dogorman

As I understand it, the purpose of ABS is to let you slam on your brakes and NOT swerve. If your wheels lock up then you lose all steering authority. ABS lets you slam your brake to the floor and still be able to keep your car on the road using the steering wheel. If your car doesn't have ABS, then you should know that and know to "pump your brakes" instead, to maintain control of the car.

If a child jumped in front of my car, I'd swerve even if that meant risking a tree. If I ran over a child I don't know that I'd be able to live with myself anyway, so the choice is clear: I risk myself to improve the odds of the child making it away unscathed. But a deer? No way in hell. I'll slam on the brakes, since my car has ABS, but I would not take my chances with swerving.

Yes, if you are driving responsibly then using the brakes is always an option. All cars have brakes; they're required to by law. If using the brakes is not an option then you already fucked up (e.g. you were going too fast on a slippery road.)

Cars have this handy peddle on the floor that lets you slow down the car without power-sliding it. You should give that a try.

No!? You're supposed to not swerve, but you sure as shit are supposed to brake! If you can't safetly slam on the brakes because somebody was tailgating you or because the road surface is too slippery, then you already fucked up before the deer appeared!

I know an American civil engineer who has one of these rings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineer%27s_Ring

Wikipedia says the oath that goes with it is:

I am an Engineer.

In my profession I take deep pride. To it I owe solemn obligations.

As an engineer, I, (full name), pledge to practice Integrity and Fair Dealing, Tolerance, and Respect, and to uphold devotion to the standards and dignity of my profession, conscious always that my skill carries with it the obligation to serve humanity by making best use of the Earth's precious wealth.

As an engineer, I shall participate in none but honest enterprises. When needed, my skill and knowledge shall be given without reservation for the public good.

In the performance of duty, and in fidelity to my profession, I shall give the utmost.

---

I get the impression this ring is not for "software engineers". I really dislike that term, I call myself a computer programmer to anybody who asks, regardless of the title my employer flatters me with. I think "software engineer" is leaching off the social prestige real engineers have earned for their professions. Prestige the software industry in general does not yet deserve. Programmers take jobs making shitty socially harmful products then deflect all blame to their employers, denying their own responsibility to society that oath describes.

I am sure there are some programmers who deserve it, but by in large, the term is used by companies to flatter code monkeys making gambling apps, spyware, social media skinner boxes, etc. I am not without sin here, so I refuse to call myself an engineer.

They might claim they do, on their paperwork, website, etc. But what is the reality when they're actually in the air? Do you think stewardesses on these private jets are really in the habit of making demands of their multimillionaire customers? Somehow I doubt it.

'Overreach' can only be defined in relative terms.

As has always been the case I think, common plebs are expected to sacrifice so the elite can continue their lives of luxury.

Your 'Reality: [...] End of story' claim does not contradict the title. They may automatically have a truck license, but also have never driven a truck.

If I got a truck license more than 20 years ago (before 1999) but never drove a truck in my life, I would definitely feel uncomfortable driving a truck. Shit, I feel a bit uncomfortable driving my car after a two or three month break. For 20 years to elapse between licensing and putting that activity into practice seems justifiably eyebrow raising to me. The headline doesn't even mention the 20 elapsed years part of it.

In the rural Pennsylvanian I grew up in, the multimillionaire family that owned the town plant went to the same church as most of the rest of the town (excepting catholics), sent their kids to the same public school, and generally socialized freely with the rest of the town. One of their daughters was the same age as me and, although not a friend, was a close acquaintance for as long as I can remember up until the end of highschool when I moved away. That family was as you describe, 'nearly indistinguishable' from the rest of the town. Nearly indistinguishable, except there was no mistaking who they were because the plant was named after them, as was the highschool's football field (which they apparently paid for.) Also, the nearest "shopping mall" was about half an hour away. Shopping as a hobby was alien to me, nobody I knew did that until I went to college.

