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180560558
comment
bypz
04:12PM
(#65915264)
Attached to: Medical Evacuation from Space Station Next Week for Astronaut in Stable Condition
Thanks for the civility.
Interestingly, she was not heartbroken. Disappointed, yes. Astronauts (at least the ones I've met) and those who get close are incredibly resilient people. She ended up working in a company that builds experiments that fly on the ISS, on contract for the scientists who want to run them. Part of her job was astronaut liaison.
NASA's medical examination is far, far more involved than anything a civilian will ever experience. They examine every part of your body, as intensively as technology will allow. They found her anomalous condition in a part of the head that is not normally of concern or even examined. The wild thing is that they recognized her condition, despite it being very rare. The people at NASA often take a lot of grief on Slashdot, but to a person, I've never met a more impressive set of people, and I'm fortunate enough to work at a top-tier university.
180560318
comment
bypz
03:05PM
(#65915166)
Attached to: Medical Evacuation from Space Station Next Week for Astronaut in Stable Condition
No it isn't, not even remotely. It's private information regardless of your job.
The thing is, astronauts undergo pretty serious medical evaluation prior to being sent up. Their medical condition is in no way private from NASA (or whichever agency is sending them up). I have a close friend who made it to the final round before being disqualified because of an incredibly rare condition that is thought to be completely benign on the ground. But because NASA did not have any experience with it in space, they did not want to end up with a disabled astronaut who might jeopardize the mission (which is exactly what happened here).
180560248
comment
bypz
02:59PM
(#65915162)
Attached to: Medical Evacuation from Space Station Next Week for Astronaut in Stable Condition
There are good reasons on both sides of the discussion.
First: medical privacy is pretty well established as a right in the western world. Its pervasiveness thus, suggests a natural extension into missions in space.
But then: space exploration is still very, very experimental. In a deep sense, we do not understand the effects of space on human health. Yes, we know more than we used to, but we really know precious little. Any information about illnesses in evidence during or after space flight have critical importance for the future.
It's not unlike clinical trials, in that sense. No matter what adverse event happens when someone is in a clinical trial, it gets reported. When decisions are later made about approving the treatment under trial, the panel evaluates which events are relevant and which are not based on the evidence. The only difference is that with clinical trials, the data are anonymized, and there's very little chance of identifying which individual had which adverse event. But with spaceflight, there are so very few people involved, and their names are all public, so that process of identification would be / is reasonably straightforward. It might be that medical privacy cannot exist in practical terms, even though it should.
Having thought about it for the few minutes it took to reason through this missive, I'm of the opinion that we are still early enough in the development of spaceflight that medical privacy needs to be waived as a condition of being sent up. The greater good outweighs the individual's right to privacy in this case.
180465201
comment
bypz
@12:24PM
(#65884753)
Attached to: Video Call Glitches Evoke Uncanniness, Damage Consequential Life Outcomes
I stridently disagree. A voice conversation of some sort is almost always going to be more efficient than an email one.
Video is more efficient than email and phone is more efficient than video (really, I mean it: take a hard look at how much time is spent just dialing a number versus setting up a video call). In-person is the most efficient of all.
Carefully measure how much time it takes you to write a carefully-worded email versus just saying what's on your mind. For me, the ratio is about 5:1. And then, with an email the response isn't immediate, the correspondent likely didn't take the time to read the email carefully, so gets something wrong, and you have to send a clarification. This cycle repeats a few times. A simple, traditional phone call would have been done in 1/10th the time, and with a better outcome. At least for one-on-one communication, which is what TFS is about.
180450113
comment
bypz
@08:13AM
(#65879409)
Attached to: What Might Adding Emojis and Pictures To Text Programming Languages Look Like?
I had to educate one of my daughters on this very idea just the other day with its two implications. First, if you want to be understood, use the tools that best allow that. And second, if you are too lazy to make that low-level effort, you are implicitly insulting the recipient of your message with the subtext that the effort they spend trying to figure out the meaning of what you wrote is less important than the miniscule time you saved.
For me, as someone whose professional career is built upon communicating ideas, not using the right methods to communicate your message succinctly and accurately to your intended audience is a major failing. If it is out of laziness, then it rises to a character flaw.
Moreover, if your thinking is so clouded that an emoji is the best way of communicating an idea, you need remedial work in expository writing. Or you're hungover, one of the two.
180438043
comment
bypz
6:58AM
(#65874255)
Attached to: Google Launches CO2 Battery Plants for Long-Duration Storage of Renewable Energy
I know of at least one company that was trying to do exactly that: have long tubes into which you pump air to some ridiculous pressure to store energy, and then run turbines from that compressed air when you want to draw back that energy.
