratton··on 70TB of Parler users’ messages, videos, and posts leaked by security researchers
Was it really? Where can I see proof of this?
reuben_scratton··on Amazon, Apple and Google Cut Off Parler
Well quite. You'd think for all the screeching of "incitement" the news coverage would be able to find one 5 second clip or tweet or something where he'd actually done it. It beggars belief how low journalistic standards have fallen.
reuben_scratton··on Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine
That article is one of the dumbest articles I've read in an unusually dumb year.

Why do these journalists think we should all only ever be spoon-fed inoffensive, carefully-curated pap? And when was the last time anyone changed their mind about anything because of something they saw on Facebook? The worst it does is confirm existing bias and prejudice.

reuben_scratton··on Eric Engstrom, co-creator of DirectX, has died
I had a year or two of chronic lower back pain and thought it was just the price of getting older (also mid 40s) and living a largely sedentary life. Then I started taking a Vitamin D supplement for a totally unrelated reason (mood, basically) and my back pain disappeared! I was extremely surprised (and happy!).
reuben_scratton··on Facebook Employees Slam Zuckerberg over Militia Groups and QAnon After Kenosha
Could we stop trying to make Facebook responsible for every damn thing that happens?
reuben_scratton··on Mark Zuckerberg Believes Only in Mark Zuckerberg
That's a truly terrible article.
reuben_scratton··on MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?
Quinn The Eskimo at Apple's forums is a 10x support engineer, his posts have helped me fix dozens of problems.
reuben_scratton··on The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic could have been prevented
There's bat colonies and wet markets all over China. The odds that SARS-CoV-2 naturally began in one of the very few places with labs that study it seems exceedingly remote.
reuben_scratton··on What Happened to Lee
Yes. His family are financially secure, thanks to his Cloudflare millions. I could die much more easily knowing my family were safe after I'd gone.
reuben_scratton··on Ask HN: Why did you leave the tech industry?
Not actually left yet, but at age 48 I certainly want to. The trouble is it's all I'm good at...
reuben_scratton··on A quick primer on type traits in modern C++
That was an excellent article, thank you.
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