cpleppert

I'm confused about what is actually going on here. The FDA claims [1] that Tianeptine can't be used as a supplement ingredient so selling it should be illegal. That was from 2018 so there is no reason it should still be able to be sold.

Notwithstanding, The FDA could simply put Tianeptine on the controlled substances list.

1: https://www.fda.gov/food/dietary-supplement-products-ingredi...

Same, I even wrote a chrome extension to enable js on the current domain using a keyboard shortcut; but it has gotten to be more of a pain especially on landing pages.

It isn't just hyped; popular reporting on fusion power hasn't been very accurate. It doesn't help fusion power that things like this are trumpeted as a breakthrough when the reality is that the INF was never was a viable way to generate power in first place.

I don't believe its contrarianism. Sure, its an interesting science experiment but it has no viable way to generate power in any way. The lasers needs to be more efficient by a factor of 100x in the best case scenario(it depends on the specifics of how they calculate net gain). Then you probably need to increase that by another factor of 2-5x even assuming you have a way to convert that thermal energy to electricity.

No one has any idea how that would ever be viable; other fusion alternatives at least have a way to accomplish thermal transfer from the reactor. Then you somehow have to figure out how to build a financially viable power plant. Oh, by the way, the lasers need to fire 1000x more for that. No one has any idea how that would work either.

There is a reason no one but a national lab interested in fusion reactions with massive financial resources has done this before; its interesting but doesn't produce any kind of viable power source.

Edit: The INF was proposed and designed as means to ensure the viabilty of the nuclear stockpile. It and the French equivalent were never understood as somehow prototyping a fusion power plant for the reasons laid out above. The press reporting here is just not accurate.

This post is mostly misleading.

Its not clear at all that blue light has a significant impact on sleep or eyestrain; the science is ambigious.

The main piece of research referenced suggests that dark mode is worse in situations of low ambient light. But that was at small text sizes; of course, light text on a dark background has less contrast than dark text on a light background. That doesn't address the question of whether dark mode, used correctly, helps to alleviate eyestrain in low ambient light conditions. The suggestions offered seem to have little empirical evidence to back them up. If you feel more comfortable using dark mode at night there is little here to suggest that it would be harmful.

Was this written by ChatGPT? It is completly wrong but written in a confident manner with broad sweeping generalizations that leave no doubt of the truth. It even asserts multiple times that the Ford Pinto was made out of aluminum.

>> To those that are interested, basically Hancock visits sites around the world that seem to show that humans had the technology to build megaliths much earlier than previously thought. Currently accepted archeology believes that human civilizations start around 6000 years ago, but some structures like Gobeki Tepe suggest that this actually happened much, much earlier, closer to 12,000 years ago.

I'm confused here. The significance of Goblekli Tepe is as a ritual center that may not have been produced by a sedentary agricultural community. It is clearly a neolithic structure of the period. In fact, the controversy has less to do with the megalithic structures than the research that suggests it may not have had a settled population. None of that has anything to do with what Hancock suggests. No archeologist involved in the site agrees with Hancock. I can say that with 100% confidence.

Nor does the age of the site disprove anything about 'mainstream archeology.' The site is clearly neolithic. The suggestion that archeologists believe that megalithic structures are impossible before 4,000 bc is simply wrong.

>> I mean, the evidence has only been moving toward Hancock’s theories over the last 30 years, not away from it.

I'm sorry. What? More raw research has been conducted in the last 30 years than in the entire history of archeology up to that point. Absolutely none of it provides even the slimmest speck of confirmation for this guy's nonsense.

Because it essentially requires everything known about the recent past to be wrong. Human societies and civilizations are incredibly complex and don't just pop out of nowhere and then disappear without a trace. We have an overwhelming amount of evidence on the human development from genetics to radio-carbon dating, to deciphered languages to the spread of technological innovations.

It is as nonsensical as claiming that the latest Ryzen is really from the 1990s. Of course, this guys 'theory' is not based on actual evidence; so there is no reason to even take it seriously.

First of all, it isn't clear this is the case.

But this entire comment thread on the AGPL misses the mark. It doesn't matter that the AGPL hasn't been tested in court or what fine grained distinctions you apply to the license or what the AGPL intends. No company in their right mind would risk using software licensed under the AGPL because the result of being wrong would be catastrophic. The legal advice to be skeptical of the AGPL is absolutely right. There is no conceivable reason to ever use AGPL software when you could simply license it under a commerical license or use a non-AGPL alternative.

Generally when someone licenses something under the AGPL they totally understand this and that is their intention.

