xolox
Like you I generally prefer polite phrasings over rude ones, and I'm certainly not going to tell you how you should communicate to LLM models, however it's interesting to note that being somewhat rude and to the point seems to have some objective advantages, see for example:
Mind Your Tone: Investigating How Prompt Politeness Affects LLM Accuracy (short paper)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.04950
Understanding Tone-Dependent Inference Cost in Large Language Models
https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.23915
I would hate for this style of communication to leak through to daily communications with humans (e.g. colleagues) though, so even just for that it can make sense to hold on to a polite form of communication :-).
I have to say that my experiences with running virtualized relational database servers on top of Ceph centralized storage have shown somewhat disappointing performance, so I think that could become a real challenge if performance is or becomes a goal. However, I've encountered multiple mentions that Ceph performance is supposed to increase significantly as the number of storage nodes increases (from a handful to a dozen to much larger clusters) and while I cannot corroborate this from personal experience, it stands to reason that "throwing more (hardware) resources at the problem" can make a big difference.
The point about letting the mushrooms soak up sunlight to boost their vitamin D content is totally true and absolutely fascinating though!
> When commonly consumed mushroom species are exposed to a source of ultraviolet (UV) radiation, such as sunlight or a UV lamp, they can generate nutritionally relevant amounts of vitamin D. The most common form of vitamin D in mushrooms is D2, with lesser amounts of vitamins D3 and D4, while vitamin D3 is the most common form in animal foods. Although the levels of vitamin D2 in UV-exposed mushrooms may decrease with storage and cooking, if they are consumed before the ‘best-before’ date, vitamin D2 level is likely to remain above 10 μg/100 g fresh weight, which is higher than the level in most vitamin D-containing foods and similar to the daily requirement of vitamin D recommended internationally.
I feel bad for posting this without references so here's one reference I could find right now:
> This study shows that longer wavelengths in sunlight are transmitted through the body. When these are presented via NIR LEDs in a laboratory-controlled environment at much lower energies, they again have the ability to be transmitted through the body and also are associated with improved visual function independent of ocular exposure. Hence, body penetration by longer wavelengths impacts systemically. Longer wavelengths improve mitochondrial membrane potential and ATP production and improve function in a species conserved pattern that can impact on mobility, visual function and cognition, particularly in ageing. In short lived animals they can extend average life span.
> Taken together, these data provide evidence of the importance of the full spectrum of sunlight for human health. They also highlight the potential dangers of the restricted spectra found in white LED lighting in the modern built environment that lacks longer wavelengths and whose output is generally restricted to around 400–650 nm. The absence of longer wavelengths from LED light sources may have implications for public health that should be addressed.
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-09785-3#Sec5
First it took over an hour to create the backup, then I got a 4.42 GiB tar file, that of course failed to upload to the new Home Assistant install.
I investigated and found that the tarball was just a compressed copy of the complete installation directory of my Home Assistant setup, and that included multi gigabyte `.cache/pip` and `.cache/uv` directories :-s (my old Home Assistant install operates from a Python virtual environment that I created, and Home Assistant keeps nagging me that this installation method is deprecated, so I decided to migrate to HAOS in a VM).
When I deleted those directories the tarball was less than 200 MiB but the new HAOS VM still would not accept the upload. All I got was "500 Internal Server Error - Server got itself in trouble". And of course because HAOS is an "appliance" its kind of a black box so I couldn't find out how to get access to error logs with details :-(.
In the end I decided that the path of least resistance was to simply start from scratch based on the HAOS virtual machine and take some days/weeks to build up the new Home Assistant setup before it's mature enough to take over from the old Home Assistant setup (which is running on hardware that is close to failure).
Now I do like a challenge every now and then, so I'm currently setting up Proxmox to gain live migrations and high availability for virtual machines, because I've become quite dependent on all of these services in virtual machines actually running successfully :-) even in the face of eventual hardware failure (like what happened to me in the past months).
Sickness caused by bacteria doesn't happen as soon as one bad bacteria (bacterium?) enters your body, a certain critical mass is usually required. This is very similar to the concept of "viral load" where a certain amount of viral genetic material needs to be exchanged before the viral infection can take hold.
The "beneficial bacteria" on your skin and in your gut make it harder for bad bacteria to take root in many different ways, one of them simply being they provide competition, "crowding out the bad guys".
Another way is that many, many, many types of antibiotics were originally discovered as metabolites produced by bacteria and fungi (examples include penicillin, streptomycin, chloramphenicol, and tetracycline).
And for completeness sake, milk kefir contains many Lactobacillus species that are also a natural part of the mammal microbiome (which makes sense when you think about it; Lactobacillus are named for consuming lactose, an ingredient of mammal milk).
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/27/climate/epa-pfas-fertiliz...
https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/pfas-in-fertilisers-blam...
I have to say I'm kind of happy were not doing this in the Netherlands, because PFAS are a horrible class of chemicals that are causing all sorts of issues in nature as well as human health (obviously the two are intricately linked). I'm kind of ashamed to hear that the Netherlands are trying to get rid of their sewage in the UK though...
Edit: Upon reading the investigatemidwest.org article I see that it's about the exact same subject, apologies if my reply is perceived as noise.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_resources#Carbon_and_nit...
Meanwhile most indicators I've seen imply that PFAS contamination is -in some ways- getting worse, and is not only from historical sources.
Also, earthworms will mix up deeper and more shallow layers of earth and plant roots will extract PFAS from deeper layers and deposit them on or near the surface when the plants leaf matter dies off (in fact I know of several types of plants including hemp being successfully used for this exact purpose).
I'd love to find definitive proof that PFAS can be remediated on a hobby garden scale (in one's own backyard) but I'm skeptical of the success rate and longevity of the endeavor...
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to directly compare the development of bacterial antibiotics resistance with the adaptation of viruses to be able to infect other kinds of hosts. Surely these disease vectors follow different developments.
It wouldn't surprise me though if intensive animal farming [3] has the capacity to exacerbate these problems, if only based on the high concentration of animals kept together and the generally poor health of these animals (poorly functioning immune systems, which is the whole reason for the overuse of antibiotics).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methicillin-resistant_Staphylo...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibiotic_use_in_livestock
Dutch source for the thing about rain worms: https://nos.nl/artikel/2539934-hoge-concentraties-pfas-via-r...
[1] I especially like grinding up the tempeh to turn it into a plant based burger substitute, and making "Perkedel Tempeh" (tempeh fritters)
Yeah I was surprised (and frankly annoyed) by this as well, I don't see the value of showing this to everyone in the world when all of this relates to a "drama" played out in one country over the course of one presidential term with close to zero chance of extending that to another term (the guy is already 78 years old and it's showing in his ever more erratic behavior). I sure hope we can forget about this nonsense 4+ years from now...
A 'Second Tree of Life' Could Wreak Havoc, Scientists Warn (nytimes.com)
Related:
Technical Report on Mirror Bacteria: Feasibility and Risks (stanford.edu)
As someone living in the Netherlands and being used to dozens of political parties with various ideologies and convictions, the two-party system of the US has always surprised me as being extremely limiting (e.g. if you don't naturally identify with Democratic ideologies you vote Republican or vice versa).
Edit: None of this is to imply that Western Europe or the Netherlands doesn't have major political issues, for example I'm quite disillusioned about the uptick in popularity of populist political parties (throughout Western Europe but also specifically in the Netherlands).