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British MPs want to haul Elon Musk before parliament over riots
  • They have some powers, they got upset at Facebook and decided to flex a bit by sending one of the boys around, to invite one of his mates for a chat.

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/nov/24/mps-seize-cache-facebook-internal-papers

    The person sent was the serjeant at arms. They carry a sword. Doubt they took it out but they also carry one of the House of Commons maces, which is gold covered and jewel encrusted, about 1.5m (4.9ft) long and weighs roughly 10kg (22 lbs).

    Imagine some large, pissed off looking dude, dressed like he’s from the year 1415, kicking your hotel door in because you didn’t RSPV properly. Then being told hand over documents or we may stick you in jail (and you know the pretended it would be the Tower of London).

    The 1,000 yard stare he must get when asked if he enjoyed London and how lovely that history must be.

  • UK state pension age will soon need to rise to 71, say experts
  • 1950s, the time of plenty… if you ignore the rationing you mean? Life expectancy of 69 (12 years less). Infant mortality was almost 10 times higher, 30 infants died per 1,000 births vs 3.25 per 1,000.

    Healthcare has grown from 3.5% gdp to 9%, more stuff gets treated.

    There are double owner occupier housing now. 1953 was about 30%. 1956 is when protected rents ended and rents started to increase massively.

    Defined pensions were taxed to death by Brown. They do still exist though (I have one, along with a SIPP). More people contribute to pensions than ever before and the age people stop work is starting to decline.

  • White House asks Congress for $106 billion for Ukraine and Israel wars
  • Did you have healthcare before Russia invaded Ukraine and started murdering babies? Was it even on the cards?

    It's not an economic factor either. US health costs are much higher than other developed nations. It spends 17% of GDP, almost double of Germany (next highest).

    Spending is without the positive outcomes. Infant mortality of 5.4 deaths per 1,000 live births (17,000 extra dead babies a year Vs an average.rate), for context you are worse than Russia with 4.9 but better tha Chile 5.9). 23.8 maternal deaths per 100,000 births being 3 times higher than most wealthy nations.

    The economic considerations are that you have a lot of heath businesses. If you socialised medicine and reduced spend, you may improve health outcomes but how would they pay for the very nice buildings they have loans for?

    Finally, US doesn't want universal healthcare as a society. Whilst they may be financially wrecked by costs and live shorter more painful lives, that is far preferential than seeing the low income family get the same free cancer treatment for their child.

  • More schools are adopting 4-day weeks. For parents, the challenge is day 5
  • What would they do for the hours after school finished normally or if work on weekends?

    Sounds like a work / life balance problem. Companies will have to be made to change their working practices, allow more remote, flexible working hours and reduced time.

    UK is, very, slowly starting to move to a 4 day week for work (reduced hours, not cramming in 4 days x 10 hours). The productivity increases along with recruitment make it worthwhile. My company isn't there but 35 hours + 50 days holiday so not far.

    That would solve the 4 day school day. Also allow for parents to educate their kids for 1/2 a day if needed.

  • Hydrogen vehicles in Denmark left without fuel as all commercial refuelling stations shuttered
  • Yes but not for long.

    As (generally climate denying) people love to point out, wind and solar is erratic power generation. For this reason you need triple capacity Vs requirements.

    This means that for a huge amount of time you'll have excess energy, once we start to be predominantly renewables, battery storage is expensive. One of the solutions is to create hydrogen, also pumped hydrogen, etc.

  • EU banks face liquidity checks next year after 2023 crises
  • Banking sector regulations require financial reserves that can be used to cover emergencies.

    The EU revised the rules recently that meant banks could count the cost of its software as part of its cash reserves, increasing them by € billions each year.

    You try and sell your copy of windows 10 and Norton anti virus to make ends meet.

  • Sinéad O’Connor, acclaimed Dublin singer, dies aged 56
  • She was protesting about the physical and sexual abuse of children by the church. The criticism helped to continue the protection of pedophiles, which continued for decades and still happens.

    Joe Pesci (a study in short man syndrome) said on TV he wanted to slap her for ripping up a photo and the audience applauded him for it.

