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Comment Re:And what good would it do? (Score 1) 447

Too little or too much iodine can fuck up your thyroid (only because it uses iodine directly), but otherwise it's not real sensitive to lifestyle or diet... however it can influence what you want to do and eat (low thyroid causes sugar craving and lack of motivation/energy to do anything). TSH levels fluctuate depending on iron, selenium, and sugar intake, but there's no strong evidence that any of these will cause more than transient deficiency; indeed, low thyroid is a known cause of poor iron absorption, so it's rather the reverse -- eat well and you still won't get good use of it. At least one gene has been identified that causes poor T4-to-T3 conversion, IOW the DNA that controls the required enzyme is defective. Anyway, if you try treating hypothyroid with diet and exercise you won't get far. I can point at myself as a good example -- I'm more active than most folks (I've done physical work my whole life) and I eat almost entirely home-cooked, nutrient-dense food, but that doesn't do a thing for my Hashimoto's.

Comment Re:And what good would it do? (Score 1) 447

An interesting read even though I have to admit I understand but half of it. What I didn't get is if there's a treatment path without medicine, something like the proper food, excercise regime, etc. -- because I find it hard to believe that the proper conditions cannot be created by the proper lifestyle.

Comment The earlier the better (Score 3, Interesting) 145

One of the few things I learned in college was how to learn things.

I was lucky; I was homeschooled before college, and as a result learned how to learn things with directed self study instead of just doing what teachers said.

It made college way more valuable to me as a result, but it also made life after college better because there was never a point where I thought "Yep, done learning now, time to work for a few decades".

The sooner we can get people into a state where they enjoy and can learn on their own, the better everyone will be.

Comment Re:So... (Score 2) 114

Not to look a gift outbreak of common sense in the mouth, but how the fuck can GPS trackers be a form of search and seizure and civil forfeiture NOT be a form of search and seizure?

It's a form of seizure, but the supreme court hasn't found it an unreasonable one. And it's been used for a very long time. Basically, the issue was that without forfeiture they had a hard time catching the owners of smuggling ships. As long as you can't establish them as an accessory to the crime or you have jurisdiction problems, they can legally provide the supplies while the criminals operate on an asset-less basis. So the solution was to declare the assets - in this case the ship - used in illegal acts forfeit, making it a risk and a cost to be used in crime. This goes all the way back to the British.

I've been reading some of the court cases and it seems the minority has been trying really hard to find tortured ways of getting out of their own past precedents as the cases become more and more unreasonable but the majority falls down on "we've approved of civil forfeiture for 200 years, we can't overturn that now". They really, really, really don't like interpreting an old law in a new way. So without acts of Congress saying this is not okay, I don't think anything will change.

P.S. Civil asset forfeiture puts the US way ahead of the UK as fascist country in my opinion, I'm not really even sure if it should qualify as an "innocent until proven guilty" system anymore since you can be robbed blind and need to prove your innocence to the court. It stinks to high heaven.

Comment Re:Although unused, not useful (Score 1) 213

I was thinking everywhere, not just the U.S., but I have to admit I did not remember only the FAA could regulate local airspace, and I have no idea what other countries do in that regard.

It seems like communities could address this to some extent not just trough airspace, but using zoning to disallow facilities where the drones could take off and land.

Comment Perhaps less noise, but wider spread (Score 2) 213

If the drone confines its flight path to mostly over the road systems it will make a lot less noise than a passing car.

I thought about that too, but the problem is road nose is well contained to buildings on the side of the street, while drone noise is elevated and thus can reach out a lot more.

Perhaps drone noise at 200+ feet would not be as bad as I'm thinking of, but it seems like these would be pretty large drones at 55lbs, thus quite a bit noisier than many of the drones we are used to hearing.

Comment Re:Don't be an asshole. (Score 1) 279

He's still an employee during his notice period; treat him like one.

Or not, either way is fine.
a) You're leaving for another company but during the notice period while it is our paycheck we expect you to be professional and loyal to your current employer. That means continuing to carry out your job duties to the best of your ability and help transition them to other employees. I'm sure they'll appreciate someone with working knowledge of the system guiding them.
or
b) I'm sure you know it's company policy to immediately terminate all access for leaving staff members, regardless of reason so don't take it personally. Think of it as two weeks paid vacation. Have you got everything in order? I can pretend I haven't seen this for another hour, but if you're ready I'll call the honor guard to escort you out. The check will be in the mail.

