The European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO) operates facilities in Chile because it offers good weather, good seeing, and it is in the Southern Hemisphere.
None of the ESO’s instruments are in Europe. They’re all in Chile. It would make no sense to place an instrument for Southern Hemisphere observation in Europe.
However, administration is out of Germany, and the captured data is processed by researchers mostly in Europe.
There are also many amateur remote hosting facilities for telescopes in Chile. It really has great atmospheric conditions. If my telescope is in one of these facilities, is it no longer my telescope?
I’m sure the Yuan will increase somewhat as a reserve currency, but I’m skeptical it will become dominant. China has systemic issues at the moment, with a working-age population that peaked some time ago and a property market that is perpetually on the verge of implosion.
There are mounting pressures in domestic consumers, and an increasing move towards “dual circulation” (with a focus on the domestic part of that duality). Then there’s the risk of a miscalculation in the East China or South China seas.
Given that CNY trades in a tight, centrally-managed range against the USD (it’s almost always between 6-7 CNY to the dollar, and only briefly traded outside that during the pandemic), I’m not sure there’s a big incentive to use CNY as a hedge against USD.
It’s the same in China. My wife’s family is from there, and they hand out antibiotics for everything. Everyone seems to have a stash of them as well.
When my in-laws were visiting Australia for a couple of months and my wife’s mother got a minor cold, she started demanding we get her some antibiotics. We tried to explain that there’s no way a doctor would prescribe them for a minor sniffle, and she totally went if the deep end, acting as if she was going to die if she didn’t get them. But in the end, she survived.
I’m not sure if this is the previous poster’s reason, but (given the implication that the poster is a vegetarian) it my simply be that many vegetarians are put off by the taste and texture of meat, whether it be real, cultured or fake (via textured proteins, etc.).
But I think it’s pretty silly to think that vegetarians are the target market for fake or cultured meat. Surely not.
If you’ve been vegetarian for a long time (life-long or for decades), then the distinctive texture of many meat products can be very off-putting. It’s not like anything you find in vegetable dishes (which is why fake and cultured meat products exist!), and if you’re not used to it, it can trigger you to gag as your brain sends signals that “this isn’t food as I know it”.
This isn’t usually a problem. If you’re a vegetarian, you don’t have any requirement to eat meat. Except some restaurants are now excitedly adopting fake (vegetable protein-based) meats as a “vegetarian” option. It must be convenient as they don’t have to invent new vegetable-centric dishes, but many vegetarians just can’t manage to eat them even if they try. I’ve been to a couple of work dinners lately where the vegetarian option was a fake (TVP-based) meat, and had to just eat the side salad because the main dish triggered my gag reflex.
I’m a life-long vegetarian and kind of wish I could eat meat, it would make life simpler. But I just can’t bring myself to chew or swallow it without plenty of water to wash it down. That said, I’m all for cultured meats as an option for meat-eaters. Go for it.
A few guys in my PhD office 15 years ago used to have a hobby of doing something similar.
They’d invent a “fact”, spin up a webpage with that fact, add the fact to Wikipedia and cite the webpage to add plausibility.
Then one of them would occasionally Google to see if any “reputable” sources were repeating that “fact” (after reading it on Wikipedia) and add/swap their references in to strengthen the Wikipedia text.
As long as the “facts” were trivial enough, it worked.
If certain words (like “orange”) are statistically unlikely to be used in that context in that rhyme scheme, then they’re unlikely to be picked to begin with.
Previously generated words are added to the input token window.
At the point it’s generating the next word, it knows what its preceding words were. With a conceptual representation of various rhyme schemes, subsequent words will (probably) fit that form.
I’m eagerly anticipating our company moving to Teams.
Right now, the only approved chat solution is Skype for Business (with only plaintext messaging - rich text, files and images have been disabled for security reasons).
Other chat and social media sites are blocked at a firewall level (including Slack, Discord, Facebook, etc.).
I’ve heard bad things about Teams, but it’s surely better than the current solution we use with its lack of persistence and plain text limitation.
Even with double blind reviews, it’s often very clear who wrote the paper.
Authors regularly cite work by themselves or their team, so a statement like “In a previous study[1] we established a relationship between X and Y” renders double blind pointless.
I have both a Walkman (for music) and an upgraded/rebuilt iPod (for audiobooks) and prefer them for a few reasons:
- They don’t use any mobile data, and work when in a mobile-phone black spot (e.g. the national parks I go to most weekends). This is the main one.
- I can store all my music on there, without needing to use any storage space on my phone.
- They last forever with some basic maintenance. My iPod was made in 2006. I’ve upgraded the battery and replaced the HDD with an SD-card, but otherwise it just keeps on going.
- I can switch EQ profiles on my Walkman super-easily to suit different music or headphones. No navigating menus, it’s done in under a second.
- Tactile controls and voiced menus on my Rockboxed iPod. I can use the device entirely without looking at the screen. Handy when driving, but also useful when jogging or cycling, any other time you’d rather not stare at a screen instead of being aware of your environment.
- I can load them up with the exact pressing of music I want to listen to. For many old albums, which have gone though a dozen re-releases and remasters, this makes a difference. In fact, for some albums I have several different releases on my player, all with their distinct character, pros and cons.
- Brilliant bookmarking in Rockbox for audiobooks. Super customisable. And dedicated players never do a software update and lose your state. It’s always ready to go, precisely where I left it.
- Car mode. Brilliant for cars like my weekender that predate proper phone connectivity. Rockbox will automatically pause your audiobook when you turn off the ignition and start again when you’re back.
- Ability to enable dynamic range compression to combat road noise. All in a few button presses, without looking at the screen.
Are they for everyone? Of course not. But all of the above things matter to me personally.
The pre-Android Sony Walkmans (like the NW-A55 mentioned above) have decent battery life. I typically get around 30 hours from my SONY NW-A45. In a world where many modern “audiophile” players only get 8-10 hours of playback, that’s not bad.
However, they really are terrible for podcasts and audiobooks. There aren’t any real bookmarking features to speak of. For that, I use a Rockbox-compatible player (my preference is for a refurbished old HDD-based iPod with a new battery and SD card storage).
UK Consumer Contract law has a 14-day cancellation period.
For digital goods, the legislation states:
——
Under a contract for the supply of digital content not on a tangible medium, the trader must not begin supply of the digital content before the end of the cancellation period provided for in regulation 30(1), unless—
(a)the consumer has given express consent, and
(b)the consumer has acknowledged that the right to cancel the contract under regulation 29(1) will be lost.
——
Therefore, Nintendo is stating that the 14-day cancellation period is to be waived, and digital goods are to be deemed as supplied immediately upon purchase.
None of the ESO’s instruments are in Europe. They’re all in Chile. It would make no sense to place an instrument for Southern Hemisphere observation in Europe.
However, administration is out of Germany, and the captured data is processed by researchers mostly in Europe.
There are also many amateur remote hosting facilities for telescopes in Chile. It really has great atmospheric conditions. If my telescope is in one of these facilities, is it no longer my telescope?