_RPL5_

But over the phone you have to talk to a person. When I use an app, it's not because I want to save time. It's because I want to avoid having to talk to people.

English is a second language for me, maybe that's why, but even in my native language I dread making a call to a live person. I have to hype myself up for a few minutes, before I pick up the phone.

> this is comparable to bad flu year

Maybe he means the Spanish flu /s

Next you'll be asking whether lockdowns caused more harm than good. Oh-oh. I think we are 10 years too early for that particular discussion.

This is a fascinating topic, though, and I can't help myself. I have two competing perspectives on this:

1. Covid is deadly, but not that deadly, certainly not to children and younger (<60 y.o.) adults. The initial decision to hunker down was warranted, but as the stresses of the various lockdowns begin to pile up, it's no longer obvious that the lockdowns and strict health regimes are worth it. The "stresses" would include suicides, drug overdoses, domestic violence, depression, and general depravity due to lost income.

2. Covid is deadly, and if not for the lockdowns, it would have killed a lot more people than it did. The number of lives saved by shutting down the economy far outweigh the cost of the lockdowns. If we didn't shut down and later push people to vaccinate, millions would have died in the US instead of hundreds of thousands.

Anyone with an educated opinion wanna weigh in? Which perspective is correct?

My impression was that the extra hours are due to the factories being on a 24/7 uninterrupted production cycle. Having people work 12 hour shifts instead of 8 reduces the headcount required by 33%.

"Horseradish" aside (lol) my favorite Russian euphemism for this is:

"[I] spun [this] on my dick" (на хую вертел). Spun as in "to spin", "to rotate", "to twirl." The imagery is a bit absurd, as is the case with most of these. The Greek one with the flowers and the bees is 10/10 as well.

I had a good laugh. Thanks, author.

"Horseradish" is a euphemism for "dick." Whatever translation tool he was using didn't pick up on it ;/

This is a nice tool. I wonder, if with some additional bells and whistles, like machine translation, bookmarking, and tag search, this could be a product people would be willing to pay for.

"These people don’t last long and I have gotten pretty good at screening out this personality in interviews after having it cause huge issues at two different places I worked."

Well, now everyone is curious for more details on this. Do share :)

Well, for one, the US government prevents private actors from buying all sorts of things. I am surprised that selling tools which potentially "enable cyber crime" hasn't triggered some overzealous regulator in DC yet. It seems like low-hanging fruit.

Who buys this stuff? Other things in the shop:

> Screen Crab: This covert inline screen grabber sits between HDMI devices - like a computer and monitor, or console and television - to quietly capture screenshots. Perfect for sysadmins, pentesters and anyone wanting to record what's on a screen.

> Shark Jack: This portable network attack tool is a pentesters best friend optimized for social engineering engagements and opportunistic wired network auditing. Out-of-the-box it's armed with an ultra fast nmap payload, providing quick and easy network reconnaissance.

> Key Croc: The Key Croc by Hak5 is a keylogger armed with pentest tools, remote access and payloads that trigger multi-vector attacks when chosen keywords are typed. It's the ultimate key-logging pentest implant.

They say "pentesters." What prevents a malicious actor from buying and using these tools?

I think I am missing something here.

"The 'publish or perish' mentality makes it easier to put blinders on when faced with something that's inconvenient."

I'd like to provide a competing take on this.

In my experience, it's the job of the peer reviewers to force the authors to test alternative hypotheses, especially if it's something obvious or inconvenient. I once published a methods paper, where the reviewers got aggrieved I didn't mention a complementary, but mostly unrelated, method in my discussion. At first I was annoyed, because it was OBVIOUS to me that their objection was flippant.

However, once I thought about it, I realized that the reviewer was probably representative of the audience that's going to read my paper. Their criticism while tiresome was entirely valid. So I sat down and spent a week coding a series of experiments that showed how the two methods (mine, and theirs) were different and how they could complement each other. That translated into a paragraph in the discussion section and a couple of supplementary figures, and overall a better paper.

So to go back to the original point of the GP ("maybe things got left out because they are obvious"):

Obvious things, unless it's something really trivial, are only obvious to the authors of the paper. If you expect an educated reader to raise an obvious/natural objection, you should really address it in your text head on. And if you don't, then hopefully the peer review will catch it.

PS

This is not meant to be a commentary on the paper linked in this thread. I have not read it, and have no opinion on it. I just wanted to opine on the general topic of peer review and whether "obvious" things should go into an academic paper.

I am still using a MacBook Pro from 2013. The battery doesn't hold charge as well anymore (down to ~2-3 hours), and I had to replace the rubber feet at the bottom of the case, but other than that the laptop has been rock solid. I've never had any serious problems with it.

I am somewhat surprised there are so many people reporting issues with the newer models. I plan to upgrade to a new MacBook soon, and this gives me pause.

You are right. We do need systematic trials to confidently makes statements like the one I made. Thank you for pointing out the error in my logic.