litchralee

@litchralee@sh.itjust.works

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do the majority of women still take their partner's last name?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Pew Research has survey data germane to this question. As it stands, a clear majority (79%) of opposite-sex married women changed their family/last name to their husband’s.

  But for never-married women, only a third (33%) said they would change their name to their spouse’s family name. 24% of never-married women were unsure whether they would or wouldn’t change their name upon marriage.

  From this data, I would conclude that while the trend of taking the husband’s last name is fairly entrenched right now, the public’s attitude are changing and we might expect the popularity of this to diminish over time. The detailed breakdown by demographic shows that the practice was less common (73%) in the 18-49 age group than in the 50+ age group (85%).

  Pew Research name change data

  However, some caveats: the survey questions did not inquire into whether the never-married women intended on ever getting married; it simply asked “if you were to get married…”. So if marriage as a form of cohabitation becomes less popular in the future, then the change-your-family-name trend could be in sharper decline than this data would suggest.

  Alternatively, the data could reflect differences between married and never-married women. Perhaps never-married women – by virtue of not being married yet – answered “would not change name” because they did not yet know what their future spouse’s name is. No option for “it depends on his name” was offered by the survey.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨what can I use to cushion my knee when exercising with it on the floor so it doesn't hurt?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  In my homegym I have an AbMat foam pad which I also use as a knee pad. And while I think the thick foam would work outdoors on tougher terrain, it would not meet your criteria to fit in a backpack.

  My other suggestion would be a scrap piece of horse stall mat, which are nearly solid rubber sheets commonly employed for homegym floors. This is what I use when working in my yard, for tasks requiring a lot of kneeling. Such a piece – while heavy – could be cut to whatever size you need, using a sharp knife or a jigsaw.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How long do you think we'll keep seeing "formerly Twitter"?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  When I see “Xitter”, I think it might be pronounced Exeter, like the town in southwest England. But that feels like an undeserved slight against the good people of Devon and England.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do PhDs HAVE to use Dr?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  So far as I’m aware, non-occupational pre-nominal honorifics inure to the individual, so generally speaking, if that person doesn’t want to use their title, they don’t have to. And in the same way that most people will go along with someone’s acquired honorific of Dr or Capt or whatever, the same should also apply if someone expressed that their honorific should not used. I have no citation for this, other than what I’ve seen in life.

  As a sidenote, in Britain, I understand that medical doctors are able to use the pre-nominal of Dr, but surgeons specifically will drop the Dr and just use Mr. or Ms.

  Apparently this stems from ages ago when surgeons did not have to have a medical degree, and the doctoral view was that surgeons were akin to butchers. This may have reflected the crudeness of early surgeries. As a result, surgeons developed a history of being Mr – it’s not clear if female surgeons also took on Mr. So after the various laws/rules changed so that surgeons also had to be doctors, they still kept the tradition of Mr.

  Thus, a male student of medicine in the UK could go from Mr, graduate to Dr, and then graduate as a surgeon to Mr again. I have no citation for this either, but it’s plausible for the ardently traditional British nation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨For states on the coast with excess solar energy why don't they invest in water desalination and pump that water back upstream?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If you were to properly consider the problem the actual cost would be determined by cost per distance traveled and you essentially decide the distance by which ever you are budgeted for.

  I wrote my comment in response to the question, and IMO, I did it justice by listing the various considerations that would arise, in the order which seemed most logical to me. At no point did I believe I was writing a design manual for how to approach such a project.

  There are much smarter people than me with far more sector-specific knowledge to “properly consider the problem” but if you expected a feasibility study from me, then I’m sorry to disappoint. My answer, quite frankly, barely arises to a back-of-the-envelope level, the sort of answer that I could give if asked the same question in an elevator car.

  I never specified that California would be the best place to implement this process.

  While the word California didn’t show up in the question, it’s hard to imagine a “state on the coast” with “excess solar” where desalination would be remotely beneficial. 30 US States have coastlines, but the Great Lakes region and the Eastern Seaboard are already humid and wet, with rivers and tributaries that aren’t exactly in a drought condition. That leaves the three West Coast states, but Oregon and Washington are fairly well-supplied with water in the PNW. That kinda leaves California, unless we’re talking about Mexican states.

  I’m not dissing on the concept of desalination. But the literature for existing desalination plant around the world showcases the numerous challenges beyond just the money. Places like Israel and Saudi Arabia have desalination plants out of necessity, but the operational difficulties are substantial. Regular clogging of inlet pipes by sealife is a regular occurrence, disposal of the brine/salt extracted is ecologically tricky, energy costs, and more. And then to throw pumped hydro into this project would make it a substantial undertaking, as dams of any significant volume are always serious endeavors.

  At this point, I feel the question is approaching pie-in-the-sky levels of applicability, so I’m not sure what else I can say.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨For states on the coast with excess solar energy why don't they invest in water desalination and pump that water back upstream?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not a water or energy expert, but I have occasionally paid attention to the California ISO’s insightful – while perhaps somewhat dry – blog. This is the grid operator that coined the term “duck curve” to describe the abundance of solar energy available on the grid during the daylight hours, above what energy is being demanded during those hours.

  So yes, there is indeed an abundance of solar power during the daytime, for much of the year in California. But the question then moves to: where is this power available?

  For reference, the California ISO manages the state-wide grid, but not all of California is tied to the grid. Some regions like the Sacramento and Los Angeles areas have their own systems which are tied in, but those interconnections are not sufficient to import all the necessary electricity into those regions; local generation is still required.

  To access the bulk of this abundant power would likely require high-voltage transmission lines, which PG&E (the state’s largest generator and transmission operator) operates, as well as some other lines owned by other entities. By and large, building a new line is a 10+ year endeavor, but plenty of these lines meet up at strategic locations around the state, especially near major energy markets (SF Bay, LA, San Diego) and major energy consumers (San Joaquin River Delta pumping station, the pumping station near the Grapevine south of Bakersfield).

