Hacker News: qvrjuec

New comment by qvrjuec in "Lifestyle and environmental factors affect health and ageing more than our genes"

qvrjuec — Thu, 20 Feb 2025 21:33:00 +0000

I remember seeing discourse recently saying telomere shortening is a side effect more than a cause of aging as a function and happens as a function of DNA damage. Important to consider

New comment by qvrjuec in "TikTok goes dark in the US"

qvrjuec — Sun, 19 Jan 2025 18:03:41 +0000

Imagine what else they are doing: https://networkcontagion.us/wp-content/uploads/A-Tik-Tok-ing...

New comment by qvrjuec in "TikTok goes dark in the US"

qvrjuec — Sun, 19 Jan 2025 18:00:42 +0000

I see so many people arguing against the effectiveness of propaganda as if they think an opinion is arrived at deterministically with the same access to facts. Utterly insane.

New comment by qvrjuec in "TikTok goes dark in the US"

qvrjuec — Sun, 19 Jan 2025 17:57:16 +0000

Your understanding of the situation is incredibly naive. TikTok can selectively suppress or emphasize viewpoints that are geopolitically advantageous to China that are not as overt as "China GOOD!" or whatever you imagine propaganda to be.

This is studied and proven to be happening already: https://networkcontagion.us/wp-content/uploads/A-Tik-Tok-ing...

New comment by qvrjuec in "TikTok preparing for U.S. shut-off on Sunday"

qvrjuec — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 19:55:27 +0000

Huh. What are your interests? I'm curious why you think they would come in conflict with those of the US.

I'm confused why you think China's interests are irrelevant to you, unless you truly believe geopolitics is a zero-sum game. We compete in markets, militarily in the indo-pacific, and technologically in ways that are not mutually beneficial.

New comment by qvrjuec in "TikTok preparing for U.S. shut-off on Sunday"

qvrjuec — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 19:04:36 +0000

Surely you can't think propaganda is just spreading lies... Contextual presentation can change how true information is perceived. Seeing a perspective more will align your own with it.

New comment by qvrjuec in "TikTok preparing for U.S. shut-off on Sunday"

qvrjuec — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 18:56:35 +0000

Is this a serious question? China has its best interests in mind, the US government has its best interests in mind. Which one of those two adversaries are more likely to align with your interests?

New comment by qvrjuec in "U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments over TikTok divestment law"

qvrjuec — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 21:46:12 +0000

> who lack critical thinking skills to such an extent that we basically shouldn’t even have the option to make up our own opinions in response to feed recommendations

I think it's easy to be insulted by this perspective if you spend too much of your time surrounded by people who fall more than one standard deviation to the right on the intelligence bell curve. 84% of people are to the left of that, and can vote.

> Ultimately, who is the one most overtly putting their thumb on the scale here

The expression "putting their thumb on the scale" means influencing subtly and deceitfully, so China. I chose this expression intentionally.

> Do you really actually have the opinion that China is the most censorious here

Nowhere did I mention censorship. Its not merely about suppressing perspectives, it's about influencing them. Hong Kong is too obvious-- what about amplifying anti-AI sentiment to increase regulation and hobble AI progress in the US, giving a decisive advantage to China in the AI arms race? Amplifying anti-nuclear energy sentiment, to erode US energy security and create economic advantages for the Chinese solar industry?

I do agree w.r.t. the messiness of precedent, though.

New comment by qvrjuec in "U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments over TikTok divestment law"

qvrjuec — Wed, 18 Dec 2024 19:46:09 +0000

The issue isn't surveillance, it's the ability for China to 'put their thumb on the scale' of the black box algorithm responsible for populating every user's feed to emphasize or de-emphasize topics/ideas that are strategically beneficial to China, and bad for us. This is not hypothetical, this is happening, and has been happening.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/24/briefing/tiktok-ban-bill-...

New comment by qvrjuec in "Amazon Aurora DSQL"

qvrjuec — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 23:20:00 +0000

Why would this product having a subset of postgresql features make it less portable? If anything, that makes it more portable

New comment by qvrjuec in "China Tells Telecom Carriers to Phase Out Foreign Chips in Blow to Intel, AMD"

qvrjuec — Fri, 12 Apr 2024 14:52:04 +0000

...What? There is a spectrum of importance to national security, food and energy are very much on the side of more important, so not sure why you chose those as an example. It's extremely reductive to say any country that imposes limits on trade for its own strategic benefit is an autocracy.

New comment by qvrjuec in "A generalist AI agent for 3D virtual environments"

qvrjuec — Wed, 13 Mar 2024 16:38:34 +0000

He was a professional gamer, and switched to biodynamic agriculture after seeing how little hope humanity had playing games against machines

New comment by qvrjuec in "OpenAI – transformer debugger release"

qvrjuec — Tue, 12 Mar 2024 14:52:04 +0000

>Truck drivers earn between min wage and 150% of min wage

Where are you getting this information? It's absolutely wrong. Long haul truckers (the one's you're saying don't have social lives because they drive 8 hours per day) make $71,196 on average in the US[1].

[1] https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/LONG-HAUL-Truck-Driver...

New comment by qvrjuec in "Single dose of LSD provides immediate and lasting relief from anxiety, study say"

qvrjuec — Thu, 07 Mar 2024 18:15:38 +0000

The dose that recreational users are being told they're getting is FAR off what they are actually getting. When someone says they're taking 3 tabs of 100 microgram dosages, it's likely they're taking 50-75% of that.

New comment by qvrjuec in "Slashing data transfer costs in AWS"

qvrjuec — Mon, 15 Jan 2024 16:26:55 +0000

>someone who will not treat their datacenter like a home lab

What does this mean? They steal company resources for themselves, or just configure things incompetently?

New comment by qvrjuec in "AWS cancels serverless Postgres service that scales to zero"

qvrjuec — Wed, 10 Jan 2024 14:28:24 +0000

Because you need SQL. Dynamo can be quite powerful for querying if you use all of its features but it won't be as flexible as just using SQL

New comment by qvrjuec in "LED Industrial Piercing"

qvrjuec — Sat, 23 Dec 2023 02:29:08 +0000

Such a big fan of this guy. Found him through his UV protection amulet project: https://mitxela.com/projects/amulet

New comment by qvrjuec in "Polymers capable of killing bacteria without inducing antibiotic resistance"

qvrjuec — Fri, 22 Dec 2023 18:55:19 +0000

Interesting - how is it not outcompeted by regular staph? Wouldn't it be over a long enough time period without introducing it to methicillin?

New comment by qvrjuec in "NASA study finds life-sparking energy source and molecule at Enceladus"

qvrjuec — Thu, 21 Dec 2023 16:40:26 +0000

His book The Vital Question does actually address this. He says the RNA world hypothesis doesn't perfectly explain early catalysis, as RNA is a sophisticated polymer. It was most likely more simple things like metal sulphides or other inorganic complexes were primarily responsible. Amino acids and nucleotides also have catalytic activity.

New comment by qvrjuec in "To revive Portland, officials seek to ban public drug use"

qvrjuec — Tue, 12 Dec 2023 14:19:30 +0000

Except as a rhetorical device which the above person is clearly using his request as...