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Comment Re:Excellent (Score 1) 123

They won't make worse products specifically for the UK, but they will make worse products for the rest of the world which will also be sold in the UK.
Even down to the plugs - UK plugs are used in Malaysia and Singapore too.

China makes a range of products, but what's sold in western countries has to comply with relevant local safety standards. They make much cheaper (and often far more dangerous) products which are sold in countries with lax regulations like Myanmar, Laos etc.

Submission + - Is Windows 7 about to overtake Windows 10? (gbnews.com)

alternative_right writes: According to StatCounter, Windows 7 has been rapidly gaining market share in recent weeks — a full five years after support for the desktop operating system was officially terminated. At the latest count, Windows 7 is now used by some 22.65% of all Windows PCs worldwide. That's an increase from the 18.97% just a little over a month ago.

As of last month, users were already switching to Windows 7 in record numbers, but that number had only totalled to 9.6% worldwide.

Submission + - How we sharpened the James Webb telescope's vision from a million kilometers awa (theconversation.com)

schwit1 writes: Hubble started its life seeing out of focus – its mirror had been ground precisely, but incorrectly. By looking at known stars and comparing the ideal and measured images (exactly like what optometrists do), it was possible to figure out a “prescription” for this optical error and design a lens to compensate.

The correction required seven astronauts to fly up on the Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1993 to install the new optics. Hubble orbits Earth just a few hundred kilometers above the surface, and can be reached by astronauts.

By contrast, Webb is roughly 1.5 million kilometers away – we can’t visit and service it, and need to be able to fix issues without changing any hardware.

This is where AMI comes in. This is the only Australian hardware on board, designed by astronomer Peter Tuthill.

It was put on Webb to diagnose and measure any blur in its images. Even nanometers of distortion in Webb’s 18 hexagonal primary mirrors and many internal surfaces will blur the images enough to hinder the study of planets or black holes, where sensitivity and resolution are key.

AMI filters the light with a carefully structured pattern of holes in a simple metal plate, to make it much easier to tell if there are any optical misalignments.

We wanted to use this mode to observe the birth places of planets, as well as material being sucked into black holes. But before any of this, AMI showed Webb wasn’t working entirely as hoped.

Submission + - 80% of employees say their workplace is toxic (fastcompany.com) 1

joshuark writes: According to Monster’s newly released 2025 Mental Health in the Workplace survey of 1,100 workers, 80% of respondents described their workplace environment as toxic. Toxic work environments are playing a large role in an epidemic of worsening mental health.

The alarming statistic is an increase from 67% just a year ago. Mental health is incredibly important to employees. The majority (63%) care more about it than having a “brag-worthy” job. According to the survey, more than half of workers (57%) say they’d rather quit their job than continue working in an environment they feel is toxic and overall, causing major strains to their mental well-being.

Regardless of the fact that workers seem to be feeling strained, most of them don’t feel their employer is responding to workers’ mental health needs. The vast majority (93%) say their employer isn’t focused on supporting employee mental health—a statistic that rose drastically since just a year ago, with 78% claiming the same.

Comment Re: Yeah but the Mayo clinic says (Score 1) 110

The fact is its become endemic, containing it has totally failed. Those who are not young or healthy will absolutely be exposed to it sooner or later irrespective of what actions others take, and they are free to choose to take a vaccine (or not) too.

The risk calculations for the elderly will be different - being they have less time for any potential long term effects to manifest, they are more likely to have had kids already and less likely to have more, and they are at higher risk of serious effects if infected.

Comment Re:Guys... (Score 2) 41

I don't think AMD even make wifi chipsets themselves?
There's no reason a laptop with an AMD CPU/GPU couldn't use an Intel wifi chipset, many of them even come on minipcie cards and could be swapped over.

I suspect what you're seeing is the manufacturers cheaping out and using lousy chipsets because they can get away with it. Generally components are sold based on claimed specs rather than actual performance.
Two different chipsets might both support 802.11AX, but one might also support monitor mode, come with superior drivers, be able to transmit with higher power and be more sensitive for receiving. But if you're only comparing the 802.11AX support both of these chipsets look to be equal when infact they are anything but.
The same is true of pretty much all components - SSDs and HDDs have wildly different performance/reliability characteristics, memory does too, ethernet chipsets etc.

People will differentiate between an AMD or Intel CPU but consider two different brands of SSD or wireless chipset to be identical.

Comment Re: "Mis-information" = BS Madup word ;-D (Score 1) 110

During the 16th century very little was known about the moon. People could see it, but had no idea what it was or what might be there.
When you have thus unknown you get stories being made up for various reasons - just for fun, to placate curious kids, or to comfort people's fear of the unknown. In the case of the moon science has progressed sufficiently that these stories can now be disproven.

But then where do you draw the line? Is a work of fiction "misinformation" because it portrays something that does not exist, or does it get a pass because it's explicitly labelled as fiction?
How about religion? Most religions describe all powerful deities and scientifically unexplainable miracles, none of which can be proven. Do we class religious teaching as misinformation too?

Then there are other cases. Consider new research that contradicts previously established research? This happens all the time as science advances. Should a scientist's new theory be immediately discredited without giving it an opportunity for peer review and further research simply because it seeks to disprove some earlier research?
Science needs healthy debate, it needs people to challenge established facts either to prove or disprove them.

Comment Re:Drink Bleach! RFuK says good for U! (Score 1) 110

Bleach *does* destroy covid, that's factually correct.
It will also destroy the host creature, that's a fact too.
You'd have to be pretty stupid to believe one fact and ignore the other.
Bleach is useful and has its place for disinfecting non organic objects which might have been contaminated.

People stupid enough to drink bleach would actually reduce hospital workload during a similar pandemic, since they'd die much quicker than the infected and thus no longer require ongoing treatment.

Comment Re: Yeah but the Mayo clinic says (Score 0, Troll) 110

Even if they magically did cause cancer, it would take a whole lot more years for anyone to see a 75% rise in cancer cases.

That's the main problem, vaccines were rushed out without long term testing which understandably has people worried.

For people who were young and otherwise healthy the effects of COVID were generally minimal. Weighing up "risk of dying from COVID" vs "risk of long term side effects from minimally tested vaccine" some people made the choice not to take the vaccine, and why shouldn't they? That was their choice to make.

If in "a whole lot more years" there is proven a link between the vaccines and cancer, or other seriously negative side effects then who's going to have made the better choice?

There are a _LOT_ of things on the market today - food additives, medicines, etc which have various negative health effects, some of which are long term and serious.

Comment Re:Inaccurate statement (Score 1) 128

A normal healthy human will have XX or XY, and be either female or male respectively. They will also have two functioning eyes, two arms, two legs etc. This makes up the vast majority, and it's what nature is *trying* to produce unless an anomaly occurs.

Anyone who falls outside of this definition is handicapped, either through genetic defects or through external factors.

Comment Re:Coconut milk? (Score 1) 193

They do.
Eggs here are labelled as "from caged hens" or "free range". Meat is similarly labelled depending on the type of animal it came from.

The post-slaughter processing is generally limited to cutting into smaller pieces for whole cuts of meat, but absolutely any processed meat should have the processing detailed and many processed meats are pretty disgusting.

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