I would assume the extent of the uniqueness is probably unknown at this point. The researchers probably meant uniqueness within a group. Though I suppose the population is small enough that the names could be unique globally.

That would make sense. In Europe I got an IV just for blood samples. They could have been anticipating the possibility that I would need pain killers later, but seemed like it would have made more sense to use a normal needle and only do the IV if it came to the point of needing meds.

Indeed.. now that we can simply enter a couple ingredients into a search field and get countless recipes, and also w/Youtube, I would expect people to be better equipped in recent decades.

What’s Kenji? Is it the cookbook mentioned here:

https://www.kenjilopezalt.com/

?

Indeed, that’s a good point. I wonder how many people don’t know that. I used to think “nothing will survive 250°F in my pressure cooker” and was tempted to cook some questionable pork. But yeah, would have been dangerous because chemical toxins from bacteria output would “survive” (persist) in 250°F. So after some quick research, I tossed it.

Though I might be surprised if 24hrs is enough time for brine to not only accumulate bacteria in high numbers but also allow enough time for bacteria toxins to be produced. How fast does that happen? I would have thought a day is too short (I don’t think I ever let more than a day pass between boils).

Yeah, indeed I just realized from an article I linked that salt only works as a preservative by drying out food. So salt water is indeed useless.

I can’t imagine it’s particularly food safe to leave your starchy pasta water out for a few days and then reuse it.

I haven’t tested a few days of non-use. It’s usually if I happen to make pasta two days in a row, and (more rare) three days in a row (where it still boils daily).

Well it’s not actually clear to me whether the soft water is to protect the dishwasher, or to make cleaning more effective. Soft water dissolves soap better which makes it more effective in cleaning. It also means I can use powdered detergent (which is cheaper than liquid detergent, but in hard water powder doesn’t perform as well). Soft water has the down side that it’s actually /more prone/ to corrosion than hard water (at least according to youtube plumbers). So I’m tempted to conclude the built-in water softener is just for cleaning effectiveness.

Ah, I wondered if I needed to explain that, since dishwashers in N.America do not take salt. European dishwashers tend to have built-in water softeners (because it’s somewhat uncommon to have whole house water softeners). So we periodically have to fill a salt reservoir in the dishwasher to feed the water softener.

When I studied compsci, my prof told me ½ of what I learn at the uni will be obsolete by the time I report to work. So his take was to give a strong dose of the kind of knowledge that does not expire: theory and concepts. We learned a language that does not even exist in the real world (PEP5), which was a blend of important constructs from several real assembly languages. He said if you learn PEP5, you will be best adapted to picking up any assembly language. If he were to teach a real assembly language the chances we would encounter it would be slim and we would be alienated by dissimilar other real langs.

The wise move is not to make students dependent on implementation specifics.

On a note on matlab, in addition to industry, there are certain fields in academia, eg neuroscience and many engineer fields, where matlab has been part of their culture for quite some time. My guess is you can make the case for some other proprietary softwares used in university. Changing culture in a field is not an easy thing; but fortunately people in science usually notice these issues and make a choice for themselves.

IIRC, the GNU Octave language is similar enough to MATlab that if someone cannot adapt something must have gone wrong with their instruction, which should not be centered around implementation particulars.

MATlab can only be justified in one niche case: simulink, which GNU Octave does not offer. A prof should have to have simulink as part of the course if they are going to justify spending dept money on MATlab.

I have a postfix server that Google rejects. I was told I need to setup DKIM. Then I was told it’s not just enough to have DKIM configured, but I will be forced to solve Google’s CAPTCHAs before my DKIM is accepted. In the end I opted not to ever send email to google or MS recipients.

Perhaps universities could go as far as setting up DKIM but then refuse to support Google’s special needs (such as CAPTCHA solving). If email from the uni to a google acct bounces, no problem because the sender is at least informed that google refused their RFC-compliant message. But what if Google accepts the msg for delivery then files it as spam? Should the university mail server give the sender a notification that a msg was delivered but likely to a spam folder, I wonder?

When the hard-working little swimmers encounter the thicker vaginal mucus, their path is slowed. So the sperm often join together at their heads, which gives them greater swimming speed (up to 50 percent faster) than if they were to carry on individually.

I wonder why that is. If a group of people were to join together and run, the speed of the group would be capped by the slowest runner. And aerodynamics would be worse.