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veilrap

423 karma · joined July 28, 2016

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veilrap··on Visualizing the inside of cells at previously impossible resolutions
For a moment I thought this article was going to be about doing visualizations of cells using Vi(m)
veilrap··on What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?
Society won't break down. Societies of the high longevity future are almost certain to look back at the current age and balk in confusion at the number of people afraid of living longer the same way we balk at things like human sacrifice.
veilrap··on What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?
Death is worse, we do know that - outside of religious afterlifes, having continued brain patterns is preferable to non-existence.

It's incredibly more likely that continued existence will be no worse than the world today, which is quite nice. Even if it becomes torturous existence beats non-existence.

veilrap··on What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?
Give me a few million years of life and I'll still have billions more to think about what to do in the event of a heat death of the universe.
veilrap··on What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?
I've never understood the "not wanting to live 300 years" sentiment.

I've experienced extreme loss, but continue to expreience new connections, knowledge, etc. There's simply no small limit to what a human can experience, and hundreds of years is paltry compared to when it would take to even be on the verge of boredom/emptiness, if such a verge could actually ever be reached.

veilrap··on What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?
Yep, that's exactly the stance I've heard from people who are interested in this sort of thing.

And to be honest, <1% odds seem a lot better than 0% odds for normal death. (Sans religious aftermaths)

veilrap··on What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?
The people running the Cryo business are living people who get paid for the task. No more wasteful than any other relatively benign thing someone is going to spend their money on.
veilrap··on Spotify CEO renews attack on Apple after Musk's salvo
The restricted App Store does add customer value, and that customer value is degraded if there are other App Stores available.

Namely - if a user buys Apple products because they want the security/curation/whatever that comes with Apple's walled garden, that advantage is broken by forcing Apple to have other app stores on their platform because now that user cannot get all the content through their trusted source as they could before.

veilrap··on Idiot Proof Git
I'm mostly with you, except, `git reset --hard` is relatively easy to recover from. `git reflog` generally can fix most `git reset --hard` commands.

On the other hand. `git checkout .` with unstaged changes tends to be the most common way I've seen people lose code via git.

veilrap··on Microsoft sued for open-source piracy through GitHub Copilot
100% agree. This matches my actual usage of github copilot. All the drama around it seems to just be mostly for headlines to fuel the outrage machine.
veilrap··on T-Mobile will start charging a $35 fee on all new activations and upgrades
AT&T hasn't charged me an activation fee in years... yet I also hear people complaining about them from time to time. Maybe it's because I tend to buy direct from Apple?

Are these sorts of fees randomly applied by carriers? I'd definitely start shopping around for a new carrier if I was on T-Mobile.

veilrap··on The Twitter whistleblower story is worse than you think
Agree 100%, if I were not able to download the applications and tools that make me productive, I would be looking for a new job at a less employee hostile work place.
veilrap··on Will California Eliminate Anonymous Web Browsing? (Comments on CA AB 2273)
They all certainly made the web a worse experience for those using it. Wether that was avoidable or not is moot compared to what happened in practice.
veilrap··on Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?
I don't like the ability for arbitrary app/store/sites to be able to pull/push money directly from my bank account. The credit card companies provide a nice buffer between my wallet and the payee.

I could see it being useful for interbank transfers and for bank to billing (e.g. credit cards, etc.)

veilrap··on The unclear future for gifted-and-talented education
I think the problem is that the measurement, detection, and access to so-called gifted and talented programs is a major issue. The more exclusive the programs are the more it restricts the access to advanced studies to students not lucky enough to make the cutoff. The differences of students on one side of a cutoff and the other side of a cutoff are negligible.

I prefer systems that make advanced coursework and guidance available to anyone willing and able to put in the work. And the "who" may vary from year to year or course to course based on the individual student interest.

veilrap··on Apple Reports Third Quarter Results
"Literally" has always been used figuratively.

https://blogs.illinois.edu/view/25/96439

veilrap··on EU Digital Markets Act, aimed at Google, Apple, Amazon, approved
Android already is a huge iOS competitor, in fact, the majority player in the space. So competition clearly exists without this heavy handed regulation.

