Juraj Plavcan

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

Wool is a technology so good that if a startup unveiled it tomorrow, it would raise a fortune.

Run through the spec sheet with a straight face.

It keeps you warm even when it's soaking wet, which almost nothing else does. It is naturally flame-resistant. It doesn't catch and melt onto your skin like plastic does. It chars, refuses to sustain the flame, and puts itself out when you take the fire away. It manages moisture, breathes, and resists smell so well you can wear it for days. It bends tens of thousands of times without snapping.

And when you're finally done with it, you can put it in the ground and in a matter of months it's gone, rotted back into the soil, feeding it nitrogen on the way out.

Then there's the supply chain, which is the part no engineer could ever replicate. It grows back. Every year, on its own, on nothing but grass and rain, on a sheep that was going to stand on that hillside anyway. A self-renewing, fireproof, compostable insulation fibre with a production input of weather.

We replaced it with polyester. Oil, spun into thread, that melts on you in a fire, sheds plastic into the sea with every wash, and sits in landfill for centuries when you're done.

We had the better version the whole time. It says baa.

[Andrej Karpathy @karpathy]

I wrote a quick new post on "Digital Hygiene".

Basically there are some no-brainer decisions you can make in your life to dramatically improve the privacy and security of your computing and this post goes over some of them. Blog post link in the reply, but copy pasting below too.

Every now and then I get reminded about the vast fraud apparatus of the internet, re-invigorating my pursuit of basic digital hygiene around privacy/security of day to day computing. The sketchiness starts with major tech companies who are incentivized to build comprehensive profiles of you, to monetize it directly for advertising, or sell it off to professional data broker companies who further enrich, de-anonymize, cross-reference and resell it further. Inevitable and regular data breaches eventually runoff and collect your information into dark web archives, feeding into a whole underground spammer / scammer industry of hacks, phishing, ransomware, credit card fraud, identity theft, etc. This guide is a collection of the most basic digital hygiene tips, starting with the most basic to a bit more niche.

Password manager. Your passwords are your "first factor", i.e. "something you know". Do not be a noob and mint new, unique, hard passwords for every website or service that you sign up with. Combine this with a browser extension to create and Autofill them super fast. For example, I use and like 1Password. This prevents your passwords from 1) being easy to guess or crack, and 2) leaking one single time, and opening doors to many other services. In return, we now have a central location for all your 1st factors (passwords), so we must make sure to secure it thoroughly, which brings us to...

Hardware security key. The most critical services in your life (e.g. Google, or 1Password) must be additionally secured with a "2nd factor", i.e. "something you have". An attacker would have to be in possession of both factors to gain access to these services. The most common 2nd factor implemented by many services is a phone number, the idea being that you get a text message with a pin code to enter in addition to your password. Clearly, this is much better than having no 2nd factor at all, but the use of a phone number is known to be extremely insecure due to the SIM swap attack. Basically, it turns out to be surprisingly easy for an attacker to call your phone company, pretend they are you, and get them to switch your phone number over to a new phone that they control. I know this sounds totally crazy but it is true, and I have many friends who are victims of this attack. Therefore, purchase and set up hardware security keys - the industrial strength protection standard. In particular, I like and use YubiKey. These devices generate and store a private key on the device secure element itself, so the private key is never materialized on a suspiciously general purpose computing device like your laptop. Once you set these up, an attacker will not only need to know your password, but have physical possession of your security key to log in to a service. Your risk of getting pwned has just decreased by about 1000X. Purchase and set up 2-3 keys and store them in different physical locations to prevent lockout should you physically lose one of the keys. The security keys support a few authentication methods. Look for "U2F" in the 2nd factor settings of your service as the strongest protection. E.g. Google and 1Password support it. Fallback on "TOTP" if you have to, and note that your YubiKeys can store TOTP private keys, so you can use the YubiKey Authenticator app to access them easily through NFC by touching your key to the phone to get your pin when logging in. This is significantly better than storing TOTP private keys on other (software) authenticator apps, because again you should not trust general purpose computing devices. It is beyond the scope of this post to go into full detail, but basically I strongly recommend the use of 2-3 YubiKeys to dramatically strengthen your digital security.

Biometrics. Biometrics are the third common authentication factor ("something you are"). E.g. if you're on iOS I recommend setting up FaceID basically everywhere, e.g. to access the 1Password app and such.

Security questions. Dinosaur businesses are obsessed with the idea of security questions like "what is your mother's maidan name?", and force you to set them up from time to time. Clearly, these are in the category of "something you know" so they are basically passwords, but conveniently for scammers, they are easy to research out on the open internet and you should refuse any prompts to participate in this ridiculous "security" exercise. Instead, treat security questions like passwords, generate random answers to random questions, and store them in your 1Password along with your passwords.

