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seccess

537 karma · joined September 15, 2014

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seccess··on Smoking Causes Cancer
"Finally, looking at that figure you might wonder why the relative risk of smoking has increased so much. Based on my first pass through the literature, it seems like no one knows. There are at least three possibilities:

- Over this period, cigarettes have been reformulated in ways that might make them more dangerous.

- As the prevalence of smoking has decreased, it’s possible that the number of casual smokers has decreased more quickly, leaving a higher percentage of heavy smokers.

- Or maybe the denominator of the ratio — the risk for non-smokers — has decreased."

My first thought was "second hand smoke". My logic is, when smoking was more normalized, non-smokers were exposed to some of the same risk as smokers due to smoking indoors, etc, resulting in higher rates of lung cancer among non-smokers.

seccess··on UT-Austin blocks access to TikTok on campus Wi-Fi networks
You should. I have no idea to what you're referring.
seccess··on There may be a steep privacy cost if you park here
Next time you wind up in a situation like this, just lie about your number.
seccess··on The bargain at the heart of the BBC is fraying
"Instead, they’ll be reminiscing about watching a Twitch streaming millionaire child screaming racial slurs as he rail-guns his opponents on Fortnite."

This perspective is reductive and insulting. There are many great, wholesome creators on YT/Twitch who put a lot of work to make their content welcoming and intellectually engaging, even if they are seemingly just playing video games. Just because the author doesn't like it doesn't make this remotely accurate to the real world.

seccess··on Blender 2.90
"The new shadow terminator offset setting helps you to avoid shading artifacts with smooth normals on low-poly meshes."

THANK GOODNESS, man those shadows always looked so ugly. I primarily use EEVEE so this makes me happy.

seccess··on Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details to avoid Google 30% cut
For context: This seems directly related to the discussion that went on with the Hey iOS app yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23552760
seccess··on Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details to avoid Google 30% cut
I think in this case, the hypothetical lawsuits would be between companies that make iOS apps and Apple. The companies that make iOS apps want to have their own payment system where Apple doesn't take a cut.
seccess··on Why Developers Hate PHP
I couldn't find a date on this article, but I don't think this line is accurate anymore:

"Facebook, Wikipedia, Yahoo, Flickr, Tumblr all these sites run in PHP and welcome millions of users every month without flinching."

Facebook dropped PHP for their own language called Hack, which I think is based on PHP but with a lot of the things people complain about changed.

seccess··on Update to L.A.'s stay-at-home orders
I don't think its that simple, because it doesn't have to be all or nothing. I think CA has the right idea to lift restrictions at the state level so that less at-risk rural areas can try it out. It will give an idea as to what LA county would need to do: if things go okay then a reopen is reasonable, if people don't feel comfortable without some kind of "distancing" rules then those would need to be considered, or something else.

So yeah, of course there is a point in debating such a question. And there are real ways to find answers. Probably even better ones than what I said.

seccess··on Update to L.A.'s stay-at-home orders
I think this is a valid point, but one consideration that feels missing from a lot of these kind of disucussions is to what extent the economy will "come back", even if every restriction were lifted.

If people are afraid to be in public, then the restaurants, bars, and shops won't see full-scale business return. Those jobs and business will be lost anyway, perhaps with more people infected than necessary. Or, we try and find some middle-ground "new normal" that lets people feel safe in public. Or something else? I have no idea and I doubt many people in this comment section really know either.

seccess··on Former CEO of RadioShack now an ER doctor on frontlines of Covid-19 fight
A bit tangential, but this reminded me of Dexter Holland [0] the lead singer and songwriter of the band The Offspring. He went on to get a PhD in molecular biology (not an honorary one) and publish various papers about HIV.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dexter_Holland

seccess··on Swift: Google’s Bet on Differentiable Programming
Haha, there is always one :)

I feel like trying out various languages/frameworks would affect compsci labs a lot less than other fields, since the students probably have some foundational knowledge of languages and have already learned a few before getting there. Might be easier for them to pick up new ones.

seccess··on Swift: Google’s Bet on Differentiable Programming
I don't find this response convincing because:

(a) While I'm being honest that my observations are based on the fields I have experience, there is no such justification that "It is true broadly for computation in academia" in your comment.

(b) Interpreting "niche" as "small" (especially given your "true broadly" claim): Computational genetics is huge in terms of funding dollars and number of researchers.

seccess··on Swift: Google’s Bet on Differentiable Programming
> Python has been the defacto standard in scientific/data/academic programming for decades

In my experience (Genomics) this is simply not true. Python has caught on over the last 5 or so years, but prior to that Perl was the defacto language for genetic analysis. Its still quite heavily used. Perl is not a paragon of simplicity and clarity.

seccess··on Let Google do the patching with new managed base images
I don't understand this comment, what are you suggesting Google will do? Surreptitiously insert code into your binary during a patch?

