stinos

Honest question: how else would one interpret 'cheaper to drive', if not 'cheaper per-mile operating costs'? Wouldn't they have used plain 'cheaper than' if they would have meant 'purchase+operating'?

This has provided rather deep and interesting insights in software development for these particular products and in general. Or in OP's lingo: not a lot of potential for insanity at all. Because any new idea immediately gets regarded on 2 fronts: what does it take to implement and what does it really do for the user.

You're probably right when it comes to benefiting the company, but technically - at least for me - using only https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr means no ads/sponsored/whatever. Only the posts I actually want to see, and chronologically so easy to continue where you left off. I don't understand why this isn't more common knowledge but have been using this for years and it makes the whole platform usable exactly for what I want to use it for: tracking things which haven't moved on from it yet without being forced to consume anything else.

Btw there's also https://www.instagram.com/?variant=following which does something similar on Instagram.

Would be pretty interesting to figure out if the amount of dopamine really is smaller. I'm not convinced.

But anyway: the bigger picture I've been wondering a lot about lately is whether this dopamine addiction is ok to begin with. I've never had much issues with the 'truckloads' OP names but all things considered my life is basically a journey from one dopamine shot (coffee ritual, sport, problem solving, sex, music, drugs) to the next and everything in between feels not too interesting. And I'm fearful for what's going to happen when I can't do some of those anymore when getting older.

I'm sure that's a thing for some people. And there's research to back that up IIRC. Even seemingly silly things like the smell of a wet forest being beneficial.

One aspect which stood out for me is 'awareness'. I find it deeply fascinating how many people, as I used to be one, can just stroll through everyday locations without even knowing the names of the most common plants let alone think about their connection to the surroundings. Once I started to realize how unaware I was of this I started forzing myself to be more aware and it's fascinating how much there can be going on in like even 1 square meter of nature. And of which I only know a fraction.

And for me this is really meditative - even though it's somewhat counterintuitive. Meditation is usually about clearing the mind, but for me being in nature and filling my mind with thoughts about the whole interconnection of individuals in ecosystems can bring peace and relaxation. Well, as long as I do not think about how we're collectively destroying a lot of it.

I do, and I've seen it in others, but from the limited data points I've seen there's no causal relationship with age. I.e. what I've seen is people largely oblivious of nature/ecosystems/flora/fauna sudenly becoming very invested in it, for various reasons, but this doesn't happen at or only beyond a certain age. For me it was around 30 but that's simply because of a series of coincidences (new house, large garden, needed solution for mowing, happened to see a 2nd hand scythe, looked into grassland ecology, etc). But I know people whos obsession started at 16 and at 60 and like everything in between.

Note there are various species who're oligolectic meaning they only collect pollen and nectar - and hence pollinate only - a single family or sometimes even single species of plants. Moreover they are usually also better at pollinating than more generalistic species especially honeybees.

I do think about that, when needed. My point is that these containers can be 'good enough' in places where it doesn't really matter, not that they're always the go-to thing. E.g. I really don't see any issue using a map as part of a configuration type of object which gets read from args or json and which only gets used once at application start.

It's really hard to take your comment serious because of generalization like this. Maybe they're not usable for your particular usecase but that doesn't mean they suck. Just like there's a 'million' ways that C++ sucks in your book, there's a reason there's millions of lines of code out there where these containers are valid usecases and hence work without issues whatsoever nor a need to replace them with something else.

Sort of (I mean: seeing void* and a size probably means 'arbitrary sequence of bytes' or something like that, but well it's void* so it can be like anything whereas with std::span you get more of a hint what's going on just based on the type), but not at the callsite which is what the author is referring to when it's about reinterpret_cast.

> I think the point is that it adds security, which the other options don't

Imo span also does that to some extent, but already when writing the code and not afterwards in e.g. static analysis. E.g. if I get an std:span<const char> I'd have to do counterintuitive things to misuse it. Annotating a void* still leaves it a void* which I then need to cast to char* if I think that's what it is intended.

Don't get me wrong: I've written my fair share of void* but these days I really feel like there's almost always a better thing which can be used instead. Though I do admit that since I've written and consumed a lot of code with such alternatives I'm not hindered by readability/apparent complexity of it anymore but I understand that's not the same for everyone.

