Hacker News: qplex

New comment by qplex in "The Problem with America’s Lab Mice [video]"

qplex — Mon, 22 Jun 2020 19:03:30 +0000

>the ethical and monetary cost of a rodent suffering or dying due to unwanted effects of a drug candidate is judged to be lower than similar suffering in a human.

Thank you for the insightful comment, I'll cite the part that is relevant, since my (very serious) point was indeed that by this logic a more "advanced" being than us would have (by our own morals) the right to conduct medical experiments on us humans, because we are capable of feeling less pain.

New comment by qplex in "How I Programmed Myself"

qplex — Mon, 22 Jun 2020 18:28:27 +0000

Sorry for my hazy morning scribbles. I meant real as in how this property often is employed to mold our reality or behavior. Indeed the information has more copies - or links (as a better analogy for brain structure). I should have made it more clear that I don't use repetition to "program myself" or change habits, but to affirm thought. I am familiar with the concept since it's actively in use everywhere from religious mantras to marketing.

Generally life can be seen as a copy mechanism for DNA. The logic of it is (drumroll) to make more copies. I'm not sure about artificiality, but mentioning that reminds me that we are already capable of simulating neural nets that very much correspond to some (simple) real organisms.

In any case, I agree that our brain is structured over time and old "animal" areas of the brain appear sometime to have a firm hold over the cortex . Deeply ingrained habits have indeed 'deep pathways', and of course they're not only localized single neurons that can be flip-flopped.

Neuroplasticity refers to the ability of the brain structurally change, or rather to correspond to thought. The software/hardware analogy is useful but I want to add thar the human brain is really not just a programmable computer, but much more.

New comment by qplex in "The Problem with America’s Lab Mice [video]"

qplex — Mon, 22 Jun 2020 11:02:34 +0000

In my humble opinion it's not that bright to think of animals as an utilitarian resource for the human race to plunder, or to consider their monetary value as any sort of a yardstick.

Certainly if we hold these kind of ethics we've got no excuses if an advanced alien race wants to use us in their medical experiments.

New comment by qplex in "Arm’s New Cortex-M55 Breathes Helium"

qplex — Mon, 22 Jun 2020 10:37:20 +0000

Clickbait title.

Advice to change it to reflect that Helium is just a marketing term for some new instruction set they have .

New comment by qplex in "How I Programmed Myself"

qplex — Mon, 22 Jun 2020 04:32:31 +0000

In addition to affirming what I want by repetition, I try to generate logical ammunition for an argument: to think in depth how and why something is bad for me.

It's very interesting how just repeating something makes it more "real".

New comment by qplex in "Ask HN: How do you read long PDFs?"

qplex — Tue, 16 Jun 2020 05:28:34 +0000

Anyone reading or creating PDFs to begin with should ask why even bother with such a static and outdated format that was made for when it was common to print out documents on paper to read them.

New comment by qplex in "Ask HN: What are some great internet innovations of the past 10 years?"

qplex — Sun, 07 Jun 2020 14:02:00 +0000

Biggest internet thing of the past decade is the smartphone and anything related.

New comment by qplex in "Ask HN: Anyone here climbed up from rock bottom? How did you do it?"

qplex — Sun, 07 Jun 2020 12:47:57 +0000

If it's financial rock bottom as in that you need to make ends meet, to sustain yourself and your family, it's mostly the environment that dictates what can be done. If the situation seems absolute, as in that no suitable jobs are available, securing land and growing food yourself etc. can go a long way.

Emotional rock bottom: probably goes in hand with the former. Anyway, don't blame yourself. I dunno who made the call and on what grounds they made it. That kind of stuff eats you, especially if you don't know.

In any case I urge you to keep going and wish you all the best. Much to wonder, and live for.

New comment by qplex in "Ask HN: Do you still use reddit.com?"

qplex — Sun, 07 Jun 2020 12:03:43 +0000

Beside the heavy-ness, I've found the site unusable with mobile browsers because it constantly nags you in various different ways to "try out" their app.

New comment by qplex in "Google Chromium, sans integration with Google"

qplex — Sun, 07 Jun 2020 07:11:57 +0000

Chrome on Android does not support extensions at all.

New comment by qplex in "Wine 5.10 Release"

qplex — Sat, 06 Jun 2020 17:16:42 +0000

Indeed configuring Wine to run something can involve a lot from installing different depedencies to .dll overrides. Different configs for different applications are also a bit painful.

But other than this, Wine is great.

New comment by qplex in "OneDevice – A smartphone that makes sense"

qplex — Sat, 06 Jun 2020 08:34:07 +0000

While this is about the best size for a phone, I want to point out that making a device for the user and maximizing corporate profit seem to be incompatible goals.

Smartphones are no exception in this - the vendors are mostly interested in making not-the-best phone that'll only last a couple of years so that they can then sell you another one and profit.

New comment by qplex in "Mental Wealth"

qplex — Fri, 05 Jun 2020 10:24:20 +0000

The current mainstream approach of western medicine does not follow this - eg. there is little evidence that anti-depression drugs actually cure depression, and the side-effects are horrible. Yet the pharma industry profits greatly by selling snake oil that just makes people more sick.

New comment by qplex in "Cannabis and Frankincense at the Judahite Shrine of Arad"

qplex — Wed, 03 Jun 2020 05:11:50 +0000

Cannabis extracts like charas - hash that is made from the resin have been around for thousands of years, and are way more potent than "narcotic skunk mutants".

New comment by qplex in "Cannabis and Frankincense at the Judahite Shrine of Arad"

qplex — Wed, 03 Jun 2020 03:45:11 +0000

It was most likely the flowers of a female plant (that contain the seed) that were thrown on the rocks.

Also, hemp == cannabis.

New comment by qplex in "A Hidden Origin Story of the CBD Craze"

qplex — Sun, 24 May 2020 02:22:42 +0000

While raw cannabis has some % of THC and CDB (among other compounds) it is the processed stuff like hashish or oils that really hold the crown for potency. This stuff has been around for a long time, much longer than the westernized commercial strains.

New comment by qplex in "Vanilla Production in Geodesic Domes"

qplex — Mon, 11 May 2020 03:13:15 +0000

How are the geodesic domes supposed to help in comparison to regular greenhouses?

Commercial orchids and greenhouses already grow vanilla and plenty of other stuff in automated hydroponic and aeroponic systems

I fail to see what is so special about this.

New comment by qplex in "Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help"

qplex — Tue, 05 May 2020 02:44:47 +0000

To completely stop doing tech professionally, or to ignore everything, to build up thick skin, and say "it's up to other people how my inventions are used."

I'm curious to what you think is the fundamental nature of science and engineering. Is science only intellectual curiosity just for the sake of it?

New comment by qplex in "Troubleshooting Systemd with SystemTap"

qplex — Thu, 30 Apr 2020 18:39:47 +0000

I think standardizing init to systemd across distributions has some benefits for everyone.

SysV certainly wasn't and isn't the smooth experience either and took some time to grasp.

New comment by qplex in "Troubleshooting Systemd with SystemTap"

qplex — Thu, 30 Apr 2020 18:19:48 +0000

It's kind of funny how systemd breaks often when old farts (like us) tinker with something in a way we shouldnt.