HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

tsol

1,727 karma · joined October 4, 2021

submissionscomments
tsol··on Did fermented foods fuel brain growth?
To be fair that last part was probably always true. The future belongs to the next generation, and not everyone values having kids. Probably why most major faiths encourage having kids. The people who were too smart to have kids died out along with their ideas. It's like survival of the fittest, but with ideas. I have a theory that long in our past we've went through periods of secularization like our current modern age. It's just a phase that dies out when the people who believe it do.
tsol··on Bioluminescent houseplant hits US market for first time
>He is currently developing plants that use the mushroom luciferase system to communicate when they are stressed or infected by a virus. He imagines that future farmers might get an early heads-up about problems with their crops from satellites or drones flying at night.

Now this would be really cool. Seems pretty useful as well. Though I wonder if there's a risk of the gene spreading

tsol··on Show HN: Improve cognitive focus in 1 minute
In general he's good at not being so pushy, but that part bothers me. There's nothing explicitly wrong, but it's not a great look. And it's a little bit unethical depending on how you think about it.
tsol··on Show HN: Improve cognitive focus in 1 minute
For 90% of people the most in impactful thing they can do for their health, focus, and success is to eat well and sleep well. Unfortunately no one actually wants to do this. Instead they'd rather find "life hacks". I get the appeal, I honestly do it too. But the most important stuff here is, as often, pretty boring.
tsol··on Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan's online rant spurs threats to supes, police reports
He's always been a very strange person. Blocks everyone who disagree, insults freely. I'm surprised it's taken this long honestly
tsol··on Gene therapy allows an 11-year-old boy to hear
It's kind of amazing. The issue is that the cells have a dysfunctional copy of the OTOH gene, which leads to production of a dysfunctional otoferlin protein that does not work. There are virii that inject their DNA into cells. They modify one of these to make them inject a working copy of the OTOH gene into the cell. Cells have a mechanism where if there is a gene floating around nearby it will sometimes pick it up and integrate it. This is the process that is exploited in gene therapy to change individual cells to produce the correct protein. If enough cells produce the correct protein, there will be enough to have the desired effects. It's really unbelievably cool. I wish there were more appreciation for how these things work.
tsol··on Fujitsu bugs that sent innocent people to prison were known "from the start"
This is kind of the idea behind the innocence project. I'm not sure if they have a certain focus but they work on cases of people falsely accused.
tsol··on Study Finds Microplastics in Nearly 90% of Proteins Sampled
I imagine the enormous metal structures we put up are the longest standing evidence, simply because metal is normally found unrefined in earth's crust
tsol··on Meta censors pro-Palestinian views on a global scale, report claims
This isn't a universal problem though: only Instagram and Facebook have these accusations
tsol··on Eye scans detect signs of Parkinson’s disease up to seven years before diagnosis
Well if your already dread the time ahead of you then you might as well know, it can't get much worse eh?
tsol··on Alcohol without the hangover – scientists are finding ways
I've always been fascinated by these trace alcohols. They are very rarely talked about. Some people will say 'alcohol is alcohol' but that's actually incorrect. Alcoholic drinks are bioactive concoctions made of organic materials with multiple active ingredients-- the hops in beer for example has a slight effect on cannabinoid receptors which is why beer tend to makes one sleepy. Like you said there are a lot of trace alcohols as well. People report having different effects from different alcohols-- vodka can be numbing while wine feels more relaxed, etc.

By categorizing an inventory of these trace alcohols and their effects, one could hypothetically create customized alcohols with varying effects and levels of metabolic load. These trace alcohols are also called fusel alcohols. A lot of these are very weird chemicals with varying effects, though, not all positive. Propan-1-ol is a fusel alcohol that is thought to be 2-4 times stronger that alcohol and similar in effects, but can lead to high anion gap metabolic acidosis as a lethal side effect. So there are likely safe maximum levels of each fusel alcohol that can actually be added. Fusel alcohols are something brewers take great care to avoid, after all, as they can cause many negative effects. There's something interesting there and I'm surprised no one has pursued this before(AFAIK)

