litchralee @ litchralee @sh.itjust.works

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2 yr. ago

While the NEC does generally require grounded receptacles, there remain a lot of old homes which don't have the ground wire (formally the "equipment grounding conductor") in the junction box to actually connect to said grounded receptacles. Fortunately, the NEC provides a rule in 406.4(D)(2), allowing an upstream GFCI to be used in lieu of the safety of a ground wire, and permitting a 3 prong receptacle to be installed. This is a practical consideration by the NEC, since obviously rewiring homes to add the ground wire would be safer, but economically, a GFCI provides a pretty good degree of safety; the NEC makes these compromises all the time, in pursuit of "good" rather than an implausible "perfect".

That said, the lack of a grounded receptacle has some notable limitations, since technically some appliances must have a properly grounded receptacle to be used, although it's rarely checked. And in OP's case, the lack of ground wires means OP cannot leverage the convenient earth ground point.

A static dissipating mat is designed to be somewhat conductive, so that any static charges that build up on a PCB or on yourself are distributed and equalized across the mat and anything in contact with it. The point is that you cannot have a sudden static discharge between two objects which have equalized charges (eg between your finger and a sensitive chip).

With that in mind, it should make sense that, when possible, you want to extend the "reach" of your mat by equalizing it with other things that can hold a charge, such as the floor, the door handle, the light switch, etc. All of those home furnishings are indirectly in contact with terra firma, and do slowly drain any accumulated charge to earth. But your electrical ground system provides a convenient, low-resistance copper path to quickly drain charge. So if it's available, you'd want to electrically "anchor" your mat to the Earth's charge using the electrical ground. Otherwise, just keep everything on or attached to the mat, including yourself by way of the wrist strap.

As an aside, in the electronics lab at my company, the floor was redone to the tune of six figures to install a semi conductive floor, so that engineers could wear ankle straps instead of wrist straps, all to protect from ESD damage. The reason that floor and your matt are only semi conducting is that an all-copper floor or mat could end up shorting out a PCB. So their resistance is a precise value which lets charges equalize but not too low to cause shorting issues.

I almost wanted to call the linked post as clickbait, based on its terse title and the bold claim made in the subheader ("I’m not going to cryptographically sign my git commits, and you shouldn’t either"). But there was just enough substance to present and justify a colorable argument in the post. It just wasn't the same argument presented in the title, and took me way too long to determine what the grievance was directed at.

Worthwhile read? Eh, not until its position is clarified to not be confusing.

Just to be clear, this is about how signed commits appear in GitHub, right? Native Git signing is as robust -- and complex -- as it's always been, with the user having to keep their own GPG private and public keys. Managing these keys is the same process for signing outbound emails or preparing to receive inbound encrypted emails, with the attendant usability quirks like dealing with key revocation.

The author's main gripe appears to be with how GitHub presents a veneer of trust based on the commit signature, but not in pursuit of a cognizance security objective. That the veneer of "verified" could be confused with "safe to compile/execute" could regress overall security of users. I think this position is well-supported by the examples given.

But what I don't see is how this relates to Git signing at-large, when GitHub is not involved. The title of this Lemmy post and the blog post is "Unsigned Commits" and the author only ever mentions the consequences as they pertain to GitHub. Yet the same concern as the author's post can apply here: users who don't recognize that this is a GitHub-specific grievance might think ALL Git commit signing is useless, which is wrong. And that mistake would regress overall security of all Git users.

An example of Git signing outside of GitHub is the Linux kernel. Note that "PGP keys" are what GPG uses to sign the commits; that's not confusing at all.

PGP helps ensure the integrity of the code that is produced by the Linux kernel development community and, to a lesser degree, establish trusted communication channels between developers via PGP-signed email exchange.

Ever since the 2011 compromise of core kernel.org systems, the main operating principle of the Kernel Archives project has been to assume that any part of the infrastructure can be compromised at any time. For this reason, the administrators have taken deliberate steps to emphasize that trust must always be placed with developers and never with the code hosting infrastructure, regardless of how good the security practices for the latter may be.

As the Linux folks so eloquently put it, and in firm agreement with the author of this post, the infrastructure (kernel.org or GitHub) cannot be trusted over indefinite timescales, and problems will arise eventually. In disagreement with the author but in agreement with the Linux people, signed commits decentralize the trust, making the infra less useful to attack.

I personally still encourage Git signing, just like I would encourage email signing and encryption. But not just because GitHub is telling me I should. Every email and commit I produce, I should sign; the author here says I shouldn't, and I disagree. Signatures are valid for a specific purpose, until the day the signature key is revoked, which I can always do, however annoying.

TL;DR: Git signing is fine. What GitHub built atop native Git signing is questionable. Do sign stuff, but for real reasons, not just because GitHub tells you to.

I'll meet you half way, as the intro text at join-lemmy.com prominently proclaims: "Lemmy: a link aggregator for the Fediverse". I've edited my answer, although I'm concerned what other parts of it will prove to be wrong lol

TIL. I've struck out the parts of my answer which don't reflect the present reality.

