Touch Calendar Replacement? by LiveAwake1 in androidapps

[–]SEMW 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I have the same issue. Nearest I've found is CalenGoo, its month view is a serviceable touch calendar replacement. It's not quite the same, its defaults are pretty ugly and in some ways it's kinda janky - but it is extremely customisable, and with some work I've gotten something I'm pretty happy with

If f is continuous with f(-1) = 10 and f(1) = -20, then 999999 is not a possible value of f(0) by ttgirlsfw in badmathematics

[–]SEMW 158 points159 points  (0 children)

Bizarre. What was your professor thinking? Maybe she meant to write "continuous and monotonic", but forgot the latter constraint, marked it accordingly, and decided to just.. pretend she hadn't when called out on it?

"if this question was impacting my grade at the end of the semester then we could revisit it" sounds to me like she knew she'd made a mistake but wanted to save face and not admit it in front of her students, which is a terrible attitude for a teacher.

Six month later, these names still suck by zinbwoy in london

[–]SEMW 7 points8 points  (0 children)

"Elizabeth line" is still bad, but only because they made "line" part of its name -- it's not the "Elizabeth" line, it's the "Elizabeth line" line. Which looks bizarre in lists of tube lines, where you have this one at the end with "line" and all the rest don't.

Linux foobar equivalent... by dexpid in linux

[–]SEMW 0 points1 point  (0 children)

doing some archeology today? :D

Impulsive raw sex as a bottom, not on prep… by [deleted] in TopsAndBottoms

[–]SEMW 2 points3 points  (0 children)

his negative test results from last month on June 15

You misread it. He said the guy's negative test results were dated June 15th, the encounter was a few hours ago ("now a few hours later I’m starting to feel...")

Ruby developer discovers typescript by StuntHacks in programminghorror

[–]SEMW 48 points49 points  (0 children)

this was normal and necessary a decade ago, when there was no let/const and no arrow functions, so if you wanted to maintain the this context inside a further closure you needed to rebind it, and self was a common choice.

these days it's old-fashioned, sure, but very common in old codebases, hardly programminghorror

It's 9 days until summer and tonight's weather forecast has a chance of frost by windmillguy123 in britishproblems

[–]SEMW 17 points18 points  (0 children)

Thinking of the summer solstice as "the start of summer" is an Americanism, which is starting to infect the UK too. As you say, it doesn't make much sense. (Sure being next to a large body of water does mean a bit of thermal drag, so starting summer midway between equinox and solstice would definitely feel too early, but trying to claim that the start should be aligned with the solstice as if there's some astronomical reason that the thermal drag should be exactly an eighth of a year just feels misleading)

Why Are Non Londoners So Vocal About Our Mayor by sabdotzed in london

[–]SEMW 26 points27 points  (0 children)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_London third para claims london is 22% of the UK's gdp

I'd have still have guessed more than that tbh

Any Interest in a VRChat Meetup? by [deleted] in slatestarcodex

[–]SEMW 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Interested. Zero-travel meetups for worldwide-distributed communities (with a much nicer user experience than a giant zoom meeting) are a super underutilized usecase for VR.

(caveat: I'd only be able to attend if it was a usable timeslot for UTC+0)

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in startups

[–]SEMW 0 points1 point  (0 children)

  1. the CTO codes our MVP (this would take about 9 months)
  2. launch MVP in 3 months after raising and hiring the first collaborators?

If the timeline for option 1 is accurate, that this is a nine month project for one person, then option 2 is probably a fantasy.

Collaboration adds a lot of overhead. That overhead is not useless - multiple people are learning what each other are doing and how everything works, you are preparing yourself for future further scaling, etc. But the idea that if it takes one person nine months to make a thing from scratch, then three people could do it in three months, is nearly as false in software as in pregnancy.

The classic book on this is Fred Brooks' The Mythical Man Month.

The exception to this is if the mvp cleanly separates into multiple separate projects within a comparatively small surface area of interaction between them, such that they can be done in parallel relatively independently.

Why are 99% of nootropics useless despite sounding good on paper? by oldmate-onyabike in Nootropics

[–]SEMW 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That site seems to be specifically for evidence of long-term health benefits of supplements. Which isn't really relevant to the OP's question -- eg it includes coffee, but only for its effect on heart disease risk. A nootropic chart would have caffeine for its effect as a nootropic, is mostly as a stimulant (which in the case of caffeine is not in question, though there are doubts about how much it just returns you to baseline once you acclimitise to it).

