SimonPStevens

Feels like we need something more than just a national bill.

Something like the European Convention on Human Rights, ratified into local law by each country. That would be much harder politically to overturn by the next parliament.

Can't see it happening though.

This is a quote from the Unabomber's manifesto for those who aren't aware.

The salary data is interesting. But I found the clear example of title inflation quite shocking.

Promoted to "Senior" after only 1 years and 4 months. (Not counting their placement year here) and the "principal" in just under 4 years.

I have close to 20 years of experience this year so it kind of makes me chuckle when people with only a couple of years experience get refered to as senior. Admittedly, my title is equally laughably inflated, it seems to be a growing trend.

(This isn't intended to be personally disparaging to jvt. My comment is more on the state of the industries naming conventions)

Bills like this keep coming back.

Can we instead look to pass the opposite? A bill that marks the right to use private encryption as a fundamental right?

Is that kind of thing possible?

Where or how would I support such an activity?

On the subject of monopoly, it's also interesting that it's roots are in a game created to teach the negative aspects of monopolies. The original game that modern monopoly is based on had two sets of rules, one that rewarded all players for wealth creation, and a second with the goal of creating a monopoly to crush opponents.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_(game)

Interesting comparing CMR3 to the newer Dirt Rally 2.

CMR3 roads are much much wider. I find DR2 almost too hard to keep the car from hitting the side all the time.

I wonder why that is. The narrower road seems more true to real life. But I'm not clear why CMR3 was made with the wider roads.

I can't find any plans that are actually accepting new customers for less than £0.27/kWh overnight. I'm pretty sure anything as cheap as £0.075/kWh is grandfathered into a legacy plan.

I would be happy to be proven wrong, I'd love to switch plans right now.

Can you share what provider you are getting £0.17 at night from? I can't get better than £0.27 currently.

I'm very sceptical about this claim. Would like to see a source.

Sure, we may have enough "money" to redistribute it. But if 99% of the population stops working, who is going to make everything we use, produce food, run power stations, and transport everything to us. Automation is great, but it doesn't cover anywhere near 99% of necessary jobs yet.

I suspect Insomnia or God Is A DJ was probably the first Faithless track I heard, but it was hearing the Reverence album that turned me into a die hard fan of Faithless and Maxi. I practically had it on repeat for months. I saw them live sometime in the early 2000s and it was amazing.

He just had a voice that I could listen to forever.

> "Pay heed to the Grand Oral Disseminator."

Firstly Asimov's laws aren't inviolable physical laws. They were just fictional idea that were suggested could be programmed into robots as a plot device in his books. The stories were frequently about unexpected side effect caused by intersections of the laws and specific situations that caused some kind of ambiguity in how they should be followed. Real world robots could be programmed with or without them, or with entirely different behavioural 'laws'.

Secondly, the 'laws' were about behaviour that applies mostly to the AI side of things, the fact they are referred to as laws of robotics is mostly immaterial, they are about behaviour rules for AI.

I think it depends a lot on the type of project.

If you are working on a web app that you can bisect and retest each new version in a few seconds it's an amazing tool.

If you are working on a stack of huge server apps with 1h+ build times, and complicated start up procedures you aren't going to find besect very useful at all.

I'm not sure I'd call 85miles extreme distance. It's very low compared to modern EVs.

I'd say this Citroen is totally targeting me. My need is less than 20 miles a day, and I'm saying I'd be nervous about how little buffer that battery would give me.

My point really was 46 miles range is too low, even for low usage. In poor conditions with heating, etc, if the range halves that doesn't leave any spare. Unlike an ICE you can't just run it close the bottom of the tank because charging takes time, and has limited locations.

I do love this, and hope more things like it gets made so there is choice. It's exactly the kind of thing I want for most of my day to day traveling.

It's competition though is what I did instead. Last year I brought a 7 year old Nissan leaf.

£9,800. 22Kwh battery (probably degraded about 15%, so estimated actual capacity is around 18Kwh) which gives me about 85 miles range with the current battery state. And I get a decent sized boot, 5 seats and 80+mph top speed.

I love my leaf, and use it to commute around 20 miles total each day plus lots of other local travel. It's perfect as a 2nd car for town driving.

