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vog commented on I was right about ATProto key management   notes.nora.codes/atproto-... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti
Dwedit · 2 months ago
"View -> Page Style -> Basic Page Style" is required to read any of the text.
vog · 2 months ago
Indeed, it's a pity that the author placed so much focus on a cool looking font that they forgot to take basic properties like "good readability" into account. Form should follow function, not the other way around.
vog commented on The '3.5% rule': How a small minority can change the world (2019)   bbc.com/future/article/20... · Posted by u/choult
AnotherGoodName · 2 months ago
If you have 2+ groups with opposing views, each 3.5%+ it's pretty clear that at least one of the 3.5%+ groups will fail.

Others here note it's really "3.5% if there's no one seriously opposing their objectives" but in my opinion that's a meaningless rule. Of course in those cases non-conflict resolves the issue.

vog · 2 months ago
This is far from meaningless, because if you are too far below those 3.5%, you'll fail to make a change for the better, despite having a good cause with no real opposition.

Those 3.5% are encouraging for all social movements, who suffer (and/or have friends/family who suffer) from some issue in the system, have perhaps developed a good plan out of it, but think they are too small to make a difference.

vog commented on PostgreSQL and UUID as Primary Key   maciejwalkowiak.com/blog/... · Posted by u/taubek
vog · 2 years ago
Note that the article's link to the UUID v7 standard is meanwhile outdated. You should instead head directly to RFC 9562:

https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc9562

(which wasn't yet finished at the time of the article)

vog commented on Research into homeopathy: data falsification, fabrication and manipulation   skeptic.org.uk/2024/07/re... · Posted by u/zaik
rafaelmn · 2 years ago
> If you have "mild problems, which would normally heal on their own", buying no medication at all would be even cheaper.

But placebos actually outperform no intervention.

vog · 2 years ago
Okay, fair point.

But then, why prescribe the most expensive placebos where you co-finance societal harmful behavior, rather than just prescribing the "harmless" placebos that are not homeopathy, which are usually even cheaper and don't have any ideological overhead?

vog commented on Research into homeopathy: data falsification, fabrication and manipulation   skeptic.org.uk/2024/07/re... · Posted by u/zaik
vog · 2 years ago
While I hear this argumentation a lot, I still struggle with this:

If you have "mild problems, which would normally heal on their own", buying no medication at all would be even cheaper.

And from an ethical point of view, the idea of financing a whole (homeopathic) industry that uses your money to produce fake science, even with a single cent, should make one shudder, shouldn't it?

vog · 2 years ago
To those who downvoted: Would you dare to explain your disagreement?
vog commented on Research into homeopathy: data falsification, fabrication and manipulation   skeptic.org.uk/2024/07/re... · Posted by u/zaik
vog · 2 years ago
This is an incorrect summary of the placebo effect. The placebo effect does require the patient to either believe it is effective, or at least not knowing clearly it is ineffective.

This is why clinical studies don't tell neither group (neither the treated group nor the control group) who is in which group, to not spoil the results.

And also, this is why homeopathy puts so much effort into spreading the belief they are effective despite all odds, up to the point of trying to convince people to abandon basic scientific principles.

vog · 2 years ago
Contrast this with advertisement, which actually does work even when people know that it is ads, and which still does work on people how know how ads work.

Also, contrast this with psychotherapy, which usually does work even better if the patient understands how it works, because it enables them to become an active and more effective part of the therapy.

vog commented on Research into homeopathy: data falsification, fabrication and manipulation   skeptic.org.uk/2024/07/re... · Posted by u/zaik
jxy · 2 years ago
THE PLACEBO EFFECT:

It works even when you know it's a placebo.

vog · 2 years ago
This is an incorrect summary of the placebo effect. The placebo effect does require the patient to either believe it is effective, or at least not knowing clearly it is ineffective.

This is why clinical studies don't tell neither group (neither the treated group nor the control group) who is in which group, to not spoil the results.

And also, this is why homeopathy puts so much effort into spreading the belief they are effective despite all odds, up to the point of trying to convince people to abandon basic scientific principles.

vog commented on Research into homeopathy: data falsification, fabrication and manipulation   skeptic.org.uk/2024/07/re... · Posted by u/zaik
pizza234 · 2 years ago
They're even covered by some insurance plans.

A friend of mine is an orthopedic surgeon, and they explained to me that for mild problems, which would normally heal on their own, it's cheaper to cover a placebo rather than real medication.

vog · 2 years ago
While I hear this argumentation a lot, I still struggle with this:

If you have "mild problems, which would normally heal on their own", buying no medication at all would be even cheaper.

And from an ethical point of view, the idea of financing a whole (homeopathic) industry that uses your money to produce fake science, even with a single cent, should make one shudder, shouldn't it?

vog commented on Portable software is more complex than you think   sporks.space/2021/10/30/p... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti
pwdisswordfish9 · 4 years ago
You mention being puzzled. Could you elaborate on why? What do you see as the natural way of doing it instead?
vog · 4 years ago
To me the "natural way" has always been to write portable code in the first place. From time to time, you'll find that parts of it are not portable, so you fix it, and along that way to learned something new about portability and apply it to future improvements on your code as well. Over time, you'll find fewer and fewer portability issue as you get better and better at writing portable code in the first place.

I'm not saying that this is the best way to do this, but to me this was always the obvious thing to do. As a somewhat extreme example, I'd never write a graphical user interface in pure Win32 API and expect it to be even remotely portable by some additional layer. I'd rather use Qt (or GTK, or Dear ImGui, or whatever) for native UIs even for programs that are (for now) meant to be only run on Windows.

To me personally, this has the additional benefit that I can do most of the development and testing in a non-hostile environment (e.g. Debian), then running a cross compiler (e.g. via MXE) and only do the final testing on Windows (well, usually first Wine, then some Windows VM), but at that last stage surprises are extremely seldom.

vog commented on Ask HN: PostgreSQL resources for SQL Server users?    · Posted by u/JeffRosenberg
vog · 4 years ago
I'd recommend starting "from scratch" for the simple reason that the official PostgreSQL manual is excellent:

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/index.html

You'll quickly find which parts of the manual are interesting to you and which ones just repeat what you already know (or could have guessed on your own). Since the manual is very well structured, skipping those parts is very easy.

u/vog

KarmaCake day10115July 24, 2009
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