Chocolate production is infested with slave labor, child labor and child slave labor.
Glad i basically dont eat the stuff ever.
I used to think that at least the parts that are Fairtrade wouldn’t be affected as much.
So is banana production. And here I am with a bowl of banana-topped chocolate ice cream. Dammit.
Chunky Monkey by any means necessary
So what are you gonna do to stop it? 🍫🍌
I alone cannot stop it if that’s what you mean. In fact, often the reverse course of action seems the best. But I try to think forwardly and would stand up for what’s right even when I’m alone in doing so.
Not trying to be offensive, but could you provide examples of your second point? 😉☝🏻
The part about me standing up for what’s right?
Hehehe. That’s just plain mean.
If I’m not mistaken Nestlé, the firm that makes various brands of chocolate, are known or at least have been known to include slavery in really poor parts of the world.
When I look at a bottle or a cuddly packaged bit of chocolate, I shudder to think the shit conditions that a person, a child even was forced or on crap pay to produce that from the cocoa farming…
Ne*tle also does this thing where they lie to mothers in ‘third-world countries’ (I hate that term but can’t think of a better one rn) by telling them that their baby formula is better than actual milk, then give them some, which the mothers mix with dirty water, and when they can’t afford the formula, they’ll just give the babies plain dirty water.
An important part of that process that needs mentioning is that when the mothers are convinced by Nestle to feed their babies formula instead of their breast milk, their bodies will stop producing the milk before the baby is weaned from it.
So Nestle literally endangers babies’ lives just to sell more baby formula.
That’s an important addition!
Former process engineer in an aluminum factory. Aluminum foil is only shiny on one side and duller on the other for process reasons, not for any “turn this part towards baking, etc” reasons.
It’s just easier to double it on itself and machine it to double thickness than it is to hit single thickness precision, especially given how much more tensile strength it gives it.
Also, our QA lab did all kinds of tests on it to settle arguments. The amount of heat reflected/absorbed between the two sides is trivially small. But if you like one side better you should wrap it that way, for sure!
The amount of heat reflected/absorbed between the two sides is trivially small.
Your particular choice of wording here makes me very curious: Do you mean that there really was a measurable difference (which was trivially small)?
Yup, the lab could tell a difference! Shiney side (so mill roller facing, as opposed to the dull side which faces the other layer of aluminum) was marginally more reflective, but I believe (and a former coworker also remembered it as) it was less than a tenth of a percent (<0.1% for the visual folks)
Anyone who says it affects cooking time or something is mistaken, I’d wager.
Post your spectral emissivity study or GTFO!
Jokes on you.
I baked my casserole with the shiny side up and pulled it out at 59 minutes and 55 seconds, when it was supposed to go for an hour.
So take that Dull Side!
Welcome to the Dull Side.
Such men are dangerous!
Any info on surface roughness? I’m thinking shiny side would be smoother and therefore less sticky, though I don’t know how much the passivation layer would affect it. Probably no where close to making a difference at the end of the day, but I’m curious.
It was a fair few years ago, but yeah, the oxidation on it will be so much smoother than the delta in surface roughness that I doubt it’d make much difference. Lemme reach out to a metallurgist from there and see what he thinks!
Today I learned numbers are visuals but words are not. Wtf dude!
Now that’s the kind of industry secrets I opened this thread for.
Yup, the lab could tell a difference!
Awesome!
I mean, maybe if you bake a stone cold potato that was in the fridge and then cook it for two hours? But even then we’re probably talking about a handful of minutes at the most.
Okay, my buddy is gonna take foil tomorrow and run it over the profilometer (?) tomorrow and see. I’ll report back with more numbers and less hand waving when I have it
I’ll be here to read those numbers
I’m an engineer in a totally different industry but I want to know what the numbers are
If the Internet has taught me anything, they’re 42 and 69.
Matte side isn’t non stick?
Correct. Just a manufacturing decision. It looks a lot more different than it actually is.