Instructure doesn't need to comply with AGPL obligations because it owns the product. It isn't licensing it to itself under the AGPL.

>> Someone was playing stupid.

Welcome to the real world. Even if the intelligence offical was being scrupulously careful to lay out the facts the reporter may mishear or misunderstand the context. The only thing that would have been known immediately was that the missile was manufactured in the soviet union. The offical thinks he is telling the reporter one thing but the reporter just hears 'russian missile' and runs with it because he believes it comes from a verified source.

The Slack chat is pretty clear that the AP reporters here are just jumping to conclusions that fit their preconceptions. The reporters are breathlessly invoking article 5 as if a stray missile hitting a polish farm would rise to the level of a deliberate act of war.

One person commented specifically that the source was vetted (not the story). There was also another comment about how they couldn't believe a senior intelligence could be wrong ( so no reason to get a second source). This doesn't really make sense if the story was vetted by a senior editor. Also, why would a senior editor make any difference about the credibility of a story? Thats the reporters job. If the senior editor signed off on the story why then he would have immediately put the story out.

Either the source is wrong or LaPorta was confused about "Russian missile" i.e. was it Russian made or fired by the Russian Federation?

Yeah, I'm confused about the wording here. That is the crux of their entire argument and I would think if they had evidence the Little Ice Age interfered with Mao hunting as opposed to simple overexploitation they would say so.

This isn't true. Newsweek is reporting an unverified tweet which is from an account focused on the conflict in Ukraine. The tweet itself seems to be referring to the letter on sunday signed by 227 lawmakers urging the death penalty.

I don't agree with the premise of that hypothetical. Nuclear blackmail is only an effective strategy if it seems credible i.e. if the blackmailer is really in a desperate situation. If putin is faced with a situation where he would lose control if he doesn't use nukes (which we are not anywhere close to being) then by definition he probably doesn't want to be in a situation where blackmail would be effective.

There just isn't a lot of incentive for an autocratic ruler to destabilize his regime and crash his country's economy to grab a piece of territory at a massive price that the world will never recognize. Putin wanted to annex six eastern provinces of ukraine and create a client state in central Ukraine; not be in a position where he needs to threaten to lob nuclear weapons. Putin was able to grab Crimea precisely because there was no military resistance not because he was able to create a fait accompli that he was able to blackmail the world into accepting. Yet the sanctions imposed after Crimea was annexed dramatically weakened the civilian economy and putin's military buildup.

To be clear, I don't think Ukraine should negotiate or be forced to negotiate but that isn't because I believe Putin would not be deterred in the future.

That wasn't the reason, Russia was simply the lowest cost supplier by far. They have an entire network of pipes developed over decades to deliver gas to Europe and Germany.

In fact, If Germany diversified LNG supplies it would make war less likely because Russia would have less leverage. Every geopolitical commentator for a decade has pointed out that Russian gas supplies were a weapon that could be used to deter Europe.

I would think that a head of state with substantial assets administered by the government and a massive public subsidy for the royal family would be in a position to lobby the government. The ruling party in the UK at the moment is pretty favorable to the monarchy so it isn't surprising they would provide the monarch with some ability to lobby the government.

I'm not a royalist or British but I would be more concerned about the financial subsidy and the ruling party's deference to the monarchy than the theoretical possibility of them witholding consent. It isn't much of a negotiation if one side can immediately win though right? The prime minister can just threaten to go public that he can't obtain consent and the monarch has to back down immediately.

Practically, the UK Monarch (or Japanese emperor) has no discretionary political power at all. Republican Parliamentary systems usually leave some discretionary power to the head of state in either emergencies or for the purpose choosing a party to attempt to form a government.

Hereditary Lords (i.e. the noble aristocracy in the UK) have almost no political power. The ninety or so still in the House of Lords are elected by fellow members of the House of Lords. The remainder (600+) of the peers are appointed by the party in power in the commons.

Kings/Queens consent is for legislation affecting the royal household. Parliament is not bound by the monarch's consent in any case.

Every appointed member of the house of lords and the supreme court is appointed on the advice of the prime minister and cabinet.

>> My rural internet connection is 40mbps/sec down in theory — in practice it’s between 25 and 40 depending which second you poll it, and the speed is affected by whether someone is downstairs watching Netflix while I’m upstairs playing a graphics-intensive game.

I'm surprised he even bothered trying the service let alone he found it playable. A rural area with 25-40mbps with someone using the internet at the same time ( let alone netflix!) is basically worst case scenario. If you are playing near a datacenter with reasonable internet your experience will be significantly better. Geforce now is technically very good when configured properly; it is similar to parsec (which is probably state of the art).

