CompactFlax
@CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de
- Comment on What types of cleaning products do you *really* need to clean the bathroom? 2 days ago:
I’m not convinced you need specific toilet bowl cleaner if you clean it regularly; a lot of them are really strong chemicals that are unnecessary, but it does depend on your situation and the water you’ve got etc. Loose stools may need more attention.
A bit of all purpose cleaner really is all you need imo. But a it hard water you’ll need to up it to something containing a (preferably buffered) acid to remove soap scum and hard water deposits.
Vinegar has its place but I find it almost universally disappointing when cleaning. In particular, it’s not got any surfactants or ability to bind to dirt or grease.
- Comment on People who don't wear earphones outside - why, and what do you do instead? 3 days ago:
Part of the world is the outside, without external stimulus of music or a screen.
I can consume all those things without music playing steadily in my ears, and I would venture to say I prefer to enjoy arts, history, geography, literature, science, philosophy, film, games etc. without steady noise being pumped into my skull. Sometimes I do it while conversing with another person or several people.
At other times, I can listen to music. But I don’t complain that life has lost its lustre because my phone can’t play my music!
- Comment on People who don't wear earphones outside - why, and what do you do instead? 4 days ago:
That’s, erm, life m8.
- Comment on People who don't wear earphones outside - why, and what do you do instead? 4 days ago:
If listening to birds chirping and wind blowing through trees while you’re out for a walk is “no stimuli” you have a problem.
- Comment on People who don't wear earphones outside - why, and what do you do instead? 4 days ago:
Don’t tell this guy about the times before the ubiquity of iPods and later phones.
OP, might I suggest a “music” detox? Spend a month without the need for headphone delivered dopamine.
- Comment on People who don't wear earphones outside - why, and what do you do instead? 4 days ago:
I’m running my tractor or lawnmower
Speed running hearing loss. Typically, people crank the audio levels to hear it over the equipment. Get some work-rated hearing protection muffs and wear the earbuds inside that.
However I’d argue that hearing protection combined with additional noise is a good way to lose situational awareness.
- Comment on People who don't wear earphones outside - why, and what do you do instead? 4 days ago:
This resonates with me. If I’m listening to music, I want to do it with intention. Pop music is made to be background noise in an already noisy environment. Just sit down and listen for a change. The whole album.
- Comment on NHS staff who visit patients at home say St George’s flags can mean ‘no-go zones’ 4 days ago:
The people who can’t tell the difference are the ones who use it without intending it to be a joke. 4chan “jokes” leak into the real world now, without being jokes.
- Comment on pwned: do you pronounce it as "pohned" "pawned" or "owned" 4 days ago:
Yup.
- Comment on And now I'm reminded I have two of these to repair. 5 days ago:
Parts?
Anyhow, they have a 10 year lifetime. You can’t repair it.
- Comment on ...will continue until... 5 days ago:
Alternate corporate solution: they add carts, equipped with driver and horses. They all share the mud equally, and the managers wonder why they’re still not progressing.
The mythical man-month.
- Comment on Whatever happened to pickup artists? Did they evolve into alpha males or ascend to a higher plane? 1 week ago:
They’re still in the online space but they’re not pick up artists, they’re tinder profile experts or whatever they call themselves.
- Comment on What is the catalyst that actually causes (financial) bubbles to burst? 1 week ago:
Ultimately it will be when the credit dries up and circular nature of the “investments” breaks down.
A Couple things that come to mind:
- data centre operators borrowing money to buy GPUs and then using those GPUs as collateral for loans to buy more GPUs
- nVidia investing money into companies contingent on their purchase of GPUs worth an order of magnitude greater than than their investment
- Microsoft selling Copilot below cost, provided by OpenAI selling GPT services below cost, in exchange for compute offered below cost
- A consensus that the cost of scaling users is not going to be the same as it has been with e-commerce and software (ie one user using Amazon.com vs 1 million users is roughly the same cost to build the software that runs Amazon.com while the cost scales directly with number of users of chatbots)
- a consensus that hallucinations are not a solvable problem
One way could be a failure to deliver on a contractual obligation with regards to a payout (eg company X will receive $100 billion when Y is complete) will lead to the failure to make a debt payment (company X has borrowed money based on the money promised by company Y), which will precipitate a scramble as investors try to recoup the money they’ve put in the firms, which will crash them.
For example, and I don’t know what happened here, CoreWeave had a balloon payment to make on a loan in October; if they didn’t make that payment, it could lead to a panic. But it didn’t
- Comment on Study concludes cybersecurity training doesn’t work 1 week ago:
I got some emails about required training from outside the company. I needed to download and complete a PDF, which had links to other forms to complete, all offsite. I do know with certainty that the email was legit, but I reported as phishing. Still haven’t heard back about this critical training attestation, so I assume their tracking is as awful as the process.
It’s not my ass on the audit finding. Fix your shit.
- Comment on Why the Price of Electricity Is Spiking Around the Country | Not all states have gotten hit equally hard. The reasons are complex. 2 weeks ago:
Below this article as I’m scrolling All is this. Wonder if there’s a relationship.
- Comment on What's the best way to ease getting back in shape after years of little to no exercise? 2 weeks ago:
Walking. If youre overweight, don’t need the vest. You live with it. Work up to a fast shuffle/jog, and/or longer walks over a period of weeks.