Disk encryption. Always ensure that your computers use disk encryption. For example, on Macs this total no-brainer feature is called "File Vault". This feature ensures that if your computer gets stolen, an attacker won't be able to get the hard disk and go to town on all your data.

Internet of Things. More like @internetofshit. Whenever possible, avoid "smart" devices, which are essentially incredibly insecure, internet-connected computers that gather tons of data, get hacked all the time, and that people willingly place into their homes. These things have microphones, and they routinely send data back to the mothership for analytics and to "improve customer experience" lol ok. As an example, in my younger and naive years I once purchased a CO2 monitor from China that demanded to know everything about me and my precise physical location before it would tell me the amount of CO2 in my room. These devices are a huge and very common attack surface on your privacy and security and should be avoided.

Messaging. I recommend Signal instead of text messages because it end-to-end encrypts all your communications. In addition, it does not store metadata like many other apps do (e.g. iMessage, WhatsApp). Turn on disappearing messages (e.g. 90 days default is good). In my experience they are an information vulnerability with no significant upside.

Browser. I recommend Brave browser, which is a privacy-first browser based on Chromium. That means that basically all Chrome extensions work out of the box and the browser feels like Chrome, but without Google having front row seats to your entire digital life.

Search engine. I recommend Brave search, which you can set up as your default in the browser settings. Brave Search is a privacy-first search engine with its own index, unlike e.g. Duck Duck Go which basically a nice skin for Bing, and is forced into weird partnerships with Microsoft that compromise user privacy. As with all services on this list, I pay $3/mo for Brave Premium because I prefer to be the customer, not the product in my digital life. I find that empirically, about 95% of my search engine queries are super simple website lookups, with the search engine basically acting as a tiny DNS. And if you're not finding what you're looking for, fallback to Google by just prepending "!g" to your search query, which will redirect it to Google.

Credit cards. Mint new, unique credit cards per merchant. There is no need to use one credit card on many services. This allows them to "link up" your purchasing across different services, and additionally it opens you up to credit card fraud because the services might leak your credit card number. I like and use privacy dot com to mint new credit cards for every single transaction or merchant. You get a nice interface for all your spending and notifications for each swipe. You can also set limits on each credit card (e.g. $50/month etc.), which dramatically decreases the risk of being charged more than you expect. Additionally, with a privacy dot com card you get to enter totally random information for your name and address when filling out billing information. This is huge, because there is simply no need and totally crazy that random internet merchants should be given your physical address. Which brings me to...

Address. There is no need to give out your physical address to the majority of random services and merchants on the internet. Use a virtual mail service. I currently use Earth Class Mail but tbh I'm a bit embarrassed by that and I'm looking to switch to Virtual Post Mail due to its much strong commitments to privacy, security, and its ownership structure and reputation. In any case, you get an address you can give out, they receive your mail, they scan it and digitize it, they have an app for you to quickly see it, and you can decide what to do with it (e.g. shred, forward, etc.). Not only do you gain security and privacy but also quite a bit of convenience.

Email. I still use gmail just due to sheer convenience, but I've started to partially use Proton Mail as well. And while we're on email, a few more thoughts. Never click on any link inside any email you receive. Email addresses are extremely easy to spoof and you can never be guaranteed that the email you got is a phishing email from a scammer. Instead, I manually navigate to any service of interest and log in from there. In addition, disable image loading by default in your email's settings. If you get an email that requires you to see images, you can click on "show images" to see them and it's not a big deal at all. This is important because many services use embedded images to track you - they hide information inside the image URL you get, so when your email client loads the image, they can see that you opened the email. There's just no need for that. Additionally, confusing images are one way scammers hide information to avoid being filtered by email servers as scam / spam.

VPN. If you wish to hide your IP/location to services, you can do so via VPN indirection. I recommend Mullvad VPN. I keep VPN off by default, but enable it selectively when I'm dealing with services I trust less and want more protection from.

DNS-based blocker. You can block ads by blocking entire domains at the DNS level. I like and use NextDNS, which blocks all kinds of ads and trackers. For more advanced users who like to tinker, pi-hole is the physical alternative.

Network monitor. I like and use The Little Snitch, which I have installed and running on my MacBook. This lets you see which apps are communicating, how much data and when, so you can keep track of what apps on your computer "call home" and how often. Any app that communicates too much is sus, and should potentially be uninstalled if you don't expect the traffic.

