ReHacked #89: Diet soda may prompt food cravings, especially in women and people with obesity, faster Python with Guido van Rossum, How to get Facebook ban for life and more

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Facebook banned me for life because I created the tool Unfollow Everything. #socialnetworks #internet

If someone built a tool that made Facebook less addictive—a tool that allowed users to benefit from Facebook’s positive features while limiting their exposure to its negative ones—how would Facebook respond?

I know the answer, because I built the tool, and Facebook squashed it. This summer, Facebook sent me a cease-and-desist letter threatening legal action. It permanently disabled my Facebook and Instagram accounts. And it demanded that I agree to never again create tools that interact with Facebook or its other services.

The tool I created, a browser extension called Unfollow Everything, allowed users to delete their News Feed by unfollowing their friends, groups, and pages.

Software at Scale 34 - Faster Python with Guido van Rossum - Software at Scale (30 minutes podcast) #programming #podcast

Diet soda may increase hunger and weight gain : Shots - Health News : NPR #health #science

The "diet" in diet drinks may be a false promise for some soda lovers. True, they deliver the fizz and taste of a soda experience, without the calories. Yet, new research shows they also can leave people with increased food cravings.

A study published recently in JAMA Network Open adds to the evidence that drinks made with sucralose may stimulate the appetite, at least among some people, and the study gives some clues as to why.

"We found that females and people with obesity had greater brain reward activity" after consuming the artificial sweetener, says study author Katie Page, a physician specializing in obesity at the University of Southern California.

America Is Choking Under an ‘Everything Shortage’ - The Atlantic #economy

The global supply chain is slowing down at the very moment when Americans are demanding that it go into overdrive.

Retired husband syndrome - Wikipedia #society #health

Retired husband syndrome (主人在宅ストレス症候群, Shujin Zaitaku Sutoresu Shoukougun, literally "One's Husband Being at Home Stress Syndrome") (RHS) is a psychosomatic stress-related illness recognized in Japanese culture which has been estimated to occur in 60% of Japan's older female population. It is claimed to be a condition where a woman begins to exhibit signs of physical illness and depression as her husband reaches, or approaches, retirement.

Why Curiosity Is Better Than Being Smart? - Durmonski.com #learning #psychology

If you shut the door to curiosity. You shut the door to learning. And when you don’t learn. You don’t move forward.

You must be curious to learn. Otherwise, you won’t even consider learning.

If you’re not curious, internally, you don’t think that learning more about what you already know is needed. You have convinced yourself that you already know everything.

futurecoder: Free online python course #programming #learning

futurecoder is a free and open-source platform and course for complete beginners to teach themselves programming in Python.

20 Things I've Learned in my 20 Years as a Software Engineer - Simple Thread #programming #learning #longread

You’re about to read a blog post with a lot of advice. Learning from those who came before us is instrumental to success, but we often forget an important caveat. Almost all advice is contextual, yet it is rarely delivered with any context.

“You just need to charge more!” says the company who has been in business for 20 years and spent years charging “too little” to gain customers and become successful.

“You need to build everything as microservices!” says the company who built a quick monolith, gained thousands of customers, and then pivoted into microservices as they started running into scaling issues.

Without understanding the context, the advice is meaningless, or even worse, harmful. If those folks had followed their own advice early on, they themselves would likely have suffered from it. It is hard to escape this trap. We may be the culmination of our experiences, but we view them through the lens of the present.

CNN - Breaking News, Latest News and Videos #economy

A group of 136 countries have agreed to a global treaty that would tax large multinationals at a minimum rate of 15% and require companies to pay taxes in the countries where they do business.

Estonia, Hungary and -- most notably -- Ireland joined the agreement Thursday. It is now supported by all nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the G20. The countries that signed on to the international treaty represent more than 90% of global GDP. Four countries that participated in the talks -- Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan and Sri Lanka -- have not yet joined the agreement.

The Biden administration breathed new life into the global initiative earlier this year and secured the support of the G7 countries in June, paving the way for a preliminary deal in July.

Ireland, which had declined to join the initial agreement in July, has a corporate tax rate of 12.5% — a major factor in persuading companies such as Facebook, Apple and Google to locate their European headquarters in the country.

"Today's agreement will make our international tax arrangements fairer and work better," said OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann in a statement. "This is a major victory for effective and balanced multilateralism."

