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Sheffield-based company Viners has produced the "Assure" range, square-ended knives which are "shaped to reduce and prevent injuries, accidents and fatalities." With knife crimes in England and Wales at their highest in a decade, a 3% increase on last year and the highest level since 2009, this new knife is intended to not be used in crimes and only in the kitchen. While anti-stabbing messages have been left on fastfood containers and a crackdown on knife crime has been tried, for which included limiting the sale of knives, so far nothing has blunted the knife based problem.
When have social problems been solved by technical solutions?
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UK Company Makes Knives Without Tips As Knife Crime Wave Surges
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You are a fluke of the universe; you have no right to be here.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by c0lo on Monday January 20 2020, @12:02AM (9 children)
When a botched repair can result in your neighbours' home being damanged or destroyed (and maybe their life too), I don't think is such a bad idea to ask wiring/plumbing be performed by professionals.
Besides, that bank that offered you the mortgage for 30 years? Paradoxically, it's more interested in the integrity of the building and its value than your rights.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by DrkShadow on Monday January 20 2020, @04:58AM (1 child)
By going outside, you could (perhaps inadvertently) cause a death! Let alone suggest you try to operate a vehicle.
Therefore we should make it illegal to go outside. Obviously. Eliminate the edge cases, eliminate the problem!
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday January 20 2020, @05:18AM
See? This is why your parents trained you for some long years before letting you go on your own. You can still (perhaps inadvertently) cause a death, but the risk is deemed acceptable.
Invest that much time in training as an electrician/plumber under supervision (it's called apprenticeship in most of the civilized world) and chances are nobody will object to you performing repairs to your own power circuits or pipes, even if you can still could (perhaps inadvertently) cause damages.
Heck, you may even get a job doing those repairs for others too (that is usually called "certified trade/professional" in most of the civilized world).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 20 2020, @09:05AM (4 children)
Then I wouldn't be able to fix my house, because I wouldn't be able to afford to. Electricians, plumbers, etc. charge high rates, so there's serious savings to be had by doing the work yourself.
I educated myself and replumbed, rewired, air sealed, and insulated my house for a fraction of the price that I would have had to pay had I hired an electrician and a plumber. As long as you educate yourself about code and safety standards, it should be fine.
And yes, there are people who do ridiculous nonsense such as wire their house with undersized wire (you know, the same people who would probably ignore such laws anyway), but that doesn't mean everyone should be forbidden from fixing their homes.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday January 20 2020, @10:26AM (3 children)
Cool. Very likely you avoided the critical mistakes and made many others smaller that you don't know about. Let's hope you won't run into conditions that make from those small mistakes a critical risk (which is to say the practical experience of a good trades aren't totally captured by codes and safety standards, those are just the minimum required - and known - to be safe)
There is such a thing as "the law of diminishing returns" which guarantees over a certain level you'll be spending way more money to, in this case, lower infrequent risks. Besides, work quality, "defect free"-dom and risk minimization aren't guaranteed even the licensed tradesmen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by helel on Monday January 20 2020, @01:09PM (2 children)
In my experience many tradesmen are just as likely as any amateur to make stupid mistakes. The phone line in my house has been a problem forever and the man from AT&T insisted it's as good as it can be, nothing more they can do. I read up, tore apart his work, and found numerous errors including the complete lack of a ground. After I fixed his mistakes and connected the ground in the connection box to the earth I've got an order of magnitude faster internet connection and far less risk that I'll die in a lightning strike.
A skilled tradesman might be worth their weight in gold but many of the one's I've dealt with have been just a little less knowledgeable then wikihow.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday January 20 2020, @03:38PM (1 child)
If one has budget worries, in UK at least, one can hire an electrician to check out a "home brew" job and sign it off for compliance purposes. It is a compromise option.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 21 2020, @02:42AM
It's the same in USA. In fact, you're supposed to get someone to inspect all your work after you finish each phase and you're supposed get your repair/improvement plans approved ahead of time before you even start. These guys are arguing with each other over nothing, both too ignorant to know what they're talking about.
In reality, the city's inspection office is too understaffed so people DIY their repairs without approvals or inspections all the time. Normally it's fine. Most things aren't that difficult or dangerous and even if it is, it only matters when something goes wrong which might never happen. A lot of the random contractors you can hire don't have that much knowledge above what you can teach yourself. Most do have more experience than you, but knowledge and experience aren't the same thing. All the knowledge you need is out there online and at your local library. You gain your experience when you screw it up and have to re-do your own work.
With insurance, sure if you screw up you'll end up being denied coverage, but that's the same when you hire someone else to do the work too. If you don't get the inspections done (something every contracting company says in their contract that it's up to you to do), then there's no difference from you doing the work or them doing the work. The 3rd party inspection is what matters for the insurance, not who completed the work.
As with most things, it's all a time vs money trade off.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 20 2020, @09:15PM (1 child)
yeah, b/c paying some parasitic piece of shit to give you a piece of paper makes you qualified. what a fucking suck ass slave.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday January 20 2020, @09:56PM
I do remember distinctively I said you need the experience to know what problems you need to address for the result of your work to be reasonable safe, nothing about a paper.
BTW, that paper? Should be for others to trust you working on their stuff. Your problem is with your fucked-up education system, the rest of the civilized world works better in this regard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford