zinkem (u/zinkem) - Readit News

zinkem commented on Enhancing gut-brain communication reversed cognitive decline in aging mice med.stanford.edu/news/all... · Posted by u/mustaphah

inanutshellus · 3 days ago

Everyone's "poo-pooing" the article because the title doesn't mention mice, but, FWIW, stories of gut biota affecting humans behavior have been documented for a while.

Memory gain is noteworthy, which is the article's "wow" factor, but everyone's just knee-jerk smirking so ... here's a few random articles to gross you out about the wild world of trading microbiota and, for better or worse, changing your personality:

  * "My butt made me crave candy."[1]
  * "Gee, I'm not bipolar anymore thanks to my husband's butt juice infusion."[2]

Crazy, right?

   [1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-behavioral-microbiome/202404/hacking-an-individuals-personality-through-their-gut-contents

   [2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-28/faecal-microbiota-transplant-credited-with-curing-bipolar/105541522

zinkem · 3 days ago

I believe this research is totally true-- I had a lot of memories come back after

1. I stopped drinking heavily and using other drugs, i.e. marijuana

2. managed my diet to avoid heartburn without medication

3. schedule my meals so it was easier to sleep at night (always eat something for breakfast when I wake up)

I did not need any "poo infusion" or anything.

I had a gal bladder removal that didn't fix the problems the doctors thought it would and got a lot smarter about the kinds and variety of food I eat.

I believe alcohol in particular was really screwing up my gut biome and entire digestive system.

zinkem commented on The Brand Age paulgraham.com/brandage.h... · Posted by u/bigwheels

jgrahamc · 10 days ago

"Because at Patek he'd encounter the most extreme brand age phenomenon: artificial scarcity. You can't just buy a Nautilus. You have to spend years proving your loyalty first by buying your way through multiple tiers of other models, and then spend years on a waiting list."

Strange game, the only winning move is not to play.

I've heard other brands do this (Ferrari?) and, of course, there are lines outside "luxury" brands like Louis Vuitton. Why bother?

PS I'll stick to my Casios: https://blog.jgc.org/2025/06/the-discreet-charm-of-infrastru...

zinkem · 10 days ago

> Strange game, the only winning move is not to play.

What a tired aphorism. Just like PG's 50 year old insights.

zinkem commented on Should random() be banned? r2c.dev/blog/2021/should-... · Posted by u/pabloest

zinkem · 5 years ago

I most commonly use random() for generating names (e.g. docker's container names) and generating test inputs. I don't care about cryptographic safety in either case.

zinkem commented on Slack is now easier to use with Microsoft’s Office 365 apps theverge.com/2019/4/9/183... · Posted by u/praveenscience

probdist · 7 years ago

This is a good move from Slack. Microsoft teams is an extremely high quality product already. Slack has to be wary of this competitive force nipping at their heels. I've seen teams make good penetration into large companies by starting as the alternative to sharepoint for new projects/working groups.

Team's live editing functionality of excel files is really really valuable for team collaboration. Slack closing the gap on O365 integration is important for enterprise sales.

zinkem · 7 years ago

> Microsoft teams is an extremely high quality product already.

This has not been my experience with MS Teams. If I respond to a message on my phone, and then return to my laptop, Teams has disconnected and I have to restart the app on my laptop in order to get updated messages. Scrolling back even 5 minutes in Teams' message history incurs multi-second latency sometimes, so reviewing the context of a conversation you're in is very painful. Threading is handled very poorly in teams and makes teams feel much more like a decades old forum than a chat application.

I do agree this is a good move for Slack, but only because organizations are adopting teams due to its bundling with Office 365, something most companies are already using. Slack has no other way to survive because the people in the org making these decisions aren't concerned with the quality of the tools they are choosing, just the idea they are getting something for free.

zinkem commented on Convert Markdown to PDF only using browser md2pdf.netlify.com/... · Posted by u/realdennis

zinkem · 7 years ago

I've been using the Markdown Reader Chrome extension and using the browser print function to do this kind of conversion.

What would be really useful (to me personally) is a tool that renders plantUML/mermaid embedded into markdown to a PDF. I haven't been able to find a simple solution that doesn't require writing code to integrate the libraries together, or rendering the images separately and bringing them into the markdown document (which is tedious).

zinkem commented on Nginx to Be Acquired by F5 Networks nginx.com/blog/nginx-join... · Posted by u/eduren

gbuk2013 · 7 years ago

Pretty much everything. :)

L4-L7 load balancing, distributed DNS, SSL offload, WAF, DPI, data centre firewall and other things. With a nice WebUI to configure all that.

The Tcl iRules allow you to hook into pretty much any stage of the request or the response L4-L7 at FPGA speeds to do whatever you wanted to the request / response data.

It's a very powerful product.

zinkem · 7 years ago

> any stage of the request or the response L4-L7 at FPGA speeds

I also work at F5, and used to work on the FPGA. This is unfortunately not true for TCL iRules. The FPGA basically only operates on L2-4, L7 is all software.

There was some talk about doing L7/iRules in an FPGA but prototypes never produced compelling enough performance gains to make it worth it.

zinkem commented on How not to design a wire protocol esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8254... · Posted by u/alexeiz

zinkem · 7 years ago

Not mentioned in the article, but bit packed data structures are easier to interpret in hardware and offer more guarantees. If I'm designing an FPGA/ASIC I can predict how many clock cycles a statically sized data structure will need to move through my system, and how much RAM I need while it's being processed.

I have spent a lot of time working with FPGAs that process network packets and many of the performance guarantees relied on the rigid structure of L2-4 protocol headers.

zinkem commented on Ask HN: How long does it take you to learn a new language? · Posted by u/isthispermanent

zinkem · 8 years ago

I agree with others here that learning a language has a lot to do with learning an ecosystem, libraries, and culture. To contribute to an existing project, it's not necessary to really know the language that intimately. I "know" a handful of languages, but I have contributed in environments that I don't "know."

To learn languages quickly, I think the best way is by learning the 'building blocks' languages are composed from. How are function arguments passed (value vs reference), how is memory management handled (garbage collected, reference counted, manual?). Learning these lower level language concepts then allows a person to approach a new language by saying "How does this new language X handle concept Y?"

zinkem commented on Korg Monologue – Monophonic Analogue Synthesizer korg.com/us/products/synt... · Posted by u/Socketubs

thedjinn · 9 years ago

I own a Microkorg and must say that I'm not really impressed by the sounds the Monologue offers; it seems far too limited and doesn't have that deep punchy bass that the Microkorg offers. And it's a lot more expensive too. It makes me think of the iPhone 5C.

zinkem · 9 years ago

I'm not sure where you're getting your pricing, but the Monologue is $299 [1] and a new MicroKorg is $399 [2].

The MicroKorg is a great piece of equipment, but it's also prone to aliasing problems at the upper end, which shouldn't be present in the Monologue since it's all analog.

The MicroKorg also offers different features: FM Synthesis and a Vocoder. The Monologue has a full 16 step sequencer, wheras the MicroKorg has only an arpeggiator.

For this price point I think a lot of mucisians are going to find the Monologue is a good value. It isn't far off the MiniBrute which came out at $400 and has less features.

[1] http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/MonologueBK

[2] http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/microKorg