What about common nootropics people take to get into 'programmer flow', like nicotine, lions mane, choline, caffeine, theanine, etc
Surely they're more effective than cannabis, which typically makes everything feel great, but in a sober frame of mind, and on hindsight, seem trivial and over-hyped when sober.
I've tried various nootropic 'blends' (stacks) over the years and they've all been great. Cannabis has its uses, like experiencing the various vibes and feel of a new city for the first time, or making a snowman when it's snowing, but it's not some panacea that makes you super-productive.
Not saying nootropics are a panacea either. You have to have the base multiplier before using nootropics, and already be in a flow state before getting any leverage from them. They don't automatically make you more productive or creative.
Yea, I'm useless on weed and feel slower for a day or two afterwards but have had luck with nootropics. Just a warning about nicotine tho, it works well for me but it is addictive and I feel dumber for a couple days after stopping. Nicotine and substances like adrafinil almost feel like overclocking my brain.
I read there's some research on Lion's mane, and there's a lot about caffeine and theanine but none of this are magic productivity pills. Like it's not that the concentration and productivity effects are obvious and reproducible among all humans. Caffeine has the "keep you awake thing" that cocaine also has and it's pretty reproducible but in most studies I've read about caffeine and L-theanine the flowy non-jittery productive state or any cognitive enhancement are spotty.
I think the other problem with cannabis as a workday desk-job productivity enhancement substance that you are not mentioning is its interaction with other drugs and the unpredictable and really deep tolerance buildup. Like giving an average someone a curve of how much they need to smoke to get the same "effect" among weeks or months is probably really hard.
after seeing some fresh lion's mane at [fancy supermarket] for the first time, I'm convinced it's reputation is just because it looks and feels soft and squishy like a brain.
My new hobby is Linux, and all that that entails. I've learned basic command line operations and have experimented with all the popular distros out there, usually in Virtual machines. My daily driver is Ubuntu, and I have Virtualbox installed to try out different distros. I typically run the 'live-cd' / ISO to try out the distro before making a commitment to it. Other distros I use heavily are Fedora, Trisquel, Mint, and TailsOS.
I try not to install too much software on them as I like a simple working environment, typically with nothing but a text editor like Sublimetext running, and a browser with the LiveReload extension for doing web development. No npm or NodeJS crap. Just oldskool development.
The 'ROI' if you will of learning Linux is that I have peace of mind that I'm not being spied upon or potentially getting ambushed by various malware, and also: knowing that I am standing on the shoulders of giants. I am super thankful for how far Linux has come along. I remember in the early days having to write scripts just to get my Wifi adapter working, and hours upon hours trying to debug simple shit like printer compatibility errors, etc
Frankly I didn't have the time to focus on Linux in my twenties, and lately in my thirties I have more free time, so I can go down rabbit-holes all day and it doesn't bother me as much.
My Linux installs are very much 'set and forget', as in, you configure them to your liking, and then never have to do that again for a very long time.
I used to run Nextcloud locally, and could open it up on phones, tablets, etc. But I recently stopped using it, since it's no different than SFTP (Nextcloud just has a web UI to manage / view files and looks nice is all).
I got a NAS device hacked once, and watched people try to copy my stupid .MP4s/.MKVs off it, which is strange since all that's readily available on the web anyway. They were probably looking for sensitive info, but there wasn't any lol.
There is a paradox with app stores in that they play the gatekeeper and can arbitrarily not allow certain apps, remove them, or enforce certain rules on what types of apps are allowed, but then also permit all sorts of shenanigans such as this.
The developers of these types of apps are just pushing the envelope of what's allowed until they're called out and formal complaints are made to the app store gatekeepers.
The malicious & overly expensive apps should get taken down swiftly, but are allowed to linger for months on end, generating large profits.
Whilst app stores are policed, there exists a lot of room for exploitative apps. I imagine these app store gatekeepers are trying to keep a balance, but app stores seem heavily swayed in favor of scams, and malicious or overly expensive apps.
