miri (u/miri) - Readit News

miri commented on How to efficiently operate the Arduino GSM shield with a battery pack comoyo.github.io/blog/201... · Posted by u/ingridod

freehunter · 12 years ago

I'm preparing a large project using Arduino that will need to be running on battery power for long periods of time. I haven't attempted anything like this before, but everywhere I read tells me that Arduino is not power efficient at all, and people have to get creative to conserve power. I guess such is the way of low-end microprocessors, something we take for granted in power powerful machines.

miri · 12 years ago

It's not so much the microprocessor, it's all the trappings of the Arduino, and not using sleep mode. If your project is large and runs on limited battery power, you might want to choose another solution and work on power management. The Arduino is an excellent prototyping tool, though.

miri commented on Inappropriate comments at pycon 2013 called out twitter.com/adriarichards... · Posted by u/nashequilibrium

incongruity · 12 years ago

(nit-pick) There's a difference between sexist and sexualized.

FWIW, I'm not sure where I fall on all of this – but my hunch says there's a bunch to be unhappy about all around. Having said that, I'll throw this out:

In my experience, men (I am one) tend to be more okay with a small amount of sexualization in conversation. Women tend not to be. (extreme generalization, but a real distinction, I believe).

Say what you will about which is right or wrong, but I think that the important point is the general difference between the way men and women see things. That difference is real, regardless what any one of us would want one side or the other to be.

So, the question becomes, how do we deal with it and how do we minimize conflict?

miri · 12 years ago

I believe your observation is correct. I'll also throw out a possible reason for women being less okay with sexualisation in conversation: We're the target or object of sexualisation far more often than men are, and sometimes in quite threatening contexts. If you keep getting exposed to something in a negative context, you stop liking even fairly mild occurrences of it. (I'm sure a black person hearing even quite mildly racist jokes will be more annoyed than a white person would, because they are usually the target of these jokes.)

miri commented on The lactose-tolerance mutation slate.com/articles/health... · Posted by u/MaysonL

bad_user · 13 years ago

It's worth pointing out that our methods and tastes also evolved because the raw materials and industry trends are changing.

Get a bottle of fat milk straight from a cow, leave it on the kitchen table for a couple of days to turn sour (depends on room temperature) and you'll get yogurt, maybe not as thick as the one you can buy at a store, but it's good nonetheless. Then if the batch was good, you can save some of this batch for later batches, for an addition of bacteria cultures, thus with each successive batch you'll get better and better results. There are absolutely no additives needed (unless you make a business out of it, in which case you want predictable results), with the end-result being 100% chemicals free.

Now try doing that with the bottled milk you can find in the stores.

EDIT (reformulated):

So, consumer tastes are changing based on industry trends ... like these fuckers put extra sugar in everything, being a vicious cycle, because extra sugars in foods give dependency on foods with extra sugars in them. And let's not forget of additives like gels for extra-thickness, or dyes, or powder milk, or other chemicals (because degreased milk or yogurt does not resemble real milk or yogurt, so they have to make up for it somehow) and also preservatives for longer shelf life, etc, etc...

Many consumers would turn their nose on real, fat, non-pasteurized milk or on fat barbecued pork neck, because it's somehow unhealthier than McDonalds' burgers or diary products enriched with chemicals.

And tastes are grown, so if people get used to Danone yogurts that never rot, then that's what they start expecting.

Funny story, the punch line for a Danone milk cream in my country on a TV commercial has been "look how well it dissolves". And I was like "oh wow, can cream really do that?". Go figure.

miri · 13 years ago

There is absolutely no such thing as "chemical free". Water, lactic acid, casein, and so on, they're all chemicals, even if you have glorified them with a stamp that says "natural".

miri commented on Sleep Hacks: The Geek's Guide to Optimizing Sleep scribd.com/doc/3932344/40... · Posted by u/mathgladiator

DanielStraight · 15 years ago

In the U.S. at least, a normal, healthy diet is something of a contradiction. Michael Pollan wouldn't need to promote "eat food, not too much, mostly plants" if people were doing it already. I agree with you completely on your other points, but telling some people to eat a "normal" diet will be interpreted as, "eat out of fast food restaurants and freezer cases," because for many in the U.S., that is a normal diet.

miri · 15 years ago

Oh, a "normal" diet varies a lot depending where you are. Myself, I'm in Norway, and the diet here is fairly healthy if somewhat short on vegetables (especially during the winter). I'm sure most other "normal" diets in the world are quite ok, as well. Might need some added vegetables, depending on where you are (the Dutch probably don't need any extra), but mostly, people who are able to afford normal amounts of food will eat better than one would expect given the media hype. They might want to cut down on the amounts, and cut out the sugary drinks, but I think that's it.

miri commented on Sleep Hacks: The Geek's Guide to Optimizing Sleep scribd.com/doc/3932344/40... · Posted by u/mathgladiator

miri · 15 years ago

The sleep bits are (probably - don't know very much about the topic) ok, but once it gets to diet, it goes right into la-la-land. It is riddled with misinformation and the belief that a "raw food diet" fixes all. A raw food diet might make you lose weight, and it might get you food poisoning, but that's about it. For more information, I recommend C0nc0rdance's youtube videos on raw food.

