i do appreciate the comments here from people who actually have firsthand experience with this. i think a lot of people on HN find this story interesting because it's so far from their experience, but feel like commenting anyway.
and it's valuable because the writers at the atlantic can't say "boy this sure is stupid, it's obviously X or Y." they have to write in this awkward tone as if they genuinely can't tell if these people are really possessed or not.
dota 2 is not as extreme about this as, say, starcraft. in starcraft, most "strategies" are heavily scripted build orders that almost never deviate from a handful of openings (similar to opening moves in chess) and a large amount of winning comes from the ability to quickly give orders to your troops ("micro"). This is an example of a strategy that is not viable without superhuman reactions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKVFZ28ybQs if you directly attack 20 siege tanks with 100 zerglings you will only kill about two siege tanks, but an AI can kill all the siege tanks with some zerglings left over.
There's some of this in dota, but there's a cap on the skill level for most playable characters that pros generally get "close enough" to, and beyond that the strategic depth comes from area control decisionmaking. Theres over 100 heroes and many of them have really weird abilities, like the possibility of creating a temporary wall (earthshaker) or the ability to teleport anywhere on the map every 20 seconds (furion). I could be wrong though, maybe the AI is winning games by playing heroes with long range and perfectly microing them to harass and prevent the other team from ever getting gold/xp.
My impression is that nicotine is "essentially" harmless but caffeine is actually harmless, maybe even good for you (kind of like a glass of red wine a week).
One thing that bugs me about ecigarettes is that the flavoring chemicals are totally untested. Vegetable glycerin is essentially harmless and is even used in asthma inhalers, and nicotine is way less harmful as well. However it's already been shown that certain flavoring agents like a particular butter flavoring are harmful (https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/11/e-cigaret...). I know a couple "juice" makers and they basically just throw in random flavoring chemicals that are meant to be ingested.
It's possible to get unflavored e-cigarette juice, and when I was using an e-cigarette (i switched to gum) i tried to get it as often as I could. But it's really uncommon, most shops don't even have one, and the one i went to was often sold out.
I agree with your first (non-quoted) paragraph. Please don't blame this on #metoo. it just happened, and I think the first point you made was just as legitimate before #metoo
As a stupid and impatient person, I didn't get to the end of the article the first time i looked at it. After I saw you wrote it I went back to check if you mentioned ublock by name.
You might want to have something below the header and above the lede that says "hey just before we go any further, the solution is to use ublock origin instead of adblock." And even better, a big image of adblock with another, bigger red "no" symbol over it (in addition to the one that's already in the logo i guess) and then a check mark next to ublock origin. Like I said, I'm stupid. It's an interesting article but i already knew adblock plus was sketchy so I didn't finish.
I took modafinil for a while because a crypto SV nerd told me it was hip. We both ordered some and tried it. The stimulant effects basically stopped affecting me after a week, and i had the bizarre side effect of crying very regularly. My father, who has adhd, also tried modafinil and also found himself crying a lot at his work.
I gave my extra pills to another friend who was interested; both my friends stopped using them after a while, saying they made them feel different but not more focused or anything.
It was a mildly interesting waste of time and money for all four of us.
Friend works in data law and says that it's ambiguous. One of the problems is that people use personal information in their email. Also, you have no idea if it's actually personal information or just a nickname they've given themselves. For these reasons it looks unlikely that emails will be considered personally identifiable information.