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Temperatures are set based on formulas that aimed to optimize employees' thermal comfort, a neutral condition of the body when it doesn't have to shiver to produce heat because it's too cold or sweat because it's too hot. It's based on four environmental factors: air temperature, radiant temperature, air velocity and humidity. And two personal factors: clothing and metabolic rate, the amount of energy required by the body to function.
The problem, according to a study in Nature Climate Change on Monday, is that metabolic rates can vary widely across humans based on a number of factors -- size, weight, age, fitness level and the type of work being done -- and today's standards are based on the assumption that every worker is, you guessed it, a man.
Or if you want to be really specific, a 40-year-old, 154-pound man.
...
Kingma and van Marken Lictenbelt's work builds on research out of Japan which found that the neutral temperature for Japanese women was 77.36 degrees (Fahrenheit) while it was 71.78 for European and North American males.
5.58 degrees is a significant difference. Is it better for half the people in the office to be sweaty than half the people in the office to be chilly?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by virens on Wednesday August 05 2015, @12:43PM
Please, please stop re-posting this garbage from ./ - they are going down the drain, Phoenix666, don't bring this SJW cancer here.
Science must be used for more important things than analyzing hipsters' "thermal comfort", developing ketchup bottles and thickness of pink condoms. And by "Science" I mean verifiable, provable research that actually increases our knowledge: math, physics, engineering, chemistry, biology and (to some extent [slashdot.org]) medicine. And no, gender studies, feminist theory, sociology, psychology and other garbage from social studies dumpster is not a science. Not by any means: if psychologists cannot reproduce more than 30% of their "landmark papers" [slashdot.org] and cannot distinguish normal people from nuts (as Rozenhan convincingly shown [wikipedia.org]) - it is trash, not science.
Can we have more submissions about, oh I don't know, astrophysics (dark energy, dark matter and Pluto), physics (especially particle physics), some cool math, or even Tesla and SpaceX? You know, news for nerds, stuff that actually matter?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @12:56PM
Is there a way to automatically give a lower score to all comments containing the phrase "Social Justice Warrior" or the abbreviation "SJW"? Because in my experience all of them are purely worthless rants.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by TheRaven on Wednesday August 05 2015, @01:31PM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @02:03PM
Probably virens had a mod point to spend.
(Score: 4, Informative) by K_benzoate on Wednesday August 05 2015, @04:04PM
Patriarchy is a fictional concept created by feminist academics based on flawed historical and sociological analysis and a misapplication of proto-Marxist philosophy. SJWs actually exist. They also ruin communities, so it's not unreasonable to be wary. Nothing about this is particularly hard to understand so don't be so smugly dismissive.
Climate change is real and primarily caused by human activity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @05:47PM
Not unlike furries then eh? Thus why they are banned so many places and the oh-so-popular "yiff in hell"
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday August 05 2015, @05:47PM
Patriarchy is a fictional concept created by feminist academics based on flawed historical and sociological analysis
patriarchy: [merriam-webster.com]
noun pa·tri·ar·chy \-ˌär-kē\
: a family, group, or government controlled by a man or a group of men
You realize that it was illegal for women to vote or hold public office in the US for about the first 100 years of its existence, right? It think the flawed historical analysis is yours.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @05:58PM
Nice equivocation there. You are not an idiot. I am certain you realize that the term patriarchy has a purely negative connotation towards men having power as used today and is no longer the neutral definition that you have posited. And please, show me a married man in the western world that is in total control of their own life, let alone the lives of their family. Women rule the world by proxy, always have.
Also, "there is no such thing as mysogyny because it is not in the dictionary". Yet there are indeed people in the world that are sexist towards men. Funny how dictionaries and reality don't match.
(Score: 4, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday August 05 2015, @06:39PM
Nice equivocation there. You are not an idiot. I am certain you realize that the term patriarchy has a purely negative connotation towards men having power as used today...
No equivocation. I addressed, directly, the accusation of "flawed historical analysis."
"there is no such thing as mysogyny because it is not in the dictionary" Yet there are indeed people in the world that are sexist towards men
Try spelling it correctly. [merriam-webster.com]
Or, perhaps try learning the actual term for it (also in the dictionary) [merriam-webster.com]
(Score: 2) by gidds on Thursday August 06 2015, @12:17PM
[gasp]
You can't spell it 'misogyny'! That starts with 'mis', which sounds like 'miss', which is a derogatory term for a female of a certain age and/or marital status — neither of which are any of your business!!!
