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Essential oils. Homeopathy. Chiropractic. Reiki. Juice cleanses. Perineum sunning. Internet accelerator software. Iridology. Faith healing. Organic food. Oil pulling. Gold plated digital audio cables.
It’s worth noting that gold plated connectors are not snake oil. Gold is a good conductor and doesn’t form a nonconductive oxide layer. That means it’s going to be more durable and won’t corrode together or apart like those old ass sheet metal tube sockets that all need to be cleaned.
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I think you replied to the wrong comment.
I absolutely did. Thanks for that.
Perineum sunning
I’m sorry WHAT
I’ve not heard of this but I assume it’s irradiating your taint/barse/grundle with sunlight. Although for what purpose is beyond me.
Edit: Wikipedia link
Isn’t showing the sun your grundle purpose enough?
Fair enough.
Everything marketed audiophiles, not only gold plated cables, but also anything that uses vacuum tubes because “they sound better”
I agree, but with one caveat.
Fully analog tube amps do definitely produce a warmer/richer sound with less complicated things to go wrong. Artists like them because they are reliable, generally user serviceable, (usually just need to replace bad/old tubes) and makes each recording sound relatively unique.
The thing is, is that it really only works during production. Unless being cut direct to a master record, the sound will get saved in a digital format to produce the user-facing media, which can include digital-source vinyls.
Those products marketed to audiophiles try to take the digitally recorded/archived products to “try” making it sound like the original.
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There’s a LOT of snake oil in the audio world. Especially home theater and home studio setups. I’m a professional audio technician, and some of the “audiophile” setups I have seen are just outright asinine.
Use balanced signal for runs over ~3 feet. Use the cheapest star-quad cable you can get, and the most basic $4 Neutrik connectors. Why? Because that album you’re using to test your “hi-fi” sound system was recorded using exactly that: Cheap ¢30/foot cable and basic Neutrik connectors.
It’s also what concert setups use. You think a concert with six combined miles of cabling is going to be paying $2000 per cable? Fuck no, they’re using the cheap shit (which was hand soldered in bulk at the warehouse workbench by their lowest paid shop tech), to run that million dollar audio system. Their money goes to the speakers, amps, and mixer; Not gold plated wire, robotic soldering, or triple insulated jackets. In double-blind tests, audiophiles can’t hear the difference between a $500 cable and a couple of plasti-dipped coat hangers twisted together.
The people who complain about digital audio also can’t tell the difference in double-blind tests. Because modern audio hardware is able to perfectly emulate old analog gear. Google the Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem for a breakdown of how we can perfectly capture and recreate analog audio with digital equipment. Vacuum tubes were groundbreaking when they were first used. But they had a lot of issues, and have very little relevance in today’s systems. They’re prone to burning out, notoriously fragile, and can be emulated perfectly.
The Norquist-Shannon rate sampling theorem only asserts that for a given maximum frequency, you only need another other given maximum frequency of sampling to represent it.
It does not say you can “perfectly” reproduce a signal. Only that you can reproduce all fourier components of the signal that are below half your sampling rate in frequency. It perfectly does that, yes.
But the signals that only contain a finite number of frequencies all below a certain maximum frequency are abstractions used in signal theory classes for teaching that theorem, and in engineering to hit a “good enough” target, not a “perfect” target.
Any frequencies bouncing around the room at over 22 kHz are lost at least to something using the 44 kHz sampling format.
TL;DR: Norquist-Shannon lets you completely reproduce signals with finite information in them. But real life sound doesn’t have finite information in it.
It’s Nyquist–Shannon. Norquist is taxes.
Also frequencies greater than half the sampling rate aren’t lost they fold into lower frequencies unless filtered out.
But if you think it’s easiser to capture those room acoustics with analog equipment the non linear amplification and distortion of any analog system is going to change the sound just add much if not more then a good digital system.
So yeah both lose or distort the signal but digital does it in avery predictable way that can be accounted for and it does have a frequency region that it captures precisely. Analog doesn’t.
Nyquist, thank you.
aren’t lost they fold into lower frequencies unless filtered out
If by “fold into” you mean they add noise to and hence distort the readings on the lower frequencies, that’s correct. But that just takes it further from a perfect reproduction.
