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earlyam

52 karma · joined February 25, 2023

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earlyam··on French workers protest plan to increase retirement age
Thanks
earlyam··on A study on the extent of global air pollution
> Same as the obesity pandemic, the climate crisis, the biodiversity crisis

That and almost every problem is a political party's solution. Get the voter base whipped up about any attempts to do anything and get reelected for obstructing it. Rinse, repeat.

Politicians don't care about issues, they care about getting reelected; to do that they must exploit and perpetuate problems they're supposed to fix.

earlyam··on Alaska’s Fisheries Are Collapsing
I'm not necessarily opposed to this line of thinking but we probably need to do a lot more in other areas first, like undaming the Columbia and Snake rivers which were the largest salmon spawning grounds in the world.

Thanks for the link though, I'll take a look at it when I have some time.

earlyam··on French workers protest plan to increase retirement age
I don't doubt you, but do you have a source? I don't know anything about the economics of France and I'm kind of interested now.
earlyam··on Hardware microphone disconnect (2021)
A cool feature on laptops would be a jumper you could physically disconnect, and a tiny window (on say, the bottom of the laptop) to verify it hasn't been reconnected.
earlyam··on Ultra-processed foods may contribute to cognitive decline
Sounds like you'd be better off finding a local bakery that doesn't sell bread which is shelf stable for a month or more.
earlyam··on Alaska’s Fisheries Are Collapsing
I was listening to a piece on the local news radio about fish hatcheries in the PNW and the numbers are shocking with the fish that make it back to spawn; Chinook salmon sound like they're barely holding on with all our best efforts.

I have a lot of pessimism about our ocean health, we really need to do anything we can to support fish populations -- if those collapse it's just a matter of time before the rest of the ecosystem follows.

earlyam··on Walmart to close its final two locations in Portland
I...have no sympathy.
earlyam··on Chinese disinformation targeting U.S. features fake people on fake news programs
Some anecdata: I've seen a big increase in pro-Chinese commentors on the internet in the past year or so. HN especially. It keeps popping up in subtle ways. I'm not saying it's necessarily propaganda or psyops, but we'd be fools to believe China isn't doing that quite extensively. Hell, America does it; we just had a scandal where the military was doing that when they shouldn't have been.
earlyam··on Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief
Most criticism I've heard of them is that they suck up a disproportionate amount of funding.
earlyam··on Japan births fall to record low as population crisis deepens
Cat's out of the bag with family planning. If we want more kids we need to make it an option that doesn't impose severe economic penalties. You have one in America and childbirth alone can bankrupt you.
earlyam··on Japan births fall to record low as population crisis deepens
I've met too many millenials who want kids but can't afford them or the stuff you should have before you have kids to agree with you.

From what I've seen, it's lack of stable employment, stable housing and decent support system for parents. Wages have been declining relative to inflation and cost of living for a very long time, and that's for the job you get after you go into debt to get a degree which you didn't used to need.

earlyam··on Dried Lake Reveals New Statue on Easter Island
That doesn't seem so specific to imply a connection. For most of human history we spent our time trying to not starve. Hands holding a contented belly seems like a universal symbol.
earlyam··on Bitwise Division
Start counting in binary on your fingers until you're just about "binary native". Also, perform operations, and think about why they behave the way they do.

It sounds a little woo-woo but going from representing something on paper (or worse, a display) to doing it with my hands really changed it for me. Humans likely evolved intelligence because we stood up and used our hands to manipulate our environment, I suspect we more fully engage our brains in important ways by doing something with our hands when we can.

You might start appreciating the imperial system of measurement though. You've been warned.

earlyam··on A spellchecker used to be a major feat of software engineering (2008)
Random story. I was a young kid in the 90's and my dad took me by the biggest house I'd seen at that point in my life for some work party or something. Really nice landscaping, etc. It was clear the owner had A Lot Of Money.

I asked him afterwards how the guy got so rich and he told me that he wrote Microsoft's spellchecker.

earlyam··on X12: Requirements for a successor to the X11 protocol (2013)
As a user(!), Wayland is much more usable at 15 than X was at 25.
earlyam··on Plutonium: The most dangerous substance known to man?
Further reading:

https://www.science.org/content/article/near-disaster-federa...

earlyam··on Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says
Problem was you weren't even allowed to speculate about this and consider that the possibility warranted more investigation without being written off as a "Trumper."

I've seen huge family fights over this very issue and not one person involved was a Trump supporter or a conspiracy theorist but then the names get thrown around because somebody didn't toe somebody else's ideological line.

earlyam··on My daughter's school took over my personal Microsoft account
My wife basically had all the problems you guys are talking about with her Minecraft account. When Mojang was independent none of this stuff was an issue but with MS you're practically pulling your hair out to do really basic stuff.

100% pure regression with account management.