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eclecticfrank

302 karma · joined March 20, 2023

reading since forever, registered since 2023.
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eclecticfrank··on Cannabinoids remove plaque-forming Alzheimer's proteins from brain cells (2016)
https://xkcd.com/244/
eclecticfrank··on “Car Wash” test with 53 models
Does anyone know what kind of apps Rapidata questions are integrated in? I suppose they are using ad-like integrations to ask users for feedback. Their website only states:

By integrating in a large range of mobile apps (3000+) we have access to a large crowd of over 10 million users responding to our micro tasks/surveys - which we call Rapids. They are spread all over the world, so we can get human input from over 160 countries. Due to the immense size, we can parallelize tasks and get near instant results.

eclecticfrank··on The United States withdraws from UNESCO
These quotes are displayed without context and hence have no or a very little value in a conversation.
eclecticfrank··on The United States withdraws from UNESCO
For context: The commentary those quotes are taken from was written by Eugene Kontorovich, a senior researcher at the Heritage Foundation which runs Project 2025.
eclecticfrank··on How to Firefox
Lots of Firefox hate here, but little discussion about the articles kicker, which is the exclusion of uBlock Origin from Chrome.

I hope this will mean that in the long run Firefox (and other secondary browsers) will gain more users again. For me, Firefox is a solid piece of software. Works well in strict privacy mode, with uBlock Origin and Multi-Account Containers.

eclecticfrank··on How to Firefox
Brave wants to replace "bad" ads from third parties with their own "good" ads.[1]

They have also in the past been caught adding their own referral codes to crypto transaction URLs pasted into their browser. [2]

[1] https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-earn-and-use-cryptocurre... [2] https://www.pcmag.com/news/brave-browser-caught-redirecting-...

eclecticfrank··on How to Firefox
Give us an example where Chrome is faster than Firefox, so we can see if it is more important than having uBlock Origin.

I use both Firefox and Chrome for work and haven't noticed any speed differences (without measuring).

eclecticfrank··on Workers at Snopes.com win voluntary recognition
It is always great to hear of another union being formed. Workers representing themselves is not only a benefit for the workers, but also a pathway to healthy and sustainable organisations.
eclecticfrank··on Complete silence is always hallucinated as "ترجمة نانسي قنقر" in Arabic
This person refers to the German television and radio fee (Rundfunkgebühren).[1] It is a state-mandated system that ensures free (as in free speech) and (relatively) neutral public broadcasting institutions. There is a constant and engaged discussion, because every household in Germany has to pay this fee. Exceptions are made only for low-income households.

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

eclecticfrank··on “Reading Rainbow” was created to combat summer reading slumps
> Man didn’t evolve in an environment where stories were told by people who’d won a massive intertribe tournament of story telling ability. Stories were told by family.

The stories we grew up to were indeed those which won "a massive intertribe tournament of story telling ability". Only interesting stories got retold. Stories travelled further when made into songs. They became artworks when tranformed into plays. They became myths and legends in the luggage of those travelling the planet. And the art of telling stories also became a way of making a living much before our contemporary society produced the first pop star.

eclecticfrank··on Spain and Brazil push global action to tax the super-rich and curb inequality
Germany technically has a wealth tax. However, it is supended since 1997, because the methods of how real estate wealth was calculated were outdated and thus considered unconsittutional.

Tax is not collected, but the supporting law has never been revoked.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verm%C3%B6gensteuer_(Deutschla... (Sorry, no translation available)

eclecticfrank··on The new skill in AI is not prompting, it's context engineering
It might make sense to split the car analogy into different users:

1. For the majority of regular users the best way to understand the car is to read the manual and use the car.

2. For F1 drivers the best way to understand the car is to consult with engineers and use the car.

3. For a mechanic / engineer the best way to understand the car is to build and use the car.

eclecticfrank··on The "Frankfurt Kitchen"
Its design exhibits a very dense funtional pragmatism that makes it look like a laboratory or even bomb shelter to me.
eclecticfrank··on Airhull lets electric boats glide on a layer of air
This concept also seems related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_cavity_system
eclecticfrank··on As an experienced LLM user, I don't use generative LLMs often
Can you give a concise example of good prompt engineering in your case?
eclecticfrank··on Marine Le Pen banned from running in 2027 and given four-year sentence
A lot of words to say "I do not agree with the judgement of a fair and independet court because I feel otherwise".
eclecticfrank··on Marine Le Pen banned from running in 2027 and given four-year sentence
That is a great list. The principle behind this is the defensive democracy.

