That's one of those statements, like a natural empiricist saying they don't believe in the big bang, that people tend to latch onto and run with without stopping to evaluate.
Flossing daily isn't necessary if you're an adequate manual brusher. Relatively few people are adequate manual brushers.
Buy a good electric toothbrush, floss periodically.
> Flossing daily isn't necessary if you're an adequate manual brusher.
Anecdote. I went my whole life not-flossing, having occasional procedures until every molar had work done to it. I started flossing daily and the need for procedures stopped.
It's one of those things which people endlessly argue about, but once one flosses once or twice, the rotting bits of food in between their teeth become very unappealing to them.
My partner is an orthodontist. (That’s a specialization within dentistry.) I’m a software engineer btw.
The saying goes that you only need to floss the teeth you want to keep.
If you think about it, a toothbrush will only clean 3 sides of a tooth. Top, outer side, inner side. Not the 2 sides facing neighbour teeth.
How on earth is it very important to clean those 3 sides but not the remaining 2? That just doesn’t make sense. If you think flossing is not useful, to be coherent, you must believe toothbrushing is not useful.
On the flip side, learn how to do flossing right to not hurt your gums. The floss must follow the shape of the tooth, and not be straight. (Ie. move along a U path.) Flossing in a straight line does more harm then good.
If flossing lowers the risk of certain types of gum disease and certain types of gum disease are associated with Alzheimer’s, then maybe flossing is (indirectly) good for your brain.
If you follow news in France, it’s been shown and been shown in court cases that certain pesticides, commonly used in wine farming, cause Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
They have much higher rates of these diseases, and recently in a court case the death of a farmers daughter has been shown to be caused by these pesticides.
Court isn't the place for scientific inquiry into these issues. It's just not setup for it. French courts have also found in favor of "electrosensitivity" issues.
That story is because no-one had thought to study it so there was no scientific evidence that it made any difference. Not that a study had found it made no difference.
I still floss because I think its gross and I have bad gaps in some of my teeth, but I think flossing can also cause harms, for example some floss has PFAS in it.
>But it cannot be proven to hurt, either, so current recommendations are to do it anyway.
That's not a meaningful standard for any health intervention. If I'd apply everything to my body that wasn't proven to hurt I'd spend a hundred bucks every morning and two hours in the bathroom. If "it doesn't hurt" was sufficient basis for a recommendation our doctors would tell us to swallow homeopathic medicine every morning.
It seems pretty obvious that anything you apply has to have at least some measurable impact, otherwise you're basically in the same category as the supplement industry.
I'm inclined to believe that preventing food particles from rotting between my teeth is a measurable impact in itself, regardless of whether it directly impacts my health.
Your assumption is that the floss is removing something that brushing does not. Ask your dentist why you should floss and the answer is not removing occasional lodged pieces of food from between your teeth, but cleaning under the gum line. There is no evidence to suggest it works that way, this is what the long term studies have determined.
It's like when I researched whether an electric toothbrush is better: All the studies say it's not, assuming you're a good brusher. You're probably not. For bad brushers and people that can't manipulate the toothbrush properly for whatever reason, an electric toothbrush gets them to the same performance.
This is a systemic review. A RCT would absolutely find a difference. The whole point of this satire is to point out that there's not always studies on what you want to know. "No randomised controlled trials of parachute use have been undertaken"
Flossing has absolutely been studied. Professional flossing seems effective at combating gum disease. Telling people to floss doesn't seem to be. It's unclear why (is it just compliance effects? are people educated on how to floss still ineffective? etc.)
Ah, you're right I grabbed the wrong paper. I presume the other commenter (hervature ) also knew what paper I meant.
But yes, the item you want studied might not have been studied. ("However, the trial was only able to enroll participants on small stationary aircraft on the ground, suggesting cautious extrapolation to high altitude jumps.")
> It is a critique (in poor taste if you ask me) that everything does not require a double-blind study.
I think the real point is that systemic reviews often will have a pretty tilted set of included studies, because they are influenced by what things researchers choose to study.
Indeed, you probably couldn't publish a study saying that parachutes work; it's not an interesting enough finding for publication. So the only stuff you'll find, in many cases, are studies that buck the prevailing wisdom.
the studies are about outcomes of parachute use writ-large ("gravitational challenges"), not just helicopters.
Only reason I'm being pedantic here is because if the study was in-fact looking at parachutes from helicopters, it could actually be plausible that parachutes had no improvements when used with helicopters. Most, if not all pilots, don't wear parachutes because there's not enough time to jump out of a crashing helicopter to deploy one and the blades would probably hit you anyway (unlike a plane which you could glide for some time, helicopters are notoriously more likely to fall straight like a brick)
Interestingly helicopters don't fall out of the sky when they lose power. Air moving over the rotorblades causes lift, as they are after all wings. During normal flight the blades are turned by the engine generating lift in the expected way. If you are already above the ground and start descending, the airflow over the blades as you descend will cause them to rotate and generate lift. This is known as autorotation[0], and allows control over the unpowered descending craft.
