General > General Technical Chat
EU votes to mandate removable batteries in smartphones
james_s:
--- Quote from: eugene on June 20, 2023, 08:11:48 pm ---But, most laws like this apply only to new construction. When there was talk about outlawing gas stoves it raised hysteria in some of the population that the government was going to come and take their gas stove away. In reality, the proposal would have applied only to new home construction. Under the proposal, people that already had a gas stove would be able to continue using it, and could even replace it with another gas stove when the time came. Some people are stupid. I know that to be the case in America and assume it to be true everywhere else.
--- End quote ---
Whether it applies only to new construction or impacts existing homes makes little difference to me. I love my gas stove and will accept no substitutes, and if I ever choose to buy a different house it had better have a gas hookup. I can completely see why people were upset about this law, whether the government comes and takes their gas stove, or makes it so when they decide to build their custom dream house somewhere down the road and are not allowed to have a gas hookup makes little difference, the outcome is the same. Also outlawing gas stoves in new construction has the effect of greatly reducing demand and turning them into a specialized (very expensive) item for replacement uses. Not to mention the whole thing is completely stupid, natural gas burns very clean, it's plentiful and relatively cheap, and if you want heat, it makes so much more sense to burn the fuel right there in your home than to generate electricity and use resistance elements. You can't cook on a heat pump.
james_s:
--- Quote from: John B on June 20, 2023, 10:26:50 pm ---I see the California-cancer warning label on lots of products that are exported from the US.
I keep thinking to myself "Wow, California is a dangerous place for getting cancer. Who would ever want to go there??"
--- End quote ---
That's due to Prop 65, which was a law created on good intentions but extremely poorly implemented. As the law is written, there is no threshold under which something is declared safe, so even the most minuscule quantity of some substance gets it flagged as being there. The list of substances is absolutely huge and covers a wide range of stuff, much of which is not really even known to be harmful. On top of that, you can be penalized for not applying the label to a product that contains some substance on the list but there is no penalty for applying the label to products that do not, so generally the safest approach is just slap the warning on absolutely everything just in case. A warning that is on everything tells you nothing, it is completely useless.
james_s:
--- Quote from: Monkeh on June 20, 2023, 10:21:02 pm ---Er, well, there's the whole 'yield' concept, which is what you all do anyway because coming to a complete stop over and over again for nothing when you have enough visibility to see the curvature of the earth is totally pointless.
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We have yield signs too where it is not readily obvious who has the right of way. But stop signs are most often used where a lightly trafficked street intersects a much more heavily trafficked street, you don't want to make everyone on the busy street have to slow down and yield at every intersection, so they're allowed to just blast through and anyone wishing to enter traffic must stop at the stop sign and wait until it is safe to proceed. Usually there is not sufficient visibility, that's the issue. At least where I am is very hilly and heavily forested, the roads twist and turn due to geography, there is absolutely nowhere anywhere close to me that you can see the curvature of the earth except for the coast where you can look out over the Pacific Ocean. Failure to come to a complete stop at a stop sign is an offense, you'll get pulled over and issued a fine if a police officer sees you do it. People get killed by someone running stop signs, I know a guy who lost a leg because somebody ran a stop sign and t-boned him on his motorcycle.
SiliconWizard:
--- Quote from: james_s on June 21, 2023, 12:51:46 am ---
--- Quote from: John B on June 20, 2023, 10:26:50 pm ---I see the California-cancer warning label on lots of products that are exported from the US.
I keep thinking to myself "Wow, California is a dangerous place for getting cancer. Who would ever want to go there??"
--- End quote ---
That's due to Prop 65, which was a law created on good intentions but extremely poorly implemented. As the law is written, there is no threshold under which something is declared safe, so even the most minuscule quantity of some substance gets it flagged as being there. The list of substances is absolutely huge and covers a wide range of stuff, much of which is not really even known to be harmful. On top of that, you can be penalized for not applying the label to a product that contains some substance on the list but there is no penalty for applying the label to products that do not, so generally the safest approach is just slap the warning on absolutely everything just in case. A warning that is on everything tells you nothing, it is completely useless.
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Informing people is a good thing - although here it seems extreme and thus, pretty useless - but OTOH, by constantly exposing people to the idea of almost anything potentially causing cancer, I would think that it could cause constant, if low-level stress to people and possibly even end up actually triggering cancer for some.
If you leave in constant awareness, and fear of some deadly disease, that's not all that great for your health.
Just saying.
james_s:
--- Quote from: SiliconWizard on June 21, 2023, 01:16:33 am ---Informing people is a good thing - although here it seems extreme and thus, pretty useless - but OTOH, by constantly exposing people to the idea of almost anything potentially causing cancer, I would think that it could cause constant, if low-level stress to people and possibly even end up actually triggering cancer for some.
If you leave in constant awareness, and fear of some deadly disease, that's not all that great for your health.
Just saying.
--- End quote ---
That's why I say that the law was based on good intentions, I agree, informing people is good. But when the list of things you are informing them "may cause cancer" is so broad, contains zero context and is written such that it's safer to just slap it on everything then it's not really informing anyone. For a warning to be useful it needs to be selective, warn people when something contains more than a certain threshold of substances KNOWN to be truly dangerous, that could be useful. A warning that applies to everything doesn't really inform you of anything.
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