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[Frumple]

For what it's worth, the things seem easier to find nowadays. They also tend to go into things like blood sugar testing devices, which are around more than they were a while ago. Least feels like they're around more now than they were, say, twenty years ago or something.

[Trekkin]

Also related: the increase in use of FRICKIN WATCH BATTERIES in toys.  And where there aren't watch batteries, they are all AAA so they last like 3 minutes.  And it's not because the toys are too small to fit the space of even a AA or C - they are just probably colluding with the battery manufacturers.

Or perhaps they recognize that many of their toys' power needs can be met by a AAA cell, so they went with the most versatile form factor as far as they could to simplify production? If all your toys need the same battery, they also need the same battery clips and part of the same power supply and so forth, and the battery compartment can re-use an existing design to help get the molds made.

How feasible would it be to keep a set of rechargeable AAAs on hand and have your kid swap them into whatever toys they want powered?

[pisskop]

Ahh, when I was child I would recharge every battery, AAA or not.

[McTraveller]

Yeah you can use rechargeable batteries, but they last even less time than regular batteries of the same size.  So when you have young kids screaming to play, you are constantly swapping batteries.

Not Fun.

[Lord Shonus]

The power consumption of any form of electronics is far lower than it was 20 years ago. This means that anything that doesn't use motors will last at least as long with a AAA as the toys of yesteryear did with an AA.

[pikachu17]

Assassins Creed II seems to have a really unbalanced tutorial early part.
Many times it only tells me how to do something either after I figured it out on my own, after a section where it would have been useful, or both.
What takes the cake in my mind is Stealing however. To pickpocket, all you have to do is hold the foot button while walking into people, which is also the 'walk faster' button. They could have easily not had people he looted in the tutorial part have enough money for the doctor, so he steals a bit to pay for it, or otherwise make it so he can't do it before the game tells you how to do it, considering how easy it is accidentally steal.
It doesn't tell how to steal until the next arc after you can first steal, and after I stole over 2000 coins.
 It also tells you how to climb several missions after after it tells you how to freerun and sprint. Sprinting is the same button combination as climbing and half of it is the button for free running, so I didn't even realize climbing wasn't just a part of normal free running, until several missions after I first started climbing.
 There are many more cases of such things.

[McTraveller]

The power consumption of any form of electronics is far lower than it was 20 years ago. This means that anything that doesn't use motors will last at least as long with a AAA as the toys of yesteryear did with an AA.

Ah yeah, I was specifically referring to motorized toys.

[hector13]

The power consumption of any form of electronics is far lower than it was 20 years ago. This means that anything that doesn't use motors will last at least as long with a AAA as the toys of yesteryear did with an AA.

Ah yeah, I was specifically referring to motorized toys.

*waggles eyebrows*

[Greiger]

Spent a good two hours trying to make a simple mod for 7 days to die that added a very small chance to be able to wrench damaged solar panels that spawn in the world into solar banks and solar cells. (because they are not nearly good enough to be locked behind a perk that requires maxed int and a trader to get).  I'm still new to modding that game but it should have been simple even for me, it's literally 3 lines.  But I made a mistake, and because of one thing it never threw an error to tell me why it was not working.

In what world would you have the <append> command not throw an error when referencing something that does not exist.

---

Talking to the computer: Ok I want you to attach this post it note to that solar panel with the Id cntCollapsedSolarbank.
Computer: Got it boss!

*goes to solar panel*
Computer: Huh well theres something named cntCollapsedSolarbank but not something with the Id cntCollapsedSolarbank.   Should I throw an error?  ...nah I'll just create something invisible and intangible out of thin air with the Id cntCollapsedSolarbank and attach the sticky note to that!  Clearly that's why they specifically used the append tag.

*later*
Me: Why is my sticky note not on the solar panel?
Computer: I unno, looks fine to me.

[bloop_bleep]

Often associative maps have the semantic idiosyncrasy where accessing a key that does not exist creates a new entry in the map, with that key and a default-constructed value.

This is so that, for example, in C++, you can write "m[a] = b" to insert the entry (a, b) into the map m. This is also why I've heard the [] syntax be discouraged, in favor of .at(), if this sort of default-construction is not desired. Apparently the engine writers used [] somewhere to get an object by key and either purposefully or inadvertently triggered the default-construction when the key was not there. If they had used .at() instead there would've been an exception generated. If exceptions were not what they wanted they could have used .find() with a dereference, which would've probably generated a segfault instead, but would've probably been less confusing than creating a completely new object somewhere else and continuing on.