Fair point (although to be honest: 'complexify' feels a bit of an exaggeration here to me), but the answer to this why is simple: document and express intent clearly. The compiler gave you an error first such that you're forced to consider what you're doing. Any seasoned C++ developer seeing this knows what this reinterpret_cast means.

> Wow. With std::span the complexity-meter bumps in the red zone and goes even higher!

Same remark: yes, it's a bit more text to read, but again: to me (and many others I'm guessing) this clearly expresses intent. I also do not find it particularly hard to read. I mean, it's C++, you're likely going to encounter templates at one point or another, except in super specific software perhaps. But no-one also ever argued the C++ learning curve was easy, and trying to make it easier by refusing to use features which were added for good reasons and instead going back to constructs which are the very source of those reasons seems a bit backwards.

> As a nice addition, if you use SAL annotations, the function could be decorated a bit to help code analyzers detecting memory bugs

Some might also say it complexifies and uglifies the code. And in any case makes it non-portable on top of that.

Anyway: you can calculate things for your particular rendering framework all you want, that only tells you when that software considers something visible, and you're still missing the extra frames the GPU driver or the monitor itself might add.

In the end total latency can ime only be measured accurately by measuring both the time when you send your 'show' command and measuring when the thing actually becomes visible (photodiode on the monitor, or one of those expensive monitors which can e.g. output a TTL signal upon seeing a certain pixel value).

But I was talking about partying: there's a fair share of EDM I can party to without any drugs. Goa trance is the main one btw. And I still get the feeling of connection with the rest of the crowd.

The nice thing if you find something is that it's also sustainable - as in: can do this for the rest of your life - which at least for me is definitely not the case with mdma.

Anyway: if there's anything I'd weep about it's that measures like these are needed in the first place. Far too little, far too late. But to be honest I stopped weeping and just do whatever I can personally such that the day I die I can at least have some peace with my life.

Saw them last year in Brussels. And while I agree with this and would go again and would recommend it to others, the side note for me is: I've listened to a lot of electronic music old and new and for my personal taste almost everything Kraftwerk makes is on the mediocre side. I'd never play it at home to listen to. But to see them in concert with pretty nice visuals and at the same time realizing they basically pioneered all of this 50 years ago does remain sort of mindblowing.

Very strange indeed.

It's agricultural output is insane for a country with its surface area.

Isn't that, just like in Belgium, mostly so for meat and derived products? Which also happens to be one of the worst situations (of natural food production) ecologically: grow and import a ton of corn and soy, export again, and in the meantime all the pesticides and methane and nitrogen and manure etc are left in your country.

Wow, TIL. Do you happen to know if IRC file sharing of obscure music is still a thing?

I get the sentiment but tend to I disagree. Maybe some very specific species might benefit somewhat, but in general the principle makes little sense. Whatever native fauna there is in your area spent thousands of years in relationships with other native flora and fauna. So not just plants, also the soil life, the combination of plants, the terrain variation and so on. Hence replicating that as close as possible should be what works best. Which a far as nectar/pollen goes means not a single species but a combination providing it throughout the seasons. Whereas 'long blooming and nectar rich' completely ignores specialist insects which only get nectar and pollen from one particular species or group of species, insects laying eggs on specific species only, and so on. Butterfly bush is considered a McDonalds for insects, and that's actually a pretty good metaphor. Red valerian is in the same ballpark.

Such numbers might be ballpark correct, but I think the "without them" here literally means "if we take current industrial agriculture and simply drop pesticides" i.e. without any other change. Pretty obvious that yes, doing so will easily get you to numbers of that magnitude.

So it's a bit strange not considering the various root causes of what requires those pesticieds in the first place: monocultures on dead soil and nothing which even begins to resemble a normal ecosystem in sight. Those causes happen to be exactly among the causes of the massive insect/more general biodiversity decline we're witnessing. Along with pesticides, sure, but habitat loss is likely an even bigger factor.

So while those biopesticides are probably a net win over what is used now, it's rather unclear if they'll have a meaningful impact on that decline. Which is why reports on solutions for the decline also always include adressing at least part of the root causes, like partial shifts back to landscapes which are a mix of nature and agriculture. Where there's at least a bush/tree line between fields, for instance. Which also helps keeping certain pests in control.