I mean you have to screw up pretty bad to make the last seem like a bad thing for an employee that's leaving voluntarily. You're getting two weeks pay for doing nothing. Pretty much the worst you can do is make them stay, but act like you don't trust them anymore.

And if they care a bit too much about their coworkers and start talking about transitioning, it should be pretty easy to to talk them out of it. Sure it'll be tough on the remaining staff, but it'll be like a "what if he was hit by a bus" exercise and we'll find out how much documentation and routines we're missing. They'll cope somehow and besides, it's company policy so I can't really make those kinds of exceptions.

Comment Although unused, not useful (Score 4, Interesting) 213

The main problem (well, perhaps not the MAIN problem) I see is that no-one signed up to have drone flights right over their houses. You can buy and plan for where airports are going to be, but the "drone corridors" will just appear overhead one day. Drone sounds are (I think) especially obnoxious buzzing...

It'll be interesting to see if communities try to ban this.

Comment Re:depends (Score 4, Insightful) 155

You mean like browsers and Javascript? In that case 99% of the population has lost already. The pwn2own competition results are rather miserable. The part that /. probably doesn't want to hear is that the primary effect is centralization and gatekeepers.

Take Usenet for example, it got overrun by spammers and trolls because there was no real way to block them and the few moderated groups basically meant a few people were in control of the discussion. Instead we moved to forums, where you could use CAPTCHAs and various other tricks to block mass sign-ups, moderation, flagging of abusive users and so on. They're not perfect, but they work okay.

Why do so many people use Facebook instead of email? Same thing, much less SPAM. For the longest time, Linux users hailed the repository model over the Windows "download random exe from the Internet" model. Then Apple took it to the extreme with the "one store to rule them all" and suddenly it was a problem. Even on Android you have to pass by huge warning lights to enable third party repositories and Windows Phone has as far as I know joined Apple in the "one store" model.

My guess is that they'll push it to the cloud so all the application code runs on a server and they just need to lock down the browser, more per user&app sandboxes, more difficult time running unsigned software and more users with computers that need Apple's, Microsoft's or Google's sign-off to run an application. The average user simply doesn't understand the micromanagement involved, same way users won't use NoScript when browsing the web. They'll "outsource" it.

Comment Re:WWJD? (Score 1) 1168

Trust me -- the small business bakery market will weed out those who want to miss great business opportunities and/or sales just because they don't want both figures on a cake wearing pants.

That depends on how much of peer pressure/boycott there is from your local church congregation and extended to their members to not shop at "gay friendly" stores and buy at stores that refuse gays service. From what I've understood the most successful such peer pressure in the US has been to make mainstream outlets "family friendly". Despite there obviously being a big market for adult material, they've managed to force adult stores out of malls, keep mainstream cinemas showing adult-only movies, video game stores from selling adult only-titles and so on simply by refusing to shop in any business that would touch it with a ten foot pole. You don't think the same can happen to a cake shop? I do.

Comment Re:Good luck... (Score 2) 64

The short story from any seasoned admin perspective: 'Whatever platform *I* know the tools for is better than the platform that I don't know the tools for'. This applies to all the parent posts. The Windows guy thinks Linux isn't enterprise ready because he doesn't know the tools. The Linux guy is shocked to hear this because Windows in his experience is a pain in the ass.

Of course leaving out the small detail that basically every managed Windows desktop uses AD and Windows admins either know it or they don't. If I search for tools to centralized manage Linux machines, I get dozens of alternatives in the top 50 hits. Like with everything else on Linux, there is no single standard.

Comment Re:And what good would it do? (Score 1) 447

If I find that particular paper again I'll let you know. And depression as a consequence of subclinical hypothyroidism is very well established, but no longer generally acted upon. It used to be routinely treated as such, but when the TSH test came to prominence, most doctors started treating to make nice test results rather than treating the patients' symptoms.... despite that all the evidence is against using TSH as anything but a crude marker that something is wrong. False negatives are extremely common.

Here's a starter kit:
http://hormonerestoration.com/...

I have Hashimoto's thyroiditis, and I've had to take up reading the Journal of Endocrinology in sheer self-defense. It's quite shocking how much well-established endocrine research has never filtered down to GPs, never mind other specialty fields, despite that a malfunctioning endocrine system can fuck up just about anything else. I've concluded it should be the first line of inquiry (since fixing the thyroid will commonly cure a whole raft of apparently-unrelated physical and mental symptoms), but most doctors act like it's the last resort.

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