The “industrial sulfur” is actually sodium metabisulfite or E223 (preservative). According to the article, the farmers aren’t supposed to use this preservative at all, so there may be some restrictions with this specific berry.

According to this article E223 is GRAS and approved by several food authorities. Obviously, there are restrictions, so you can’t do whatever you want.

Sounds really cool. Let me know how that works out.

Theoretically, that could help a little bit, but it won’t change the fact that the ear canal is only the gateway to the organ where hearing actually takes place. Due to bone conduction, the crunchy noises can take a shortcut and bypass the outer ear completely.

The noise cancelling headphones are listening to noise coming from the outside and cancels them out. When the source of the sound is in your mouth (see also: bone conduction), the headphones can’t hear or cancel that sound.

The headphones should still cancel the background noise as usual, but they can’t cancel whatever noise is coming from your mouth. I wonder if this mismatch could result in some noise getting through?

If you’re wearing buds, the seal could become inadequate while your jaw is moving, so that could also explain some of the noise.

It’s as if the human mind was built to recognize patterns. There’s probably some biochemical reward mechanism associated with finding perceived patterns and structures, which would explain why that feels pleasant.

The packaging also offers some hints. It has a glass jar and a metal lid, which might click when you open it. My guess is, that bottle went through an oven before being shipped. Glass is heavy and expensive, which isn’t what the manufacturer wants. They wouldn’t use a package like this unless they really have to, which implies heat treatment.

If sterilized properly, that process killed all the microbes in it, which means you can safely ship it and store it in ambient temperatures for a very long time. Chemical reactions still take place, which might affect the taste if you store it for decades or centuries. However, if it’s properly sterilized, microbes aren’t involved in any of it. Once the lid is opened for the first time, airborne microbes immediately contaminate the contents and the clock starts ticking.

Salt and vinegar make the environment hostile for most microbes, but not all. This method will clearly help with limiting the growth rate, but keeping the jar in the fridge would be my advice as well. This way, you get the benefits of multiple methods of slowing down the growth rate.

Yes and no. GPT usually gives me clever solutions I wouldn’t have thought of. Very often GPT also screws up, and I need to fine tune variable names, function parameters and such.

I think the best thing about GPTis that it knows the documentation of every function, so I can ask technical questions. For example, can this function really handle dataframes, or will it internally convert the variable into a matrix and then spit out a dataframe as if nothing happened? Such conversions tend to screw up the data, which explains some strange errors I bump into. You could read all of the documentation to find out, or you could just ask GPT about it. Alternatively, you could show how badly the data got screwed up after a particular function, and GPT would tell that it’s because this function uses matrices internally, even though it looks like it works with dataframes.

I think of GPT as an assistant painter some famous artists had. The artist tells the assistant to paint the boring trees in the background and the rough shape of the main subject. Once that’s done, the artist can work on the fine details, sign the painting, send it to the local king and charge a thousand gold coins.

Who cares if your team got zero points as long as the opposing team got -300 points. Bigger number still wins.

Say hello to negative scores!

Humanity has this default setting where tribalism = TRUE, and social media gives you a place where you can form new tribes around anything and everything all of the time. As a matter of fact, it tends to encourage modern day tribalism. Why do you think antivaxxers and flat earth are a thing. In ancient times that sort of behavior was confined to the house of the local village idiot.

But advertisers care, and they are the true customers Alphabet has to please.

Remember that time when YT started showing banner ads below the video? Yeah, that was like just after the dinosaurs were wiped out and before blockchains became a thing. I was a long time ago, ok. Anyway, that’s when I was about to quit watching YT, but then I suddenly discovered the wonderful world of ad-blocking. Turns out, YT became watchable again.

Short answer: money

Long answer: As more and more ad sales started rolling in, YT was like: “Yes please! Can I have some more of that sweet sweet ad money?” Advertisers were like: “Yeah, sure why not. That seems to boost sales, so how much money can we dump into this black hole?” Some users were like: “WTF! I’m installing an adblocker.”

Meanwhile, nobody was like: “Yes please. I want to see more ads. Who cares about the videos as long as there are lots of ads to watch. This is the best thing ever!”

”Facebook’s AI spam problem is one that is powered and funded primarily by Facebook itself”

Now that you have created a problem, it’s time to start selling the solution. Make a spam detector AI, and put it behind a monthly subscription. People will pay good money to filter out the trash. Also, better include some lootboxes and micro transactions too, while you’re at it.

There are people who buy a new phone every years, even though they don’t really need to. Why wouldn’t the same philosophy apply to some people who are enthusiastic about computer hardware? Actually, when it comes to CPUs and video cards, it already does.

But anyway, even though the customer could get some perceived benefit from this arrangement, the company would still benefit more from the perpetually rising stock value. You know the usual capitalist mentality that would drive this sort of innovation and product development.

Not a surprise. That’s how subscription companies operate these days. Basically like the heated seats BMW tried a few years ago.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/12/23204950/bmw-subscriptions-microtransactions-heated-seats-feature

If I made a service like that, I would require the customer to send the old one back every year. Then the company could sell the refurbished mice instead of throwing them away.

Yeah it’s a horrible idea in all the usual ways, but hear me out. What if Logitech figures out a way to provide actual value to the customer? What if you get a new mouse every year if you send the old one back? That way, you would be paying a subscription for always having the latest mouse. Probably not something I would do, but someone who has more money might appreciate a service like that.

What about her policies though? Being more than one step away from the grave is great, but would she actually make sensible decisions?

And then someone will create a new AI capable of defeating the old one. It’s just AIs all the way.