Uggh. Look an armchair unqualified and outrage opinion by someone on Hacker News who has no idea what they are talking about.
Look up febrile seizure. Every parent know them. The recommendation by most doctors is to only bring in your child if their fever reaches 104, which he did.
You know what almost all new parents do? They bring their kids to the doctors at the slightest sign of trouble. You know what happens the first few times you do this? The doctors tell you to stop and they tell you you are over reacting.
Yes, this article is from 2016. Texas also has a strong law that allows throwing out "junk science". This case didn't make it through appeals because the forensic criteria that is suspect was such a small part of the evidence.
I don't think the average Red Hat customer will base their business decision on HN sentiment.
Also, they're probably using software certified for Red Hat Linux and don't have the freedom to pick another OS if they want the support they're paying for.
None of the suits cared about Linux in the early days when we sysadmins were extolling it's benefits. The idea that Linux could ever take on commercial Unix offerings from companies like IBM was laughable. It's so strange to me that the argument that suits don't care what geeks think is still being made. Current users will stick with Red Hat until they fear they won't be able to hire for it. But that's what happened to AIX and why IBM bought Red Hat in the first place.
I was there when Linux overtook proprietary UNIX in the late 1990s / early 2000s and agree completely.
The Solaris and HP/UX stalwarts who laughed Linux off as a toy for hobbyists changed their tune pretty quickly when Oracle announced support for their flagship database on Linux. Adoption quickly accelerated as other software vendors announced support. Obviously Red Hat was the winner in all of this, but they could easily lose their lead if another Linux vendor gets serious.
Linux did not win on technical merits back then (it wasn't very good). It did not win because its geeky simps pushed it. It won because it was cheaper, good enough, and (more importantly) another company (Red Hat!, Caldera) was willing to walk you through compliance, offer support, and take the blame if shit went sideways.
Maybe your experience was true for your company. But it feels like revisionism to me, a fellow 90s Linux professional who introduced it to many orgs.
This is simply not true: GPL requires you to share all code needed to build the binary you shipped including their minor patches. GPL also has a clause: "You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein.".
Yeah Red Hat does share all the code for customers who purchase binaries and they are not imposing further restrictions on recipients of those binaries with their EULA. If the EULA is violated Red Hat is simply exercising their rights to not distribute future binaries and source thus not violating the GPL clause you mention
And yet they promised to use blackmailing tactics to severe relationship with those customers who want to exercise their rights to the code and republish it.
The people the binary is shipped to can access it via weather means red hat provides. If red hat does not provide you a binary, they do not need to give you access to their code.
Blender is absolutely amazing, but for the sequencer I had to switch to Resolve because it's just too slow. 1.5 hour long video takes 12 hours to render in blender and about 40 minutes in resolve, with just a simple chroma key processing.
I noticed a particularly dark pattern when I used Keeps, by Thirty Madison. They tell you, that you can cancel or pause at anytime but that is a lie. They over-prescribe their medication, and if you try to pause delivery, they automatically resume it after 3 months. You cannot pause, for longer than 3 months. If you want to cancel, you have to call them where they harass you into staying.
This is not how you should do customer retention. This is fraud. You are making intentionally difficult pathways for your customers to leave you so that you can report falsely propped up retention number to your investors, Thirty Madison. If you IPOd today, I would short the shit out of you.
This is why I reported Thirty Madison to the FTC in a consumer trade complaint and it is why I notified their investors of potential fraud over LinkedIn.
Thirty Madison is committing fraud against their investors, in my opinion and you should absolutely stay away from them as a consumer.
This is why I use one-time use CC numbers to sign up for most things. They can send me all the pathetic “hmm we’re having trouble renewing your subscription” emails they want, they just make me laugh.
So, I hope they show up but a couple of folks I used to know in the tech community in Columbus would travel down to Marion State Penitentiary every month or so to teach programming to the inmates there. One guy they taught even got a job right out of prison, writing code as an intern. I’m certain he’s a senior or staff engineer now. Kenny, if you’re reading this speak up because folks need to hear your story and now is the time. Guy, and Will(?) too.
