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Comment Re:And with that yoiu get POWER! (Score 2) 420

This doesn't make any sense physically.

Lets say you go moderately deep, and have a pressure differential of 10 atmospheres (say 11 atm on the outside, and 1 on the inside). The pressure differential causes water to be pumped into the container until there is no pressure difference and the water flow stops. To restore the pressure differential you need to pump the water out - so you'd need the pump to provide 10 atm of pressure to evacuate the chamber.

At that point, why not just have a pump here on the surface to provide the 10 atm of pressure and not deal with the hassle of pumping it up from under the ocean needlessly? You negate the energy gained from the ocean depths by bringing that water back up the surface.

This is magical thinking where you coast your bike down a 10 foot ramp and expect to go 20 feet up on the other side.
Google

Building an Open Source Nest 195

An anonymous reader writes "Google's recent acquisition of Nest, the maker of smart thermostats and smoke detectors, has sparked concerns of future plans for the devices, and how Google's omnipresent thirst for information will affect them. Thus, a team of engineers at Spark sat down and roughed out a prototype for an open source version of Nest. It looks surprisingly good for such a short development cycle, and they've posted their code on Github. The article has a number of short videos illustrating the technology they used, and how they used it. Quoting: 'All in, we spent about $70 on components to put this together (including $39 for the Spark Core); the wood and acrylic were free. We started working at 10am and finished at 3am, with 3.5 engineers involved (one went to bed early), and the only work we did in advance was order the electronic components. We're not saying that you can build a $3.2 billion company in a day. But we are saying that you can build a $3.2 billion company, and it's easier now than it's ever been before.'"

Comment Science-Based Medicine (Score 1) 554

I know people have been hating on this article because it only addresses a few specific conditions, but it is one in a long line of studies that have shown vitamin supplements to have no positive (and occasionally negative!) effects, unless you are actually deficient in that vitamin.

People are so taken by advertisements and anecdotes about vitamins that they neglect the reality. If you hear a commercial that says "You might be deficient in X!" you suddenly need to take that vitamin/mineral "just in case." Rinse and repeat for every single vitamin, mineral, or "energy/immune/etc booster," and suddenly you're taking 100+ supplements and spending an excessive amount on useless pills.

The takeaway is this:

Unless you actually have a condition that requires you to supplement a specific nutrient, you do not need to take vitamins, to say nothing of multivitamins.

If you are concerned that you are actually deficient, go get a blood test from your doctor. Saving yourself the cost of supplementation over the next 20 years when you find out that you don't actually need them will more than pay for the appointment.

Comment Re:Peer review (Score 1) 707

According to your very own definition of a quack ("someone who doesn't use the right process, who avoids peer review, who insists they can't be wrong"), Pauling *was* a quack.

Yes, he had two nobel prizes in a completely unrelated field. Just because he was an expert in that field does not mean that he is an expert in all fields, nor does it mean that he even felt he should use the scientific method in other fields. (Obligatory SMBC.)

There had already been studies showing Vitamin C didn't cure colds before Pauling made his claim. His (completely anecdotal) claim made other people do *more* studies which also showed no link between Vit. C and curing anything. From the article: "Although study after study showed that he was wrong, Pauling refused to believe it, continuing to promote vitamin C in speeches, popular articles, and books."

Yes, he was a smart guy and brilliant in some ways. But in medicine, he was a quack, by your own definition.

Comment Re:This isn't as bad as it looks (Score 1) 741

It is still a thought-crime, however. He bought no weapons, built no bombs, created no toxins. He did nothing but possess knowledge and harbor some crazy fantasies. If he had started to enact those fantasies, I would totally agree that he would have to be arrested. Until that point, however, he had committed no physical crime.

It's interesting that you can get over two years of prison time just for *thinking* about doing something bad, but if you are in the right position, you can murder 24 civilians and get away with it.

Comment Differing Standards (Score 4, Insightful) 591

I never quite understood why it is so abhorrent (by comparison) to do things to dead bodies (which cannot feel or be affected by such acts) while the actual act of killing those people (which obviously affects those people quite a bit...) doesn't get much mention. We don't care that these men were killed, we care that they were peed on afterward. Why the differing standards?

Comment Re:Boats... (Score 1) 314

I think the idea behind coating electronics is that you can coat them both inside *and* outside. When you are applying such a thin layer of (what is apparently) plastic, you have to worry about friction wearing off the coating on the outside. When it's also applied to the inside electronics, which are not exposed to wear and tear, those parts can stay waterproof over a long time, keeping the device safe.

A boat is different, however. Instead of applying this waterproofing to inside, non-worn parts, you'd be applying it to the outside of the hull. Those are the parts which would receive the most friction, and would likely cause the coating to wear off very quickly. Unless you plan on coating your boat before every ride, I have doubts that this would be terribly (long-term) useful.

Comment Re:Alcoholic puddings? (Score 3, Informative) 215

Read the article. They aren't restricting who can buy their products. They are only restricting who can get *free samples.* No shopkeep or store will refuse to sell these pudding cakes to children, but the company can certainly refuse to give *free samples* to children (who are not their target market).

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