People used to do a lot of stupid stuff. If you live alone and are conscious of the risk, sure, this is not a terribly dangerous item if you're safe about it. If you live with pets or children, it's entirely sensible to be concerned about the risk. A mercury spill can seep between the floorboards and contaminate your house with volatile mercury vapors for years to come if not properly managed.
Maybe in a pinch, doesn't seem very sustainable. A single decent 400 watt solar panel produces about the same continuous power as a horse, and doesn't consume 20 lbs of hay per day, or pee on your generator.
Sure, plenty of people also wear a 14 oz hard hat strapped to their head all day with no negative health impacts. Doesn't mean it's enjoyable or comfortable for everyone.
The property you are talking about is generally called "deniability" in the literature, whereas the GP is talking "verifiability" ie. being able to verify your own vote is cast correctly. They are both valuable, sometimes mutually exclusive, but not necessarily, see eg. https://petsymposium.org/popets/2024/popets-2024-0021.pdf
You’re overthinking it. “Country” is simply more ambiguous when used as an adjective. “F5 announces attack from country hackers” sounds silly and confusing.
"Simple stochastic blob detection" is an abstraction. You write (or import) a function where the the gnarly logic lives and call `detectBlobs()`. "Use an abstraction" doesn't mean you should use the same abstraction for every task, you should use the right tool for the job.
He didn't "do it", he was one voice among many astronomers who have been calling for a reclassification for years, the IAU voted and made the decision. It's a little silly calling him out for "doing it" for ego reasons when you are the one implicitly giving him credit for it... He didn't write the definition, he didn't chair the committee, he wasn't even on the committee. All he did was leave it off the list of planets at the Hayden Planetarium, where he was director.
Is it still trespassing if the door was unlocked? Yes. Not sure why so many people have trouble applying the same principles of unauthorized access to computers.
Perhaps they are optimizing for having plausible deniability/a fully fleshed out backstory in case they are questioned by eg. local cops or a security guard, moreso than inconspicuousness to a random passerby who is unlikely to pose any danger with their idle theorizing
There is at least one area where ATtiny still outcompetes RP2040: low power consumption. Even in its lowest-power dormant state, 2040 still burns around 200uA, whereas the ATTiny can sleep on only a handful of uA or less. Even during active use, an ATtiny with low voltage supply and low frequency clock can often do what you need with an order of magnitude or two less power than a 2040. So for a hobbyist project to build a battery-powered device with long lifetime, it’s hard to beat the ATtiny. Otherwise I completely agree!
Also not that long ago electricity and clean drinking water weren't a thing. The fact that people can make a career as an artist now, and couldn't before, is something I'd consider an advancement! "Nothing wrong with that" is a conclusion that simply doesn't follow from the rest of your post.