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He did not cause a serious hazmat situation. The authorities decided to evacuate a street, and are responsible for the seriousness of their over-reaction.

The packages were labelled correctly, and blocked at the border, and USPS delivered them anyway. He offered to send them back as soon as he was made aware they weren’t permitted.

The real failure here is at the border, where they were flagged and then let through, followed by the absurd over reaction of the authorities to a situation they’d enabled


USPS is United States Postal Service. They didn't deliver the package once it was received in Australia.

Or does Australia's postal service have the initials USPS too? Not being a pedant, just don't know. (Aside: UK entirely privatized their postal service which is sad given history and doesn't seem to be working out so well.)


Australia has Australia Post, as well as a number of private package delivery businesses but I don’t think any of them are called usps.

The article says “the quantities of material were so small they were safe to eat”

If that’s true, the overreaction and evacuation is higher risk than possession of the elements

You can’t blame Lidden for the overreaction of others


> The article says “the quantities of material were so small they were safe to eat”

The question is did the authorities know that the materials were harmless in advance, or only after they acquired them?


They knew, or should have known. They knew exactly what he had bought and in what quantity, and anyone who knew anything about radioactive material would have concluded it was safe, or if they had doubts, they would have sent maybe two people to go knock on his door and ask to look around.

This was someone or a small group inside the border force who didn't have a clue what they were doing, cocked up, tried to make a big showy scene of things, and then scrambled to save face after the actual experts clued them in that a) what he had was safe and b) was 100% legal to own. (note that he was prosecuted for something that the border force allowed through years before the sample they erroneously thought was a problem, and that was not illegal to own, only illegal under a very twisted interpretation of an obscure law to import).


Also, the question shouldn't be "Did they know it was harmless?" It should be "Did they know it was harmful?" You don't initiate a huge hazmat incident, close off homes and evacuate people just because "you're not sure it was harmless." You do that when you know it's harmful.

You have an overly optimistic opinion of the police.

They did know. It was well labelled and initially stopped at customs.

They asked the ordinary courier (without hazmat gear) to deliver it in person to help build a stronger case.

Details: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0JGsSxBd2I

The hazmat crew was literally manufactured drama for a prosecutor (who somehow continues not to be named in this ridiculous case) to build a better case.


Here you go:

Sally Dowling SC - Director of Public Prosecutions New South Whales

Frank Veltro SC - Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions New South Whales

Helen Roberts SC - Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions New South Whales

Ken McKay SC BAB - Senior Crown Prosecutor New South Whales

Craig Hyland - Solicitor for Public Prosecutions New South Whales

Anne Whitehead - Deputy Solicitor for Public Prosecutions (Legal) New South Whales

Esther Kwiet - Deputy Solicitor for Public Prosecutions (Legal Operations) - New South Whales

Natalie Weekes - Deputy Solicitor for Public Prosecutions (Operations) New South Whales

Deborah Hocking - Deputy Solicitor for Public Prosecutions (Operations) New South Whales

Joanna Croker - Deputy Solicitor for Public Prosecutions (Operations) New South Whales

https://www.odpp.nsw.gov.au/about-us/leadership-team

The current head of Fire and Rescue NSW is Jeremy Fewtrell.

https://www.fire.nsw.gov.au/page.php?id=135


They stopped it at the border, then let an ordinary courier deliver it. Either they knew it's harmless or they're intentionally criminally negligent.

Do you think we can avoid multiple-degree temperature increases with the amount of CO2 (and equivalents) in the atmosphere already?

If not, how do we mitigate those increases without CDR?


If not, how do we mitigate those increases without CDR?

Maybe we don't, and the magical CDR unicorn isn't going to come and save us. I don't mean to speak for parent, but CDR is the "least effective way", yet many are speaking as if it's the most viable solution. And maybe it is, because $DEITY forbid that a dollar of CO2-producing profit be left on the table, but if that's the case then we are most certainly doomed.


> Do you think we can avoid multiple-degree temperature increases with the amount of CO2 (and equivalents) in the atmosphere already?

If we ceased all economic activity today, then probably, but I assume you'd have to nuke most of the population or something equally catastrophic.

> If not, how do we mitigate those increases without CDR?

The half-assed approach (which I assume we'll take), is solar radiation management.


Based on the title, I was expecting this article to have instructions for calibrating an air quality sensor, rather than just explaining different error types.


This post is part of a series of posts. We already wrote a few posts about sensor calibrations, e.g. how to develop a correction algorithm for temperature [1] or how to use R for making a linear regression [2].

In one of the next topics we will dive more into PM correction and the sensitivity to relative humidity.

If you want to know more about the science of air quality monitoring, we are also running webinars that you can watch on our reserach page [3].

[1] https://www.airgradient.com/blog/slr-temperature-example/

[2] https://www.airgradient.com/blog/using-r-for-sensor-correcti...

[3] https://www.airgradient.com/research/


It doesn't mention anything about calibrating


I was looking for this too, "site:airgradient.com calibrate" brings a lot of results, so it seems like they support it, but I haven't dug in yet.



What you think the purpose of determining the error of an instrument is, if not to calibrate it?


Medical leeches are still very much a thing. They’re used to help improve venous circulation after plastic surgery around reattached body parts, help with burn recovery, etc


> Is there really a difference between a human flooding the market using AI and a human flooding the market using a printing press?

Yes. A printing press only floods the market with copies. An AI floods the market with new derivative works.

A human producing a single creative work and then flooding the market with copies leaves lots of room for other humans to produce their own novel work. An AI flooding the market with new derivative works leaves no such room.

I work with DNNs a lot professionally and remain a proponent of the technology, but what OpenAI et al are doing is highly exploitative and scummy. It’s also damaging their social licence and may end up setting the field back.


"AI flooding the market with new derivative works" sounds nice if you are the consumer.

Now that we can finally have lots of amazing things almost for free, should we create artificial scarcity to protect the existing business models?


It’s potentially nice for the consumer. If I could get personalised audio and video content created on demand for me, that would be pretty amazing. But it does disincentivise people from creating content rather than just consuming it, and I think that could end up taking away a lot of the magic from life.


Parents often let their children struggle and make imperfect decisions, and it's entirely possible (though definitely not guaranteed) that an AI superparent would do the same for us.

I think it's becoming clear that humans are fundamentally incapable of forseeing and understanding the consequences of the actions we are now capable of taking. It is likely that without some sort of super-governance that is fundamentally more capable than humans, we might not be able to survive as a species. Maybe AI can help solve that.


In the article they talk about using artificial electromagnetic fields as an alternative to sticking random antennas in the soil, which apparently works well too


Climate change absolutely won't be solved in twenty years if everybody stops having kids. What's your logic there?


In the same way that the pushback from the earth you're standing on is an infinite source of energy


It isn’t though. You can use gravity to apply the weight to the superconductor and the pushback would be against gravity.


You can also hang a weight on a spring. Neither helps you override the laws of thermodynamics.


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