UniverseHacker

HN isn't just broadly a tech discussion site, but is largely focused on the SV/Bay Area startup culture scene that PG and YCombinator play a big role in.

The fact is, the current authoritarian political movement in the USA is being largely funded and driven by political extremists in our own community, who have become billionaires through tech, and are using their significant resources to inflict their personal fantasies on the rest of the world, without it's permission.

By all accounts, our own Peter Thiel hand selected the current vice president for his position. The very person that today claimed at a press conference that ICE agents have "absolute immunity" and are therefore presumably allowed to murder anyone they want in cold blood without any recourse or accountability. Elon Musk's involvement here needs no explanation.

Musk, Thiel, and their ilk that are often referenced by labels such as "Dark Enlightenment," "Techno Fascists," and "Neo-monarchists" are from and part of our community. Many of us were or still are engineers and business leaders that work or worked for or with them to give them the power and resources they now have. Some of us are even likely working at places like Palantir, developing government surveillance tech designed to accelerate the systematic dismantling of privacy, freedom, and democracy.

To now pretend that this has nothing to do with us and we don't talk about things like this when people are being shot in the street, and murderers are being protected by a corrupt government that was in part selected and installed by our own community is morally reprehensible. As a community, we need to take some responsibility here, and not censoring uncomfortable facts will be a good starting point.

Moreover, hacker culture is rooted in a historical ethos of freedom, anti-authoritarianism, and inclusion. If any of that ethos still persists, it goes completely at odds with the current status quo, where we refuse to talk about this issue, while members of our community continue to inflict widespread harm on the world.

Why would anyone want a smart speaker, when every speaker acts as one when hooked to the sound output of a phone, wirelessly or wired?

I'll admit, I don't want or use 'smart' anything, and am currently trying to disable smart devices that were already present in my home from the previous owner.

I agree, it's surprising. Even in California of all places, you can make a one-off vehicle at home and register it for legal road use, without even needing modern safety or emissions equipment:

https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/registering-as-a...

Another even more common strategy is to "restore" a classic car using some extremely small number of parts from some really old pre-emissions and pre-safety equipment car. This is often done for hod rods, dune buggies, etc. where it will be, say a "1930 Ford" but contain only some minuscule amount of that original car it is titled and registered as. There's a sizable industry of homemade "kit cars" that require you to start with a legally registered VW Beetle, but ultimately they often retain nothing except parts of the thin sheet metal floor pan, and somehow that is apparently legal.

No, it is possible to register a homemade car for use on public roads, pretty commonly done actually.

That was always such a silly argument, even more so with the rise of cheap and reliable 3D printing. I download, print, and use physical objects every week and don’t know or care what IP issues might exist as long as it works for its purpose. I can’t wait until the day comes when you can download and print a working car at home.

You’re getting downvoted but your take is simply the truth. Trump does not think like a politician or leader- he does not listen to, care about, or consider things like facts or broader consequences. Insiders in his administration have repeatedly leaked that they are not allowed to communicate information or facts to him, and he never shares reasons for his orders, they have to creatively make that up after the fact for the media. He operates the presidency as a reality TV show, he is interested only in how an action will play with the public and his base in the short term- will it increase his power and help him shift public narratives the way he wants, or not?

Is this HN or Tyler Cowen’s blog?

Yep, I’ve spent time in Finland and loved this… but for me it works better to skip the warm part and just do the cold.

However, the Finns in the winter did not seem to be happy at all, but mostly quite deep in seasonal depression.

Your rant about Bay Area subcultures is suspiciously written in jargon that only someone deep in these subcultures would recognize- well done, very Straussian.

Religions themselves are a great example of a Straussian meme, it’s shocking how close they got to using that example but instead went somewhere else with it that made zero sense.

I suspect that the use of incredibly bad examples is some sort of intentional Straussian joke, and that the entire article itself, and not the examples in it, is supposed to be the real example of a Straussian meme.

