tqi (u/tqi) - Readit News

tqi commented on Over 40% of deceased drivers in vehicle crashes test positive for THC: Study facs.org/media-center/pre... · Posted by u/bookofjoe

Youden · 17 hours ago

There was a larger discussion in a previous thread on this topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45494730

Since then, [0] has been published and I think it's worth at least a skim. Since it's quite recent the introduction summarizes some of the most recent research.

The things that jump out at me are:

- [0]: Habitual users with baseline concentrations above legal limits perform just as well as habitual users with baseline concentrations below the legal limit, indicating that for habitual users, the legal limit doesn't have any relation to impairement.

- [1]: A study in Canada analyzed crash reports and blood tests to look at the state of drivers responsible for accidents. While alcohol had a very clear and statistically-significant influence on the risk of a driver causing an accident, THC did not.

To steelman the idea that THC causes accidents, [0] only looks at habitual users with baseline levels of THC and [1] only looks at non-fatal injuries.

My conclusion right now is that the number of drivers in accidents with THC in their blood is going up because the number of people with THC in their blood is going up, not because drivers who use THC cause accidents.

The law's assumption that this level of THC is evidence of impairment seems to be invalid.

The law would be better off measuring impairment in some way and perhaps intensifying penalties when an impairment test fails and the user has THC concentration above some threshold.

[0]: https://academic.oup.com/clinchem/article/71/12/1225/8299832...

[1]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31106494/

tqi · 8 hours ago

- [1]: A study in Canada analyzed crash reports and blood tests to look at the state of drivers responsible for accidents. While alcohol had a very clear and statistically-significant influence on the risk of a driver causing an accident, THC did not.

I don't understand how this study can make that claim just looking at crash report data. The assumption that not at fault drivers are representative of people who aren't in accidents at all is pretty generous? It seems likely that folks who are unimpaired are also better at avoiding accidents / driving defensively

tqi commented on This is not the future blog.mathieui.net/this-is... · Posted by u/ericdanielski

tqi · 5 days ago

This article has such palpable distain for the people who consume these products that it makes me wonder why the author even cares what kind of future they inhabit.

> But what is important to me is to keep the perspective of what consitutes a desirable future, and which actions get us closer or further from that.

Desirable to whom? I certainly don't think the status quo is perfect, but I do think dismissing it as purely the product of some faceless cadre of tech oligarchs desires is arrogant. People do have agency, the author just doesn't like what they have chosen to do with it...

tqi commented on X's move to show users' location is a great step toward online transparency washingtonpost.com/opinio... · Posted by u/bookofjoe

damnitbuilds · 21 days ago

The point of early internet discussions was that "On the internet, no-one knows you're a dog".

One could discuss things without the usual silly accusations of sexism or racism or ageism or whatever because no-one knew the characteristics of the other interlocutors.

X now broadcasting everyone's location and people self-announcing their pronouns/race/age whatever are backward steps and make it way to easy for the silly people who want to be victims rather than argue the facts of an issue.

tqi · 21 days ago

There is no reason why "the point" of the internet has to be dictated by people who happened to be online in 1995.

tqi commented on Meta buried 'causal' evidence of social media harm, US court filings allege reuters.com/sustainabilit... · Posted by u/pseudolus

JKCalhoun · a month ago

> To the company’s disappointment, “people who stopped using Facebook for a week reported lower feelings of depression, anxiety, loneliness and social comparison,” internal documents said.

I don't think it's even a stretch at this point to compare Meta to cigarette companies.

tqi · a month ago

Journalist love that study but tend to ignore the likely causal reason for the improved outcomes, which is that users who were paid to stop using Facebook had much lower consumption of news and especially political news.

tqi commented on Why don't people return their shopping carts? behavioralscientist.org/w... · Posted by u/ohjeez

maest · a month ago

> I try to grab an outside shopping cart to leave the world slightly less chaotic than when I entered; which is all we can do in life, perhaps

I lived in several European countries for many years. I then moved to the US a few years ago.