Frequency folding is the term used in DSP no need for quotes. The Nyquist frequency is commonly referred to as the folding frequency.
And yes frequencies above the Nyquist folding frequency alias into lower frequencies. A simple low pass filter prevents this however.
Properly filtered digital sampling produced a more accurate reproduction of the frequency range with less distortion then an analog signal.
Also I used quotes to refer to your words, not to throw shade at a term’s validity. I use quote marks to quote.
If by “x” you mean …
Doesn’t mean the same thing as just randomly surrounding it with quotes in normal use means.
I don’t disagree that there’s noise in analog signals too, limiting their information capacity. But that’s coming from the limitations of our physical implementations’ quality, no?
The Guys podcast has a pretty fun episode about this.
Chiropractic
I dunno what shysters you’ve all been going to. My chiro, with his kinesiology degree and full physiotherapy ticket in addition to his nationally-recognized certification, seems to do a lot more “do these stretches and stop sitting stupidly” guidance and reeeeally isn’t interested in a “programme of wellness” grift that my friends in other regions worry about.
Downvotes? What, jealous my guy isn’t an overt shyster quack like the horror stories? I hope when you need them, there’s a good one out there for ya. I’m 30 years on a wicked back injury and I’m still limber so woo!
Chiropractic is literally based on the teachings of a ghost while haunting its founder.
No, really. Look it up.
How do you bundle up organic food with the rest of that ?
At best, organic food offers the same nutritional value as non organic food. At worst, it’s less nutritious and more expensive.
Organic food? Please let me take that out of your list. Organic produce has a huge lot of benefits over industrial, to both the consumer and the environment.
All it takes to qualify for the organic label is a payment to the right industry group.
That’s another thing. That’s organic certification.
You’re fighting for semantics, but the other guy is right here. Organic labeled food and “organic food” can be used interchangeably
Maybe in the US or the EU.
All food is organic. Unless you have a crop like a chicken (you don’t), you really shouldn’t put any inorganic materials in your body.
That’s another meaning for the word “organic”.
What is
Organic means both chemical compounds that contain carbon and a form of agriculture that complies with certain standarda
Yep. I’m pretty sure. But we have to distinguish “organic input based produce” v/s regenerative agriculture, which is also “organic”. And there’s a huge gray area in between.
All food is organic. Every bit of it is made of carbon building blocks.
That’s another meaning for the word “organic”.
Organic food is devinetively not snake oil. As you mentioned,Nutrition wise its exactly the same. However, the Environmental Impact is completely different. Organic farming is much better in terms of biodiversity, soil health. Since organic farming doesn’t include the use of pesticides it doesn’t kills everything else that would live on a field. Also, Theres always parts of the pesticides that stay in the crops and that you eat. I don’t know exactly how bad they are, but considering that(at least in Germany) Parkinson is an accepted work related illness for farmers its sure that they aren’t entirely safe for humans. However, we should take into consideration, that farmers get exposed to much higher doses of pesticides. If someone has some articles regarding this topic feel free to share.
This is going to be different country to country, but organic farming can still use pesticides. I posted a link below as well, but organic farming is also not conclusively better for the environment. It has lower yields, and therefore requires more land. You have to balance the effects of converting more land into organic farmland versus the benefit of, for example, less fertilizer runoff.
At the end of the day, “organic” is a marketing term, not a statement of health or ecological benefit. Most complaints about conventional agriculture (and GMOs) are actually complaints about industrialized agriculture as a whole.
I wish there was a good, regulated term for food that was produced with the best known processes (and perhaps there is for specific foods), but “organic” is not it.
I personally think, that the loss in efficiency is worth it, if you don’t have to use pesticides. This also becomes less relevant, when you take into consideration, that we have to move away from eating that much meat(which needs more land), so we have the land to compensate this loss in efficiency.
Internet accelerator software is not. Once you use IDM or XDM, you cannot go back to regular single threaded downloading. They are also download managers and provide a ton of useful functions.
Also essential oils are not snake oil. They are infinitely superior to the chemical deodorant crap we are accustomed to using. Although I do not know what purpose you mean by it is snake oil.