Reynolds wrap literally has this as a faq on their website because so many people think it.
This is all I found on their site about it, which aligns but isn’t as much detail as I hoped
With standard and heavy duty foil, it’s perfectly fine to place your food on either side so you can decide if you prefer to have the shiny or dull side facing out.
Update: sorry to be an OP who didn’t deliver. My buddy never made the measurement. I’m hoping he will. Sorry everyone!
If you value your privacy and you have a choice between using a browser to access a service vs installing their app, use the browser.
Online services can get much more information about you through an app vs the browser. Browsers are generally locked down more. Apps in general have access to much more information from your device.
Department lead.
The website team is small, but incredibly effective. Everything works. Everything is mobile friendly, responsive, fast. It’s a way better experience.
I love my app developers, but they’re always behind. Not their own fault. Mobile development is complicated. There’s so many screen sizes, iOS vs Android differences, platform permissions, etc.
The big reason for us to push the App on people was to get more brand awareness on the App Store. But the website is so much more better.
You literally can use it as a web app right into your phone and get a better experience.
And it’ll be such a dark day when I have to dissolve the App team (and hopefully convince them into web dev)
Why not a responsive web app packaged into native viewer app? Depending on your utilization of native components of cause.
My team had the same issues you described so we build the web responsive and made that the “Apps” on the App Store + Google Play. There is still a tiny native components that hook into the web so you still need those native developers knowhow, but yes they will have to switch in large to web based development.
Less maintenance, more devs for the main product, faster progress, fewer headaches with Apple and Google tooling.
Edit: forgot to app that our customers loved that more features are available now on the “Apps” and that things work the same between devices
But where is has the compromise happened? The Kotlin/Flutter/swift code written? The database? not being sarcastic just unaware.
Its all useless if the very operating system ur using is collecting info about you. Stop using windows
Stop using windows
lol I’m sure OP meant mobile apps.
I hate windows, but c’mon. Stick to the main point.
It’s like saying “I prefer oranges over strawberries” and then in comes someone and says “Trump prefers mangoes. Fuck Trump!!!”
This is the main reason why I quit Facebook and other services. Anytime you access them from mobile via a web browser it corners you into a “download our app” page. Facebook started doing it with messenger and I knew I had to get out.
I’m not giving Zuckerberg that level of access to my data.
Most software is a terrible pile of unreadable code with no tests and horrible architecture choices, that somehow manages to keep working just through the power of years of customers finding bugs and complaining loud enough to get them fixed.
If you write any automated tests at all, you’re already better than most “professional” software companies. If you have a CI/CD pipeline, you’re far ahead.
Systemd was built by a guy who wanted to work at Microsoft with the help of someone berated more than once for an inability to work with others and generate decent kernel code. These are your gods
I didn’t know that, but I’m not exactly shocked to hear it.
No wonder systemd is basically implementing all the kernel functionality.
A whole bunch of welds in nuclear reactors are visually inspected using cameras duct taped onto the end of incredibly long poles which also get duct taped together. This would be the inside of BWR plants near the fuel and jet pumps. There is also an “art” to moving the cameras and poles around to get the shots you need. And if you get stuck the talented people know how to get you unstuck. There are also cameras just duct taped to ropes that the camera handler “swims” to certain spots.
Don’t get me wrong, we have cool ultrasonic inspecting robots as well, but I was absolutely blown away by what visual inspection looked like in practice.
PS: The high dose fields make the camera look like it is being blasted with colorful confetti because of the high energy particles bombarding the camera module.
Truely facinating! :)
How do you get the stick or rope into the high dose areas? Or do you use the robots for that?
It just sort of sinks down. You have two ways of manipulation, the cable the camera uses for power and data and the attached rope. Between those two you sort of puppeteer/swim it into place. It actually works out pretty good and some people are real pro at it.
Every high-tech workplace tapes shit together sometimes, and has systems and practices that are just kind of “good enough”.
