alephnullshabba's comments

This isn't what goog-411 was. You would dial Google's 1800 number, and then tell a voice prompt the name of the business and location, and google would try and automate looking the business up and then route the call for you by ringing them automatically. In the pre-smart phone era, this would allow you to call a business with just your dumb phone. GOOG-411 is completely worthless in the smart phone era (discontinued in 2010).

It's worth mentioning that goog-411 enabled at least a couple very niche internet subcultures in the early 2000's. When skype brought in free 1800 calling, GOOG-411 could be used as a way to dial any business with skype for free (so no credit card info associated with an account). Think Xbox live lobbies but its a dozen kids on a call, muted, and taking turns unmuting to prank call (harass) businesses all day. I watched a childhood friend spend a summer doing this with a group he met playing mmo's/forums, two of which ended up making it as famous streamers over a decade later. I imagine this experience is very common for a type of kid that grew up online in a certain era (mw2), and google could probably see the tool was garnering a disproportionate amount of abuse

("Do you guys have battletoads?")

This isn't what goog-411 was. You would dial Google's 1800 number, and then tell a voice prompt the name of the business and location, and google would try and automate looking the business up and then route the call for you by ringing them automatically. In the pre-smart phone era, this would allow you to call a business with just your dumb phone. GOOG-411 is completely worthless in the smart phone era (discontinued in 2010).

It's worth mentioning that goog-411 enabled at least a couple very niche internet subcultures in the early 2000's. When skype brought in free 1800 calling, GOOG-411 could be used as a way to dial any business with skype for free (so no credit card info associated with an account). Think Xbox live lobbies but its a dozen kids on a call, muted, and taking turns unmuting to prank call (harass) businesses all day. I watched a childhood friend spend a summer doing this with a group he met playing mmo's/forums, two of which ended up making it as famous streamers over a decade later. I imagine this experience is very common for a type of kid that grew up online in a certain era (mw2), and google could probably see the tool was garnering a disproportionate amount of abuse

I'm surprised I don't come across this perspective more often. ESG funds reached 15% of the total global securities market in assets under management (although much of this was merely a reclassification of existing investments). It seems very reasonable to conclude that ESG funds/scorings became the primary market incentive driving the corporate DEI initiatives we've seen rolled out this past decade.

Publicly traded companies operate under a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders (maximizing long-term shareholder value). For consumer-facing companies one could easily argue these initiatives are part of a broader marketing/corporate branding strategy that benefits shareholders. But, for large publicly-traded companies that don't rely on retail consumer sentiment, I presume DEI initiatives were primarily a strategy to attract investment from ESG funds and help quell potential regulatory action/political controversies

I'm ultimately not sure how reasonable my take is (I have no insider experience or knowledge) but would love to hear from someone with relevant first-hand knowledge and get their perspective

Hope it was obvious but I was being sarcastic. Suggesting we simply "fix housing" is akin to suggesting we just "eradicate poverty" when confronted with widespread, immediate famine.

Larger doses yes, but the opiates being consumed are almost entirely a result of cost/availability. Genuine prescription pills are by far the most desirable choice amongst opiate addicts, but tight control on supply post opiate-crisis has made them practically nonexistent in illegal drug markets.

The extent of prescription opiates desirability is somewhat evidenced by most "street" fentanyl being consumed in counterfeit oxycodone/vicodin pressed-pills. And then of course there is cost--why smuggle 50 packages of heroin when a single package of fentanyl contains an equivalent number of opiate doses and can be manufactured far more efficiently/discretely?

But in general the opiate market is defined by the practical constraints of cost and availability. Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that has been used in hospitals for decades, but its emergence as a street drug in recent times is the result of precursors and synthesis methodology becoming very accessible

Oh you don't understand? It's simple--BC's lawmakers were presented with the option of either making housing affordable nationwide or criminalizing drug use in their city. Darn lawmakers always picking wrong!

I wasn't aware the leading experts came from a subreddit comprised entirely of children and recent GED graduates

It seems reasonable to assume it does virtually nothing. Like nearly every trendy non-rx supplement that has been around for this long, if there were any substantive medical benefits that could be demonstrated empirically in clinical drug trials, a prescription variant would have emerged. (As was the case with prescription fish oil, and this is in spite of most fish oil on the supplement market being of extremely low quality and consumed as a result of outright nonsensical medical claims)

Worth mentioning that gitpod's openvscode-server is a third option. I prefer it to code-server since gitpod's has proper parity with a desktop vscode install, while coder's implementation fails to work with several plugins when loading them in manually

For anyone that stumbles upon this later, I strongly recommend gitpod's openvscode-server container over coder's code-server. Linuxserver.io has docker containers for both.

openvscode-server has had 1:1 parity with a full desktop install of vscode, while coder's variant always had issues with several official plugins.

In coder's implementation several menu options will trigger caught exceptions for basic shit like opening a jupyter notebook, typescript language server frequently crashing, environment variables not being set properly in the correct order of priority, etc.

openvscode-server "just works" on the other hand.

Note that with both implementations the easiest way to get access to the microsoft plugins store is to compile it from source and modify preferences.json. Open source maintainers technically cant distribute it this way out of the box due to Microsoft's licensing requirements. Alternatively, you can always just download the extensions in your browser and drag and drop them into your vscode server window and install them that way.

When using linuxserver.io's container for openvscode-server, traefik worked fine as a reverse proxy to put it behind an https domain I own