However, that 85 mile range is only in good conditions. With the heating on in winter it's range is probably more like 40 miles. I'd say this Citroen's battery is too small for me to buy compared to my leaf. 46 mile range doesn't give you much spare, especially in winter when using heating. Unless charge points become a lot more ubiquitous. It shouldn't take them much to double the battery size though, and then I'd seriously go for this.

(Edit to add, my leaf also has air bags and antilock breaks. What with it being an actual car)

I had always assumed that recommendation algorithms didn't work on genres, but instead did a lookup based on something like:

"You like X" "Person Y also likes X" "Person Y also likes Z" "I should recommended Z to you" (proportional to the number of people there are who liked X and Z, compared to other options)

If this is the case (and perhaps I'm wrong), it's nothing to do with the algorithm not understanding the subtleties of the genre, but it's actually just that on average those subtleties disappear because they are unique to you. (Forgive me, I don't know your genres at all, but), I would guess that on average people who like Black Sabbath really do typically like Slipknot as well, and that is why the algorithm recommends them to you.

It's not that the algo is any worse than human recommendations, it's just that it's an average of all humans likes, which will never fit your exact personal unique preferences because they aren't you.

Different author, but sounds somewhat similar to 'The Light of Other Days' by Arthur C Clarke and Stephen Baxter.

Although iirc correctly it starts with being able to see other locations in space but at the same time, and the historical viewing is a second development.

Fantastic book, even if it's not the same one you were thinking of.

I really hope Dang or one of the others in charge here is reading this and is willing to consider it.

The change suggested here would be one of the greatest single improvements to the signal-to-noise ratio on this site, and even news in general.

It would be a policy change rather than a tech change really, and would need some enforcement. Just a reminder on the submission page, and perhaps a banner at the top of the home page highlighting the policy change, and directing people to flag titles in the wrong form.

(Or, failing that, does anyone have any suggestions for good tech news sources where the titles are in this format, this is definitely something I want to see)

Regarding number 4, "Don't ride against traffic."

Seems pretty obvious, but in my local area they've started building bike lanes for both directions on a single side of the road [1]. It's great that they have nice wide bike lanes with some separation from the cars, but quite frankly it's an accident waiting to happen at the junctions with one of the bike lanes running opposite to the expected flow of traffic.

Cars pulling out of side roads on that side now how to cross the double bike lane first, (which means looking both ways when you would only expect to have to look in one direction) before reaching either car lane. It's also not signposted that bikes can be coming from both directions. Cars going straight over a cross roads have to cross the double bike lane after the double car lane, so have to switch and look both directions twice at different times.

Worse, as a car, if you are turning off the main road and down the side road (either to the left or right), you now also have to watch for bikes coming up the bike lane from behind you which is very tricky.

Both of these situations goes against the well established norms of the road which I think makes for a very dangerous situation.

And finally, when the double bike lane crosses a more major intersection with traffic lights, they actually narrow it to a single lane running only with the flow of traffic. Bikes moving on the lane opposite to the natural flow are directed to cut across the other half of the bike lane and navigate the whole junction on the pedestrian pavements, crossing the roads at crossings. On a bike this significantly slows you down, unsurprisingly I've frequently seen cyclists ignore the guidance and attempt to navigate the intersection against the flow of traffic on the now single track bike lane. That's crazy dangerous as the timing of the lights pretty much guarantees that you are going to be passing in front of a turning or crossing car. I don't endorse the behaviour of cyclists who do this, and to some extent it's their fault if they get hit when not following the rules of the road, but given how awkward and slow they've made it to follow the 'correct' route, I'm not at all surprised to see it being ignored.

[1] Something like these: - https://www.buffalorising.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/202... - https://www.buffalorising.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/202...

I think of it more like a learning guide. Initially you include the guide lines and just sketch over them to refine the shape. Once you've become familiar with the shape you can just draw close to the final version with no guide lines, and just mentally visualise the positions of the guidelines if you need to.

I'm not sure I fully agree here. I think for me some level of equality of outcome is what I think would be best. Not complete equality perhaps, but a tolerance band of maximum acceptable inequality of outcome perhaps.