The US strikes me as a less civilised country, in the sense that people, on average don't return the shopping cart. In the first year after I moved, I kept returning the shopping cart, but, after seeing many others not do it, I stopped. I stopped even though I agree it is the right thing to do because I felt like a fool every time I did it. Other people decided their time is too important to return the cart, so why should I be the sucker who does it?

This isn't the only example of uncivilised behaviour I've noticed in the US. Here are other examples: bypassing a long queue of cars only to merge into the lane at the last possible second, skipping red lights if no cars are around, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk and forcing other to walk around me, not saying "you're welcome", not giving up my seat on public transportation to e.g. old people, littering.

Every time I see someone break these markers of civilised society, makes me less likely to abide by them next time.

tqi · a month ago

> so why should I be the sucker who does it?

Because it's the right thing to do.

tqi commented on Is your electric bill going up? AI is partly to blame npr.org/2025/11/06/nx-s1-... · Posted by u/ilamont

tqi · a month ago

> "There's automobiles that have gone from gasoline-powered to electric vehicles," says Drew Maloney, president of the Edison Electric Institute, which represents power companies around the country. "You're also seeing stoves being replaced from gas to electric. And the AI data center growth."

In other words, any usage of electricity is "partly to blame." But of course, "AI" gets clicks, and journalism is fundamentally the practice finding a boogeyman to pin the misfortune of the day on.

tqi commented on Angel Investors, a Field Guide jeanyang.com/posts/angel-... · Posted by u/azhenley

tqi · a month ago

> Elad was elusive but the angel who was most consistently influential and supportive during my entire five-year run at Akita. We had a fifteen-minute call almost every quarter, sometimes at an unpredictable time, but always full of great guidance.

How helpful can a person who spends less than 5 hours over 5 YEARS be? How much time are they even spending learning / thinking about the company?

tqi commented on Internet Archive's legal fights are over, but its founder mourns what was lost arstechnica.com/tech-poli... · Posted by u/thinkcontext

alt187 · 2 months ago

You might be glad to learn a number of studies (mostly commissioked by the European Union) agree on the fact that piracy doesn't hurt sales.

The main consensus is that people who illegally access content wouldn't have bought it otherwise, and that they still advertise it (thus, still driving up sales).

These studies have then been systematically strong-armed into silence by the EU and constituent countries' anti-piracy organisms.

This is probably because the war on piracy, too, is a billion-dollar industry. I'd be glad to blow it all up and give it all to the starving artists and their families.

tqi · 2 months ago

If hypothetically the study had said that piracy does hurt sales, would you change your position on piracy? Because what I'm seeing in this thread is just a bunch of people pointing to studies when they support their priors, or to limitations of studies when it doesn't...

tqi commented on I took all my projects off the cloud, saving thousands of dollars rameerez.com/send-this-ar... · Posted by u/sebnun

fennecbutt · 2 months ago

Et al is for people, Et cetera is for things.

Edit: although actually many people on here are American so I guess for you aws is legally a person...

tqi · 2 months ago

I don't think that's a hard and fast rule? I think et al is for named, specific entities of any kind. You might say "palm trees, evergreens trees, etc" but "General Sherman, Grand Oak, et al"

tqi commented on I took all my projects off the cloud, saving thousands of dollars rameerez.com/send-this-ar... · Posted by u/sebnun

tqi · 2 months ago

I'd be more interested to understand (from folk who were there) what the conditions were that made AWS et al such a runaway hit. What did folks gain, and have those conditions meaningfully changed in some way that makes it less of a slam dunk?

My recollection from working at a tech company in the early 2010s is that renting rack space and building servers was expensive and time consuming, estimating what the right hardware configuration would be for your business was tricky, and scaling different services independently was impossible. also having multi regional redundancy was rare (remember when squarespace was manually carrying buckets of petrol for generators up many flights of stairs to keeps servers online post sandy?[1]).

AWS fixed much of that. But maybe things have changed in ways that meaningfully changes the calculus?

[1] https://www.squarespace.com/press-coverage/2012-11-1-after-s...