  • NATO's latest moves could bottle up much of Russia's naval power
  • Russia invaded Ukraine not the other way around.

    Russia is threatening to attack commercial ships, NATO countries are going to restrict Russian naval moves through their territories to stop ther murder of civilians.

  • Florida family awarded $800K after McDonald's Chicken McNugget burned 4-year-old girl
  • They can also add punitive damages. Didn't seem to be in this case BUT a meal marketed at children shouldn't cause scars.

    With the coffee case had lots of damages for this. MacDonalds had been warned that they were serving coffee at dangerous temperatures, had 700 complaints but it was cheaper to pay compensation than fix.

    They served the coffee at much higher temperatures than other establishments, so normally you'd have 12 seconds to wipe coffee off your skin but with MacDonalds it was 3 seconds, causing 3rd degree burns.

    They lied saying it was done as people wanted to drink after driving for a long time but their surveys showed the opposite.

  • Advice needed to keep contact adhesive fresh

    Edit at bottom:

    I have purchased a larger pot than usual of contact adhesive. My last pot was 1/2 the size and started to thicken after a year (mostly used).

    As a hobyiest, I'm wondering if there is a cheap solution to extend the life of the glue or bring it back to life, it's not the cost but trying to reduce waste. Product is a solvent based polychloroprene contact adhesive (EVO-STIK IMPACT ADHESIVE).

    To identify if cause was user error - stored in the tin, and I wrapped in plastic as an extra air barrier, it was on a shelf inside.

    Would adding solvents work (have Butane and isopropanol alcohol on hand). Happy to experiment but nice to know I'm not creating leather wrapped napalm.

    Obviously best plan would be to double my leathercraft output. Any advice on better glue in UK would be welcomed.

    Thank you.

    EDIT:

    A) first findings are ther cross over between chemists and leather workers seems to be low.

    B) Isopropyl alcohol seemed to make it set arder

    C) Butane had a slightly better response but didn't really help enough - think it had gone to far to be saved.

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    Elon Musk launches his new company, xAI
  • They do train LLMs on others. A fairly successful new tact has been to train them not on the output but on how the LLM got to the output. So teaching how to answer questions rather than answers by rote.

  • What did the BBC presenter allegedly do and why hasn’t he been named?
  • I can talk from a UK perspective.

    Whilst investigating someone, the police should not normally release the name of the person because it could endanger their life or lead to disorder.

    The media are free to name suspects BUT get it right or have the ever loving shit sued out of them. This is even as far as naming a small group of people.

    Once charged, then police release the names, it becomes public knowledge. Where it's serious cases like rape or child abuse then it's often proactively released. This is because it helps gather evidence or get others to come forward.

  • If humans were born with 6 fingers on each hand we would be using base 12 instead of the decimal system.
  • 60 is useful because it’s easily divided by lots of small numbers, 1,2,3,4,5 and 6, other factors include 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, and 60. This is why we can split our day so much.

    The Babylonians popularised base 60. The origins of which were possibly derived from 2 separate groups in Mesopotamia, that started trade but one used base 12 and one base 5, multiply together to get 60.

    You can count to 5 and 12 on one hand easily (12 by using thumb to count each section of your 4 finger). Using both hands you get to 60.

    https://mathsciencehistory.com/2021/11/09/count-to-60-with-your-phalanges/

    China also has counting to 10 on one hand, theory being you can indicate quantities with one hand full at a market.

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  • I've been slowly amending my most like comments (leaving the most downvoted). Yet to see any come back, maybe Reddit didn't value my top notch sarcasm Vs helping people with actually problems.

  • [Final Update] My insurance won't cover UTIs for males. Yes, I'm in the US.
  • Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits different treatment of insured persons on the basis of their sex in connection with pension funds. This was a supreme court ruling, so kind of linked but not quite.

    https://www.jstor.org/stable/253100

    Interestingly, in UK and EU it became illegal to discriminate by sex for car insurance from about 2012, without very careful use of data - which doesn't happen. It is allowed to be linked on things like jobs though.

  • InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)UN
    UniquesNotUseful @lemmy.world
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    Comments 19