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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • Tree nested communication is much more superior than traditional thread based communication

    Heavily depends, IMO.

    Nested threads are great temporary discussion of a specific story or idea. They’re absolutely miserable for long-running discussions. New posts get lost in the tree and information ends up scattered across multiple threads as a result.

    It’s also been my personal experience that the nested threads format just doesn’t seem to build communities in the same way forums did. I have real-life friendships that were made on forums decades ago and I never had that experience with reddit despite being a very early user.

    I don’t think that’s entirely due to the ephemeral format, but I do think it plays a part in it. A deep thread between two people on Reddit might last a few hours and a dozen replies before it falls off the page. On forums threads running months or years were pretty common, and that kind of engagement with the same people certainly changes how your relationships develop with them.


  • 80%+ of severe injury and death on a bicycle is caused by motor vehicles, or complications of motor vehicle involvement.

    Which would mean ~1 in 5 have absolutely nothing to do with a motor vehicle. That’s significant.

    There is considerable evidence that everyone wearing a helmet in a car would save vastly more lives and prevent severe head injury

    Then that should be an easy [citation needed] for you because my searches are coming up blank for actual studies. Lots of assertions of it, but I’m not finding anything in terms of actual data.

    It’s very easy, on the other hand, to find comprehensive meta analyses on the efficacy of helmet use.

    It’s also worth noting that the introduction makes a point of calling out another common online assertion that you repeated – that helmets make people engage in more risk-taking behavior – as false:

    There has already been an extensive peer-reviewed literature review conducted by Esmaeilikia et al.5, which found little to no support for increased risk-taking when cyclists use helmets and if anything, they cycled with more caution.

    I don’t feel those people should be called stupid for their choice.

    I don’t think they’re stupid. I think they’re bad at risk analysis. That’s a pretty inherent feature of humans. It’s the reason I want to see actual data.


  • A helmet is only needed if you intend to spend significant time in traffic.

    The worst wreck I’ve ever had on a bike was without a single car in sight. Pinch flat while carrying speed through a steep downhill curve. I split an expensive MIPS helmet in two and still hit hard enough that I had a minor concussion, road rash up one side of my body, and cracked the face of a week old watch just to pour salt in the (metaphorical) wound. I mostly landed on my head and that helmet is the reason I didn’t have drastically more severe head injuries.

    Helmets aren’t just for traffic.


  • He came to suck years later.

    At the time he was considerably farther to the left than the rest of the field short of Dennis Kucinich. Opposition to the Iraq war was central to his campaign when half the party was still trying to justify it. He wanted to push universal healthcare before that was a common position within the party. He was on the cutting edge of promoting gay rights and was extremely popular in the gay community when that community didn’t have the voice it does now. His stint as DNC chair built real party infrastructure and helped set the stage for Obama’s 2008 run.

    The country – and the Democratic Party – were considerably more conservative 20 years ago and he definitely helped push things toward where we are now.

    That said, he’s absolutely said and done some things in recent year that make it pretty clear he’s not the progressive vanguard he was back then. He’s stood still, and arguably regressed, while the country kept moving. It’s unfortunate. But I think it’s also a mistake to dismiss him outright; he was a pretty important figure in getting the party to where it is now.



  • In a vacuum, sure, but it also completely tracks with Sam Altman’s behavior outside of OpenAI.

    Employees at previous companies he’s run had expressed very similar concerns about Altman acting in dishonest and manipulative ways. At his most high profile gig before OpenAi, Paul Graham flew from London to San Francisco to personally (and quietly) fire him from Y Combinator because Altman had gone off the reservation there too. The guy has a track record of doing exactly the kind of thing Toner is claiming.

    What we know publicly strongly suggests Altman is a serial manipulator. I’m inclined to believe Toner on the basis that it fits with what we otherwise know about the man. From what I can tell, the board wasn’t wrong; they lost because Altman’s core skill is being a power broker and he went nuclear when the board tried to do their job.




  • It’s why I’ve avoided anything smarthome tied to any particular vendor.

    My endpoint devices are almost entirely Zwave or Zigbee/Matter based. I started out with a SmartThings hub but migrated it all to Home Assistant last year. HA has honestly had easier integrations than SmartThings did and supports almost anything under the sun.

    I don’t have to worry about suddenly losing control of my devices and the only ‘subscription’ associated with it all is $15/year for a domain name to make setting up remote access easier. This approach requires a little more research, but it opens up the ability to mix and match devices however you’d like. Absolutely zero regrets.










  • The HA SkyConnect does Zigbee and will eventually add Matter support. Z-wave needs a separate dongle, though.

    I’ve literally been in the process of migrating all my Home Automation from SmartThings to HA over the past couple of weeks. I have a mix of Zigbee, Z-wave, and WiFi devices. The HA side has honestly been easier to set up than SmartThings was in the first place.

    I’ve also been working on getting some cameras set up with Frigate and Coral object recognition. That part has been more involved, but I’m pretty happy with the functionality so far.

    I’ve definitely been happy with my decision years ago to stick to devices using standard local protocols. Has made the whole process far less painful than it could have been.

    Funny enough, one of the few things I have that uses a proprietary hub/app are my Hue bulbs – they were my first dip into home automation a decade ago. I haven’t ditched the Hue hub quite yet, but moves like this definitely make me more inclined to.