Interesting Links for 14-07-2023

[andrewducker]

1. I missed that Biden terminated federal private prison contracts 2 years ago

(tags:prison business politics usa )

2. How crab sticks are made. (Sophia loves those things)

(tags:factory food video )

3. Phones with replaceable batteries to be required by 2027 thanks to the EU

(tags:Europe phones batteries )

4. ChatGPT owner in probe over risks around false answers

(tags:ai fraud regulation usa )

5. Magnetic drive has the potential to silence submarines

(tags:magnets submarine usa )

6. Nearly every home in the UK will need a heat pump by 2050 as plan for hydrogen to replace gas is ditched

(tags:hydrogen uk GoodNews heating )

7. Studios demanded the ability to scan actors once, owning their image forever

(tags:actors faces scanning )

8. FDA approves the first over-the-counter birth control pill

(tags:usa contraception )

9. Participating in genetic studies is in your genes

(tags:research genes )

10. London faces a measles outbreak of tens of thousands of cases unless vaccination rates improve

(tags:vaccination london OhForFucksSake )

Comments

[calimac]

1. It doesn't mean much in a practical sense, as most prisoners in the US are in state prisons, and Biden has no authority over those. But it sure is important symbolically.

4. This just makes me more exasperated at my brother, who's using ChatGPT as if it were an oracle to answer philosophical conundrums of the "Can God make a rock too heavy for him to lift?" sort. And then he sends me the transcripts. By this point I'm just deleting them unread.

5. At last, an article that actually references the movie that immediately comes to mind when reading it.

7. And people blame the shutdown on the actors who went on strike. Why not blame the studios who insisted on these awful things?

[andrewducker]

Yup. If they want the actors back to work then treat them well and pay them a fair share.

[andrewducker]

And yes, as soon as someone says "this is what Chat GPT has to say" I'm out of there.

[channelpenguin]

Gosh, are people really doing that? :-(.

It's a computer program not an oracle.

[ckd]

Item 5 had to reference the movie, since the book didn't use an MHD propulsion system but rather a ducted impeller sort of thing.

[calimac]

I was thinking of a previous article about space debris impacting satellites, that said nothing about the movie Gravity.

[channelpenguin]

Maybe because the submarine movie is MUCH better than the space one?.:-)

[calimac]

Really?

Gravity: 96% approval on Rotten Tomatoes, 4 stars from Ebert.com, won 7 out of 10 Oscars

Red October: 88% approval on Rotten Tomatoes, 3.5 stars from Ebert, won 1 out of 3 Oscars

Not a bad film, but hardly "much better" by any of these accounts. I liked them both.

[channelpenguin]

I thought it might have been obvious that by "much better" I meant "in my opinion". :-)

[calimac]

No, it wasn't obvious, because you were trying to explain their appearance or nonappearance in articles which were not written by you and therefore not subject to the judgment of your opinion.

I guess you meant it as a joke, but I've seen enough really bad arguments in my time to be insensitized to jokes disguised as bad arguments.

[channelpenguin]

Yup, it was meant as a joke.

I thought it would be funny to invite the assumption that the researchers share my opinions.

I don't know that you can actually sensibly have any case for or against, "is this good or bad?" when it comes to art of any sort, it's all just our opinion and what we personally like. But that's just my opinion of course :-).

2 - "crab" sticks

[agoodwinsmith]

I am always fascinated and horrified by how processed food is made.

The machinery is fascinating and ingenious, and the goo is *so* too goo; and it also always surprises me the little parts of the process that are still best done by a human.

And: ew. ;)

Re: 2 - "crab" sticks

[andrewducker]

Mass produced food does tend to look pretty ew while it's being produced, it's true :-)

But very efficent, thankfully, with as little waste as they can get away with.

Re: 2 - "crab" sticks

[anef]

While I "knew" that crab sticks were processed fish, I hadn't appreciated quite *how* processed...they're not something I buy as such, but I do buy food with crabsticks in it. I'll have to think about that. Probably not for very long.