Anyway, I’m pretty sure like all these Java books was because of Will(?) trying to bring them in for this program.
They had to do some insane thing like photocopy individual pages or something to get around regulations. Apparently it is next to impossible to bring in any educational materials that can help inmates when they get out.
Hi there, I'm the editor of the piece. Me or someone on my team would like to chat with you if you're willing to talk about your experience and could give us some leads in finding a couple of those folks.
Drop me a line: deads AT themarshallproject.org
We have a bit of a rolodex of formerly incarcerated software engineers. One person talked with my team and said he needed prison to get sober, but he needed access to tech books to have a future afterwards.
I think about that a lot when I see all the programming books banned in different state prisons -- it's not just Ohio.
The program was called Coding in the Clink, and if I remember right they even had a guest visit from Uncle Bob at some point.
The people involved with the program were some of the best devs I've worked with in Columbus.
A quick search for "Coding in the Clink" will turn up the names of many of those involved. Look for the name Dan, he'd be the guy I most strongly associate with CITC.
There is one place where Learned Helplessness is super prevalent due to loss of control: The behavioral treatment of autism in children.
Applied Behavioral Analysis uses operant conditioning theory and techniques used to coerce behavior and compliance in autistic children. It turns out though, that this “therapy” results in Learned Helplessness and PTSD/cPTSD in 46% of autistic people who later seek further therapy for trauma resulting from the practice.
Autistic people see ABA as torture and abuse. Help me end it.
Until Congress passes data protection laws that result in company ending fines, no one in America is safe. How this isn’t a national security crisis is beyond me.
All this news about Hauwei but they just made something that is already easy, a little bit easier. We create our own holes everywhere, out of greed and willful neglect. We are fools to think our adversaries and competitors won’t use that against us.
The fines for this incident should be $Billions with a B, Big. End the company. Criminally prosecute company leaders and managers that ignore security, and put them in jail.
You have a responsibility and obligation, to do right by your users, customers and community. Ignoring security is inexcusable and immoral.
You have these cells in your brain called Microglia. They are responsible for cleaning up neurons and plaques and other weird proteins. These Microglia are activated by the firing neurons which release 2-AG and AEA (Anadamide). AEA binds to the CB1 receptor in these Microglia. 2-AG binds to CB2. THC binds to CB1. CBD binds to CB2.
Autistic adults have significantly low blood serum levels of AEA. Autistic people’s neurons prune slower. Schizophrenic people’s neurons prune faster.
It seems the ECS system is the principal driving mechanism behind both conditions. We need a lot more research in this area, but it could be THC has a positive neurological affect on Autistic people whereas finding a blocker for AEA binding on Microglia may result in a positive neurological affect on Schizophrenic people.
The next few years will be especially interesting.
Empirically (based on my own observations) I've known for decades that weed induced episodes in schizophrenic people. I didn't know it was helpful for autistic people.
On the same (personal observation) basis, I'd say that schizophrenic people are drawn to cannabis. I have no idea why; perhaps because they're often very marginalized and precarious.
If the definition of disease is any condition that puts you in a state of dis-ease, then a drug that promotes a state of ease would be a valid treatment!
> schizophrenic people are drawn to cannabis. I have no idea why
I think that there are a number of reasons for this. CBD, exploration/play of mental states, and the hundred+ other cannabinoids may all be a factor.
First, cannabis can contain CBD, which has strong, known anti anxiety and anti-psychotic effects. Couldn't a person vulnerable to episodes recognize this effect when enjoying a higher CBD strain, then seek it out again?
It is very unfortunate for these people that prohibition selected for high THC, low CBD strains.
Second, it can be a great benefit to know, from experience, that smoking a herb can bring on near-psychosis. Certainly, some people try to get a handle on their condition by 'playing' with it in this way.
Learning about the physical feelings and clues that go along with the early stages of an episode may help in some way to feel in control, and even learn to recognize and change the course of a budding episode.