Good to hear, I struggle with depression and cold plunges have been life changing for me also. I would love to find a community to do it with.

Yes, another thing Feynman is doing is teaching people how to think about and model problems in a simple but reliable way in their mind, something he was very good at. In a sense his specific subject matter is just an example to demonstrate the process.

A textbook that just plainly presents the facts about a specific phenomenon isn't necessarily training you to think like a theorist, in the way Feynman is.

In that case it wouldn't matter much to an individual making personal decisions about their environment. Either way, an environment with enough outdoor air exchange to keep CO2 low would avoid these effects.

But hypothetically, what other trace contaminants would you expect to be so universally correlated with CO2 in different environments that they could account for repeatedly observing these effects in different studies? That seems implausible.

Why would this be unlikely as a prior? High CO2 changes your blood chemistry and breathing rates. Different breathing rates have a well understood effects on lots of systems including sympathetic/parasympathetic activation. There is no reason to expect humans to be evolutionary adapted to CO2 levels that we couldn't have experienced historically.

Several other posters in here have posted peer reviewed studies replicating these effects, but personally I find individual direct experience with my own body to be massively more generally useful when making health decisions than studies in other people, or some known mechanism.

I'm using a desktop CO2 meter, they're cheap and accurate, and can be tested by just putting them outdoors and confirming that they read known outdoor levels correctly. What you are saying is not unlike doubting that it's possible to measure temperature with a thermometer- CO2 measurement is extremely reliable, cheap, and mature technology.

This is the meter I am using, costs $39, and is a calibrated instrument with +/- 3% accuracy. I have an academic colleague that uses these same devices for scientific research on plant metabolism, and they are highly accurate and are optionally self calibrating just by opening a window or putting them outdoors.

https://www.co2meter.com/collections/indoor-air-quality/prod...

How is a toddler going to get behind my car before I can get in it that I did not notice was nearby and start visually tracking from standing there? How is a backup camera going to help when I backed into the spot and am now pulling out forwards? That’s just not a realistic concern. Also, backup cameras cannot see much closer to the wheel than those cars I mentioned with good visibility.

Tech really won’t help you here- safe driving requires looking where your vehicle is going with your own eyes. The field of view of a backup camera is insufficient- even if you have one, it’s usually better to be looking directly behind you and not use it. I see cars with backup cameras and sonar hit each other in parking lots all the time, because they thought the camera was a replacement for looking and situational awareness.

A well designed car and proper driving technique make a backup camera unnecessary.

Many old cars have excellent rewards visibility without needing any camera- no camera will compare to a first generation Porsche Boxster with the top down for example, where you can directly see behind you by looking back. Volvo wagons are great like that also.

I also, as a rule never back anywhere that I haven’t seen directly just a few seconds before. I always back into parking places so I can see them facing forwards and not back up when starting out, and if I do need to back up when starting out I walk behind the car and look around first and then immediately get in and back up.

Even if you are right and there is no objectively measurable impaired abilities, the things I can detect directly are themselves extremely undesirable.

I feel irritable, and fatigued/sleepy when CO2 is high. Increased breathing rate by itself activates an undesirable sympathetic nervous system response, that anyone can notice immediately with deliberate breathwork.

Also, it seems likely to me that the same poor air exchange that leads to high co2 causes respiratory disease to spread more rapidly, and with a higher initial viral titer.

Not everyone in a population will be affected the same by the same conditions, and the constraints of peer reviewed research make them often a poor choice for guiding personal decisions. By the time you have conditions bad enough to statistically prove harm in a large population, you’re likely already way past causing harm worth preventing in some subset of the population.

My life is better driving a car that is simple and fun, where I feel alert and connected to the road and every function is controlled by me deliberately and manually. Ideally something with no screens, a manual transmission, and no power steering. Being chaperoned by AI is infantalizing and boring.

