jrapdx3

Excellently written, informative, entertaining and a bit scary. Oceans of slime yet viruses are so small. It is mind-blowing to think about.

Haven't visited Europe in a few years. Last time I was there, on a train routed through less populated areas of northern France, I saw nuclear plants emitting steam. For all their downsides they do feed a lot of power into the grid. It is a relatively clean option.

You make a strong case for alternative options. I guess the path taken pivots on evaluation of the tradeoffs, and significantly, who does the evaluating.

Good interview, informative and reveals something of the character of the individual. Better writing than typical for interviews of this sort.

But I'm biased. I've used Chicken Scheme for a few years. For the most part, it's been a gratifying experience. For me, Chicken's easy to use and sensible FFI is big part of the reason. The language more than not works for what I aim to achieve.

The Chicken community supports newcomers and old hands when they need it. Harsh responses to queries are rare. As online communities go, it's about as good as it gets.

> "...if you ever get a chance, check out the Auguste Rodin Gallery at the Maryhill Museum of Art"

I wholeheartedly concur. Just a few hours up the Gorge from Portland/Vancouver, Maryhill is a great place to take visitors up for it.

If memory serves, the Rodin exhibit has original plaster casts signed by Rodin and dozens of other works. In addition, the vast museum contains the huge and fascinating collections of its founders.

Nearby is the Stonehenge replica constructed to match the original as closely as possible. Definitely worth visiting.

I'll have to try it.

It occurs to me that in this era of RAM hardware shortage, resource-frugal applications like this one could become more prevalent.

Anyway I guess we'll see if that happens.

Interesting. Having made websites I think "of course that makes sense!". As a practical matter, getting wanted page appearance can require adding a few classes. I've been guilty of class proliferation caused by perfectionistic tweaking of things to the last nanogram. Anymore I strive not to go there.

This aroused my curiosity. Tried to get the article. Clicking on the item didn't fetch the site, never did connect.

I've programmed in Scheme on and off over the last decade or so. callcc comes in handy for "return" or "break" functionality. More sophisticated uses, like threading or coroutines, have been around for a long time. Obviously those operations are harder to implement but they do exist and are widely used.

That's absolutely splendid. In the user role, I get very irritated when programs do stupid things or interface elements don't do what they're supposed to do. Muttering to myself I'm asking a question: have the developers ever actually used this program? I'm convinced had they used it for real, there would be far less idiocy users have to deal with.

Your approach to developing software goes a long way to producing software that users appreciate. OTOH users may have no opinion about software sufficiently intuitive to use that it fails to bring attention to itself. Such transparency is an outcome developers should be proud to achieve.

I get what you're saying but I think there's a problem, gobs of common drugs have 2D6 as a metabolic pathway. Increasing 2D6 inhibition puts recipients at greater risk of serious adverse events or drug toxicity. Can't say much about pharmacodynamics of candidate compounds, that remains to be determined experimentally in live subjects including animal models and possibly phase 1 trials.

In any case I appreciate the interesting ideas in your comment and the article.

Studies show Modafinil isn't effective in ADHD adults. It may have benefit in children with ADHD.

I think many prescribers give ADHD adults a high dose too soon causing side-effects. In my experience, it's best to start with a low dose and slowly increase as necessary. The myth is ADHD responds quickly, but observing hundreds of patients it takes months, not days, for benefit of treatment to develop. There's wisdom in the phrase, "start low and go slow".

> ... I wonder why they don't just give people some ritalin and ask if they feel calmed down? Except the obvious reason of course

In ADHD (and most conditions) diagnosis by medication response is not acceptable. Response to drugs is highly variable and fails criteria for acceptable tests. Also drugs can produce side-effects. According to professional standards, it's unethical to expose people to nontrivial risks without good cause.

FWIW it's commonly the case with cancers of abdominal organs: stomach, pancreas, liver, kidney, etc. These cancers are frequently not diagnosed until at an advanced stage. Symptoms tend to be nonspecific, overlap with ubiquitous conditions like constipation, gastritis.

A goal of research is improving early detection of these cancers but it's an uphill battle. It's difficult to increase providers' "index of suspicion" of seemingly "minor" complaints.

> And by adulthood, height doesn't change significantly and you probably know it ...

But height does change in adulthood [0]. On average people living past 40 gradually lose height. At age 80, it's likely height loss will be >=2 inches. This loss is reflected in higher BMI even when body fat content hasn't changed. Average BMI increase isn't large, but think about a person losing 4 or 5 inches of height while maintaining body fat unchanged.

Self-reported height is generally greater than measured height. Adding 1/2 to 1 inch is common (per experience measuring height). "Height inflation" has modest effect on BMI but problematic in research and workup for medical procedures. In the latter cases, measuring height is necessary.

[0] https://www.uhhospitals.org/blog/articles/2024/10/why-do-peo...

> My point is mostly that artist occupy a strange spot in our culture. They are the only “trade” that I know of that can fabricate items that have a value beyond their utility.

Thank you for the clarification. You're right artistic success usually requires enduring arduous effort. Art, well, visual art, is making something out of very little. Hard to explain why the value of art is quirky. The word "value" is ambiguous, has multiple meanings.

