Railway tracks have crushed stones alongside them, known as ballast, which serve a crucial role in maintaining tracks and ensuring the safety of trains.
Ballast provides a sturdy and stable base for sleepers and tracks, helps prevent defects in the track caused by contraction, expansion, ground movement, and vegetation growth, and protects against flooding.
Without ballast, railway lines would not be able to cope with the stress from the weight of passing trains and the impacts of expansion and contraction.
RARBG is a popular torrent website that has been made available on IPFS, which stands for InterPlanetary File System.
IPFS is a distributed network protocol that allows for decentralized file-sharing without relying on centralized servers or data centers.
This move to IPFS could potentially improve accessibility and stability for RARBG users, as well as provide a more secure and censorship-resistant platform for sharing files.
'Rarbg on IPFS', containing 826,201 magnets and categorized into several categories- SQLite database may have glitches when searching, and users gave recommendations for IPFS clients- Users discuss incremental requests, verification of partial reads, and pros/cons of using IPFS over BitTorrent
DreamBerd is a new programming language released on Github with unique features such as using spacing to specify order of arithmetic operations and an ability to use any letters from the word "function" to declare functions.
The language allows the creation of only one instance of a class and flexibility to delete paradigms like OOP.
Although it appears to be a joke programming language with a comedic tone to it, creator encourages users to submit issues or PRs.
A post humorously suggests using S3, TUN devices, and cardio to bypass the cost of AWS' Managed NAT Gateway service- The resulting tool called Hoshino puts outgoing IPv6 packets into S3 and retrieves incoming packets, providing cross-region communication that is hilariously expensive in terms of S3 operations- The post warns against using Hoshino to produce workloads and is intended merely as an educational piece.
Discussion on unconventional message queue implementations, including email and file systems- Mention of historical and alternative message queuing systems- Humorous comments intertwined with technical discussion
More than half of students find it acceptable to use pirated textbooks, according to a new study by Danish anti-piracy group Rights Alliance.
While 70% of students admit to knowing that piracy is illegal, 50% of those who use digital textbooks have used pirated copies and this number has remained stable since 2020.
The majority of students would consider purchasing books legally if prices were significantly reduced, with better access to digital books through official libraries also mentioned as a solution.
Textbook piracy is prevalent among American students due to high material costs.
Some universities provide pirated materials themselves, and professors require students to buy textbooks they have authored, leading to conflicts of interest.
Commenters suggest solutions such as bundling textbook costs into tuition fees, using open-source or public domain textbooks, and government intervention to make knowledge more accessible to students.
The article discusses how the shift to remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic has led to increased use of workplace surveillance software by companies, including Office 365's productivity monitoring tool.
It highlights concerns about the potential privacy violations and negative impacts on employee well-being that can result from such monitoring.
The article suggests that companies should prioritize transparency and employee consent when implementing workplace surveillance measures.
Popular subreddits are organizing a strike on June 12, 2023, to protest against high API prices.
Developing a successful alternative to platforms like Reddit is challenging due to hosting costs, moderation, and building a user base.
Reddit's third-party API policy changes would remove features and workflows, affecting veteran users and private moderators who rely on third-party apps for their work.
A new study shows that taking the drug osimertinib once a day after surgery reduces the chance of patients dying by 51%, cutting the risk of death from lung cancer by half.
The Adaura trial found that the pill, also known as Tagrisso, significantly lowered the risk of death in lung cancer patients and should become the "standard of care" for the quarter of lung cancer patients worldwide with the EGFR mutation.
Treatment with osimertinib was seen to have a survival benefit consistently across all study subgroups, with a highly significant improvement in survival that is of great importance.
Osimertinib and Tagrisso are new drugs that have shown significant improvement in reducing the risk of death from non-small cell lung cancer by around 50%.
Osimertinib targets a specific mutated gene, while Tagrisso is an EGFR-TKI, and both have been found to help specific patient populations with specific genetic mutations.
Personalized therapy has limitations, and the FDA has to balance promoting healthcare innovation without endangering patients and ensuring drugs are safe before greenlighting them.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, is facing legal action in Kenya after three lawsuits were brought against it within the last year, accusing the company of union-busting and exploitation of Kenyan content moderators.
Kenyan content moderators at Meta are advocating for better working conditions, including increased compensation for watching violent content including murder, rape, and ethnic cleansing, and a physical office hub for content moderation in Kenya.
Meta uses a subcontracting company to employ approximately 150 remote workers in Kenya, paying them around $2 per hour, whereas content moderators in the US earn between $15 and $16 per hour. Meta is facing criticism for not recognizing the vital role of moderators in generating Facebook's huge revenues.
Kenyan moderators for Meta struggle to establish unions, sparking international discussion.
Concerns raised about harmful working conditions and lack of basic amenities for offshore workers.
Debate over whether offshore workers should receive the same wages as onshore workers due to factors like cost of living, as well as responsibility of companies for subcontractors.