Hacker News: Tharkun

New comment by Tharkun in "Microsoft Japan’s 4-day workweek experiment sees productivity jump 40%"

Tharkun — Tue, 31 Dec 2019 10:24:27 +0000

I agree. Sadly not every manager got that memo.

My brief time at $megacorp taught me to recognize when a meeting turns into unproductive bullshitting, at which point I just walk away and go back to work. YMMV.

New comment by Tharkun in "Microsoft Japan’s 4-day workweek experiment sees productivity jump 40%"

Tharkun — Tue, 31 Dec 2019 08:48:47 +0000

Maybe the headline should reflect this gem:

> That boon was thanks in part, Microsoft said, to meetings capped at 30 minutes and an increase in remote conferences.

From my past experiences in megacorps, there are so many meetings it sometimes feels like that's all you're doing.

New comment by Tharkun in "The Joys of Unix Keyboards"

Tharkun — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 22:49:46 +0000

I've gone down this route several times. I've moved Esc, Ctrl and Win (or whatever you call it, Meta?) to the CapsLock position. But for some reason my left pinky just doesn't like that spot. It's a slightly awkward angle, and I use Esc/Ctrl/Win so much that having any of them in that spot tires out my pinky.

One row up or down is fine. But home row far left is hell. Maybe it's simply because my hand grew into it over several decades. Instead, I use CapsLock to lock my screen.

New comment by Tharkun in "Ask HN: Best solutions for keeping a personal log?"

Tharkun — Sun, 29 Dec 2019 19:55:21 +0000

I use Zettlr + git to keep my personal log/lab notes/daily journal. It's just a fancy markdown editor, to it should be trivial to write some shell foo to pull in data from whatever source you like.

New comment by Tharkun in "FDA approves new treatment for adults with migraine"

Tharkun — Sun, 29 Dec 2019 08:00:10 +0000

The news here is that ubrogepant is a tablet taken as an abortive, while emgality etc are injections taken as a preventative.

New comment by Tharkun in "FDA approves new treatment for adults with migraine"

Tharkun — Sun, 29 Dec 2019 07:55:58 +0000

Diclofenac is an NSAID painkiller. It comes with all the usual risks and contraindications of any other NSAID.

Migraine abortives like triptans and migraine inhibitors like these CGRP antagonists (erenumab and now ubrogepant) are not painkillers. They attempt to stop the migraine, not just numb the pain. They're both in a league of their own.

New comment by Tharkun in "OnlyKey: Open-Source Alternative to YubiKey"

Tharkun — Fri, 27 Dec 2019 07:05:18 +0000

Sadly it doesn't seem to work that way. BE/AZERTY keyboards, for instance, have a physical key that US/QWERTY keyboards do not (<>\). The OS will ignore that key unless it's set up to use a layout that includes the key. There is no way to program a QMK keyboard to fix that (unless you change the OS to run the BE layout), because QMK does not map keypresses to characters. It maps keypresses to keycodes, which depend on OS keyboard layouts, specifically US/QWERTY and sometes DVORAK. At least that's how I see it.

New comment by Tharkun in "OnlyKey: Open-Source Alternative to YubiKey"

Tharkun — Thu, 26 Dec 2019 17:57:42 +0000

There are many, many keyboard layouts out there. Maybe it's time for an input standard that acknowledges this fact, instead of endlessly putting the onus on OS developers and users. Maybe keyboards should output UTF8 instead of messy keycodes.

New comment by Tharkun in "Hepatitis C kills more Americans than all other infectious diseases combined"

Tharkun — Thu, 26 Dec 2019 14:42:30 +0000

Drug development is incredibly costly. It's also something of a long term gamble. It can take 10-20 years to develop a new drug. A lot of that time is spent testing safety and waiting for approval. As a drug company, you need to have several new drugs in your pipeline at any given point, or you'll be seriously fucked if one (or more) of your products don't pan out. It's basically a high-risk-high-reward type of gambling situation.

Imagine having thousands of people on payroll, some working on drug design, some designing experiments to test the drugs, some doing the legal paperwork to get drugs approved etc, and suddenly the patent for your best selling drug expires and your latest drug doesn't work. You're pretty much boned.

New comment by Tharkun in "New laser ultrasound technique can remotely image the inside of a person"

Tharkun — Mon, 23 Dec 2019 07:17:26 +0000

Thanks for linking to that. I had this done a while back but didn't know what it was called or how it worked. If only all imaging techniques were as fast and pleasant this one. It was over in seconds. Although I suppose the small size of retinas likely play a part in that as well.

New comment by Tharkun in "Dietary Supplement Use During Chemotherapy and Survival Outcomes of Patients"

Tharkun — Sun, 22 Dec 2019 17:44:39 +0000

Don't have access to the full paper, but it seems like this study was based on asking patients whether they were taking supplements, as opposed to administering placebo/supplements and measuring the outcome. I would imagine that the worse your cancer is, the more likely you are to try things like supplements and whatnot. Did they manage to control for this?

New comment by Tharkun in "Booking.com agrees to EU demands to change travel offers"

Tharkun — Sun, 22 Dec 2019 17:18:27 +0000

Not lying about what you're selling seems like it ought to the norm without requiring legal intervention?

New comment by Tharkun in "Story of Mattermost: Open-Sourced Competitor to Slack"

Tharkun — Tue, 17 Dec 2019 19:44:38 +0000

I like Mattermost. My only gripe with it is that it's a bit of a pain to upgrade. Would be nice if they were to automate the upgrade procedure.

New comment by Tharkun in "If You Can't Buy the Keyboard You Want, Build It Instead"

Tharkun — Sun, 15 Dec 2019 18:20:20 +0000

If you're at all into custom keyboard making, and you haven't already, check out the QMK firmware: https://qmk.fm/ It makes it a lot easier to deal with the non-standard layouts that you'll probably want to use.

New comment by Tharkun in "Face recognition in European police forces"

Tharkun — Thu, 12 Dec 2019 07:14:56 +0000

Thinking that haircuts will defeat facial recognition is cute but wrong. This is a political/legal problem and has to be solved by political means. Haircuts and LEDs just won't cut it. If anything, they will draw more attention to people.

New comment by Tharkun in "Face recognition in European police forces"

Tharkun — Wed, 11 Dec 2019 19:33:31 +0000

Sure, but the people doing the surveilling are also the people who will fine or arrest you for covering your face. Not sure I understand what you're trying to say?

New comment by Tharkun in "Ultrasound destroys 80 percent of prostate cancers in one-year study"

Tharkun — Wed, 11 Dec 2019 19:05:27 +0000

Considering they're putting a rod up your urethra which will be burning you from within, and another device up your rectum, while you're in the uncomfortable confines of an MRI scanner, I suspect local might not be something most people would be comfortable with.

New comment by Tharkun in "Face recognition in European police forces"

Tharkun — Wed, 11 Dec 2019 12:08:56 +0000

Are you referring to those infrared headlights? Those don't work. Quite the opposite, they only highlight your face.

New comment by Tharkun in "Face recognition in European police forces"

Tharkun — Wed, 11 Dec 2019 12:08:17 +0000

Hiding your face is illegal in Belgium at least. This includes masks, helmets etc. I don't know the exact wording, but I would suspect that it's broad enough to include umbrellas and makeup and anything else that effectively makes it impossible to recognize a person.

New comment by Tharkun in "Use of nanoparticles for detection of vascular calcification in atherosclerosis"

Tharkun — Tue, 10 Dec 2019 19:56:56 +0000

What is the clinical significance of the plaque being calcified? Is that worse (or better?) than "regular" cholesterol plaque? Or is that just another term for the same thing?