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andrewjlon CocoaPods trunk read-only plan

As long as the Obj-C and Swift are in separate source or binary targets, SPM supports them being in the same package.

There was a Swift Evolution proposal at one point to go all the way and bring in support for mixed Obj-C and Swift targets [1] but it was returned for revision. It talks about the multiple target workarounds:

> Distribute binary frameworks via binary targets. Drawbacks include that the package will be less portable as it can only support platforms that the binaries support, binary dependencies are only available on Apple platforms, customers cannot view or easily debug the source in their project workspace, and tooling is required to generate the binaries for release.

> Separate a target’s implementation into sub-targets based on language type, adding dependencies where necessary. For example, a target Foo may have Swift-only sources that can call into an underlying target FooObjc that contains Clang-only sources. Drawbacks include needing to depend on the public API surfaces between the targets, increasing the complexity of the package’s manifest and organization for both maintainers and clients, and preventing package developers from incrementally migrating internal implementation from one language to another (e.g. Objective-C to Swift) since there is still a separation across targets based on language.

The upshot is that SPM has a better interoperability story with Swift and C++ [2] and maybe that can serve as a foundation for getting to the same level of interop for Obj-C.

[1]: https://github.com/swiftlang/swift-evolution/blob/main/propo...

[2]: https://www.swift.org/documentation/cxx-interop/

andrewjlon Brazil central bank to launch Pix installment feature in September

On a technical level are there big differences between Pix and FedNow[0]? Besides this upcoming installment feature.

[0] https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow

andrewjlon Research Finds Vaccines Are Not Behind the Rise in Autism. So What Is?

TIL autism has been linked to environmental factors like metabolic syndrome during the first trimester of pregnancy, air pollution, and pesticide exposure. Some of these frequently co-occur with specific gene mutations. [1][2] There's a good argument that everyone has more exposure to everything on that list nowadays. Increased diagnoses would then make a lot of sense.

Teasing out the specifics of how much each of these contribute and separating that out from possible confounders like greater screening and others does seem like a tough study to design.

[1] https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/environmental-auti...

[2] https://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/conditions/autism

andrewjlon Who killed the rave?

> How do you suppose we do that in the US?

Exempt or lighten planning requirements for affordable housing construction. California is going in this direction now.

There are other levers like subsidized financing for developers building homes targeting a certain price range as well as favorable tax treatment of those profits.

A lot of these have would probably have some bipartisan support.

andrewjlon Study: Dark matter doesn't exist, the universe is 27B years old

Is there a plausible experiment that can falsify dark matter? The study here used observational data and it didn't do that. (Deducing that non-existence of dark matter is plausible given what else was observed isn't the same thing.)

> “There are several papers that question the existence of dark matter, but mine is the first one, to my knowledge, that eliminates its cosmological existence while being consistent with key cosmological observations that we have had time to confirm,” Gupta confidently concludes.

andrewjlon World-first therapy using donor cells sends autoimmune diseases into remission

https://www.outsourcedpharma.com/doc/an-overview-of-the-fda-...

andrewjlon Patent troll Sable pays up, dedicates all its patents to the public

One colorful anecdote from that period.

> In the United Kingdom, he was called "Slater the Traitor" and "Sam the Slate" because he brought British textile technology to the United States, modifying it for American use. He memorized the textile factory machinery designs as an apprentice to a pioneer in the British industry before migrating to the U.S. at the age of 21.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Slater

andrewjlon Patent troll Sable pays up, dedicates all its patents to the public

I guess they could. Is that a worse outcome than the on net additional expense of dealing with patent litigation?

andrewjlon Knowledge Growth and Specialization: Evidence from Oncologists

> I confirm that oncology knowledge has grown dramatically. The total length of NCCN Guidelines, a “complete library” of cancer guidelines (NCCN, 2023b), has grown from 1,129 pages in 2002 to 5,825 pages in 2020. This growth in guideline length appears closely tied to growth in the scientific literature about how to manage cancer. This growth in guideline length also occurs in a period with large increases in the number of available therapies: the total number of approved cancer drugs rose from 90 in 2002 to 243 in 2020.

https://elsevier-ssrn-document-store-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/2...

andrewjlon Patent troll Sable pays up, dedicates all its patents to the public

How would they get around crowd sourced prior art?

andrewjlon Dockworkers at ports from Maine to Texas go on strike

It'd be nice right? Too bad the maritime shipping industry is an oligopoly.

andrewjlon Canadian mega landlord using AI 'pricing scheme' as it hikes rents

Property markets are usually segmented locally. A real estate portfolio with that valuation can move the needle in a city or neighborhood.

andrewjlon We need to liberate the Postcode Address File

> Would open address data create privacy risks? No. Unlike opening up more sensitive datasets such as personal location, releasing address data - a list of the physical places recognised by the government - carries few new legal or ethical risks. Many other countries are doing this, including those with strong privacy regimes. Open address data could only create new risks if it were linked and used with other datasets, and these risks should be managed in that context. The harms created by the lack of access to address data are more pressing.