Is it not an issue that duct tape can be pretty flammable?
Reactor is full of water so it’s not an issue
Fractional-reserve banking. Most people have no idea what it is, probably a good thing. You could argue that it’s not a “secret”, but most people aren’t aware of it regardless. I don’t think most people would be fond of grinding for $15 an hour if they knew banks could just lend money they don’t actually have. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking
I’m always surprised how few people know about this. The banks are literally gaining interest on money they never had. It should be illegal.
Wait till you hear about how your bank account gains interest, hooo boy
I’m horrified to ask, but what do you mean?
Probably something about how your bank account only earns interest because banks can lend out a fraction of that to make money. Otherwise they would just be like a vault service who you have to pay to keep your money safe (basically negative interest).
It’s a little more complicated than that. Without fractional reserve banking, the economy would be more difficult to control. I would recommend a quick macroecon video or something.
I myself took quite a while to really understand why this was legal even during my macroecon credit. It actually makes sense when you think about it.
I’ve been thinking about it and it still doesn’t make sense. I’m a scientist, not an economist, so it’s wildly out of my wheelhouse. Would you mind pointing me in the right direction?
Here’s where I’m hung up. Let’s assume a 10% fractional reserve and, for the sake of simplicity, just one bank and a dramatically simplified deposit/loan scenario, just to minimize the number of hypothetical people and transactions.
Person A deposits $1000. Bank lends $900 to person A which is sent to Person B.
Person B deposits $900. Bank lends $810 to person B which is sent to Person C.
Person C deposits $810. Bank lends $729 to person C which is sent to Person D.
Person D deposits $729. Bank lends $656 to person D which is sent to Person E.
Let’s stop there. So we have one initial deposit of $1000, which has resulted in an additional $2,493 in deposits ($3,493 in total) and $3,095 in loans. The bank is now receiving payments, plus interest, on over 3x the amount of actual money it was actually given. To me, it seems like the bank is figuratively “printing money” and gaining interest on it. Nothing I’ve read on fractional reserve lending has suggested this is incorrect.
Halp!
I’m a scientist, not an economist
I’m neither lmao. We just had a macroecon credit in my degree program, which is where I learnt about this.
Halp!
Now onto this… You’re kinda right but kinda wrong in that fractional reserve banking “creates money”. Here’s a way to think about putting your money in a bank. By opening a bank account, you are not putting your money in a vault. You are loaning it to the bank. The bank then loans it out to another person, who then “loans” it to another bank. Hence, fractional reserve banking is a natural side effect of this logic. What would happen if we had a 100% fractional reserve? Well, the bank wouldn’t be able to loan your money to anyone then. It would essentially become a vault.
Therefore, fractional reserve banking is necessary to make loaning money possible. Loaning money is necessary for obvious reasons.
Now to the “creating money” part. Sure, at the macro scale, you get a lot of virtual money in the economy. At the micro level though, individual banks aren’t creating money. They still have to get the money that they’ve lent out back. If they fail to do so, they’re going to go bankrupt. Banks would never go bankrupt if they could print money on a micro scale, right?
Okay, so now let’s zoom out back at the macro scale. Now, you can accelerate or decelerate the economy by controlling the ratio of money that is in circulation vs money that is out of circulation. It’s simple- more money in economy = more demand = more profits = more investments in increasing supply to be competitive = more work done. If this demand however drops, profits drop, and increase in supply drops. This is very bad as no work will be done. However, if demand increases too much for essential goods (like food, housing, etc.), it is bad as it can cause problems for people till the supply can catch up. The economy is going too fast in such cases.
Now, you can slow the economy down by many ways- by increasing interest rates, increases the fractional reserve and so on. This way, less people are going to borrow (you just reduced demand by this simple technique). You now reduced demand in your economy and slowed it down. The opposite can be done to speed the economy up.