Point is, America is a big place. If you think you understand America after watching a bunch of American movies and TV shows, you probably don't.

Interesting that a "33 percent increase" is the same thing as 0.105% to 0.14%. Those latter two figures are both a lot lower than I would have guessed.

Potassium nitrate (the main ingredient of gunpowder) has historically been used as a preservative, particularly for curing meat. Some people might still use it, but these days sodium nitrite is more common.

I'd guess tomatoes are fine. I'd definitely think twice before eating carrots or potatoes from such a garden though, even washed and pealed thoroughly (and normally I wouldn't peal those.)

Not that I don't support warning disclaimers on facebook, but "designed to manipulate your emotional state" certainly applies to all movies, music, most books, etc. A big difference between these things and facebook is that facebook is reactive. It constantly measures your emotional state and modifies what it presents you with. Movies, music and books don't do that (yet?)

Facebook reacts to you reacting to facebook; putting you inside a control loop. Facebook is more akin to a car salesman than a movie director; a car salesman who knows virtually everything about you because he's MITMed your social interactions for years, and can modify his individualized approach to manipulating you minute by minute.

To be frank, I do not want to get that book nor do I want my name to be in their system as somebody who is interested in that book. A search of their online catalogues through Tor was enough to confirm my suspicion that they would not have the book generally available. My understanding of how librarians think about and consider "banned books" comes from my interactions with a few librarians in my social circle; the search for the book was simply to illustrate my point with an example.

Most people don't want to read most earnestly banned books. It's a very notorious book though, it would probably garner more attention than many uncontroversial books in the long tail of most library collections, which are neither loved nor hated, notorious nor famous.

But a lot of the people interested in reading it would probably have right wing inclinations, and the average librarian doesn't want to support that sort of thing (not least because the nazis themselves were big on book burning..)

When librarians speak of banned books, they are talking about books other people wanted banned, not the books librarians themselves wanted banned.

Harry Potter gets on these lists because some christian groups in America demanded that librarians remove the book from their shelves, while the librarians didn't want to. But books that the librarians themselves chose to not stock don't get on the list, because to a librarian, a librarians job is to select which books to stock and which not to. You are very unlikely* to find a copy of Myth of the 20th Century on the shelves of your local public library, not because of external pressure but because the librarians themselves think that people shouldn't read it. And to librarians, that is not banning.

*(I checked. Of the two library systems I have a card for, one doesn't have it and the other has a single copy in German, which they won't let you check out, but no copies in English. Since this is an American library, the German copy would be inaccessible to huge swaths of the population anyway.)

It's both, either, or neither. The spelling he used is common and widely accepted. According to legend Rochambeau played it, but there is no evidence for that. The earliest written reference to the word doesn't spell it like the French general's name, though similar enough to plausibly be a corruption of it. However it may also be a corruption of the japanese name for the game.

Anyway, I'd guess he was downvoted because a lot of people here have an old justified hate of flash and thought his comment signaled tribal allegiance to the opposite camp.

The Zeroth law, which permits a robot to harm individuals if it's good for the collective humanity, is certainly cause for concern. But it's scarcely the only concern. The three laws are riddled with holes which Asimov used as plot generators for his robot stories. Consider the Solarian formulation of the first law: Robots are not permitted to kill humans [where 'human' is defined to only include Solarian.]

But even when the laws haven't been tampered with, they're still filled with holes, traps, oversights, etc. The first law states "A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm." This law requires a robot to intervene when a human is doing something the robot considers risky. A robot operating under this rule might grab you off your skateboard, because it judges skateboarding to be risky and is required to take action to prevent that possible harm ("A robot may not [...] through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm") That inaction clause could be removed, but that introduces other problems.

