goose847

Wow there really is an xkcd for everything.

I’ve been using this mouse on a daily basis since 2017. Mainly for the gestures that work with MacOS.

I totally understand how bad this design is and love making fun of it. That being said, I don’t have to charge it for months at a time and it charges fully in 45 minutes.

It’s really not a big deal.

There’s a book called ‘The Sixth Extinction’ By Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Kolbert which talks about this. The sixth chapter is about the rise in ocean acidity.

She also details a critical acidity point (I forget the PH level but I think with current rise in acidity it is modeled to reach that point in 2100) where calcifiers cannot survive due to the acidity essentially breaking down their shells. Think oysters, barnacles, coral. Major parts of the ocean’s ecosystem that could have a ‘cataclysmic’ effect if wiped out.

What's more, indoor grown cannabis is being increasingly seen as higher quality product and is sold as high end 'craft' bud. It'll be interesting to see where this goes considering the slow but steady acceptance and legalization in many parts of the world.

Came here to promote “The Program” as well! My favorite episodes are “The White Algorithms’ Burden”.

I found one of your posts sometime during the hard lockdown and I absolutely loved falling into the world built in the podcast! I've done a second listen recently and loved spotting new links between episodes! I'm really excited to see what's in store for the show next year.

I certainly welcome a company with as much experience in the energy sector as BP embracing renewable energy sources. However, I do worry about similar problems of a handful of companies controlling energy policy world wide. Be it in fossil fuels or renewables. While we make this technological transition, we should also be aiming to democratise and distribute power over the energy supply and industry.

Edit: Fixed grammar.

Seems like a terrible idea. The argument is not from the stand point of pressuring Google to adopt more privacy friendly practices but rather to bring them to the table to negotiate Google continuing to pay Apple to set Google as the default search engine on iOS. Using a privacy-centric service as a pawn to coerce more money into Apple's pocket would not serve the people DuckDuckGo was made for.

Adding to this: I finished high school 3 years ago with a distinction for Mathematics from inevitably one of the ‘top 200’ schools mentioned in the article.

I read an article about a year ago showing the change in the syllabus for Maths over the last two decades and it was quite disturbing to see how the quality of the questions has decreased.

The upshot of this is that unfortunately even getting a distinction in the subject says very little about how you will fair in University. I very nearly had to repeat first year maths at UCT (also mentioned in the article). I really shudder to think how those with even less access to proper resources might have fallen by the wayside as a result of their circumstances.

In SA high schools it is increasingly common to take ‘maths literacy’ instead of the more intensive maths subject. This is once again skewed against students from poorer schools where they don’t have good maths teachers and therefore see higher rates of students taking this ‘maths lit’ course which is limited to real world algebra problems without an introduction to calculus or any tools that students would need to succeed in university.

A really interesting take! Makes scientific papers feel more like a tool rather than an article or book. Certainly nice in the case of Computational work. Also allows the potential for long term projects that get incremented on in what would’ve been separate papers. Additionally if new, relevant information comes to light long after a paper has been published, the authors could reference this to give a more complete story.

My favorite podcast is No Dumb Questions. It has Destin from Smarter Every Day and his friend Matt Whitman (from the YouTube channel “Ten Minute Bible Hour”)

They do really awesome episodes on History or aspects of history that they’re interested in. The best one of these imo is ‘Siege Warfare’ episode. Other than that they talk about books and friendship. It’s a fun podcast.

Not entirely sure what I’m looking at in the pic. Could you give a bit of detail in a comment?

That’s fantastic! Thanks for sharing!

University of Pennsylvania has an amazing course on single variable calculus.

Don't let the idea of doing 'basic' calculus turn you away as it is an incredibly tough course. The reason it can be so challenging and the reason I find it so incredible is that it teaches Calculus through the lenses of Taylor Series. Very different to other Calculus courses and as someone who hated my first year university maths course it's helped me really come to appreciate the beauty of it!

Here's the link to the first course of 5:

https://www.coursera.org/learn/single-variable-calculus

I was going to reply mentioning Destin's YouTube series on 'Manipulating the Algorithm' Only to be pleasantly surprised that you linked to it right in the beginning. Keen to read it when I have a moment!

Edit: typo

Thanks for sharing this. I found it really interesting to read.

Not from Sweden so I’m a little curious about some aspects. They mention their conscription. Is this a standing conscription that everyone has to do? Or is this a structure they have in place in the event of needing a larger standing army?

Also, are pamphlets like these distributed in times of peace? Or have they only been going around now due to the Coronavirus?

Honestly relieved to see this being discussed. In South Africa we are currently under lockdown with the military deployed to enforce the new restrictions. I'm not necessarily against this as we have a particularly vulnerable population and can't afford to be late to implementing distancing measures. However, the conversation towards these steps seems to be dismissive of people who raise concerns about potential abuse of power during this time or people who are more interested in learning how they plan to dismantle these emergency powers rather than how they implement them.

Agreed. If you’re interested, there’s a book called The Kasinomic Revolution by GG Alcock that dives into the potential (and importance) of the informal sector of South Africa’s economy. It doesn’t go into the employee exploitation that the article covers but has some truly amazing insights.

Great thanks! Will definitely take a look.

Considering that the deposit was only $100 I think there would have been a lot of people who pre-ordered hoping that they’ll be able to save up the money by 2022. I reckon there will be quite a few cancellations closer to the time.

You know we speak English in South Africa, right?

I just started this yesterday! Thoroughly enjoying it. Another great one is Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. It's main idea is that we decided to destroy all possibility of disagreement to make us all more comfortable by banning and burning books. Really takes you to the discussions of censorship taking place today! Highly recommended.