[sig redacted]
(Score: 4, Informative) by K_benzoate on Wednesday August 05 2015, @06:08PM
No, it’s still you who is off base.
You don’t get to play this game in one direction only. Most men couldn’t vote either throughout the history of democracy, and universal female suffrage followed very closely behind universal male suffrage. Also, you don’t get to ignore that men have had to bear the majority of responsibilities and liabilities to their families and societies. And don’t forget the immense shame, guilt, and in the recent past even corporal punishment that is dealt to men who fail to live up to these duties. Teddy Roosevelt even longed to bring back the whipping post for men who mistreated their wives—the lash having the benefit over a monetary fine or stay in jail that it would not deprive the man’s family of his resources and labor which accepted practice considered them entitled to.
Feminism is the intersection of systemic, unapologetic, intellectual dishonesty and bitter misandry.
Climate change is real and primarily caused by human activity.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday August 05 2015, @09:38PM
The existence of other crappy forms of governance has no bearing on whether this particular crappy form of governance is "fictional" or not.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @07:04PM
You realize that men in the US and Brittan did not have the right to vote either? Men were dying in wars they were not allowed to vote in politics to perhaps prevent because they were not land owners. Shortly after universal suffrage for men came universal suffrage for women, within one generation in the US or and less than two decades in Brittan. People who legally fought Drafting for military service in the US were defeated by a Congress which ruled that Conscription was the duty required to those afforded the right to vote. Thus the largest push back against voting rights for women were women themselves who did not want to be conscripted and didn't really care about politics (the marriage was a union, and the family had one vote which she typically had a say in). As soon as more women wanted the right to vote than didn't the all male government granted women the right to vote without requiring the duty of conscription how "oppressive".
You history wast taught to you by ideological propagandists. The past sucked for both men and women. I can always smell a SJW by the sexist and ignorant shit they say.
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Wednesday August 05 2015, @11:50PM
We're going way off topic, but you raise a point that bugs me. In Amazon tribes, it's the duty of every able-bodied woman to defend the tribe from aggressors and to rebuild after environmental disasters.
More prosaically, Heinlein wrote in Starship Troopers (I confess I haven't read it yet and only know the deliciously campy movie version):
When you vote, you are exercising political authority, you're using force. And force, my friends, is violence. The supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived.
While I wasn't unaware that women were not held to the same standard outside of Amazon law (I wasn't born an Amazon), I was, however, shocked to the extent that this discrepancy didn't even enter into the minds of the feminists I was required to read in college. Perhaps more excusable (more surprising than shocking), is that while this discrepancy comes up for MRAs, the obvious solution, bringing gender equality to Selective Service, doesn't seem to have a lot of support in those circles, either.
(All though, I did learn an adequate explanation from my mentors back in Qinghai: many women are happy being weak, taking pride in being the mysterious, fair gender, exclusively connected to the Door of Guf. Eh, who am I to argue with them? As I've been researching submissions, I've found that there may be some upcoming tensions among Western women in what, exactly, feminism should be for.)
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @12:56AM
That's not what the SJW crowd use the word for. In gender studies, the patriarchy is a system of oppressive male dominated society where women are disadvantaged by nebulous things such as institutional structures and subconscious cognitive biases. They literally think that a meritocracy is oppressive to women because it "unfairly" favors men.
That's not uncommon for them, a lot of politically charged words like racism get "sociological definitions" and are used interchangeably along with the real words. I'm pretty sure it's intentionally confusing.
You realize that it was illegal for women to vote or hold public office in the US for about the first 100 years of its existence, right? It think the flawed historical analysis is yours.
SJWs think the patriarchy exists and is widely prevalent today. And no they aren't talking about the middle east or Africa, they mean western societies.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by darnkitten on Thursday August 20 2015, @04:17AM
-
Anecdote is not evidence time...
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I worked retail for a time, for a Store Manager who deliberately arranged the sales floor and store room so he could literally trap women--staff and customers, and hit on them. He had been transferred in from another division. Women stopped coming into the store during the hours he was there, and female staff quit. Complaints from male staff were ignored, because we "weren't [ourselves] directly harrassed." He lasted for a few years after I left, until he harassed a VP's secretary, who had enough pull to get him fired.