If you’re afraid to carefully drive a high quality and well maintained older car that was designed from the ground up with safety and quality at the absolute forefront- say an 80s Mercedes or Volvo, you would benefit from relaxing a bit and being willing to take slightly more risk in life.

Besides, I am not wholly convinced that improved safety tech is a replacement for the type of safety first engineering used in every tiny detail of those old cars, that mitigate certain types of accidents and injury that won’t be addressed in crash testing.

People seem to dismiss the value of humility and frugality nowadays, but I see them as important virtues that lead to a more enjoyable life. Counter intuitively, wealth can allow someone the freedom and privilege to live a simpler and more frugal life, which can feel more rewarding and fun.

For one, I like to have a connection with the place I live and the physical objects I use like my car and home- the fact that they are old things I fixed up and maintain myself gives me a sense of place, connection, and pride- just buying something expensive that someone else prepared for me would feel infantalizing and unsatisfying. I enjoy deeply understanding and being part of the history of the objects and tools I use, in a way that can’t be purchased.

Also, I think a lot of consumerism and conspicuous consumption comes from a sad and depressing place of anxiety that you aren’t good enough to make friends or find romantic partners without doing this. Many people don’t directly want or enjoy conspicuously expensive things, but are hoping it leads to social status or approval. But this inevitably means resigning yourself to essentially buying the company of people that don’t actually like you. At the extreme end you see some famously wealthy people so anxious about not being perceived as wealthy enough that they glue tacky fake plastic gold on everything they own because they’re afraid of looking poorer than billionaires. That type of narcissism is not a happy way to live, and will turn off the kind of people that would have built a genuine emotional connection with you.

Exotic cars are designed to be fast and fun to drive, for people that enjoy driving. You can still find them fun even if you dislike showing off. There are even some great exotic cars that look normal enough on the outside that a non car enthusiast won’t recognize them as anything unusual.

I don’t need to look at studies in other people, I notice and feel the effects directly at high CO2 levels, such that I can tell when it it too high before checking the meter.

I’d need to look at the study, but I also suspect the submariners would be used to high CO2, and also not experienced enough in doing focused creative or knowledge work for impaired abilities there to be detectable.

I think it’s little appreciated that high CO2 levels cause cognitive impairment, and with the same amount of (often very poor) air exchange, higher outdoor concentrations can push indoor spaces to levels that cause impaired cognition and poor sleep. I’ve already been seeing this in my home, and will often open windows even when cold just to keep co2 levels reasonable. One solution that can help is an external air heat exchanger, which can exchange air with the outdoors without compromising your homes heating and cooling like an open window will do.

Noticeable cognitive impairment starts in the 700-1000ppm range, whereas it is very common for homes to reach 2000-3000ppm, especially when in a closed bedroom.

Timer

> strength training definitely does not have a smooth progress bar

Not at intermediate or advanced levels, but for beginners on a well designed program like “starting strength” it typically does.

Apologies in advance for the pedantic response, but the human body can generally make enough glucose from protein to keep you out of ketosis. You usually have to restrict both protein and fat to reliably induce ketosis. You can confirm this for yourself with ketone test strips. Most dieters on so called ketogenic diets are not actually in ketosis.

Even more surprising is that fermentable fibers get converted into short chain fats by bacteria in the gut that are ultimately metabolized as ketones, so a diet high in those can induce ketosis even with a high carb diet. Some herbivore animals are always in ketosis, and some carnivores are almost never in ketosis unless they are starving and can’t find protein.

Some people never seem to be able to think clearly or focus while fasting, independently of any feelings of hunger. There is likely some biological variability here, but it could also be due to metabolic problems that are making it hard to provide the brain with energy during a fast. In some cases the fasting itself can help treat that, and it may get better over time.

People respond differently to fasting, some are never able to do focused knowledge work during a fast, others can’t at first but can once their bodies get used to fasting. Others can immediately focus better right from the beginning. There is a lot of individual variation.