Tarquinn2049

That paper specifically concludes that despite all that, there is no reason to even look into whether fluoridation in drinking water might be a problem because there has clearly been no corollary deleterious effect. So, knowing what it would look like if it was a problem, was enough to know that it isn’t even close enough to warrant checking how close it is. The highest reported extremes of exposure already didn’t cause issue, so there is certainly no cause for concern at normal levels.

Basically, normal levels are so far below potential risky levels, that they aren’t even concerned of accidental overexposure due to mistakes or accidents. They concluded they had literally zero concern…

So linking that paper isn’t really supporting your opinion.

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Yeah, I know at least 4 of my ancestors should have been diagnosed as Autistic but never got tested. And 2 more were for sure undiagnosed ADHD. They all just ended up being stunted unhappy people instead that had a couple happy moments with their other stunted unhappy friends whenever they would hang out and play trains or music or whatever other “weirdly” deep hobby their sposes had to eventually pull them away from to go back to “normal” life.

Kids with diagnosed or undiagnosed Autism didn’t used to stay in the same class as “non-disruptive” students, oftentimes not even in the same school. But it’s so much better understood now that there is a much stronger effort to keep the classes as integrated as possible and just figure things out as they present. But the problem is that it’s being compounded by spending cuts that have led to integrating even more than what currently makes sense because they can’t afford enough teachers to split classes more. Instead, they hire cheaper teachers assistants and try to handle 30+ kids in the same room. A teacher and 2 TAs for 30 kids is a much worse situation than 2 teachers with 15 kids each.

When I was in school, even my, at the time called Asperger’s syndrome, was enough to have me pulled out into a side class with a specialised teacher. That side room was 10 kids and had 2 TA’s as well. They managed to keep that room so well organised that I was able to pull ahead a grade in that environment. Partially just due to not having to wait for all the other kids in the bigger class to learn stuff before I could move on. Each kid in the 10 kid side-class was on individual learning. So I could breeze through all the stuff I found easy to have more time to work on the stuff that was unduly challenging for me.

On the neurodivergent version of the IQ test they had me do back then, my section scores varied from as low as 74 in a section to 152 in my highest, averaged out to 121 overall. So there was more that I was good at than bad, but 74 is pretty low, so I had to spend a lot of time on that stuff. And it’s tough, the brain hates doing stuff that is relatively challenging. But they worked out a sort of interval training reward system that worked for me. I guarantee I am a much more useful person to society now than I would have been without the funding schools used to have. I shored up my weaknesses while still building my strengths.

After a year in the side course, I was able to rejoin the main class, but a grade higher than the class I used to be with before. The school got me a personal education assistant to keep me on task through challenging stuff or boring stuff. Anything that would otherwise cause my mind to wander or seek out other activities. Eventually, with practice, I was able to keep myself in check with the same tactics.

Not enough paid humans sorting between which data is examples of good behaviour and which data is examples of bad behaviour. Not saying that is what is happening as we don’t even know if there is data, but that would be the weakness in that plan when run the way it would be run if instituted by elon.

Ah, I’m out of touch. When I saw the amount, I just assumed that was indicative of how far the ruble has fallen.

Thus, symbolic of how much they would need to charge to mean anything in USD.

Dude, don’t worry about it, like I said, save your money. If it’s not important to you, it’s better to keep it that way.

It is important to me, I’m gonna keep doing it.

As we get higher and higher frame rate, there are certainly more and more people that won’t care.

But you can’t say it doesn’t make a difference, in blind testing(name of the testing style, obviously) people who freshly walked into a room with a game running and were asked if it was 60 fps or 120 fps guessed right 100% of the time, literally no errors made, they were not gamers. But they did have one training attempt each of walking in on each setting knowing which one it was that time.

So literally everyone -can- see the difference, but not everyone cares.

It is a real thing anyway, unlike cable quality for digital audio.

I very much know how other people feel about it, we can be different and both our opinions can still be valid. I don’t think at any point in there I said that everyone is wearing their headset 16 hours a day.

But the matter remains that one headset has sold 4x as much as the steamdeck, and the second most sold is 2-3x as much as the steam deck… so why is the steam deck considered a good seller and VR is considered dying?

