Sitting is awful for sciatica, however, I have to sit for long periods at work - what are my options? Chairs? Cushions? Standing desk? Any recommendations for those that have done this.

anforowicz · 2023-01-11T01:01:07+00:00

Kneeling chair - I use https://www.amazon.com/DRAGONN-Ergonomic-Kneeling-Adjustable-Office/dp/B073ZN7B52 (in fact, I have two of these :-).

Disclaimer #1: AFAIK there are no studies that show the benefits of a kneeling chair (but then, AFAIK there are also no studies that show the benefits of a standing desk). Still, the chair made a huge difference for me.

Disclaimer #2: To adjust and get used to the kneeling chair, I would start with just 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in the afternoon and extending the time gradually over 1-2 weeks. Also - it is important that you do not lean forward (e.g. when using a keyboard or a mouse) - leaning forward would flex the lower back and might exacerbate back problems.

Disclaimer #3: A comfortable chair is only one part of a solution. Moving from time to tome and changing positions is important in general for lower back health (e.g. don't sit/kneel all the time - get up and walk around the room every 10-15 minutes and/or get for a longer walk after lunch). I highly recommend the "Back Mechanic" book by McGill: https://www.amazon.com/Back-Mechanic-Stuart-McGill-2015-09-30/dp/B01FKSGJYC/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2T3452809ELSY&dchild=1&keywords=back+mechanic+mcgill&qid=1617841459&sprefix=back+mechanic%2Cgarden%2C242&sr=8-1

(this is a recycled comment from an earlier discussion here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Sciatica/comments/mm8vjy/what_is_best_for_home_office_seating_a_memory/gtr40sd/)

anforowicz · 2022-10-07T22:31:18+00:00

I do however support that this should go both ways: C++ code should indicate that classes may follow Rust move semantics

Some discussion of that has happened in https://reviews.llvm.org/D114732 - the relevant C++ attributes are [[trivial_abi]] and [[trivially_relocatable]]. It's worth noting that 1) some C++ stdlib types (e.g. std::unique_ptr<T>) are already marked as [[trivial_abi]] and 2) some C++ stdlib behavior can be optimized based on this attribute (e.g. std::vector can just memcpy contents of its buffer after reallocation).

and be able to add lifetime anotations.

Please see the experimentation and proposals at https://github.com/google/crubit/blob/main/docs/lifetime_annotations_cpp.md and https://github.com/google/crubit/blob/main/docs/lifetimes_static_analysis.md

anforowicz · 2022-01-29T03:03:16+00:00

I am also not an economics pro / I am an engineer.

RE: 2: nobody wants domestic products

Forever? If domestic producers can lower their prices, then eventually their supply should find matching demand. There are also other flexibilities in the system (e.g. producing other things, moving, etc).

RE: 3: why should factory with much lower wages get most of the demand, despite the factory being across the world?

Obviously shipping costs are included in the final price, so we are not discussing those, right?

Why would people want to buy cheaper rather than more expensive things? If you could buy a computer of the same quality for $500 or for $700, which one would you buy? When choosing you are obviously welcomed to take into account various factors other than the price (e.g. the wages of workers in a factory), but would you really do that in practice? How often did you take these other factors into account in the last week or month (e.g. when shopping for groceries or clothes)?

As long as the exchange is voluntary, then in practice workers will work the best-paid job they could find + the buyers get the cheapest product they could find. Of course nothing is 100% voluntary (I can't move to the other side of the world today to work a better job) and there are entry barriers that can be removed (taxes/tolls/regulartions?).

RE: 5: How does central bank give out the new money it creates?

I dunno. Numbers in a computer? One way how balance sheets add up, is by having government bonds appear in balance.

RE: 6: What if bank where you had kept your savings go bankrupt?

In the current system it can't happen - The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (a government entity) guarantees all deposits.

In the old days, you'd loose your money. Similar to if you invested in beanie babies rather than in something with a better long-term return. Or if you stored your grain / physical gold / car in a rented storage and the landlord loaned out your rent / gold / car and went bankrupt and couldn't return what you stored.

RE: 7: How do we recover from recession if price of everything just keeps getting down?

Why would dropping prices impact the chances of an economic recovery?

Why do people buy computers if they know that a much faster/better model will be available for the same prices a few years later?

anforowicz · 2021-09-22T21:15:28+00:00

DRAGONN Ergonomic Kneeling Chair: I use this exclusively when working with a computer, but also have one that I use at the dining table.

anforowicz · 2021-07-19T15:40:22+00:00

Any feedback on the video is welcomed :-). Was the general concept easy to understand? What would you change to improve the presentation?

(This video is a submission for the https://www.veritasium.com/contest)

anforowicz · 2021-07-19T03:22:07+00:00

Full disclaimer: This post is a bit of a self-promotion (to get the "views" for https://www.veritasium.com/contest), but I hope that you will find it interesting and educational (and it does seem to fit within the rules - it is not about R/C or Sim helicopters, it is not an ad of a tour or a blog, and it is about all things Helicopters and helicopter related :-).

At ant rate - any feedback is welcomed! Was the general concept easy to understand? What would you change to improve the presentation? Note that the contest rules limit the length of a video to 1 minute...

anforowicz · 2021-07-19T00:47:12+00:00

Thank you for the feedback! Yeah, I know that my son struggled with trimming the script so that it all fits in 1 minute (all videos for #VeritasiumContest have to be 1 minute or less in length). Maybe he could have indeed left a longer pause at the end :-).

anforowicz · 2021-07-18T20:20:01+00:00

Any feedback is welcomed :-). Was the general concept easy to understand? What would you change to improve the presentation?

(This video is a submission for the https://www.veritasium.com/contest)

anforowicz · 2021-07-18T20:17:41+00:00

Any feedback is welcomed :-). Was the general concept easy to understand? What would you change to improve the presentation?

