The “Contain, Verify, Explain Foundation”, dedicated to the study of and protection against cyber-anomalies

Satin undies?

Close. Soiled undies.

It’s a cargo cult. They don’t understand, but they like what it promises, so they blindly worship. Sceptics become unbelievers, visionaries become prophets and collateral damages become sacrifices.

They may use different terms, but if some job became obsolete, that’s just the price of a better future to them. And when the day of Revelation comes, they’ll surely be among the faithful delivered from the shackles of human labour to enjoy the paradise built on this technology. Any day now…

It’s not the goal itself that’s the issue. Protecting kids from harmful content until they’re ready to deal with it is absolutely a worthwhile endeavour.

But the means to that end often pose a massive security and privacy issue.

You’re supposed to give all your identifying details to some website and trust them, that they’ll use it only for the legal purpose of verifying that identity and promptly deleting them, rather than selling them to criminals who now have everything they need for identity theft. Hell, just storing them is a risk because we all know how many companies (and people) treat IT security as an afterthought at best and a breach compromising the identification of thousands of people would be a fucking nightmare.

And what if your kid tries to circumvent it? Now their face is out there on some server, whether or not they succeed. Is that really better?

The argument is that the onus should be on parents to protect their children and help them find their way safely, rather than compromising everyone else with poorly thought-out and invasive policies.

Solid vitamin C is relatively stable, but it decomposes rather quickly when dissolved in water. Factors such as pH, temperature, oxygen, and the presence of catalysts (iron, copper) influence the decomposition process. The lowest rate of oxidation is observed at pH 3, where vitamin C solutions are the most stable. Raising the pH to 5 increases the oxidation rate by a factor of 2.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3510389/

The study uses particularly clean water (clean enough to be suitable for medical injections) with a pH of ~7.4. At that acidity and a temperature of 20°C (≈70°F), it takes about 95 days for the vitamin C to decay to 10% of its original concentration, or 28 days to reach 50%.

Normal drinking water has a pH of 6.5-8.5, but also contains a lot of other substances, which might increase the rate of oxidation. Given the potential time between treatment and consumption as well as the fact that people might boil it and increase the rate of decay that way, it’s just not as economical to add ascorbic acid to the water supply if only a small percentage of it will ever reach the consumers.

Additionally, the exact dosage will be hard to control, leading to a risk of excessive side effects such as kidney stones. People with a specific enzyme deficiency may also suffer anemia as excessive doses.

Compare that to, say, lemons, whose juice has a pH of ~ 2.4 and renders the vitamin a lot more stable. If you want people to get a good intake of vitamin C, tell them to eat fruits and vegetables, preferably uncooked. The vitamin C dosage you’ll get from that will hardly lead to megadoses, unless you eat such vast amounts that you’d probably get other problems anyway.

The reason fluoride is added is that it’s quite stable, safe and effective, while also being fairly cheap.

Heh, flavour

(I like Fedora, but it obviously doesnt taste as good)

…and then you finished reading the sentence, right? Just in case it adds more nuance or context, or makes an argument you didn’t consider, right? You engaged their comment in good faith and gave them the chance to make their case before deciding whether you actually disagree with them, right?

Most cases of “we can’t find anyone good for this job” can be solved with better pay. Make your opening more attractive, then you’ll get more applicants and can afford to be picky.

Getting the money is a different question, unless you’re willing to touch the sacred corporate profits…

My milk ranking:

Almond < Dairy < Soy < Oat

I rarely drink any milk at all, but when I do, it’s gotta be oat.

(Also not a vegan, but that doesn’t have anything to do with my taste here)

Your wife is right to hate it. It’s rather shallow and narrow-minded.

That aside, if calories-to-price is your metric, are you growing your own food?

Oat is GOAT

(The acronym, not the animal)

Shouldn’t, definitely. But for a while, it will keep running, because that’s how a lot of speculative investment works.

It can! For a while. Isn’t that the nature of speculation and speculative bubbles? Sure, they may pop some day, because we don’t know for sure what’s a bubble and what is a promising market disruption. But a bunch of people make a bunch of money until then, and that’s all that matters.