It is a normal procedure to be able to safely land this way when power has been lost, and in some ways is safer than a gliding fixed wing aircraft as you don't need a runway to land on.
Of course catastrophic failure is possible in a helicopter where the rotorblades can't turn, and then autorotation won't work. But then if a wing falls off a fixed-wing aircraft, they generally can't be controlled (interesting exceptions do exist like with the Israeli F15[1]).
Anecdotally, my gums used to bleed fairly easily (like during a dental cleaning) and they don’t anymore since flossing somewhat more regularly. So I think you can judge this by how dental cleanings go.
Completely anecdotal but my gums flare up and just feel disgusting when I don't floss for too long.
I don't do the dentist recommended 2/week but if I stop flossing for over a month I notice significant decrease in my gum health. It becomes excruciatingly painful to brush and this stage and my mouth is full of blood afterwards.
You might be going at it too hard. Please see a dentist or get a second opinion from another dentist.
According to my dentist, you can damage your gums by brushing them too hard. I don't floss so he didn't address that, but in both methods, force is being applied to delicate tissue.
The point of brushing and flossing is to remove food particles. You don't have to abuse your teeth or gums to do that.
I have been told by him not to brush too hard. And i dont brush hard. But the issue is not related to my brushing. What I meant with the blood was;
First I don't floss for a month.
Then what looks like gingivitis shows up.
And when I brush (normally -- not hard) after this, the sites that have the gingivitis bleed and are extremely painful.
If I don't floss my dentist notices immediately and tells me to floss more often because there's food and shit in there, hence why I tend to floss.
> Profound Threats to Users Can Occur When Targeting Occurs Based
on Sensitive Categories
> Targeted ads based on knowledge about protected categories can be especially distressing. One example is when someone has not disclosed their sexual orientation publicly, but an ad assumes their sexual orientation. Another example is when a retailer identifies someone as pregnant and targets ads for baby products before others, including family, even know about the pregnancy. These types of assumptions and inferences upon which targeted advertising is based can in some instances result in emotional distress, lead to individuals being misidentified or misclassified, and cause other harms.
If this is one of the biggest harms the FTC can come up with, then honestly as a consumer I don't really care. Having free youtube is worth getting a few mistargeted ads, or I CAN JUST TURN TARGETED ADS OFF. Advertising isn't someone harassing you, its an ad that I can close or just report as not being accurate. I'd really be interested to hear from someone who thinks getting a mistargeted ad is in top 10 most stressful things in their life.
What I would really be interested in is the raw responses from the companies, not this report.
The only reason you have the option to do this is because of groups pushing back against advertising companies. Ad companies have no incentive to offer the option to disable targeting.
If you like having this option available, then you should like this FTC report and the position they are taking.
> If you like having this option available, then you should like this FTC report and the position they are taking.
I can like other positions and actions the FTC has done, like requiring the ability to turn off targeted ads, and not like others, like this one. This is among the biggest problems in politics right now. Supporting a political party doesn't mean you need to 100% back all their opinions and policies, thats how change is effected in successful democratic systems.
> I can like other positions and actions the FTC has done, like requiring the ability to turn off targeted ads, and not like others, like this one
They weren't saying that was the case I think you're misunderstanding them here.
But they are 100% correct, you are benefiting from other people fighting against this mass surveillance and yet speaking against it. I think you should do some research on why privacy is important and challenge yourself and your potentially entrenched beliefs.
Read my first comment. I definitely agree privacy is important. All I'm saying is that this is not one of the harms we should be worrying about when saying targeted advertising is a problem, and I don't understand why this is an important issue that we should care about when targeted advertising can be turned off:
"Profound Threats to Users Can Occur When Targeting Occurs Based on Sensitive Categories"
Actually, I trust Apple's hardware security enough that I think it is probably impossible for anyone in China (even though they have physical access to the devices) to alter an iPhone or Macbook so that its own electronics can be used to trigger any explosive the attacker might install in the device, so in addition to an explosive, the attacker would need to install his own radio receiver. And the attacker probably won't be able to use the device's electronics to eavesdrop on the device's user, so no ability to tell whether the user is in the group the attacker wants to target unless again the attacker installs his own electronics (including radio transmitter) to do the eavesdropping.
> it is probably impossible for anyone in China (even though they have physical access to the devices) to alter an iPhone or Macbook so that its own electronics can be used to trigger any explosive the attacker might install in the device
It would be trivial for a Mossad-level adversary to get around this. The pager explosives were disguised inside the battery, not around it. If you replaced the iPhone's 4500mAh battery with a 3500mAh one containing RDX and a 3G radio, you'd have to be mega-paranoid before you noticed the difference.
This is exactly the sort of hubris modern intelligence agencies rely on in order to exploit your misplaced trust. Apple's hardware security, much like their software security, is mostly predicated on marketing and not the transparent or accountable defense of your device.
I didn't say they had to specifically play by your rules. There is nothing that prevents them from avoiding iPhone mainboard hardware entirely to perform this exact same exploit at-scale.