If you are running in Google cloud, its their machines and they have power to do pretty much whatever they want anyway. How would this feature affect anything?

seccess··on David Byrne Curates a Playlist of Great Protest Songs
I'm reading into this a bit, but I think David Byrne is focusing on American protest songs which could explain why Fela Kuti wasn't included.
seccess··on The Science Is Clear: Dirty Farm Water Is Making Us Sick
This paper from 2010 has some info on why this may be the case [0]: "These results indicate that the protection of bacteria on the leaf surface by biofilm formation and stomatal colonization can reduce the antimicrobial efficacy of irradiation on leafy green vegetables."

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20629883

seccess··on The Devil's Hair Dryer: Hell is other people, with leaf blowers (2016)
I wonder how the author feels about leaf vacuums like this, which is what I use: http://a.co/d/dGh7M4R

Its electric, so no fumes, and since it sucks instead of blows I don't have to worry as much about annoying passers-by with dust. Sadly it still makes noise, of course, though its far quieter than the backpack blowers the author is talking about.

seccess··on Encrypted SNI Comes to Firefox Nightly
Hey I just recently complained about SNI on a recent HN thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18223168). This is a lovely coincidence. Thanks Mozilla!
seccess··on Modernizing Transport Security
Thanks for the links. Sounds like the main reason it hasn't been addressed is DNS, if the client is just going to make a DNS request before their TLS session, the host is effectively leaked anyway. Sadly DNSSEC wouldn't address this as it only provides integrity and not confidentiality.
seccess··on Modernizing Transport Security
Maybe somebody more familiar with TLS can set me straight here, but I find it surprising that SNI still exists and there isn't much effort to replace it. To me it seems like an odd hole to punch into the encryption layer. Back when I was doing security research I wrote a TLS MITM and I distinctly remember thinking "wow thanks SNI this makes it so much easier".
seccess··on The Wisdom And/or Madness of Crowds
This is super cool to play around with and really illustrative.

One thing I noticed about the game is that I was able to "solve" some puzzles by accident when I went to erase a set of edges at once. I guess at some step during removing edges the puzzle was solved, but the game both registered the puzzle was complete AND applied the rest of the erasures afterwards. This lead to me moving to the next screen when the network didn't satisfy the requirement, so I didn't get to see the actual solution.

I would recommend changing the game so that it either waits for the user to let go of the mouse button (ie all the edits are applied before checking for correctness), or ignoring edits for a set period of time after the solution is found.

seccess··on Massive Martian dust storm endangers NASA rover
Do dust storms only occur on planets with an atmosphere? And does their severity depend on how dense the atmosphere is?
seccess··on Man dies on Mount Everest during cryptocurrency promotional stunt
This reminds me of a great book I read, "Into Thin Air"[0]. If you're interested in getting a first-hand account of climbing Everest, and what effect novice climbers have had on it, definitely give it a read.

[0]https://www.amazon.com/Into-Thin-Air-Personal-Disaster/dp/03...

seccess··on America’s Teens Are Choosing YouTube Over Facebook
I'm pretty surprised Twitch isn't mentioned in that list. I'm curious where it would stack up.
seccess··on Instagram launches “Data Download” tool to let you leave
I like to plug Google takeout[0] in these convos, which also lets you export data if you want to leave. Many people don't seem to know about it, but it is quite mature and has been around for many years.

EDIT: To expand on this a bit more, I do wish there was more industry standardization when it comes to data import/export. Is there any standardized format for chat history, for example?

[0] https://takeout.google.com

seccess··on The latest trend for tech interviews: Days of unpaid homework
Supporting anecdote: Awhile ago I interned at Google and my engineering manager - who was quite high level - did not have a high school degree.
seccess··on The Strange Online Aesthetic of the YouTube Shooting Suspect
>My YouTube channel also used to net closer to $1k/mo (about 100 coding tutorials) and as a result of frequent algorithm changes and algorithmic demonetization now nets shy of $100 per month.

Please correct me if I'm missing something here: It appears like that channel hasn't had a new upload in some time. That could explain the drop in revenue, I wouldn't expect a channel to maintain the same revenue indefinitely without new content. At some point videos get saturated.

seccess··on Intel Confronts Potential ‘PR Nightmare’ With Reported Chip Flaw
According to this patch comment, AMD x86 chips are not affected: https://lkml.org/lkml/2017/12/27/2
seccess··on Pixel Buds review: OK Google, go back to the earbud drawing board
While I agree with your opinion about removing headphone jacks, I think OP means that even phones with a headphone jack tend to have it break due to OP's heavy use of it.
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