Again, it is more than unfortunate that prohibition and propaganda have prevented any real exploration of these possibilities. For thousands of years shamans have played with mental states, and it was seen as not just positive but necessary.
It is too often seen as heresy if you suggest that psychosis doesn't actually need to be treated with hardcore pharmaceuticals, for life. I do believe though that it could - at least sometimes - be better treated as a mental state which can be self-recognized, and integrated.
Third, cannabis contains hundreds of cannabinoids other than THC and CBD. Some of these may have positive effects on all sorts of things related to schizophrenia and psychosis - mood, humour, insight, metabolism, gut health, etc.
Studies which only examine THC and CBD in isolation can only ever understand so much - these interactions may be a lot more complex than we commonly guess.
Ah, the old shaman argument. The dude living in an essentially black-and-white wasteland up north with months of darkness. He strongly believes in the need to go consult the ancestors, moves in a hypnotic fashion, beats a monotone rythm on the drum for hours staring into a fire. And thus needs a minuscule plant-based push to have a profound experience. And still the old stories always have the element of being very careful and struggling to return from the other side. And then there’s a modern everyday flashing-lights-and-technicolor life kind of dude just looking to have some fun. The context is too different for “they did it thus it’s natural” argument to work.
I don't think you understand my argument - and I certainly don't understand yours.
My argument is wholly secular and realistic. It's summed up as 'exploration/play of mental states', which applies even to your flashing-lights-and-technicolor straw-man.
It doesn't rely on 'hypnotic movements' or 'rhythmic drumming'; or a monomyth, or cultural surroundings, or 'they did it thus it's natural'. Or flashing lights, or wastelands, or ancestral visions, etc.
Perhaps you could read my comment again, with a little more care and a lot less caricature.
My understanding is that schizophernia is a predisposed condition. Cannabis can trigger it but not really cause it. (That's at least what I got from talking to a professional). One clue to find out whether you are predisposed is if you have someone in the family (related genetically) who has at-birth mental health issues. Then stay a gazillion miles clear of any drugs.
Your analogy isn't equivalent to what was said. To be 1-1 with the OP, you'd be arguing that the lighter caused something to be flammable. Causing a *fire* is something else.
Similarly someone can be schizophrenic but have an *episode* caused by weed. The weed didn't make them schizophrenic but it did cause an episode to happen.
Sometimes, but not always. In chemistry, catalysts can help initiate or facilitate chemical reactions, but there is often another input required to kick start the process (e.g. heat). A catalyst won't do anything if there are other things missing.
We know that cannabis can act as a catalyst for schizophrenia, but we also know that not everyone who is predisposed to schizophrenia develops it 100% of the time after cannabis use. There are degrees of predisposition, and a bunch of other factors that contribute to this.
Marijuana causing schizophrenia would be easy to determine if nobody was schizophrenic before the reefer. Before then they were just possessed by demons.
I think it's just that schizophrenic people are often depressed, and depressed people are drawn to drugs in order to alleviate the negative feelings, one of the drugs being cannabis.
Schizophrenic people are also very often smokers, but there's a good reason for this; nicotine is actually a very effective treatment for schizophrenia symptoms, better than the actual medicines.
These are all group-level findings, meaning they aren't true for every individual. You can do a study and find that there is a statistically significant difference in mean X between two samples – autistic vs control or schizophrenic vs control. But pretty much always, although there is a statistically significant difference in the mean, the two samples overlap – which is consistent with this being a factor which only explains some of the cases.
> It seems the ECS system is the principal driving mechanism behind both conditions.
Claims like that ("the principal driving mechanism behind psychiatric diagnosis X is biological difference Y") have been made many times before, and few of them have gone anywhere. I'd be surprised if this one turns out differently.
Both autism and schizophrenia are bundles of different conditions which we've grouped together on the basis of nothing more than overlapping systems. Two people can both have "autism", yet at a biological level they've got two completely different things. The same applies for two people with "schizophrenia". This is why a number of researchers have been arguing that diagnosis-centric research is a dead-end.
