I couldn’t argue with you, but here’s their answer. The arguments appeal explicitly to people “who remember when”:
> Need more convincing? How about a commercial operating system which doesn’t spy on you, does not report your online activity to anyone, and gives you complete freedom to choose the applications you want to use, however you want to use them? How about an operating system which isn’t tied to any specific hardware manufacturer, allowing you to choose the platform which is right for you, and fits perfectly well in systems with less than 4GB of memory or even virtual machines?
* Population-weighted findings. Air pollution is a bigger public health threat than (say) tobacco and alcohol not because it's worse for you individually (although it's terrible), but because the regions most affected are so densely populated
* Regulatory policy really works. "After periods of industrialization led to pollution that choked Europe and the United States decades ago, the two regions have largely been successfully creating and enforcing strong pollution laws. In the United States, legislative measures like the Clean Air Act have helped to reduce pollution by 64.9 percent since 1970, extending the average lifespan by 1.4 years" and similar improvements began in Europe 25 years ago, and even in China 10 years ago
> Higher intensities of the same sounds had no effect on animals’ pain responses. “In mice, we found that sound-induced analgesia depended on its low SNR rather than harmony, which is supported by a previous hypothesis that music-induced analgesia is attributable to contextual factors of the treatment, not only to the music per se,” they wrote. “We were really surprised that the intensity of sound, and not the category or perceived pleasantness of sound would matter,” Liu said.
…
> The authors further stated that the observed low-SNR sound–induced analgesia is “unlikely to result from some reduction in anxiety or stress, and it probably does not directly involve attention-distraction in affecting pain perception, given that the analgesic effects persisted for at least two days after sound withdrawal.”
Thank you for pointing me to that thread. I'll make sure to respond there as well.
I did (incorrectly) assume that the parent was talking about Electron, so that's my bad. That being said, our decision to move away from licensing is absolutely not being driven by VC funding, so the parent comment is also spreading misinformation. We were building a subscription-based model all the way back in 2014, and we're phasing out licenses for the host of reasons that were mentioned in the original article.
In my experience the impact of VC money isn't directly seen by engineers but is rather a subtle top down shift in direction. Growth matters more, revenue matters more, existing users matter a bit less versus future users, features that impede this are removed, etc. Feature direction shifts slowly but surely.
The goal of a VC company is to either grow big or die. That's it. Risky bets at the expense of existing users are expected if current growth does not meet expectations. Worst case everyone quits the app and you go bankrupt. VCs expect that 9 time out of 10 so no big deal as long as the 10th makes it big.
> In my practice, 85 percent of my patients came to me with a severe magnesium deficiency. A deficiency in this mineral often leads to anxiety, mood swings, personality disorders, sound sensitivity, light sensitivity, and insomnia. Magnesium has been shown to mitigate the neurotransmitter glutamate while easing the anxiety and anger experienced by someone with most types of sound sensitivity. Chelated magnesium is one of the best types of mineral supplements as it is very small and easy for the body to absorb and make use of.
Mg deficiency is widespread in industrialized populations, due in part to nutrient depleted soils. It’s heavily implicated in medical literature for anxiety, irritability, insomnia. The link to noise sensitivity seems more anecdotal so far.
I often hear that Chelated magnesium has the highest bio-availability of all the different types of magnesium supplements. One might think they can just take more magnesium citrate to compensate but then it might be a full on laxative at that point.
> Need more convincing? How about a commercial operating system which doesn’t spy on you, does not report your online activity to anyone, and gives you complete freedom to choose the applications you want to use, however you want to use them? How about an operating system which isn’t tied to any specific hardware manufacturer, allowing you to choose the platform which is right for you, and fits perfectly well in systems with less than 4GB of memory or even virtual machines?