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Work got me an hp elite book a few year ago and the only thing negative I have to say about it is that the screen is pathetic! Otherwise it's a decent yet overpriced (unless you buy hundreds of them each year like my work place does) laptop. I used to run arch Linux at work but I was denied my favorite OS this time because it's wasn't compatible with the EDR software... So i cannot tell you how bad it is with Linux.

It still hold its charge but then I mostly work on it plugged either via RDP from my personal workstation at home or from the docking station in my office at the campus. So it has less than 50 charge cycles.


the acronym is NAC for N-Acetyl-L-Cystenine (the L is implied). With ACC you could theoretically have S-acetyl-L-Cystenine and that not the antidote !

I did try that weird linux on fat32 distribution but like you I completely forgot its name. I remember that I installed it because I wanted to run bitchx and be able to send ping of death!

2 * 1000 is 2000 ;)

I think you meant 2**1000

the syntax for formatting ate your star https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc


For anyone else who, like me a moment ago, doesn't know the meaning of ** but is curious: it's how many (but not all) programming languages express "to the power of", aka 2**1000 = 2^1000

> 2**1000 = 2^1000

The reason for using `**` is that `^` is widely used for bitwise exclusive-or. So commonly `2**1000 != 2^1000`!


I think Fortran used ** because EBCDIC didn't have ^ or uparrow. ABC and Python followed Fortran rather than C on this point. units(1) supports both.

C uses ^ for bitwise xor and a function for exponentiation, though.

No, C does not have an exponentiation operator! Possibly you meant "and not a function for exponentiation".

I should have said "followed Fortran rather than BASIC".


I meant exactly what I said. C uses a function for exponentiation. Nothing that uses ^ for powers follows C's lead.

https://en.cppreference.com/w/c/numeric/math/pow.html


Oh, I interpreted "a function for exponentiation" as being part of a list of things C uses ^ for. It didn't even occur to me that the sentence had an alternative parsing where it was part of a list of things C uses. C does indeed use a function for exponentiation. And time flies like an arrow!

He's explaining that C was not the reason for picking * over ^

BCD, actually, given that Fortran dates from the mid-1950s. EBCDIC only appeared more or less around Fortran IV, in the early 1960s. Many printers in those days had a 48-character chain/train. After upper-case letters, digits, and a few essential punctuation marks (like . and ,), you weren't left with many options. The 60-character set of PL/I was a luxury back then, let alone lower case.

Hmm, I guess you're right. Also EBCDIC does have ^ apparently, though not ↑: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBCDIC#Code_page_layout

But IBM's BCD character sets, including the 48-character ones you allude to, didn't: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BCD_(character_encoding)#Examp... (though Honeywell's did)

There are a lot of decisions in Fortran that stem from the absence of useful characters. .LT., .LE., .EQ., .NE., .GT., and .GE. is another.


Interesting, thanks!

And != means ≠

Oh that's why i did not get any upvotes /i

Wow, I didn't know that you could write

  like
    this
      for
        code
          blocks

It’s been around since at least occam, maybe longer

If they achieve their goals; I don't know of any tech company I would trust with a direct write access to my brain.


I shudder to think what capability the execute bit would grant.


You literally give them write access to your brain every time you interact with social media.


you have the causality reversed....


Go on


you probably meant metaclass and according to the doc classes inheritance don't have surprising behaviors. And about the metaclass not being inherited here are the implication:

  ...In more prosaic terms, this means that static methods are not inherited.


I consider that the core of Windows (the NT kernel and win32 api) is actually a very polished gem but it is encased in layers of upon layers of barely polished turds ( winui, the win11 shell, the over agressive telemetry, forced ms635 integration, etc..)


Makes sense, given that allegedly Windows NT is very much next gen OpenVMS... https://www.itprotoday.com/server-virtualization/windows-nt-...


The kernel might be a polished gem but win32 API?

Practical is a term I'd use as win32 has managed to survive to this day but that came with a boatload of hacks and problems. It's ugly.


When you run Steam games on Linux that mostly goes via a version of Wine, which implements win32.