I wouldn't be surprised if ECS system issues (or any other system in the brain) turn out to be the cause of some cases of autism and some cases of schizophrenia; but there will be other cases of both in which it isn't the "principal driving mechanism" at all.
You know whats really interesting? Autism and Schizophrenia used to refer to the same condition. The term "autism" was invented by Bleuler, who worked with Freud, as a shortened version of his "autoerotism" and referred to a state where a patient was totally absorbed in their own fantasies to the point of hallucinating them. This becomes clear if you look at Jung's "introvert/extrovert" dichotomy (Jung, who worked in Bleuler's lab!), where someone extremely introverted could be BOTH autistic--not communicating with others--and schizophrenic--absorbed in their own fantasies, not concerned with the real world.
Now, clearly, mainstream psychology disassociated these terms sometime in the 60s, when the goal with autism diagnoses was moreso to find and identify "abnormal" children (Hans Asperger famously used Autism diagnoses to euthanize children, that's who "Asperger's Syndrome" is named after!), and Schizophrenia gained its own separate classification. But its interesting to note that there was a time when social disaffection in general was considered a single set of disorders.
> (Hans Asperger famously used Autism diagnoses to euthanize children, that's who "Asperger's Syndrome" is named after!)
Asperger was assigned to identify autistic children for exterminatiom, but mafe the case that certain ones were useful to the Reich, which is why “Asperger’s Syndrome” became the name for the manifestation of autism that was seen as a leader impairmemt.
He wasn't assigned to identify "autistic children" specifically for extermination. Hans Asperger was a psychiatrist. Psychiatrists in Nazi Germany (post-Anschluss Austria in his case) were expected to evaluate all of their patients for potential extermination, children included. Some psychiatrists refused to cooperate with the regime, at great personal cost to themselves. Other psychiatrists signed up to become enthusiastic members of the Nazi Party. Asperger chose a middle path – he chose not to join the NSDAP, but he joined some of their affiliated organisations; he chose to cooperate with the regime, and be supportive of it–not in an overly enthusiastic way, but with sufficient enthusiasm to ensure his Nazi superiors would not stand in the way of his career advancement.
He did successfully argue that some more intelligent children should be spared, on the grounds they had unique skills which could be valuable to the regime. However, less intelligent children, he was happy to refer to be murdered (in most cases without the knowledge or consent of their parents). He wasn't evil in the way in which many devout Nazis were, just in the more banal way of the many who collaborated in the regime's crimes out of personal self-interest, or through coming to believe its propaganda.
I'm certainly not trying to defend the guy. If anything, I think a lot of people in the "autism community" want to defend him (even if only to a degree), in part because they feel some emotional attachment to the label of "Asperger's" and are trying to shoot down the argument "we shouldn't use that label because it is named after a Nazi collaborator"
For all of Asperger's sins, he was too humble to actually name a disorder after himself – he called his disorder "autistic psychopathy". Lorna Wing renamed it after him, because the word "psychopath" had become very stigmatised, and Asperger was using it in an older and broader sense than current discussions of "psychopathy", which is prone to confuse the uneducated layperson. Wing was actually one of the people trying to defend Asperger–before her death, she wasn't aware of the further historical research published on this topic after she died, and who knows whether she would have revised her position if she'd lived to see that–it is understandable she'd want to defend one of the major decisions of her career–and she was (at best) dimly aware of this aspect of Asperger's history when she made that decision
I will admit to myself sometimes using "Aspergian" in describing some of my own personality traits, not because I necessarily agree with the term, but simply because it is a useful shorthand which my listener is likely to understand, and as much as I'd love to dump all these details and more on them, it risks overwhelming their time, attention and comprehension
I myself am of two minds about it. On the one hand, I'm very appreciative of shows like Extraordinary Attorney Woo and the contemporary diagnostic criteria which does seem to assist many people who otherwise wouldn't get very far in this world. There is definitely some sort of disorder called "autism," and you know it when you see it.