At the opposite end of the intensity spectrum, Burpees are also great fun. They build upper body and core strength, as well as being cardio. Do the full chest and thighs to ground version, step back, step forward and experiment with jumping back as you get better. Try something like on the minute for 5 min. Set a timer for 5:00, then burpee until it says 4:20 - at a moderate pace. That number is your target for the next 4 min. When it says 4:00, do that number of burpees again, and at 3:00, 2:00, and 1:00. Work up in number of burpees and number of minutes, over a period of weeks. If it’s getting too easy, make it burpee box jump overs (be conservative because missing a box hurts).
With both these things, as you lose weight, it’s going to get a lot faster.
I’m not here to tell you how to live, but if you’re getting high every night, it’s almost certainly making your anxiety, depression, and motivation issues worse.
- Comment on Is that a fucking threat 2 weeks ago:
- Comment on Microsoft's OpenAI losses hidden as part of $4.7 billion 'other' expense — stake in AI company still doesn't turn a profit as companies grapple with ongoing contract negotiation 2 weeks ago:
I’m not sure where it will land. MS and Google are funding a lot of it so they stand to lose a lot of money.
- Comment on Microsoft's OpenAI losses hidden as part of $4.7 billion 'other' expense — stake in AI company still doesn't turn a profit as companies grapple with ongoing contract negotiation 2 weeks ago:
“Stake in OpenAI doesn’t return profit”
And I don’t see how it could. Sell copilot at a loss, which consumes ChatGPT (sold at a loss) which runs on Azure (exchanged at below cost for stock in OpenAI).
- Comment on How do people get rid of or sell stolen jewelry? I ask cause the news says the the Louve thieves can never sell it because it so known? 3 weeks ago:
Melted down and gems re cut.
It’s a bad deal for everyone.
- Comment on AWS crash causes $2,000 Smart Beds to overheat and get stuck upright 3 weeks ago:
I wonder how it compares in functionality - to be clear, there’s no functionality I’m aware of that would require cloud (perhaps historical data).
Still, they’re wildly expensive.
- Comment on AWS crash causes $2,000 Smart Beds to overheat and get stuck upright 3 weeks ago:
I’ve heard these beds are actually quite effective at helping you sleep and then wake up more naturally.
But they have wrapped entirely local events (it’s all just timers, folks) behind a cloud-exclusive subscription and the product is useless on a sunny day like we had yesterday.
They’re enormously expensive and the subscription serves no useful purpose other than to line the pockets of the investors.
I have a strict rule of no cloud dependency in my house. Otherwise, I’d be interested - if the price was remotely reasonable.
- Comment on Update on my Home-Lab now featuring a fully custom built 10" Aluminumm rack 5 weeks ago:
Cool. I’m considering replacing my aging Pfsense box (which there’s nothing wrong with) with a UI router; presently I don’t need more than 100mbit. The integrated wifi doesn’t meet my needs though.
- Comment on Update on my Home-Lab now featuring a fully custom built 10" Aluminumm rack 5 weeks ago:
What are the unifi bits?
- Comment on Former Finnish Prime Minister Calls for Four-Day Workweek: More Time with Family 5 weeks ago:
She leads a coalition, so she could be reelected.
- Comment on Former Finnish Prime Minister Calls for Four-Day Workweek: More Time with Family 5 weeks ago:
four-day workweek of six hours a day.
- Comment on I landed in another toxic workplace after quitting a previous one. What would you do in this scenario? (Open to all suggestions) 5 weeks ago:
In response to your edit - micromanaging is standard. It’s super awesome when the PI is telling you how to run a procedure they haven’t run themselves or haven’t done in 10 years. /s
One thing I forgot to mention is that you’ve got people with zero industry experience and zero managerial training walking into their supervisory role on the merit of their educational and research background. They just don’t know (and have the Dunning Kreuger effect in spades) that they’re being managerial jerks. ASD or not. Huge “manage your manager” challenge in academia.
And with ASD, we get into a habit of trying to communicate with neurotypicals and in America especially it’s expected to sugarcoat and kowtow in every communication with the manager but that’s not always a great thing to do with ASD people as you’re aware. Clarity without confrontation is the fine line that you’ll need to walk.
- Comment on I landed in another toxic workplace after quitting a previous one. What would you do in this scenario? (Open to all suggestions) 5 weeks ago:
This may be unhelpful but my experience working in academia is that clear explicit communication helps a lot, and suspending judgement until a relationship and trust is established helps too - and that can take a really long time. Try to take a step back and not get emotionally involved with things, but keep the receipts and escalate if things do truly get out of hand. Having someone you can talk to and trust to be critical of your method of handling the situation can helps with perspective.
Some academics are just assholes. Seems most are on the autism spectrum, and that makes it hard to interact with. Aside from neurodivergence, it’s not hard for a perceived slight to get blown out of proportion for a variety of reasons.
As you’re noting you’re going to have to grin and bear it for a while until you can get the residency sorted out. Doing excellent work that’s in demand can definitely help with establishing relationships, but obviously that depends on the situation.
- Comment on Disabled man denied access to train at Homerton station over ‘made-up rule’ 5 weeks ago:
Bureaucracy will protect the station staff.
The driver then got the ramp out, allowing Mr Kaplowitz and his four friends to board the train, and comforted the group. The train departed six minutes late.
Common sense hero right there.
- Comment on What I Learned From My Days in Russia: Silicon Valley Needs to Start Speaking Out About Trump 1 month ago:
With money comes comfort. With comfort comes complacency. Panem et circem.