boyband6666

This is pretty much my experience. Based on the 'working from orbit' article I bought a Quest 2, but just couldn't find a way of working. I have a 1920x1200 in the centre now, and to each side a 19" 1600x1200 (same pixel density, vertical height, gives a level of wraparoudn with 3 monitors).

The main thing was I couldn't make the virtual screen be as good as the physical ones, and being able to see to type - I'm not at the complete touch type level - especially without reference points.

The difference is I haven't sold mine, it is still here to try some VR gaming, which I also haven't got roudn to get.

My summary is I was impressed with what the technology can do, but it's not a replacement if you have a well set up desk.

It made me smile - I'm now using WACUP for my mp3s, but this was a great bit of nostalgia, thankyou :-)

Free tiers are an essential; when settling on a service I will try many, in parallel with our current system. If I'm happy it is better I will switch,. when either immediately, or after a short period results in us being paid at a mid tier. If I have to pay to try, and find out if it is any good and works for our specific cases, I'll try it after competitors - so probably won't get round to it - as something else probably meets our needs first.

I'm with you here. Did I change my approach totally? No. But it did force me to be more explicit about the time/money tradeoff, and accept that I might at times be better spending on things that would make me more productive, or take away pain points.

Likewise his podcast is generally excellent. I now have to be more judicious in which guests I listen to, but he has amazing people, and really does get in to detail, not just glib highlights.

Step -1: Metric. Everywhere - no more miles!

Potentially; infrastructure is quite a broad term, and some sectors of the economy are pretty maxed out. Spend it on telecomms, and how much would flow overseas?

I'm in the UK and we're increasing spending on 5G, but lots just goes elsewhere. Our constrution sector has limited capacity, and has less now we have EU staff leaving (and not arriving), so any extra spending will just lead to price inflation (and wages for already well paid people). Actually getting new people (and companies) in to these sectors is hard, not as sexy, and as a result doesn't seem to happen.

The US may be different, but there are few really easy answers in economics. Almost everything has second order effects that you might not like! That said, having been to the US a lot, there is a lot of infrastructure that does need attention...

So I've a degree and masters in economics, before heading down the more statistical route. I can't say I found it compelling, and some of the issues waved away were too alarming for my liking.

The asset price inflation that's happening, and as a result the crazy investments (Softbank style) in search of some return are worrying. These are storing up problems for the future. I don't find the 'return to gold and it'll all be fine' any more compelling. I don't much care for the politics side, and advocating for no vs tons of spending seems to gloss over the very real problems with each approach.

In something so long and meandering, that's not a surprise. I also stopped readng before it got any further; to be compelling it needs to be a lot shorter - there is not that much content in it!

Isn't this extremely similar to Supply Me (SYME), except they use a lot more buzzwords; blockchain, AI, etc

I've not abandoned it yet, but I'm close. Also a "Don't show me things shipped from China that'll take 6 weeks to arrive".

Outside of the case, it looks like a nice business to be in! p7 shows gross profit increasing from £450k (2018) to £550k (2019)

See Sept 2019 full accounts: https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c...

I can't say I'm surprised. The incentives are for them to provide a mostly trustworthy service, and certainly one that looks like it, but to monetise it there are compromises. Nothing overtly bad, but certainly... selective. I mean companies could also flag positive reviews they feel are fake, right? But it just so happens that they will likely flag negative ones - that isn't Trustpilot’s fault, right? Ultimately it means that any score is biased upwards.

Depressingly is also means the most shady companies that will abuse systems like this, will also seem to have a sparkling reputation - actually harming customers if they rely on these sites.

Companies that pay can flag negative reviews, when they get taken down, and to get it back up you have to provide all sorts of proof of your custom, and complaint. Companies can also then reply without you getting to add.

Much like amazon reviews they absolutely cannot be trusted to be a representation of the truth

Not a dumb question at all. In medicine we test on two different animal species before it goes close to a human. For a reason.

Not the same, but I'm sure some (10?) years ago I saw something about University of Buckingham doign straight through the summer learning, so you completed in 2 years. So it isn't unheard of for everything not to be the standard 3...

I did mine based far from the University (a very good one) but travelling down every few months to meet with my supervisors. I learnt tons, and it has helped my career. It also meant a lot of work over 6 years (part time). Time well spent! I effectively swapped TV and movies for statistics, and have no regrets. Over the period we had 2 kids.

You could probably do it faster / easier with a pro forma type place, but it would be a debasement of standards - it might tick a box but you probably wouldn't learn the skills. What I really like about the author's post is that they are detailing it all, and it is about getting a formal qualification to recognise the knowledge they have.