I think paintings, prints, etc., are approximate expressions of an artist's visual imagination. Material value of painted canvas is negligible, price can be assigned by dealers and other players. Real value is individual, created when a viewer strongly resonates with an artistic expression. OTOH market/art-world value is mutable. I've often remarked that it won't be decided which of the art created today is "good" until 50 years after we're all gone.

> The most important thing is creating.

It's true, motivation to make art is more than selling art. A very successful artist in his sixties told me he feels a need to create art whether it sells or not. I've donated prints to schools, hospitals, libraries, etc. It's gratifying to know my work will be around long after I've passed on. That's more important to me than money.

I visited your uncle's website. His kinetics are superb, entertaining but also expressing visually complex, 4 (or more) dimensional ideas. Translating to concrete form is an admirable accomplishment.

BTW I think industrial design is underappreciated. Shape, color, etc., of utilitarian objects has to be determined by at least one real person. Some of these objects are endowed with subtle beauty. Working with beautiful things makes the labor less burdensome.

MDD is the "bread and butter" of psychiatric practice. I'm not really sure how much that's changed over decades. Of course, depression treatment options have evolved greatly since the late 80s, truly a blessing.

You're probably right that increased awareness, reduced stigma and improved attention to diagnosis play a role in apparent population rate increase. Interesting how the comments here put forth quite a few "theories" regarding sources of the increase.

AFAIK there's no definitive explanation of the observation. In passing we should note that many other psychiatric conditions have parallel rising incidences. The factors you cite apply to those conditions as well.

Psychiatric conditions in general are very complex, with associations to a wide array of factors. Most likely many small contributors add up to vulnerability to one or more of these conditions. Our brains are constructed to prefer lumping things into simpler categories. What we call MDD clearly enough is not a unitary disease but outcome of a messy set of myriad "causes" diagnostically lumped together.

The progress made in identifying and treating psychiatric disorders is impressive and gratifying. The more we accept the messy reality, the greater the level of progress we'll make.

> The students who get in have been minmaxing and exploiting every advantage they can for their entire life.

Not a school I'd be tempted to apply to. Scholastic competition is one thing, but scrapping for every conceivable speck of "I'm better than the next guy" is not a bit attractive. I wonder about the campus atmosphere. Seems likely contesting would be a hard to break habit. I feel tense just thinking about it :/

Of course, ADHD students are less likely to achieve near-perfect grades than non-ADHD peers. Though it's not impossible for an ADHD student to succeed. Anyway, not at all uncommon for a student to do very well until subjects become more complex and challenging. Conceivably a student could look promising, but then suddenly have great difficulty keeping up.

So a safe bet that at least a few students at the top-level school have ADHD. If the school offers little or no accommodation, affected students probably have to accept getting educated elsewhere. Fortunately, more than not ADHD treatment is effective, a favorable response can make a pivotal difference in the student's outcome.

Treating many ADHD adult students some did take advantage of accommodations available to them.

Problems with test-taking varied, but common issues were getting distracted by extraneous stimuli in "regular" classrooms. Frequently ADHD students were slow readers and really did need/use extra time. But the biggest problem was test-taking anxiety, often quite prominent, contributing to difficulty with tests.

Interestingly, more than not ADHD students were reluctant to ask for accommodations. Some never availed themselves of this benefit. Others only used part of the options they could use.

In my practice were a number of ADHD adults admitted to nursing school, some having serious academic difficulties and eventually asking for accommodations. The assistance was effective. Notably, none of these student-patients failed or dropped out, all graduated. A pleasant footnote to add is a subset of these nurses developed exceptional skill earning them leadership positions in their institutions.

Reputable clinicians wouldn't give an ADHD diagnosis or support academic accommodations without sufficient clinical evidence.

Your family certainly has an impressive record of success in the art world. My father was a talented painter but didn't attempt to sell his work. He was an even more talented pianist but rarely performed publicly. My sister is an exceptionally talented painter and sculptor. I encouraged her to put her work out there but never did, a real shame.

I'm also an artist, primarily a printmaker. I've made my living otherwise, though my work sells at a modest pace.

I know many artists in galleries but only a few earn enough to pay their bills. Artists who do earn a living are good self-promoters of their work or build reputation through family connections to patrons. The shy ones remain unknown. Hardly a "criticism of the art world" just a summation of decades-long observation.

For every artist turning rubbish into big money there are many who only turn rubbish into garbage. Perhaps my comments are "one-dimensional", but so is implying that turning rubbish into big money is easy to achieve.

Very few artists earn a living in art let alone become wealthy. The art world is highly competitive, though real talent and innovation are rare. But making it big in art is more about self-promotion and marketing than artistic ability. So success is only marginally correlated with what they do with their hands, as opposed to what's done with their mouths.

Interesting comment. FWIW the idea of God as Being accords with Spinoza's philosophy, which in turn accords with Greek philosophy and ultimately accords with biblical philosophy. These are roots among the many roots of our modern world.

