makomk

45 ms·

481.
by makomk 5y ago
The problem with relying on resistance-based emergency heat is that it means heating efficiency tanks by a factor of potentially 4 or so at the same time as heating demand is also at its highest. This is a really great recipe for collapse o
482.
by makomk 5y ago
Norway is almost entirely hydroelectric, which is pretty close to ideal in terms of providing reliable non-fossil-fuel power - and unfortunately something most countries don't have the geography to pull off, which is why Norway ended u
483.
by makomk 5y ago
I think you'll find that mask compliance amongst people who're supposed to wear them at their jobs all day is almost universally pretty poor. Prior to Covid they were disfavoured as a way of protecting workers partly for that reas
484.
by makomk 5y ago
The UK and Germany have very similar vaccination rates averaged across the entire population, but the UK has very high vaccine uptake amongst elderly people who're most at risk whilst Germany doesn't. If you're relying on vac
485.
by makomk 5y ago
Believe it or not, the fact that 2.5G switches are cheaper than 10G switches at all is an improvement. There seems to be a weird lack of interest in shipping it as a consumer technology.
486.
by makomk 5y ago
Yeah, Intel managed to incorrectly implement the 2.5GbE standard with the result that if you connected older steppings of their NIC to a standards-compliant device massive packet loss and effective data transfer speeds apparently as low as
487.
by makomk 5y ago
Recent versions of Synfig can apparently export to Lottie too, with some limitations, but that was mostly designed for anime-imspired character animation rather than UI stuff and I'm not sure all the features intended for animating cha
488.
by makomk 5y ago
Yeah, Omicron is is still potentially a huge threat to countries which both have low vaccine uptake amongst the most at risk and avoided people being infected by previous variants. I think that might only apply to Germany, Austria and China
489.
by makomk 5y ago
This news came out shortly after the UK mandated proof of two vaccine doses (or a negative test, though there's some suspicion this option will be removed like in many other European countries) for access to nightclubs and other large
490.
by makomk 5y ago
Cowpox produced strong enough immunity to smallpox that a vaccine likely derived from it completely wiped smallpox off the planet, but it's very much not the same disease - cowpox doesn't spread effectively in humans and is much l
491.
by makomk 5y ago
The current PCR tests detect three different regions of RNA that are expected to be relatively well conserved, so there's no single mutation that can cause PCR tests to not detect them and we'll hopefully get a substantial early w
492.
by makomk 5y ago
The problem with LFP batteries is that they really need to be kept resonably close to room temperature in order to be efficient and safe to charge. This is fine if you're using them for some kind of off-grid home that needs to be heate
493.
by makomk 5y ago
Overall, the US seems to be doing about as well as continental Europe in ways that actually matter, like deaths. What the NYT did was cherry-picking figures - for example, for a while last winter they kept comparing Spanish cases to Florida
494.
by makomk 5y ago
The mainstream media is very much part of the problem. For example, both the idea that the US could've avoided a substantial proportion of those pandemic-related deaths and people's beliefs about how it could've done so are t
495.
by makomk 5y ago
I've seen that definition of Ponzi schemes a lot and it doesn't really explain how they work - you could say the same about, say, most of the stock market where the only way to exit your position is through funds from new investor
496.
by makomk 5y ago
The UK is interesting in that only about 70% of the population is fully vaccinated, which seems to be less than the proportion of Covid-releated deaths that were fully vaccinated. This isn't because the Covid vaccines are ineffective a
497.
by makomk 5y ago
The obvious solution to this problem is to do actual random sampling: pick members of the public in as close to a random fashion as possible, test them for Covid regardless of vaccination status or symptoms, and you should be able to get a
498.
by makomk 5y ago
The changes to EU energy efficiency labelling were a little different in that it was an active, stated goal that it should not be possible for manufacturers to achieve the top A rating in the near future and the criteria were set with the a
499.
by makomk 5y ago
As I understand it, none of the existing major variants is an ancestor of Omicron - their closest common ancestor is quite a way back in the pandemic. Alpha and Delta weren't particularly closely related either.
500.
by makomk 5y ago
No, this does not imply that going from 80% to 90% vaccinated could halve the number of hospital beds needed - that reasoning would only work if the vaccine completely prevented Covid-related hospitalizations, in which case zero vaccinated
501.
by makomk 5y ago
Vaccination does reduce the proportion of people that need ICU beds, but there are pretty rapid diminishing returns on just vaccinating more; countries have reached the point where the majority of Covid patients in their ICUs are vaccinated
502.
by makomk 5y ago
That is a weird graph. Am I missing something, or does it say that the counties with a mask mandate began to have substantially lower cases than those without starting two months before the first mask mandates were reimposed?
503.
by makomk 5y ago
There's a really obvious difference between those two things: every cent of the union's funds is actual money that is taken out of employees' paychecks and comes right out their pockets, whereas Bezos' net worth isn&#x27
504.
by makomk 5y ago
Peak anti-vax for measles was like two decades ago, at least over here in the UK - we were at pretty much an all-time record high for MMR vaccinations of kids before Covid came along and disrupted all the vaccination programs. (I know the B
505.
by makomk 5y ago
Italy only banned direct flights from China which was indeed worse than useless, but the US travel ban was based on whether someone had been in China in I think the last 14 days and most subsequent travel restrictions have been modelled on
506.
by makomk 5y ago
Every single benefit of the vaccines seem to fade over six months or so - not justt symptomatic infections, but also protection against serious effects, hospitalization, and death. That's why there's been so much push for boosters
507.
by makomk 5y ago
There's some evidence in retrospect that a lot of the spread to the US was from Italy. There wre two huge problems with using that as proof Pelosi and co were right to call the travel bans xenophobic. Firstly, it suggests the US polici
508.
by makomk 5y ago
Yeah, South Africa apparently postponed their upcoming vaccine deliveries recently because they're running out of willing people to vaccinate and the current stockpiles will last half a year at the current rate: https://www.
509.
by makomk 5y ago
South Africa's big problem with vaccination right now seems to be that they're running out of willing people to vaccinate - they just postponed a bunch of vaccine deliveries because their current stockpile is big enough already, a
510.
by makomk 5y ago
This pretty much concurs with the current BBC reporting, just with more graphs: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-59418127 It's honestly better than I'd expect from any of the usual American publications thes

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