Like any unregulated capitalism they will do everything to maximise profit. They get profit regardless of whether the original or the copy is being purchased. They get profit if a user gets scammed through in-app purchases.
Only because they are monopolies for the corresponding platforms. If customers could choose between smaller stores using different moderation strategies, the forces of competition would have found an optimal solution very fast.
I really don’t think Apple is consciously allowing these apps because they get profit either way. They’re very well aware that the long term success and profits of the App Store and the Apple ecosystem are based on users’ trust and frictionless experiences. In fact, Apple guidelines stressed pretty early on in the app store’s life (2010) that “we don’t need any more fart apps” in the App Store. I really don’t believe that they would risk their brand and image being affected by a very short-term focus on 30% commission on some scammy apps.
Also, more generally, even if this was conscious behaviour by Apple, I don’t think this really linked to “unregulated capitalism”. In any economic/political system you will find that some people serve their own interests while harming others or the public interest. Whether those “own interests” are amassing money, assets, power, access to goods/services or anything else deemed “valuable” in that system does not chance the dynamics of that basic conflict of interests which will cause trouble in any system. I’m afraid that’s human nature and there’s no system that can fully align those interests or avoid the negative effects of conflicts of interest.
The only personal blog that covers infosec, similar to Krebs is Graham Cluley, but it's usually watered down language explained in simple terms: https://grahamcluley.com/
I like the concept. There are even young people experimenting with retirement but for typically one year, also known as a 'gap year' where they don't work/study - they just explore.
This gap year has been pretty common in Europe/Aus/NZ for a while. Lots of young people do it. We even have visas for it called "working holidays" so they can work a part-time bar job etc, so you dont need to save up much to do it.
I missed my chance on this. I hope I'll get another after my kids grow up a bit. I believe this is called "sabbatical" (except in this case it'll be self-funded).
For me, becoming famous is similar to selling your soul, in the sense that you trade in your privacy in return for being famous and also presumably being rich too. It's like Cypher in the Matrix who wants to be reborn as an important actor in exchange for handing over keys to the Zion mainframe.
Sidenote: The problem with fame is that you can't reverse it. If people know your face, then they know your face. There's no getting away from it.
> We want to take this work a step further by inviting and incentivizing the community to help identify potential harms of this algorithm beyond what we identified ourselves.
What more needs to be done here? Twitter got caught out with bias in their image cropping algorithm, and now they want people to further elaborate on how/why this is?
> For this challenge, we are re-sharing our saliency model and the code used to generate a crop of an image given a predicted maximally salient point and asking participants to build their own assessment.
Seems like a very exhaustive endeavour just to point out algorithmic bias and re-iterate what went wrong, but in more detail.
They want to develop a fuller understanding of what kinds of biases they need to be aware of. "Caught out with bias" isn't a good way to understand the situation - this isn't the kind of problem that can be solved by just debugging to find the biased functions and using unbiased ones instead.
> The concept known as "worse is better" holds that in software making (and perhaps in other arenas as well) it is better to start with a minimal creation and grow it as needed.
Or in other words, try to avoid Feature Creep[0] or Overengineering[1]
« It is more important for the implementation to be simple than the interface. » and « completeness must be sacrificed whenever implementation simplicity is jeopardized ».
I think of this every time I'm annoyed that I can't add an empty directory to a git repository.
Surely they're more effective than cannabis, which typically makes everything feel great, but in a sober frame of mind, and on hindsight, seem trivial and over-hyped when sober.
I've tried various nootropic 'blends' (stacks) over the years and they've all been great. Cannabis has its uses, like experiencing the various vibes and feel of a new city for the first time, or making a snowman when it's snowing, but it's not some panacea that makes you super-productive.
Not saying nootropics are a panacea either. You have to have the base multiplier before using nootropics, and already be in a flow state before getting any leverage from them. They don't automatically make you more productive or creative.