  But water desalination isn’t just a regular energy consumer. A desalination plant requires access to salt water and to a freshwater river or basin to discharge. That drastically limits options to coastal locations, or long-distance piping of salt water to the plant.

  The latter is difficult because of the corrosion that salt water causes; it would be nearly unsustainable to maintain a pipe for distances beyond maybe 100 km, and that’s pushing it. The coastal option would require land – which is expensive – and has implications for just being near the sea. But setting aside the regulatory/zoning issues, we still have another problem: how to pump water upstream.

  Necessarily, the sea is where freshwater rivers drain to. So a desalination plant by the ocean would have to send freshwater back up stream. This would increase the energy costs from exorbitant to astronomical, and at that point, we could have found a different use for the excess solar, like storing it in hydrogen or batteries for later consumption.

  But as a last thought experiment, suppose we put the plant right in the middle of the San Joaquin River Delta, where the SF Bay’s salt water meets the Sacramento River’s freshwater. This area is already water-depreased, due to diversions of water to agriculture, leading to the endangerment of federally protected species. Pumping freshwater into here could raise the supply, but that water might be too clean: marine life requires the right mix of water to minerals, and desalinated water doesn’t tend to have the latter.

  So it would still be a bad option there, even though power, salt water, and freshwater access are present. Anywhere else in the state is missing at least one of those three criteria.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Weird PC PSU Capacity⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  commercial appliances didn’t take any stand-by measures to avoid “keeping the wires warm”

  Generally speaking, the amount of standby current attributable to the capacitors has historically paled in comparison to the much higher standby current of the active electronics therein. The One Watt Initiative is one such program that shed light on “vampire draw” and posed a tangible target for what standby power draw for an appliance should look like: 1 Watt.

  A rather infamous example of profligate standby power was TV set-top boxes, rented from the satellite or cable TV company, at some 35 Watts. Because these weren’t owned by customers, so-called free-market principles couldn’t apply and consumers couldn’t “vote with their feet” for less power-hungry set-top boxes. And the satellite/cable TV companies didn’t care, since they weren’t the ones paying for the electricity to keep those boxes powered. Hence, a perverse scenario where power was being actively wasted.

  It took both carrots (eg EnergyStar labels) and sticks (eg EU and California legislation) to make changes to this sordid situation. But to answer your question in the modern day, where standby current mostly is now kept around 1 Watt or lower, it all boils down to design tradeoffs.

  For most consumer products, a physical power-switch has gone the way of the dodo. The demand is for products which can turn “off” but can start up again at a moment’s notice. Excellent electronics design could achieve low-power consumption in the milliwatts, but this often entails an entirely separate circuit and supply which is used to wake up the main circuit of the appliance. That’s extra parts and thus more that can go wrong and cause warranty claims. This is really only pursued if power consumption is paramount, such as for battery-powered devices. And even with all that effort, the power draw will never be zero.

  So instead, the more common approach is to reuse the existing supply and circuitry, but try to optimize it when not in active operation. That means accepting that the power supply circuitry will have some amount of always-on draw, and that the total appliance will have a standby power draw which is deemed acceptable.

  I would also be remiss if I didn’t mention the EU Directives since 2013 which mandate particular power-factor targets, which for most non-motor appliances can only be achieved with active components, ie Active Power Factor Correction (Active PFC). While not strictly addressing standby power, this would be an example of a measure undertaken to avoid the heating caused by apparent power, both locally and through the grid.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Weird PC PSU Capacity⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  How were you measuring the current in the power cable? Is this with a Kill-o-watt device or perhaps with a clamp meter and a line splitter?

  As for why there is a capacitor across the mains input, a switching DC power supply like an ATX PSU draws current in a fairly jagged fashion. So to stabilize the input voltage, as well as preventing the switching noise from propagating through the mains and radiating everywhere, some capacitors are placed across the AC lines. This is a large oversimplification, though, as the type and values of these capacities are the subject of careful design.

  Since a capacitor charges and discharges based on the voltage across it, and because AC power changes voltage “polarity” at 50 or 60 Hz, the flow of charge into and out of the capacitor will be measurable as a small current.

  Your choice of measuring instrument will affect how precisely you can measure this apparent power, which will in-turn affect how your instrument reports the power factor. It can also be that the current in question also includes some of the standby power for keeping the PSU in a ready state, for when the computer starts up. So that would also explain why the power factor isn’t exactly zero.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Could I patent harmful technology to prevent it from being put on the market?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Although copyright and patents (and trademarks) are lumped together as “intellectual property”, there’s almost nothing which is broadly applicable to them all, and they might as well be considered separately. The only things I can think of – and I’m not a lawyer if any kind – are that: 1) IP protection is mentioned broadly in the US Constitution, and 2) they all behave as property, in that they can be traded/reassigned. That’s it.

  With that out of the way, it’s important to keep in mind that patent rights are probably the strongest in the family of IP, since there’s no equivalent “fair use” (US) or “fair dealing” (UK) allowance that copyright has. A patent is almost like owning an idea, whereas copyright is akin to owning a certain rendition plus a derivative right.

  Disney has leaned on copyright to carve for themselves an exclusive market of Disney characters, while also occasionally renewing their older characters (aka derivatives), so that’s why they lobby for longer copyright terms.

  Whereas there isn’t really a singular behemoth company whose bread-and-butter business is to churn out patents. Inventing stuff is hard, and so the lack of such a major player means a lack of lobbying to extend patent terms.

  To be clear, there are companies who rely almost entirely on patent law for their existence, just like Disney relies on copyright law. But type foundries (companies that make fonts) are just plainly different than Disney. Typefaces (aka fonts) as a design can be granted patents, and then the font files can be granted copyright. But this is a special case, I think.