I also worked as a shop foreman under a new Technical Director. He was a great boss, patient, understanding, and a great teacher--to the men. if one of the men made a mistake, he would sit with him, show him what he did wrong and how to correct it, multiple times even. If a woman made even a slight mistake he would "jokingly" suggest that they were "too dumb to do the job," but wouldn't help them. He would find fault in their construction work or their draughtsmanship, even when it was of a higher quality than the men's work. If they complained to me or asked me for help, he publicly belittled them, because they were "crybabies, who couldn't handle the pressure." He hired men with NO experience or even without any RELATED experience in the field over women with years of direct experience. His contract would have been renewed, had I not made a point of finding out when his contract review was, so I could speak up. Management liked him--he was pleasant, and completed his projects on time and within budget. We ended up losing all the women who had worked for us in the time he was there--they just left the industry. A waste. None of the men came back, either--they were only there to get paychecks, and had no interest in the field.
-
-
Today, I run a small rural library.
Despite having TWO female paleontologists (one dinosaur) and a married pair of antarctic scientists as well as female doctors, a female firefighter and female ranchers, business owners AND military personnel in our town of about 700,
I still
(just today, in fact)
hear parents or other adults tell little girls
"oh, you don't want to read THAT, that's a BOY BOOK!"
...when all she wants is a book on spiders, sharks or dinosaurs.
(boys of that age already won't read "girl books," even with action and explosions, at least in front of other kids).
-
--This ends today's episode of "Anecdote is not evidence." Please feel free to imagine the cutesy theme music of your choice.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @06:48PM
You are not incorrect:
Invention of the Patriarchy. [youtube.com]
However, Feminism is an outgrowth of Marxist Theory [wikipedia.org], which is not only attacking the west through dishonest propaganda that causes gender divisionism, but also via media lies designed to cause racial tensions. [youtube.com]
SJW is the non "Politically Correct" term for lying and manipulative ideological extremists who co-opted the once legitimate Civil Rights movements to further a world wide propaganda war against capitalism in the west.
Feminism is not "women's rights". Feminism is a bogus ideology that does not further the rights of women. Women's Rights needs a divorce from Feminism, which is just traditionalism (more protection and provision for women) repackaged and sold to angst filled college youths as a way to "rebel" against "oppression" and "tear down gender roles" (while actually furthering them and increasing the size of the socialist police state); These useful idiots who buy into the easy to believe lies then spread the propaganda and cause erosion of social unity without even realizing what they're doing -- they think the rest of us are all just blind to how evil we all must be for not agreeing with them (even though many of us know far more about their bullshit teachings than they do).
E.g.: If you had no knowledge of the KKK and they were teaching a class about "Racial Studies" and promoting Racial Pride, and just wanted to inform you of the inherent evils of "blackness", the correct thing to do would be to research the KKK beyond just what is stated in their own propaganda. Notice that SJWs don't do any research about Feminism or Marxism outside these ideologies' own propaganda, and thus teach and attend classes about "Women's Studies / Gender Studies" and "African / Native American Studies" (etc.) while promoting "gender" pride, and just want to inform you of the inherent evils of "maleness" and "whiteness". It's fucking disgusting, and colleges are rife with this Orwellian authoritarian ideological indoctrination. [thefire.org] I feel sorry for the duped idiots who are unwittingly helping to destroying western cultures (who never mention the "diversity" disparity and lack of "representation" of blacks among Chinese or Russian businesses, BTW), but then again I have no tolerance for stupidity or identity politics. [wikipedia.org]
Feminism did not break down gender roles and allow the family to select which parent would raise the children and maintain the home. Instead it shamed women into the workplace by overvaluing the worker role and devaluing the parenting responsibilities. Once women entered the workplace the economy adjusted to two income homes, and so you now get the same amount of pay per home for twice the labor -- Capitalists love it too: Workforce labor at half the price! That's why elites like the Rockefeller fund feminist rags like Miss Magazine. With both parents slaving away in the workplace the State loves being able to take on more responsibility for raising / controlling the children [youtube.com] -- gee, how very Marxist, eh? The better to indoctrinate you with, my dear.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by K_benzoate on Wednesday August 05 2015, @07:13PM
The doubling of the labor force driving down wages is something that I've struggled with. I do agree with the idea that women should be allowed to choose to work if that's what they think is most fulfilling. I'm also committed to the idea that the most stable unit to raise children is one full-time worker and one full-time caregiver, at least until the child is old enough to start school. I'm not committed to any particular arrangement of the sexes within that framework. Two men, two women, one man, one woman, all seem equally effective. I would say however that children, boys especially, need a "traditionally" masculine role model. This does not necessarily have to come from one of the parents, or even a male for that matter.