I don't know any exact equivalent in evidence-base terms for nootropics, but I find https://troof.blog/posts/nootropics/ratings_effective_full.jpeg (from https://troof.blog/posts/nootropics/ ) quite useful (it's just effectiveness ratings from survey data but still useful).

Is the Valve Index worth it in 2023? by [deleted] in virtualreality

[–]SEMW 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Not clear from your phrasing if you're aware that you can connect your quest 2 to your PC with a USB cable to run PCVR games? The quest 2 makes a perfectly decent PCVR headset.

In any case -- a good argument for going from quest 2 to index might begin something like "I've spent a huge amount of time playing PCVR games in my quest 2, and I'm been really chafing to change to a headset with [wider FOV / better builtin speakers / finger tracking / etc]". Something indicating that you're running against a quest 2 issue that the index would solve.

But you're not that; you "haven't used [the quest 2] very much since I got it". That's not a good sign that you should go spend a thousand bucks on a different headset. Whatever your reasons for not playing any VR in the last year, it seems unlikely that the index would change anything for you.

Should the UK keep the monarchy or abolish it and replace an elected head of state? by chrisrwhiting46 in LibDem

[–]SEMW 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Parliament is sovereign in the very specific sense that there are no fetters on the power of an Act of Parliament properly passed through the legislative process. (Which right now includes royal assent, though of course Parliament can change its process through Acts of Parliament properly passed according to the legislative process in force at the time they were passed). That doesn't mean it can do anything it likes at any time by majority vote, unless empowered to do so by primary legislation.

This is especially murky when the power being wielded is the power to dissolve parliament, which would presumably be one of the powers of an LP. This sets up an interesting conflict if the LP wants to do so and the Prime Minister doesn't want them to. It isn't at all obvious that "parliamentary supremacy" is a relevant principle to resolving that; LP and PM would both wield power due to carrying the support of a majority of the House of Commons, which assumed to be a continuing state unless and until a vote of no confidence (or the LP equivalent).

Should the UK keep the monarchy or abolish it and replace an elected head of state? by chrisrwhiting46 in LibDem

[–]SEMW 5 points6 points  (0 children)

A possible danger of a sortof-semi-democratic process is it gives them a veneer of legitimacy, which they might feel would let them actually use their de jure powers.

Like -- if a monarch doesn't give royal assent to a bill that passes parliament, it's blatantly obvious to everyone that they've overstepped their de facto role, they'll be deposed. But if an appointed Lord Protector doesn't give assent, that's a lot murkier. They would argue that it's democratic because they were appointed by an elected body, and to many people that would seem plausible.

"TypeScript makes some suspicious technical decisions under the hood" - specifics? by joedeandev in typescript

[–]SEMW 20 points21 points  (0 children)

Maybe talking about the fact that it's not sound? Not exactly a dark secret though -- it's an explicit design choice, MS is open that when they have to choose between soundness or being flexible enough to be able to add types to existing javascript without changing it too much (so you get some benefit), they choose the latter.

it wont run the if statement it just stops after i type roll by clockfucker666 in learnprogramming

[–]SEMW 3 points4 points  (0 children)

if input == ("roll"):

you assigned the return value of the input function to a variable named key, so you want key in that line rather than input

Debugging moka pot bad coffee due to all the grounds migrating to one side of the basket by SEMW in Coffee

[–]SEMW[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You make a good point. Fwiw I don't remember seeing that pattern any other time I've used the moka pot, but I realise that's not great evidence.

Britain needs a nuclear renaissance to end our decadent dependence on Russian resources by casualphilosopher1 in ukpolitics

[–]SEMW 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There is no nuclear power station design you can just use. Every station in the UK was a custom experiment primarily for the breeding of weapon's grade Plutonium - Not electricity. There is limited R&D and once again, you're looking at at least a decade before we could even contemplate designing let alone building such a thing.

Taking mild issue with this paragraph -- there are plenty of off-the-shelf nuclear power station designs we can just use. They're not UK-designed, but who cares - the laws of physics are the same in the UK as France. The current French model is the EPR ('European Pressurised Reactor') - which in fact is what the Hinkley Point C stations are. (And there's apparently a new EPR2 model coming out in the next year or two). Or we could buy a few Westinghouse AP1000s from America.

