Software is a tool. I develop stuff that i know is of interest to companies working with everything from nuclear energy to hydrogen electrolysis and CO2 storage. I honestly believe I can make a positive contribution to the world by releasing that software under a permissive licence such that companies can freely integrate it into their proprietary production code.

I’m also very aware that the exact same software is of interest to the petroleum industry and weapons manufacturers, and that I enable them by releasing it under a permissive licence.

The way I see it, withholding a tool that can help do a lot of good because it can also be used for bad things just doesn’t make much sense. If everybody thinks that way, how can we have positive progress? I don’t think I can think of any more or less fundamental technology that can’t be used for both. The same chemical process that has saved millions from starvation by introducing synthetic fertiliser has taken millions of lives by creating more and better explosives. If you ask those that were bombed, they would probably say they wish it was never invented, while if you ask those that were saved from the brink of starvation they likely praise the heavens for the technology. Today, that same chemical process is a promising candidate for developing zero-emission shipping.

I guess my point is this: For any sufficiently fundamental technology, it is impossible to foresee the uses it may have in the future. Withholding it because it may cause bad stuff is just holding technological development back, lively preventing just as much good as bad. I choose to focus on the positive impact my work can have.

You are aware that what Israel is doing in Gaza is comparable to the nazi treatment of e.g. the Warsaw ghettos… right?

Take a step back, and look at the Israeli soldiers mocking Palestinian dead, mistreating the wounded and captured, and shooting at clearly unarmed civilians for fun. All this while they brag about it on video. Look at that and tell me that it doesn’t give you a sick feeling to your stomach of the type you haven’t had since you saw photos of concentration camps.

There are dozens of children that have literally STARVED TO DEATH in Gaza because of Israel’s actions. They’re dying the same deaths that Jews were put through in concentration camps. Don’t you see the horrifying irony in this?

Israel is at a point where humanitarian workers from recognised international organisations have been targeted and killed, and they brush it off as a “mistake”.

I cannot think about anything in the past 70 years that compares to what Israel is doing, and I hope beyond hope that some force will smite their government and armed forces such that the slaughter will stop. Because it is a slaughter. It’s not a war when Israel is counting its dead on its fingers, while there are enough missing Palestinians in the rubble to fill a football stadium. It’s just Israel wilfully bombing, burning and slaughtering, with nobody stopping them.

All this, and you have the fucking audacity to talk about antisemitism? Take a look at the world, and ask yourself how calling for an end to this can have anything to do with the religious beliefs of the perpetrators.

Israel recognised Palestinian civilian and security control of the West bank in the Oslo accords from the 90’s. They are blatantly shitting on their own promises whenever a genocidic occupier or their enabling security forces set foot on the West Bank without express permission from the Palestinian West Bank government.

Oh, I definitely get that the major appeal of excel is a close to non-existent barrier to entry. I mean, an elementary school kid can learn the basics(1) of using excel within a day. And yes, there are definitely programs out there that have excel as their only interface :/ I was really referring to the case where you have the option to do something “from scratch”, i.e. not relying on previously developed programs in the excel sheet.

(1) I’m aware that you can do complex stuff in excel, the point is that the barrier to entry is ridiculously low, which is a compliment.

I just cannot imagine any task you can do in excel that isn’t easier to do with Python/Pandas. The simplest manipulations of an excel sheet pretty much require you to chain an ungodly list of arcane commands that are completely unreadable, and god forbid you need to work with data from several workbooks at the same time…

You are neglecting the cost-benefit of temporarily jumping to the wrong conclusion while waiting for more conclusive evidence though. Not doing anything because evidence that this is bad is too thin, and being wrong, can have severe long-term consequences. Restricting tiktok and later finding out that it has no detrimental effects has essentially zero negative consequences. We have a word for this principle in my native language - that if you are in doubt about whether something can have severe negative consequences, you are cautious about it until you can conclude with relative certainty that it is safe, rather than the other way around, which would be what you are suggesting: Treating something as safe until you have conclusive evidence that it is not, at which point a lot of damage may already be done.

So what you’re saying is: We have a small sample of unreliable evidence that this thing may be absolutely detrimental to the developing brain. Thus, we should assume it’s fine until we have more reliable evidence. Did I get that right?