I was just making a pre-emptive counterpoint to the arguments people usually make against VR. That the headsets “aren’t comfortable”, which has been less and less true for the out of the box experience over time, and has never been true for people that are willing to tailor the experience to their individual headshape and preferences. I have always worn my headsets for 8+ hours even right from the dk2 days, first step: battery bank on the back, to get the weight counter balanced and for older headsets a different choice of facial interface was often a good idea. Eventually, once I tried a few options, I determined my personal best comfort came from “halo” style headstraps. So I have since just been buying BoBoVR’s kit for each headset I buy that is an all-in-one cenversion kit to take headsets from 2 hours of play time to infinity with no other adjustment needed.

I think honestly most people have only tried VR once or twice, and don’t even know what state it is in now. The Quest 3 crossed a threshold, now that you can use it as a 4k 120hz screen, it’s the first headset I would say is clear enough that normal people would find it worth using. I do still think the tech barrier is a bit too high. I’m very aware that if I didn’t show her how, my Mom would have had trouble figuring out on her own how to do virtual calls with my sister in New Zealand. But she very much appreciates being able to sit in the same room as her and have face to face conversations now. And even though desktop streaming is something built right into the headset, the default option isn’t the one that would sell people on it, Virtual Desktop is so much better. If in the future that becomes the default, and the desktop streaming client half of it is just baked into the headset software. Or if the default solution just learns from Virtual Desktop and at least looks as good as it even without all the extra bells and whistles… either one would be a huge help. The built-in desktop streamer just hasn’t been revisited since the screens are clear enough to actually see 4k, so it’s still unoptimised and kind of muddy looking.

But, my Mom did figure out on her own how to launch and play Tetris Effect, she loves it. Also Puzzling Places and Cubism. My mom is a bit of a gamer though. She doesn’t like anything with killing, but she has made some exceptions like for Stardew Valley. My Dad on the other hand still needs me to launch games for him from the phone app, hehe. He just “doesn’t want to break it”, to be fair he prefers the Quest pro, which is still a pretty expensive headset. So I can understand his hesitation, he’s used to windows 95… where you very much could break it by clicking the wrong thing. But he loves city building games, and there are a few good ones to choose from in VR. Cities:Skylines VR for “professional” city building ported to VR, and Little Cities for “fun” city building made for VR first are his favourites so far.

My brother only really got into it when I gave their family my old Quest 2, he still just plays the default “normal people” games like beatsaber and other exercise stuff. But he doesn’t have his VR legs yet, he does want to play adventure/rpg games with me, but they tend not to have comfort settings, as they would be kinda ruined with teleporting and stuff. I explained to him how to go about training for not needing the safety features any more, but he keeps taking it too far any time he tries, he likes the games so much that he doesn’t want to stop playing so soon when he first starts feeling the symptoms. But that is the most important part, otherwise you are working to make your VR sickness worse instead…

So yeah, there are definitely hurdles still. Maybe there should be supervised programs for getting your VR legs. You very much need to stop as soon as you notice the very first symptom for you, usually face flush, but can be different per person. The earlier you stop, the more you convince your brain it doesn’t need to “save you from the poison berries”. The bodies reaction to a vestibular mismatch is to assume you must have eaten poison, and it should save you by throwing up. But you can train it to leave you alone. Done well, you can gain as much as 5 more minutes of playtime each attempt. Doesn’t take long until you don’t even have to think about it any more.

What game would you finally consider good? Do you even know what people play in VR? There are literally thousands of games. I personally own 250 from over the 10 years, and that’s me holding back. There are so many more that I wanted to play if I had more time to do so.

And even outside of bespoke VR games, a VR headset is an awesome monitor replacement now for your regular computer games too. My Virtual monitor is 4k 120hz, that I can use while sitting in a recliner.

Fps matters for everything, 120 fps is just the new normal, can’t go back. When we used to play games at 15 fps and the new normal became 30, we couldn’t go back, 15 fps looked so bad once you got used to seeing stuff at 30 fps. Same for 60 fps in it’s day, and 120 fps now.

If you haven’t gotten used to 120 fps yet, and you want to save money, put it off as long as you can. You won’t be able to go back.

