Category: Technical Labour

And this is supposed to make me feel better?

And this is supposed to make me feel better? I’d be feeling a lot safer if there was an order of magnitude or two between these two figures.

Originally shared by Buddhini Samarasinghe

Red meat and cancer risk

The news is awash with stories about how red and processed meats have been classified as carcinogens in the same category as tobacco. But what exactly does this mean? Let’s unpick this a little bit before throwing out the bacon with the bathwater. 

There have been several excellent bits of writing that explain what this means – the first is by Ed Yong (http://goo.gl/br9OU7) and the second by CRUK* (http://goo.gl/ELDzCI). These are well-worth a read if you want to learn more. 

Basically, the key bit of information to remember is that this is not a risk assessment, it is a hazard identification. A great analogy (stolen from the CRUK article above) is to think of banana skins – they definitely can cause accidents, but in practice it doesn’t happen very often, and isn’t as severe as being in a car accident. But under the hazard identification approach, banana skins and cars would be in the same category because they both definitely cause accidents. The severity of the accident is not discussed, and that’s where we tend to get lost with the breathless press releases on this topic. 

So should you stop eating red and processed meat? The answer is all about the dreaded, boring M word – moderation. If you’re always eating red and processed meat, over years and years, then that’s probably not good for you. But meat in moderation (i.e. not too much and not too often) is still okay, and is definitely not as bad as smoking is. The thing with diet and disease is that reality is often rather boring; there are no miracle diets or magical juice cleansers that will give you eternal youth. There are no superfoods that offset the damage of binge-drinking every weekend. That’s just not how our bodies work. 

What you can do to prevent cancer is eat plenty of fruit and veg with lots of fibre while cutting back on things like alcohol, salt, red and processed meats. And definitely avoid sunburns and smoking. 

*In the interest of full disclosure, I work at the charity CRUK as a science communicator. 

#ScienceEveryday  

Imagine what it will be like when television is common.

Imagine what it will be like when television is common. Political discourse will become so superficial and trivial! Politicians will behave almost like vaudeville entertainers or moving picture stars!

Interesting things to note about this picture: the “televisor” set depicted is based on Logie Baird’s mechanical television. The device used a “Nipkow” disc which span rapidly and had a series of holes near the outer edge arranged in a gentle spiral. When the disc rotated, the holes swept lines across the screen on the right and produced a vertical raster. A light bulb behind the screen modulated its brightness according to which part of the image had was being scanned by a hole. Nipkow discs could only produce a tiny image relative to their radius so the screen was usually made bigger by using a magnifying lens.

You would think a company like Google would understand something about naming.

You would think a company like Google would understand something about naming. It is after all the choice of the name of a product or service which makes it possible to talk about and even more importantly to find in a search engine. Instead they use stupidly generic names which mean that many of their excellent services never get known outside the narrow world of early adopters. The only ones that ever really prosper are the ones with distinct names. Eg. YouTube, Gmail etc.

Google+ was doomed from the start to never leave its niche by the choice of its name. Hangouts were destined to a middling fate by a combination of its awful ui and the inability (unlike Skype or Google) use its name as a verb.

Via Keith Wilson​

http://plus.url.google.com/url?q=http://lifehacker.com/google-sucks-at-naming-stuff-1738016114&rct=j&ust=1445550297097000&usg=AFQjCNF0gjdO5UStHRctWdUQeL6_xeG77Q

Once unleashed the robots will toil for centuries mining and transporting minerals without human intervention.

Once unleashed the robots will toil for centuries mining and transporting minerals without human intervention. Robot miners never need sleep, they never need rest. When they falter they can be cannibalized by others for scrap iron and spare parts. The final step is when the robot miners start fabricating bigger and better robot miners by smelting the ore that they extract. Then they can go on indefinitely, certainly long after we’re all gone.

Originally shared by Wayne Radinsky

Rio Tinto says its automated trucks in Pilbara, where they have 15 mines and associated rail lines and ports, are outperforming its traditional human-driven fleet by 12%.

“At our Nammuldi mine in the Pilbara we now have the largest autonomous truck fleet in the world. This fleet outperforms the manned fleet by about 12 per cent and we have seen a commensurate saving in load and haul costs due to the greater efficiency. The improved utilisation allows us to run the same mine using a smaller size fleet, which means lower capital expenditure.”

https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/wa/a/29819102/robot-trucks-outperform-human-drivers-rio/

Google has dropped wireless charging for the Nexus 5X.

Google has dropped wireless charging for the Nexus 5X. The reason they give is due to thinness but I suspect the other part of the story is too many returned Nexus 5 phones with cooked batteries.

Don’t use a cheap Qi charger on a Nexus 5 if you want to keep temperatures below 45°C. A long living battery is a battery that has been kept cool.

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3mzrl9/hi_im_hiroshi_lockheimer_here_at_google_with_the/cvjjnp0

Bitcoins are a waste of energy — literally

Bitcoins are a waste of energy — literally

Vast amounts of electricity go into feeding the Bitcoin delusion. Fortunately, it’s unlikely that the digital currency will survive long enough to generate the environmental disaster that would arise if it became a major part of the financial system, writes John Quiggin.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-06/quiggin-bitcoins-are-a-waste-of-energy/6827940

I love that Google Now works on my Watch.

Originally shared by Christopher B

I love that Google Now works on my Watch. Not only did it tell me I needed to leave earlier to get to my daughters soccer game on time, but it told me the reason why. Which was the Amtrak derailed in Vermont (http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/05/us/vermont-train-derailment/) and the school she was playing against was the town where the wreck happened at. 

On another note, the game was obviously canceled. 

It will suck when I move back to Android that I will have to buy another watch to get useful stuff from Google on my wrist, since my Apple Watch only works with an iPhone. The good news is the Android Gear watches are a lot cheaper, but a lot uglier. 😦

Welcome to “hell”. Um.

Welcome to “hell”. Um.

Oh please. Somebody call the waambulance. The Verge as well as being a big crybaby is also one of the worst offenders when it comes to laggy, spammy, phishy “content” on the web. http://blog.lmorchard.com/2015/07/22/the-verge-web-sucks/

Treat your readers with contempt and they’ll happily return the favour. So if this is a case of “you’ll miss us when we’ve gone” then I’d like to test that prediction.

Via Ben Carew​​

http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/17/9338963/welcome-to-hell-apple-vs-google-vs-facebook-and-the-slow-death-of-the-web