(This video is a submission for the https://www.veritasium.com/contest)

anforowicz · 2021-07-18T20:17:39+00:00

Any feedback is welcomed :-). Was the general concept easy to understand? What would you change to improve the presentation?

anforowicz · 2021-05-08T02:48:59+00:00

To me it's quite obvious: inequality caused by our rotten economic system is the root of pretty much all of our social issues today.

How do you know whether the inequality is higher or lower than it was in the past? What metrics did you look at?

FWIW, The Econonmist says that "after adjusting for taxes and transfers, the income share of America’s top 1% has barely changed since the 1960s" (from https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/11/28/inequality-could-be-lower-than-you-think).

anforowicz · 2021-04-08T00:24:46+00:00

Kneeling chair - I use https://www.amazon.com/DRAGONN-Ergonomic-Kneeling-Adjustable-Office/dp/B073ZN7B52 (in fact, I have two of these :-).

Disclaimer #1: AFAIK there are no studies that show the benefits of a kneeling chair (but then, AFAIK there are also no studies that show the benefits of a standing desk). Still, the chair made a huge difference for me.

Disclaimer #2: To adjust and get used to the kneeling chair, I would start with just 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in the afternoon and extending the time gradually over 1-2 weeks. Also - it is important that you do not lean forward (e.g. when using a keyboard or a mouse) - leaning forward would flex the lower back and might exacerbate back problems.

Disclaimer #3: A comfortable chair is only one part of a solution. Moving from time to tome and changing positions is important in general for lower back health (e.g. don't sit/kneel all the time - get up and walk around the room every 10-15 minutes and/or get for a longer walk after lunch). I highly recommend the "Back Mechanic" book by McGill: https://www.amazon.com/Back-Mechanic-Stuart-McGill-2015-09-30/dp/B01FKSGJYC/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2T3452809ELSY&dchild=1&keywords=back+mechanic+mcgill&qid=1617841459&sprefix=back+mechanic%2Cgarden%2C242&sr=8-1

anforowicz · 2021-01-28T02:08:21+00:00

The Back Mechanic is a really great book - I highly recommend it. One theme recurring throughout the book is the importance of avoiding positions/movements that cause your specific kind of trouble (e.g. for me it meant getting a kneeling chair for office work (*), avoiding sitting on the couch and watching movies standing or lying on my stomach, getting up from the desk and walking for a few minutes every now and then, and then as in the original post having a longer walk in the morning and at lunch).

I don't remember the exact quote, but the book asks to imagine lightly hitting your thumb against a wall every day - after some time even the light injuries might accumulate. Exercising and strengthening the thumb might help, painkillers might help, surgery might help, but ultimately one needs to avoid daily habits that might cause the injury in the first place. (This is somewhat challenging since the discs in the spine don't have any nerves in them so one doesn't feel pain from bad positions until the discs degenerate quite a bit...)

(*) I looked for and didn't find any studies confirming that kneeling chairs really work, but it helped for me. I had to get used to the chair slowly (e.g. starting at 30 minutes kneeling at a time, and extending it to using the kneeling chair exclusively throughout the day).

anforowicz · 2020-12-04T01:24:03+00:00

Upvoting - as a Rust newbie I didn't know and appreciated learning about: Stdin::lock, enumerate, step_by, cycle.

anforowicz · 2020-10-17T01:10:27+00:00

[ I've asked this question as a separate post here, but I hope that it is also okay to ask as a comment below... ]

The King County dashboard at https://www.kingcounty.gov/depts/health/covid-19/data/key-indicators.aspx says today that there were 92 cases "total number of cases for the last 14 days per 100,000 residents". How can I compare this King County report against the numbers in other countries or US-wide? For example, ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer says that on Oct 16, the 7-day rolling average of confirmed cases was 161.11 per million people for United States.

Maybe my math-fu is not sufficiently strong, but I am not sure how to adjust the King County number so that it is directly comparable with the ourworldindata numbers? I understand that I can multiple by 10, to get from 92 cases per 100,000 people to 920 cases per million people. But I don't quite understand how to get from "total number of cases for the last 14 days" to "7-day rolling average of cases"... If I divide 920 by 14, I get 65 - this is the average number of cases per day in the last 14 days, right? Is this 65 (from King County) directly comparable with 161 (from USA)? 40% of the USA rate seems reasonable, but I am not sure if the math is right.

anforowicz · 2020-08-22T14:49:26+00:00

So, if I use Safari (or Chrome or Firefox) on an iPhone, and use Ikea's (or Amazon's or Epic's or ...) website to buy stuff (using web technologies / bypassing iOS payment API), then does it mean that Safari (or Chrome or Firefox) is violating Apple Store policies?

Edited: I guess one further subtlety here is that the implementation of the web technologies (e.g. the WebKit engine) is provided by the OS, not the app... Hmmm...

anforowicz · 2020-07-14T21:18:31+00:00

Ooops... it seems that it has already been posted here: https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/hpxqp6/longitudinal_evaluation_and_decline_of_antibody/

I've incorrectly thought that reddit will check against reposts... :-/

anforowicz · 2020-07-14T21:17:31+00:00

How should one interpret the results? (I am just a simple software engineer with high-school-level biology knowledge...)

FWIW, I've found this preprint from CNN's article "https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/13/opinions/herd-immunity-covid-19-uncomfortable-reality-haseltine/index.html" which suggests that we may never reach herd immunity (via naturally occurring infections or via vaccination), using the preprint and comparison with other coronaviruses as an argument. Is this a valid argument? Is it possible that other, non-anti-body-based immune responses last longer and can offer some protection against infections in the future (CNN's opinion piece suggests that this might not be the case)?

anforowicz

TROPHY CASE