Holy shit. I get it! That’s a great explanation and I really appreciate your taking the time to type it all out. I’m glad we don’t have Lemmy medallions to award but, if we did, I’d give you one. I now see how a 100% reserve requirement, i.e., all deposits completely backed in cash, would entirely change banking.
The only thing that feels weird to me is the virtual money the bank creates doesn’t seem go away once it’s paid back. For example, if a mini bank only had $1000 and lent $900 with a 10% reserve, they’d end up with $1900 once the loan is repaid (ignoring interest). Or does the $900 they lent create a -$900 for the bank that is cancelled through repayment?
Or does the $900 they lent create a -$900 for the bank that is cancelled through repayment?
Correct (effectively). Remember how you are “loaning” money to the bank by depositing money in ur bank account? Think about it - if someone loaned you money, and you spent it somewhere, would you have 0 money or would you have negative money (in terms of cash)?
Interestingly, this is why Nordic countries technically have one of the highest wealth inequalities in the world. It’s because they easily get home loans as the government acts as their guarantors. Here’s a vid to explain this.
Holy shit. I get it! That’s a great explanation and I really appreciate your taking the time to type it all out. I’m glad we don’t have Lemmy medallions to award but, if we did, I’d give you one.
Awwww thankssss
While the loan is outstanding the bank would only have $100 ($1000 - $900 loaned out), so when it is repaid they go back to $1000.
Well, they have it in the sense that somebody deposited it with them, and they have some fraction of it held
in reserveto cover withdrawals.Edit: Well, in the form of capital, so that’s actually the wrong terminology.
Yes, they still have it. It’s just not in cash.
Fractional reserve banking works because most people don’t need all their money as soon as they get paid. Most businesses keep some money in the bank too. Banks have a required percent of deposits that they must keep on hand to allow these withdrawals. And if they run low on cash, they just borrow money for a day from other banks (literally just one day). The US government can adjust the percent of required reserves or the overnight lending rate to keep banks from lending too much money out.
Banks use this money to loan to businesses or people buying houses. It works well because whenever the money is loaned out it is used for a purchase and just redeposited in another bank. A percentage of that money is retained by the bank and the rest is loaned out again. And again and again. This way money is “created” when people buy things in the economy.
This seems like an already failed banking model which places lenders at the front of the pack and will lead to only larger asset bubbles. Japan’s Kiretsu system of banking led to banks taking out loans to cover up their own investment losses as they had put their money into an asset bubble which collapsed. Banks then committed wholesale fraud by disguising such losses on their books. The Japanese government then used quantitative easing. They create money ex nihilo, swap the money for a t bill, then they bought the toxic assets by giving t bills to the bank. The bank doesn’t sell the t bill, they merely collect interest on it.
The main effect is a system in which bubbles are never popped and consumers suffer a declining standard of living in order to keep asset prices high.
I mean, there’s all kinds of math that goes into making modern fractional reserve banking a self-correcting system with a reasonable theoretical basis, but I’m guessing you’ve made up your mind already.
Sorry I appreciate your comment. So I read (erroneously?) that central bankers had done away with the reserve ratio in the fractional reserve banking article. And that just seems like a reckless thing to do given how prone to bubbles our economy is.
One of the main points in “this time is different” is that despite the math, we are experiencing greater and greater asset bubbles and at no point in world history were things actually different.
In a lot of jurisdictions there’s no minimum reserve requirement anymore, in cash. It’s not really a problem, because at the big bank level money on paper is barely real. If they need more, they can almost just ask. They do have to have a certain minimum amount of capital, though, which can take a number of forms.
I mixed up my exact terms a bit earlier, sorry about that. I’m not a professional macroeconomist, I only know enough to know they’re not completely full of shit.
we are experiencing greater and greater asset bubbles and at no point in world history were things actually different.
I’m not sure what you mean by this. If things aren’t any different from before, how can we have bigger and bigger asset bubbles? I don’t know that we do, really. The niche for bear investors is very full, if something’s overvalued by the whole market you and me won’t know either.