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

eclecticfrank··on Marine Le Pen banned from running in 2027 and given four-year sentence
False, it's simply a requirement.

French law explicitly states that a candidate for an election must not be ineligible by reason of criminal conviction or judicial decision.

Should have thought about messing with EU funds before, I suppose.

eclecticfrank··on Marine Le Pen banned from running in 2027 and given four-year sentence
Being convicted of a crime is an obscenely high bar.
eclecticfrank··on Marine Le Pen banned from running in 2027 and given four-year sentence
The temporary loss of the right to stand for election is a common punishment in France when politicians are convicted of corruption and breach of trust.
eclecticfrank··on Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels
India is on a steady path of improvement and has awareness campaigns running that adress these issues.

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

https://innovateindia.mygov.in/toilet-campaign/

https://siwi.org/latest/the-clean-india-mission-worlds-large...

eclecticfrank··on Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? How to thrive in a ChatGPT world
This is not something only younger people are prone to. I work in a consulting role in IT and have observed multiple colleagues aged 30 and above use LLMs to generate content for reports and presentations without verifying the output.

Reminded me of wikipedia-sourced presentations in high school in the early 2000s.

eclecticfrank··on F-Droid's Progress and What's Coming in 2025
I'm using:

  FreeOTP (OTP tool)
  Simple Chess Clock (once a year)
  Binary Eye (QR code scanner)
  Etar (Calendar)
  Simple Notes Pro (Very nice and simple note taking app)
  OsmAnd (Maps with great path details for hiking)
eclecticfrank··on India takes out giant nationwide subscription to 13,000 journals
This injustice is being adressed by The Berlin Declaration on Open Access to the Sciences and Humanities [1], which a large number universities worldwide have already signed.

All employees and students of my university are encouraged to publish open access or grant the university a royalty-free, non-exclusive, non-commercial, worldwide licence to publish it in their own repository, if the publisher is more restrictive.

[1] https://openaccess.mpg.de/Berlin-Declaration

eclecticfrank··on Boltzmann brain
Adding to the million monkeys on a million typewriters: There is Project Babel, an algorithm that strives to produce every combination of letters (and then also words) possible.

It's "books" are filled mostly with gibberish but theoretically, if running long enough, it will generate books that have not been written yet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel_(website)

eclecticfrank··on Leaving and Waving
This made me cry. Being intimidated by the temporality of relationships but also stunned at how beautiful goodbyes can be.

I had seen these photos before and saw them return to reddit during the past few days. Couldn't click on them until now, because I was afraid of the emotions they would surface.

Impressive work.

eclecticfrank··on Chain-of-thought can hurt performance on tasks where thinking makes humans worse
I think the previous commenter chose "word" instead of "language" to highlight that a grammatically correct, naturally flowing chain of words is not the same as a language.

Thus, Large Word Model (LWM) would be more precise, following his argument.

eclecticfrank··on Up to $41B in World Bank climate finance unaccounted for, Oxfam finds
The author's wikipedia page is well worth a read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Hancock
eclecticfrank··on Why Google Search Is Falling Apart?
Yes, it's still dying / falling apart / getting worse.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26460092 (2021) [Ask HN: Has Google search been worse at finding information lately?]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30347719 (2022) [Google Search Is Dying]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36564042 (2023) [Google search's death by a thousand cuts]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39040559 (2024) [Google Search Has Gotten Worse, Researchers Find]

eclecticfrank··on We're in the Golden Age of Garbage Clothing
I'm curious how you make socks last for 10+ years?

I have around 25 pairs of socks, rotate them, wear socks daily and have to retire them after around two years, because they start getting holes. Never had problems with the nylon band though.

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