Hacker News: valec

New comment by valec in "Judge finalizes order for Greenpeace to pay $345M in ND oil pipeline case"

valec — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 16:18:20 +0000

won't someone think of the property??!?

New comment by valec in "Data centers in space makes no sense"

valec — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 17:10:38 +0000

ok. your pipe is full. now what

New comment by valec in "Prozac 'no better than placebo' for treating children with depression, experts"

valec — Sat, 22 Nov 2025 04:28:49 +0000

ssris are known to unmask or precipitate manic episodes in people with family history of bipolar or schizophrenia.

> I'm speculating here but I'm pretty sure if you did an MRI on my brain you'd see lesions from the mixing of mdma and sertraline

ssris actually block the serotonergic effects of mdma and similar.

New comment by valec in "Leading computer science professor says 'everybody' is struggling to get jobs"

valec — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 18:15:13 +0000

well, they are. outsourcing is the bigger problem. just like outsourcing decimated manufacturing jobs, now it's decimating white-collar. i well and truly hope you get fired so you see how bad the market is. no other profession has this number of cruel, judgmental narcissists not looking out for their own kin.

New comment by valec in "Leading computer science professor says 'everybody' is struggling to get jobs"

valec — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 18:13:38 +0000

don't be asinine. h1-b is what enables this exploitation

New comment by valec in "Charlie Kirk killed at event in Utah"

valec — Wed, 10 Sep 2025 20:08:49 +0000

it's material conditions that lead to violence, not the tools.

sure tools make it easier, but gun control didn't stop the pm of japan from getting assassinated.

if people weren't so desperate, polarized, and angry, i would bet my entire life's savings gun deaths would be decimated

New comment by valec in "SSRIs induce cardiac toxicity through dysfunction of mitochondria and sarcomeres"

valec — Sat, 17 May 2025 14:30:48 +0000

in fetuses.

New comment by valec in "A Texan who built an empire of ecstasy"

valec — Mon, 05 May 2025 16:54:27 +0000

> Also taking SSRIs near MDMA administration is one of the worst pieces of what is doubtless intended as harm reduction advice I’ve ever seen. You don’t hand people a recipe for serotonin syndrome because of a small scale rat test or two.

you have a deep understanding of releaser pharmacology if you state this. don't take it from me though--matthew baggott, one of the leading researchers studying enactogen pharmacology recommends doing this exact thing

New comment by valec in "A Texan who built an empire of ecstasy"

valec — Sun, 04 May 2025 18:18:13 +0000

dosed reasonably (~125 mg with no redoses), ideally at lower ambient temperatures, and ideally with an SSRI at the end of perceptible effects to stop MDMA to keep circulating through the neuron and causing oxidative stress, you will quite literally see 0 axonal damage. maybe some neurotransmitter depletion, but this is only temporary.

PCA yes that is concerning but I would be extremely surprised if it ended up in the MDMA supply chain. MDMA is made cheaply at quantities several magnitudes higher than research chemicals. it's much more likely PCA will be sold as a cut for others RC's -- especially as a part of those dreadful cathinone soups labelled "3-mmc" these days

New comment by valec in "WikiTok"

valec — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 23:55:16 +0000

keep user profiles maybe with cookies or by encouraging sign-ups and then use NMF

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-negative_matrix_factorizat...

New comment by valec in "TikTok should lose its big Supreme Court case"

valec — Tue, 07 Jan 2025 10:19:54 +0000

actually, yes, it is extremely hard to determine who finances the political ads you see on TV.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_money

and how is a black box algorithm any worse than a system where only large corporate gatekeepers control what you see? if anything, i'd argue tiktok is more fair and democratic.

New comment by valec in "TikTok should lose its big Supreme Court case"

valec — Tue, 07 Jan 2025 03:03:48 +0000

should we ban tv too then?

New comment by valec in "TikTok should lose its big Supreme Court case"

valec — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 19:55:26 +0000

it's interesting you bring that up as it turns out the incumbent party was actually the one behind that tiktok campaign, not russia. the campaign they used as evidence of "russian interference" that they cancelled the election because of

https://snoop.ro/anaf-a-descoperit-ca-pnl-a-platit-o-campani...

New comment by valec in "Lonely individuals tend to think and talk in an unusual way, study finds"

valec — Mon, 25 Nov 2024 20:54:31 +0000

well, thankfully there are tools [1]

1. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06204-3

New comment by valec in "Lonely individuals tend to think and talk in an unusual way, study finds"

valec — Mon, 25 Nov 2024 20:53:51 +0000

terms like "oversocialized" suggest you spend too much time on imageboards and you would do well to get off those sites. same with "humiliation ritual"

New comment by valec in "Study finds intense exercise may suppress appetite in healthy humans"

valec — Thu, 07 Nov 2024 03:27:02 +0000

lac-phe. https://www.cell.com/trends/endocrinology-metabolism/fulltex...

New comment by valec in "On 17th century "cocaine""

valec — Thu, 10 Oct 2024 01:31:05 +0000

interesting. i have about 1-2 cups most days but 5-6 over a few hours is fine and i still get ok (but poorer quality) sleep

New comment by valec in "Zero calorie sweetener linked to blood clots and heart disease, study finds"

valec — Thu, 08 Aug 2024 21:34:22 +0000

now if only neotame was mass produced.. (100x aspartame's potency but requires more synthetic steps to reach)

New comment by valec in "A chemist explains the chemistry behind decaf coffee"

valec — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 20:32:05 +0000

how did you get that from the article?

"One of the common solvents, ethyl acetate, comes naturally in many foods and beverages. It’s considered a safe chemical for decaffeination by the Food and Drug Administration."

speaking from a chemist's perspective, ethyl acetate is basically non-toxic. it decomposes into ethanol and acetic acid (vinegar). dcm (methylene chloride) is toxic, but should be completely removed before it ever reaches you. the nice thing about volatile organic solvents is that they're...volatile, so they are easily stripped from coffee beans.

New comment by valec in "Large models of what? Mistaking engineering achievements for linguistic agency"

valec — Sat, 20 Jul 2024 22:11:02 +0000

it does. that's what the "direct preference" part of DPO means. you just avoid training an explicit reward model on it like in rlhf and instead directly optimize for log probability of preferred vs dispreferred responses