perrygeo

21 ms·

331.
by perrygeo 2y ago
The difference is that in soil you have microbes and fungus which seek out and break down inorganic nutrients then exchange them with plants for sugar. Plant's access to nutrients is mediated by this underground ecosystem. In hydroponi
332.
by perrygeo 2y ago
"Measure first, discover later" can be a perfectly valid application of the scientific method. It's all about refining the resolution on reality. The problem with dark matter/energy is that we're not guaranteed to d
333.
by perrygeo 2y ago
Aside from local pollution laws, what power do governments have to prevent privately-funded geoengineering? If someone wanted to sail out to the mid-atlantic and start spewing sulfur into the atmosphere, who could stop them?
334.
by perrygeo 2y ago
I get the point of the article, but the headline is just wrong. Not all databases use files. There are a number of vendors that offer direct raw device I/O and bypass the filesystem entirely.
335.
by perrygeo 2y ago
That's what ignorant culture warriors claimed was harming children. There was never much evidence to support those claims; they were the ravings of clowns, not statements to be taken seriously. The damage from social media is widesprea
336.
by perrygeo 2y ago
Interesting to note that "staring at the screen confused" and "systematically working through the problem" look almost identical from the outside.
337.
by perrygeo 2y ago
The 3.5 billion dollar carbon fiber bike industry comes to mind. The Tour de France riders have been using carbon fiber frames almost exclusively for decades. Going back to welded metal frames would reverse decades of technical innovation.
338.
by perrygeo 2y ago
Surely they're not proposing banning all carbon fiber, just in automobiles right?
339.
by perrygeo 2y ago
POSIWID. Life on earth's primary "purpose" if observed from space would be to dissipate low-entropy solar radiation, using it to build temporary structures out of carbon. It is puzzling why life isn't more common. Perhap
340.
by perrygeo 2y ago
Malthus was wrong only in that he didn't anticipate the massive store of energy we were about to unleash with coil, oil, and gas. We were able to smash through Malthus' predictions because we added more solar energy (in the form o
341.
by perrygeo 2y ago
Pump and dumps run from the white house, blatant insider trading, no checks or balances - welcome to post-America.
342.
by perrygeo 2y ago
My favorite is when the LLM hallucinates some function or an entire library and you call it out for the mistake. A likely response is "Oh, I'm sorry, You're right. Here's how you would implement function_that_does_not_ex
343.
by perrygeo 2y ago
> parse and interpret packet headers, apply validation rules, maintain BGP routing tables, add their own headers etc. That's a few more than zero. I don't do network programming, that was just an example to show how even the qu
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by perrygeo 2y ago
> Even if you do, it's quite often a very small part of the entire project. So your projects are only moving bits from one place to another? I've literally never seen that in 20 years of programming professionally. Even network
345.
by perrygeo 2y ago
Not even the most fanatical functional programming zealots would claim that programs can be 100% functional. By definition, a program requires inputs and outputs, otherwise there is literally no reason to run it. Functional programming simp
346.
by perrygeo 2y ago
You sound very certain of yourself. Yet you cite no evidence at all except your gut feeling. Let's review these so-called "poorly considered claims": (2014) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24845118/ &quo
347.
by perrygeo 2y ago
Read it earlier this year and I agree. Also, he's all over various podcasts and youtube channels if you'd rather watch. What I got out of the book was two things: * Mitochondria are freaking cool. * The DSM is bollocks and metabol
348.
by perrygeo 2y ago
Mitochondria doping! People are already thinking how to use it for sports performance. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/02/14/new-doping-trick... Beyond athletic performance and chronic fatigue, som
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by perrygeo 2y ago
I think it's a rational reaction to peak oil. One way or another, we're going to phase out fossil fuels in the next few decades, either through depletion or climate action or market incentives. That implies reduced mobility, highe
350.
by perrygeo 2y ago
Bad analogy. Fortified food provide nutrients to supplement what you get from other foods. One can simply choose to buy white bread that's fortified, or whole foods that have those nutrients naturally. You can't avoid water for to
351.
by perrygeo 2y ago
Alcohol is a potent carcinogen. The EPA considers it in the highest tier of risk - "Known To Be Human Carcinogen" - alongside such fun substances as Asbestos, Benzene and Formaldehyde. Yet fewer than half of Americans polled even
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by perrygeo 2y ago
Agreed. Make a guess, then verify that guess with running code, repeat. I'm surprised this is controversial; engineering ostensibly follows the scientific method. Without forming hypotheses and testing them, there is no scientific meth
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by perrygeo 2y ago
Your hypothesis makes sense. I'd call it "human exceptionalism" - the (wildly unsupported) assumption that we are separate from nature. Religions that see humans and nature as part of the same system don't have this idea
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by perrygeo 2y ago
The article implicates high-fructose corn syrup as the enemy. Which is partially true. But table sugar is also 50% fructose. And fruit, juice, honey and "natural" sweeteners are higher. If we're going to try for low fructose
355.
by perrygeo 2y ago
Which is objectively a different statement than the headline - it heavily caveats the narrative stated in the headline yet still doesn't backpedal fast enough. It completely ignores the fact that electricity is only 20% of carbon emiss
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by perrygeo 2y ago
There's good evidence to suggest that most mammals and other K-selected species (long lived with few offspring) will always expand to fill the productive capacity of their niche, and keep doing so until negative feedback pressure kicks
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by perrygeo 2y ago
Thank you. At this point the renewable energy cheerleaders have resorted to greenwashing; we need voices of reason to hold us accountable. The headline was clearly written to tell a story - that renewables are winning. According to what met
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by perrygeo 2y ago
I agree. Those offline jobs are highly productive and fun. I'd like to think they still exist somewhere. They did 15 years ago. But I'm afraid a whole generation of software professionals is growing up without ever experiencing it
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by perrygeo 2y ago
The conservation biology world has some interesting philosophical problems to wrestle with. On one hand, despite the best efforts, biodiversity loss is accelerating. We're losing habitats and species faster than earth has seen in 60 mi
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by perrygeo 2y ago
Not really. The decline in whaling starts before the introduction of kerosene. And the increase starts after it. Making a case for causality either way is basically impossible from this time series.

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