This was the most well-written technical piece I've read in a long time. Kudos Andi. The conversational tone, imagery, well-sourced history - it was perfect.
It was interesting to read that Rust has a WebGPU implementation [0] outside of the browser. I wonder if this will become a more general standard.
Anyone know how WebGPU compares to CUDA in terms of performance and functionality?
Great project - this is important! Love your clear motivation statement at the top. I do wish there were some code/data examples within the README, but clearly that's not holding people back from using it.
It’s not WASMs fault. Rust produces large binaries for whatever reason and people like to write their WASM in Rust. I’ve ported Rust to equivalent C and it was 25% of the size and similarly for loading times.
The UI redesign called Cheetah was also forced internally and a lot of OGs left during that period including the long time VP of Eng Tim Sehn. Lots of internal politicking, late hours, and then layoffs the next year, for a project many of us weren't sold on. Not fun. And when the rollout data showed what many of us suspected, it took too long to pivot. The thing is up until then I think Snap's top-down design-driven culture was a strength and supported its innovation. Sometimes you have to do the unpopular thing. It works until it doesn't. I hear things have softened since.
I wish Nostr were invented 30 years ago because it seems like a elegant protocol with room for extensions that could have served as the backend language for Twitter, IRC, FB, and more. But network effects are just so powerful and people post to be seen. Twitter isn't going to willingly open the door to competitors, and so I hope Nostr can find a few unique use cases and communities to let it blossom.
"Data brokers would have to undergo an independent third-party audit every three years to ensure compliance with the DELETE Act provisions and submit audit reports to the California Privacy Protection Agency."
His audience is already there. Anyone young and even slightly right-leaning knows he's hugely popular on social media. His clips also drove Fox News's whole YouTube channel, so whatever viewers he might lose by leaving cable, there will be many more to gain.
It also shows mortality rates per 100,000. That's what I was referring to. For example, here are the rates of all-cause mortality for the most last month they released, May 2022, for the 40-49 group:
Why is it so hard to find data showing how often people are dying, no matter the cause, broken down by vaccination status and age? Surely that would help clear things up. Lots of countries publish COVID-19 mortality rates which show benefits for vaccinated but that's really not helpful for understanding overall risk of vaccines. The UK is the only country I could find that publishes this data and unless I'm missing something things look really bad. Table 2 in [1] shows a 2-3x higher mortality rate for vaccinated vs. unvaccinated in almost all groups this year. Perhaps the unvaccinated are healthier on average, maybe, but 2-3x healthier? Yeah, don't think so. What's going on?
We found clear evidence that surgical masks are effective in reducing symptomatic seroprevalence of SARS-CoV-2. Although cloth masks clearly reduce symptoms, we find less clear evidence of their impact on symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections, with the statistical significance depending on whether we impute missing values for nonconsenting adults.
Apple famously went with gorilla glass over plastic for the original iPhone, despite glass being more breakable, because when it would break users tended to blame themselves rather Apple. Plastic on the other hand scratched just from everyday use and users would have blamed Apple for that cheap design. Perceived fault matters.
Interestingly, I think this can be used to argue either side.
Thank you for the answers. It's all amazing to think about. It seemed strange to me when reading your comment, for example, that the universe would look the same age in every direction. Why? Are we close to the center? And then it hit me (probably not for the first or last time): we can only see as far as light had time to travel here! In reality the universe just keeps going.
Is each of those spirals really the size of our whole galaxy? And if we were to zoom in 100x more, would there be just as many galaxies to see, or is there a perceivable outer edge to our universe's expansion?
Yes, but see NASA is trying to tell us something. The nerds thought they would be on the ones pushing space exploration forward. And they were, for a time. But then the travel vloggers, the instagrammers, the reality tv producers, and even the pornographers all saw the advertising money floating out there in the cosmos, and space has been tropical house ever since.
My wife and I are dealing with this as new parents. Even setting aside the COVID vaccine which looks completely unnecessary for infants, there were a ton of other issues that lost our trust. The CDC does not for example recommend aspirating the needle anymore during shots because "there are no large blood vessels" (this is wrong - anatomy has outliers, and anyway there are smaller ones) and it "might be more painful for infants" (this is a not a good reason). This shocked our doctor who said they always aspirate and were trained to do so. We had our pediatrician aspirate and it took less than a second. I could write more about why we insisted on aspirating but that's another can of worms to make the same point which is you can't take CDC at its word. We are scrutinizing every advice and every vaccine whether the benefits (individually and to society) outweigh the risks. So far I think we probably will end up doing the main ones, but we're doing it our way, on our schedule, and specifically choosing vaccines with certain ingredients to minimize risks. We know other parents that are opting out completely and I can't blame them. It would be easier if we could just trust the CDC.
