Alex

Really interesting picture in that you rarely see «super developed» Western nations on these lists. Canada is of course coasting on Han Chinese and assorted other immigrants.

Hoje, às 07:00, no Aeroporto de Lisboa: mais de 3 horas de filas. Turistas frustrados, famílias exaustas e uma imagem do país que não podemos normalizar. Isto não é um episódio, é um problema estrutural que afeta a economia, a reputação e o futuro de Portugal. Temos talento e potencial, mas falta visão, planeamento e execução. A porta de entrada do país não pode continuar assim. Portugal merece melhor.

VO2max has not been measured or predicted in any of the studies popularly claimed to tie it to longevity. One set of papers from Finland that nobody cites showed that measuring VO2 offers ZERO utility to predict longevity relative to performance on a cycling task. In fact, using VO2 was slightly worse at predicting longevity compared to cycling performance. Worse, none of the papers that built the equations predicting VO2max from treadmill performance used by the American College of Sports Medicine even measured VO2max. They measured VO2peak and claimed it was VO2max even though in none of the papers did VO2 plateau, which is needed to measure VO2max. Michael Pollack, who pioneered the aerobic craze of the 70s and 80s to the point that his obituary proclaimed “aerobics is dead” when he died of a stroke at age 61, was involved in the largest study demonstrating the utility of the equations in 1984, and the paper makes the wild justification for not seeking a plateau of VO2 that Robert Bruce, “the father of the treadmill exercise stress test,” did not look for a plateau when he first made the equations in 1973. The ACSM blindly propagates these equations even though their own methodological discussion says that if you don’t observe a VO2 plateau you didn’t measure VO2max! Koutlianos 2013 shows that when you *do* observe a plateau, the treadmill performance only has 7% utility to predict VO2max! Koutlianos measured it in athletes. It’s almost impossible to measure VO2max in the general population because they give up before the VO2 plateau. For example in the Finnish paper by JA Laukkansen, they tried to look for a plateau on a progressively increasing cycling test in 1294 men. 735 stopped because of fatigue, 207 stopped because of exhaustion, 155 stopped because of breathlessness, 50 stopped because of pain in the legs, joints, or back, and 86 stopped because of cardiorespiratory symptoms or abnormalities. No one stopped because they hit VO2max. In short, the papers show FITNESS is strongly predictive of longevity but hyperfocusing on VO2max is completely outside the evidence base.

After reading several posts about Apple terminating developer accounts, I've decided not to release my new app. I've been working on it for the past few weeks and was in the final stages. The app is related to a major franchise. While it doesn't directly reference the franchise or use its materials, the connection is quite obvious. I was relying on this link for the marketing campaign. To avoid any risks, I've put the project on hold. I might revisit it later as a web app. For now, I’m shifting my focus to updating the Tekst app. This audio transcription app was developed during Shipaton 2024. After its release, I didn't give it much attention. I now plan to change its positioning and integrate SpeechAnalyzer. Does anyone have experience using SpeechAnalyzer in production? Any pros, cons, or pitfalls to share?

Just had our monthly Indie meet-up in Wroclaw – amazing as always!