1MachineElf

From the article:

>Education minister Robbert Dijkgraaf said he was investigating curbs on students funded by the state-run Chinese Scholarship Council after several universities started excluding them on security grounds.

>Recipients of grants have to swear allegiance to the Communist party, return to China within two years of completing their studies and report to the Chinese embassy in the country where they study.

These scholarship requirements are a cause for concern.

(downvote if you swear allegiance to the Chinese Communist Party)

The HN submission Could leak in blood-brain barrier cause poor memory? (2021) may provide a clue: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26520453

>People with ApoE4 have a hard time getting rid of amyloid beta peptide in their brains, which causes an accumulation of plaque. With healthy aging, the pumps in the blood-brain barrier work less efficiently in getting rid of the amyloid beta peptide. The pumps work even less well in people with Alzheimer’s disease.

>Recent work suggests that the leak in the blood-brain barrier that occurs with Alzheimer’s may be due to an age-related loss of pericytes. Astrocytes, by contrast, seem to be overactive. Recent work suggests that preserving pericyte function by giving the factors that they secrete or even transplanting them could lead to a healthier blood-brain barrier.

>Other findings raise the question of whether the brain’s source of nutrition and its grip on control of the immune and endocrine systems could deteriorate with aging. Another finding raises the possibility that the rate at which many drugs are taken up by the brain may explain why older folks sometimes have different sensitivities to drugs than their children or grandchildren.

Pair that with this part of OP:

>This regulation is important in preventing proteins from going rogue and clumping together, which is what happens to the amyloid and tau proteins in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease, the most common cause of dementia.

I'm just a layman, but it sounds like BBB health is a major factor for regulating this in the brain. In some individuals, including those with identified genetic biomarkers for increased Alzheimer's risk, the BBB ages faster, leading to decreased regulation of protein/peptides. So learning more about how to improve BBB health could eventually help people maintain a healthy brain longer.

Avoiding excessive alcohol seems to be an important factor for BBB health, according to this 2021 study performed on mice: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33516661/ ; also this research published in 2022: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9204474/

OP refers to "amyloid and tau proteins" while the 2021 article I referenced refers to "amyloid beta peptide" - at this point, I'm really not sure how precisely these terms are being used. Are they interchangeable in this context, or is there an important nuance that I'm missing?

Hot breasts should be safe!

Coincidentally, I was watching a video yesterday that made a couple points about this. The video is titled Is Jesus Historical? What Do The Romans Say About Him? by creator Metatron. There are many testimonies from non-Christian perspectives (mostly pagan).

The part about death worship is at 5m39s, linked here: https://youtu.be/A41Tm5FDKns?t=339

A film that explores a similar theme is The Island (2005) - recommended!

CPUs are various Haswell-era Intel Xeons. RAM is, in all cases, 32GB (4x8GB) UDIMM DDR3 UDIMM. There are always multiple disks, some in ZRAID10 configuration. SSDs are purchased new, while spinning disks are all refurbished enterprise disks.

>6 TOPS NPU

I'd like to learn more about what a 6 TOPS NPU means in practice. Does it compare at all with a Coral Edge TPU? The wiki page is detailed, but there were no benchmarks: https://docs.turingpi.com/docs/turing-rk1-neural-processing-...

Thank you!

The punishment only upholds “the fairness of the entire competition” and “the principles of sportsmanship” if one accepts the perverse CCP definitions of fairness and sportsmanship - Otherwise, it is completely ridiculous to punish someone for using the word Liberate... I am disappointed in the government and the institution - they are failing the people of Hong Kong.

If Nvidia ever wants to see their GPUs on next generation PlayStation consoles, an updated FreeBSD display driver is a good stating point.

The name reminds me of Iosefka, an NPC in the game Bloodborne: https://bloodborne.wiki.fextralife.com/Iosefka

It appears these are two ways of spelling the same name, and that has made me curious about its etymology.

I've not found much in the way of clues. Most of the search results are either in reference to the font or to the game.

According to names.org, Iosefka is tagged with Gender-Neutral and Hebrew: https://www.names.org/n/iosefka/about

Does anyone here have one of these names? Can you share the story behind them?

>If democracy is about individual rights (justice for individuals), then social justice is about group rights (justice for groups). –Lynn Lemisko (in Educator to Educator, p. 193)

What a strange statement. Democracy is the rule of the majority, and therefore, it'd be justice for groups, rather than individuals. Am I wrong in understanding social justice as the movement to have equal treatment among individuals? I don't know who Lynn Lemisko is, but it sounds like she has these ideas backwards.

Anyways, the author makes a decent point about critical theory potentially being more destructive than constructive.

That's a theory for countries without a Bill of Rights to practice.

It looks like you've devised a way to mount your keyboard to the armrests of a Herman Miller Mirra chair: https://danwilkerson.com/static/92bcd474239a7f376b33d3be05d4...

Would you mind posting a couple more pictures of the mounts from different angles? I have the same chair and would really like to have it setup the same way!

It probably needs to be said because of situations like that in Baltimore, Maryland. The city spends more than 97% of what other major school districts spend, and yet it's students are on average some of the worst performers: https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/baltimore-ci...