  The point is: no one’s really clamoring for longer parents, and most people would regard a longer term on “ideas” to be very problematic. Esp if it meant pharmaceutical companies could engage in even more price-gouging, for example.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Could I patent harmful technology to prevent it from being put on the market?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  If you hold a patent, then you have an exclusive right to that invention for a fixed period, which would be 20 years from the filing date in the USA. That would mean Ford could not claim the same or a derivative invention, at least not for the parts which overlap with your patent. So yes, you could sit on your patent and do nothing until it expires, with some caveats.

  But as a practical matter, the necessary background research, the application itself, and the defense of a patent just to sit on it would be very expensive, with no apparent revenue stream to pay for it. I haven’t looked up what sort of patent Ford obtained (or maybe they’ve merely started the application) but patents are very long and technical, requiring whole teams of lawyers to draft properly.

  For their patent to be valid, they must not overlap with an existing claim, as well as being novel and non-obvious, among other requirements. They would only do this to: 1) protect themselves from competition in future, 2) expect that this patent can be monetized by directly implementing it, or licensing it out to others, or becoming a patent troll and extracting nuisance-value settlements, or 3) because they’re already so deep in the Intellectual Property land-grab that they must continue to participate by obtaining outlandish patents. The latter is a form of “publish or perish” and allows them to appear like they’re on the cutting edge of innovation.

  A patent can become invalidated if it is not sufficiently defended. This means that if no one even attempts to infringe, then your patent would be fine. But if someone does, then you must file suit or negotiate a license with them, or else they can challenge the validity of your patent. If they win, you’ll lose your exclusive rights and they can implement the invention after-all. This is not cheap.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is the bitwise AND of subnet masks and IP addresses redundant?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ll address your question in two parts: 1) is it redundant to store both the IP subnet and its subnet mask, and 2) why doesn’t the router store only the bits necessary to make the routing decision.

  Prior to the introduction of CIDR – which came with the “slash” notation, like /8 for the 10.0.0.0 RFC1918 private IPv4 subnet range – subnets would genuinely be any bit arrangement imaginable. The most sensible would be to have contiguous MSBit-justified subnet masks, such as 255.0.0.0. But the standard did not preclude using something unconventional like 255.0.0.1.

  For those confused what a 255.0.0.1 subnet mask would do – and to be clear, a lot of software might prove unable to handle this – this is describing a subnet with 2^23 addresses, where the LSBit must match the IP subnet. So if your IP subnet was 10.0.0.0, then only even numbered addresses are part of that subnet. And if the IP subnet is 10.0.0.1, then that only covers odd numbered addresses.

  Yes, that means two machines with addresses 10.69.3.3 and 10.69.3.4 aren’t on the same subnet. This would not be allowed when using CIDR, as contiguous set bits are required with CIDR.

  So in answer to the first question, CIDR imposed a stricter (and sensible) limit on valid IP subnet/mask combinations, so if CIDR cannot be assumed, then it would be required to store both of the IP subnet and the subnet mask, since mask bits might not be contiguous.

  For all modern hardware in the last 15-20 years, CIDR subnets are basically assumed. So this is really a non-issue.

  For the second question, the router does in-fact store only the necessary bits to match the routing table entry, at least for hardware appliances. Routers use what’s known as a TCAM memory for routing tables, where the bitwise AND operation can be performed, but with a twist.

  Suppose we’re storing a route for 10.0.42.0/24. The subnet size indicates that the first 24 bits must match a prospective destination IP address. And the remaining 8 bits don’t matter. TCAMs can store 1’s and 0’s, but also X’s (aka “don’t cares”) which means those bits don’t have to match. So in this case, the TCAM entry will mirror the route’s first 24 bits, then populate the rest with X’s. And this will precisely match the intended route.

  As a practical matter then, the TCAM must still be as wide as the longest possible route, which is 32 bits for IPv4 and 128 bits for IPv6. Yes, I suppose some savings could be made if a CIDR-only TCAM could conserve the X bits, but this makes little difference in practice and it’s generally easier to design the TCAM for max width anyway, even though non-CIDR isn’t supported on most routing hardware anymore.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why are doctors so hands off and unhelpful in the USA?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  To start off, I’m sorry to hear that you’re not receiving the healthcare you need. I recognize that these words on a screen aren’t going to solve any concrete problems, but in the interest of a fuller comprehension of the USA healthcare system, I will try to offer an answer/opinion to your question that goes into further depth than simply “capitalism” or “money and profit” or “greed”.

  What are my qualifications? Absolutely none, whatsoever. Although I did previously write a well-received answer in this community about the USA health insurance system, which may provide some background for what follows.

  In short, the USA healthcare system is a hodge-podge of disparate insurers and government entities (collectively “payers”), and doctors, hospitals, clinics, ambulances, and more government entities (collectively “providers”), overseen by separate authorities in each of the 50 US States, territories, tribes, and certain federal departments (collectively “regulators”). There is virtually no national-scale vertical integration in any sense, meaning that no single or large entity has the viewpoint necessary to thoroughly review the systemic issues in this “system”, nor is there the visionary leadership from within the system to even begin addressing its problems.

  It is my opinion that by bolting-on short-term solutions without a solid long-term basis, the nation was slowly led to the present dysfunction, akin to boiling a frog. And this need not be through malice or incompetence, since it can be shown that even the most well-intentioned entities in this sordid and intricate pantomime cannot overcome the pressures which this system creates. Even when there are apparent winners like filthy-rich plastic surgeons or research hospitals brimming with talented expert doctors of their specialty, know that the toll they paid was heavy and worse than it had to be.

  That’s not to say you should have pity on all such players in this machine. Rather, I wish to point to what I’ll call “procedural ossification”, as my field of computer science has a term known as “protocol ossification” that originally borrowed the term from orthopedia, or the study of bone deformities. How very fitting for this discussion.

  I define procedural ossification as the loss of flexibility in some existing process, such that rather than performing the process in pursuit of a larger goal, the process itself becomes the goal, a mindless, rote machine where the crank is turned and the results come out, even though this wasn’t what was idealized. To some, this will harken to bureaucracy in government, where pushing papers and forms may seem more important that actually solving real, pressing issues.