Worth pointing out: the Geforce now library is not great and and I wouldn't hold my breath on it improving too much. Most interested publishers have already signed up and the rest are either commited to other platforms or aren't willing to choose nvidia over other monetization options.

>> The attention to Aurelius as emperor comes at the price of overlooking the young Marcus, a lover writing erotic letters to his teacher, the African orator Fronto:

There isn't a lot offered to support the conclusion that stoicism somehow caused Aurelius to turn away from love and accept power. I would be hesitant of drawing such a conclusion based on the paucity of evidence; but the author just asserts it. The trope of the philosopher more interested in contemplation than earthly affairs is just that: a trope. There isn't really an argument here, just indignation at this ancedote.

I don't understand what that means unfortunately. I would think the second part of the comment refers to direct buffers in NIO that were added in java 1.4. One possibility is that he means directly interfacing with the operating system I/O system calls and using sun.misc.Unsafe to read or write to buffers.

I don't think anyone has ever asserted that stealing can be justified if the casual outcome for the victim is insignificant and it is certainly isn't a justification here. It is a valid historical question of the impact of the indemnity. Pointing out that haiti's economy was unable to develop should be relevant and certainly not reprehensible. There are a lot of cases of historical injustice including other instances that involved Haiti in the first place. Justice will be harmed if we can't fairly judge the outcome of these injustices.

>>I do not believe that I am misrepresenting the article. The reason I do not believe that is because I am personal friends with an unusual number of historians who work in early US history and the history of race in the US. The quote I pulled from the article very neatly sums up their opinion of the 1619 project.

I have no idea what you are personally told or what views your friends, whatever their qualifications, have. The article's author is generally favorable to revisionist interpretations and even she has serious doubts. As a historical matter one of the central claims of the 1619 project is false and is mostly asserted without evidence. Now, if you produce a work with a thesis and one of the most important (as asserted by the work itself!) test cases of that thesis is false the credibility of that work is clearly undermind.

>>Braudel has claims that are outright wrong but The Mediterranean is heralded as a triumph. Said has claims that don't hold up today but Orientalism is a critical step forward for the field. [...] Historical writing should seek to be based in fact. But fucking up (even very badly) is not a reason to declare a work to be propaganda.

The difference is that those works advanced the field even where they had shortcomings. They did so by rigorously supporting claims and providing evidence. The 1619 project does neither.

This doesn't work. Mouse acceleration isn't exposed using a defaults key anymore. You need to use a tool like linear mouse to modify the scaling value.

I can't agree with this enough. Certain threads are almost as bad as reddit. It isn't quite on the same level as having a current ukraine war thread and literally every comment is completely wrong about the weapon used. That doesn't happen on HN much but its clear a lot of the time the comments are just not what they used to be. I'm disappointed because it reduces any value in the comment section. I mostly only stick to technical threads at this point.

Yeah, not quite sure what to say at this point. It's been pointed out over and over that wind and solar do not provide reliable power and apparently that point just goes over people's heads? What do people think Germany has massive subsidies for?

Yet every discussion has claims about how energy storage is somehow a solved problem; usually with some handwaving about pump storage or how batteries have gotten cheaper. There are, interestingly enough, never any real world examples of this.

It's perfectly rational to argue that solar and wind have obvious merits that could be worth subsidizing but that usually isn't the argument. Solar and wind are always cheaper period. Which just isn't true

State commitments in New York and New Jersey mean that off-shore windfarms are guaranteed to be profitable. The cost of extraction doesn't equal the cost of the land or right to drill for oil.

I don't mean of course that states are somehow sentient entities but decision makers in charge of states are, not surprisingly, very interested in the security of the thing they are in charge of.

I disagree that the decision makers in Russia who made the decision for war were motivated mostly in their own hold on power. If they were, they probably would not engage in such a risky business as a major war. Power is more secure in a stable political environment. To take one example, decision makers in Germany before the first world war had no illusions that a major industrialized european war was risky for the political order and its outcome was very uncertain. One reason why Germany refused to expand conscription was the fear the aristocratic class would lose power in any new citizen army with mass conscription( which in fact, happened).

So even in an autocracy this incentive problem still exists. Democracy certainly reduces the incentives for decision makers to go to war over security concerns but even in a democratic states these cross cutting concerns of political stability and economic well being could find themselves at odds with having to ensure the security of the state that makes such prosperity possible.