I don’t know… would E.coli cause someone to miss alot of interviews and events due to “exhaustion” and potentially choose to sit on an absorbant mat when sitting on a clean white couch?

Maybe it did affect his.

Looked it up, e.coli symptoms tend to start 4 days after infection, in healthy people, as little as one day after for people with weaker immune systems. Symptoms involve diarrhea, stomach cramps and can include fever.

If he got it the first day those burgers were tainted, and most people took another 3 to 4 days after they had their burgers to start showing symptoms. It’s entirely possible that by the time enough people had it that it was definitively traced back to mcdonalds and then we finally heard about it, that could easily be what has been up with Trump lately.

Edit, actually just thought to look up the timeline of both as they should both be known. Mcdonalds said they determined the tainted burgers/onions seem to have been available from september 27th to october 11th. The day trump cut his rally short to stand on stage and listen to music for 40 minutes was october 14th. Could sort of be related, but I think the e.coli outbreak is just a bit too early to explain his recent behavior, as much as diarrhea and stomach cramps would sort of explain some of it. He could just be shitting his pants normally instead of brought on by anything specific. And he could just be normal exhausted instead of e.coli exhausted. And he kind just always looks like he has stomach cramps…

Ok

Well, good luck. Obviously, I hope your perfect candidate gets in, and it doesn’t just allow Trump in like I think it would. I would be very happy if you were right and I was wrong.

But I forsee third party candidates getting 10% of the vote, and those votes coming primarily from Kamala, and then having to live with Trump. Kamala clearly isn’t perfect. No one thinks she is, politics are just broken enough that it doesn’t play out the way you clearly want it to. No matter what. You want third party, make sure they are in a position where they are polling decently before it is too late, or no one will waste their vote on them.

Yeah true, not having to switch phones every couple years is a plus. I don’t do contract, just buy the phone I want and pick the network I want to use it with. Then use that phone for as long as I can stand to. Eventually the upgrade is positive enough to outweigh having to get used to the physicalities of a new phone. New muscle memory, especially for typing on a screen based keyboard is so annoying.

Hehe yeah, nice added benefits to everything, but ourside of gaming it would be hard to justify the price of a high-end phone. Heck even with gaming it can still be hard, lol.

Presumably, they want to get everyone used to their environment so that when their hardware lead doesn’t mean as much in the future, there will be hesitation to leave. We know they aren’t currently doing anything untoward as there is plenty of overlap between paranoid tech experts and people interested in pioneering new tech. Can’t hide from them. The software and network traffic has been thouroughly vetted and everything is so far doing exactly what it would need to or purports to do.

As long as you go into it knowing you will be changing platforms at some point in the future and hedge all software purchases against that in your mind, the only remaining downside is whether you can stomache giving them your money.

And if that ever changes, it won’t go hidden.

There is also something to be said for the fact that everyone in the Meta community see VR as thriving and growing, and everyone that is outside of it sees VR as stagnating or shrinking. So their money is doing that too presumably.

Their ultimate main goal is also, of course, marrying the tech from VR headsets to the tech from AR glasses. Which will be a true ubiquitous product. Being the first one there will be a huge pay day.

Generally for gaming. It’s like PCs, you can totally get by with a 100 dollar second hand computer… unless you want to play a game made this year.

Typing this on a 120hz 4k gaming phone.

Stand alone headsets can play PCVR games too, especially steam games, that is the most accessible market for PCVR on standalone. Most do it wirelessly, which likely isn’t as bad as you are thinking, but some also still do it with wired and some even with uncompressed video over wire. But honestly, as the resolution and bitrate keep going up, the difference between raw and compressed gets harder and harder to spot. At this point, you can only really tell in side by side comparisons of still frames which feed is compressed.

The main remaining problem of compressed streams is the total latency added, most importantly the decompressing time, since it’s done on the headsets mobile hardware. And the networking time. Though a dedicated network device, either a router or a bespoke VR streaming tool can get that down to 5ms or less now. My streams total latency to my wireless headset is about 30ms now. I wouldn’t be able to professionally compete in a frame counting fighter game… but that is about the only type of game where that level of latency is too much. Heck, people of my generation grew up through a point in time where TV screen latency was over 100ms… And while I will admit that there is still a benefit to sub 14ms latency, it’s not as big of a difference as it used to be. And that is only when I stream PCVR stuff, it’s still under that for stand alone content. Which also is not as bad as you likely think it is.

