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Comment Re:Chile worst dictatorship in South America? (Score 1) 86

No, he wasn't elected. He lost to von Hindenburg in the presidential elections, who later appointed him as chancellor. Meanwhile, the Reichstag switched to a largely Nazi composition due to success in elections, and passed a law (the Enabling Act) that gave Hitler the ability to pass laws without the Reichstag's approval. When von Hindenburg died, Hitler used the Enabling Act to merge von Hindenburg's former office with his own.

The only way you can claim Hitler was "elected" is by indirectly having his cronies get elected.

Comment Re:Different part, same number? (Score 3, Interesting) 357

From what I understand, it's an extremely common practice. For example, in my Scion FR-S, there's the original fuel pump, and another newer model under the same number that doesn't make a chirping noise under certain conditions (not a serious problem at all, just a bit annoying during the summer, it's triggered by heat and a long engine run time without cooling down). The difference is that the newer pumps have a green dot on the box. I imagine they do it for inventory/systems reasons - instead of having a system to handle 4-5 different part numbers for what is effectively the same part (i.e. 2013 FR-S fuel pump) as they are upgraded or redesigned, they just use the single number, so they don't have to update their entire maintenance system constantly. Don't forget, a lot of these maintenance systems don't get updated often, so there could be a mechanic ordering part X when the upgraded part is X+1 if they were switching part numbers, and a company would have to ensure the entire supply chain gets those updates.

Comment Re:Ridiculous. (Score 1) 914

Part of what happens when something like this comes up is completely irrational, like using it for punishment against prisoners. However, there's other angles that should be seriously contemplated - what if we gave prisoners on a sentence that's not effectively-life, say ten years, the option to experience a week in prison without the drug, then a week with it. Then, we give them the choice whether they'd want to serve a reduced time sentence on it (with all the benefits and risks) or a full sentence without it (no benefit, no risk). So yes, while this philosophy professor is just being a "punish them all forever!" parrot with nothing useful to say, there's things to consider here from more legitimate angles if this drug truly acts as a dilation of the experience of time.

Comment Re:I wrote anti-terrorist software for banks. (Score 1) 275

Using Soundex on something like the terrorist watch list would undoubtedly increase the false positive rate, even though it would solve the true positive problem laid out by the summary. We need something that doesn't create far more problems (you know, like expanding the invasion of rights) than it solves.

Comment Re:EXACTLY (Score 1) 278

Probably a majority of the parents would do this. After being there for a couple months, I realized that when new students came in I should take the first 15 minutes to figure out if they're going to even try to learn. I couldn't refuse to tutor them if they made it seem like they wanted help, and students were very good making it look like they were getting help instead of answers, so it was easier to just figure out what they wanted and give it to them under the guise of "learning". It was very rare that they took up the opportunity, but I became good friends with the ones that did.

Comment giving answers vs insight (Score 1) 278

I used to work in a tutoring center at my college, and something that came up more frequently than not was the students would show up with their homework, and tutors would end up giving them answers rather than teaching them how to find the answers themselves. I imagine that this kind of data might be highly related, since it's exactly what you'd expect if a parent is "helping" with homework by providing answers instead of real insight into the topics.

Comment Re:Agriculture for nerds. Stuff that matters. (Score 1) 116

There's a significant difference between this and the typical aquarium.

Pretty much just surface area, since this system would be designed to ensure the bacterial load, while home aquariums typically do not. Any real aquarist (i.e. not people with a betta or goldfish in a tiny bowl) is relying on nitrosomas and nitrobacter to a massive extent, and even "aquarium specialists" at a place like Petco will be able to describe this process to you (albeit without being able to name the bacteria).

Comment Re:Agriculture for nerds. Stuff that matters. (Score 1) 116

In a fish tank with plants, nitrites are dead simple to keep in check - and that's in a very small body of water, whereas this type of system would have a much larger volume, and be much easier to manage. Bacteria consume nitrite and convert it into nitrate. This process is relatively short, and once the bacterial colony is established, it can accommodate relatively large increases in ammonia input (like a dead, decaying fish) fairly quickly. Plants (and algae) consume nitrates extremely quickly. Anyone who has trouble handling nitrites in their fish tank is clueless, since the bacterial growth process happens entirely on its' own once they're present in the water.

I know this because I've had many fish tanks, the most recent of which was a saltwater reef. Dealing with nitrates in a reef is "hard", in the sense that you need something to consume them, as most corals don't deal with even nitrates (the end product, not the middlemen nitrites which are deadly in minuscule quantities) well, and some have trouble with algae growth near/on them. Once you have a separate tank with plants or algae, it's next to impossible to fuck up that aspect of the system.

The big problem that people have comes from commercial filter design and recommendations (far too small for the tank size), which largely don't contain enough surface area (Penguin Biowheels are one of the few power filters that even have a design specifically for surface area, and it's still not sufficient) to process the waste their fish create in the first place, then they overfeed and make the problem worse, then they add fish before the colonies are settled, and then they wonder why fish keep dying but add another one anyway, and then they don't do large enough water changes to remove the nitrates (on typical systems, there's no plants/algae there specifically to consume it). Done by someone with even a moderate amount of knowledge and experience, which you'd expect from the early implementations, it's a great idea.

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