unavoidable

Some of the sites on this "web ring" (amazing!) definitely have Yahoo chat like applets and GIF animations that remind me of Flash. I miss Flash (kind of).

I've been looking for a community of exactly this! This website layout/feel scratches a really deep itch. Let's make a hand-crafted web of enthusiasts and bring back 1999 all by ourselves! :)

The problem with library apps isn't really the app. It's trivially easy to spin up a database with all the necessary fields. The real problem with library apps (or systems) is having to actually manage/index/code/scan the books, which is a pain.

On the other hand, now that you've written this out precisely, it will get fed into the next release of whatever LLM. Like reverse AI slop?

While this advice is good, the article is discussing HSV (herpes simplex virus), not HPV (human papilloma virus), which have quite different symptoms and epidemiology. There are, as yet, no approved HSV vaccines.

Removing 24% of GDP is not just a "mild recession", leaving aside all the interconnected parts of the economy that would immediately be destroyed.

You have to look past the stated intention. It's quite clear by logical deduction that it cannot be the stated purpose.

If the policy is intended to bring back US manufacturing, it would not be haphazardly implemented where the rates/industries/countries affected change by the hour. The best example are auto tariffs and steel/aluminum tariffs, which are going to absolutely destroy US auto manufacturing (where do we think the steel and aluminum used in cars are coming from?). An actual "reshoring" policy would be (1) targeted and (2) scheduled well in advance. So it obviously isn't that.

It also can't be part of a drug policy, since whatever Trump is saying about Canada is clearly false (Canada accounts for less than 1% of illicit fentanyl trade and is a net _importer_ of illegal drugs and guns _from_ the US), thus no policy can really impact this trade.

It also clearly can't be part of an energy policy, since US refineries are designed to accept a huge amount of Canadian and South American heavy crude (very little of which is produced in the US), so the oil tariffs can't possibly "onshore" more production of heavy crude.

The long-held theory by some that he's wrecking the economy for insider trading also doesn't make sense, because his favoured allies like Musk are losing tons of money right now, and an "insider trading" strategy would be much more regularly spaced rather than changing by-the-hour.

That leaves, by deduction, only a few possibilities:

* Trump really is intentionally wrecking the economy, for known or unknown reasons:

* He's wrecking the economy by instruction from a foreign agent (e.g. Putin - certainly indirect evidence exists)

* He's wrecking the economy because his donors told him to (e.g. Musk, other billionaires - unlikely because why would they want that? They would rather have the stock market go straight up, right?)

* He's wrecking the economy so that his "friends" can trade on the market with insider information (see above - seems unlikely based on the pattern)

* He's wrecking the economy so that his "friends" can buy things cheaply (would have been plausible but for the widespread collateral damage he's causing)

* Trump actually genuinely believes in tariffs (he's a product of the 80s after all)

* Trump actually genuinely hates Mexico, Canada, Europe, and China (seems plausible based on his personality and that of his political base)

* Trump really has no idea what he's doing (judge for yourself)

As an outsider, it certainly seems like the US is entirely incapable of doing that in the foreseeable future.

100%. I would say, even on the UI/UX side - Microsoft(!) has done a way better job on Edge (even though it's Chromium), with lots of new features on tab grouping, split screen browsing, note taking, syncing, and app integrations. Love it or hate it, at least they are doing some new features.

If tariffs work at all (which is doubtful), they're supposed to be part of an overarching plan with a long-term strategy in coordination with industry so that they can actually invest in creating new manufacturing. It certainly isn't going to work when tariffs are going on-off-on-off-25%-200%-10%-off-on-sometimes-off-on again. How in the world is _anyone_, American or otherwise, supposed to plan around this?

> I feel like every time I look at JavaScript it’s different .

So much truth in this. It's amazing that JS has managed to survive (even thrive!) in spite of the constant fundamental backwards-breaking changes every few cycles. Maybe that speaks to the lack of web based alternatives than anything else.

Also my 2FA app _is_ BitWarden...

The disincentives are huge though. Hiring a bad employee is a very expensive problem and hard to get rid of.

That is literally the drug in the article (ritonavir).

I mean, that's the point - in pharmaceutical sciences there's _so much noise_ including fraud that it's really only easy in hindsight to pick out "the guy" who was the "genius". It's hard to take one story like this and make it a repeatable success.

So much of this is hindsight bias though. There were no shortage of people with ideas and companies pursuing obesity drugs through a number of different pathways. Only in hindsight does it seem "genius" that Thomsen persisted and succeeded where nobody else did. But there are dozens, hundreds, of other smart people who were pursuing other pathways who did just as much stubborn work but didn't get a result. That's just pharmaceuticals.

Take, for example, another high profile disease - Alzheimer's. First there was the beta amyloid theory, then there was the p. gingivalis theory (this one was talked about so highly on this very forum, but ended in an equally high profile failure* of a pivotal clinical trial by Cortexyme). Now there are viral and metabolic theories. Each of these theories have a few dozen companies and armies of PhDs stubbornly pursuing a miracle drug, but so far it remains elusive.

* We also like to talk about "failures" of clinical trials, which is technically correct language, but evokes in the public imagination the wrong idea. A clinical trial failure doesn't mean there was something wrong with the idea or process (long before it ever gets there, a drug candidate would have been proven to be very effective in lab tests and animals). It's just that 90% of clinical trials don't end up working due to complex disease pathways and numerous unknown factors. It would help if we talked about "negative proofs" (i.e. proving something doesn't work is also valid), but it's not quite as catchy.