I'm not sure about your first question, but for the second: Mastodon and Lemmy are both part of the Fediverse, implementing the ActivePub protocol. But what each offers is not really compatible with the other. Mastodon is microblogging, whereas Lemmy is link/news aggregator. The semantics of each also don't match: does favorite-ing in Mastodon post equal a Lemmy upvote?

So while you can't natively cross-post between the two systems, there's no reason why an app can't integrate the experience of both seamlessly. And in any case, sharing content from one to another is as simple as including the URL.

As an aside, I will say that the examples from the OSM Overpass API are pretty nifty for other applications. For example, I once wanted to find the longest stretch of road within city limits that does not have a stop sign or traffic light, in order to fairly assess ebike range by running back and forth until out-of-battery. I knew at the time that OSM had the data, but I didn't know it could be queried in such a way. Would have saved me some manual searching, as well as broadening to include rural roads just outside the city.

OSM can definitely find you a bank near a freeway ramp, but it can also find you a bank near a creek to make an inflatable boat getaway. What it can't do is arrange for decoys to confuse the police while you eacape.

The inflatable boat robber was ultimately caught and sentenced a year later.

I'm not a lawyer, but I think psychosis is a medical diagnosis, whereas lawyers would be concerned with legal insanity. The latter can draw from the medical diagnosis, but psychosis doesn't guarantee that legal insanity is present, and one can prove legal insanity without a psychosis diagnosis. Certainly, if a doctor will confirm that the client has psychosis, then it's easier for the lawyer to prove legal insanity.

The NIH provides this helpful definition:

What is psychosis? Psychosis refers to a collection of symptoms that affect the mind, where there has been some loss of contact with reality. During an episode of psychosis, a person’s thoughts and perceptions are disrupted and they may have difficulty recognizing what is real and what is not.

Essentially, psychosis sufferers are "disconnected" from this reality, and don't see everything we do, and see things that no one else does. But what legal insanity tries to capture is whether a person was able to understand right from wrong.

Example 1: a person suffering a psychotic episode attests that he saw demons about to attack his spouse on the driveway. He then produces an AK-105 and fires at the non-existent demons to protect his spouse, but the bullets go into the air and into the stucco walls of his neighbor's house. No one is injured.

Here, a doctor could conclude psychosis, but a jury might not find legal insanity. The person's reasoning was correct (ie using deadly force to protect someone in danger) but his perception of the non-existent threat was faulty. He clearly knew right from wrong. From the law's perspective, this becomes a case of mistaken facts, like burglars breaking into the wrong house, or a petty thief stealing something more valuable than intended. Many courts would find the defendant guilty and remove the guns from his possession, but may issue a shorter custodial (ie prison) sentence at a state psychiatric hospital, sufficient to bring the psychosis under control, then serve the remaining term.

Example 2: a person suffering a psychotic episode attests that he saw demons about to attack his spouse on the driveway. Because the demons are monstrous in size, he believes his spouse will be killed no matter what. He believes that the spouse's infidelity has wrought these demons upon her, and that they too are punishing him by killing his spouse. Thus, he produces an AK-105 and shoots his spouse, so that the demons will not have the satisfaction of killing her, and he will have avenged her by killing her. The spray of bullets kill the spouse, go into the air, and also into the stucco walls of his neighbor's house. No one else is injured. Later investigation shows the spouse was never unfaithful.

Here, both psychosis and legal insanity probably exist. Seeing demons -- of any size -- is evidence of a psychotic episode. The contorted logic of avenging someone by killing them is evidence of an incapacity to see what is right from wrong. This is not just the facts and perceptions being clouded, but a wholesale loss of sense and judgement. From the law's perspective, this person is unable to take care of themselves, let alone function amongst society. Many courts would find the defendant not-guilty by legal insanity and remove the guns from his possession, but will issue an indefinite order for committal to an institution until fully treated for psychosis. But this is often longer than any prison sentence for the crime. The other option is that some courts suspend the trial, send the defendant to the institution until fully treated, then resume the trial, if possible; a treated defendant might still be unable to aid in their legal defense, for example. Again, the defendant could end up being locked up somewhere for a very long time, even without being convicted.

All the above depends on jurisdiction, with some allowing an easier pleading of insanity, while others less so. States like California might also prohibit certain related defenses, such as diminished capacity.

So can a lawyer plead insanity? Sure, but it's a long shot, with one reference saying that less than 1% of defendants succeed in their claim. And if it is successful, the client may end up with more time than in prison.

but there's no way for a reader to know if you're an inept experimenter, got a bad batch of reagents or specimens, had a fundamentally flawed hypothesis, inadequate statistical design, or neglected to control for some secondary phenomenon.

I agree, to the extent that single, poor dataset can't draw useful conclusions. But after (painstakingly) controlling for issues with this dataset and from lots of other similar datasets, there can still be some value extracted from a meta-analysis.