Or, at least, I'm guessing, since this situation seems like an example of what I've described above.

[helmacon]

Introduce a bacterium to mosquitoes? To what, kill them all off?

That would be ill-advised, even discounting the proposed method. Also likely impossible.

The news blurb states that it 'prevents the mosquitoes from carrying the malaria disease', without going into how exactly.

I've worked on this!!

Well, I've worked in the same lab developing primers to track the same infections in tick cells anyways. (ixodes scapula)
Basically it's just an infection designed to spike the host's immune response so it kills off everything it's carrying.

I did get to feed the mosquitoes sometimes though.

[Naturegirl1999]

Introduce a bacterium to mosquitoes? To what, kill them all off?

That would be ill-advised, even discounting the proposed method. Also likely impossible.

The news blurb states that it 'prevents the mosquitoes from carrying the malaria disease', without going into how exactly.

I've worked on this!!

Well, I've worked in the same lab developing primers to track the same infections in tick cells anyways. (ixodes scapula)
Basically it's just an infection designed to spike the host's immune response so it kills off everything it's carrying.

I did get to feed the mosquitoes sometimes though.

Are you an entomologist? What other research have you done? This sounds interesting

[Yoink]

Somehow, someone managed to accidentally catch a fly under a saucepan lid on the kitchen table. I only noticed the next morning that there was movement underneath it.
Also, earlier I found a green frog just sitting on the path as I came back from taking the rubbish out. It's a miracle I didn't step on the silly thing in the dark - or that the outside cat wasn't around to catch it, for that matter. He's been unusually bloodthirsty lately, assuming that dead rat/mouse the other day was killed by him, at least.   

[helmacon]

Introduce a bacterium to mosquitoes? To what, kill them all off?

That would be ill-advised, even discounting the proposed method. Also likely impossible.

The news blurb states that it 'prevents the mosquitoes from carrying the malaria disease', without going into how exactly.

I've worked on this!!

Well, I've worked in the same lab developing primers to track the same infections in tick cells anyways. (ixodes scapula)
Basically it's just an infection designed to spike the host's immune response so it kills off everything it's carrying.

I did get to feed the mosquitoes sometimes though.

Are you an entomologist? What other research have you done? This sounds interesting

Not an entomologist. (Wish i was sometime)

I am an ecologist.
Other notable research, hmm...

I worked with a grad student on her thesis a while back that was pretty cool. We did vegetation and species surveys for urban birds all over the city, and then overlayed that with demographic data to make a system for predicting the actual ecological value of different types of development. Good for urban planning and pretty to look at.

I also do a fuk ton of fieldwork at my current job. I work with quail as a wildlife technician, so its mostly radio telemetry and messing with automated recording systems, but it's fun!

I haven't really done much other serious lab work tbh, unless you count the occasional dissection of a quail. I did write a program to model quail populations over time given environmental data once, but it was hot garbage. I don't exactly have the most extensive resume tbh, I only just graduated a few days ago.

[Naturegirl1999]

Introduce a bacterium to mosquitoes? To what, kill them all off?

That would be ill-advised, even discounting the proposed method. Also likely impossible.

The news blurb states that it 'prevents the mosquitoes from carrying the malaria disease', without going into how exactly.

I've worked on this!!

Well, I've worked in the same lab developing primers to track the same infections in tick cells anyways. (ixodes scapula)
Basically it's just an infection designed to spike the host's immune response so it kills off everything it's carrying.

I did get to feed the mosquitoes sometimes though.

Are you an entomologist? What other research have you done? This sounds interesting

Not an entomologist. (Wish i was sometime)

I am an ecologist.
Other notable research, hmm...

I worked with a grad student on her thesis a while back that was pretty cool. We did vegetation and species surveys for urban birds all over the city, and then overlayed that with demographic data to make a system for predicting the actual ecological value of different types of development. Good for urban planning and pretty to look at.

I also do a fuk ton of fieldwork at my current job. I work with quail as a wildlife technician, so its mostly radio telemetry and messing with automated recording systems, but it's fun!

I haven't really done much other serious lab work tbh, unless you count the occasional dissection of a quail. I did write a program to model quail populations over time given environmental data once, but it was hot garbage. I don't exactly have the most extensive resume tbh, I only just graduated a few days ago.

that’s all very interesting. I find biology very interesting, and am trying to figure out what to go into, I find ecology cool, aswellsd parasites. What would it be called to study how parasitism originates? When you dissected quails, were you looking for anything in particular? If so, what?