Brutalism actually comes from the French word for concrete, "beton brut"; not English "brutality".

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Brutalism

Am a lawyer. This is correct. Drafting subpoenas, motions, applications, convincing a skeptical judge that Twitter posts are "real" evidence, or explaining how DNS records work, not to mention actually scheduling a damn hearing, then multiply that by 4 or 5 jurisdictions (therefore 4 or 5 sets of lawyers), and you got yourself easily a few years' worth of work.

It's not quite that simple. If you've ever lived in a tall building and heard/seen/smelled stories of sewer pipes backing up, well you'll know what I mean. The bottom floor of a 50 storey building needs much more sewage space than the bottom floor of a 5 storey building. Anyway, there are considerations about venting, as well as increased capacity for lower floors versus higher floors, and the whole thing has to be designed in conjunction with the rest of the plumbing anyway.

I see this sentiment a lot, and as an engineer-turned-lawyer, I've always found this to be intriguing but unsatisfactory. Certainly lots of transactional type work (contracts, estates) and maybe even basic adversarial work (parking tickets and fines?) could be greatly enhanced by AI/ML.

But I've asked clients this question and while they would love to not have to pay lawyers - if you ever put the thought in front of them and asked whether they actually want an AI to represent them in court, when stakes are high and there's a chance of losing... well, I've never met anyone who has said they willingly take that chance.

Some fields will also certainly never be AI-ified. Not a snowball's chance in hell (and I know it sounds like a cranky person talking) that lawyers and judges in criminal/constitutional trials will ever be "replaced" by AI. It has nothing to to with the possibilities of present and future technology, but everything to do with optics. Society is almost certainly never going to accept being judged and/or losing to AI and algorithms. Even if a person has a losing case they would want to make sure to hear it from a human rather than a machine.

"To be or not to be, that is the question." -> "Or not."

That settles it then.

Europe and Canada approved AstraZeneca's vaccine while the FDA didn't (not debating whether it was a "good" decision, just that it did). Canada also approved of vaccine dose mixing (out of necessity, but nonetheless it was clearly not following the FDA). Plus, by and large Europe and Canada's leaders did not actively harm Covid treatment and vaccine efforts (many policy missteps, but nobody was actively politicizing the virus itself).

Relatedly, a great primer on this concept has been written up by the Bank of England and IMO is a must-read for anyone who wants to know how money is "created".

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-...

I love something like this but something about having to log in to a proprietary service to read/comment/view markups just doesn't sit right. I wish this kind of stuff was built in more easily to PDF readers/writers. The modern state of commenting/annotating documents despite a decade of tablet computers is sad.

There isn't really a professional expectation about prestigious firms. However, there is some reputational effect of having external counsel represent you in court. Some courts (judges, juries) might view a lawyer who represents a variety of clients more credibly than a lawyer who is directly employed by one corporate party (admittedly I think this is a very small effect and can work both ways).

Most companies also want to maintain a healthy separation between internal and external counsel so that they can keep certain kinds of communications privileged and avoid awkward situations where an attorney who is both an employee and legal advisor to a company might be subpoenaed for a deposition (basically any time a lawsuit happens, any corporate employee with knowledge can potentially become subject to deposition as a fact witness). You basically never want your in-court lawyer to be deposed for any reason.

That said, there are some companies who look into this kind of stuff for smaller matters - small corporate disputes, collections of accounts receivables, and whatnot - oftentimes are now being done in-house even if they involve some in-court matters. It still doesn't seem to make sense for big files though.

Litigation (court stuff) is almost always outsourced to law firms. The reason is that it's a different kind of practice than day-to-day corporate stuff (contracts, acquisitions, regulatory compliance) which is primarily done in house. Another major reason is the economics - generally, court cases are not always expected, and "lumpy" in timing (for example, you can have a few hearings back to back, and then spend months without court cases). So it's not usually efficient for companies to have in-house litigators. In addition, once litigation starts, you need a very big team to handle the work (pretty commonly, 10+ lawyers working full time on a tech case during pre-trial and trial). Companies don't like big payrolls.

Source: am litigator.

Does it make no sense? She hasn't testified yet.

It probably has to do with the failure mode rather than actual rate of failure, although it may be perceived differently.

When digital signals "fail" (usually just minor interference or some power fluctuation), you usually just get a black screen or a picture that cuts in and out. When analog signals "failed" (in the same interference or fluctuation) then you likely got a distorted image/sound/colour for a few seconds but it didn't really interrupt your viewing experience.

It is an interesting observation that it seems in areas where there was still analog and digital transmission in parallel, that the "live" analog signal was "faster".

Like aircraft disasters, most civil/structural engineering disasters have more than one "cause". There is not always a satisfying answer or a single "smoking gun". A bunch of things usually have to go wrong at the same time for a building to collapse catastrophically. Building codes and engineering designs have a lot of assumptions built in, including an assumption that construction does not follow the drawings exactly. But other assumptions include lack of corrosion to a degree, regular maintenance, proper materials specifications, no subsequent modifications, a particular load pattern, etc.

Even then, most buildings are not really designed for much more than 60 or 70 years. Of course, most buildings are also supposed to be designed in such a way that even if it fails, it does not result in a cascading failure. The fact that this particular kind of disaster (apparently spontaneous collapse) is so rare is what makes it newsworthy.

I agree, unfathomable. But one interesting thought that I usually entertain is that based on our best estimates there are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on Earth. Now imagine every time you step foot on a beach and think - there is potentially a star system for every grain!

https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/are-there-more-grains-of...