  I posit to you that the USA healthcare system suffers from procedural ossification, as many/most of the players have no choice but to participate as cogs in the machine, and that we’ve now entirely missed the intended goal of providing for the health of people. To be an altruistic player is to be penalized by the crushing weight of practicalities.

  What do I base this on? If we look at a simple doctor’s office, maybe somewhere in middle America, we might find the staff composed of a lead doctor – it’s her private practice, after all – some Registered Nurses, administrative staff, a technician, and an office manager. Each of these people have particular tasks to make just this single doctor’s office work. Whether it’s supervising the medical operations (the doctor) or operating/maintaining the X-ray machine (technician) or cutting the checks to pay the building rent (office manager), you do need all these roles to make a functioning, small doctor’s office.

  How is this organization funded? In my prior comment about USA health insurance, there was a slide which showed the convoluted money flows from payers to providers, which I’ve included below. What’s missing from this picture is how even with huge injections of money, bad process will lead to bad outcomes.

  financial flow in the US healthcare system Source

  In an ideal doctor’s office, every patient that walks in would be treated so that their health issues are managed properly, whether that’s fully curing the condition or controlling it to not get any worse. Payment would be conditioned upon the treatment being successful and within standard variances for the cost of such treatment, such as covering all tests to rule out contributing factors, repeat visits to reassess the patient’s condition, and outside collaboration with other doctors to devise a thorough plan.

  That’s the ideal, and what we have in the USA is an ossified version of that, horribly contorted and in need of help. Everything done in a doctor’s office is tracked with a “CPT/HCPCS code”, which identifies the type of service rendered. That, in and of itself, could be compatible with the ideal doctor’s office, but the reality is that the codes control payment as hard rules, not considering “reasonable variances” that may have arisen. When you have whole professions dedicated to properly “coding” procedures so an insurer or Medicare will pay reimbursement, that’s when we’ve entirely lost the point and grosdly departed from the ideal. The payment tail wags the doctor dog.

  To be clear, the coding system is well intentioned. It’s just that its use has been institutionalized into only ever paying out if and only if a specific service was rendered, with zero consideration for whether this actually advanced the patient’s treatment. The coding system provides a wealth of directly-comparable statistical data, if we wanted to use that data to help reform the system. But that hasn’t substantially happened, and when you have fee-for-service (FFS) as the base assumption, of course patient care drops down the priority list. Truly, the acronym is very fitting.

  Even if the lead doctor at this hypothetical wanted to place patient health at the absolute forefront of her practice, she will be without the necessary tools to properly diagnose and treat the patient, if she cannot immediately or later obtain reimbursement for the necessary services rendered. She and her practice would have to absorb costs that a “conforming” doctor’s office would have, and that puts her at a further disadvantage.

  The only major profession that I’m immediately aware of which undertakes unknown costs with regularity, in the hopes of a later full-and-worthwhile reimbursement, is the legal profession. There, it is the norm for personal injury lawyers to take cases on contingency, meaning that the lawyer will eat all the costs if the lawsuit does not ultimately prevail. But if the lawyer succeeds, then they earn a fixed percentage of the settlement or court judgement, typically 15-22%, to compensate for the risk of taking the case on contingency.

  What’s particularly notable is that lawyers must have a good eye to only accept cases they can reasonably win, and to decline cases which are marginal or unlikely to cover costs. This hereustic takes time to hone, but a lawyer could start by being conservative with cases accepted. The reason I mention this is because a doctor-patient relationship is not at all as transactional as a lawyer-client relationship. A doctor should not drop a patient because their health issues won’t allow the doctor to recoup costs.

  The notion that an altruistic doctor’s office can exist sustainably under the FFS model would require said doctor to discard the final shred of decency that we still have in this dysfunctional system. This is wrong in a laissez-faire viewpoint, is wrong in a moral viewpoint, and is wrong in a healthcare viewpoint. Everything about this is wrong.

  But the most insidious problems are those that perpetuate themselves. And because of all those aforementioned payers, providers, and regulators are merely existing and cannot themselves take the initiative to unwind this mess, it’s going to take more than a nudge from outside to make actual changes.

  As I concluded my prior answer on USA health insurance, I noted that Congressional or state-level legislation would be necessary to deal with spiraling costs for healthcare. I believe the same would be required to refocus the nation’s healthcare procedures to put patient care back as the primary objective. This could come in the form of a single-payer model. Or by eschewing insurance pools outright by extending a government obligation to the health of the citizenry, commonly in the form of a universal healthcare system. Costs of the system would become a budgetary line-item so that the health department can focus its energy on care.

  To be clear, the costs still have to be borne, but rather than fighting for reimbursement, it could be made into a form of mandatory spending, meaning that they are already authorized to be paid from the Treasury on an ongoing basis. For reference, the federal Medicare health insurance system (for people over 65) is already a mandatory spending obligation. So upgrading Medicare to universal old-people healthcare is not that far of a stretch, nor would further extending it to cover every person in the country.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If Necromancy suddenly became possible, can the undead be called as a witness during court proceedings?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not a lawyer, but let’s have some fun with this.

  To start, I’m going to have to assume a jurisdiction. I’ll go with California, because Hollywood films have depicted a lot of walking dead, zombies, and whatnot. And also because that’s the jurisdiction I’m most familiar with. I think that such a case where the undead might be a witness would mostly arise in California state courts, since zombies rarely walk/jump/crawl quickly enough to cross state lines from the major population centers of California, which wokld invoke federal jurisdiction.

  Now, we need to hone in on the type of case. A murder case where the victim is called as a witness would certainly be very juicy. But the same legal intrigue would arise from a less-interesting inheritance or family law case. We could also go into contracts and see whether or not the presence of an undead counts as an “act of God” but maybe that’s a bit too niche and law-school theoretical.

