That might be good. With text to speech getting as good as it’s getting, it’s probably getting in the realistic territory, too.

Hah, I had the exact reverse experience. For years when I had a delivery they would come by once (of course not staying nearly long enough to allow me to answer the door) and leave a notice saying the package would be at their warehouse the following day starting at 17:00.

The warehouse was pretty far. The round trip would take nearly 2 hours by bus. And since they opening hours weren’t ideal, if I happened to have a class or be otherwise busy the one night of the week they’re open late, well I guess I’d better find a solution, because they’ll only keep it for a week.

I would plead with them. Can you come back? Can you leave it at my door? It’s not even worth that much! I’ll take the risk! No. At least one thing they did agree to do was keep my package a bit longer once when I realized I had absolutely no way of retrieving it in time. But they only gave me two days.

It was only when COVID hit that delivery companies started just leaving packages. Sometimes they just wouldn’t tell you at all about it, and you’d have a surprise when you’d open the door and hit your foot on a surprise package, if you hadn’t kept up with the tracking.

Some people complained, because they were scared someone would steal their stuff, but I was so glad they were careless. I’ve worked from home ever since COVID.

Finally, I can order a thing and actually receive it at home.

How would you tackle that? Unless you build a really intelligent system that’s allowed to interpret and reword and understand the significance (or lack thereof) of emojis in context, it sounds tough. Like, generally speaking, you just wouldn’t be able to tell how important an emoji is to the message, when writing an algorithm.

You know, it’s not always, but apple does sell things that are price-competitive with similarly performing competing products.

Some iterations of the Mac Mini have been hard to beat with a tiny PC with similar performance.

The M1 MacBooks had some surprisingly cheap options for the relatively premium laptops they were.

Samsung’s Ultra phones tend to cost more or less the same as the Apple Pro Max phones.

The main difference is sometimes just that Apple doesn’t make low-end or low-mid-range, or sometimes not even anything below “relatively high-end”, products in a particular category.

That’s pretty impressive. I hadn’t even thought oral treatments were possible!

It’s amazing.

CRISPR makes gene editing easier, but unless you’ve got a way to deliver it to every cell, it won’t do much unless you’re targeting such a small number of cells that it’s realistic to have a technician physically inject it into a cell.

That would work for an embryo. Ignoring the plethora of ethical issues and the lack of data on long-term effects, it would probably be pretty easy for a scientist to make the change in an embryo and then go through the normal in-vitro fertilization procedure.

For a whole organism, though, it’s more difficult. One obvious solution is a specially modified virus, and that’s under research.

There’s a lot of stuff here if you want to dive deep:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7356196/#sec3-biomolecules-10-00839title

It’s speculation, but from my experience with Accutane I can infer the following possibility:

• an earwax blockage could get worse because of dry earwax depending on the particular ear

Also speculation:

• if there’s fewer lipids in sweat, you keep those fats, and potentially you lose less weight.

Well there’s a pretty easy fix unless it’s an extreme case. Razor and antiperspirant (or just deodorant if you’re worried about aluminium).

Maybe she’s used to it. Maybe it’s not that bad to her. Or maybe she just thinks it’s impolite to point it out.

Maybe you’re right and you really don’t smell much. But most cases I’ve seen actually did smell.

For a few months, while I was taking Accutane, my earwax turned dry and flaky. It was awesome. It would come out much more easily, it wouldn’t accumulate, and for once my ears stopped producing so much liquid. But I imagine depending on your unique body, it could make things quite a bit worse if you manage to get an earwax blockage.

Disclaimer: do not take Accutane for more than a few months, unless your doctor really knows what they’re doing. Apparently there are significant risks associated with long-term usage.

And pure speculation, but I imagine if you’re not excreting that fat, you might lose a tiny bit less weight when exercising?

We can do this on isolated cells, but I really don’t think we have a way to distribute such a change across the zillions of cells in a human body.

And even if we could, it’s not clear how much effect altering the gene after the fact would have. Maybe once your apocrine glands have obeyed the gene and developed a certain way, it’s too late.

That said… Sign me the hell up.

My company used to allow it, but then it became clear people were doing too many dumb things with their work computers to control them normally. For example, some people would explicitly turn their PCs off without updating the OS every Friday and were nearly a year out of date.

That, plus other security concerns I don’t remember surrounding the tightening of our policies for security certifications required to net a very demanding client, made it so that we needed to institute mobile device management (MDM) for everything.

We went with Microsoft’s version because there were some crucial things I forgot that only it could do. But it didn’t support Linux.

So our few people using Linux had to choose between Windows and Mac OS.

That’s what my current bank uses for the web portal now to think of it. Client number, and 6-number PIN. I guess they’re only doing this because they really trust their “unusual activity” protocols, but I’ve got a feeling they really shouldn’t only rely on those.

Wow that’s a big oops

You remind me of my bank about 17 years ago. Everyone had to have a 10-character password, exactly, and it had to include exactly 2 numbers and 1 symbol. I wasn’t very knowledgeable about computers at the time and it already felt dumb.

To be honest I just look at the state of the world and laugh like I’m watching a sad comedy.

And I avoid thinking about how I’m in it and I have basically zero power over it.

I vote for whomever is the least bad candidate and try not to think about it too much the rest of the time.

A few days? Depending on the person’s condition, it might turn out badly.

First, start with one day. Second, and most importantly, consult with a medical professional to make sure you don’t have any counter-indications.

Hah, that’s smart. I like that.

Also woo, dials. I hate how most ovens use capacitive buttons nowadays.

You know what happens when I stop visiting Facebook? I don’t learn anything about extended family because they don’t give a shit about me.

You know what happens when you sell not on Marketplace here? You get like 10 clicks a month and you don’t sell.

You know what happens when you message people not on Messenger? You’re the annoying person on the hipster app/sending text messages to a phone number and people don’t talk to you unless talked to first.

Also, good for you if you’re a significant enough friend to be invited personally, but no one invites me anywhere unless I show up in a list of people to invite.

I realize my comment was a bit too generalizing but holy shit dude calm down

It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. I do use it because that’s where people are. You can’t really not do Facebook at all. You can’t talk to people on Messenger, you can’t sell stuff on Marketplace, you can’t get invited to events…