Slashdot Mirror


User: iMadeGhostzilla

iMadeGhostzilla's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
995
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 995

  1. Re:Mechanism? on Cell Phone Radiation Emission Tests Assume Use of Belt Clip · · Score: 1

    Well, listed SAR values seem to be higher for your average phone today. Here's the 2005 listing: http://cellphoneradiationprote...
    and here's the 2014 (flagship) list: http://topmobiletrends.com/rad...

    Most people in the US and Europe seem to have smartphones and most of those are high up SAR-wise.

  2. Re:Mechanism? on Cell Phone Radiation Emission Tests Assume Use of Belt Clip · · Score: 2

    But smartphones with stronger radiation and ultrafast processors and whatnot have been around for a relatively short time.

    Here, I just randomly picked a popular phone from 2006, Morotola Razr, and Motorola Turbo Droid, from 2014:

    Razr SAR rating:

    Head:
    0.31 W/kg
    Measured in:
    1900 MHz
    Body:
    0.35 W/kg
    Measured in:
    1900 MHz

    Droid Turbo SAR rating:
    SAR US 1.39 W/kg (head) 0.50 W/kg (body)

    Just two points but I imagine more search would show the trend is that SAR is getting higher.

    I assume there is a point where harm begins to show -- imagine you build a phone with SAR rating of 100W/kg and use it every day. Would the effect show in 100 years, 50 years, 10, 1, six months...? So the question is where that point is for the what seems like a very common 1.39W/kg.

    And then there is the question how reliable SAR is as a measure of effect of radiation on the tissue. From the Wiki page: "SAR limits set by law don't consider that the human body is particularly sensitive to the power peaks or frequencies responsible for the microwave hearing effect.[5][6] Frey reports that the microwave hearing effect occurs with average power density exposures of 400 w/cm2, well below SAR limits (as set by government regulations)"

    I don't think it's unreasonable to say that not enough time has passed for the new generation of phones to rely on it as evidence of safety.

  3. Re:As Compared to What? on Are Certifications Worth the Time and Money? · · Score: 1

    As compared to no experience, and no degree, I'd say yes.

    I think it's an even stronger no. If the person wanted to learn say JavaScript, and they chose the most formal, most rigid and the least creative and inspiring way to learn it by working to get a certificate -- instead of building a project and putting it up out there, for instance -- shows what kind of developer they will be: someone who cares less for making good software and more for playing carefully within the system.

    I'd trust more someone who spent the time to train for a marathon than to get a certificate.

  4. Re:Methamphetamines age you prematurely. on Scientists Show Human Aging Rates Vary Widely · · Score: 1

    Hope you get into a situation where you can choose a path in life with less stress. I've also heard that biological age can be reversed to a degree, with healthy habits, clean diet, yoga and the like.

  5. Re:Poor Scalia on Supreme Court Ruling Supports Same-Sex Marriage · · Score: 1

    Part of the joke is that there will be a Oscar-winning movie. "All agreed that the movie would probably be pretty good, and that they could see Paul Dano getting his first Academy Award nomination for his supporting role as a gay rights crusader."

  6. Too little, too late on General Mills To Drop Artificial Ingredients In Cereal · · Score: 2

    Their entire line of product is sugary junk -- Cocoa Puffs and the like. I think the decades long movement of making our food chemically better is now starting to swing in the opposite direction, with the likes of Paleo diet that won't even look at organic whole grains, let alone processed cereals with added sugar and artificial ingredients.

    What's interesting is that just as the US was the first in terrible food and bad eating habits, with the rest of the world catching up, it appears it's also the first to lead on the way back.

  7. Re:They've nailed it on Turning Neural Networks Upside Down Produces Psychedelic Visuals · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's true. And we know the physical texture does extend fractal-wise into infinity... I'm thinking the opposite is when one is not on psychedelics and is further stressed out, texture details disappear if they are not relevant for the stressful situation. (E.g a sponge becomes a yellow block, no holes or pores.) As if psychedelics open the valve and stress closes it, like many people have said.

