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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • There are methodical ways of valuating a private (and public) company. Some are pessimistic and some are wildly optimistic. Your can legally use whichever one you want, only you must only use that valuation method for everything. It’s illegal to value the company low for taxes and high for loan collateral. And if you sell it, you can owe back taxes if your valuation was off (sale price is the new valuation).

    This is overly-simplified US accounting rules (from finance class 10 years ago)




  • Cellulose, starch, and chitin are all sugar polymers in plants and crustaceans (may be a broader group, I used chitosan from crustaceans though).

    In mammals, collagen is a polymer. It’s like 30% of a humans non-water weight. Bones are composites that are tough collagen binding hard and strong fibers of apatite (mostly calcium apatite/ hydroxyapatite). I don’t think the apatite system is considered a polymer, though.

    Triglycerides aren’t polymers in adipose tissue. Although plant triglycerides can split and polymerize. Which make beautiful wood stains.



  • Kale@lemmy.ziptoProgrammer Humor@lemmy.mlC Compilers be like
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    10 months ago

    I haven’t dealt with HPC in a while, but Intel C compiler against MKL libraries were fastest CPU, and Nvidia CUDA was slightly easier to develop than OpenCL for other cards. I’m not sure if the situation’s changed.

    For my current applications, I use NumPy compiled against Intel MKV installed as a binary. It works great.






  • I do a lot of camping in bear country. I’ve been to Bannf. Bear spray is more effective than a firearm at stopping a brown bear attack. Bears have super sensitive noses and eyes, bear spray is immediate pain.

    Bears are extremely muscular from the front, so even if you could manage to shoot one several times from the front, you’d have to use non-expanding bullets like hard cast lead or full metal jacket, which aren’t as lethal as expanding bullets like flat nose or hollow points are (for people). Expanding bullets would be stopped by muscle in bears. Non-expanding bullets are slower at killing things (I believe it’s illegal to hunt with FMJ around me). Bears can run so quickly that a lethal shot killing a bear in two seconds might not be enough time to stop the bear before it could hurt you. And if a lethal shot took a minute to kill a bear, it’s not effective at stopping an attack.

    9mm has stopped brown bear attacks plenty of times, but it’s risky. Both US Parks Service and Parks Canada say bear spray is more effective at stopping a bear than a firearm. I think Parks Canada still uses 0.303 rifles to rangers, but that might be for polar bear. Canada is really strict on pepper spray and mace, but you can purchase bear spray, even if you’re not a citizen. I don’t think a non-citizen would be able to hike with a holstered 10mm or .40SW pistol anyways.

    Bannf was really crowded when I went there. It’s beautiful but the “must see” scenic spots are all filled with Instagrammers. Bears are probably less afraid of people, and I saw plenty of idiots 10 meters from a brown bear with an SLR camera without any precautions at all.

    Pro tip: Jasper is very similar terrain, is also a Canadian Park, and is much less crowded. When I was there a couple of years ago, there was zero cell signal an hour before we arrived at the park. You’ll need paper maps or offline GPS. If you want wilderness with fewer people, try Jasper Park.




  • Fundamentalism in Christianity means you interpret Scripture with two rules that are a lot like Occam’s Razor. The first is that text is interpreted literally unless it has obvious indications that it is not literal. The second is that the Tanakh (which Christians call the Old Testament) is followed unless the New Testament specifically comments on it.

    Fundamentalist Christians don’t believe in evolution because there’s nothing in Genesis that hints at allegory, and it’s not mentioned in the new testament. Eating pork and shellfish is allowed because that is specifically addressed as being Ok. Something like the Talmud in Judaism or Papal Bull / Canon in Catholicism, where Scripture can be interpreted in a more complex light, is not used at all. That’s a hallmark of fundamentalism in Christianity.



  • Melting tundra releases methane, accelerating the increase in temperature. Rising temperature reduces polar ice, making oceans absorb more heat, accelerating heating. Climate pattern changes cause more frequent and larger wildfires, accelerating heating.

    There are probably processes that work to reduce heating as it increases that I’m not aware of, but there are a lot of positive feedback processes which is concerning.

    I believe the IPCC 1.5C was criticized because it included effects of a carbon sequestering process that hasn’t been invented yet. That’s pretty optimistic.


  • It has a small function. A random gamma ray decides to absorb into DNA? Well, 85% chance it won’t matter.

    My understanding is that on average a human will make malignant cell about once a year, but the other anti-cancer systems of the body deal with it. People that develop cancer had one of those cells escape the system. Without introns this would be a much more frequent event.

    Similar idea: at work we were sintering metal powders together in a vacuum chamber, but had oxygen diffuse into the metal about twice as much as our limit to keep it strong. So the lead researcher took titanium powder that weighed a little more than twice what our work part weighed and put it in the chamber, and the oxygen level dropped to about half in our parts. After that he started making three parts at a time to keep oxygen levels down.

    It’s not a reason for developing this way, but introns are great for familial testing. They don’t need to be preserved so they’re changing all the time. If we didn’t have introns, familial testing would have to be done by looking at several DNA or protein types. Blood type, what D2 receptor phenotype. What MTHFR phenotype, etc.

    Sorry for long post but I love this topic: in all primates non-coding DNA, there’s the gene that makes vitamin C. Most mammals make their own, except primates and Guinea pigs. In primates, the vitamin C gene is broken at the same location. So, the chances of multiple species of primates developing this mutation at the same place is very low. They’d all have to develop this mutation at the same place and thrive over the other members of the species, and become the dominant phenotype, and all offspring consume enough vitamin C in their diet to thrive also. Every single primate!

    Instead, it’s much more plausible that one primate or primate ancestor develop this mutation in an area where the food sources had plenty of vitamin C, and a population reduction caused this ancestor primate to be the sole ancestor of the remaining primates, which then evolved to become monkeys, apes, and humans.

    The Guinea pig vitamin C mutation that causes it to not work? It’s in a different location than the primate mutation.

    Edit: apparently some primates can make vitamin C. But most can’t, and the ones the can’t, the gene is broken at the same place.