  To really showcase the problems this would pose to the court, we will focus on the undead being witness in a criminal trial, as the standard of proof to convict the defendant would be proof “beyond a reasonable doubt”. As the most stringent category of proof, it necessarily follows that the court must err on the side of the defendant in matters of impartiality. This is because the court is technically an arm of the state, and the prosecution wields all the resources of the state against an individual who stands accused of some criminal act.

  As such, for criminal trials, there are certain constitutional rights of the defendant that the court must uphold. The foremost is the right to due process, guaranteed by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. One of the results from applying due process is that evidence introduced in a criminal trial must not be “unduly prejudicial”. That is, no evidence can be admitted which so irresponsibly causes the jury to render a verdict based on anything but the law.

  Often, this rule is invoked to set aside irrelevant evidence which has no bearing on the charges, except maybe to impune the reputation of the defendant so that the jury thinks they’re a terrible person. Other times, it can be used to exclude relevant but really-bad evidence. The US courts have been through cycles where novel science is used in a prosecution but which later turns out to be bunk and lacking any foundation in reality. It certainly is “evidence” but because it purports to be science when it’s really not, it must be excluded. Psychics are certainly not going to be welcomed witnesses as a subject matter of expert.

  Finally, the other category for evidence being unduly prejudicial is when the jury – through no fault of their own – would weigh that evidence as being the primary factor, above all else, whether it’s DNA or video evidence. This is more a matter of testimony evidence rather than physical evidence. Imagine a small, devoutly religious town where the local pastor is called to testify about whether the defendant could have committed hit-and-run.

  Having a respected community authority figure testify about someone’s potential to commit a crime might be something the jury members would be open to hearing, but the judge might have to weigh whether the fact the fact that the lay witness is a pastor will cause the jury to put too much weight on that testimony. If there are other ways to obtain the same evidence – such as bringing in the defendant’s mother or employer – the judge should not allow the pastor to testify, because it could jeopardize the soundness of the trial and lead to an appeal.

  So now we come back to zombies. Would a jury be able to set aside their shock, horror, and awe about a zombie in court that they could focus on being the finder of fact? If a zombie says they’re an eye-witness to a mugging, would their lack of actual eyeballs confuse the jury? Even more confusing would be a zombie that is testifying as an expert witness. Does their subject matter need to be recent? What if the case needs an expert on 17th Century Parisian fashion and the undead is from that era? Are there no fashion historians who could provide similar expert opinions?

  But supposing we did overcome all that, there might be one form of testimony which – even though very prejudicial – might be allowable for a lay-witness (ie not expert) zombie witness could testify about, and I already mentioned it earlier.

  In most jurisdictions and in California, a dying person’s last act which might point to their killer will not necessarily be excluded for being irrelevant or being circumstantial. It is a rebuttable presumption that someone dying has no incentive to lie, and will likely have been the final witness to their own murder.

  To that end, it’s entirely plausible that a zombie who died by murder could come to court to testify against their killer. Of course, how long does it take for the dead to become undead? If this takes longer than the statue of limitations allows, the defendant would walk. Likewise, if the zombie’s testimony is the only shred of evidence for the murder, that’s not likely to convince the jury. Not unless, of course, the details of the testimony match the circumstances of the crime so well that it wasn’t a fluke.

  TL;DR: rules of evidence would still apply to the undead, and judges must take care to balance the probative value of evidence with any prejudicial quality it may carry.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If Russia takes out all the Internet cables like the news is saying. How much of that traffic can be re-routed to satellite?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Lasers work really well in space for secure sat-to-sat data links, but are a lot less viable on Earth’s surface due to diffraction and weather, nevermind the limits of the visible horizon for any height of a communications tower. For pretty much any scenario where laser comms would be considered, microwave RF links would likely be just as good, cheaper, and more commonly deployed and understood by telecom engineers. The only exception is when absurdly high bandwidths are needed, which is where lasers rule.

  But using RF links across thousands of kilometers of oceanic waters? For that, you must construct additional pylons on floating islands to repeat the signal. Otherwise, the only RF signals that could reach land would be too low frequency to carry much bandwidth.

  For reference, when the German Aerospace Center (DLR) set the world record in 2016 for free-space optical communications, they achieved 1.72 Tbits/sec over a distance of 10.45 km. Most optical systems observe a bandwidth/distance relationship, where at best, shooting the signal farther means less available bandwidth, or more bandwidth if brought closer. This is a related to the Shannon-Hartley theorem, since the limiting factor is optical noise.

  So if 1.72 Tbits/sec at 10 km is the best they achieved in free air in 2016, then that pales in comparison to the undersea fibre cables of 2006, where a section of the SHEFA-2 Scottish-Faroese cable runs unamplified for 390 km and moves 570 Gbits/sec aggregate.

  In short, free-space lasers are fast and long-distance. But lasers within fibre cables are much faster and cover even longer distances.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How can I register to vote?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This page appears to describe the standarsized process for registering to vote as an overseas absentee voter: www.fvap.gov/citizen-voter/

  It states that whether or not you just want to vote for federal offices, the important criteria is to establish your “voting residency”, and then the elections office of that county would send you a ballot for what you’re eligible to vote for.

  I can’t imagine this will be simply to navigate, but I applaud you for seeking to exercise your right to vote. Good luck!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What have you been pondering about as of late?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Not the Roman Empire. :)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  If you’ll permit me to broaden the question to “why are political subdivisions allowed to sue each other?”, then the answer often is two-fold: 1) political subdivisions are incorporated entities under the law, so they have a right to pursue redress in front of a higher court, and 2) when the higher power is unclear about the division of rights to the subdivisions, then only a court can dispense the issue.

  For #1, this is the same power which allows a city, county, municipality, special district, state, and sometimes the federal government to obtain an enforcement order against an individual or company. An example would be an injunction to stop dumping more toxic waste into a river. It should be clear that if a city, county, or state was dumping toxic material into a river, the higher level of government would want to stop that too.