180410977
comment
bypz
@09:58AM
(#65864173)
Attached to: Uber and DoorDash Try To Halt NYC Law That Encourages Tipping
Trying to solve the problem with tips is completely wrong.
No. Tipping is the problem, and the problem has gotten entirely out of hand. Make tipping illegal, and employers will be forced to pay wages that will retain their employees, and then, in turn, raise prices to compensate. At which point, we will have the system that Europe has been using for longer than I know, where being a waiter is not a stop-gap employment option while you're trying to do something else, but a respectable profession. There are establishments I frequent in various parts of the Continent where I see the same waiters working there, year after year, and there is never any problem with the service. Tipping is not expected, and if you do, it's a couple of percent. The prices on the menu are the prices you pay. No extra taxes, no extra tipping. Completely transparent.
It is pure commercial greed that prevents the US from adopting the same rational standard, and instead we get the fraud where the price you see is nowhere near the price you pay, except in very specific, isolated cases like fuel and airline tickets.
180388651
comment
bypz
7:03AM
(#65859041)
Attached to: Roomba Maker 'iRobot' Files for Bankruptcy After 35 Years
That's what's driving the recent increase in asthma: a more aseptic environment.
I ate dirt as a child, and I almost never get sick. My wife lived in a pristine environment and gets sick at the drop of a hat. These anecdotes are examples that are backed up by reams of rigorous science, some of which was done by a friend of mine, looking at the rate of respiratory illness in Papua New Guinea populations pre- and post-westernization. Their conclusion: we would be healthier if we lived with dirt floors.
180316715
comment
bypz
@08:17PM
(#65840371)
Attached to: Woman Hailed As a Hero For Smashing Man's Meta Smart Glasses On Subway
I've seen Meta's glasses, and they look close enough to normal Ray Bans that you might not give them a second look. What was this guy doing to evoke such ire? I mean they look like normal eye glasses, not something unusual that would stand out like Google Glass.
180253287
comment
bypz
3:25PM
(#65828625)
Attached to: Waymo Has A Charging Problem
Dude, learn about punctuation if you want to be understood.
180178339
comment
bypz
@10:14AM
(#65811983)
Attached to: Magician Forgets Password To His Own Hand After RFID Chip Implant
But, you eventually will. Trust me, you will. Time catches up to all.
Best option is to write them down and put them in a bank vault, or similarly secure location. And include the bank identity in your will, which you entrust to a respected legal firm. Make sure that the bank knows what to do with the contents of the safe deposit box if they go belly-up.
180059982
comment
bypz
@10:06PM
(#65792166)
Attached to: Russia's AI Robot Falls Seconds After Being Unveiled
Sheesh, talk about a rookie mistake.
Dress rehearsals are intended to be a run-through under full production, not dev, conditions. You hope and pray you never discover problems during dress rehearsals, but they exist for a reason.
180059494
comment
bypz
@08:42PM
(#65792026)
Attached to: US Ends Penny-Making Run After More Than 230 Years
I see all the comments of people putting coins in jars and this is on a tech board where I expect most people to be reasonably good at arithmetic. Or is the problem that you don't have a reliable place to keep the coins?
I seldom have more than five pennies or three quarters on me at any given time because I deliberately pay out whatever it takes to get the next denomination. If price is $1.24 and I don't have exact change, I could pay $1.25 that means another penny in my wallet but if I pay $1.29, those four pennies in my wallet become one nickel. Later, I might toss that nickel at a transaction to get a single quarter back instead of two dimes. And I never pull out a $1 bill if I have four quarters.
The math is not that difficult though I do understand that it depends on me being able to keep my coins together and too many wallets have no useful coin purse.
And there are countries in Europe where if you do NOT do that sort of minimalist transaction arithmetic, you are given such a serious stink eye by the cashier that you think twice about going back again.
I jest ... but only a little.
179977270
comment
bypz
@05:54PM
(#65776034)
Attached to: Kodak Quietly Begins Directly Selling Kodak Gold and Ultramax Film Again
There are plenty of places that will take your exposed film, develop, and scan and/or print for you, by mail, or in-person, at least around here. If there's a Hunt's Photo near you, they do a great job.
If you only want digital photos printed, then there are many, many places that will print pro-grade photos for cheap, and the results will be a damn sight better than what you get at the local drug store.
179974068
comment
bypz
@11:18AM
(#65775070)
Attached to: Google's New Hurricane Model Was Breathtakingly Good This Season
Instead of just the average track error (the dotted black line), I'd be interested in the error of the average track position. In other words, get the track position at each timestamp for all models, average that, then determine the error.
You're describing the consensus models, and they are better than any individual model, at least thus far.
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