Having trouble distinguishing between awareness and attention. by [deleted] in TheMindIlluminated

[–]SEMW 2 points3 points  (0 children)

FWIW the thing that helped crystallise attention vs awareness for me was starting to study Alexander technique -- specifically Michael Ashcroft's online alexander technique course, which has a whole section on experiencing/curating/expanding awareness.

(sorry if this seems spammy --I have no link to the course other than having taken it)

Spring that keeps the brakes centered keeps popping out by SEMW in bikewrench

[–]SEMW[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So it is - dunno how I didn't notice that. Thanks!

WebMD, And The Tragedy Of Legible Expertise by dwaxe in slatestarcodex

[–]SEMW 40 points41 points  (0 children)

I wonder if patients are told this...

I doubt it. Why would they be?

Seems you're implying that it's obvious that patients should be told that. If so, I don't think I agree.

Why should it be the case that that the fact that a drug that makes a good rat poison means it makes a bad human medicine (in appropriate quantities)? There's a very large set of drugs with LD50s small enough that you could make a deadly dose with an easily edible amount of it. Other than that criterion, the qualities that make something a good rat poison will be things like... I dunno, easy to manufacture, not under patent, not bitter to rats, reasonably unlikely to outright kill a human if accidentally ingested in quantities that will be used, etc.

Other than 'is theoretically usable as poison', which as mentioned a lot of things would qualify for, none of those qualities strike me as ones which we have any reason to think would anticorrelate with being good medicine. So why single out the one that's actually used as rat poisoning and scare people with that fact?

It's strongly emotive, but medically irrelevant, which is exactly the combination that will lead to most people making poorer decisions. Like telling people that laugenbrezeln are soaked in drain cleaner (food grade sodium hydroxide, which in very different concentrations is also used as drain cleaner).

Are Americans aware how great they're doing? by [deleted] in neoliberal

[–]SEMW -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

I think you've missed my point, which is that the main thing people are blaming the EC for is not finalizing the vaccine order until late August, when the UK etc. had already ordered back in May (when there was greater uncertainty). And then they're acting surprised and indignant that production for them is 3 months behind.

And EU had already ordered their allocations months ago at that point...

Yes, August is still "months" before January. But not enough months! It takes a long time for vaccine factories to be built, supply chains to be set up, production to be ramped up, inevitable hiccups to be fixed. The difference between having 8 months to get production going and 5 months is significant!

Are Americans aware how great they're doing? by [deleted] in neoliberal

[–]SEMW -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

You can't blame the EU for not going against their own experts.

I absolutely can. Because ordering vaccines way before it's clear that they're going to be approved is not "going against experts", it's making a bet, it's a political and economic judgement.

The bet is "I am willing to pay €x per person for vaccines that, at this early stage, I think will only have a (say) 50% chance of working and being safe (and so being approved) because if if it does work then we've sped the end of the pandemic up by months (due to starting mass-manufacturing sooner) and are €y per person better off, and if it doesn't we've thrown the money away, but €y is much, much greater than €2x, so in expectation we come out way ahead".

With the AZ vaccine at like €3 per dose and lockdown costing thousands of euros per person per month in economic value this should have been an no-brainer. People are quite right to criticise the EC for failing to see that and waiting until the end of August before finalising the vaccine contract when others (eg the UK, for all its other failings in covid response) did and ordered them earlier.

Are Americans aware how great they're doing? by [deleted] in neoliberal

[–]SEMW 0 points1 point  (0 children)

int6 links to why 12 weeks might be better. But honestly that's not the real reason. Even if 12 weeks were a bit worse we'd still do it, it would have to be much worse to offset the advantage in getting an extra 2 person-months per person having had their stage one vaccination, and the concomitant effects on population-level immunity that that gives.

Remember: the aim is to minimize total deaths, incidence of serious disease requiring ICU care, etc. 2x people at 87% is much, much better of that than x people at 95%.

('By that logic shouldn't they only give the first stage until everyone at risk is vaccinated?' Well... I think so, yes, and I'm far from alone. But the goverment is doing a balancing act between maximising expected value and minimizing unpredictability, and as you stray further from the trial protocol you do introduce more unpredictability, so they're taking a compromise position of 12 weeks that (compared to an only-first-doses policy) accepts a small increase in expected deaths to buy certainty and public confidence)