I had always thought that the fundamental forces were largely the same regardless of whether time was reversed or not.

Not really. Even the electric force is not purely time symmetric - you have to flip the sign of the charge if you want to flip the direction between forwards vs backward in time.

Even worse, the weak force breaks another symmetry as well, parity symmetry (which basically means that moving backward in time, weak force particles "look" like their mirror image, instead of looking the same).

Theoretically this holds true, but in practice it never happens.

Why is a major question, but any understanding of our universe must assume this fact.

How do you test that behavior if you can't make time go backwards?

I think accessibility is one area where some of these components libraries can be helpful as they automatically include a11y features that might otherwise be ignored.

So many of these component libraries get a11y wrong, actually (or don't even try - mat-ui select comes with a big "don't use this" warning label)

You mean like the 1949 Nobel Prize for Medicine being awarded to the person who developed lobotomy surgery?

An imperfect record doesn't mean the whole process is a sham.

But with the Peace Prize, the failures are numerous, and it becomes harder to claim they are outliers.

It's not socialism, it's a kleptocracy. There's a pretty big difference.

Human behaviour can be a confounding thing. There was some debate a while ago [1] about whether bike helmet use may actually lead more head injuries due to factors like drivers passing closer to helmeted riders vs. unhelmeted ones or riders riding more recklessly, among a tonne of other factors. I still prefer to wear a helmet, but its an interesting example of how difficult it can be to engineer human behaviour.

Another good example of this is how civil engineers adding safety factors into design of roads - lane widths, straighter curves, and so on - leading drivers to speed more and decreasing road safety overall.

1. https://bigthink.com/articles/the-bike-helmet-paradox/

Did the US allow all the other nuclear countries to develop nuclear weapons? There are quite a few states that could easily and quickly develop their own nuclear deterrent and the US is in a much worse position now to deter them from that.

Tell that to Iran.

To me, it's when narrative has priority over accuracy. There are a number of popular edutainment figures who fit this mold, but Gladwell is probably the most prominent example.

Apparently it was acceptable to use s or z in words like catalyse or analyze in British English until Microsoft Word came out with a British English spellchecker that picked the s spelling as its standard. Whether this is just myth or fact seems to be a point of controversy.

Most academic and technical writing in the UK still uses the z form, and the OED and Collins dictionaries tend to prefer it, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_spelling

In popular writing, the s forms dominate - I've not heard the MS Word explanation before, but the most popular UK-produced word processors and spellcheckers in the 1980s (eg. Locoscript/Locospell, Protext/Prospell, 1st Word) tended to come from companies in the Cambridge area or which were founded by Cambridge grads, so would naturally have used the s spellings by default.

> Most academic and technical writing in the UK still uses the z form

'z' forms are generally used for writing for an international audience, it hasn't really caught on more generally than that.

I'm British, but when submitting papers for blind review, always use American spelling for obvious reasons. I suppose I could change it after acceptance, but that would just be pretentious.

I learned British English starting in the 80s and using s whereas z was used in American English, together with tre instead of ter (eg. theatre), was a big difference. And I can tell you that MS Word back then was just not there so this sounds like an urban legend but let the British people in HN chime in.

Both -ise and -ize are UK spelling. One is favoured by Oxford and the other by Cambridge.

No, see (even the new) Fowler's Modern English Usage. British usage is -yse, but right-and-proper Oxford spelling uses -ize, not -ise, for words with a Greek root.

It's not just that they are adding AI to every single product, it's being pushed on customers in incredibly intrusive and irritating ways that makes it seem as though they're desperate for their AI investments to pan out. If your AI productivity enhancement stuff is so amazing, shouldn't you be turning away customers at the door due to demand instead of brow beating me into finally signing up for it in submission?

This is what gets me with the AI promotion. If it's so good at increasing productivity, then where's all the result? Currently, we still have shitty software, updates that break things (Windows password icon?) and zero day threats.

How about tech companies focus on the actual problems first rather than desperately grabbing attention for a product that doesn't seem to deliver anything useful and instead hallucinates and regurgitates falsehoods. It's the opposite of a benefit and we're burning up the planet to make ourselves worse off.

The master bath in my parents' old place had a massive bathroom and gigantic shower that seems to be all the rage now in more "luxurious" bathroom designs - often with a bathtub in the shower as well. I had to use their shower once while I was there, and it was terrible - it was cold and drafty in the shower, even with the shower on its highest setting. Luxury shouldn't be uncomfortable.