Obsolescence comes when Apple conveniently "optimizes" a new architecture in the OS for a new chip... that conveniently, ironically, somehow severely de-optimizes things for the old chips... and suddenly that shiny new OS feels slow and sluggish and clunky and "damn I need to upgrade my computer!." They'll whitewash it not as planned obsolescence but optimization for new products. Doesn't have to be that way, shouldn't be that way, but its incredibly profitable.
Maybe by that time ARM linux on this platform will be excellent and we can migrate to it for old gear. I still have a 2011 MBP running Linux on my electronics workbench and it is just fine.
Dont worry, that guest blog post actually read the research results completely wrong and its the opposite. The coils were supposedly attentuating the radiation waves, which is why your right side has a lower incidence. Furthermore, any scientist will tell you a non-powered set of unenergized coils cannot amplify anything. Amplification requires power. Bedsprings are not powered.
> "Furthermore, any scientist will tell you a non-powered set of unenergized coils cannot amplify anything. Amplification requires power. Bedsprings are not powered."
You might wonder how a magnifying glass can ignite paper, why a satellite dish on the side of a house is a dish, how a solar cooker works, why a radio telescope works, or how a roof can turn trickles of rain water into a powerful stream coming out of a drain, all of them unpowered, all of them not needing powered amplifying to have an effect.
You’re confusing concentration with amplification, and you’re not explaining how you think bed springs could cause concentration despite having no similarity in form or action to your examples.
I'm not confusing them. The statement "any scientist will tell you a non-powered set of unenergized coils cannot amplify anything. Amplification requires power. Bedsprings are not powered." suggests that the only way there could be measured increase in radio wave strength at a point is if there is a powered amplifier, and so the lack of powered amplification proves there is no possible effect, case closed. This is a weak argument because it doesn't address concentration. I am not claiming that an effect does occur, I am saying that argument is not sufficient to show an effect cannot occur.
> "despite having no similarity in form"
When you get into bed, your weight curves the bed springs with you at the centre of a dish-shape. Is that not a similarity in form? If you want to go down that route, this image of bed pressure points[1] shows the most weight and curvature around the hips and thighs, areas the article claims are most affected by melanoma, and less curvature around the legs, neck, head.
I am not making the claim that this is connected or significant, I am wondering how you can think that bedsprings don't curve around a person?
Agree - as someone who took Adderall in highschool and college, and has started taking it again as an executive in my career, I always took it to be able to handle multitasking more efficiently with less distraction, and to motivate an action to be performed vs procrastinating. A test in which you HAVE to get a job done and you're being monitored and timed - I wouldn't expect a large improvement in results with 'smart drugs'. I think it would be much more interesting to watch study or work habits while under the influence of these smart drugs, measured in pages reviewed/written or emails sent or slides created or phone calls made, etc. True measures of productivity without knowing someone is looking over your shoulder.
Also notice as I take my "smart drugs" my ability to focus in meetings is increased, and therefore allows me to better recall information in subsequent days... vs when not on meds I'm constantly distracted and my memory is much more foggy, especially specifics or details.
> and to motivate an action to be performed vs procrastinating
I’ve watched several peers go down the path of trying to use stimulants for motivation starting in college and again later in my career. There’s no denying that it works at first. They are stimulants, after all, and they stimulate people especially well when they first start taking them.
The problem is that the motivation from stimulants is famously prone to tolerance and rebound effects. It’s also very prone to habit-forming associations. I’ve noticed several people try to use prescription stimulants in an “as needed” fashion when they need to get a lot of work done quickly and they don’t really want to do it. It doesn’t take long before it’s obvious to their friends and coworkers when they’re having an off day or an on day, even though they might deny any rebound effect. It gets scary when they do this so long that they forget how to self-motivate without taking stimulants because they’ve built such a strong mental association between “I have a lot of work to do” being a trigger for “I should take another pill today” or even “I’ll save this work until tomorrow when I can take a pill”. It gets even scarier when tolerance sets in (to the motivating/stimulating effect, not so much the intended attention-enhancing effect) and they’re now flirting with escalating doses, double doses, combinations with ‘nootropics’ to boost effects or ‘reduce tolerance’ and other slippery slopes.