When they are talking about essential oils, they are talking about the peddling Karens and Staceys that consume overpriced lavender oil and shit with every meal and also put it into the food of their kids. And then wonder why their kid exhibits sings of certain poisoning and hives.
consume overpriced lavender oil and shit with every meal
Who does this? This does not happen in the East, where essential oils are originally made to use as scent.
Who do you think does it?
Western women apparently seem to consume it, and even make kids consume it, according to some comments in this thread. It is wild to hear something as dumb as this happens. This is akin to rightwingers eating fentanyl to defeat COVID.
It’s the same demographic, don’t worry.
I’m shocked that no one has said Essential Oils yet.
They smell nice, if you put them in those burner thing, they have that going to them.
Some also do have specific use cases where they work really well, like Tea Tree Oil for acne and nail fungus or Peppermint oil for nausea. Most of them don’t do anything though.
Clove oil is a decent anti-mildew agent. I have used it in a past apartment, and use it on my boat to knock out the mildew scent.
Eucalyptus is good for clearing your nose as well.
Essential oils are natural fragrants better than chemical deodorants.
They are just allergic reactions waiting to happen.
Tea tree oil was the only one I think to actually have merit, but I imagine we’ve been able to reproduce the beneficial part of in a lab. (with minimal risk of triggering allergies)
Wait, are essential oils supposed to be anything more than fragrances you stick in a humidifier thing?
There’s an entire industry of pedaling them as health products. I once had a random bint on a tour notice my sore back thanks to my scoliosis and asked me about it during some downtime in the tour. After the tour was done she “tipped” me by pouring an amount of essential oil on my palm, told me to rub it on my back, and that if I buy the stuff myself it’ll cure my scoliosis.
I walked to the break room and washed it down the drain. Shit made my hand STANK and my head hurt from the fumes.
Essential oils were invented in the East. As an Indian, I can tell you we use them as scent by rubbing it usually near the ear/neck. Today I got to know these weird western women mix it in foods and eat it.
They are essential!
Shampoo and conditioner with vitamins in it.
Your hair is dead. It can’t metabolize anything.
I don’t know anything about how it works, but I assumed it was absorbed by the skin on your head not the actual hair.
I still doubt that putting vitamin whatever on your head everyday will actually make a difference
This is correct. It’s about a healthy scalp. Like lotion for your head.
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Vitamins yeah that’s no good.
Things like fruit, honey, or flowers must be good though right?
I mean, my wife’s honey pomegranate and hybiscus body scrub must be amazing with all that fruity yummy stuff.
They just smell nice, your skin is dead and you’re not retrieving anything from it. Just eat the fruits and veggies.
I didn’t know that. I am definitely going to keep this in mind now.
PH numbers in any hair washing/conditioning product that gets rinsed out.
You end up with the PH of the water, people.
VPNs for internet access, at least the way they are advertised
I’m sure plenty of them have nice little deals with the NSA lol
Most of them are owned by one company. The only independent ones are Mullvad, Proton, and IVPN. For the most part, you want to Tor and never sign into anything if you are being ultra private about your browsing.
What about airvpn ?
They don’t give you complete privacy, no. On the other hand, if what you’re concerned about is your workplace seeing that you’re fucking off at work, or a Hollywood studio suing you for pirating a 20 year old television show that isn’t available to buy or stream, well, a VPN is just fine. In regards to piracy, it obfuscates a lot of your internet behavior from your ISP, so they aren’t able to easily track what you’re doing either.
If I was worried about gov’t level threats, Tails, Tor, and public, unsecured WiFi would be the only thing I’d be using.
The Mayers Briggs Type Indicator test. It was developed with the same rigor as horoscopes, yet I still hear people I know are smart proudly tell me their four letter personality code.
Yeah, it’s corporate astrology
I mean isn’t it obviously homoeopathy and a significant part of the rest of alternative medicine (not all of it I guess). It is a billion euro business in Germany alone.
Dietary advice based on the food pyramid/MyPlate. Before the late '70s, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, and mental illnesses were all rare in the general population.
We need to be eating fewer carbohydrates, not basing our diets around them. We need to be getting most of our calories from fat, not demonising it.
Thankfully, we have people like Dr. Ken Berry, Dr. Chris Palmer, Dr. Anthony Chaffee, Dr. Georgia Ede, Dr. Shawn Baker, Dr. Paul Mason, Dr. Tony Hampton, Dr. Jason Fung, and others spreading this message.