The prospect that someone might one day later incorporate your data into a meta-analysis and at least justify a follow-up, more controlled study, should be sufficient to tip the scale toward publishing more studies and their datasets. I'm not saying hot garbage should be sent to journals, but whatever can be prepared for publishing ought to be.

TIL F5 iRules. I suppose I'm glad my career didn't into NetOps.

maybe experimenters are opting to do further research themselves rather than publish ambiguous results

While this might seem reasonable at first, I feel it is at odds with the current state of modern science, where results are no longer the product of individuals like Newton or the Curie's, but rather whole teams and even organizations, working across universities and across/out of this world. The thought of hoarding a topic to oneself until it's ripe seems more akin to commercial or military pursuits rather than of academia.

But that gut feeling aside, withholding data does have a cost, be it more pedestrians being hit by cars or bunk science taking longer to disprove. At some point, a prolonged delay or shelving data outright becomes unethical.

fine tuning your experimental design to get a conclusive result is a more attractive option than publishing a null result that could be significant

I'm not sure I agree. Science is constrained by human realities, like funding, timelines, and lifespans. If researchers are collecting grants for research, I think it's fair for the benefactors to expect the fruits of the investment -- in the form of published data -- even if it's not perfect and conclusory or even if the lead author dies before the follow-up research is approved. Allowing someone else to later pick up the baton is not weakness but humility.

In some ways, I feel that "publish or perish" could actually be a workable framework if it had the right incentives. No, we don't want researchers torturing the data until there's a sexy conclusion. But we do want researchers to work together, either in parallel for a shared conclusion, or by building on existing work. Yes, we want repeat experiments to double check conclusions, because people make mistakes. No, we don't want ten research groups fighting against each other to be first to print, wasting nine redundant efforts.

or a significant result that you fear might need retracting later.

I'm not aware of papers getting retracted because their conclusion was later disproved, but rather because their procedure was unsound. Science is a process, honing towards the truth -- whatever it may be -- and accepting its results, or sometimes its lack of results.

My understanding -- again, just from that book; I've never worked in academia -- is that some journals now have a procedure for "registering" a study before it happens. That way, the study's procedure will have been pre-vetted and the journal commits to -- and the researchers promise to -- publish the data irrespective of any conclusive results. Not perfect, but could certainly help.

The linked tweet in turn links to Adrian Barnett's blog post: https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/z_values/

The two large spikes in Z-values are just below and above the statistically significant threshold of ± 1.96, corresponding to a p-value of less than 0.05. The plot looks like a Normal distribution that’s caved in.

From my limited statistical understanding, the Z value measures standard deviations compared to the null hypothesis. This page on statistical analysis says:

Often, you will run one of the pattern analysis tools, hoping that the z-score and p-value will indicate that you can reject the null hypothesis

To reject the null hypothesis, you must make a subjective judgment regarding the degree of risk you are willing to accept for being wrong (for falsely rejecting the null hypothesis). Consequently, before you run the spatial statistic, you select a confidence level.

So from that, I understand the takeaway from the Z value graph is that if researchers are truly willing to publish studies which don't reach a definitive conclusion, then the huge gap in the middle should be filled in. But it's not.

And the danger is that valuable data from studies straddling the arbitrary p=0.05 line is simply being discarded by researchers, before ever reaching the journal. Such data -- while not conclusive on its own -- could have been aggregated in a metastudy to prove or disprove the effectiveness of medicines and procedures that have non-obvious or long-term impacts. That is a loss to all of humanity.

A while ago, I read a book about how researchers inadvertently misuse statistical tests, along with how to understand what statistics can and cannot do, from the perspective of scientists who will have to work with datasets. It's not terribly long, and is accessible with no prerequisite of any statistical experience. https://nostarch.com/statsdonewrong

EDIT: the author of that book has published its entire text as a website: https://www.statisticsdonewrong.com

This reminds me of a post I once saw, describing a person who (ab)used the C preprocessor to make an Old English version of C. It was clever, but obviously unmaintainable in a collaborative setting.

If this DreamBerd language is statically compiled, then it might still rank slightly above Tcl, a language I've had to use in production and despised every moment of it.

I could see this used like a therapist chair, where two people will be conversing at length and would like to both be comfortable, to face each other, and don't necessarily need a table between them. It certainly would be interesting to arrange this in a space, but the closeness does evoke a sense of privacy and coziness.

The fanciness could make it workable in a space-constrained high-rise office, say Chicago or SF.

Obligatory link to the Useless Use of Cat Awards

"tete a tete chair" turned up a lot of very relevant pictures on Google Images. I'm poised to think you've comprehensively answered the main question!

I'll have to do more digging to see if modern versions of these chairs exist and if any were featured on TV or film, but at least I know have a workable keyword. Thanks!

Funnily enough, the reason I thought to look for this double-sided sofa is because a friend joked about a two-person toilet. This isn't what I had in mind, but it's amazing nevertheless.

Thank you for improving my happiness today!