The short-term productivity boost shouldn’t be denied, but I think it’s also short-sighted to hold these drugs up as a free lunch productivity boost. Let’s be honest: A little experimenting here and there isn’t going to show tolerance, extensive rebound, psychological associations, or other effects, but that’s also what gets people in trouble when they start to think it’s a free lunch. There’s a reason the traditional ADHD treatment approach involves taking the same dose every day rather than encouraging the patient to build psychological associations between taking the drug to alter their mood state.
The strange part about this conversation is that if I wrote all of the above text about drinking 2 energy drinks at the start of a work day, few people would argue with it. The tolerance, rebound, and dependence effects of caffeine seem to be well known in pop culture. For some reason people with a little exposure to prescription stimulants seem to think that the normal rules don’t apply to them, at least at first.
A lot of people who have minimal or sporadic experience with stimulants seem to think they’re no-strings-attached productivity boosts, but there’s no free lunch. The brain will adapt over time.
Very good summary of long term situation, I hope OP and similar folks would realize the drawbacks. Indeed, concept of 'free lunch' simply doesn't exist in reality, especially when it comes to drugs. Our bodies and minds constantly adapt and what caused a certain reaction before will gradually cause less of it the more its used. Some folks fare better, some worse, some have very low threshold for addictions.
A very US-centric view I think, i never knew a single person in my University who took these 'enhancing' drugs, we just got wasted from alcohol and smoked weed. And I went through rather stressful University where 2/3 of people who started were thrown out of school in first 2 years in one or the other filtering hardcore courses with slightly psychotic professors (still not getting why by far the hardest course from 5 years for studying freakin' Software engineering had to be 'Theoretical electrotechnics' with some hardcore math way beyond our actual math courses, of course never used any of that, not even on rest of studies).
Anyway, any substance you abuse will eventually kick back quite hard, if it didn't yet give it some time (or take a bit harder look in the mirror next time). Same for bad habits.
I could see someone making the exact same arguments that you're making about caffeine: you need to increase the dose over time, it's habit forming, people are not the same when they're not on it, etc; but many would argue that they drink coffee successfully for entire lifespans and are better off for it. You're demonstrating a 'spiraling out of control' reaction that happens when people habituate to stimulants but—well, I'm not sure how many cases this actually occurs in.
Stimulants may be used by individuals with true deficiencies in an effort to get to baseline. Many people who start using stimulants in their 20's and 30's report being able to express healthy, practical behaviors that they couldn't summon themselves to express before: cleaning the house, making it to meetings on time, paying attention in conversations. The caution that you're expressing is warranted with any substance, but I'm sensing a bit of fearmongering which I think could possibly stop individuals from trying a substance through which they could possibly receive benefit.
I drink coffee every morning and have for pretty much my entire adult life. People might be better off for it because coffee in moderation is healthy and has various bioactive compounds in addition to caffeine that can reduce risk of some diseases... but I don't think the caffeine itself has any cognitive benefits for me at all compared to if I were to never drink coffee. It's just an addiction I'm completely adapted to, and skipping a morning coffee just means I'm a bit extra tired and sluggish through the day. Maybe dopaminergic stimulants are different, especially for people with true ADHD, and they can maintain an effect over time even at a dosage plateau.
I would get a short term productivity boost with caffeine, and then a remarkably unproductive time when it wore off. I deduced that the "up" part of the curve was cancelled out by the "down" part.
So I switched to decaf. I'll still enjoy regular coffee now and then as a special treat.
I get distracted easier if my diet is awful (which it has been in the past)... Refined carbs, sugar, tap water (fluoride in tap water is insane:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5285601/) and highly processed foods. Switch to a diet high in nitric oxide and run and I'm a much better problem solver. And I have no desire to work "for fourteen straight hours" and I'll find another job if I'm being asked too.
