Interesting Links for 29-1-2011

[andrewducker]

• Probiotics use in mothers limits eczema in their babies
  (tags: biology health eczema)
• Differences in brain structure in transexuals show that something very interesting is going on.
  Female-to-male transsexual people had white matter in specific regions that resembled a male brain, Male-to-female transexuals had white matter that was halfway between male and female brains.
  (tags: brain transgender lgbt neuroscience science mri psychology)
• An explanation of how repayment will actually work for student loans (hint - less per year than at present)
  (tags: education university loans money students)
• Council staff told clock-out if they want to talk about anything other than work.
  (tags: society work jobs conversation)
• In defence of the infodump
  (tags: writing fiction)
• Sky now has 70,000 3D subscribers. Not bad when you can't even buy one for less than £750.
  (tags: 3d tv sky)
• Finish regulator calls for iPhone refunds over "below zero" warranty violation.
  (tags: iphone finland)

Comments

[draigwen]

The thing that bothers me most about the student loans is the inability to pay back early. Both me and the other half paid ours back early, saving us a fair amount of interest - the other half paid off his before he even earnt the minimum freshhold, I believe (this was before it came off income). They're really not encouraging students to be sensible about debt if they aren't allowing them to help themselves out of it.

But yes, I wish they'd advertised more the fact that students would end up paying less per year. If the factors in this post had been advertised in more detail, maybe students could have protested against the finer points and maybe encouraged changes, rather than protests against the fees that were never going to work.

[matgb]

saving us a fair amount of interest

You sure?

Wouldn't you have been better off investing the money? Because the interest rates are set so low as to be negligible, income rises higher than inflation, so the longer you leave the loan, the better off you actually are, under virtually all circumstances.

I agree early payment should be an option, but the idea that you're better off repaying early, especially under the current system, is normally false.

[draigwen]

Okay, put it another way. I couldn't afford the £100+ per month repayments out of my income. If the money had been in savings earning interest I wouldn't have been able to use it to make the payments, and so I'd have been unable to pay my bills every month. So yes, it was far cheaper for me to pay it off than anything else.

Plus there's the fact that being in debt, even if the interest is incredibly low, is demoralising. Seeing that £100 taken out of my account every month was depressing - and I somehow doubt the interest from savings would have helped.

[matgb]

Ah, so you must have been on the old style mortgage loans that were scrapped for students tarting from 1998 onwards then?

Because if you just hit the earnings threshold for repayment of them, then yes, they did suck, and the technicality that you'd have been better off doesn't help--I paid the small amount I had of one of them off because it was easier.

But post 1998, the system's completely different and repayment is effectifely a form of income tax based on ability to pay, paying it off early makes almost no sense whatsoever.

[draigwen]

Yup - started uni in 97. Three years of full student loans, followed by one year of career development loan. The amount of money I got from my first job after taxes and loans was not fun!

[matgb]

Not surprising--it was an awful system, I dropped out of my first degree when they announced the grant/loan proportion would increase substantially from my 2nd year onward, I had a job offer so it made sense.

Although my total debt after my second attempt was much higher, I've never had to repay a penny, and the amount I owe is worth less now than it was when I got my first graduate job, but I started that time in 99.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Interesting numbers on 3Dtv, and HDTV. Not surprised 3D is as low as that, this generation of 3D is a bust. The next gen of 3Dtvs that will start to come out this year might do better, because I understand its a better technology (and will totally screw over all the poor saps who have already bought 3Dtvs, because those expensive tvs will be white elephants and not forwards compatible), but I still have a sneaking suspicion that 3D is a flash in the pain technology, like it was the last 2 times they tried to foist it upon us.

I am a bit surprised that HDTV takeup is as low as that though, but, the HDTV subscriptions are pretty expensive from Sky, so maybe thats it. And most people probably don't notice the difference. (Which will be why Sky are progressively lowering the bitrate quality of their SD transmissions, to try and make it look worse, and HDTV look better.)

[snarlish.livejournal.com]

The thing that sickens me about this push for 3Dtv is the jury is still out on the effect of sustained viewing on younger children. Given that a very high percentage of animated films aimed at children are using 3D, and that young children love love love to watch these films over and over, the effect 3D can have on their vision development is frightening.

The USA especially throws years and years of testing on the effect of medicine and food supplements on people, why they can't do this for audio and visual technology just doesn't make sense.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the new 3D nintendo device is going to have a warning that children under 7 should just not use it at all. Which points towards there definitely being a major issue with young children and 3D.

Plus years ago when they were developing a 3D headset, millions of dollars worth of research got canned when a report on the effect of 3D on childrens development was commissioned. The results were never made public. But the fact that Nintendo and Sega instantly stopped all R&D on 3D technology, pretty much speaks volumes.

[snarlish.livejournal.com]

...and a warning that children under 7 shouldn't use the device = children under 7 wanting to use it all the more.

Just saw a Slashdot thread on that buried report. Grr.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Exactly. I would think the biggest market for the new 3D handheld will be children under 10. (I don't believe that once a kid hits 8, it's suddenly safe for them to use.)

And it probably says somewhere do not use for more than 30 minutes at a time. And how many kids take breaks from video games every 30 minutes?

[ladysisyphus.livejournal.com]

I would argue that there's a difference between exposition and an infodump, and the latter happens when I have not been given a reason to care.

I run into this particularly when I'm editing issues for bb_shousetsu, since all the submissions are standalone short stories, meaning that everything you have to know about the story has to be contained in the story itself. So I'll read stories that start out where the first paragraph or five are all detailed information about family relationships or employment histories or political situations, given to me long before there's been anything else about the story to care about, and it all just ... rolls off.

Good worldbuilding and exposition can be tremendously interesting! But only if the story has given me a reason to care. Otherwise it just looks like the author is showing off just how very clever s/he thinks s/he is, and that's annoying, to say the least.

[pete stevens (from livejournal.com)]

I wrote a student loan calculator that works out your tax and repayments for every year of your life under all the different schemes

http://www.ex-parrot.com/~pete/student.pl