On the other hand, Autism Spectrum Disorder basically doesn't exist, it was designed specifically to cover as many possible definitions of Autism such that nearly anyone, under the right circumstances, could be labeled as Autistic and be given expensive treatment, and I think there is something dangerous in people self-identifying with this label as it only feeds into the larger psychiatry-industrial complex. It's similar to depression--some people legit can't get out of bed in the morning, but the drugs we use to treat it are handed out like candy, are not approved to be used for the terms that they are, and don't even perform better than a placebo.
The problem isn't that some people are "neurodivergent" and others aren't, and neurodivergent people shouldn't be ashamed and should embrace their label. The problem is that everyone is neurodivergent--everyone is "perverse," as Freud famously elucidates in his theory--its just that those who are labeled as "other" under the system get exploited, and everyone else, for fear of the same fate, hide all their psychological proclivities from everyone except from their most intimate acquaintances. And there are some who are lucky enough to avoid both fates, but they are rare among the ruling class, and the commonality of ostensible abnormal psychology among the working class is considered a "problem" to be solved by endless mental health facilities, treatment programs, etc. meanwhile the real pains of being a working class American forces many into addiction, and what they are offered can do nothing much to alleviate the underlying problems which led them there (often times problems, as in the case of the opioid crisis, generated by the very corporate structure which also drives people to treatment for their addiction).
I learned about all what you discuss because I wanted to find a genealogy of "Autism" as a why of critiquing it as a medical category. But I don't know, as I said there is definitely some constellation of symptoms and ways of treating them that would fall under an Autism diagnoses, its just that how such a diagnoses came to exist was not through some pure empirical scientific process but a historical, social process that can't be disassociated from the other socio-economic realities.
He criticises the "autism spectrum" saying that it "is a convention that changes over time and belongs more to the history of science than neurobiology" (a rather scathing remark but put it in an understated way)
On the other hand, he insists that "prototypical autism" should be retained as a real target of scientific investigation, and he proposes that our failure to discover its causes (despite immense research funding into the project) is largely due to going astray by broadening its definition (through the "autism spectrum") to the point that it is approaching meaninglessness
For a different viewpoint, see Lynn Waterhouse et al – https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40489-016-0085-x – who argue the whole category of "autism" (whether a broad "autism spectrum" or a narrow "prototypical autism") is a dead-end, and researchers ought to abandon it and look for new concepts to replace it with. In her book, she proposes (as a temporary measure) replacing "autism" with phenotypes of neurodevelopmental social impairment – which unlike "autism"/"ASD", are only defined in terms of deficits in the social communication domain, but allows those deficits to coexist with deficits in other domains (repetitive behaviours, restricted interests, impulsivity, attention deficits, dyspraxia, dyslexia, epilepsy, intellectual disability, etc)
And then there's Sami Timimi et al's book "The Myth of Autism" which, as well as criticising the science of "autism" (as Waterhouse and, to a lesser degree, Mottron do), goes beyond that to criticising it as a cultural construct, arguing that the harm it causes outweighs its benefits
> The problem isn't that some people are "neurodivergent" and others aren't, and neurodivergent people shouldn't be ashamed and should embrace their label. The problem is that everyone is neurodivergent
> This is why a number of researchers have been arguing that diagnosis-centric research is a dead-end.
Just sounds like they've been diagnosing by symptom because they didn't know the actual etiology. Once it's known shouldn't they just change the diagnosis to be the new, more specific condition? Seems like diagnosis is still the goal?
> Just sounds like they've been diagnosing by symptom because they didn't know the actual etiology. Once it's known shouldn't they just change the diagnosis to be the new, more specific condition? Seems like diagnosis is still the goal?
Well, we don't know the aetiology (in most cases), so while restructuring diagnosis on the basis of aetiology is defensible as a long-term goal, we are nowhere being able to achieve that yet. The argument is, designing research around the current symptom-focused diagnostic categories is blocking progress in research. Two people with the same diagnostic label may have completely different aetiologies, two people with the same aetiology may have completely different labels, two people with the same aetiology one of them may have a label and the other may have none – the same underlying brain dysfunction may manifest with very different symptoms in different individuals, depending on its interaction with other biological factors, and their social environment. If we want to understand "what's really going on", it can be better to put everyone in the same sample (both diagnosed with various diagnoses and undiagnosed), then look for patterns in that big sample. I think this paper is a great example of doing that, with the help of machine learning – https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-019-0631-2 – but it needs replication.
