On a side note, McMaster.com is the very best online shopping site I've ever visited or used. It's blazing fast (a trick based on pre-fetching that you can observe in all its glory in the developer view of your favourite browser), it's logical, uncluttered - perfect.
The price really is eye watering. At a glance, my first impression is this is something like Llama 3.1 405B, where the primary value may be realized in generating high quality synthetic data for training rather than direct use.
I keep a little google spreadsheet with some charts to help visualize the landscape at a glance in terms of capability/price/throughput, bringing in the various index scores as they become available. Hope folks find it useful, feel free to copy and claim as your own.
Back in the day, there was a commercial bulletin board software called TBBS ("The Bread Board System"). It differed from most BBSs in that it could handle multiple lines on a single computer, through a built-in multitasking implementation. Most TBBSs allowed new users to dial in and create new accounts by entering their name and choosing a password on the first login. TBBS had a companion product called TDBS ("The DataBase System") that allowed writing interactive programs for use by users. One of these programs that became popular was a light adventure MUD called Illusions. I had a two line demo of TBBS/TDBS I got from somewhere (I think legitimately, actually), and I downloaded a demo copy of Illusions to play with on my own machine. Looking at its databases, I found something curious - the players' characters and the non-playing characters were stored in the same database, with the user name for all of the NPCs being "aa non-playing character". It turns out the game did not check for a user using that name. And of course TBBS knew nothing of Illusions's design choices. And so by creating a new login account so-named, I was able to play as the NPC characters, moving them around town and chatting with other players to much amusement. At least until the sysop realized what was happening. That is all to say, I too have had the experience of choosing to play as a non-playing character.
(another fun fact: the companion product for connecting TBBS to the nascent Internet was called an IPAD - Internet Protocol ADapter)
Interconnections: Bridges, Routers, Switches, and Internetworking Protocols 2nd Edition - Radia Perlman
Every 2-3 years, particularly in the periods when I'm not actively in network engineering, I re-read this book from start-finish - and it just completely centers my mindset with regards to pretty much every fundamental topic in Network Engineering. There almost didn't need to be a 2nd Edition - most of the major topics were covered in 1st edition - the only major difference is the use of lots of protocol examples. The core material itself is timeless.
Here is just one gem from Chapter 5 - "Hubs, Switches, Virtual Lans and Fast Ethernet"
"I originally resisted adopting the term switch. Unlike thing, switch sounds like a word you'd apply to a well-defined concept, so it makes people assume that there is a crisp definition that everyone else knows. I thought the world was already confusing enough with the terms bridge and router. Unfortunately, people coined the word switch assuming they were inventing a new concept, somehow different from a bridge or a router. And there were various independent product concepts named switch. As "switch" vendors expanded the capabilities of their products, the products wound up being functionally the same as bridges and routers, usually a hybrid or superset. One cynical (and ungrammatical) definition I use for switch is "a marketing term that means fast." Almost all products these days are some hybrid or superset of bridges and routers. So maybe it's right for the industry to settle on a new word, switch, as a more generic term for a box that moves data."
I once read an off hand comment[1] from a dental scientist on Reddit that NovaMin® (calcium sodium phosphosilicate) was shown with strong evidence to reverse tooth decay and promote remineralization but due to complex licensing issues was made OTC in Sensodyne toothpaste everywhere but the USA.
I think the effect is subtle but present and slightly more effective than just fluoride by itself. I travel often enough that I find myself looking for and buying Sensodyne with novamin but without whitening agents when I’m abroad but I understand others source it in the US online. Do check the ingredients - it’s in about 1/3rd of the Sensodyne packages I pick up off the shelf outside the US but certainly not all.
I follow the topic very casually - I understand hydroxyapatite, fluorapatite, and biotin were initially reported to be even better (but only through self-reported studies such as Biomin.) I couldn’t tell you why or if there is now more credibility there nor where to source it if it is. BioMin USA’s anti-fluoride stance raises a lot of red flags for me and is probably what turned me off their brand when I looked into it years ago. GSK Sensodyne sells formulations with fluoride and novamin - I wouldn’t use toothpaste without fluoride. (Edit: I see BioMin UK sells toothpaste with fluoride.)
I've become really obsessed with 'Miyawaki Forests' lately - small, dense, urban forests which can reach a mature state in only a few years. I hope they start showing up everywhere. Fuck minimum parking requirements, where are the minimum forest requirements?
Radar and Sonarr here with Overseerr as an UI for my wife. Bazarr for subs, jackett as a client for torrent sites, unpackerr for unpacking zips. Good old Transmission as download client.
My favorite fat loss drug along these lines is dinitrophenol. It is the true miracle fat burning drug. It interferes with cellular metabolism in such a way that the body just nonstop oxidizes fat. Fat mass loss in the order of a pound a day or more is entirely possible and some bodybuilders use it to get to a ludicrously low bodyfat percentage. Unfortunately oxidizing that much fat generates a lot of heat, so much that an overdose can be lethal because your body literally roasts itself to death and titration is extremely difficult. Oh and blindness is a common side effect. And for added fun it’s an high explosive. Needless to say it’s not FDA approved.
I've found the Month's First Sunday method[1] (a mild simplification of the Doomsday Algorithm including the odd-plus-eleven innovation) easiest, fastest, and most practical. I'm not insisting on it, just great for me, and I wish it were better known.
The fantastic documentary “We Are As Gods” about Stewart Brand spends a considerable amount of time on this topic as he is involved in many of these efforts.