Suffice to say I disagree with all sides on this debate to the point where I have almost no allies or cohorts. Liberals call me a conservative "family values" bigot, and conservatives detest my flexibility with regard to sexuality and gender roles. I like to think I look at what works and adopt it, regardless of where the idea came from. Our society seems to have done the opposite and mixed the worst aspects of every modality.
Climate change is real and primarily caused by human activity.
(Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Wednesday August 05 2015, @08:01PM
I'd like to say I agree with your position on the matter. (My only nitpick is that my hypothesis is that a child needs a role model who is the same mental gender, but we'll need to wait 20–30 years for any data to come out to test that hypothesis. Of course a role model doesn't necessarily need to be a parent, so my hypothesis wouldn't be an argument against homosexual marriage but perhaps a consideration for parents to take into account, if it's true at all.)
It's a very small part of the series, but the first episode of Madoka Magica [wikipedia.org] is just about the only instance I think I've ever seen of a “househusband.”
We opened up the workplace to women, but we neglected to open up the “kitchen,” as it were, to men.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @08:08PM
Is there a way to automatically give a lower score to all comments containing the phrase "Social Justice Warrior" or the abbreviation "SJW"? Because in my experience all of them are purely worthless rants.
I really wish SJWs were not real, but they are. There is much evidence of mandatory SJW indoctrination programs in some colleges. [youtube.com] This is a real problem, and it's major scary shit considering that anyone who disagrees is labeled an idealogical extremist, and this is the precursor [allenbwest.com] to Reeducation / Internment Camps. [youtube.com] (or "fun camps" as some presidential nominees call them) [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday August 05 2015, @01:03PM
What's wrong with this? I mean, studying the metabolic rate variation in the human race and all that?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @01:17PM
Maybe because the premise of it is about as bigoted as comparing thermostat preferences between 'blacks' and 'whites' or 'caucasoids' and 'mongoloids'. It's plain sexist. People can adjust to a lot of different temperatures. We should learn to do that rather than coddle centuries of idiotic conditioning.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @03:27PM
Except your whole analogy is false because, unlike "whites", "caucasoids", and "mongaloids", there actually are genetic and even chromosomal differences between men and women. That they might have different metabolic rates is not surprising.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by kurenai.tsubasa on Wednesday August 05 2015, @03:34PM
Not only that, the implication is that white men are using their hegemony/privilege/whatever to not only make everyone else uncomfortable and waste energy in the process, wrecking the environment, but that they're happy to pay extra on the power bill to accomplish all this! Somebody get Captain Planet on the horn and show those evil white cis male capitalist oppressors what-for!
What they've effectively done is update a study done another world away back when there was a need for the civil rights movement and feminism with more modern demographics. That's nice and all. However, I really don't understand the social justice angle. They're asserting that the thermostat where you work (presumably this means in a vast majority of office buildings) is set for men's comfort and it's unpossible that anything else might be the case. Yet, they present no data about how thermostats are set in the real world in 2015 to back up this assertion.
Secondly, this raises worries for me about their methodology:
The women, who were an average age of 23 and weight of 144 pounds, wore the equivalent of summer clothing -- underwear, socks, a cotton T-shirt and cotton/polyester sweatpants -- and simulated light office work by sending e-mail or reading a book while sitting at a table.
To take a cheap shot at the waistlines of many in the USA, most women I've met here in flyover country would say 144 lbs is anorexic! If the temperature gets up to 75°F, they'll all get out desk fans. Additionally, the subjects weren't even wearing office attire! What on earth am I supposed to do with these data?