Let me elaborate. I think there should be a minimum level of outcome that every single person in the world should be able to attain with minimal or even zero individual effort. This level should cover basic human rights, plus the ability to live a safe healthy life. For example, the ability to afford food, water, shelter, full quality medical care, clothing, heating, safety, education, childcare, local transport, and having some money left over for entertainment, etc, perhaps some other basics I've forgotten. I would be happy to live in a society that had these things definied as clearly basic minimum requirements and no matter how badly any individual messed up their choices, or even just felt particularly lazy and just decided to stay in bed all day the society would always provide this base minimum level that everyone had available to them, guaranteed. It should be enough to provide for a safe and mostly worry free life. But not so high as to discourage most people from wanting to put in greater effort for greater rewards.

On the other end of the scale, I would be equally happy if there was some maximum level of wealth, beyond which no matter the effort put in no further personal gains could be made. I wouldn't like to guess what level that would be to make sense, although I'm reasonable sure that the existence of billionaires is pretty unnecessary. A progressive tax that at some point around a billon pounds just reaches 100% marginal taxation rate. If you earn further wealth beyond that you are just required to give it all to society.

Let's just say for the sake of argument that my described minimum level was assessed to cost £50k per person per year, and at the top end we were to decide to cap total personal wealth at £1b. What we've done there is introduce a maximum permitted inequality of outcome of 20000x. That is, the poorest person in our society can at the most extreme be at most 20000 times poorer than the wealthiest. This isn't total equality of outcome, we aren't saying everyone has to have exactly equal wealth, just that no matter the difference in opportunity or effort, there is a proscribed limit on the level of inequality.

I think this society would be a much better one to live in. Everyone would be happier knowing that even if things didn't go their way, there are some basics they would never need to worry about.

Equally, once you pass a billion pound wealth, are you really motivated by making more £££ anyway, I don't think it should be an issue for society to pressure those wealthiest individuals to seek other motivation rather than just continuing to generate personal wealth.

(Just to note, I fully understand the difficulty of actually implementing a wealth tax that works like the one I described, I know that taxing income and wealth are different and it would be nigh on impossible to do what I'm suggesting. I'm merely using this extreme example as a way to discuss the idea that some level of equality of outcome is good in my view)

I agree. They are unlikely to be intentionally exfiltrating entire videos. However, should the software crash, it's reasonable to assume a crash dumb of some kind could be sent. The crash dumb could include portions of memory, which would naturally include data from in progress frames or raw sensor data.

This may be jurisdiction dependant, but in the UK, the small prize fruit machine style games you find in pubs are required by law to payout a fixed percentage of their income over time. I believe it's 70%, but I think there are variations and exceptions to the rule.

So if £1000 is paid in during the day, the machine by law must pay out at least £700 in prizes. This is not allowed to be fully random, the odds of each game are not independent because they must by law ensure the minimum payout.

It's semi-common knowledge that the way to win at these machines is to watch them until you have seen someone else have a long losing streak, then take your turn when they leave as the machine is now 'behind' and overdue a payout.

Thank you. Lots to think about here.

Can you expand a little bit on why real estate is bad during times of inflation? And why only when RE rates are higher?

"Debt locked in at rates below inflation" seems to tie into real estate. You could get a 2% ish mortgage right now, even though inflation's running at 6-8% Seems a great way to devalue the debt quickly, provided you've bought something that holds its value with the money you've borrowed. With inflation high it seems rents are likely to go up so your mortgage payments become a decreasing percentage of your rental income.

Pensions: not just low, medium, high. My pension lets me pick specific funds, so I've always picked things categorised as "high risk" equity index funds that aim to track things like FTSE all share or S&P. Is that still just the best option? Do we still just assume that over a decent timeline the general market is still going to go up, so keeping in the market is better than messing around, even if there are down periods. And pound cost averaging means you get some benefits from the dips too.

What can be done do to prepare for inflation?

I've got a job with good income. I save a little monthly and invest in whole market index funds. I contribute decently to my pension, also in index funds.

What should I be doing to be best prepared for the next few years of inflation?

Should investments be moved towards real estate as that seems likely to grow with inflation? Or something else? What types of investments will do best under high inflation?

For pensions, again, is there something I should do there to best hold their value?