Legally requiring companies to degrade customer experiences is frustrating.

veilrap··on EU Digital Markets Act, aimed at Google, Apple, Amazon, approved
So use Android? I don't get the reason to force all companies to be the same when customers clearly have preferences.

I've bought mostly Apple products because I prefer their system to Androids. People who disagree can buy something else.

Competition is better than these father knows best overarching regulations.

veilrap··on EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms
If you don't want to use Apple services, why are you buying an Apple device? These facetious arguments make no sense.
veilrap··on New California law requires high schools to start later
In the US, I had similar (not quite as early) optional 0-period classes in high school that started around 6:45AM. It was awesome, small class sizes (because it was optional), interesting useful topics (Math and Philosophy).

I'm happy my school admins made this available to us. I don't understand your rage.

veilrap··on New California law requires high schools to start later
The fact that "late bedtimes" is listed as a cause is telling - shifting the start time later isn't likely to help if it just allows/causes people to shift their bedtimes later in response.

Teens who go to bed at a reasonable hour are getting enough sleep and performing well.

veilrap··on Apple's claim is that it bans other browsers for security
It's not the same, because Safari is already a minority in the market compared to the Chrome behemoth.
veilrap··on Apple's claim is that it bans other browsers for security
No one is forced to use Apple products at all. Choosing an Apple product over non-apple products is a choice. There is extensive competition with Apple products. Choosing to buy an iPad, and being upset that they can't install linux on it, failed to do any product research before buying the product.

Many people, myself included, choose to use Apple products in part BECAUSE of how those products work and function, today. I don't want to install additional browsers, app stores, or other crap on my phone, I just want it to work well, out of the box with reasonably high security. For my needs Apple products provide that today.

If Apple's products don't fit your needs, the solution is trivial - don't buy Apple products.

veilrap··on Apple's claim is that it bans other browsers for security
Yes, I am happy with the Apple ecosystem in this regard. If I wanted to run a different browser engine, I could do so by buying an Android phone. I purchased an iOS phone specifically because I think the overall phone experience is better when certain aspects do not have a choice.

If android did not exist and Apple controlled the market it would be a different story, but that is far from the case.

veilrap··on High tuition costs mostly stem from the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act 1993
The spending all the money you have so that you don't lose it is a problem actually created by anti-corruption bureaucracy, and is very common in government funded areas.

The problem is that in an effort to avoid being wasteful, the bureaucracy aggressively tracks money spent, and forces a return of unused funds. This in turn disincentivizes saving because there is literally no benefit to spending efficiently or saving money for rough times, because those short term savings are immediately vacuumed back up by the higher level bureacracy.

Blaming student services departments for overspending is missing the root of the problem. I've seen the exact same issues in STEM research institutions.

veilrap··on High tuition costs mostly stem from the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act 1993
My experience in higher ed is exactly the opposite. Funding is quite easy to get for STEM research projects through grants and other research programs.

Projects that just "align with political talking points" tend to be much more challenging to fund because there's significantly less money available in those domains.

Economically, an educated populace produces positive externalities on society. As such it makes sense for the government to fund and subsidize it to some extent because it produces a good ROI for both the society and the individuals.

veilrap··on To learn more quickly, brain cells break their DNA (2021)
Does this imply that thinking too hard, cramming, and other rapid learning strategies may actually increase brain cancer risk?

Somewhat horrifying to think about... Oops.

veilrap··on Modern programming languages require generics
The C++ code could have also just have been `T`. It's a bit odd of a comparison because `RandomAccessIterator` is just a name the author chose for the template typename.
veilrap··on Reddit is being funded by a fake company?
The president of the United States should be treated no differently than other users of the service.

In this case the president repeatedly broke the rules by posting lies and dangerous misinformation. Even given that, his account was allowed to continue to break the rules for far longer than normal peoples would have been.

veilrap··on Minnesota Wants to Ban Under-18s from User-Generated Content Services
The problem with this is that Republicans in power today equate things like evolution with Democrat ideals.

When facts get labeled as bias it's impossible to remove both from the classroom and still have a functional classroom.

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