So, in the absence of data and in the presence of questionable methodology, I see their anecdote about the poor, victimized woman freezing to death in her office and raise them 3 anecdotes. First, everywhere I've worked, the thermostat is set by consensus, usually 70°F or 72°F. The folks who pay the electric bill in summer are more than happy to throttle back the AC. Second, yes, sometimes in winter I'll admit I do find it a tad chilly inside, but there are these miraculous things called sweaters, thermal undershirts, long johns, warm cups of tea, etc. (That might even be an argument for women to stop, just stop, going into sales, management, marketing, and HR careers and instead come over here to tech! They'll let you wear a sweater!) Anecdote the 3rd: every winter at home I seem to get into a thermostat war with roommates from demographics who should prefer it cooler than my demographic. Instead, I'll turn it down to 70 or 72, then a few days later I'll break out a sweat doing light exercise to find it's been cranked to 78!
To speak more to your point, what this study does is find that the temperature at which somebody is comfortable depends on a variety of factors. Then, for some reason, TFA goes out into lala land and says that we should privilege demographics that prefer it warmer than other demographics because historically a demographic that prefers it cooler was the dominant demographic in the office. Uh, no? They seem to present no guidance on what a company with ideal diversity should set its thermostat to. So, we have a classic social justice bully piece that offers no solutions or guidance. All it does is heap yet more guilt and blame on a demographic that was, decades ago, dominant in office environments. It doesn't even consider that the average guy on the floor has no say in it and can't do one damned thing about it, which is another sign of social justice bullying. Where are the anecdotes from men who prefer warmer temperatures? Their voices are completely ignored because they're the expendable gender, don't have enough melatonin in their skin, and must be held responsible for decisions made by others who have a superficial physical similarity and ethnic background, to hell with economic class dynamics!
Individuality and reaching consensus like adults—we don't need that! Let's find yet another thing to beat up on those evil white cis male oppressors over!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @04:08PM
There are some things to consider. First of all it's possible to put a heater in a colder room but how exactly do you put an air conditioner in each warmer room? So having the temperature set a tad bit too cold and allowing people to bring their own heaters makes more sense than the other way around.
Secondly it would help the issue a whole lot if each room had its own individual climate control thermostat so that the air conditioning system can keep each room the the desired temperature. Granted people share rooms and so there maybe conflicts but at least this would be better than having one unified colder temperature and wasting more energy on everyone having their own individual heaters.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @05:36PM
Its called a "fan"....works great....and a lot cheaper to run than a heater.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @09:01PM
Fans do not cool a room down. Place a thermometer in a room get a reading, then point a fan at it and get another reading. It wont change.
Fans can help cool people by speeding up the evaporation of sweat. If someone is sweating they are stinking.
Get over your self and stop wearing revealing clothing if you are cold. Either that or in the sake of fairness, let men wear t-shirts and shorts.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday August 05 2015, @05:51PM
...the implication is that white men are using their hegemony/privilege/whatever to not only make everyone else uncomfortable and waste energy in the process, wrecking the environment,
I think it's pretty common knowledge that keeping the thermostat lowers actually saves energy. But hey, don't let basic thermodynamics get in the way of your persecution complex.
(Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Wednesday August 05 2015, @07:07PM
Yes, that's true in the winter. I should have been more clear. My apologies. I was mostly reacting to this:
Any female worker who spends time sitting at a desk can tell you that that makes for a wretched day, especially in the summer when air conditioners are on high, and they have to wear wool clothes and run space heaters even when it's 90 degrees outside.
I tried to imagine being one of these women who gets frostbite at 68°F. It must be a tough choice: either dress for winter and then get heatstroke after entering the car at end of the day, or dress for summer and get hypothermia after entering office!
I can only assume the freeze-to-death problem doesn't exist or isn't as severe in winter, since one would need to be insane to wear, say, a sundress while negotiating the two feet of snow that fell overnight and the −20°F wind chill.
As far a persecution complex goes, I'm mostly angry that they'd presume I'd be comfortable at 75°F–77°F without giving me a standard deviation or error bars or some other statistics I might be able to use to determine just how strange of a girl I am! (May also lead to follow-up studies about the effects of Amazon training.)
(Score: 2) by soylentsandor on Thursday August 06 2015, @10:03AM
You do realize this isn't American research, right? As such, your American ideas of average weight or what is and what isn't office attire don't apply.
This does mean however, that the conclusions even if valid don't necessarily apply to the American workplace.
(Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Thursday August 06 2015, @10:44PM
I am aware of that. Dutch, wasn't it? On the other hand, the Washington Post is a USA newspaper.