(I know the answer depends on how far away retirement is. For me it's still quite a way off, but I'm sure others closer to retirement will value advice for the situation where they need to start drawing down soon)

Accepting liability doesn't mean they require the system to be perfect.

Accepting liability really just comes down to who's insurance company pays when it fails.

If the manufacturer can demonstrate to the insurance company that their self driving system fails less frequently (or lower overall cost of claims payouts) than human drivers then the insurance company will happily charge a lower premium for cover. Even if it's not perfect. The closer the system can be demonstrated to be to perfect the lower the insurance premium is going to fall.

There is certainly a regulatory moat being set up here as it will prevent new startups from entering the space unless they can find an insurance company willing to cover their risk profile, which in turn means demonstrating a suitably high level of safety to keep the premiums affordable. But I think in this matter I want a level of regulation that says if you're making something that's used on public roads, and risks injuring or killing people you'll accept liability when it goes wrong. It's not much different from the system of mandatory insurance for drivers in most countries. If you're going to drive on the roads, you must meet a minimum insurance level whereby you can accept liability for any failure that causes damage to other property or people.

My experience was the opposite of this (not saying yours is wrong, just that it might be different for different people)

I did a 7 year stint as a contractor in which I worked at 7 different places, plus multiple smaller ad-hoc projects. Most contracts started with 1-3 month engagements. Most were also extended multiple times. But I never made any assumptions about extensions.

Knowing that I was only ever going to be somewhere short term made it a while lot easier to be be fully honest with people, instead of just telling them what I thought they wanted to hear. I found it put me in a great position to point out problems or give advice and recommendations for improvements based on my experience without any worries about upsetting anyone who was personally invested in the existing status quo. Because the consequences of the personal relationships weren't so critical, I would be leaving anyway

Knowing I was only there temporarily also made me much more conscious of writing up or handing over knowledge of the things I worked on. I always tried to make sure I was building up the client to succeed after I left.

I always wanted to do a great job, so doing something poorly because I didn't have any long term consequences was never really a factor. Many clients reached out and offered repeat business too, so the lack of long term consequences isn't really true anyway. If you do a good job, it adds to your future revenue stream.

I try to carry this mentality forward now I've returned to more conventional employment. Being honest about improvements needed, and working to help the team succeed in the long term.

Nice.

I'm pretty sure it's fast charging that is more detrimental to the battery life. The included charge cable that charges from a regular home socket charges at 3.3kw, which is the max you can do with the type1 socket on the car even if you use a dedicated home charge point (unless your particular car has the optional 6.6kw onboard unit upgrade). My charge point can deliver 7kw, but the car limits it to 3.3kw.

The ChaDeMo socket can charge much faster (50kw I think?), But you aren't easily going to do that at home.

I looked at a Zoe too, it's an equally nice car that fits the exact same niche for short range or town driving. It mostly just came down to the fact the particular leaf I found was the best balance on price vs age for what was on the market at the time. I'd have likely been just as happy with a Zoe had I found a good one.

£9800. 28,000 miles on the clock. Battery still reporting 12 out of 12 for health.

I did look at a few other used models, one a couple of years newer, but a lot of miles on the clock and quite a bit more expensive. This one I got just had the best balance of price, age, condition, etc of the cars I saw.

I briefly looked at new ones, but prices started at around £27k, and I didn't really want to spend that much. I tend not to buy new cars.

I recently bought a second hand Nissan Leaf (2015 model, so the battery is already 7 years old), and I have to say my experience with it has been fantastic, even through the winter.

The range is about 70-80 miles of general town driving 30-40mph in the UK winter, so cold, but not freezing most of the time. The range doesn't seem to be noticeable different between warm and cold days. Average temp is probably around 5c.

The range does drop noticeable on motorways. I haven't done a proper test, but I suspect it's probably only good for 40ish miles at 70mph.

As a second car it's brilliant. It's saved us a load on petrol doing the local trips, school runs, short commute, etc. Even with the current high power prices in the UK. It very much depends on what you plan to use it for, but if your usage profile fits what the car does well, it's a really nice car.

I plan to do a proper blog post at some point analyzing some data on it. Maybe after the summer and I'll see if the range improves.