For other clearly wrong, or wrongly interpreted information: While 70% of the population is lactose intolerant, that doesn't mean you are. We do know that about 99% of the Chinese population is lactose intolerant (which proooobably skews the numbers a bit), yet, for example, only about 1% of Dutch people are lactose intolerant. Northern Europeans and other people from historically very dairy-rich cultures have a very high degree of lactose tolerance, and persistent lactase production (the enzyme that digests lactose and makes you lactose tolerant). Very interesting genetics topic :) Statistics will not say anything useful about whether you are likely to be lactose intolerant, but ethnicity will. Get tested if you are in doubt. It's a simple test. Just make sure you go to a qualified medical practitioner.

As for gluten insensitivity, this is called coeliac disease and is very serious. Thankfully, the highest estimate for prevalence is about 1%, not 15%. The anti-gluten brigade has been on it for years, but non-coeliac people can and should eat gluten. It's a good protein of high quality and makes your bread dough stick together. That's why it's hell trying to bake gluten-free bread or pizza dough.

Casein, a milk protein, is also not a bad protein. While there are many scare stories about casein (it being blamed for autism, cancer, et cetera), they don't hold up very well. Casein is a nice, slow-digesting protein with a very good quality, as any body builder who does the diet/protein thing will be able to tell you. Drink your milk if you can tolerate it, and eat more cheese :)

As for multiple sclerosis, we actually don't know what causes it other than that there likely is a genetic component, but that other factors also interfere. For the actual, REAL long term effects of coeliac disease, see here: http://celiacdisease.about.com/od/symptomsofceliacdisease/a/...

As for cortisol, your body regulates this itself. If you're stressed, stress down. But if your body doesn't regulate itself, you have a huge problem and need to see a doctor right away.

While "eat food, not too much, mostly plants" is very good advice, there's also another piece of advice that has been forgotten: "You are probably not sick, and your body can take care if it." Just eat a normal, healthy diet.

Man. That was long. Sorry about that, but I had to get some facts out.

miri commented on Your last name contains invalid characters blog.jgc.org/2010/06/your... · Posted by u/jgrahamc

rbanffy · 15 years ago

Welcome to my world. I have mostly given up of writing "Bánffy" in web forms. I have even given up on pronouncing it right, as nobody in Brazil (except Hungarian expats) can do it in a non-painful - for me to hear - way.

Well... At least your name is valid ASCII... Once entered, it won't be mangled at the database layer.

miri · 15 years ago

I was just about to say this, too. I've ended up just splitting up the letter æ in my last name into a and e. Even some Norwegian businesses end up mangling my name, which is really very embarrassing. For them, that is. Æ, Ø, and Å aren't considered ligatures, they're considered separate characters in our alphabet. Worth taking the time not to mangle them, since they're fairly common in names :P

miri commented on Banana equivalent dose en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ban... · Posted by u/soyelmango

miri · 15 years ago

And I just can't help but thinking... "Aha. So that's where the Bananaphone song got its superpowers from!" ><

On a more serious note, I do love everyday comparisons that everyone can understand. For example, science books for kids measuring things in elephants or houses. It's a comparison they can understand. It's like scaling things down for your brain. They're good tools to detect nonsense, too. Take antivaccinationists. For example, they do talk a lot about "toxins" in vaccines - like formaldehyde. Sounds dangerous, doesn't it? Except... That the average pear has about fifty times the formaldehyde in it, and formaldehyde is naturally present in your body in the first place. Then there's the mercury preservative mostly gone from vaccines anyway - gone in a matter of days, since ethyl mercury is easily passed. The methyl mercury from that tuna salad you ate a month ago is still in your body. But when a non-scientific person just hears "mercury" or "formaldehyde"...

miri commented on How to sleep on a long haul flight blog.jgc.org/2010/06/how-... · Posted by u/jgrahamc

simplegeek · 15 years ago

Thank you. That helps. Off-topic, but are you studying in Norway? Which university you're a part of?

miri · 15 years ago

Studying in Norway - at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. I <3 Gløshaugen.

miri commented on Daring to Discuss Women in Science nytimes.com/2010/06/08/sc... · Posted by u/d4ft

pbhjpbhj · 15 years ago

>If you grow up hearing that girls can't do computers, can't do math, can't do science, cos science is a boy thing, while hearing that language is something girls are good at, you get a lot of female language majors.

Who says this? I've never heard it except in debates where it is levelled as the reason why boys prefer mathematically biased subjects ("hard sciences").

Are women also worried that they are under-represented in autism figures, something which appears to closely related to the generalised male ability with mathematics and disability in respect of social aptitude.

>If they'd treat people the same from the start [...]

You mean ignore that people are different and want different things?

miri · 15 years ago

Like MichaelSalib says, they're definitely out there, and sometimes they're our teachers. I've got female classmates who have routinely been graded one grade lower in than their male classmates IT class in high school - despite being as good or better than them. It rectified itself at the exams, since they're anonymous, but things like this still happen all over the place - and my classmates are the ones that persevered, and still started a master's programme in computer engineering. We've all experienced this to some degree (we've been asking around), which is probably a contributing factor to the fact that having 11 girls in a class of 120 is a whopping high for our course.

Just because people are different and want different things is not an excuse to be condescending to anyone based on gender. That's what I'm getting at.