  8. Re:It's not the adverts in themselves on Adblock Plus Can Now Be Rolled Out To Every Single Employee In a Company · · Score: 1

    Ah everything is code. Even jpeg data is a sequence of instructions for the jpeg decoder FSM. Therefore nothing from the advertisers should run on my computer! But in seriousness, I agree. I think though that channel is doomed, exhausted forever. On the PC, I run noscript and adblock. On the phone, if I can't close an intrusive ad in half a second I close the page. I downloaded a stupid puzzle game (research, I swear) for the phone and the game asked me mid-play. "interested in annuities?" That's sheer desperation. It's game over for ads. (Uninstalled the game a second later.) The only "ad" I remember clicking on in years -- when I wasn't searching for something to buy on Amazon or Google -- is ArsTechnica's "tech deals" post. And the difference between us and non-tech folks is they are only slightly more patient waiting for the ads to be over b/c they don't know they have the technology that could bypass the ads. Only the outliers click and outliers' outliers buy. And the multibillion empires like FB seem to be based on the premise that there are enough of the latter.

  9. Re:And so the cycle of "reform" continues on FDA Bans Trans Fat · · Score: 1

    There are heuristics that could help us make fewer mistakes, and we have not been followed them much in the last few decades.

    - when it comes to food, innovation is usually bad and research is often wrong; instead it is safer to assume that the way people have been eating something for hundreds or thousands of years is likely evolved to be optimal; treat all proposed changes very conservatively.

    - when it comes to government, less is more, as long as the rules are in place to protect the weak. So healthcare for example shouldn't be designed to save money to the middle class but to make sure those who can't afford essential treatment nevertheless receive it.

  10. Re:what will you treat with these robots on Tiny Fantastic Voyage Inspired Robots Are Starting To Get Reasonably Mature · · Score: 1

    They don't necessarily have to treat, but can act as a seeing eye into what's happening in the body. Especially if they are actually tiny nanobots, capable of flowing to any part of the body and self-organizing into a vision device that takes images and wirelessly sends them to the instrument outside of the body. OK that's from Michael Crichton's "Prey."

  11. Re:One quote from the article that is nice... on Prospects and Limits For the LHC's Capabilities To Test String Theory · · Score: 1

    We really have no idea what kind of profound ramifications this could have for the planet and even beyond. Let's find out.

  12. Re:Maybe science went off the rails... on Can Bad Scientific Practice Be Fixed? · · Score: 1

    I see, thanks. Yes I have long thought that the science that has shorter, more repeatable and more controllable experiments will be more successful. In fact, the business of a scientific model is to predict causality: if A happens (or if you do A), B happens. Physics does it marvelously, but they have it easy. Astronomy is harder. In living systems it's not at all clear that such causality exists, except trivially. Maybe we need a different scientific method for biomedical fields, something equivalent to fuzzy logic in computing. The current one was invented for the need of physics alone.

  13. Re:Maybe science went off the rails... on Can Bad Scientific Practice Be Fixed? · · Score: 1

    What field, if I may ask? Sounds like you're talking about physics, or astronomy maybe, or chemistry, or perhaps basic life sciences at the most complex. Biomedical sciences and fields involving complex/living systems seem to require a different or more refined protocol, with stricter standards for acceptance and more fuziness at the same time for giving ideas to others, compared to hard sciences.

  14. Re:Null hypothesis on Can Bad Scientific Practice Be Fixed? · · Score: 1

    That's a great point. I also think it means at the current level and depth of knowledge we need to refine what it means to have a correlation.

    From http://www.wired.com/2013/02/b...: 'Well, if I generate (by simulation) a set of 200 variables — completely random and totally unrelated to each other — with about 1,000 data points for each, then it would be near impossible not to find in it a certain number of “significant” correlations of sorts. But these correlations would be entirely spurious.'

    Probably 'significance' needs to be larger the higher the number of variables in the system.

  15. Re:Science != Biomedical Research on Can Bad Scientific Practice Be Fixed? · · Score: 1

    I think for that reason life sciences need to be subjected to a different process. All the sciences now try to use the physics approach which was designed for physics. IMO in life sciences theories based on models should be taken very loosely, and collected evidence should be taken more as a hint for other researches in the field to pay attention. "Consumption of salt increases blood pressure"? No. Instead, "it seems like there's a correlation between higher salt intake and blood pressure in the small group of specific people we've observed. Physicians, please pay attention in the next 20-30 years if you might see something similar in *your* context." And for economics, sociology etc. it should be spread out even more.

    That way, we don't throw away concentrated efforts on discovering patterns by intelligent people knowledgeable in their field, nor do we naively jump into believing that those hints they stumbled upon are some general Truth.