This does mean however, that the conclusions even if valid don't necessarily apply to the American workplace.
Go tell that to the gender lunatics when this becomes yet another bullet point for USA (3rd wave) feminists to pull out when they start up about how victimized women are and how guilty all assigned males (even those of us who are women!) should feel. Perhaps you can talk some sense into them.
(Goodness knows I've tried, but apparently the first 7 or so years of my life living as a boy somehow imparts unfathomable privilege, of which I have the privilege of being unaware, to me. Oh, and I've tried the deep stealth approach, too, but I just got accused of having a dick, which didn't make any damned sense to me or my Amazon sisters when I related that to them.)
(Score: 5, Touché) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday August 05 2015, @01:42PM
I didn't get it from Slashdot. I have only visited Slashdot twice in the last year, once because people on SN were talking about the users were slamming Dice for something I forget now. This article I got from the Washington Post via Trove, Rob Malda's (aka CmdrTaco) new venture.
First, I'm a humble user, like you, not an editor. I submit a lot because I care about the community and want to help the editors avoid burnout, because without them and our handful of intrepid developers the whole tent folds up. That said, I do try to submit mostly "pure" tech articles with something like this one in question thrown in now and then. But let's take a quick survey of how interesting the Soylent community finds those, based on the number of comments (I grabbed these from the last 3 days):
"Toshiba and SanDisk Announce 48-Layer 256 Gb 3D NAND"
1 comment
"NASA's Ceres Maps Show Color-Coded Features and New Official, Mythical Names"
3 comments
"Prostheses With Lego Adapters: Digging Instead of Gripping"
1 comment
"Physicists Announce Graphene's Latest Cousin: Stanene"
3 comments
"Pluto Findings Recap"
5 comments
How many did, "Sex With Robots to Be 'the Norm' in 50 Years, Expert Claims" get? 62 comments. That different level of response doesn't surprise me, based on the patterns I've observed over the last 6 months. But I was surprised the story about LEGO prostheses didn't get more discussion, because it's really cool and raises a lot of interesting questions about body image and human-ness as we incorporate more technology into our bodies. But, nope, apparently only one other user in the entire SN community found that as interesting as I did.
You can, however, put more science articles like you're looking for on the front page by submitting them. The Soylent system limits you to 12 submissions per day (or close enough), so I can only do so much.
It sounds like you're talking about the distinction between basic research and applied research. The trouble with limiting our article queue to basic research articles only is that it's very incremental most of the time, and because of the hyper specialization in all branches of the sciences it's rare that you'll find one biochemist, say, ready to post authoritatively on another biochemist's work because he/she has a different focus. As such, as much as we'd like to tell ourselves that's all Soylentils care to read and talk about, it's not very good grist for the mill.
I'd also say that applied research, the sort you're panning as frivolous, is more accessible to the non-specialist. "Thermal comfort" in an office? Well, most of us work in offices and might have something to say about where the thermostat's set. And if the level a thermostat is set at does have clear effects on energy consumption, which is well-known in fact, then adjusting the average temperature of the office thermostat could well have non-frivolous consequences. The point is in such "applied research" articles there is often a more serious purpose behind it than can be discerned by the attention-grabbing headlines journalists employ.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @01:50PM
"Toshiba and SanDisk Announce 48-Layer 256 Gb 3D NAND"
256GB, is that all they could get using 48 layers? Maybe they should hire better engineers, they should get at least 320 GB!
Some stories are tougher to troll than others.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Wednesday August 05 2015, @02:16PM
Hey, that is quite an interesting angle.
In case you don't see any line of comments approaching what you've seen interesting, may I kindly ask you to "seed" a comment on that line? Specifically to that article, all my lone neuron managed to fire was: "How's this different from allowing the kid to use nail-polish on her/his prosthetic?" - really, I can be stupid sometimes (perhaps most of it?), any kick in the back would be appreciated.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday August 05 2015, @02:34PM
OK, I will. I typically incorporate that into my quip after the quote, because articles that start out with low # of comments tend to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
A handful of people have taken umbrage at my quips, but I can see that consistently when I don't quip conversation is not generated. Assuming more conversation is better, that is.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday August 05 2015, @02:37PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday August 05 2015, @05:52PM
Keep the quip.
(Score: 2) by fleg on Thursday August 06 2015, @04:43AM
+1 for quipping.
