Malic

CGP Grey did a video essay on this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfYbgdo8e-8

Do you have a business plan to eat 10-15% more year-over-year on an ongoing basis?

Pixelmator Pro. Biggest bang for the buck image editor for macOS.

I gotta make a call-out for the book "Hackers" by Steven Levy. The book had a nice section covering those days back at MIT when Spacewar was developed.

https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/hackers/9781449390259/

Web3 feels like a Google AMP caliber event; lots of excitement around it that, in hindsight, was created excitement to justify a technology that would be beneficial to the few at the expense of the many. Am I wrong here?

This... this is a Monty Python sketch. (facepalm) https://montypython.fandom.com/wiki/Probe-Around_on_Crime

Personally, I think Weller's line of thinking may fit here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lh9lDWPMWrM (TED Talk - Richard Weller: Could the sun be good for your heart?)

TL;DW - It's not just Vitamin-D generated from UV exposure but nitric oxide release in the skin, that may have a positive effect on health.

Let's add https://shapez.io/ to that list!

I can't emphasize enough how much I like a browser's Reader View for web pages like this.

Yup. Twice a day, results show up somewhere before 90 days, ceasing treatment after point appears to continue to provide results.

"In phase 1 and 2 studies, UNR844 exhibited a good safety profile and there were no treatment-related study discontinuations. In addition, all patients showed substantial near visual acuity improvements by day 15.3,4 By day 91, 82% of patients had 20/40 or better near vision and 36% had 20/25 or better near vision. Novartis expects the drop to be labeled for use twice daily for approximately 90 days. The effects of this dosing regimen have been found to last up to 7 months without further dosing. "

https://modernod.com/articles/2020-sept/coming-soon-presbyop...

Article mentions a marketing file year of 2021 but I have read that they did a Phase IIa trial that should finish in 2022 (2023? Can't find the citation ATM)

I'm more interested in UNR844-Cl (by Novartis). It appears that it has longer lasting, possibly age-correcting, effects.

"This prodrug is topically instilled binocularly, whereupon it penetrates the cornea and degrades into two naturally occurring substances, lipoic acid and choline. The lipoic acid is then hydrolyzed by esterase in the tear film into dihydrolipoic acid, which destroys the disulfide bonds in the lens, improving flexibility as noted earlier. An interesting hypothesis regarding this medication is that it may potentially halt or even reverse the natural lens hardening that occurs with age, thereby allowing a potential restoration of natural accommodation."

Source - https://modernod.com/articles/2020-sept/coming-soon-presbyop...

Well, they kinda did buy Visicalc. It's just that the dongle was kinda big and expensive...

This is totally Peter G. Neumann* territory. Something to add to a second edition of his book, "Computer-Related Risks", if he ever makes one.

http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/risks/

It does appear there is a solution for this on the way. https://www.digitaljournal.com/tech-science/wind-turbine-mak...

TL;DR: It appears Vestas is partnering up with another company to bring to market a process to break down the epoxy resins that bind the fiberglass in the blades. The resulting base chemicals are useful for the production of further resins and new windmill blades. This process could be useful in other industries.

Keep looking! Linus Åkesson (AKA "LFT") has done A LOT of mind blowing things.

Writing code for the Demoscene? Not good enough. He made his own hardware to run his own demos: http://www.linusakesson.net/scene/craft/index.php

His research into why not all C64's are created equal (and provided a software work around to a hardware flaw) lead to being able to do safe high speed full screen scrolling. And he did it looking at someone else's logic analyzer dump!

http://www.linusakesson.net/scene/safevsp/index.php

I was under the impression that Apple chose to develop ALAC because it was less CPU/battery intensive to decode. This is going back to iPod Rev.1 days, mind you. Processing power for simply decoding audio CODECs hasn’t been a challenge for some time now.

Do share the name of the short, if it comes to mind later.

In light of shake-ups at the US Post Office in 2020, this ... smells funny.

"The rumors that I hear, both internal and external, are that we're very seriously interested in acquiring post office real estate. The reason why the post office is valuable to privatize is because of their real estate holdings. They have great real estate in every downtown of every city in the United States. Amazon may be interested in buying all of the post office locations, and we have the cash to do it. So why not?"

Please explain.

We really are living in a William Gibson novel, aren't we?

The Mars Pathfinder mission cost slightly less than that - so it costs more every year to develop/maintain/promote a web browser than it costs to go to another planet?

Gee, it sounds like tinkering with the Comix-35 could be a path to a career that you couldn't talk about!

Quite probably. I am assuming that home-made methods are similar as industrial scale methods (put a bunch of chicken bones and connective tissue in a vat of water, simmer, strain).

I have this daydream that there are some Apple engineers that looked at the Switch and said, "Dammit. We could have done this."

Not too long ago, I read that one can see her notebooks yourself! You can sign up and be on a list to do so! If you visit Paris... And sign a waiver... And wear some protective clothing...

Because her notebooks are still radioactive and will be for quite some time to come.

https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/02/27/marie-curie/

(I still chuckle - nervously - whenever I am reminded about this fact!)

This isn't a new idea to me either. I would have put it in words "The attic of the org-chart is empty" but same point.

But what bewilders me is that there ARE achievements in the world that you have to wonder how they succeeded. The engineers and scientists of NASA put men on the moon without email and mostly paper based information sharing systems. You can't just muddle your way though such efforts - how did that mission succeed? It is REALLY the case that a handful of "more aware than most" individuals had a such a strong direction providing influence on their peers (or subordinates - or superiors even) that made such an achievement possible? It seems like stretch to me.

How did they do it, if most of them were just muddling their way through?

> I'm still hammer nails into the wall to support my coat hanger rod. What's up? Where's my flying cars, etc.

I know what you mean. I'm going to have to quote William Gibson on this:

"The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed."

I think you've hit on an opt-in usage case.

Much like the opt-in feature "Will you allow [website] to access your location?", there could be a "Will you allow [website] to operate in the background?" I think that is something that the community could get behind.

In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, we have two people cross checking each other to consult 3-ring binders of registered voters for the particular district they are assigned to vote in. Your name is check-marked as part of handing you a paper ballot.

This may sound laborious and slow but it should be enough to block repeat voting, IMHO.

I wondered the same. A quick Google turned up the fact, "Oh, yeah, that's been investigated and there ARE options."

Chinese brake fern (Pteris vittata) seems to be a candidate: https://www.newsweek.com/plant-arsenic-chemical-highly-toxic...

Plants as Useful Vectors to Reduce Environmental Toxic Arsenic Contenthttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3913097/

I do have to wonder if we would find ourselves inviting invasive species with such an exercise. But on the other hand, the goal is to "grow'em, burn'em, and carefully dispose of the ash" so maybe that concern is manageable.