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Comment Re:Safety (Score 1) 63

They may be, given the horrendous loss involved and the use of directional coupling. That 50 Watt limit is not absolute, it's more of a guideline for Amateur radio stations specifically, not all emitters. Your cell phone at < 4W is also closely regulated due to its proximity to human tissue. Please refer to the FCC RF exposure site for the full regs.

RF exposure is a function of frequency, duty cycle, distance, transmitter power, and antenna gain. I have a tiny 10mW 10GHz transmitter that couples its power via WR-90 waveguide. If my math is correct, that's 3.1 mW/cm^2 at the mouth of the waveguide - WAY over the exposure limit of 1.0 mW/cm^2 at 10 GHz for uncontrolled access.

Remember, sunburns are actually RF burns.

Comment I've had issues with the Win10 NVIDIA drivers... (Score 3, Insightful) 317

Usually the problem is something like, "it isn't giving me the newest driver" or simply the poor quality of the drivers in the first place. (For awhile there, if I clicked on the start button, it would cause my screen to reset!) And a lot of "your driver stopped responding so we turned it off, then back on again."

In some ways, I like that the drivers are being pushed to me automatically, but at the same time, if I'm doing multiple reinstalls in a single day, I've already downloaded the drivers... I don't need them to be downloaded YET AGAIN, every install...

Comment Depends who you ask... (Score 4, Interesting) 219

At Facebook, it's memcached, with an HDD backup, eventually put onto tape...

At Google, it's a ramdisk, backed up to SSD/HDD, eventually put onto tape...

For anyone who can't afford half a petabyte of RAM with the commensurate number of computers? I have no good ideas... except maybe RAM cache of SSD, cache of HDD, backed up on tape...

Using something like HDFS to store your data in a Hadoop cluster of file requests, is likely the best F/OSS solution you're going to get for that...

Comment Re:Safety (Score 1) 63

Magnetic fields don't hurt you

STATIC magnetic fields don't seem to hurt you. Time-varying magnetic fields most certainly can hurt you. In addition to ionizing radiation (x-rays, gamma rays) which can obviously hurt you, plain old radio waves can too:

Radiation burns can also occur with high power radio transmitters at any frequency where the body absorbs radio frequency energy and converts it to heat.[1] The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) considers 50 watts to be the lowest power above which radio stations must evaluate emission safety. Frequencies considered especially dangerous occur where the human body can become resonant, at 35 MHz, 70 MHz, 80-100 MHz, 400 MHz, and 1 GHz.[2] Exposure to microwaves of too high intensity can cause microwave burns.

Comment Re:Does indeed happen. (Score 1) 634

Yeah, I don't normally get feed back either. But it is kind of suspicious when I do get feedback...

I think it's a lot related to the xkcd comic: https://xkcd.com/385/

If I spend a bunch of time rewriting code (which everyone does), as a man they might think "oh, well, he's just refactoring, or having a bad day." But when I do it, they think "wow, women can't code..." and then reject me out of hand without attempting to rationalize an explanation for why it should be overlooked...

Not that I'm particularly complaining here... this is just life as a woman in the tech industry... that and "oh wow, what does your boyfriend do at Google?" Actually, he's a literature teacher, I'm the genius programmer troubleshooter who knows almost everything about computers...

Comment Re:Not acupuncture (Score 2) 159

Sticking needles in people at random locations around the body does not...

Actually, that's precisely the problem with acupuncture working better than placebo. Acupuncture works whether you're following their "rules" or just randomly sticking needles into people...

Basically, it turns out, that forcing a person to lay still for a long time has the same benefits of destressing as just laying on a sofa and chilling... or a massage, or any other relaxing activity...

Comment Re:Does indeed happen. (Score 1) 634

We don't really know what the facts of the case are, but I wonder what it is about people that lead them to believe they're being discriminated against based on a particular factor, like age, race, etc?

Because I've worked for Microsoft, Amazon (as consultant, i.e. well-paid "contractor) and Google, and I have been recognized by SourceForge in a Project of the Month.

And then they return answers like "we want someone with more experience programming". To which my 7 year friend at Google laughed and said, "are they looking for someone who's on the verge of retiring?!"

Seriously, when the answer they tell you doesn't make sense... it doesn't make sense.

Comment Re:Commission (Score 2) 634

Google intentionally recruits people multiple times. They understand sometimes a person has a bad day, and that they grow and develop. Unless you don't utterly fail the phone screen, you're very likely to get called in a few times, just to make sure that they're not turning you down for arbitrary decisions. (Chances are good that an arbitrary situation won't show up 4 times in a hiring committee")

Which brings me to the second point. It's highly unlikely these people will win, as Google hires by committee... so everything gets documented and recorded. There is no ability for a single bias person to interfere with a hiring decision.

N.B.: I worked a Google, I was "undecided" by my first hiring committee, but the second made an offer like immediately after being presented my packet.

Comment Re:No software solution? (Score 2) 634

Google actually INTENTIONALLY recruits people multiple times. Unlike many other companies, they realise that people grow, people develop, and sometimes people are just having a bad day.

In any case, they want to ensure that they haven't passed up any arbitrary candidate just because they failed one in-person interview.

N.B.: I worked for Google. I didn't get hired by the first committee, but was hired by the second committee...

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