(Score: 2) by darnkitten on Thursday August 20 2015, @02:09AM
I thought the LEGO story was cool and pointed it out to several patrons, but never got a chance to comment--on busy days, I might get to read the headlines on the front page before my first interruption, and I don't like to comment after the first day, as no one will see it.
The only reason I'm able to comment now is that there is a public County meeting being held at my one-room library, and I need to be here when they leave so I can set up for opening tomorrow morning. If they weren't here I'd have been cataloging books, and would not have seen it 'til tomorrow.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @03:05PM
Number of comments is a pretty terrible metric really.
I read all of those submissions you listed, just didn't really have anything to say about them. They don't feature opinions.
"Sex With Robots to Be 'the Norm' in 50 Years, Expert Claims" is entirely opinion based, so it's easy to comment on/disagree with/bitch about.
I honestly think it might be nice, besides "n comments", to also have a "n views".
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday August 05 2015, @03:14PM
Is it, though? Anyone who wants straight science news can use RSS or some similar service. Slashdot, and Soylent, have always been about the conversation. I know I have relied on it heavily over the years in forming opinions about tech issues that I don't have personal experience or expertise in. So, if there's not a lot of commentary on a given article, obviously there's not much chance to learn from people who know a lot more about a given issue than I do.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by fleg on Thursday August 06 2015, @04:46AM
>Is it, though?
yeah it is :)
i read them too. just didnt have anything to say, which is why its good to
throw in an article like this one every now and again, gives everyone a chance
to sound off.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @03:06PM
But let's take a quick survey of how interesting the Soylent community finds those, based on the number of comments (I grabbed these from the last 3 days)
One thing I'll note is that there is a correlation (and causation) between interest in an article and comments, but they are not 1-to-1. Imagine the three following (entirely invented) articles:
1) AMD announces new CPU to be shipped in Feburary 2016.
2) First commercially-viable fusion power plant created.
3) 10 predictions from futurists of life in 2030.
The first is interesting news, but probably not generate too many comments. People are interested it happened and it's good to know, but there isn't too much to say or discuss about it. (That was my reaction to the "Toshiba and SanDisk Announce 48-Layer 256 Gb 3D NAND" and the "NASA's Ceres Maps Show Color-Coded Features and New Official, Mythical Names" articles.)
The second is interesting news, and generate several comments due to the groundbreaking nature of it and how it "changes everything." (I think the successful trip to Pluto would fall in this category.)
The third is (in my opinion) not interesting news, but would generate several comments due to the controversial nature of it. It would be like saying "the US is the sole source of freedom in the world, and you can't prove anything else." It's challenging people to say "no, you're wrong." (This is like the "Sex With Robots to Be 'the Norm' in 50 Years, Expert Claims" article.)
Don't mistake lack of comments with non-interest. The fact click-bait is a thing (and even has a known term) should prove that. I would go so far as to say that this was one of the multiple things which contributed to the path Slashdot took and continues to take.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday August 05 2015, @03:24PM
Owned by Dice, Slashdot is interested in page views for advertising revenue purposes. SN has no such encumbrances. So accusations of click-bait here are empty. Nobody's trying to make a fast buck.
Once in a while, it's fun to have a rousing debate, as nerds, about stupid shit. Shit we all know is goofy and shallow. But as usual as nerds we think about such things on an entirely different level than your average WalMart drone.
But I come here to learn about spheres of knowledge about which I know little. For example, if it weren't for HairyFeet my knowledge of developments with MicroSoft, from an MS perspective, would be greatly reduced. (So I will do what I can to make sure he's not chased from this forum.)
But none of that comes through if there's little discussion. Here, discussion's the thing. Pageviews are only great if you're trying to sell advertising.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday August 05 2015, @09:48PM
But I come here to learn about spheres of knowledge about which I know little. For example, if it weren't for HairyFeet my knowledge of developments with MicroSoft, from an MS perspective, would be greatly reduced.
Just to let you know, it hasn't been increased very much, either. And how did you know that Hairyfeet is a sphere?
**All Hail the Warriors of the Social Justice League! May they prevail over the Anti-social Injustice Warriors!**
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday August 06 2015, @11:18PM
Hell, I occasionally learned something useful from Slashdot's most revered troll, commonly known as Twitter. So I'm with ya on not chasing off anyone if we can avoid it.