Check out the actual statistics on what women and men choose an occupations when both people-related and non-people-related jobs are otherwise equal. There’s quite a bit of evidence that men and women tend to prefer occupations in one or the other category.

Honestly, looking at how different men and women are physically, it is slightly absurd to assume that they are identical psychologically (i.e. have the exact same preference regarding people-oriented vs. technical occupations).

I guess its just because saying “one-seventy-nine” rolls better off the tongue than “one point seventy nine” or “one point eight”

I’ve never thought of myself as a conspiracy theorist, but if jar-jar being planned to be the actual phantom menace, but later being taken out of the role because fans hated him counts as a conspiracy theory: Count me in! I think the arguments are compelling to say the least.

I’ve found chatgpt reasonably good for one thing: Generating regex-patterns. I don’t know regex for shit, but if I ask for a pattern described with words, I get a working pattern 9/10 times. It’s also a very easy use-case to double check.

I definitely roll with “badass tiny mf”, “chill little dude”, “tiny gangsta bro” or any other title making fun of my stature. Call me anything involving “king” and I’ll be inclined to convince you that, even though I’m short, you’ll be shorter once you’re confined to a wheelchair

I was thinking something similar: If you have the computer write in a formal language, designed in such a way that it is impossible to make an incorrect statement, I guess it could be possible to get somewhere with this

We tried the “trade your skills for something you need”. In every surviving society it eventually lead to the development of a currency (not hard to see why), which requires/leads to regulation, which requires enforcement, aaaand you’re back at a modern society. I’m all for more regulation to reduce economic and social differences in society, but the people that are talking about abolishing governments and currencies need to pick up a history book and follow their ideas to their natural conclusion.

“Controlling speech” is a hallmark of authoritarian governments, be they far-left or far-right, there are plenty of historical examples of both.

I mean, in a perfect world, yes. The issue comes up when someone wears out or breaks the drill, and it needs to be replaced or repaired. Whoever spends time and resources ensuring that we have a drill needs to be compensated somehow, because that’s time they’re not spending on making sure they have food and shelter.

Follow along that line of reasoning for a couple steps, and you end up with some kind of economic system, and likely some kind of enforcement system, so you’re suddenly back at an early stage proto-state/government.

But it might be beer!

Where I live they were systematically nice people that helped keep everybody safe. If they found some drunk/high person that needed help, they would drive them home. When we were teens and had beach parties, a couple of them would typically hang around somewhere out of the way, and only intervene if someone was being an asshole trying to start a fight (and they would tell people to pick up their glass bottles so kids wouldn’t get hurt the next day). If we were otherwise hanging around they might chat to us and ask what was going on around the neighbourhood, and nobody had an issue telling them anything, because we knew they were just there to look after and help people.

Obviously, I can tell that my experience with police growing up is far from what can be expected a lot of other places. I really do wish more places had police like we did.

This is actually an awesome writing prompt: The older ghosts get updates from the younger ones, and send stories back from their own lives, like a long telephone wire…

Hehe, exactly :) the thing with gases is that the line between completely fine (campfire outside) to potentially lethal (liquid nitrogen evaporating in a small, poorly ventilated garage) can be harder to see and judge for an amateur than a lot of other things. Anyone would understand that they should avoid getting acids or toxic chemicals on their skin, and the protective measures are quite simple to carry out. The same is true for most flammable or explosive liquids or solids. So the idea behind my advice was really “If there’s something that’s likely to hurt you because you aren’t properly aware of the danger involved and how to mitigate it, it’s likely to be a gas, so be extra, extra careful around gases, gas producing reactions, and volatile compounds.”

If you have a fume hood that’s good of course, but since the question was about advising amateurs on safety, my advice is restrictive, because gases can be very dangerous in subtle ways.

As an amateur: Do you know how to properly work in a fume hood so that it protects you? Do you know its capacity, and what to do if something unexpected leads to gas development over that capacity? Have you had training in using this stuff, so that you can react properly and quickly if something goes wrong, rather than freezing up?

In short: Because the potential dangers when working with a lot of gases are harder to detect, and harder to mitigate, than when working with other stuff, I’m taking a restrictive approach in my advice.

For you question on pyrophoric gases: They can remain in contact with air for a while (several minutes, depending on concentration) before igniting. Worst case, the room around you can fill with gas from a leak before causing a gas explosion. In principle you can also inhale gas from this leak, such the the explosion also takes place inside you :)