The wealthy and powerful like to keep their heads, and have devised complex systems of liability laundering and misdirection to ensure that the general public never get mad enough at the right people to actually start chopping off heads again. In a democratic republic, politicians are ostensibly in charge but in reality are beholden to corporate interests; corporations which in turn serve to hide more degrees of indirection between the powerful and their whims. When something goes wrong and the public gets enraged, by design it is never obvious who's head they should be after. Layers upon layers of fall men and patsies soak up the anger, tanking the outrage, long before the mob makes it to the necks that would actually make a difference.

A stalker for hire who occasionally stalks somebody who's also a scumbag, if the money is right? Give me a break. Such lame defenses of the profession only serve to further damn it.

comparing them to rapists belays naiveity and an agenda.

An agenda huh? I guess you mean it's personal to me? Well you're right; a former employer sicced such goons on me and one of them got nasty. That's my "agenda" pal; being a victim of this profession.

PIs are stalkers for hire. dubdigidob is being blunt, but I think he's right. I don't want rapists chiming in to offer their perspective on stories about rape; nor do I welcome PIs chiming in with their opinions on stories about corporations using PIs to stalk and harass people.

This is a very interesting article, but the headline is an unholy synthesis of gaslighting and clickbait. Better title from the URL: Can we hope to understand how the Greeks saw their world?"

convergence between fish and dolphins

The convergence between dolphins and ichthyosaurs is even more remarkable. Ichthyosaurs were marine reptiles; air breathing tetrapods that, like dolphins, had ancestors that walked on land but eventually returned to the sea to kick fish ass.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ichthyosaur#/media/File:Ichthy...

A rising awareness of the risks posed by house fires might also suppress the rate of burglar bar installations. If there were a fire in my house, I wouldn't want bars blocking my egress.

Pro-tip, don't buy exotic ammunition that was never actually sold to the general public from dodgy guys on the internet. That youtuber who nearly blew his face off recently with his 50cal wasn't the victim of expired ammunition; his ammunition was almost certainly counterfeit and "handloaded" with the wrong powder or far too much powder.

In old ammunition, the primary concerns are the corrosive residue the ammunition will leave behind, rounds that won't go off at all, or rounds with a delayed reaction ("hangfire".) Hangfires can be dangerous if they go unnoticed, but aren't spontaneous "gun explodes in your face" events. You're also fairly likely to experience hangfires and rounds that simply don't work when shooting new production cheap 22lr; rimfire is notoriously unreliable and when rimfire ammunition is made cheap, you'll encounter 'duds' often enough. If you're at a gun range just trying to have fun, this is generally little more than an annoyance.

Centerfire ammunition is more reliable in general. With ancient centerfire ammunition, you have to wonder whether the ammunition was ever any good in the first place. A century ago, there were plenty of companies/countries making really shitty rifle ammunition that you might still find for sale today. That ammunition was never good at the time, and age hasn't made it any better. But some companies/countries were also making perfectly good ammunition a century ago, and that ammunition is generally just as reliable today as it ever was. But it will leave behind hydrophilic corrosive salts in your gun, so maybe think twice before shooting lots of it then neglecting to clean your gun.

This article would be much better if it had some data and evidence. A quick check on google ngrams reveals that the phrase 'well kempt' surged in popularity after 2000, relative to the two previous centuries. 'Unkempt' is still far more popular, but 'kempt' has by no means disappeared.

Expiring bullets, from the makers of headlight fluid.

ring ring "Hello sir, do you own any firea-" click

I would hang up on that call and I don't even own a gun. Surely some people will answer, but wide swaths of the American public, gun owning or otherwise, would refuse to answer these sort of questions on basic principle and/or common sense. If you could get an estimate for what portion of gun owners relative to non-owners would refuse to answer those questions then you might have something for the statisticians to work with, but I don't see how you could estimate even that.

Surveys give you data, but sometimes that data is worth less than dirt.

A students are often formerly unhappy C students.

Is there any empirical evidence for this? It flies in the face of my experience, which is that A students were A students from the start; that C students almost never become A students, and that A students sometimes become C students.