So my team lead ordered a bottle of a particularly nasty chemical (don't remember what, this was long ago) Thing is, he went on holiday immediately after and didn't tell anyone about it. The bottle had to be shipped and kept at -20℃ otherwise it would decompose into a deadly gas; one of those lovely CMR types. So next thing that happens is, I get called on my day off by the boss saying that there is a scary box in the lab and if I could check it out. I was reluctant but I figure I'll check it out. I though to myself that it was a little unusual that they would ship it in a styrofoam box without any dry ice (it had evaporated) so I take out a slightly bloated bottle which seems to be filled with some liquid. I then tear of the package label and read the MSDS. At this point I read all the scary labels and realize that this thing has been out here for a while, all the dry ice has evaporated, the bottle is bloated and filled with gas which I am sitting right next to. So I turn on ventilation and GTFO. I inform the boss who immeditally got his home freezer to cool it down. I meanwhile started to notice a stinging in my eyes (which was one of the effects) We wash out my eyes, stinging goes away, lungs are fine and everything ends without injury.

TLDR

Coworker orders deadly chemicals, goes on holiday, doesn't tell anyone, almost kills me.

I'll forward your complaint to the person I stole it from.

Shame it's such a shitshow thuis year :/ lot's of great submissions otherwise.

I tried to read it like 5 times and was like "damn guess my german isn't as good as I thought" but that was apparently the point lol 😅

Noita, but you just suffer along instead of growing

• Laser holography and optics. After I took an photonics course I became obsessed. I am attempting to build a laser holography setup to capture "true" 3D reflections on a piece of film. Even getting cheap diode lasers to lase coherently at high currents is a challenge. It's a black hole for money so I need to limit myself but it is just so fucking interesting.
• Cameras. I am not a good photographer but I love cameras. I can ramble on and on about every single function detail and the history too. I even built a scientific camera for my job from scratch. And beyond that I even started getting into the math behind distortion correction, stereo, panorama etc.
• 3D printing is a major rabbit hole. Especially if you've built your own printer.

Well Chrome(ium) has almost all of the browser market share and google is trying to push something called web environment integrity which would implement a sort of certification system where web servers evaluate the authenticity of the client. If you extrapolate that idea a bit further it boils down to "we won't serve you content if we don't like your browser, device, OS, etc". Which I would consider as hostile to the open but rapidly closing internet as we know it.

Edit: I forgot to make my point lol. Firefox is a completely different browser engine from the chromium based browsers which is why you see a lot of people recommending firefox because they don't comply with web integrity. I don't think it's working though because this is something only the techbros and the cybersisters care about while everyone else just goes about their day.

not to be a party pooper, but as far as I know the casimir force is essentially the van der waals force. The way I understand it is that the vacuum energy method used to calculate the force on the plates is not correct, however it seems to be an approximation of the underlying driver of this effect which is the van der waals force.

Here is a publications in Physics letter that outlines the idea.

https://arxiv.org/abs/1605.04143

It's likely a light read for a physicist but a though one for a well read electrical engineer (me) but once again, I'm not a physicist so take it with a grain of salt.

He is trying to sell his book on quantum computers which is probably why he brought it up in the first place

I wouldn't call this guy a top physicist... I mean he can say what he wants but you shouldn't be listening to him. I also love that he immediately starts shilling his quantum computer book right after his statements about AI. And mind you that this guy has some real garbage takes when it comes to quantum computers. Here is a fun review if you are interested https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=7321.

The bottom line is. You shouldn't trust this guy on anything he says expect maybe string theory which is actually his specialty. I wish that news outlets would stop asking this guy on he is such a fucking grifter.

Can't wait to sell my excess brain power to crypto miners

Like, do people know that you can just go there and have a tour?