pipthepixie

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.

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.

I check this every week: https://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/ Don't be put off that it's ZDNet, they monitor the infosec landscape really well.

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.

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.

> 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]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_creep

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overengineering