I just want to live a secure digital life and establish harmonious relationships with products and services that leak only the necessary information. And I wish to pay for the software I use so that incentives are aligned and so that I am the customer. This is not trivial, but it is possible to approach with some determination and discipline.

Finally, what's not on the list. I mostly still use Gmail + Gsuite because it's just too convenient and pervasive. I also use 𝕏 instead of something exotic (e.g. Mastodon), trading off sovereignty for convenience. I don't use a VoIP burner phone service (e.g. MySudo) but I am interested in it. I don't really mint new/unique email addresses but I want to. The journey continues. Let me know if there are other digital hygiene tips and tricks that should be on this list.

Link to blog post version in the reply, on my brand new Bear ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ blog cute 👇

[Stella Assange @Stella_Assange]

This journalist has been in a London prison for almost five years for exposing state criminality.

If the UK sends to the country he exposed he will die in a US prison cell.

This week the UK will decide. It’s now or never. Defend Assange. His life and the future of journalism depend on it.

#JohrnalismIsNotACrime
#FreeAssangeNOW
#DayX

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Worth hearing

[Juraj Plavcan @yamesko]

I have to share this study supporting #LEM https://t.co/aNDLETuddT

[Dave Feldman @realDaveFeldman]

🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨
BREAKING: @BudoffMd has now presented the matched analysis for:
KETO (#LMHRstudy) vs Control (#MiHeart)
-🙏Please RT🙏-

METHODS – 80 Participants of #LMHRstudy fell within #MiHeart age range and were then matched 1:1 for age, gender, race, diabetes mellitus, hyperlipidemia, hypertension, and past smoking to asymptomatic subjects from the #MiHeart cohort.

PRIMARY ANALYSIS – High resolution heart scans (#CCTA) allowing for primary analysis of Total Plaque Score (TPS), Total Stenosis Score (TSS) and Segment Involvement Score (SIS)

RESULTS
The matched mean age was 55.5 years, with mean #LDL cholesterol of 272 mg/dL (max LDL-C 591) mg/dl and mean 4.7 years duration on a ketogenic diet.

🚨 There was no significant difference in coronary plaque burden of #LMHRstudy (mean LDL-C 272) cohort as compared to #MiHeart controls (mean LDL 123 mg/dl); nb: pre-KETO LDL-C in KETO group was 122 mg/dl

🚨 There was no significant difference in CAC (median and IQR) [0 (0,56)] versus [1 (0, 49)], p = 0.520

🚨 No relationship of LDL-C elevations and plaque

⚠️ This analysis is on baseline scans and the study is still ongoing for second CCTA completion in our cohort by February of 2024. And as always, please continue to work with your doctor.

- I will have my own video reaction and thoughts in the coming hours.

🙏🙏🙏 to everyone -- and I mean everyone -- who helped us get to this pivotal milestone. 🙏🙏🙏

[Isabella Cooper @I_mitochondria]

Our open-labelled, non-randomised cross-over trial is published.

We studied the effects of short-term ketosis-suppression in healthy women on long-standing ketosis.

Ten lean (BMI 20.5 ± 1.4), metabolically healthy, pre-menopausal women (age 32.3 ± 8.9) maintaining nutritional ketosis (NK) for > 1 year (3.9 years ± 2.3) underwent three 21-day phases: nutritional ketosis (NK; P1), suppressed ketosis (SuK; P2), and returned to NK (P3). (66 days in total with a 6 month qualifying lead in)

Results:
Adherence to each phase was confirmed with daily capillary BHB tests (P1 = 1.9 ± 0.7; P2 = 0.1 ± 0.1; and P3 = 1.9 ± 0.6 mmol/L).

Ketosis suppression significantly increased:

👉Insulin, 1.78-fold from 33.60 (± 8.63) to 59.80 (± 14.69) mmol/L (p = 0.0002)

👉IGF1, 1.83-fold from 149.30 (± 32.96) to 273.40 (± 85.66) µg/L (p = 0.0045)

👉Glucose, 1.17-fold from 4.36 (± 0.53) to 5.12 mmol/L (± 0.59, P2; p = 0.0088)

👉Respiratory quotient, 1.09-fold 0.66 (± 0.05) to 0.72 (± 0.06; p = 0.0427)

👉PAI-1, 13.34 (± 6.85) to 16.69 (± 6.26) ng/mL (p = 0.0428).

👉VEGF, EGF, and monocyte chemotactic protein also significantly increased, indicating a pro-inflammatory shift.

👉Sustained ketosis showed no adverse health effects and may mitigate hyperinsulinemia without impairing metabolic flexibility in metabolically healthy women.