Yes, win32 is ugly, and so is x86.


The fact that it clears the plaques quickly is not what so promising about this drugs candidate.

Unkike monoclonal antibodies of dubious effectiveness like elecanemab, donanemab and cie; this work upstream of the plaques. If a compromised BBB is a cause and not a symptom of another underlying cause this has a chance of doing something positive in the clinic. And that is also why this substance is an interesting leads for ALS and parkison.


> dubious effectiveness

Can we stop with that? These drugs were shown to slow down cognitive decline in phase 3 RCTs. Of course, the effect is not as strong as we'd like it to be. But "dubious" it isn't.


I should probably have used the word efficiency instead of effectiveness because I had in mind the ratio benefits/(costs+risk).

from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S227458072...

  Our review of the trial publications found high quality evidence of statistically significant group differences, but also recognized that there are mixed views on the clinical relevance of the observed differences and the value of therapy for individual patients. ...
  If patients are treated, then confirmation of AD by positron emission tomography or cerebrospinal fluid analysis and monitoring for risk of amyloid-related imaging abnormalities was recommended, as done in the clinical trials, although it would strain Canadian resource capacity.


I completely agree that the risk/benefit risk of these drugs isn't good.

But to me, the fact that these anti amyloid drugs show even modest effect on cognition puts the burden of proof back on the amyloid skeptics, since removing amyloid changes at least somewhat the course of the disease.


There was enormous controversy about the readout of those studies, with multiple associated people resigning in protest. The wikipedia page on aducanumab[0] highlights some of the problems. One blurb:

  Aducanumab was approved for medical use in the United States by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in June 2021,[8] in a controversial decision that led to the resignation of three advisers to the FDA in the absence of evidence that the medication is effective.[9][10][11] The FDA stated that it represents a first-of-its-kind treatment approved for Alzheimer's disease and that it is the first new treatment approved for Alzheimer's since 2003.[2] Aducanumab's approval is controversial for numerous reasons including ambiguous clinical trial results regarding efficacy, the high cost of the medication and the very high rate of serious adverse events.[12][11] The FDA considers it to be a first-in-class medication.[13]
  In November 2020, a panel of outside experts for the FDA concluded that a pivotal study of aducanumab failed to show strong evidence that the medication worked, citing questionable efficacy and multiple red flags found with the data analysis.[14] There were also significant health risks associated with the medication; brain swelling or brain bleeding was found in 41% of patients enrolled in the studies.[15]...

For an industry expert who has had nothing good to say about it, I would consult some of the writings from Derek Lowe. Here is a link to when Biogen pulled the drug[1] and a blurb from Derek

  This was a debacle. The entire process (as far as I can see) did no one any good whatsoever - not Alzheimer's patients (first in line), not Biogen, not the FDA. All that talk about how the approval was a "transformational breakthough" (Biogen's PR) is, well, "inoperative" as they used to say in the Nixon administration. In fact, I would argue that the Aduhelm saga has ended up doing a lot of actual damage. It set a precedent, the "Well, they approved this, so why not that?" kind that just sits around causing trouble year after year. Biogen, for example, says that they are now devoting their energies to their second anti-amyloid antibody therapy, lecanemab (Leqembi), but sourpuss that I am, I'm not impressed with that one, either. That's because I think that it is unlikely to actually make a difference to Alzheimer's patients, their families, or their caregivers, while at the same time exposing those patients to risks that are a lot easier to quantify than the drug's possible benefits....
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aducanumab [1]


You're focusing on aducanumab but since them other similar drugs have been approved with similar results.

I any case the debate is not on whether the drugs have an impact on the disease (which they do, unequivocally), but on whether the risk/benefit ratio is good enough (on which I'm also not sold, but that's not the question in our discussion).


For a featureless program it appears to be quite featurefull !

  Opaque and transparencies, at the same time.
  
  Use opaque color for impasto, or glazing over with transparencies, any process, any time.

  Different reflectance behaviour for dense/diluted colors, enjoy the hue shifts as you mix. 
  
  Allow different light source and exposure control of the image.

  Node-Based Brush Engine
  ...


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