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Comment Re:When will sudo read email? (Score 1) 8

I can't comment on where sudo itself lives on the spectrum from aggressively solid implementation to really-dodgy-smell-around-the-edges; but it seems like its purpose is a fundamentally tricky problem even if its execution were impeccable.

The basic "user is authorized for root; but we'd prefer he be thinking and logged when he uses that authorization" is reasonably cogent use case; but it's more of a reminder than a security barrier. Then you get into the actually-interesting attempts at limited delegation and determine that you'd basically need a different userland for a lot of purposes: aside from the modest number of things(often with setuid already in place) built specifically to carefully do a very particular delegated function on your behalf and provide you with nothing else if they can help it; very little aside from garbage kiosk UIs or web or database-backed applications with user and permission structures mostly orthogonal to those of the underlying OS actually tries to constrain the user's use of the application(within whatever context that user is operating; generally having a privilege escalation is considered bad).

Half of what you run considers having an embedded shell to be a design feature; so including any of that on the sudoers list essentially means being able to chain arbitrary commands from that sudoers entry; and the other half doesn't outright intend to include a shell but would require some really brutal pruning, likely of important features, to prevent being able to chain a couple of interactions into having the ability to run whatever. And that is assuming that sudo itself is working entirely correctly.

Comment Re:Antarctica gaining ice... (Score 1) 38

This article written by one of the authors of the study provides some insight on what is happening.

Normally, the cold, fresh surface water sits on top of warmer, saltier water deep below. This layering (or stratification, as scientists call it) traps heat in the ocean depths, keeping surface waters cool and helping sea ice to form.

Saltier water is denser and therefore heavier. So, when surface waters become saltier, they sink more readily, stirring the ocean's layers and allowing heat from the deep to rise.

This upward heat flux can melt sea ice from below, even during winter, making it harder for ice to reform. This vertical circulation also draws up more salt from deeper layers, reinforcing the cycle.

A powerful feedback loop is created: more salinity brings more heat to the surface, which melts more ice, which then allows more heat to be absorbed from the Sun.

Comment Re:What about not eating it daily? (Score 1) 152

The lower bound of their study was one a day. They didn't test amounts less than one a day.

That is false. You're taking one sentence out of the slashdot summary and assuming it reflects the lower bound of the study. It doesn't. See Figure 1 in the paper, which shows lots of data points at much less than one hot dog per day, and also shows a strong, monotonic increase in risk with dose at the very lowest levels.

Comment US used to have 40 percent tax on the richest (Score 1) 228

Why and what does a "balanced budget" look like?

In a balanced budget, taxation exceeds spending, like it did at the end of the Clinton administration and just before George W. Bush went to war. The highest federal income tax bracket at the time was about 40 percent. What broke the budget was a misguided attempt to stimulate private business by cutting income tax on the richest American taxpayers.

Comment Re:Is there a safe amount of air to breathe? (Score 1) 152

And it's a meta-analysis paper, according to the description, and they described the correlation as somewhat questionable. I automatically assume that meta-analysis papers are going to be weak.

Nature MedicineArticle https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591... studies adjusted their effect size measure for age and sex. All studies except one adjusted for smoking. Other common adjustment variables included energy intake (n=13)28,30–35,37,38,40–42, alcohol consumption (n=12)27–30,32,33,36–38,40–42 and BMI (n=14) 27–30,32–36,38–42.

So not all of the original studies adjusted for income.

These study-level covariates included length of follow-up period (10years and >10years), precision of the exposure and outcome definitions, study design (that is, RCT or prospective cohort study), reported measure of association (RRs or ORs), outcome measures (incidence or mortality), number of exposure measurements (single or repeat), method by which outcomes were ascertained (administrative records, self-reports, biomarkers or physician diagnosis) and level of adjustment for relevant confounders (for example, age, sex, smok-ing, education, income, calorie intake, BMI, physical activity, alcohol intake, saturated fat intake and other dietary factors). We adjusted for these covariates in our meta-regression if they significantly biased our estimated RR function.

So basically, it sounds like nowhere near all studies adjusted for income, and they think they took that into account, but because this is a meta-analysis, there's a certain degree of garbage-in-garbage-out involved. The only way to really be sure is to exclude studies that don't adjust for everything you care about.

Also, because this is a meta-analysis, the papers you exclude are also kind of important.

Reports Excluded:
Duplicates n=5
Not study design of interest n=39
Not outcome of interest n=45
Not outcome of interest n=54
Not measure of interest n=2

I'm not sure why "not outcome of interest" excluded both 45 and 54 papers, but that sort of discrepancy raises some red flags, particularly when there are only 16 included studies.

But the real red flag for me is the confidence interval. If I'm understanding this correctly, without compensating for heterogeneity, the effect on colorectal cancer and heart disease are statistically indistinguishable from zero. This intuitively feels like the sort of study where after a few more studies, you'll see regression to the mean.

And type 2 diabetes tends to be strongly correlated with obesity, and there's no mention of the original studies having adjusted for that. If obese people are more likely to eat processed meat because of it being a quick way to get the calories that they need, then it is also possible that the correlation with type 2 diabetes is entirely spurious.

I'm not seeing a whole lot of actual evidence to go from "we combined a bunch of studies with weak-to-zero correlation and got weak-to-zero correlation" to "eating processed meat likely causes an increase in these conditions".