  For #2, ambiguity is rife when it comes to poorly drafted legislation or decisions which “passed the buck” far into the future. Historical examples involving borders include the British Partition of India or the Delaware Wedge, the latter which was in dispute for nearly 300 years. You can also find examples in international law, such as whether or not certain islands count as territory for the purpose of extending a country’s Exclusive Economic Zone.

  In the Delaware Wedge case, because the matter involved three or four US States, the matter would ultimately have to be adjudicated by a federal court, either directly before the US Supreme Court or through arbitration under the auspices of the court. Alternatively, Congress potentially could have settled the matter forthright, but since the dispute predates the founding the union, Congress probably thought the states would quickly work it out on their own.

  Here in California, we see some similar misgivings between the state’s own political subdivisions, with a recent example where a county District Attorney brought suit against the most populous city within that county, alleging that state law was being violated.

  As for how a county is allowed to prosecute a state law violation, and why a city can be a target or such prosecution, we need to briefly look at the structure of California governance. Despite what some critics have suggested, California is not a homogenous, unitary state with a singular political and social identity. Rather, it may be one of the most decentralized states in the union, with cities with populations in the low hundreds to the low millions, all coexisting within one set of general state laws.

  The state’s primary subdivisions are the counties, which divide all the land into 58 counties. Counties are responsible to citizens within their borders, authorized to write and enforce laws, except that county laws don’t apply within incorporated borders. That is, cities.

  In essence, the incorporation of a city creates an enclave within a county, and while the state limits what categories of laws a county may author, cities have much more “home rule” authority. This is what allows the City of Los Angeles (pop. 3.8 million) and Amador City (pop. 200) to have similar powers yet clearly applied much differently. It would be a madhouse in the state Legislature if every city needed custom legislation to enable them to serve their people appropriately. So California just lets the cities do their own thing, within reason.

  In terms of enforcement, to prevent overworking the state Attorney General, enforcement of the state’s laws are delegated to the county District Attorneys. These 58 attorneys wield the power of the state within their county borders, such as brokering a plea deal or bringing enforcement lawsuits.

  The safeguard is that the state Attorney General can – at any time – take over an ongoing prosecution from the county DA. For example, investigations involving city police misconduct are now by-default taken away from the county DA and investigated by the state AG, because of a historical pattern of police being too cozy with the DA.

  In the earlier case where the county sued the city within in, the state AG could have also taken that case away. But seeing as the case was already slipshod, the AG probably just decided to let it run its course, where a judge would likely dismiss it.

  TL;DR: political subdivisions do weird things if no guardrails exist or if no other alternative appeara

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Computer Com ports⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Is it a requirement that the Windows box needs to be able to interact with the serial stream to/from the PLC and instrument? If it only needs to monitor the serial connection, would it suffice to just have Windows “tap” the RS232 lines to receive the signal but otherwise let it continue, and never TX onto the lines?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How does Ohio have stock for the new cannabis stores that just opened?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  From the State Medical Board of Ohio:

  On September 8, 2016, House Bill 523, legalized medical marijuana in Ohio.

  From a June 2024 AP article:

  Recreational pot sales are nearing reality in Ohio … The state Division of Cannabis Control began accepting applications [on 7 June] for new dual licenses that will allow existing medical marijuana dispensaries to also sell nonmedical cannabis.

  While states with medical cannabis generally issues regulations for which patients were eligible and which doctors could prescribe, the products themselves are mostly subject to meeting lab tests for containing what they say on the label, and distributed in child-resistant packaging. Otherwise, the same stock for medical cannabis customers is about the same as for recreational cannabis.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why doesn't the American market provide efficient and effective health insurance like it does for car insurance?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  At its very core, an insurance company operates by: 1) pooling policyholder’s risks together and 2) collecting premiums from the policyholders based on actuarial data, to pay claims and maybe make a small profit. But looking broader, an insurance market exists when: a) policyholders voluntarily or are obliged to obtain policies, b) insurers are willing and able to accept the risks in exchange for a premium expected to support the insurance pool, and c) the actuarial risks are calculable and prove true, on average.

  The loss of any of A, B, or C will substantially impact a healthy insurance market, or can prevent the insurance market from ever getting started. For some examples of market failures, the ongoing California homeowner insurance crisis shows how losing B (starting with insurers refusing to renew policies near the wildland-rural interface) and C (increase in insured losses due to climate change) results in policies becoming unaffordable or impossible to obtain.

  As a broader nationwide example, an established business sector that operates wholly without insurance availability is cannabis. A majority of US States have decriminalized marijuana for medical use, and a near-majority have legalized recreational consumption. Yet due to unyielding federal law, no insurer will issue business policies, to protect from risks that all businesses would face, such as losses from fire, due to a product recall or product liability, or for liability to employees. These risks are calculable and there’s a clear need for such policies – thus meeting criteria A and C – but no commercial insurer is willing to issue. Accordingly, the formal market for cannabis business insurance is virtually non-existent in the USA.

  With these examples, we can see that the automobile insurance market meets all three criteria for a healthy market, but it’s how these criteria are met which is noteworthy. Motorists in the USA are obliged in every state except New Hampshire and Virginia, it is a criminal offense to drive a car without third-party liability insurance, meaning the motorist might spend time in jail. Note: NH and VA won’t send a motorist to jail, but they do have administrative penalties for driving without “financial responsibility”, which includes insurance or a bond at the DMV.

  The exact requirement varies per state, with some requiring very low amounts of coverage and others requiring extra coverage a like Personal Injury Protection (PIP, aka no-fault insurance). The point is that criteria A is easily met: motorists want to avoid jail, but also want to avoid the indignity of being sued after having caused a road incident, in addition to protecting their apparently only viable mode of transportation.

  Insurers can take into account the overall trends in national risks trends for automobiles (eg new car safety) as well as local or hyper-local risks (eg hail damage in the southeast, property crime in a particular zip code). And as a large country with nearly as many cars as people, many insurers are willing to meet the demand. This satisfies criteria B and C.

