Zanni

The distinction that ericjmorey is making (I believe) is that the reward is not guaranteed, only the opportunity.

The ACLU hasn't been a credible defender of free speech in some time. (FIRE and EFF still credible.)

I have a (USA) digital driver's license that I've presented to TSA via my iPhone a couple of times. It's explicit exactly what information is being shared. You tap (as if to pay), the information being requested displays on the screen, and you double-click to acknowledge and send.

Note: USA "paper" passports have included an RFID chip since 2007.

It was a paper record of every (paid) phone call. This was in the 80s before the switch to digital. The front side had the origin and destination numbers, the back side had the calling card number.

Also--we didn't use a 10-key! Our keypad was 2x5 rather than 3x3, and inverted (low numbers at the top).

As a former telephone operator from this era who spent most shifts frantically bubbling scantrons as business men rattled off their calling card numbers and call numbers at lighting speed, I would have been delighted by this break in routine.

I appreciate the response, but it seems that database can be constructed with or without facial recognition because photo ID is already required. So, I ask again, why is this bad?

Serious question: why is this bad? Is it just the 3% false negative rate? I don't see the negative privacy implications of face recognition when the alternative is to present your face (via photo ID) anyway.

That is who I mean, thank you. It's been a few years ...

Universe was the only series I watched (due to Scalzi being a technical advisor), but I found it infuriating that they let Tim Roth's character continue to have the run of the ship after he proved himself a psychopath.

I worked as a telephone operator a couple of summers and pay phones were a pain in the ass. The protocol for a long-distance call (and this was back when long distance was expensive, up to to a couple of dollars/minute), you'd collect for three minutes up front and refund if they went under. If the call went longer, the caller was expected to stay on the line and pay the balance, which could be considerable. Often they just bailed. There was one exchange near a military base where we'd have to handle lengthy long-distance calls from lovesick/homesick recruits, and so many of them bailed out at the end of call that we took to breaking in every three minutes to collect more coins. Worst part of the job.

It seems to be intentional. (I was confused by this at first, too). If your starting grid contains, e.g., a dot, you can safely assume it's a one-ship. But if you add a ship, the initial state is a block that resolves to a dot or end as appropriate when you complete it.

I appreciate the fact-checking and the self-reflection :) I used 1" as an estimate (I have a lot of paperbacks), but 1.34" is probably a better estimate for hardbacks.

Physical books are great. I love physical books. But (among other downsides) they take too much space. I've got just over 2,500 books on my Kindle. That's more than 200 linear feet of shelf space if they were physical books.

My ideal library is a hybrid: physical for art books, kid's books, reference books, large format or special edition, signed copies or sentimental treasures, etc., and digital for everything else. An iPad as a digital card catalog for the entire collection and a couple of Kindles for actual reading. (Impossible to browse on a Kindle ...)

For what it's worth, I loathe this sort of thing (damning by vague questioning): "But, if a composite is full of a measure that’s biased, how accurate is it going to be?"

Well, I don't know, and you haven't told me. Is it a consistent high bias? Low? Variable? How biased? How accurate?

What you're trying to say, without accepting responsibility for actually saying it, is "It's an inaccurate composite because it's based on biased measurements." But you don't know that, or you'd say it without weasel words.

Not remotely the same idea, but the Magic Puzzle Company [1] makes fantastic puzzles with "two solutions." They're traditional puzzles with hand-drawn art, but the first solution is in four distinct pieces that can be reassembled to make a slightly larger rectangle with a hole in the middle. (Similar to Sam Loyd's Missing Square puzzle. [2])

Then, a second set of pieces (in a separate envelope) allow you to fill in the hole with an image that (typically) wildly alters the interpretation of the original image.

[1] https://magicpuzzlecompany.com/ [2] https://proofwiki.org/wiki/Sam_Loyd%27s_Missing_Square

Yeah, this is the brilliance of the novel format. Someone presents an insight, and it can see obvious in isolation but then seems obviously wrong in context. "Of course we should favor throughput over efficiency" is obvious until you realize it means, for example, allowing idle time on incredibly expensive machines to favor responsiveness, which just seems wasteful.

In the novel, you get to see the characters bang their heads against these "paradoxes" again and again until it sinks in.

Surprising reference to The Goal [1], which Mr. Beast "used to make everyone read ..." and still recommends. The Goal is a business novel about optimizing manufacturing processes for throughput and responsiveness rather than "efficiency" and is filled with counter-intuitive insights. Presenting it as a novel means you get to see characters grapple with these insights and fail to commit before truly understanding them. Excellent stuff, along the lines of The Phoenix Project [2], with which I assume many here are already familiar.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goal_(novel) [2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17255186-the-phoenix-pro...

All cars should be taxed on a formula of miles and weight. I own an EV, and I'm happy to pay my share, especially for the increased weight due to the battery. I'd love to see taxes that incentivize smaller, lighter cars in general.

Yes. Card counters (advantage players at blackjack) studied shuffle tracking. I haven't seen much good material published on it, but I played on a team with a math whiz (physicist) who ran the numbers. For the casino we were playing at the time, the last 20 or so cards would be distributed over the bottom half of a six-deck shoe. A strategic cut would bring those three decks to the front, and you could play with a slight advantage.

Suppose you're at a full table and 12 of the last 20 cards are aces or tens (rare but possible). These get shuffled and cut into the first three decks, giving you a true count of four (12/3) for the first half of the shoe, which is significant.

We never really put it into practice, though, since: 1) you have to track the count for the last 20 cards in addition to the regular count, 2) shuffles change, 3) dealers are inconsistent, 3) casinos use different shuffles, 4) the typical advantage is likely to be much smaller.

My knowledge on this is at least 20 years out of date, though, so who knows?

Insurance—decrease variance. Gambling—increase variance.

Really difficult to estimate it's worth since the owners are determined never to sell or develop. If value can never be realized, is it still value?

The island of Ni'ihau (Hawaii) is also privately owned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niihau

The data you have is the data you have but not necessarily the ground truth. See, for example, San Francisco shoplifting statistics.

Some international flights have face scanners at the gate. Not sure if it's to take a photo in the event of an issue or an actual scan and comparison against your stored ID, but the length of the process (a few seconds) suggests the latter.

In fact, the 10oz gloves that boxers wear allow them to hit their opponents' heads harder and more often, resulting in more brain damage. In MMA, we typically see a few light blows followed by a knockout blow or a quick flurry of head strikes before the fight is stopped. In a boxing match, the fighters can trade head shots for 15 rounds ...

This sounds more like a wildfire management crisis than an insurance crisis.

They are rare (not unique), true, but I don't think they fail to recognize that. In fact, this post is the opposite of such failure. They're saying they're special because they choose to be--because they're clear on the tradeoffs and willing to make them.

There are plenty of other small, profitable, SAAS businesses out there, but you don't hear about them because they don't operate on the same scale (and they're not as outspoken).

Archive: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/03/01/death-valle...

And a video, since the pics don't seem to come through on the archive link: https://abcnews.go.com/US/video/reemergence-rare-lake-death-...

A pentagonal form of a Klemperer rosette (first thing I thought of also): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klemperer_rosette

so that no control point (the circled grab handles) is sitting on any line segment between two control points