"This review finds, with moderate confidence, that higher fluoride
exposure (e.g., represented by populations whose total fluoride exposure approximates or
exceeds the World Health Organization Guidelines for Drinking-water Quality of 1.5 mg/L of
fluoride) is consistently associated with lower IQ in children."
You don't seriously think that drinking fluoride is OK? It's been studied to death and it's obvious at this point that long term fluoride exposure causes developmental neurotoxicity. Multiple countries have sponsored these studies and they show negative correlations to IQ and an increase in fluoride. They've demonstrated this in rats with sodium fluoride as well.
From your first link, they literally state that the "moderate effect" is at concentrations exceeding what flourinated water supplies in the US have. Here's the comment.
>Reviewer comment (DocB1_Monograph, page 2): It
would be helpful if the Abstract was clear in the Discussion
that the conclusion about effects on IQ in children was
derived from high human exposures (higher than US
exposures) without getting into more hazard conclusions or
assessments.
They repeatedly say that the current research is no where near comprehensive and results are weak.
Why stop here? Just take the 10 first results in Scholar, you have as much low correlations as no correlation results. You can also easily find structural issues in many papers. And finally fluoride supplement from the family can easily tip the scale dramatically in total consumption which make the comparison pointless.
Finally, there is probably a level at which it actually does become toxic. Like with many other minerals, too little is actually harmful, there is a right dosage and too much is again showing toxicity.
Why do the papers against do not mention this, do not mention any theorical model to explain their findings, do not correct for socio-demographics factors when we know that intelligence is generally very poorly related to any other variables except those ones which disproportionately explain it?
"And finally fluoride supplement from the family can easily tip the scale dramatically in total consumption which make the comparison pointless."
In groups of 100? What's the percentage of people that routinely consume toxic levels of fluoride from dental supplements (that study ran four months)? People don't generally eat toothpaste or drink mouthwash but I'm sure it happens. I just wouldn't assume that it would happen often enough to give you poison data.
" Like with many other minerals, too little is actually harmful, there is a right dosage and too much is again showing toxicity."
This is where I'm at on tap water...I assert that LOW-DOSAGE exposure over extended periods of time is bad and I assert that in the US there are area's that have incredibly high-doses of fluoride in tap water (at least 6 parts per million). Which is bad all around. Water is controlled at the jurisdiction level and there's NO guarantee that you're getting below the recommended dose of fluoride. I'm of the opinion that it's completely nuts to put this stuff in the drinking water and the Indian, Harvard, and recent NIH papers appear to back this up.
"Why do the papers against do not mention this, do not mention any theorical model to explain their findings, do not correct for socio-demographics factors when we know that intelligence is generally very poorly related to any other variables except those ones which disproportionately explain it?"
I agree with this...In the first study I could not tell if they controlled for socio-economic status. They identified villages with varying levels of fluoride and called it a day. The Harvard study did though. And the American study I linked to seemed to control for this as well...And they all came back with results that were similar...Repeated low-doses of fluoride have detrimental effects to development health.
Form the harvard study:
"We carried out a pilot study of 51 first-grade children in southern Sichuan, China, using the fluoride concentration in morning urine after an exposure-free night; fluoride in well-water source; and dental fluorosis status as indices of past fluoride exposure. We administered a battery of age-appropriate, relatively culture-independent tests that reflect different functional domains: the Wide Range Assessment of Memory and Learning (WRAML), Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-IV) digit span and block design; finger tapping and grooved pegboard. Confounder-adjusted associations between exposure indicators and test scores were assessed using multiple regression models. "
Agreed - when I dont take Adderall, the closest I feel to it is when I do intermittent carb-free fasting paired with high water intake. If I eat shitty, I have what feels like a severe mental hangover every single day with significant impacts to motivation and productivity.
> I think it would be much more interesting to watch study or work habits while under the influence of these smart drugs, measured in pages reviewed/written or emails sent or slides created or phone calls made, etc. True measures of productivity...
I think you've confused "productivity" with "bulk". Do you evaluate engineers by how many lines of source code they write in a day?
Lots of jobs do actually involve bulk reading and writing with relatively low quality targets. Lawyers and assistants being the prime examples. Also, almost all of undergrad for many, many degrees.
