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Cake day: February 28th, 2021

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  • Back in the 80s, Don Norman popularized the term affordance. Humans need something to push, pull, turn or otherwise interact with. We are physical beings in a physical world.

    Driving vehicles is potentially life-endangering. Just because the technology is there and cheaper does not mean that humans can push aside their physiological limitations in a critical situation.

    Take the emergency blinker. You know where it is, you see it all the time - it’s right there in front of you! But when a real emergency happens, you’ll be fumbling for the button, concentrating on the situation at hand. Now imagine that button on a touchscreen.



  • Wait, so you think nuclear reactors spew out uranium?

    Didn’t say that. But I also don’t think that it magically appears in the plant.

    While coal powerplants don’t spew out radioactive coal ash??

    Please stop this whataboutism.

    Nobody cares to recycle concrete.

    Not true. Making concrete creates huge amounts of CO2 during production. Sand is becoming a valuable resource. Recycling concrete for aggregate absolutely is a thing, but that’s a different topic.

    I wont talk about storing waste, because I dont know why it is marketed as prohibitively expensive.

    Convenient. Then I will because I’m not finished. You have to ensure containment of the barrels for decades, if not centuries. The mine has to be in geologically inactive area, and you have to be certain that no ground water will seep into the mine in the foreseeable future. We don’t want ground water in the mine, its cold and wet and seeps through everywhere.

    And you have to figure out how to keep idiots from breaking into the mine in 150 years and using spent rods to heat their homes. If you think that’s far fetched I encourage you to read about the Goiânia accident , one of the world’s worst nuclear disasters. Some kids found the radioactive source of an abandoned xray machine while playing around.





  • One Friday afternoon, Gary called the engineering staff together and announced that he would give them all a raise over the weekend. On Monday, when they returned to work, contractors began raising the building to make room in the basement for a new Digital Equipment Corporation VAX 11/750 computer system. After several weeks, supported by heavy wooden beams and house jacks, the engineers’ desks were five feet higher.

    I’d have loved to work for him!


  • Beyond the proven addictive effects of handing a dopamine device to your kid, there are legal ramifications many parents aren’t aware of.

    WhatsApp and TikTok aren’t just there like air, free for all to consume. They are service providers and both sides are bound by a contract, the EULA. IIRC, WhatsApp recently reduced it minimum age from 16 to 12. So if you install WhatsApp on your 8 year old’s phone, you have broken the contract.