It’s not a “failed model”. Japan has issues because banks committed fraud and disguised non-performing loans. There are strict rules in the US about when assets must be “marked to market”. Plus the US has a growing population because we let in immigrants, which supports a growing economy. We are not close to having problems like Japan.
There are also many levers the Federal Reserve can pull to keep banks in check. As I said, they can raise and lower the reserve requirement and raise and lower the overnight lending rate. This can prevent banks from going nuts with lending, but obviously can’t prevent all asset bubbles. Sometimes people are just irrational.
Frankly you seem to be using a bunch of big words and implying that they make a point. Using “ex nihilo” instead of “from nowhere” clinched it for me. Also, you spelled “keiretsu” wrong.
Thanks for the reply. I hope you don’t let my spelling or use of ex nihilo (this is the exact language used by the fed and economists, I didn’t just make it up) turn you off, because at a policy level they are pursuing policies that keep real estate prices high.
You think that high interest rates keep real estate prices high? That’s the opposite of what happens with high interest rates. People can’t afford to pay as much when interest rates are high (like they are now).
I’m judging solely based on your comments. You are using big words incorrectly. You clearly don’t understand what you’re talking about if you think high interest rates keep real estate prices high. Also, your description of Japan’s economic problems are disjointed and confused, not correct.
Fractional-reserve banking
That has already become outdated, at least according to some economists.
Banks can just create loans out of thin air without having to check their own reserves first.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_creation#Credit_theory_of_moneySo if I understand correctly, the reason it’s outdated is not because we don’t need those pesky banking regulations any more, but that it has been found that banks will just take out their own loans to cover the reserves they need from the central bank, so they can just lend as much as they want, no seatbelts. And the central bank will never run out of loans to give, since they have insane reserves, in their own currency it is technically unlimited.
So money is not really the thing we think it is. If banks overextend themselves and fuck up, the only thing we’ll see instead of failing banks is runaway inflation in the consumer and asset (housing) markets. Wonder where I’ve seen that.
I don’t think you understand how fractional reserve banking works. The first paragraph of that Wikipedia page already clearly contradicts you. The banks can still only lend money they have (otherwise how would they lend it? Where would it come from? Only the central bank can print currency). What fractional reserve banking is saying is that banks can invest some portion of the customer deposits that they hold into non-liquid assets, often in the form of loans to other customers, but it could also be invested in other things eg government bonds. The interest banks earn by doing that helps pay for the interest they pay to customers on their saving. They also have to carefully manage their liquidity: maximising returns while still holding enough liquid assets to cover any potential spikes in withdrawals.
Even when investing customer funds, banks still have to meet captial requirements set by the regulators which basically say that their risk-adjusted assets have to cover the liabilities of customer deposits, so that for example they can’t just invest all the deposits in Bitcoin as that would pose too high a risk of insolvency. The reason SVB went insolvent recently was that they successfully lobbied the Trump administration to relax capital requirements for banks of their size, then made risky investments that lost money and they suddenly had less money than they owed their customers.
I didn’t know what it was called, but I think it’s common knowledge at this point that banks don’t actually have all our money. Pretty sure we (Americans at least) found that out during the great depression when everyone was trying to withdraw their money at the same time.
And to be fair, there’s stuff in place to stop bank runs now. If a bank goes under, the government takes over until it can find a buyer, so your money stays safe.
Not true any more. Banks don’t have to hold cash.
The IRS has what is called a first time abatement of penalties. So if this is the first time in a 3 year span you owe you can have the penalties (not interest) waived.
With no other realized penalty for the individual? Nothing indirect?
It’s the failure to file and failure to pay penalties. The tools we have do a 3 year lookback from the tax year in question for these two penalties and if they don’t exist in those three years we can abate any and all of those penalties that would accrue for that tax year.