I have a total of about 250 VR games currently, and I only buy about 10% of the ones I want to buy. But I have also been in VR for 10 years now. About 150 of my games are standalone and about 100 PCVR. With about 30 of them being titles that gave both versions for the price of one. There is no shortage of games, I could not possibly play even all of just the good ones.

A VR headset is basically a console now, except one you can stream your PC to if you want. Even just for flat games too, I have a Virtual 4k 120hz monitor in my VR headset because in real life my 4k screen is an older TV that can only do 60 hz pc input or a very janky 120hz for 1080p. The nice thing about streaming to a VR headset instead of some hand held device, other than 4k 120fps, is that I don’t have to look at my hands or hold my hands up to my eyes to play. My neck feels so much better than it did when Phone, Switch, and Steamdeck were the best way to game away from a computer.

My headset is comfortable, I can, and unfortunately often do, wear it for 16 hours a day. I have a single third party mod for it that was less than 100 dollars to convert it from a 2 hour headset, to an infinity headset. There are multiple options, but I went with BoBoVR, dumb name, but quality product.

But my headset has basically replaced my computer monitor, I haven’t used my computer in person in like 2 years now. When I want to play a game on my computer, I just stay in my recliner, put my headset on and open Virtual Desktop, the same software I use to stream PCVR when I’m in the mood to be in the game instead.

There is basically no downside anymore, they aren’t even expensive. While a Quest 3 is notably better, the lower end 3s is a totally viable headset at 300USD, notably cheaper than most consoles. Just do yourself a favor, if a Quest 3 seems too expensive, do not try it on. Stay with 3s and don’t see how much greener the grass is for a little bit more, it’s very easy to talk your way up to a real Quest 3.

Also, Steam deck has sold about 5 million units extrapolating from last known good data, Quest 2 sold over 20 million, Quest 3 is seemingly up to 10-15 million so far judging from old sales data for pacing and some recently reported hardware ratios from game devs, and still has about 4-5 more years left of active sales.

So if the Steam deck is a “huge market”, then I don’t know what you would call the stand alone VR market now. Considering that is just one brand of standalone headset. It’s the market leader, sure, but there are other brands that do at least as well as the steam deck. Distant second as that may make them, seems like it’s still relevant to include given the context.

Yes, I have no facebook account. It hasn’t been a problem. Other than the logo on the headset, I haven’t seen any other downside to it being a meta ptoduct. The money they have put in to make sure they are and remain ahead of everyone else for tech means that until there is an actual downside, I pretty much have to use their headsets. But I will have no trouble jumping ship if there ever is a downside, or if anyone else even comes close to catching up.

I know you’re probably just trolling, so it doesn’t matter what I say. But I’ll keep it up anyway, for the slim chance you are just a closed minded child that has been indoctrinated and isn’t actually thinking about anything they are saying, just reacting and spewing whatever comes to mind.

The real world isn’t about what you want to happen in an ideal world. It’s about what will actually happen as a result of your actions. There very much is worse genocide, genocide of more types of people at once, in more places at once, and to a worse scale for people already being genocided. Please don’t let Trump get what he wants.

Yes, of course everyone decent wants what you want… we’re not idiots. But we also can see that there is no path to it. And that trying to get it will just lead to losing the chance to have 90% of what we want instead.

There is no black and white choice in real life, which can be hard to accept for people stuck on black and white thinking(which is actually alot of people, like 10% or so). Trying to make decisions as though something must be perfect to be a good choice, is going to lead to having huge problems because this isn’t the only situation where trying to pick the perfect choice just leads to getting a way worse result. Usually, the consequences will come in the form of waiting and doing nothing because a perfect choice never presents itself. But sometimes people prey on a black and white mentality to falsely present a “perfect” choice, knowing some percentage of the population will have no choice but to fall for it.

Sometimes, third-party candidates are even funded by the other side in order to do this very thing for something as important as an election. So they very well know that it has an effect, if people like that are willing to actually spend money they could otherwise be hoarding.