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5ee7a7d964aeed7e5c507...

andrewjlon We need to liberate the Postcode Address File

There's a writeup linked to in the OP comments about how this can happen.

https://www.centreforpublicdata.org/blog/freeing-the-paf-our...

andrewjlon Male autism is linked to brain aromatase disruption by maternal bisphenol A

> Although bisphenol A (BPA) has since been replaced by other bisphenols such as bisphenol S in BPA-free plastics, all bisphenols are endocrine-disrupting chemicals that can alter steroid signaling and metabolism.

There is some awareness of BPAs role in affecting the endocrine system. As the paper mentions merely being BPA-free doesn't mean one is out of the woods. All bisphenols are to some extent as disruptive as BPA is. Hadn't known that.

There's a list of other bisphenols here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol

andrewjlon the US government has to start paying for things again

Hard to reduce deficits substantially without much bigger policy changes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triffin_dilemma

That said, Medicare and other entitlements is where my mind went too as I was reading. Negotiating drug prices is a good step in this direction by the current administration.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/local/2024/08/16/10-pres...

andrewjlon 'smart' insulin that responds to changing blood sugar levels in real time

How does this compare to something like donislecel[1][2]?

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donislecel

[2]: https://www.fda.gov/vaccines-blood-biologics/lantidra

andrewjlon In ‘The Book Against Death,’ Elias Canetti rants against mortality

"Mein Vermächtniss, wie herrlich weit und breit? Die Zeit ist mein Vermächtniss, mein Acker ist die Zeit.”

andrewjlon US Fed: US export controls to China wiped out $130B

> If export controls continued unabated over that period, I imagine we’ll have seen a fair amount of on-shoring of former supply chains.

That's been the trend across the past several administrations.

andrewjlon Should the Hawthorn Be Saved?

> With hawthorns suddenly scarce on the landscape, though, parsing out which species are real is next to impossible. “That’s the root of the problem,” Lance said. “They’re gone.”

Would population-scale (of those that can still be found) genetic sequencing help point the way to an answer? It's relatively cheap now, compared to before, and odds are will be more so.

andrewjlon US proposes banning medical debt from credit reports

It effectively doesn't if the healthcare system is single payer.

andrewjlon Swift Static Linux SDK

https://swiftwasm.org

https://github.com/swiftwasm/swift

https://github.com/swiftwasm/WasmKit

andrewjlon Global Population Crash Isn't Sci-Fi Anymore

> Obviously I wasn't around back in the mid-1900s, but I do wonder from time to time if people actually understood that this was the trade off we were all making in changing the culture like we did.

If you're talking about the 1950s a non-trivial percentage of married American women at that time routinely took stimulants and barbiturates.

andrewjlon Sweden Is a NATO Member

Western Europe was not too different at the start of the medieval period but then evolved in a different direction. The King's Two Bodies by Ernst Kantorowicz is a good read on this.

andrewjlon Ephemeral usernames safeguard privacy and make Signal harder to subpoena

I might be missing some background on the topic but is this a real-world example of a differential privacy[1] technique?

[1]: https://privacytools.seas.harvard.edu/courses-educational-ma...

andrewjlon On the trail of the Denisovans

> I have absolutely no idea what you mean by "Wylie E Coyote period", can you explain?

The sibling reply expressed this as well. Wile E. runs off a cliff, the forward momentum keeps gravity in check but only for a short time.

The fact that human population continues to grow isn't by itself sufficient evidence that there are no existing parallel, possibly embryonic, trends developing that'll change that later. The period where both of these are true would be similar to when Wile E. is no longer on solid ground and hasn't yet fallen. It's a temporary and (on a relative basis, which could exceed human lifespan for sufficiently complex or slowly moving trends) brief period.

To be clear, I don't think it's an accurate view of where we are today. On the other hand, had the changes we've seen since 1970s not come to pass, it'd be harder to say. (An example that is climate change specific is the exponentially decreasing cost curve for solar energy.)

> Either way, I wasn't attempting a definitive list with my two items and "etc"

So long as the focus is on the definitive then IMHO there is value in looking hard here. Otherwise, why bother?

> Today's weapons are definitely scarier than 1970s weapons.

Can you say more?

andrewjlon Apple is right not to rush headlong into generative AI

Agreed. Also think this is the most probable path for them to take.

How do you imagine these features getting exposed to end-users? (When LLMs are discussed people default to thinking in terms of chat interfaces but to your point that doesn't have to be a hard and fast rule.) Do you think there will some sort of primitives that'll get exposed as APIs to developers, like with CoreML[1] for example?

[1]: (https://developer.apple.com/machine-learning/core-ml/)

andrewjlon Apple is right not to rush headlong into generative AI

> In a year or two, everyone is going to realize that Apple is a decade behind everyone else in AI and the stock will crash.

https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/vision-transforme...

> The question is, when will Warren Buffett pull out of the Apple stock?

So much to unpack here.

andrewjlon Financial systems take a holiday

Wouldn't exchanges and market makers (i.e. the big players) be all that's needed to clear orders at reasonable spreads? Others can always choose to what scope they'd participate.

andrewjlon On the trail of the Denisovans

Your comment would carry more weight if human population wasn't increasing each year.

The best counterargument to the population trend argument is that we're in the midst of a Wile E. Coyote period. Along with that though one still needs to account for:

- What's different about weapons today versus say 1970s?

- Why climate change, despite being a serious (and to be clear: actual risk), isn't amenable to solutions like the Montreal protocol that've succeeded in the past?