"it could be THC has a positive neurological affect on Autistic people". Or it could be not.
I have autism. Tho I didn't know it back then. I've had multiple minor psychoses from using marihuana recreationally. I know they're minor (with one on the mediocre side) because I've also had a longer episode likely related to stress. Oh, and marihuana was decriminalized back then. From my perspective, the last thing I need, is THC, and your post hasn't convinced me otherwise.
Also, take note of the headline. It mentions men. So for about 50% of society, its unknown. Actually, the reach is even lower, as they looked into men aged 21-30.
Honestly, if I compare marihuana to psilocybin I'd say the latter is more predictable. But either way, it all has to be standardized. Recreational usage of marihuana is not, and this is problematic, even though it is decriminalized here (and has been for many decades here). The fact people cannot buy psilo's anymore here shivers me in that regard; they either grow their own (not standardized) or have to resort to things like truffles.
Nice guy, probably on the spectrum, started smoking weed to help him chill out in social situations. Turned into a heavy user.
Few years later he ended up hospitalized due to psychosis, ended up on schizophrenia meds. Spend 2 years working a shit job medicated up to his eyeballs, smoking weed regularly.
He met a girl after I wanna say ~2 years and got off the weed... and didn't have a lick of psychosis. Eventually got off the meds, working a job just fine, does a lot of mountain biking. Can't say what he's doing now but when me and the ex split he'd basically turned his life around, and it was mostly due to getting lots of exercise and cutting out the marijuana.
Some studies find that "schizophrenia runs in lower average IQ families, autism runs in higher average IQ families", from which some suggest that the autism-vs-schizophrenia distinction is grounded in a higher-vs-lower IQ distinction – see e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4927579/ – but I think that kind of research is very speculative and needs to be taken with a large grain of salt
Other researchers suggest the boundary between autism and schizophrenia is weaker than is commonly supposed. Common diagnostic tests for ASD perform poorly in distinguishing it from schizophrenia; there is heightened prevalence of each condition among those diagnosed with the other; autism started out as a new name for childhood-onset schizophrenia (in fact the word "autistic" was originally coined to describe schizophrenia), and there is still a lot of dispute about what is the difference between autism and childhood-onset schizophrenia (the former is much more common than the later–subclinical hallucinations are common in children, but clinically significant psychotic symptoms are quite rare)
there is a theory along these lines. something like: the defense against the unconscious is so strong in autism that the person becomes rigid and shut off. the defense against the unconscious is so weak in schizophrenia that the person is overwhelmed with phenomena. but both have something to do with intense unconscious objects.
I found this (relatively) recently published article reviewing Bleuler's Dementia Praecox or the Group of Schizophrenias which is the book where he first publishes the terms "Schizophrenia" and "Autism." Though Bleuler was using the words with his colleagues starting a few years earlier. (Cf. Freud-Jung Correspondences, May 1907[0], you can ctrl-f "autism,""schizophrenia," etc.)
Some scientists suggest that schizophrenia is the human equivalent of domestication syndrome. Autism is also seen as a type of anti/counter domestication syndrome.
There also needs to be an analysis on higher level brain functions as well.
Delusions of persecution are the most common form of schizophrenia. But drug users are indeed persecuted. Perhaps has no effect, but I could imagine it to be relevant if you constantly have to hide your usage. It certainly is not helpful.
This is a review not a study. It is designed to give you a broad view of current areas of active research. It does not validate any of the research it discusses. It just says “this is what is out there”.
Look up febrile seizure. Every parent know them. The recommendation by most doctors is to only bring in your child if their fever reaches 104, which he did.
You know what almost all new parents do? They bring their kids to the doctors at the slightest sign of trouble. You know what happens the first few times you do this? The doctors tell you to stop and they tell you you are over reacting.
If you were a parent, you’d know that.