  So well-organized is the automobile insurance market that you could almost say that it’s vertically integrated: the largest nationwide insurers have contracts in place with every dealership network, auto collision chain, new and used parts dealers, as well as automatic data sharing with state DMVs, plus with firms like CarFax that buy information. Despite each state being slightly different, the insurers have overcome and achieved a level of near uniformity that allows an efficient market to exist.

  Things are drastically different for the American healthcare system and for American health insurance companies. While most think of their healthcare provider as a national name like Anthem Blue Cross or Kaiser Permanente, the reality is that each state is an island. Even federal programs like Medicaid and Medicare are subject to state-level non-uniformities. Hospitals can be either privately operated (eg religion-affiliated, or for-profit) or run by a public entity (eg county or state), and can exist as a single entity or form part of a regional hospital network). Some entities operate both the insurance pool as well as providing the health care (eg HMOs like Kaiser Permanente) while others dispatch to a list of contracted providers, usually being doctor’s own private practices or specialist offices.

  With so many disparate entities, and where healthcare is a heavily-regulated activity by each state, the cost of insurable risks – that is, for routine healthcare services – is already kinda difficult to compute. Hospitals and doctors go through intense negotiations with insurers to come to an agreement on reimbursement rates, but the reality is that neither has sufficient actuarial data to price based on what can be borne by the market. So they just pass their costs on, whatever those may be, and insurers either accept it into their calculations, or drop the provider.

  Suffice it to say, there are fewer pressure to push the total cost of healthcare down, given this reality, and more likely prices will continue to climb. This fails criteria C.

  financial flow in the US healthcare system Source

  Briefly speaking, it’s fairly self explanatory why people would want health insurance, since the alternative is either death or serious health repercussions, paying out-of-pocket rates for service, or going to the ER and being burdened by medical debt that will somehow haunt even after death.. Criteria A is present.

  As for Criteria B, that was actually resolved as part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). During discussions with the drafters, insurers bargained for an obligation for everyone to have insurance (aka the individual mandate, bolstering criteria A), in exchange for an obligation to issue policies for anyone who applies, irrespective of pre-existing health conditions. Thus, Criteria B is present for all ACA-compliant policies in the USA, even though the individual mandate was legislatively repealed.

  So to answer your question directly, the costs for healthcare in the USA continue to spiral so far out of control that it causes distortions in health insurance market, to everyone’s detriment. Specific issues such as open-enrollment periods, employer subsidies, and incomprehensible coverage levels all stem from – and are attempts to reduce – costs.

  Enrollment periods prevent people from changing plans immediately after obtaining an expensive service, like a major surgery. Employer subsidies exist due to a federal tax quirk decades ago, which has now accidentally become an essential part of the health insurance and health care situation. And coverage levels try to provide tiered plans, so people can still afford coverage for “catastrophic” injuries while others can buy coverage for known, recurring medical needs.

  But these are all bandaging the bleeding which is unchecked costs. It would take an act of Congress – literally – or of state legislatures to address the structural issues at play. The most prominent solution to nip costs is the bud is to achieve the same near-vertical integration as with automobile insurance. This means a single or very few entities which have contracts in place with every provider (doctors and hospitals), negotiated at once and uniformly, so as to achieve criteria C. The single-payer model – which Medicare already uses – is one such solution.

  Going further would be the universal healthcare model, which discards the notion of health insurance entirely and creates an obligation for a government department to provide for the health of the citizens, funded by taxes. This means doctors and hospitals work at the behest of the department for then citizenry, or work privately outside the system entirely, with no guarantee of a steady stream of work.

  These models could be approached by individual states or by the nation as a whole, but it’s unclear where the Overton window for that idea currently is.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Simple light-sensitive light switch?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  If you’re looking to do this project without a microcontroller – it’s an exercise that every SW engineer should consider doing at least once – then the venerable 555 timer may be of aid here:

  elonics.org/light-sensor-circuit-using-ldr-555-ti…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Could President Biden fully legalize cannabis before he leaves office?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s a straightforward question with a not-so-straightforward answer. I’m not any sort of lawyer, but I will borrow the classic lawyer answer of: “It Depends”.

  To start, the question of legalizing cannabis – meaning its sale, distribution, and consumption is as easy as for any other good – is distinct from the question of decriminalizing cannabis, which means it’s not a criminal offense to grow, sell, or consume.

  Right off the bat, we can say that the US President cannot fully legalize cannabis nationwide with the stroke of a pen, because the several states can (and already do?) have their own laws and regulations on cannabis and other drugs, parallel to the federal laws. But decriminalization is feasible, since the federal statues that criminalize cannabis are based on the drug schedules, which are regulations issued by DEA pursuant to authority granted by Congress.

  Of course, the several states could start writing their own laws to criminalize cannabis, but that would be kinda weird since the majority of states already allow medical marijuana, and a fair number allow recreational marijuana. So criminalizing cannabis would repeal those rather popular laws.

  So we move to how the DEA can amend the drug schedules, or how the US President can instruct the DEA Administrator. Because Congress is the grantor of such authority to the DEA and other executive agencies, and seeking to prevent regulations from whimsically flip-flopping with the passing breeze, Congress introduced the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) in 1946.

  As the name suggests, the Act sets up the rules for how regulations issued by agencies shall be performed. Most of the rules mirror those of Congressional procedure, meaning that the agency must conduct hearings on proposed rule changes openly, with the opportunity for the public to submit comments. That is, regulations suddenly appearing from behind closed doors is not permitted.

  Part of the rules require fixed timelines, such as a number of days for sending in comments, plus a number of days for publishing the full text of the proposed rule into the Federal Register, before the rule can become active.

  Furthermore, the Act instructs the judiciary to review regulations if someone raises a challenge to the adopted regulation. Among the things the judiciary will look at is whether the regulation is improperly “arbitrary and capricious”, meaning the regulation was pretextual and is instead serving a goal outside of what Congress intended for the agency to be doing.