Byzantine warrior with gold-threaded jaw unearthed in Greece | Live Science #history

A rugged Byzantine warrior, who was decapitated following the Ottoman's capture of his fort during the 14th century, had a jaw threaded with gold, a new study finds.

An analysis of the warrior's lower jaw revealed that it had been badly fractured in a previous incident, but that a talented physician had used a wire — likely gold crafted — to tie his jaw back together until it healed.

"The jaw was shattered into two pieces," said study author Anagnostis Agelarakis, an anthropology professor in the Department of History at Adelphi University in New York. The discovery of the nearly 650-year-old healed jaw is an amazing find because it shows the accuracy with which "the medical professional was able to put the two major fragments of the jaw together."

Witness the majesty of moths taking flight at 6,000 frames per second | Aeon Videos #nature #video

Cloudflare doesn’t have to cut off copyright-infringing websites, judge rules | Ars Technica #copyrights #internet #freespeech

Cloudflare is not liable for the copyright infringement of websites that use its content-delivery and security services, a federal judge ruled yesterday.

Cloudflare was sued in November 2018 by Mon Cheri Bridals and Maggie Sottero Designs, two wedding dress manufacturers and sellers that alleged Cloudflare was guilty of contributory copyright infringement because it didn't terminate services for websites that infringed on the dressmakers' copyrighted designs. The companies sought a jury trial, but Judge Vince Chhabria yesterday granted Cloudflare's motion for summary judgment in a ruling in US District Court for the Northern District of California.

Unfollow Everything developer banned for life from Facebook services for creating plug-in to clean up news feed : programming #software #internet

Links inside to download the soft.

EU court rules no EULA can forbid decompilation, if you want to fix a bug #copyrights #software

Whereas a person having a right to use a computer program should not be prevented from performing acts necessary to observe, study or test the functioning of the program, provided that these acts do not infringe the copyright in the program;

Happiness in Early Adulthood May Protect Against Dementia | UC San Francisco #health #psychology

While research has shown that poor cardiovascular health can damage blood flow to the brain increasing the risk for dementia, a new study led by UC San Francisco indicates that poor mental health may also take its toll on cognition.

The research adds to a body of evidence that links depression with dementia, but while most studies have pointed to its association in later life, the UCSF study shows that depression in early adulthood may lead to lower cognition 10 years later and to cognitive decline in old age.

The study publishes in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease on Sept. 28, 2021.

Perseverance rover reveals an ancient delta-lake system and flood deposits at Jezero crater, Mars #nature #space #science

Observations from orbital spacecraft have shown that Jezero crater, Mars, contains a prominent fan-shaped body of sedimentary rock deposited at its western margin. The Perseverance rover landed in Jezero crater in February 2021. We analyze images taken by the rover in the three months after landing. The fan has outcrop faces that were invisible from orbit, which record the hydrological evolution of Jezero crater. We interpret the presence of inclined strata in these outcrops as evidence of deltas that advanced into a lake. In contrast, the uppermost fan strata are composed of boulder conglomerates, which imply deposition by episodic high-energy floods. This sedimentary succession indicates a transition, from a sustained hydrologic activity in a persistent lake environment, to highly energetic short-duration fluvial flows.

Sildenafil and suicide in Sweden #health #psychology

Much theory asserts that sexual intimacy sustains mental health. Experimental tests of such theory remain rare and have not provided compelling evidence because ethical, practical, and cultural constraints bias samples and results. An epidemiologic approach would, therefore, seem indicated given the rigor the discipline brings to quasi-experimental research. For reasons that remain unclear, however, epidemiologist have largely ignored such theory despite the plausibility of the processes implicated, which engender, for example, happiness, feelings of belonging and self-worth, and protection against depression. We use an intent-to-treat design, implemented via interrupted time-series methods, to test the hypothesis that the monthly incidence of suicide, a societally important distal measure of mental health in a population, decreased among Swedish men aged 50–59 after July 2013 when patent rights to sildenafil (i.e., Viagra) ceased, prices fell, and its use increased dramatically. The test uses 102 pre, and 18 post, price-drop months. 65 fewer suicides than expected occurred among men aged 50–59 over test months following the lowering of sildenafil prices. Our findings could not arise from shared trends or seasonality, biased samples, or reverse causation. Our results would appear by chance fewer than once in 10,000 experiments. Our findings align with theory indicating that sexual intimacy reinforces mental health. Using suicide as our distal measure of mental health further implies that public health programming intended to address the drivers of self-destructive behavior should reduce barriers to intimacy in the middle-aged populations.

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