It is not a trivial process, and these are ferrociously complex. Safety, Quality and Efficacy - each are hard to check. From how people are categorised in trials, how missing data rules are implemented, to how it is manufactured and the stability data. It doesn't take a year for no good reason. Yes this has been sped up massively, but steps have been abbreviated - let's not kid ourselves.

If interested, the FDA release all documentation - search for Drugs@FDA and find a recent medicine, and see just how much review it gets. You'll be surprised!

So in the UK we have a really good set of expert bodies that put forward reccomendations on these things, the JCVI being the vaccines body. They are every bit as good as the current government are terrible.

Priority ranking is here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/priority-groups-f...

Though this is generic and should change depending on the results on vaccine trials (should there be evidence of differential effectiveness).

The interesting analogy Ross Tucker (https://sportsscientists.com/who-are-we/) uses is adding vitamins and mineral is like adding a wheel to a car. If you onyl have 3, then adding the 4th is really going to make a massive difference. If you already have enough however, it's like adding a 5th wheel, which will essentially do nothing, and could be harmful.

It works well as an explanation, as people do seem to try and reduce complex functions to simple rules, and extrapolate from specific populatiosn to create general rules (not helped by studies that are minimally generalisable)

I agree it is plenty but remembering it is a household income I suspect, so yes is a very nice life, without being silly.

It also doesn't mean it is unhealthy. And yes long ditance running itself isn't HIIT, but if you are training to race a long distance, you will invariably be doing a lot of high intensity work.

You might not call it Tabata training, or HIIT, but once a week you are probably doing 6x15second sprints, every other week will do something like 10x60 hill repeats (which others might call a sprint), and most weeks will be running some form of speedwork. This could be 8x800m/2 minutes, some form of pyramid (1min, 2min, 3min, 2min,1min, 2 sets), or some other combination. All of these though come down to going unsustainably hard for a short period and then having a recovery period. Is that not what HIIT is?

The same applies to many other sports where this simple caricature is applied. Most sports, done right, do involve high intensities, and recoveries.

I think we are talking cross purposes here. Training for running races, even long distances, involves some long running, lots of medium runs, and a good amount of intense work. Human physiology is complex and to get the most out of it, you have to train it all. If all you do is long runs, you will get nowhere near your potential. Marathon runners will regularly run 400m repeats on the track - speedwork helps in so many ways!

If you are training properly at running however, then you are doing high intensity exercise. The track repeats, the hill reps, they are that high intensity interval training, with easier runs the rest of the time.

The idea that running is just shuffling along at a steady pace is a straw man, and looks nothing like what actual runners do!

But a video covering that would be 30 minutes. I can read it in a lot less. Having been through academia, you do after all learn to read quickly :-)

Same. I can read quickly, and when suits me. Video I have to be sat at a computer paying attention which is time I can use for other things, and go at their speed.

Yep - things have been sold out as people work from home. I've bought a cheap Chinese 'Action Camera' i.e. knockoff gopro from Amazon. £30 and it works perfectly well as a webcam for conference calls!

That's what I do, but it took a while to get there.

Since I would say 80% of people have some level of cloud storage now (University, employer, personal), there should be a simple setting to pick one, and the location. Make it easy for people and win users!

Yep, exactly this. It doesn't seem like it should be that hard to let you suggest fixes, or flag things that are clearly incorrect, even if you don't fix them yourself - especially on something i pay for!

I have used Zotero for my [part time] PhD and found it a great tool (I submitted last week). Whilst I love it, its a bit cranky, and it's a shame it doesn't have things that would clearly elevate it to the level of (or beyond) others like endnote and the elephant in the room of Mendeley: - doesn't play nice with cloud storage - seems you should be able to just pick your cloud provider and let it sync up. Instead if you try and use cloud storage it'll most likely corrupt your library - because of the above unless using their storage, it's hard to make work accross multiple computers (and never even tried on my ipad, which is a shame) - can't export a reference pack - interface is dated. I don't mind, but suspect it is intimidating to less technical folk and a bit of a barrier to entry (Mendeley is much more accessible) - does require plugins and fiddling to get the most out of it, some of which seems unnecessary (why are they not in the main program?

Still, I've no regrets in choosing it in 2013, and think it's a fantastic piece of software. Hopefully it keeps on developing, and becomes the de facto standard :-)

As well as academic papers, I use it for storing copies (wiut hthe chrome plugin) of websites - things are not permanent these days and may reference sources I wouldn't want to lose!

It's basically my personal library