tsol··on Alcohol without the hangover – scientists are finding ways
It's very addictive and can cause a strong dependence/withdrawal, thats why it's rarely used
tsol··on The papers were not ready for publication
It gets used that way in the tech-adjacent community of twitter. It's a very particular culture. I think it's a way of sort of re-claiming the autism label from being atypical to being a 'superpower'ish thing.
tsol··on Insect memories may not survive metamorphosis
Biological beings so indeed code information at multiple levels including genetic, epigenetic, at the cellular level in the form of interneuronal connections, etc. Whether you can that memory or not is irrelevant eyes, as it's still information that the biological being has encoded at some level to achieve some function
tsol··on Sinead O’Connor Condemned Church Abuse Early. America Didn’t Listen
It's odd how silent people remain about this. The CDC said there was an epidemic of "sadness and violence"[1] among teen girls to.. basically no response. I've brought this to in conversations and most people don't seem to care very much. I don't understand it to be honest

1- https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/teen-mental-healt...

tsol··on Sinead O’Connor Condemned Church Abuse Early. America Didn’t Listen
What's conflicting about this, except that she converted to Islam? She pointed out abuse by the catholic church, the next night Joe Pesci went on SNL and said if it was his show he'd have hit her[1] to a round of applause by the studio audience. She was lambasted by the public and many fellow Catholics, until eventually she and all the children were proven right on the abuse claims. She later left the religion to join Islam which she spoke highly of. It's not entirely surpassing given how she was treated, that she would join Islam(a religion without any intercessors between God and man ex the pope)

1- https://twitter.com/DamJef/status/1684272963325943815?t=9Ii7...

tsol··on Twitter’s Rebrand to X Could Be a Trademark Nightmare Thanks to Microsoft
Doesn't Musk like to say the funniest outcome is the most likely? People were happy on twitter when Jack ran it, he might as well take the reins back
tsol··on Young people are flocking to astrology
>People abandoned religion

The majority of the world is still religious. It's mostly ex-Christian westerners who have this problem to be honest.

tsol··on Young people are flocking to astrology
Once secularism changes peoples beliefs, no one is actually in control to decide what they choose to replace it with. They might choose yoga, they might choose astrology, or they might choose qanon. Nietzsche and other philosophers talked about these problems a lot, but most this society failed at the task of living up to what was needed(ie society as a whole guiding peoples and establishing healthy alternatives).
tsol··on Young people are flocking to astrology
The truly sad thing is they have sky-high depression rates and all anyone cares is that they use too much social media and believe in astrology. The way the west regards love is supernatural anyways, so it's not surprisingly that they'd accept the idea of fate in this too.
tsol··on Young people are flocking to astrology
Indians? This is sort of like saying "many Americans pray to Jesus". Hindus are the ones that believe in astrology-- the majority religion among dozens.
tsol··on Kangaroo tendons could rebuild human knees better, stronger
You can buy the jerky on Amazon last I checked. This amazed me the first time I learned about it but apparently it's pretty mundane in Australia
tsol··on G/O media will make more AI-generated stories despite critics
Confabulate is more of a neurological term so I think that's why it never caught on, but I've always thought that was the perfect word for what's happening
tsol··on Threads isn’t for news and politics, says Instagram’s boss
That's what they said about Facebook
tsol··on New study: 70% of type 2 diabetes cases linked to food choices
CGM's are fairly recent technology and they're all very expensive right now
tsol··on Bing Jail
As an aside, MalwareBytes blocked this page. It may have ended up on some blocklist?
tsol··on Ageing studies in five animals suggests how to reverse decline
>There's nothing wrong with Bezos or Gates living forever, as long as their social and financial dominance isn't also guaranteed to live forever.

Pretty sure this problem has been around since the dawn of civilization. It's not simple to keep money and power from concentrating in society

tsol··on Tesla workers shared sensitive images recorded by customer cars
It's kind of a social problem that's it's so normalized. This isn't the first such story I've heard
tsol··on ChatGPT invented a sexual harassment scandal and named a real prof as accused
It doesn't create novel false information.
tsol··on CDC team studying toxic Ohio train derailment fell ill while investigating
I suppose that's not uncommon. Seems like a non story
← PreviousPage 4 of 34Next →