Gamer glasses
My eye Dr recommends the blue light filtering and “digital lenses” so I got them. I haven’t noticed any difference in how my eyes felt. The info packet that came with the glasses noted at all claims regarding these features are not supported by any medical studies.
I refused blue light filter on my glasses, and the eye spectacle shop was shocked as I was the first one to reject that “feature”. According to ophthalmologists, it is critical that you receive the blue light during day to keep yourself active, and dimmer yellow/red light during night time. This is to keep yourself in sync with circadian rhythm and the natural pattern of sun/cloud daytime and sunset evening time.
I refused blue light filter on my glasses, and the eye spectacle shop was shocked
I just ordered new specs and the opto was the same way. But, they were happy with the two pairs of presbyopic myopic astigmatic wtf-priced lenses I got - one tuned ‘near’ for terminal work - and sent me on my way with a valid PD … which I’m gonna have checked before sending it off to Zenni for the super-high-index daily-drivers with those sweet-sweet Mongolia-made lenses we all know the regular optos are using anyway.
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Software/game DRM/anticheat (as a service/product) that involves code obfuscation and/or kernel driver.
It works well for the developers. Denuvo games take a while to get cracked (if ever). Valorant cheats are really expensive.
Denuvo also prevents easy modding in many cases, causes issues on top of increasing system requirements. Valorant cheats possibility destroys the purpose of the system. But at least valorant anticheat is not being sold as a service to other devs I think.
The worst (best?) part is that they usually don’t even stop piracy, just waste resources.
Subscriptions.
I have a couple from the hip actually, because America has grifting baked into it’s soul. In no particular order:
- MMS (Drinkin’ bleach)
- Crystal healing (most sellers)
- WitchTok kits (TikTok influencers selling expensive spices)
- Brain pills
- Any product peddled by a megachurch (see the Baker bucket for a great example)
- Chiropractors
As more of these come to me, I’ll try to expand the list.
Update: I can’t believe I forgot chiros! They turned themselves into a religion at one point to try to dodge medical licensure laws.
I would say that a lot of stuff being peddled through tiktok and Instagram are scams. Those anti-5g dongles come to mind.
Tin foil hats are much better anti5g solution.
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Anti-5g dongles? That’s new for me, but I consume a lot of these grifts secondhand through a few podcasts I listen to. I might be behind.
Sounds like the bones of a good scam are there though, assuming the anti-5G conspiracy still gets traction and clicks.
Edit: Do you know if someone like bigclive got one? He takes those sorts of devices apart a lot to explain them and I’d love to see what’s inside. I just don’t want to pay the money for one to fund the grift.
There is a good few videos on them, it has died down significantly since the whole 5g panic went away. Some of them were just some clear USB keys, some were just stickers. Mr. Whosetheboss did a video on them.
baked into its* soul
Any product peddled by a megachurch (see the Baker bucket for a great example)
Some megachurches have sold freeze-dried prepper food. It’s not a grift per se, because it’s perfectly edible freeze dried food, but it’s overpriced for what you’re getting.
You’re right, but I was thinking of the buckets that are basically terrible quality slop that’s borderline inedible.
I might still call it a grift because they’re asking for payment as “donations” to skirt paying taxes on them. That, and like you said, it’s not a great value for what you get. Maybe not pure snake oil, but there’s definitely still enough dishonesty involved imo that I’d be comfortable calling it a grift.
Baker Bucket is a good name for a gravity bong setup.
The core slikt of anti aging creams and other hydration products.
I can get like, one. But god damned, my wife has so many different products They can’t all possibly be needed
Go to a place where it’s sunny all the time. Then go to somewhere where it’s cloudy all the time. You’ll notice the difference when looking at older people’s skins. So hydration and sunscreen are for sure helpful. All the other aging stuff… Dunno, but I think at least some of them are.
Hydration, sleep, proper nutrition, limited sun, and a bit of a cream/oil/barrier for those with naturally dryer skin is important. Stay away from things that cause you inflammation, like smoking, alcohol, and drugs, that cortisol will age you so fast.
Be careful she doesn’t OD on anti-ageing serums and turn into a baby. It would be seriously annoying being married to a baby.
