美國汽車的兒童安全座椅法律,影響生育的意願

Hacker News Daily 上看到的,原文標題比較漂亮:「Car Seats as Contraception」,在 Hacker News 上也有討論:「Car seats as contraception (ssrn.com)」,重點是作者之一 (David H. Solomon) 也有跑上去回應。

Abstract 的部份把重點都講出來了,1977 年美國通過汽車的兒童安全座椅法律,但大多數的汽車無法放下第三張座椅,這反而使得生第三胎的成本大幅提高 (需要買空間更大的車),然後另外拉出資料分析因為法律而制止的車禍數量:

Since 1977, U.S. states have passed laws steadily raising the age for which a child must ride in a car safety seat. These laws significantly raise the cost of having a third child, as many regular-sized cars cannot fit three child seats in the back. Using census data and state-year variation in laws, we estimate that when women have two children of ages requiring mandated car seats, they have a lower annual probability of giving birth by 0.73 percentage points. Consistent with a causal channel, this effect is limited to third child births, is concentrated in households with access to a car, and is larger when a male is present (when both front seats are likely to be occupied). We estimate that these laws prevented only 57 car crash fatalities of children nationwide in 2017. Simultaneously, they led to a permanent reduction of approximately 8,000 births in the same year, and 145,000 fewer births since 1980, with 90% of this decline being since 2000.

濃濃的政治不正確感 XD

用 mRemoteNG 取代 PuTTY

由於架構的隔離政策,有些服務需要透過 VM 裡面的 Windows 存取,所以又花了點時間看看 PuTTY 到底有沒有改善下載問題,也就是 2014 年「Downloading Software Safely Is Nearly Impossible」這邊作者提到的問題 (之前在「如何安全下載軟體...」這篇有提過)。

而即時再過了兩年半,還是沒辦法確認你抓到的 PuTTY 是正確的,Let's Encrypt 還是沒上...

找了一些替代方案,看到 mRemoteNG 這個可以連多種不同 Protocol 的專案,應該會是解法,裝起來用了一陣子感覺還算 okay,之後應該會拿這個用:「mRemoteNG is the next generation of mRemote, open source, tabbed, multi-protocol, remote connections manager.」。

話說回來,找資料的時候發現「simon-git: putty-website (master): Owen Dunn」這篇,在三月提到了:

Switch to https for release binary downloads from the.earth.li

The main PuTTY website is still http until chiark sorts out
LetsEncrypt or other SSL arrangements, but I think we can sensibly
switch to https for the release binaries from the, which already
provides https.

後續好像就沒有進度了...

Google 自動駕駛車保護行人而申請的專利

在「Google patent: Glue would stick pedestrian to self-driving car after collision」這邊看到因為自動駕駛車的發明才有可能做到的專利。

一般的情況下,在汽車撞到行人後,駕駛會急忙停下來,而可能會導致後方車輛的追撞,而且可能會導致行人直接飛出去造成更多的傷害。這個專利規劃在車輛前端使用特殊的黏性膠,再透過減速讓行人黏在上面停下來:

The front region of the vehicle may be coated with a specialized adhesive that adheres to a pedestrian, and thus holds the pedestrian on the vehicle in the unfortunate event that the front of the vehicle comes into contact with the pedestrian,

The adhesion of the pedestrian to the vehicle may prevent the pedestrian from bouncing off.

專利的示意圖:

印度的 Uber 將會有「Panic Button」提供給乘客

在「Uber has a panic button in India. But don’t expect it to come to the U.S.」這邊看到印度的 Uber 將會有 Panic Button 給乘客使用,馬上想到這種按鈕 XDDD

不過實際讀了文章以及官方的說明「Uber Upgrades In-App Safety Features in India」後,發現是 app 裡面的緊急通報:

這應該是因應先前印度發生好幾起 Uber 司機犯罪事件所做的改變 (參考「India Uber driver guilty of rape」)。