A lot of people are getting burned right now from the big lie, the one that enables the rest. Read the original Bitcoin whitepaper folks, as well as the early Satoshi posts. Bitcoin was designed for "small casual payments" on the web, and it used to function for that. No longer. You needed low fees and big blocks. People invest in BTC now thinking it still has these properties, but BTC has not been Bitcoin since 2017. Then they propped up Lightning network to hide the failing narratives, but anyone who reads the LN whitepaper would see it would never work. I'm not angry about it anymore. It's just a damn shame and people are getting hurt.
Did you see their response on page 5? I'm skeptical like you generally but I find it a believable explanation.
"All results, including the positivity rates by vaccination status graph, are unadjusted. The team has observed that the positivity rates among unvaccinated individuals seen on the bar graph appear to be lower in comparison to vaccinated individuals. Furthermore, repeat testing among those who were previously positive in the last 90 days appear to confound the results. The team conducted additional analyses examining characteristics of the patient population by vaccination status and the impact of excluding recent COVID-19 cases (5.0% of total tests). Findings show that the unvaccinated group are typically younger and healthier, less symptomatic and less likely to report direct COVID-19 exposure or recent travel compared to vaccinated groups. Controlling for recent COVID-19 cases, results show that the unvaccinated group has a 17.1% higher positivity rate compared to the 3-dose group. Controlling for additional factors leads to a larger difference between groups."
Yep. Eating animals, when you add up their methane + respiration, the feed for the animals, the deforestation, and transportation, is arguably our biggest cause of climate change [1], and it's avoidable. The longest living people in the world are plant-based. So agree, it would be great if we stopped the animal subsidies and simply let the market react. As a side effect, perhaps our healthcare costs would go down. Just today I read the average american spends $1200/year on medications, largely for problems like high blood pressure and cholesterol that for many people go away when they eat more plants.
[1] I know that animal agriculture being 51% of greenhouse gases number has been questioned a lot, but from what I can tell it's closer to the truth than those who want to say it's 18% or less. Ether way, it's large. New stanford study agrees that "reducing or eliminating animal agriculture should be at the top of the list of potential climate solutions" https://news.stanford.edu/2022/02/01/new-model-explores-link....
It's common in many spices we use today, unfortunately. Consumer Reports published tests on this recently, following-up on other studies, and they have a campaign to get the FDA to regulate heavy metals because so few companies test. Fortunately, you can find brands that do independently test on Amazon, and some brands seem better than others (ie. Simply Organic).
We should expect some heart damage because it happens after the flu too, but this study is flawed. If you had covid but weren't tested, you were put into the control group, meaning the conclusions they draw (ie. 5% increase in heart problems after a year) are going to be higher than in reality.
Recently I learned the Whole Foods Plant Based diet avoids processed oils altogether, including olive and coconut. Not sure I could go that far myself, but it's interesting to know that people do it, and it's the one diet known to reverse cardiac disease.
Yep, you can always add oil yourself if you like the taste. I also recommend buying the ones that have the skin and bones, because there's a lot of nutrition there. The bones are barely noticeable. This was the brand I went with: https://www.amazon.com/Crown-Prince-Sardines-Water-4-25-Ounc...
Don't forget the worst gimmick - Krispy Kreme donuts - when we know the vast majority of deaths are in the overweight. These are tricks for monkeys. And a reminder how little they think of you. You know what would have worked? Maybe a little honesty. Maybe treating people as adults and not constantly lying to them, from masks, to virus origin, natural immunity, vaccine risks, and especially treatments. People aren't stupid. I know many who were open to the vaccine once who are digging in to protest now.
We need an awesome-vaxxers repo to keep a list of companies that required injections for their customers or employees. Because I'd like to avoid them going forward.
To each their own. I used to live in Seattle and had some reservations about LA, but my opinion changed after living there, on the west side specifically. I've since moved, but I do miss 70° and sunny everyday, all the diversity of food, and generally blissful living. Weekend trips for skiing, palm springs, malibu, even vegas were great too. There's a lot to like.
+1 for Argentina. There's an argument from the book Germs, Guns, Steel that in the past civilizations flourished most where geography allowed for trade to happen at roughly the same latitude, where all the same crops would grow and could spread - for example, Europe and the fertile crescent, which is in contrast to the Americas and Africa. Now there seems to be a opposite effect happening along longitudes around remote work because of time zones, and I would expect South America, despite the lower % of English speakers, to be at least as big of a receiver of SV benefits as Europe in the short term and probably bigger over the long term.