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threadweaver34on Alphabet’s Profit Falls 34% (fourth consecutive drop) Amid Ads Slowdown

There's also a shift away from products to services, but I'm not sure how different those ads yield for Google. I assume ecommerce does better because it's easier to track conversions.

threadweaver34on Alphabet’s Profit Falls 34% (fourth consecutive drop) Amid Ads Slowdown

Meta started getting beat up about a quarter before Alphabet. They were 6 months ahead on a hiring freeze, and 3 months ahead on layoffs. They've been thinking about this a lot longer, and markets respond to if you beat the number the market was expecting, not if you beat internal or external forecasts.

threadweaver34on Ejaculation frequency and prostate cancer (2022)

The one point they have is that internet porn can be a problem for some people, but there's a difference between having to use your imagination and abstaining entirely.

threadweaver34on Japan was the future but it's stuck in the past

It's that Japan is so advanced, but different. Most other countries are either less developed or similar to the west.

threadweaver34on Japan was the future but it's stuck in the past

That's just because America castrated their war machine.

threadweaver34on Appalachian Apple hunter who rescued 1k ‘lost’ varieties (2021)

At long as there are wild, native apples growing somewhere, would that be enough genetic diversity to recreate similar varieties to anything that's lost?

threadweaver34on The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

I agree with your point on realism vs impressionism, but I still buy the explanation what we prefer 24 fps movies because we're conditioned to, not because of a preference for impressionism.

I also like my wine expensive and with nice labels.

threadweaver34on Appalachian Apple hunter who rescued 1k ‘lost’ varieties (2021)

Tomatoes are the extreme of what's better from a home garden.

threadweaver34on Tech companies are quietly defunding diversity pledges

And then there's Latinx. Latinx isn't even pronounceable in Spanish or Portuguese.

threadweaver34on Tech companies are quietly defunding diversity pledges

True. It's absolutely a pipeline problem, and "tech" isn't even the solution as much as improving educations overall. I also thing home environment has something to do with it, and there's only so much public schools can do there.

threadweaver34on Microsoft has laid off entire teams behind Virtual, Mixed Reality, and HoloLens

6 months of FAANG severance is better than 2 years of government social safety net, even with a good government.

threadweaver34on Tech companies are quietly defunding diversity pledges

The FAANG I'm at bends over backwards to find diamonds in the rough, but for the most part, they weren't at even a second-tier tech firm for a reason.

It reminds me of how Cal graduation rates went up when they couldn't use racial quotas.

threadweaver34on Tech companies are quietly defunding diversity pledges

When you've got a hiring freeze and your stock is beat up, you don't need to recruit more talent (BIPOC or otherwise), and you don't need to tell the world how progressive you are. You need to prioritize projects and execute with strong teams. As an initiative, diversity distracts from that.

Coinbase isn't in the business of being a platform for progressive politics. It's a platform for exchanging crypto, and it's explicit about it. Other companies aer quietly following suit.

threadweaver34on Tech Layoffs Shock Young Workers. The Older People? Not So Much.

> that cuts aren’t always rational

The FAANG I'm at made offers to return to some of the people it laid off. Whoopsie! Our bad.

threadweaver34on Google to reduce workforce by 12k

If hosting is cheap, I'd be tempted to put it out for free just to up the ante with the other company.

threadweaver34on Google to reduce workforce by 12k

Diversity programs are best viewed as a relatively cheap marketing expense. They exist to make the company look better to certain people. When there are more pressing concerns, you pare them back because you have better things to worry about that what non-customers think of you.

threadweaver34on Quitting the rat race

Mid 30s, $1.5m net worth, no major obligations.

I don't want to live in self inflected poverty in Tulsa, and I enjoy my work enough that I'd rather find something else to work on that I find interesting.

Good luck keeping up a resume for freelancing.

Also, I have nothing better to do than work.

threadweaver34on Long Covid: major findings, mechanisms and recommendations

My point was that we've reached the mid-term status quo. If you're still wearing a mask, you're going to be wearing it for a while.

threadweaver34on Eggs are 60% more expensive than last year in the US

https://www.richmondfed.org/research/national_economy/macro_...

> Using the relationship in Figure 1, we calculate this as an increase of the PCE price level from 295.7 to a midpoint of estimates of 300.2, plus or minus 0.9.

> Expectation of additional debt forgiveness programs evokes a moral hazard incentive for college students to take out more loans and for universities to increase tuition rates.1 To the extent that inflation is inherently persistent, any initial price level increase would also lead to sustained inflation over the near future.

threadweaver34on Long Covid: major findings, mechanisms and recommendations

> people should stick to N95/KN-95/KF-94/FFP2/FFP3 masks for the time being

Now that we have a vaccine and a bivalent booster, realize that you're suggesting masking for at least another 5 years. You said this, but it also has to be N95 at this point with how contagious it is.

> people get reinfected every few months

The realistic estimates are more like every year.

threadweaver34on Eggs are 60% more expensive than last year in the US

And Biden's still trying to give away more in student loan forgiveness and has still paused payments.

threadweaver34on CEO Jack Altman’s email to Lattice employees

I wish companies would report their CEO's internal performance reviews this year. I suspect it'll be framed as making the best out of a bad situation rather than severely misjudged macroeconomic conditions.

threadweaver34on Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

> Articles urging people not to panic sell also start appearing.

Considering what people do and the track record of buy-and-hold, this is a responsible move.

threadweaver34on Ask HN: I'm 40 and feel my mental ability declining. Programming seems harder.

Have you been working from home for the last 3 years? Less social interaction could contribute to this.

threadweaver34on Ask HN: I'm 40 and feel my mental ability declining. Programming seems harder.

> 3. cut out all sugar outside of whole unprocessed fruit. (juice doesn't count)

Juice might as well be soda when it comes to sugar.

threadweaver34on My mom left behind some number code

> In the humanties there is lots of well-written text of no useful depth

This is already par for the course

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/12/chatg...

> ...a professor in the U.K., used GPT-3, a large language model from OpenAI that automatically generates text from a prompt, to write it. (The whole essay, which Sharples considered graduate-level, is available, complete with references, here.) Personally, I lean toward a B+. The passage reads like filler, but so do most student essays.

threadweaver34on My mom left behind some number code

It's that that right answer is fuzzier.

threadweaver34on My mom left behind some number code

It's BS good enough for the humanities, but not the sciences.

threadweaver34on Production Twitter on one machine? 100Gbps NICs and NVMe are fast

Whatsapp doesn't do ranking.

threadweaver34on Microplastics are finding their way into fruit and vegetables as they grow

It's important we understand what's going on for the future of the species, but the research is political suicide.