I think you're missing the point. If you struggle with ADHD / executive dysfunction, there is a material benefit to measuring by those in that kind of job. Ultimately it is not that you're at a normal baseline and these things just make you do more busy work, it's that you struggle to keep up with so many competing priorities and demands that you end up dealing with none of it. So yes, for this purpose, that measure is worthwhile in this case.
This is well said. People who dont have ADHD or a similar cognitive dysfunction look at smart drugs as a boost above average to gain high performance - because they havent experienced ADHD or dismiss it. Unfortunately the reality is that folks with ADHD typically feel very below average regardless of their IQ, missing out on meeting details, falling behind in work, procrastinating severely vs their peers. Adderall makes me think "so this is what everyone else feels like" when I take it, and I can just get things done at the most simple levels.
Depends on level, no? Certainly it seems higher up (PhD or other research-oriented role), rote busy work may be necessary from time to time, but it also requires more creative work trying to synthesize new ideas.
ADHD has too much creativity and barely any capacity for bulk, so trading a bit of that creativity to do the bulk work is worth it.
Imagine if your brain refuses to do worthless uncreative work, that is ADHD, it is great for coming up with ideas but sucks for doing the work you often have to do.
I agree with you there. But the thrust of the article was using drugs as “cognitive enhancers” not to treat a medical condition of ADHD. Bringing someone up to baseline is one thing, but this is not that.
Its not that they have some novel idea - its that they're committing to that idea at a corporate level on a massive scale. It's essentially giving us all our best shot at achieving said results. Tesla thinks they've laid out the bridges necessary to get there, and they're publicly making a claim so they can be held accountable. That is why it's a big deal.
Most of you focused on iteration and entrepreneurship should appreciate Delaware simply for its incorporation status alone. Why does everyone incorporate in Delaware do you ask? Is it some tax break or something purely financial, as most people guess? Nope. It's because Delaware put a stake in the ground a LONG time ago and said that they want to be the experts at dealing with business law. So much so that they have their own special court system brought over from England called the Court of Chancery, which iterates its laws at a much faster pace than typical government to keep up with the current business environment. This court system is comprised of Chancellors and Justices who are known to be the best in the world at business law. And when you take a close look at who elects the Court's officials, its strictly divided into half Republicans and half Democrats, with mixed representation from legal and non-legal backgrounds, same with politics. It's about as unbiased as one can get. and from an experience perspective, the Chancellors and Justices ONLY focus on business law cases. Would you want your business case to be dealt with by a judge who just had a divorce case before yours and a criminal case after yours?
I wouldnt either.
And from a development perspective, Delaware made their own Division of Corporations almost like a lean startup with the goal of making it the EASIEST and FASTEST way to incorporate your business, with their business hours being 24/7 with international support. You can literally incorporate your business in 15 minutes or less. Try doing that in your home state. Look into the history of the Division of Corporations and the Court of Chancery if you're interested, it's a fascinating story.
So at the end of the day, when you're incorporating a company and inspecting your fiduciary responsibilities to your future employees, shareholders, investors and customers... you want to make sure you incorporate wherever the Business laws are most up to date, with a fast process, a quick judicial system that plays the game by the books and will be swift and fair with a proven track record of extensive experience. Delaware has made itself the no-brainer solution to all of those problems.
And for that, we should thank them (regardless of how shitty their tolls are, ha).
Efficient business law and registration is very important. It's practically the secret ingredient of the "Anglosphere". Similarly the UK and Ireland have a big advantage in ease of company registration compared to the average EU country. Estonia have made a deliberate effort to copy this.
The book The Other Path has a fantastic account of how improving business law was a key ingredient in stabilising Peru and defeating Shining Path. (Should be taken with a grain of salt, but it's a fantastic idea)
Note that this does not require it to be made anti-employee or anti-consumer! It just has to be clear, simple, effectively and fairly enforced.
