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Things I Won't Work With: Dioxygen Difluoride (2010)

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267 points PebblesRox | 4 comments | 31 Mar 25 10:58 UTC | HN request time: 0.776s | source
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IlikeKitties ◴[31 Mar 25 14:38 UTC] No.43535583[source]▶
Not a Chemist but reminded me about this article: https://gizmodo.com/chlorine-trifluoride-the-chemical-that-s...

> Just to get the ball rolling, here’s a few of the more unusual things chlorine trifluoride is known to set fire to on contact: glass, sand, asbestos, rust, concrete, people, pyrex, cloth, and the dreams of children…

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borski ◴[31 Mar 25 15:26 UTC] No.43536141[source]▶
He wrote that one too, heh: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/sand-won-t-save-yo...

It’s linked in the article

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QuesnayJr ◴[31 Mar 25 17:45 UTC] No.43537687[source]▶
That's a different article. The Gizmodo article has a byline of "Melissa" and apparently is originally from TodayIFoundOut.com.
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groby_b ◴[31 Mar 25 18:21 UTC] No.43538029[source]▶
So, might be "inspiration". I suspect "Melissa" did not "find out today" - chlorine trifluoride isn't exactly the stuff you discuss at your average dinner table.

You need a whole bunch of expertise to write about it. Gizmodo does not usually have this expertise, but its writers do usually recognize snappy writing that might go viral.

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1. anotherboffin ◴[01 Apr 25 06:49 UTC] No.43543599[source]▶
Yeah, I suspect “Melissa” fed Lowe’s article to an LLM to get a quick article that’s sure to get views.
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2. messe ◴[01 Apr 25 07:08 UTC] No.43543720[source]▶
In 2015? 2 years before "Attention Is All You Need"?
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3. anotherboffin ◴[01 Apr 25 13:10 UTC] No.43546389[source]▶
Good point! I’ll be more careful before quick posting.
4. banannaise ◴[01 Apr 25 14:24 UTC] No.43547141[source]▶
Ah, I miss the days when this sort of soft plagiarism required a minimal level of effort and even some genuine research. It might even rise to the level of "acceptable" if she cited her sources more thoroughly. Sadly, as presented, her choice of both anecdotes and example materials makes it pretty clear that the author is mostly just rearranging Lowe's and Clark's words.