I mean as long as it’s been less than two years you can get back any payment of penalties to the IRS.
The worst they could happen is nothing
We knew spooks were all up in the phone network. They’d show up and ask installers to run them some cables and configure ports in a certain way. I was friends with folks who were friends with the installers.
Spooks?
CIA/FBI/NSA agents
Spies
The company that provides your banks phone system has full access to pretty much every piece of information your bank holds on you, including call recordings, phone numbers, addresses, debts, credits, and your phone password. We can trick our own systems into thinking it’s you on the phone.
Avoid calling your bank at all costs, and if they call you say “no thank you I’ll do that online or in branch”, as soon as you pass security the phone system is accessing all your data. If possible go into branch or do everything on a banking app which has far better security.
Now tell banks to stop requiring SMS 2FA holy shit
You actually want them to do this, it’s terrifying easy to set up a cell tower or call centre and convince banks and people you are customers or banks.
I think he was meaning because of how easy it is to spoof and intercept sms. Use some thing like OTP that’s a common standard instead.
Ah I see, yes app/web OTP is one of the best methods, unless people are calling to report the app/website not working (a workflow I’ve seen many times) The industry has put hundreds of millions into voice recognition but the sample size required for AI to trick voicerec is really low now.
You probably mean TOTP. OTP is a generic term for any one-time-password which includes SMS-based 2FA. The other main standard is HOTP which will use a counter or challenge instead of the time as the input but this is rarely used.
Not the password to unlock your phone, but the credentials your bank may require to verify your identity over the phone. A security question/answer, a passphrase or a sequence keyed during the call.
This is correct, i should have said “telephone banking password/passcode” but also the security questions are at best hash encrypted (so basically plain text). I had thousands of hours of call recording and millions of customer details on my work laptop all unencrypted. The security for enterprise telephony companies is seriously lax, I wouldn’t be surprised if a few unexplained leaks originated from these companies.
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The ice in your drink at the bar is very very dirty.
I used to work at a nice bar. It was just a side gig for “fun”. I was always very careful with the ice and ice machine, because i find ice gross in general. I still found it very odd how many people just demand “questionable” ice. I’m glad if i don’t get ice, please don’t ice adds nothing but grossness to any drink.
Not to be judge mental here, but why do you find ice “gross”? I get it if you’ve seen what the machines look like, but ice in general?
All ice machines require monthly if not biweekly cleaning otherwise funky stuff starts growing in the water lines and the ice trays, and other hard to reach areas.
As a former commercial HVAC guy, consider yourself lucky if a place cleans it out once a year.
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That’s true for soda and beer lines, too…
I’ve never cleaned my fridge ice maker in 8 years, how much life expectancy do I have?
I don’t know but I’ll bet your ice smells a bit off.
I second this question. How am I even supposed to clean it?
Longer than before, since you’ve been exposed to so many more germs!
invincible
Not if your bartender is properly trained and not a lazy piece of shit.
I can’t imagine this to not be the case. Every bartender I know is tweaked out of their mind. Even the ones who see bartending as an art.
I’m not knocking their skill set. But they’ll be a rare breed if they think about bartending AND food safety at a high level enough to think about the cleanliness of ice.
I would never do cocain from a dirty bartop.
That’s what your coke nail is for.
What the fuck, only filthy musician’s and djs grow those. I recommend those vials with the little spoons found in most reputable headshops (but don’t share the spoon)
I am a very well trained piece of shit.
But I am not allowed to clean the upper part of the icemachine ( where all the slime happens) because of liabillity. I do my best to keep it clean but not all of it is possible so while its one of the cleanest icemachines I have ever seen its still dirty.
And I work in a very upscale cocktailbar in a very well regulated country.
Which
car companybar did you say you work for?A major one.
Creamed spinach goes good with fish.
Why downvotes?
Because it’s statistically likely that any given person will hate one or both of those foods. I know I do!
What the hell?
Soylent Green is people.