While some like the local laws, CEOs have openly stated they've incorporated there for tax reasons, and there's research suggesting the tax benefits matter more than the legal benefits: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1737937
However, I would argue that situation runs directly against the broad tenants of American Democracy. Specifically, that states should regulate their internal commerce to some extent and the Federal government should regulate the rest. Here, you have one state that allows an end-run around both institutions (except for the minute number of people actually living in Delaware).
That idea was invented at a time when the fastest way to travel or communicate was by horse. In the age of the automobile, the airplane, and the internet, there is barely any such thing as "internal commerce" any more.
I'd add that there are competing constitutional priorities, one of ensuring states can regulate their own affairs, and another of ensuring a common market, and ensuring that the legal frameworks of the various states are interlocking.
Balancing these two values is not trivial. Article 4 takes a shot, it's how we got here.
Odd to claim it's antithetical to American democracy. These sorts of compromises between union and independence, with all their odd imperfect results, are pretty thoroughly baked in.
* In the age of the automobile, the airplane, and the internet, there is barely any such thing as "internal commerce" any more. *
In that case, the government elected by the population of all fifty states seems a more appropriate regulatory body than that elected by just one of the smallest state populations in the union.
> You can literally incorporate your business in 15 minutes or less. Try doing that in your home state.
According to https://corp.delaware.gov/faqs/, their expedited service offers 1 hour, 2 hour, same day, and next day service. I didn't see anything there about how long regular service takes, but according to lawyers who answered a question about this [1] on Quora, it is about a week. Is there some faster way to get service (I saw something about some third party incorporation services have direct update access to the database, so maybe they can do it faster than going through the government directly?)
My state, Washington, offers expedited service, which is two business days. You can get same day (usually less than an hour) if you file in person before 3:30 PM.
That said, I'm having a hard time thinking of a scenario where I'd be trying to form a corporation and want expedited service, let alone be willing to actually pay more for it [2]. What's the use case for this?
As far as where to incorporate goes, there are some good points for Delaware if you are going to do a large public company that operates in multiple state. If your company is going to a small private company doing business only in your home state, on the other hand, incorporating in your home state is often going to make more sense, at least if your state has reasonable corporate law, such as in states that use the Model Business Corporation Act.
Even big public companies sometimes find incorporating in their home state fine. Apple, for example, is a California corporation. Microsoft is a Washington corporation. Microsoft did change to Delaware in 1986, five years after initially incorporation in Washington, because Delaware was more liberal about allowing the company to indemnify officers, but Washington changed its laws on that point and Microsoft re-re-incorporated back to Washington in 1993. Overall, about 35% of the Fortune 500 are not incorporated in Delaware.
[2] OK...I can think of one situation. I used to work at a small Unix workstation maker called Callan Data Systems. Callan was founded and owned by three founders, who were all equal. I asked one of the others once how Callan's name ended up on the company if they all were equal.
The answer was that they had everything done to start the company except actually filing the papers, which they could not do because they could not agree on a name. This impasse went on for quite a while. During that time, the two other founders went away for a few days on a hunting trip. When they got back Dave told them he had incorporated using a temporary name so that actually get things going, and they could change the name later once they thought of a name. That temporary name was "Callan Data Systems".
They were never able to agree on a new name, and so it stayed Callan Data Systems until the end.
Perhaps expedited filing would be useful in that situation, so Dave could make sure they were incorporated before the others got back because if the filing has not yet been processed they may have been able to withdraw it, and they'd be right back where they were.
Because fundamentally thats still less convenient for the customer. In a perfect world, you want to be picked up from your front door and dropped off at the front door of your destination. And if you can avoid highways and traffic, even better. This provides the infamous 'last mile' solution to transportation, instead of forcing everyone onto mainline routes and artery networks.
I don't see something like this scaling in the way that a rail network can. Shuttling a few people at a time won't be enough for morning/evening rush hour, you'd need loads of these to match the carrying capacity of a train, and then you've reinvented the problem of traffic (although presumably much less dense; e.g. I imagine you'd join a queue and have to wait until the airspace isn't congested before your journey is permitted).
That's also an optimistic outlook. One contributor to traffic is people using a whole car just for themselves; since we've not figured that out after several decades of having cars, I doubt making them fly will solve the problem.