  If the US President issued a brief executive to remove cannabis from the drug schedules, thus shortcutting the rulemaking procedure and the period for public comment, a court challenge could arise where someone claims the regulation is arbitrary and capricious, since Congress would have expected the DEA to do a full, extensive job of considering the implications of drug availability. If the executive order does not do a similarly extensive consideration of what the DEA staff would do, then the court challenge would stand a decent chance. To be clear, the regulation via executive order would be strict down on procedural grounds, per the APA.

  What if instead, the US President sternly instructs the DEA Administrator to immediately consider descheduling cannabis? This is more likely to withstand challenge, since the DEA staff would go through their normal evaluation procedure, even if it’s at an expedited rate. Thoroughness is one way to avoid being struck for arbitrary-and-capriciousness.

  But there’s still a wrinkle, due to the recent demise of Chevron Deference, a doctrine where federal courts generally defer to the subject-matter experts within an executive agency, if the enabling law was silent, so long as the APA’s other requirements were met. This leads to the weird possibility that a federal judge – who is unlikely to be well-versed in drug and social implications – can substitute the learned opinion of doctors and scientists within DEA with their own judicial opinion. If this sounds similar to the very arbitrary-and-capricious issue from earlier, you’d be right: a single person – in the judiciary, no less – writing regulations for drug policy is hardly what Congress intended in authoring the Controlled Substance Act in the 70s.

  The overall answer is that the US President has significant away over the DEA Administrator and can expedite the rulemaking process to deschedule cannabis, thus decriminalizing it at the federal level. And that matters because most drug defendants are prosecuted under federal law. But even an un-expedited rulemaking process would attract legal challenges like flies to flypaper, slowing down when the regulation comes into force. And if a federal judge decides to do so, they can outright cancel the descheduling regulation, choosing to not defer to the DEA, even if the DEA articulated their reasoning well.

  It really depends.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨My cake day is coming up in 4 days. Is that a bid deal on Lemmy?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I am prepared to bid one cake for your birthday. This one: 🎂

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How is it possible that praline pecans have less calories than regular pecans?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This article indicates that the USA FDA allows for up to a 20% margin of error for values required to be on the Nutrition Facts label. The article also describes multiple methods of measuring the calorific value of food, either by burning it in the not-so-TSA-friendly-named bomb calorimeter or through methods that have standardized the calorific value of each constituent nutrient.

  It’s also the case that not every foodstuff is perfectly identical to all other products. A banana is hardly going to be constituted exactly like another banana, and even the most basic measurement of mass will not match up to other bananas.

  As an aside, I do fondly remember making a bomb calorimeter in chemistry class using a polystyrene cup as the insulation. It worked remarkably well, IIRC, being within 10% of what we were given as the expected value. Obviously, real measurements would be far more controlled than what some college freshmen can manage, but the concept is sound, if only measuring what the food provides, not necessarily what the human digestive tract can extract.

  As an aside to an aside, celery appears to not be a negative-calorie food, after considering human digestion.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are cars with AWD worth it compared to FWD.⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I live in a sunny climate (California), so I’m genuinely curious: would the solution to icy roads be winter tires? And does winter tire == snow tire?

  I understand studded tires are also an option, but I think their use in this state is heavily curtailed or outright prohibited because of the damage they inflict on the road surface.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are cars with AWD worth it compared to FWD.⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Now that I think about it, you might be right. The Mazda 5 is a minivan, and a lifted version of that would be some sort of #vanLyfe vehicle, whereas the CX-5 is a crossover SUV with five doors.

  But surely the CX-5 can’t be the Mazda 2 or an uplifted version of it, since the 2 is (was?) a three door vehicle, no?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are cars with AWD worth it compared to FWD.⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  True, and I don’t see a problem. :)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are cars with AWD worth it compared to FWD.⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I should have clarified that the Mazda 5 is no longer in production. I’ve seen them from time to time here in California.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are cars with AWD worth it compared to FWD.⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ll be upfront: IMO, hatchbacks > SUVs. That said, a number of manufacturers make “uplifted” versions of their sedans/hatchbacks, such as the Mazda CX-3 which is the bigger version of the Mazda 3 sedan/hatchback. The same applies for the Mazda CX-5 which is a bigger Mazda 5 (not available in USA).

  But directly answering the question, AWD is typically an extra weight penalty (200-300 lbs, 90-130 kg) with attendant fuel economy impact (usually around 1 MPG lower), a bit more maintenance due to having to keep the wheels equally worn, and in rare cases, gets you into trouble where a 2WD car wouldn’t.

  To elaborate on that last point, in snowy weather, an AWD car can get moving better than a 2WD car, but the number of braked wheels is unchanged. So some people end up getting stuck further along on an impassable road or down in a ditch in their AWD car, in places where tow trucks have to wait for the weather to calm down. Meanwhile, the 2WD car would have already detoured when first encountering the unplowed snow.

  If you don’t have snow, then you’re not really getting much of the benefits of AWD but have all the downsides and it costs more. AWD doesn’t shine in the rain either, since moving faster is rarely desirable in wet conditions.

  If you do have snow, snow tires on a FWD is superior to all-season tires on a AWD or 4WD. This is because snow tires improve braking as well as acceleration in packed or slippery snow, for all cars.

  So for light winters or places where it snows so badly that driving at all is ill-advised, a FWD with snow tires may be perfectly suitable. Since you’ve been happy with your Nissan Versa, I assume you don’t have the steep, slippery driveway which would tip the equation in favor of AWD/4WD.

  TL;DR: it depends, but go AWD only if you need it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Would it be possible to use aerosol-based geoengineering technology locally to cool houses?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  From your description, this sounds a lot like how double/triple pane windows work, or like a Trombe wall. Although a Trombe wall is meant to heat a home, vents could be used to take advantage of convection currents that shed the heat away from the house.

  That said, this wouldn’t necessarily be cooling per-se, but would be avoiding heat gain. And at that point, any material that’s loosely coupled to then house would be equally effective, like a wall with studs 24" (60 cm) apart rather than the USA standard of 16" (40 cm).