Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re: A win for capitalism (Score 1) 120

Canada has basically implemented a version of that and now distributes alternative opioids to addicts for free. Here's a description of the situation in Toronto, but I hear about this issue reflected across the country in small towns and big cities alike (the same paper has a series of articles on the free opioids if you want to learn about the issue): https://nationalpost.com/opinion/decriminalizing-is-beside-the-point .

In the small town where my parents live, I was talking with a little old lady volunteering in a second hand shop and she calmly described how although she felt strongly that the change room should be available, they always had to monitor access, and that the first person to use it after reopening it after covid had been you know, gestures at her arm and they'd had to call the cops because he stumbled out and collapsed unconscious on the floor. But it didn't bother her, being open-minded and all. (How could this not bother you? Shouldn't it bother you?!)

Comment Re: How about not using straws? (Score 1, Insightful) 105

The same argument can be applied to almost everything, from your fancy frothy drinks themselves to air travel to bigger houses to using more fuel by speeding on the highway. It's effectively limitless, with the bigger ticket items having a much larger impact. My government is eliminating single use plastics (the paper straws now work much better than when they were first introduced, which this article seems to explain!) but it's hard to see that making a significant difference while likely making like disproportionately more difficult, especially for poorer people. Never mind that they're also pushing much higher levels of immigration to my affluent country. Determining the cutoff for what is environmentally acceptable is a very difficult and contentious process. Anyone have any ideas for a (completely theoretical) sustainable approach? A non-transferable carbon dioxide quota per person on earth? Or maybe a freely transferable one?

Comment Re: Yeah... (Score 1) 127

I'd say there's an awful lot of misplaced faith in the absolute superiority of a mechanical system on display here! My uncle's a mechanic and he claimed that all the (mechanical) parking brakes on older automatics are broken because the cables sit there unused and rusting. This may have come up in the context of my 12+ year old manual whose parking brake started feeling looser (I used it all the time); apparently, there are two cables to the brake/brakes, and one of the two cables had given out.

Comment Re: So if you only use half the carbon capacity? (Score 4, Informative) 53

I read part of the paper (sorry, see nickname, it won't happen again) and the primary reactions involved in reducing the iron involve carbon monoxide as a reactant and CO2 as a product. So while you are correct that oxygen is being extracted from the ore, the coke (coal) used as an input is already being oxidized (burned) to carbon monoxide using air/oxygen prior to its use in reducing the iron oxides.

Comment Re: All for this (Score 1) 406

I'm not in the US so I haven't bothered to see whether harm like this would have been prevented, but in my jurisdiction I have also heard directly from another parent about similar things. One of my two kids in that age range would almost certainly not report something like that to us; there's a chance my younger one would.

Slashdot Top Deals

Thus spake the master programmer: "When a program is being tested, it is too late to make design changes." -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"

Working...