I can imagine niches for this, and wish them luck, but I don't think it'll make a dent in mass commuter transport.
This doesn't even remotely provide a last mile solution because even if they get the aircraft working the landing pads will be more than a mile apart. Just because it's a VTOL aircraft didn't mean you can land it on a city street. A large, securely fenced area free of nearby obstacles will be needed. Where are you going to put those in a dense city? And don't try to tell me that they're going to land on building roofs; most roofs are unsuitable because they're too small or not flat or full of ventilation equipment and antennas.
You dont afford it. You hail it like an uber. And its autonomous, so you dont need a pilots license. And because its picking up and dropping off dozens and dozens of 'rides' a day, the cost is shared by the user base. A short flight 2 hours away could be $100. Hell of a lot better than spending your time stuck in traffic. Also begins the process of easing congestion on highways.
The other thing is that they could still be flown a few feet above ground but without an actual road. It would eliminate the need to maintain a road system and if the thing fails at least it will not be the high altitude crash landing that kills you( although traveling at 300km/hour and loosing power will still be really bad even if you are just a few feet above ground). I think it would make it an easier sell to the public.
[Edit] Obviously I know nothing about aviation. So based on the comments below I stand corrected.
That's totally unrealistic. Low altitude flight is extremely dangerous due to the risk of hitting trees, towers, power lines, hills, etc. Military helicopter pilots are well trained and have good equipment but they still have frequent crashes during low-level training missions. If anything goes wrong you impact the ground and die with no chance to recover. The general public won't tolerate that level of risk, and the FAA would certainly never permit it.
> And because its picking up and dropping off dozens and dozens of 'rides' a day, the cost is shared by the user base.
I imagine charging time would be an issue; there would have to be well-stocked supplies of batteries near each dropoff point, and some way to quickly swap them out.
Many people are failing to appreciate the "tesla for the skies" model that is coming. Uber is actively pursuing the acquisition of companies like Lilium. Long term, roads aren't a great solution to increasing populations. The Ubers of the sky which land in your front yard or the top of your building and whisk you anywhere within 200-300 miles is coming... fast. And by making the eletric VTOL aircraft autonomous with waypoints, no one has to be a pilot. You simply hail a plane with your app, hop in, fly to your destination and depart. Many companies are testing full-size models like Lilium... for example, http://www.jobyaviation.com/. No one has carried a human passenger yet, and none with autonomous waypoint flying. But soon... within a year.
Hey there, I'm intimately familiar with the poultry industry in all aspects. What you're referencing is for egg-utilizing companies, like unilever, who need eggs in their products (ice creams, etc.). Unilever is requiring their egg producers to adopt new technologies to detect male chicks in the eggs and prevent them from hatching, leading to only the female chicks growing into hens, which lay the desired eggs.
The chicken-producing industry (very different from the egg producing industry) does use males. They're differentiated for some products (Perdue's Oven Stuffer Roasters, for example), but 95% of all producers in the country now run "Straight-run" operations, meaning they dont differentiate between male and female birds (no sexing the chicks and separating them). Originally this was a problem, conforming your machines to process two different sized birds (a double-bell-curve, so to speak), but streamlining the selective breeding over the years has brought the females and males together as far as feed conversions and weight gains go.
Always happy to shed light on the poultry industry and it's many quirks :)
The Russian situation is recent, due to the Ukranian conflict. The more general observation that there are different preferences in poultry consumption globally, resulting in, literally, one bird being split and sent to opposite ends of the Earth, is what I was emphasizing.
Not knocking you in any way here, just adding my own two bits. Appreciate your insider's view, really.
Interesting to hear about the industry side. We have 20 chickens we keep as a hobby - a mix of hybrids and pedigrees. We can't tell the sex of some of these until they're weeks old, let alone at the egg stage.
Typical commercial sexing methodology is by holding the wings of the chicks out and looking a the feathers on the wing-tips. There are two sets of feathers there; if the feathers are of equal length, the chick is male. If one set of feathers extends further, the chick is female.
