I'm still waiting on my current, 60 hours of use a week, mid-2019 MacBook Pro to die or have any sort of malfunction so I can justify buying a new one. Its battery life has seen better days but that's basically it.
Linotype machines are marvellous and I'd highly recommend seeing them in action should you ever get the chance. They are the perfect intersection between a rube goldberg machine and a mechanical marvel to excite a part of my brain that I can't even properly put into words.
I hand-set a lot of lead type in a previous life, and I'm just fine now. As long as it's not aerosolized and you avoid eating or breathing it, lead is a non-problem. Just wash your hands. Of course, much lead was aerosolized during the era of leaded gas and kids ate leaded paint chips and those are huge problems.
Molten lead in a linotype machine might be an issue iff it creates lead vapor, but I'm not familiar with the literature on that subject.
The problem with leaded solders is from the corrosion that builds up on the outside surface of the solder wire. The pure lead is not that bad. Since the lead was recently melted in the Linotype case there might not be much of a health issue there.
Generally, lead poisoning is less of an issue for adults. They can slowly work it out of their system (or at least to a place it is not as harmful). The huge problem is with children. Lead poisoning interferes with brain development.
Anyway, wash your hands after touching lead before eating or smoking. They probably didn't know that they had to do that back in the days when Linotype machines were popular...
When I was a kid I visited a small-town newspaper that still used a Linotype machine. The typesetter made a slug with my name on it and gave it to me. I thought that was the coolest thing and I kept it for years, I'd use it with a stamp pad to stamp my name in all my books. Sadly it was lost at some point.
I won't resort to naming and shaming here but if you ever get contacted by a UK agency that 'resources vividly', immediately request a removal of your contact info per GDPR or you will get phoned daily for months on end.
If you're referring to Vivid Resourcing, they're truly horrible, I got interrogated by them for 30+ mins and they disappear, happened twice so it can't be a one off!
when I finish one of these calls with these UK recruitment agencies I feel so sick to my stomach. they really are hustlers and grifters in the worst sense of the word. never again...
Not true at all. I've done work for insurance companies in the past as well. While it's true most of them will not diverge from their standard contracts, some are very open to clients suggesting 'custom' insurance no matter how obscure the clauses. The only caveat of course being that it will cost you substantial amounts.
> I also work in insurance industry as a software dev - nothing that I have seen would let insure someone who would go under-prepared. One could fill in form that he goes fully prepared but once lied insurance company won't pay anything.
If you break the terms of the contracts you won't get covered of course. Same as with car insurance where you won't get coverage if you were DUI.
It acts as a "pre-emptive" tax shift. If more people pay taxes there's going to be less pressure on the government to set an ever higher tax rate, because now they receive more money while levying the same amount.
As someone who has lived in socialist countries for a long time... the Government always wants more money until they have it all.
It is as simple as that. "Less pressure" on the Government is a joke. The more it has, the more it wants.
If you give your power away, they take it, and want more. Power 101.
The money will be spent on things like public Media and public education to make propaganda for the Government. And on making the people in power mega rich, just like in China, Russia, Cuba, Venezuela or Argentina.