Conclusions:
Evolutionary evidence suggests that ancestral populations were predominantly adapted to patterns of intermittent and time-restricted feeding, as opposed to continuous nutritional intake, rich in farinaceous and sucrose carbohydrates that stimulate bolus insulin secretion. The escalating prevalence of T2DM, obesity, CVD, AD, and cancer observed in populations adhering to multiple substantial carbohydrate-dominated meals in developed nations is a testament to this.

Individuals maintaining long-standing habitual NK, when subjected to 21 days of consuming carbohydrate to suppress ketosis, followed with restricting carbohydrate, reverted to an evolutionary ketotic state within one day, indicate metabolic flexibility and health.

The negative changes in biomarkers associated with chronic diseases and ageing, which occur from a one-time excursion in a 1-year period of 21 consecutive days of suppressing ketosis, are rapidly restored after restoring the baseline dietary lifestyle of carbohydrate restriction which does not overstimulate insulin demand and secretion.

Our data show that long-standing NK appears to provide major health benefits in the maintenance of euglycaemia, with low insulin and IGF-1, the triad of markers most strongly associated with chronic diseases and biological ageing. NK serves as a reliable surrogate marker for these parameters to understand an individual’s metabolic phenotype, and therefore risk.

This study was conducted to establish a detailed metabolic phenotype biomarker profile in a long-standing healthy ketosis cohort, providing a NK control group for other studies to establish metabolic phenotypes in people with cancer, CVD, AD, T2DM, and ageing, and to assess treatment efficacy using KMT in gaining better health.

Sustained NK may mitigate hyperinsulinemia without impairing metabolic flexibility and carbohydrate tolerance in metabolically healthy individuals. Maintaining low insulin requirement and IGF-1 levels through endogenous NK may offer lower chronic disease risk, resulting in benefits to both lifespan and healthspan.

https://t.co/aNCqk0phXJ

Awesome co-authors:
@Yvoni_Kyr @_kurtisedwards @_LucyPetagine @tnseyfried @TommyDeeMD @ascarbs @jacomesandra @AdrianSotoMota @kenbrookler @valennutrition @NovaesVanusa @Brads_science

[Juraj Plavcan @yamesko]

Touch your Toes 30 days Plan: Hamstring Flexibility https://t.co/88CW9INc12 via @YouTube

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

Human history through selfies (with AI)

[📹 edmundsplanet: https://t.co/1ofqpYGLtF]
https://t.co/jQSSaO696A

[Dr Shawn Baker 🥩 @SBakerMD]

When you realize the food on the left is more important to your health than the food on the right, you will begin to experience true health!

Retweet if you agree, comment if you don’t

[Terrible Maps @TerribleMaps]

A comprehensive map of all countries that use the MMDDYYYY date format

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

@ScottAdamsSays “Master the Future” doesn’t sound ominous at all … 🙄

How is WEF/Davos even a thing? Are they trying to be the boss of Earth!?

[Dr. Mike Todorovic 🧠 @drmiketodorovic]

Can metabolism be covered in 2 minutes?!

✅ glycolysis
✅ Krebs cycle
✅ electron transport chain
✅ glycogenesis
✅ lipogenesis
✅ gluconeogenesis
✅ ketogenesis
#MedTwitter #MedEd #FOAMed #metabolism

[Vagif Abilov #StopWarInUkraine @ooobject]

I can't recommend enough @zaid_ajaj's "The Elmish Book" for writing Web apps in #fsharp using Fable. It really powered my work on Web UI (and being a backend dev I need to be powered).

[Juraj Plavcan @yamesko]

Black Lives Matter https://t.co/idMaUI8yLQ via @fsharporg

[Juraj Plavcan @yamesko]

Attending! https://t.co/kjD0XaHV8s #ng-conf

[Zaid Ajaj @zaid_ajaj]

Today I am happy and excited to announce that I am finally publishing my largest body of work into the OSS world. Introducing The Elmish Book: A practical guide to building reliable web applications with #fsharp and @FableCompiler from first principles https://t.co/fFkoKSOi2F 🚀

[Mark Seemann @ploeh]

New article: Builder as a monoid https://t.co/aI4YXc6ydP

[Juraj Plavcan @yamesko]

I just registered for ng-conf April 1-3, 2020 https://t.co/9bbCFutCff

[DeMoor @SethJamesDeMoor]

🔹 Enter the Nike Next% FREE Giveaway by sharing this post!
Have you ever wondered what's inside the Next% and 4%, now you can see with your own two eyes: https://t.co/IR35wsHfkH