What we learn from these philosophies is that God is necessarily the author of life and love, but as well hatred and destruction. Worth noting that the latter are most (but not exclusively) expressed in human conduct. Among all animals humans have the most developed ability to decide how to act. That ability is not absolute, often enough logic or reasoning is bypassed and emotion rules.

Naturally cognition is not unbounded, we are limited by constraints of our construction. It means aspects of the universe are unknowable, we can't know what we're missing.

But knowing what we can know is an obligation of our privileged existence. As knowledge expands it exposes the utter complexity of all things emerging from common fundamental processes.

Seeing what is seen, a human may for a moment get a glimpse of the hand that binds everything together. That's a gift if there ever was one.

Of course, it's always entirely up to you. But wise to stay alert to documented ADHD effects, e.g., on social functioning, general health, increased risk of accidental injury, depression, anxiety, to name a few. In any case, treatment won't undo the uniqueness of your path, if anything likely to augment reaching goals your path leads to.

> Not diagnosed, on online “tests” I score just shy of the ADHD threshold, and I find myself in this.

Don't know the tests you refer to, but it's recognized that many adults have ADHD symptoms not quite meeting DSM-5 criteria for ADHD. It's called "subsyndromal" ADHD which causes as much disability and responds to treatment just as well as "full" ADHD cases. IOW it's absurd to regard someone with 6 symptoms as belonging in a different category vs. a person having "only" 5 symptoms. Anyway, ADHD is a condition that usually responds to treatment, no reason not to check into it.

Yes, hyperfocus is indeed a frequent problem for people with ADHD. One version is getting overly involved in irrelevant details, due to interest or having difficulty pulling away. The latter takes much effort and a good measure of courage. Maybe "rabbit holes" are kind of like that.

For many with ADHD starting tasks is hard and resuming a task can be just as hard. Constant experience of "starting from scratch" is burdensome, and contributes to inertia and inefficiency. More than not, a tough problem to solve.

I've long thought disability associated with ADHD is generally underappreciated despite decades of study proving the point.

Self-observation isn't easy. I always considered it a sign of growth when people shared what they've seen.

> ... multi-tasking is not a strength, it's a sign of distraction

Interesting point of view from one who's been there. Intuitively the comment makes a lot of sense.

In a way human multitasking resembles how single-threaded computer programs work. That is, we focus on one task at a time but tasks can be interleaved to give an illusion of doing several tasks at the same time. Managing several tasks requires remembering the next step to do when leaving one task to attend to another.

That suggests ADHD people lose track of where they left off when performing several tasks. Distraction plays a role, but I think problematic working memory is the major issue. Among ADHD researchers there's a saying, "people with ADHD know what to do but don't do what they know." ADHD task performance may improve with proper treatment.

The contest you described (people with ADHD vs. autism) would have an enormously negative effect. But there are reasons to think it's unlikely. FWIW at least 25% of ADHD adults manifest autistic traits. Hardly surprising, clinicians regard overlapping neurodevelopmental disorders as the rule and not the exception.

An online community works when participants learn and share knowledge gained. Contests, with self or others, disrupt learning and sharing, hence by definition constitute "bad behavior". If it exists, the hyperwar you allude to will harm communities more than all LLMs combined could do.

You're probably right about comparative costs. But the problem of getting to an autonomous bus will remain a significant barrier to public transportation use.

My neighborhood is close to the city center. Even so, bus service is very sparse, recently reduced to just twice a day. In addition walking to bus stops is long and difficult, or even impossible, for many elderly or disabled residents.

I envision a Waymo-like car service transporting people to/from destinations or if it's more practical, a transit center. I concur car services wouldn't be the cheapest option but may well be the most effective.

> It seems that elderly nowadays are super vary of any hacking or scams. YMMV.

I'm sure you meant "wary". How amazing, education really does work. There is such a thing as overabundance of caution. But it's possible further education could encourage users to apply more balanced caution policies.

> Have you guys never done IT tech support for your elderly parents' computers?

This kind of comment is frequently made on HN and elsewhere. However, more than a few "elderly parents" are as computer-sophisticated as their grown children. A safe bet it's not rare to be exchanging ideas with an elderly person sophisticated enough to make comments on HN.

AFAIK there's no shortage of careless, uninformed, non-elderly individuals who get scammed into doing stupid things. Age is only one possible factor out of many contributing to scam vulnerability. And let us not forget that youthful, well-trained professional IT workers, developers and software engineers are not immune to scams via misunderstanding elements of the systems or processes they supervise.

"Ageism" is a word as ugly as what it signifies.

Programming in Prolog back in the 1980s was a pleasant experience. I wrote some useful programs with Prolog but as I remember that era, the language made a brief splash and soon relegated to niche settings.

Nowadays I enjoy programming in Scheme, which I'd guess is chosen by developers about as often as Prolog. Using Scheme stirs up memories of my Prolog experience. Intuitively it seems like these PLs require or stimulate a similar thinking process that appeals to some of us. I haven't pursued this idea, but it lingers in my brain.

Curiously both PLs were developed in the early 1970s and first official versions released in 1975. Is it possible the authors of Scheme knew about and were influenced by Prolog? Not too likely, but Prolog's creators did spend some time at MIT, the birthplace of Scheme, so the odds are a bit better than 0.