>Twitter now amplifies extremist opinions that make the echo chamber worse

Did the extremists not migrate to Parler/Truth Social?

This comment thread seems to be getting out of touch with reality. Marijuana use via smoking has been declining relative to vaporization and consumption of edibles. Rather than complications of smoking, I'd say the biggest risks are inexperienced users consuming way too much in one session and not being able to handle it. I don't know what young people are being taught now, but I hope drug education programs create the understanding that too much THC in the system is incompatible with operating heavy machinery, driving, anything risky, etc.

Unfortunately, the NYT paywall prevents me from reading this article.

My feeling is that it is not a big mistake, but a move in the right direction. It's a good thing that a simple pleasure no longer results in a life ruined by the US "justice system" as we've seen since 1970. Whatever the externalities are, they are better than treating people as criminals for a victimless crime.

Where I am in Maryland, it became legal for recreational use about 2 weeks ago. There are also degrees of legality in nearby Washington DC and Virginia. The voters of these states decided it.

Good things that have happened since Elon Musk acquired twitter:

- The Fediverse has grown tremendously.

- Meta's Threads is on the path to legitimize ActivityPub.

- People are realizing that social media doesn't have to be ad-driven.

- Twitter has become less of a problematic echo chamber, now that a chunk of it's former userbase is gone.

>MS don’t seem to have the systems in place to detect inappropriate key use in a proactive manner

I'm sorry, I thought this was the point of CT... Although I guess it depends on how one defines "proactive" in this context.

It's not a bug.

In 2021, Tencent added facial recognition to PBUG (and many other games) to help enforce the Chinese Communist Party's rule that children under the age of 18 cannot play more than 3 hours per week. Whatever they have implemented, it also hooks into some national criminal database.

More info here: https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/9/22567029/tencent-china-fac...

Tencent is apparently the world's largest video gaming company: https://www.polygon.com/22949530/tencent-the-worlds-biggest-...

History of Tencent, told in dramatic fashion: https://youtu.be/51fWzJ-A5w4

YouTube's algorithm recently recommended me a video which presented a compelling case that US slavery truly ended in 1942. It included references to this book. Here's the link, for anyone curious: https://youtu.be/j4kI2h3iotA

While I understand that Azure AD signing keys are used in a completely different context, would something like Certificate Transparency lower the impact of this if it had been part of Azure AD architecture?

Thought provoking. Reading this made me curious about the numbers of ActivityPub users versus the numbers of matrix users. What was their growth pattern before and after Musk acquired Twitter?

My (good!) experience is that churches are very much about community, however, I believe there is an interesting point to consider about them as institutions of control. Moreso in the context of European history, but also perhaps in the context of megachurches as described in this article. Friedrich Nietzche proposed that Christianity instills "slave morality" which redefined "good" as altruistic, patient, meek, humble, etc. and "evil" as greedy, violent, jealous, etc. Prior to Christianity, Nietzche cites that European "human morality" equated "good" with power, ambition, wealth, etc. and "bad" with weakness, apathy, poverty, etc. While it's true that Nietzche is a flawed character, I'd say it's worthwhile to examine how these competing moral codes are present within Christianity. Historically, one may see the Catholic church, or the Church of England, as instilling the "slave morality" while their leaders enjoy the base morality for themselves. Consider the Spanish inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials, or perhaps even Manifest Destiny - which moral code was primarily practiced by those who led these, and which moral code was primarily practiced by those who supported them? I believe the same cognitive dissonance is at play with these megachurches. Just something to consider, not critiquing Christianity in theory, just how things have/are playing out. It's also perfectly reasonable as a Christian to critique "human morality" as the original sin which Christian morality attempts to solve.

I'm also a happy Dvorak convert. Yes, it's tough at first. Switches back to Qwerty also take some getting used to.*

I believe there is a universal benefit of learning a non-QWERTY layout. Many people learn QWERTY first when they are young, and as a side-effect, they carry with themselves the baggage of bad typing habits. While making an intentional effort to touch type with QWERTY can help significantly, I believe it can't compare to the benefits of starting from fresh with something new.

*I think I was lucky to have a job where I needed to make those switches often, so I gained proficiency quickly.

I shall have to read that. When it comes to the Bible and Philip K. Dick, I usually think of his book V.A.L.I.S.

I really wish HAMMER2 had more traction. It's BSD licensing means it has the potential to be supported on Linux, Windows, macOS, etc. (in addition to other BSDs.)

Unfortunately, most of those new homes in the Northern Virginia area are just $1M McMansions.

>What advantages do you see to keeping a large number of tabs open at a time? Do you find that you return to them?

I edited my comment to expand a little on that. Adding to it, tabs for me are a crude thinking tool. I usually open links as new tabs so I can see how my search for information has branched out. The practice is unwieldy and results in my browser being the highest consumer of system resources, but at least I can see how I came to research a particular thing. It's more insightful than browser history, which only tells a linear story. Browsers these days will also try to direct you to open tabs if you type something similar in a search bar, which can be interesting for connecting previous inquiries with new ones.

I should dive into the Next browser. Apparently it has a tree-based history, which might be an efficient solution for my needs: https://nyxt.atlas.engineer/