try_again · HackerTrans

Congratulations, you're a sensible human being who has figured out that listening to your body and intuition works much better than all these "optimal" solutions everyone is chasing after. I've suspected for a long time that much of ergonomics is just snake oil and hardly based on any evidence at all. If sitting upright or in some specific allegedly ergonomic position is making me feel tense and wears me out, how is that helpful? I prefer to go with what millions of years of evolution have coded in me. Fortunately I don't have a desk job anymore so it's not of much concern to me.

try_again

4 年前議論

The death toll of nuclear energy is only a minute fraction of the casualties brought about by coal and oil. The most pessimistic estimations of deaths caused by all nuclear power accidents that ever occurred and waste that has been produced utterly pale in comparison to the insane human cost of the fossil fuels. And thanks to their greenhouse gas emissions the worst of it is likely yet to come. And the sun generates its energy output as a result of nuclear fusion, not the nuclear fission of a chain reaction. We'd very much like to bring the sun to earth because controlled sustained fusion could potentially solve the majority of our energy troubles. Unfortunately thus far we've brought it in the form of thermonuclear weapons.

try_again

4 年前議論

My dad had a workshop where he made woodwind instruments. For some applications he required lead. I recall entertaining myself as a kid by melting some small pieces of lead with a welding torch and looking at the pretty liquid metal. It was in the outside air, but I can't help but wonder what I may have done to my brain that day. Thank god he didn't have mercury.

try_again

5 年前議論

When you state "in this country", please specify what country that is. Despite the use of English as the lingua franca here we're amongst a geographically diverse group. I'm going to assume you mean the US. If that's a correct guess, as a European the US work standards frighten me. Health insurance so tightly coupled to work that if you get into an accident shortly after being laid off and don't have (expensive) private insurance you could be bankrupted by it. Two weeks vacation per year seems to be common and I've repeatedly heard that employees are being pressured to not actually use their full paid time off. Maybe I've just been too coddled by the working conditions here in Belgium but I simply can't imagine working in the US without going completely mad or sinking into a depression. I know that I pay incredibly high taxes, but a higher income at the cost of living in such a cutthroat environment simply doesn't seem worth it to me. And to be honest I consider my standard of living to be very high and comfortable, both in spite of and thanks to taxes.

try_again

5 年前議論

That's really just a failure of input sanitation or not properly escaping special characters or putting the comment in CDATA when constructing the XHTML. Basically that blog allowed an injection attack. Not XHTML's fault, the same software would have allowed any comment to do god knows what in HTML.

try_again

5 年前議論

Not really. Tests with two lines generally have one "control" line and one "test" line. If the control line fails to appear, then the result is invalid and you should try a new kit, regardless of what the other line said. If the control line appears, then the result is valid and the test line shows a negative (no line) or positive (line) result. So "pregnant" should only appear if both lines show up. It's a very simply boolean AND condition, but that's something that would be challenging to have done purely by chemical reaction. Probably a lot more complex than having a simple check by a circuit. Using a microprocessor, you can have "pregnant", "not pregnant" or "invalid" show up to give an unambiguous single result. Trying to achieve the same through chemical means only is likely also more prone to failure. Even if the outcome is clear, there are still false positives and negatives. Of course you should expect users to read the manual and be capable of interpreting a very simple system with only 4 combinations and 3 outcomes, but apparently that's beyond many people. Which is exactly why some test producers go to this length.

try_again

5 年前議論

Look up "Time Cube" and prepare to indulge in a bit of insane internet history.

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