Comment Receipt bug in early Steam (Score 1) 42

I sorta think of it as the "always online" issue, which in the past I thought was absolutely unacceptable for a single player game, and now I mostly don't care because I'm always online anyways.

That created a problem for dial-up users and laptop users back in the day. That was solved in two ways. First, Valve fixed the bug in early Steam that was causing it to fail to store purchase receipts for offline mode. (Users at the time were experiencing this as a need to be online for switching to offline mode to work.) Second, the home Internet market as a whole phased out dial-up, and even in areas not served by fiber, cable, or DSL, dial-up users largely switched to satellite Internet.

Comment Games that get delisted after a couple years (Score 1) 42

if i really want a game i wait until the price seems reasonable and affordable even if that means waiting for years

Unless it's something like DuckTales Remastered that gets delisted from Steam after a couple years on the market. This particular game was an adaptation of a Disney product identity, and Capcom's license from Disney had expired.

Comment Re:Makes sense. (Score 1) 40

ED: Last time I looked (when the tech was brand new) I couldn't find any studies on plants, but there apparently are now, and... yeah, it's what I expected. In fact, it's even worse than I expected: because all the energy is absorbed in such a short distance (the (living) epidermal layer), it does a lot more damage in that (critical) layer.

That said, apparently at lower doses you can still kill fungal pathogens without hurting the plants, and is much more effective at doing so, there is that.

I wonder if we should be exploring even shorter frequencies for plants. If you go shorter, bacteria are going to be able to escape harm, but you'll still be able to kill viruses and maybe still kill e.g. fungal condia.

Hmm. New thought (re: 222 / 233nm): as a pesticide.

Insect exoskeletons tend to be proportional to the insect's size. A big beetle's exoskeleton might be up to a couple hundred microns thick, while an aphid's only a several microns, and a spider mite's cuticle is just like 1-2 microns thick. And even with insects with exoskeletons too thick to kill, they typically moult, and after moulting, the new soft cuticle is initially far thinner. Also, with winged pets, the cuticle is often far thinner than on body regions (to keep them light and enable fast movement).

I bet far-UV would really do a number on small pests & winged pests. And... hmm... I guess that means we can go back away from the world of plants and back to the world of humans: surely it will kill skin mites, lice, etc... anything not hidden by clothes / hair / etc.

Comment Re:EVs are not a solution beacuse of (Score 1) 217

(And that's without fuel)

I went searching trying to figure out where you managed to find a 3241 lb Camry. Seems the 2020 ones were that light, but were non-hybrid, while the current ones are now all hybrid. Of course, it has an even more anemic performance of 7,6s 0-60, and is once again, still smaller than the 3.

To repeat, from the top: actual class competitors of the Model 3 are cars like: BMW 3-series (330i for the SR, 340i for the LR), Mercedes C-Class, Audi A4 & S4, Acura TLX, Infiniti Q50, Volvo S60, Jaguar XE, etc. And class competitors for the Model Y are cars like: BMW X3, Mercedes GLC, Audi Q5 & SQ5, Volkswagen Tiguan, Lexus NX, Acura RDX, Infiniti QX50.

Either compare apples to apples, or expect nobody to take you seriously. You might as well just say "BUT MY MOPED IS ONLY 200 POUNDS!!!".

Comment Re:EVs are not a solution beacuse of (Score 1) 217

Why on Earth are you comparing a SUV to a small sedan? Don't get me wrong, Model Y isn't exactly a GMC Yukon or anything, but it's much bigger than a Camry, with over double the cargo space (971L vs. 428L).The Camry has only 71% the cargo space of the Model 3. 7cm less front headroom / 5cm less rear headroom than the Y, and 4cm / 3cm less than the 3. And it's in an utterly different performance class. Are you, like, *trying* to be dishonest, or are you just this ignorant?

And even then, here's a stats table (US units for you). Tesla mass here and here and Camry here and here, for your disbelief.

Toyota Camry 2025 LE (FWD): 3,594 lbs, 6.9s 0-60
Toyota Camry 2025 XSE (AWD): 3,774 lbs, 6.8s 0-60

Tesla Model 3 2025 SR (RWD): 3,880 lbs, 4.6s 0-60
Tesla Model 3 2025 LR (AWD): 4,019 lbs, 4.2s 0-60
Tesla Model 3 2025 Performance (AWD): 4,080 lbs, 2.8s 0-60

Tesla Model Y 2025 LR (RWD): 4,235 lbs, 5.6s 0-60
Tesla Model Y 2025 LR (AWD): 4,392 lbs, 4.6s 0-60
Tesla Model Y 2025 Performance (AWD): 4,392 lbs, 3.5s 0-60

Explain to me how you think these numbers are somehow out of line with each other, given that even the 3 is larger than the Camry, and both are in an entirely different performance class?

Comment Re: What about not eating it daily? (Score 1) 152

You want to pay for your healthcare but not someone else's? Have you have ever been introduced to the insurance industry and the price of, say, a mere ambulance ride let alone an invasive medical procedure. By the way, you won't mind paying for Ma and Pa's healthcare right? Oh, but they are covered by Medicare. Demand your Medicare payments back because you'll fund Ma and Pa's healthcare yourself.

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