I thought this was interesting enough to spend a few minutes on, so what's the harm? If I don't like it, I don't have to open the link to start with. Do some people have a linear brain that can't skip the "boring" stuff??
And I just don't take this sort of story, or the comments, so seriously that it ruins my day. (Tho it did spend all my mod points...) File under trivial controversy, shake my head at some of the pointless arguments, and promptly forget the whole thing.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @03:28PM
But I was surprised the story about LEGO prostheses didn't get more discussion, because it's really cool and raises a lot of interesting questions about body image and human-ness as we incorporate more technology into our bodies. But, nope, apparently only one other user in the entire SN community found that as interesting as I did.
I found it interesting. But I didn't have much to comment on. As for body image and humanness - we use tools and after a while they can almost become an extension of our bodies. A pro tennis player hitting a ball no longer thinks "my arm needs to move this way so the thing I'm holding will hit the ball".
There are plenty of Soylentnews stories that are interesting that I shared with others (outside of Soylentnews) but didn't comment on.
Just because everyone and his dog can comment on a bikeshed story doesn't mean the bikeshed story is always better than some other story with only a few comments. Of course there were some other stories with few comments that I found uninteresting too. Soylentnews could have a vote up or down for a story if they want better metrics.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @04:32PM
Wait, Trove, that site whose content doesn't even display without JavaScript, is from the very same person who also created Slashdot?
Seems that not only Slashdot has gone downhill.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @12:48AM
So, this story has a lot more comments than even your sex with robots nonsense.
Does that mean the posting of this story is BETTER for the community?
Do you believe the content of the comments is irrelevant? More comments == better?
Even when the majority of the comments are either people saying the story is garbage or you defending your submission?
Well hey, "for the good of the community" you could create some sock puppets to submit all the click/flame-bait stories you like to "get the community talking" because more comments ALWAYS == better, right? Right?
(Score: 2) by fleg on Thursday August 06 2015, @04:39AM
>The Soylent system limits you to 12 submissions per day (or close enough), so I can only do so much.
can we get the limit for Phoenix666 removed? increased? he (or she!) submits good
stuff.
(Score: 1) by synaesthesin on Thursday August 06 2015, @04:35PM
Topics to do with sex will *always* generate more interest and comments. Try the same comparison on an average population, not the nerds here. You'd probably get zero comments on the tech topics instead of 3 or 5.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday August 05 2015, @01:58PM
So - submit the stories. Or, do you even have any newsfeeds from which you might contribute a story? SOME OF US actually read news, so we are capable of submitting a story here. If you aren't reading any news, then you can't submit a story.
Get with the program, man. Enlighten us!!
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday August 05 2015, @03:11PM
There are occasionally comments like this, which makes me think that what those guys are looking for is really something like RSS, or even like Trove or Flipbook, where others curate articles for you. Soylent and Slashdot before it have always been about the discussion.
Personally I really hope people with as wide a readership as Soylentils must have would submit stories. I would love to hear about things I haven't heard about, but should, especially things that fall outside my own online habit trail. I can and probably should submit more stuff from White African [whiteafrican.com], and milieux that SN are less likely to travel. I would love to hear about how techies in the middle of the Arab Spring are getting around Internet restrictions, but my Arabic is rudimentary at best.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @02:25PM
> Please, please stop re-posting this garbage from ./ - they are going down the drain, Phoenix666, don't bring this SJW cancer here.
Let's see:
(1) You have submitted no stories but are whining that you are unhappy with the submissions.
(2) You complain about "garbage from slashdot" and yet the first two links in your post are to slashdot articles.
The entitled hypocrisy is strong with this one.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tathra on Wednesday August 05 2015, @03:30PM
sure, just as soon as you start submitting them. we're waiting on you, bub.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday August 05 2015, @04:25PM
Please, please stop re-posting this garbage from ./ - they are going down the drain, Phoenix666, don't bring this SJW cancer here.
Disagree entirely. I find it mildly interesting, enough for an article at least. And I really appreciate that he didn't go the "sexist thermostat" clickbait troll route.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @03:34AM
Agree with you, but for a different reason. Stories like these bring out the assholes to comment.
"What a bunch of pricks," is probably not what we need folks to think when they read the comment section, if this site is to grow into a healthy discussion forum.