saturdaysaint (u/saturdaysaint)

saturdaysaint commented on China's Clinical Trial Boom asimov.press/p/china-tria... · Posted by u/surprisetalk

munchler · 8 months ago

Meanwhile DOGE has cancelled more than $2 billion in federal research grants. The US is shooting itself in the foot when it should be competing at its best.

https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/nih-layoffs-budget-cuts-med...

saturdaysaint · 8 months ago

Fascinating, then, how the head of DOGE has deep financial interests in China. It’s really not out of bounds to suggest that his benefactors could’ve pulled some strings to kneecap the US.

saturdaysaint commented on Switch off bad TV settings practicalbetterments.com/... · Posted by u/DitheringIdiot

saturdaysaint · 2 years ago

I found this to be an informative and well-laid out argument in favor of motion interpolation: https://www.wired.com/story/motion-smoothing-defense-hdtv/

I have come to prefer it. I think this comes as a combination of recent algorithms getting better (there are relatively few artifacts and they are far subtler than they once were) and because newer consoles have conditioned me to abhor any content running at less than 60 fps. The jaggedness of 24 fps grates my eyes. I’ve had my iPhone recording 60 fps video for years.

saturdaysaint commented on Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO theverge.com/2023/11/20/2... · Posted by u/mfiguiere

mongol · 2 years ago

This is entertaining in a way, and interesting to follow. But should I, as an ordinary member of mankind, root for one outcome or another? Is it going to matter for me how this ends up? Will AI be more or less safe one or other way, will it be bad for competition, prices, etc etc?

saturdaysaint · 2 years ago

If you use ChatGPT or find it to be a compelling technology, there’s good reason to root for a reversion to the status quo. This could set back the state of the art consumer AI product quite a few months as teams reinvent the wheel in a way that doesn’t get them sued when they relaunch.

saturdaysaint commented on The great junk transfer is coming theglobeandmail.com/canad... · Posted by u/lxm

robocat · 4 years ago

Cleaning up after your parents is a gift you give to them: look at it like them paying it forward for all the times the cleaned up after you as a child.

Psychologically, mentally, and physically, parents can have difficulty tidying up their stuff. My friend’s parents came from very poor backgrounds and had a lot of trash. The father had a shed full of stuff that was useful to him - he knew what was in it and how to use it. When the father died, the stuff in the shed was mostly junk to be sorted into scrap metal or put in the skip. A very few useful tools, a bunch of valueless obsolete tools, and a little antique/collectable stuff. The mother’s stuff was useful or precious to her, mementoes and knick-knacks. Plus some hoarder mentality that made sense given her background. Mostly valueless stuff to anyone else. What value is a drawer of your smalls?

I want my parents to pass their problem down to me and my siblings. I think forcing parents to tidy up or downsize can be cruel. Why be selfish and needlessly make my parents sad?

saturdaysaint · 4 years ago

This attitude of acceptance is probably the most helpful attitude the vast majority of the time, but I was lucky enough to have parents that radically minimized their possessions in their early 60's and moved into a retirement community, and it has first and foremost been a favor to them. As they've aged a few years, they're just enjoying a wildly unencumbered existence with the bare minimum of regular maintenance chores. They're focused on spending time with the people they want to, not puttering around the house. You're right that this kind of mindset can't be forced on senior citizens and it bespeaks a certain level of affluence, but it is a wonderful way for the elderly to live. I'd encourage children to lay the seeds with their parents before they're elderly and more resistant to change.

saturdaysaint commented on A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem theatlantic.com/family/ar... · Posted by u/wiihack

saturdaysaint · 4 years ago

I see the relationship coaches of this stripe all over all sorts of social media, and I just rarely if ever see insights that couldn't have been imparted by your average friendly stranger at a bar. What I mostly see are slightly-to-moderately damaged people who are articulate and engaging enough to find an audience of similarly damaged people who their experiences resonate with. This guy seems fairly innocuous (although this kind of rumination can also be unproductive!) but you see a lot of people fomenting bitterness. I would advise anyone I cared about to seek a credentialed therapist before turning to one of these self-appointed coaches.

saturdaysaint commented on I hate what video games have become ivanca.tumblr.com/post/67... · Posted by u/mattigames

wellthisisgreat · 4 years ago

Yeah the Rambo skin was worth $10 and it added to the experience. I don’t mind paying extra for it.

However Warzone is a prime example of cosmetics affecting the game - remember any of the scandals (DMR-gate of Dec 2020), when the desire to sell weapon blueprints / Battle Pass pushes the designers overpower the new weapons. It’s subtle but very toxic. Or the Roze skin. Even if that one wasn’t intentional they can’t change/remove it now because people paid for it.

saturdaysaint · 4 years ago

Yeah, there's room to quibble when it comes to Warzone, but it really doesn't add up to much in my view. The most gamebreaking advantages - The Roze skin and the broken Mac-10 blueprint - were basically accidents when it was a fairly young game (< a year old), and almost all of them were freebies included in the basic battle pass (so essentially free for anyone that plays regularly). Statistical anomolies still come around and "break" the game every once in a while, but it's really reached a point where most of the main weapons are well balanced to the point that I often think I would have been best off sticking with some of the first guns I levelled up.

Most blueprints effectively just make levelling up new weapons a more pleasant experience, maybe saving you 1 - 2 hours for $20.

saturdaysaint commented on I hate what video games have become ivanca.tumblr.com/post/67... · Posted by u/mattigames

saturdaysaint · 4 years ago

I play Fall Guys and Warzone, both of which offer cosmetic modifications that are unlockable both through gameplay and by purchasing them. IMO, the cosmetics are little more than flair that add a little bit of fun and personal expression to the experience. Along with the "Battle Pass" model, where users are rewarded for regular play during content "Seasons", these mini-economies incentivize people to play regularly (which improves multiplayer games on a lot of levels) and incentivize the developers to continually add content. People that get these cosmetics enjoy having a distinctive profile in a social experience they spend a lot of time in and subsidize gamers that enjoy robust free experiences (e.g. kids/teens who provide a lot of excellent competition). It's all a win-win-win-win in my book.

I'm 41 years old and have fond memories of the old days of packaged buy-once games, but the modern battle pass/cosmetic standard seems like a much more realistic way of having a consistently updated experience with strong engagement year-round.

saturdaysaint commented on Tim Cook tells employees the return to offices will begin on April 11th theverge.com/2022/3/4/229... · Posted by u/polar8

WithinReason · 4 years ago

> More people are dying with Covid now than were dying most of the previous two years, minus 4 peaks of various waves.

There is a huge difference between "dying with COVID" and "dying from COVID".

saturdaysaint · 4 years ago

This line of argument doesn't hold up to the slightest scrutiny. First of all, it's quite pedantic and naive to assume that governments and medical bodies in the richest and most advanced countries haven't worked through similar issues of causality with innumerable other diseases. More to the point, the peaks in COVID deaths magically align with proportionately large spikes in all cause mortality not seen in prior years that have yet to be explained by anything else.

saturdaysaint commented on TikTok shares your data more than any other app and it’s unclear where it goes cnbc.com/2022/02/08/tikto... · Posted by u/underscore_ku

saturdaysaint · 4 years ago

I feel like TikTok is significantly underdiscussed, almost like the tech and business press are assuming it's a flash-in-the-pan more similar to Snapchat than Facebook. It is almost certainly having a major impact on the business of some of the most prominent publicly traded companies in the US, yet there are just a handful of articles discussing their impact on Facebook's disastrous quarterly results.