Right, but at that point, Mossad might as well put the explosive and the electronics to receive the signal to detonate in a shoe or or a hamburger or something. The only advantage of putting them in an iPhone is people's tendency to not want to be without their iPhone even when sleeping and keeping it very close to the body.
> If you replaced the iPhone's 4500mAh battery with a 3500mAh one containing RDX and a 3G radio, you'd have to be mega-paranoid before you noticed the difference.
There’s a 0% chance Apple wouldn’t detect that. A huge difference in battery life like that would fail QC and even the weight would have to be very close before it wouldn’t be flagged for inspection. The liability for battery fires means so dude at the factory isn’t just saying “probably fine” and using them anyway.
> Apple's hardware security, much like their software security, is mostly predicated on marketing and not the transparent or accountable defense of your device.
Have you personally audited it, or are we just being asked to accept this because it would support your tribal affinities?
They don't have to. This could be an entirely aftermarket addition, feasibly even with functional battery DRM. I (and probably nobody here) expect Apple to be putting RDX in every iPhone, but it's entirely feasible for a targeted attack.
> are we just being asked to accept this because it would support your tribal affinities?
You are being asked to accept this because the Mossad and Israeli tech industry are the foremost exporters of iPhone hardware and software exploits. We've already seen how Apple vs. the Israeli state goes, and it apparently ends with Israel selling hardware exploits to American law enforcement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellebrite
Now you’re talking a much more expensive operation since you need to have a substantial amount of skilled labor, tools, and parts, and also convince people that it’s okay that their phones are warning them that they don’t have a genuine battery and only 75% capacity. That seems unlikely to make for a successful mass attack with so many easier options available.
> We've already seen how Apple vs. the Israeli state goes, and it apparently ends with Israel selling hardware exploits to American law enforcement
Because we would visit ruin on them in response (and they to us, likely, were we to pull the same trick). Israel is exploiting Hezbollah's inability to do that given its present circumstances.
This is a little over-the-top, but I do agree that the clinical way some are handling this understates the horror of what's happening. These people were at home or running errands or at work, not pointing a gun at anyone at that particular moment.
With fairness though, this is exactly the risk we run as an importer-state of electronics that cannot secure our own supply chains. We've been dealing with the digital risk of backdoored electronics for the better half of a decade; physical risks were only a matter of time.
There exists meaningful mitigation (eg. inspect imported electronics at random) but ultimately this risk is our just-deserts as Americans. If our smartphone and car manufacturers didn't take their jobs to other countries, then we'd be able to sleep a whole lot easier. Turns out, there is a bipartisan interest in making America hostile to manufacturing jobs.
Bikes can already be built WAY below the minimum weight set by UCI (6.8kg), so that doesn’t help - it’s easy to install a motor, battery, and still come in right at the limit.
Bikes are at a point where they can be lighter than the UCI mandated minimum weight. Aero has been the name of the game for a while as well, so it's possible that a riders bike already is heavier than expected for aero benefit
> This is how we’ve managed security on our social networks – our more robust AI systems identify and stop threats from less sophisticated actors who often use smaller scale AI systems.
Ok, first of all, has this really worked? AI moderators still can't capture the mass of obvious spam/bots on all their platforms, threads included. Second, AI detection doesn't work, and with how much better the systems are getting, it's probably never going to, unless you keep the best models for yourself, and it's is clear from the rest of the note that its not zuck's intention to do so.
> As long as everyone has access to similar generations of models – which open source promotes – then governments and institutions with more compute resources will be able to check bad actors with less compute.
This just doesn't make sense. How are you going to prevent AI spam, AI deepfakes from causing harm with more compute? What are you gonna do with more compute about nonconsensual deepfakes? People are already using AI to bypass identity verification on your social media networks, and pump out loads of spam.
"AI detection doesn't work, and with how much better the systems are getting, it's probably never going to, unless you keep the best models for yourself"
I don't think that's true. I don't think even the best privately held models will be able to detect AI text reliably enough for that to be worthwhile.
I found this dubious as well, especially how it is portrayed as a simple game of compute power. For a start, there is an enormous asymmetry which is why we have a spam problem in the first place. For example a single bot can send out millions of emails at almost no cost and we have to expend a lot more "energy" to classify each one and decide if it's spam or not. So you don't just need more compute power you need drastically more compute power, and as AI models improve and get refined, the operation at ten times the scale is probably going to be marginally better, not orders of magnitude better.
I still agree with his general take - bad actors will get these models or make them themselves, you can't stop it. But the logic about compute power is odd.
Interesting quotes. Less sophisticated actors just means humans who already write in 2020 what the NYT wrote in early 2022 to prepare for Biden's State Of The Union 180° policy reversals (manufacturing consent).
FB was notorious for censorship. Anyway, what is with the "actions/actors" terminology? This is straightforward totalitarian language.
I get an error from that site too ("reporting engine is down!"). Is the site posted here directly querying the DOT database and knocking it offline, or just a coincidence?
> ** Planned Outage: A planned maintenance is scheduled this Friday July 19th 11:00 pm EST thru Saturday July 20th 11:00pm EST. During this time, the reporting engine may be down. Sorry for the inconvenience. **
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