  16. Re:Who cares if it kills companies? on Tech Bubble? What Tech Bubble? · · Score: 1

    A bubble doesn't affect all stocks equally. So you can protect yourself by moving out of the "bubbliest" stocks -- at this point, those seem to be new Internet/anything social stocks. (Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Uber, if it gets there before the bubble begins, online marketplaces, online advertising -- though not google necessarily -- and so on.)

  17. Re:Specifically indie PC games on Video Games: Gateway To a Programming Career? · · Score: 1

    Yes, absolutely, forgot to clarify (I only know PC games) -- play games on platforms on which you can write hello world, and with tools you can get for free at that.

  18. Re:Maybe in the past on Video Games: Gateway To a Programming Career? · · Score: 1

    Yes, you had to have a sense that what you were playing was something that you could actually make yourself, given the time and effort. That has absolutely been the case for me with the ZX Spectrum in the 80's -- I played game then made them and knew all about Z80 and Spectrum's hardware. Playing a multimillion dollar game is the same as watching a Hollywood blockbuster and thinking I can make movies too -- doesn't happen.

    That said, what Zuckerberg is saying may be right if kids are encouraged to play *indie* games?

  19. Re:Irresponsible. on Software Glitch Caused Crash of Airbus A400M Military Transport Aircraft · · Score: 1

    Example is Scott Adams' example of the faulty reasoning, I should have added quotes.

  20. Re:Irresponsible. on Software Glitch Caused Crash of Airbus A400M Military Transport Aircraft · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Scott Adams' Falacy #24: IGNORING ALL ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE
    Example: I always get hives immediately after eating strawberries. But without a scientifically controlled experiment, it’s not reliable data. So I continue to eat strawberries every day, since I can’t tell if they cause hives.

  21. Re:11,000 years ago, not 300 on The Milky Way's Most Recent Supernova That Nobody Saw · · Score: 1

    You're right. I can only say that my detection of light from the exploding star and the detection of alarm clock going off have happened simultaneously. And if my alarm clock is 11,000 light years away in another direction, if I detect its light and the star's light simultaneously, I can infer that the alarm and the star went off at the "same time". At the same time for me, that is. For someone who was moving at the time, not necessarily.

    I'm still not quite convinced that I can talk about events that I can't measure/observe in principle. I.e. the detection of the exploding star's light in my telescope is an event I can observe. It appears that the explosion of the star itself at its point in space is not. But I think I see that I can use this inference about a non-observable/imaginary/abstract event to establish order and therefore potential causality or lack of it among events, which is the utility of the theory. Thanks for explaining that.

  22. Re:11,000 years ago, not 300 on The Milky Way's Most Recent Supernova That Nobody Saw · · Score: 1

    I think the problem is that the question "did the star really explode now or 11000 years ago?" is philosophical as it tries to go beyond the theory. The only thing that matters is that the light -- the information -- has just reached our frame of reference. (Actually 300 years ago.) "Now" only has meaning in our frame of reference.

    Simultaneity as you said is a better term, and "according to the special theory of relativity, it is impossible to say in an absolute sense that two distinct events occur at the same time if those events are separated in space." So if, say, I see my alarm clock go off at say 10pm and just then see a star exploding, then the explosion and the alarm activation are happening simultaneously -- as far as I'm concerned.

    Now if I had a premonition and wrote down 11,000 years ago "that one star will explode" and indeed the light of its explosion reached me today, then it's true, I had to wait that long, but my writing that down didn't happen simultaneously, in my reference frame, with the star exploding -- it happened 11,000 years before it.

  23. Re:11,000 years ago, not 300 on The Milky Way's Most Recent Supernova That Nobody Saw · · Score: 3, Insightful

    No that is the whole point of the Relativity Theory. There is no absolute time or "God time", there are only points in timespace. 300 years ago here on Earth if you could see the photons of the explosion, you were witnessing the explosion exactly as was happening. "Now" spreads at the speed of light so when you see something, it's happening, as far as you are concerned, right now.

  24. Re:I would pay $1 a month on How Spotify Can Become Profitable · · Score: 1

    And that's the problem with services like this. You don't really need that much music. 50 years ago people heard songs on the radio from time to time and were happy. I have enough good music stored on my HDD (most of it ripped off of CDs I bought) that I don't really need more.

  25. Re:Most tabs shouldn't be closed on Technology and Ever-Falling Attention Spans · · Score: 1

    Great, thanks for both. I use both Firefox and Chrome.