Reminds me of when I used an anti-wrinkle cream as a hand cream once. It anti-wrinkled the skin on my knuckles, so making a fist, the knuckle skin went so tight it started to tear.
I spilled some on my pug and he turned into a greyhound.
Bust a nut challenge. Difficulty- shot to hell if an attempt is even made
CBD oil. I bought some about 5 years ago and it did nothing but grease up my tongue
They sell CBD oil with this little droppers for dosing, but when you read the studies the dosage is like a mouthful of oil. It’s like the exact opposite problem of melatonin dosing.
I know. Thats what i had. Worthless junk
I wish we’d focus on hemp for building on an industrial scale… This CBD crap needs to stop
If you buy good quality, you can feel the effects. But the vast majority is trash.
That’s my take. I use a CBD vape or oil for arthritis pain and it noticably makes a difference. The oil takes awhile to kick in but it makes me get pretty goofy at higher doses, even without THC in it.
It’s an anti-inflammatory at best. If you could feel the effects you probably have way more pressing issues than bum weed.
Yeah probably works for some folks. Ive always kinda been the oddball when it comes to drugs. Heck even lsd didnt trip me out Just kept me up from sunset to sunrise pondering the makeup of the universe
Homeopathics, though sometimes even a placebo can have beneficial effects.
This is a common misconception of the placebo effect. The placebo effect is a measurement issue, not an actual benefit.
Tests are corrupted by using the reposnes and judgement of humans. People will say they had some sort of benefit because of expectations, poor recollection and politeness. It doesn’t mean a benefit was gained. A placebo group allows researchers to quantify how much the placebo effect has on the data they gathered, they can then see if the experiment they did had any effect. Placebo is literally our definition of zero effect.
Anyone telling you placebo is a good thing is wrong, misinformed or deliberately misleading you. In many countries it is illegal for doctors to prescribe ‘placebo treatments’. They will still recommend such things to their patients - not because they work but because they get the patient out the door and less likely to come bother them again.
Not really “modern day” snake oil when it was invented in the 1700’s lol.
As long as it continues to be sold on store shelves, it’s modern enough to count.
Definitely this one, the products are sometimes placed right next to legitimate ones and worse:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/marketplace-homeopathic-products-1.6254025
Hidden camera reveals some pharmacists recommend homeopathic products to treat kids’ cold and flu
Standing desks - stationary standing is just as bad as stationary sitting.
Blue light filter stuff - it’s my understanding that there’s no evidence that blue light causes eye strain.
I always thought the point of standing desks was, that you could periodically switch between standing and sitting. That should be at least somewhat beneficial right?
No, the main point of standing desk is that whoever has one talks about them all day, every day. At least, that was my experience 10-15 years ago, which was the last time I spent in an office.
It really isn’t that much better, instead we should be periodically stretching or exercising
Blue light filters may not help with eye strain, but I’ve definitely benefited from them for circadian rhythm reasons.
I’ve definitely noticed reduced eye strain with using blue light filters.
I called my standing desk a dancing desk. Didn’t just stand there. I don’t have one now we are back in the office though, some people do but they are all short - I’m taller and it seems too odd to be looking into everyone’s workspace.
But how else can you easily assert dominance over the peasants?
Blue light doesn’t damage the eyes unless there is a burning amount of it (or a burning amount of UV), but people with bad eye focus may find it more straining to read things in blue due to the greater light scatter of the color. The solution is wear your reading glasses, I guess.
What really strains the eyes is focusing on close up objects for hours on end. American eye doctors everywhere have the 30/30/30 rule (every 30 minutes, look at something 30ft away for 30 seconds) as a “let your eye muscles relax for a bit” exercise for those of you always working on something up close.
That said, night filters are good just to help with your circadian rhythm, since the brain looks for a persistent abundance of a particular chunk of blue wavelength to determine “daytime”.
Yeah if your desk is stuck just in one position that’s obviously going to be bad. Most ‘standing’ desks are actually height adjustable. You can spend some time standing some time sitting. But maybe even more important, you can adjust the desk to the right height rather than just adjusting your chair.
You can at least move a bit more when standing at the desk. Also, my past boss was recommended one due to back issues by his doctor at one point
