Did your flight eventually take off? Was the captain legitimately concerned about an indication, or was he just aware of the emergency declaration of Flight 1549 and waiting to see how it played out?
1,527 karma · joined July 15, 2011
Note: That is Dot CO -- no M -- just CO!
My youngest (2.5 year old) is at the ER with my wife right now getting an x-ray (insurance & the pediatric urgent-cares all referred us to ER, no one else would x-ray <3yr olds) -- I'd guess it'll cost us at least $2-3k, assuming they say it's "not broken". Substantially more if it "is broken". Yay USA.
"In addition to Texas.Net and Data Foundry, Ron and Carolyn established a Usenet company, Giganews, and an Internet security solutions company, Golden Frog, which provides one of the world’s leading VPN services, VyprVpn."
How extremely curious -- they are & have been a major seller of Usenet access & "privacy"/VPN services for the past few decades; hmm.
I'll probably pick it up for her next iPhone, which likely will be a higher-priced one, but even at the lower end the variance reduction isn't the worst thing for a luxury item that is relatively prone to breakage.
It's open-source & MIT-licensed; if it's better than Unity's GI -- and it IS better, because Unity does not currently have ANY realtime-GI solution in their latest versions (they stopped licensing Enlighten for current/2020.x+ versions) -- so why wouldn't Unity just implement this, too?
There's nothing that appears to be stopping them from doing so, other than pride perhaps; part of me really, really hope that they'll do exactly that, though I've yet to dive into the code to see how viable it may or may not be given Unity's current SRP situation(s).
For small shops (ie low or no revenue), you only need to pay that when you're ready to actually ship/make a build.
Note that the costs are higher if you're revenue is huge, it goes up to like >$100/seat/month or similar IIRC, I think that kicks in if you're in the 7-figures of annual revenue.
It's not free, and it can get expensive -- but you have to do the math on what you get, how much each will cost you monetarily & in time / opportunity cost, etc. IMO Unreal looks pretty compelling, and if they had C# support we'd jump to it in a heartbeat; I really don't want to write C++ on a day-to-day basis. If Godot keeps it up, then it may be the answer, in another 18 months or so -- but probably not wholly a commercially viable option quite yet, especially for mid-to-small shops.
When we pay US contract labor, we generally send the "gross cash amount". The US contractor actually has to fill out a form upon commencement that says how their taxes & social insurance will be paid; at the end of the year they get a form from the businesses they did work for which shows total paid, and they use that to do their taxes.
Same thing for international contractors -- they just have to deal with their local jurisdiction's taxes, instead of the US IRS.
Canned response (understandably) from support which just asked us to "re-schedule it to another day" (which was at that point a week out min), and then after 2 weeks I got a cancelation email and they finally issued the $500 refund. We pay the "premium" yearly price to InstaCart, too. =|
We now have no faith in them, because if we schedule a delivery for a week away and then the food doesn't arrive we're kind of stuck; PostMates has been decent, depending on the driver you get, and has continued to be same-day.
It's saved us a ton of time/hassle, even ignoring the fee savings (which have been somewhat substantial for most countries & currencies).
To me, that's a huge part of our game -- catering to the NPCs, specifically figuring out "why are they missing X? Oh, because they're walking Z distance to the nearest bathroom!". I think the AI is fantastic but, when functioning perfectly as [we would have] expected, we still get complaints about why the 'dumb AI' will do X or Y. Part of that is defintiely a UI/UX issue on our part -- but another part is that players generally aren't used to it and they expect much more "robotic" or obvious/easy behaviors from agents/NPCs.
Emergent & opportunistic behaviors are awesome (IMO at least), but a lesson we learned is that they may not always provide players with the desired or expected gameplay experience. It'll of course always be game-specific, but it's something we will keep in mind & likely simplify further in our next game.
In SimAirport we use flow fields, they're great for crowds & they scale incredibly well with agent count. We use them for "long distance" traversals, and then we use "local" A-star like grid search for the "last-mile" of an agent's journey.
For flow-fields, we start by dividing everything up into "sectors" based on game logic -- and then further, into "sub-sectors", essentially just basic abstractions of the graph with smaller node counts. It does have an impact on path quality but for the scale we operate at in SimAirport the trade-off is a no brainer. The abstractions then limit the flow-field's graph size & the destination-count that any given subsector (abstracted-node) can have -- essentially it's a hierarchical (pseudo HPA-star) approach to flowfield pathfinding / navigation, and the abstraction also has major benefits for reachability queries & game-logic driven "rules" (ie load-balancing of capacity-constrained paths [stairs/escalators], one-way paths [ie directed graph algos], etc).
Steam almost always already knows if the game has a '64-bit macOS depot' configured -- ie ships 64-bit binary for macOS -- though in some cases the 'depot' may be configured as "macOS - All" in which case Steam may not know for sure.
When Catalina released, they defaulted the checkbox to "No" regardless of the game depot configuration. Any remotely recent game that supports macOS almost certainly is shipping a 64-bit binary (been quite a while since OSX was 32-bit only) -- so odds are very good that games supporting macOS will work with macOS Catalina, at least likely for anything in the last 5 years if not longer.
In our case, it took several weeks to find the checkbox to update our store page. In all fairness, Valve sent out an email alerting of the concern ahead of time; we just didn't read it thoroughly enough to realize that the default setting would be "No" even when explicitly having a 64-bit macOS binary configured.
We're using liquid pool chlorine diluted with water -- pool chlorine is just higher-concentration bleach.
Although not scientific by any stretch, I know that the general guidance (and my experience from chlorinating & testing pools) is that you want to check the dates on the chlorine when purchasing because the strength can be substantially lower than stated if it's been sitting on the shelf for a long time. My understanding is that the effect is worse if the product has been sitting outside in direct sunlight / high heat (ie outdoors at a home improvement store), which I believe causes concentration to drop faster.
If you're having trouble finding bleach though, likely can get some at a pool store or a big-box home improvement store in the pool chemicals area. We just mix it down to suitably diluted concentrations in a spray bottle -- readily available & much cheaper than off-the-shelf spray products. I wasn't aware it might be 50% lower concentration in 30-days though, will have to re-mix ours here soon. But that's still small potatoes overall, a gallon of bleach goes a long way and has lots of uses. :)
Similarly, automated check-in kiosks are then usually unable to find the reservation via credit-card or passport scan -- meaning you're back to looking up the reservation code, and even that often fails, as if the apostrophe just flat-out causes issues with the query/lookup or something.
It can be very frustrating, and I'm increasingly often impressed (and vocalize the same) when I spell my name and the agent enters it correctly AND the system flawlessly handles it, too! The DMV systems in my state are one such example where I used to have issues but, in recent years, the problem appears to have been wholly addressed/handled.
My experience has actually improved substantially in the last 10 years or so, and most of the government systems I encounter these days actually handle it properly (as well as handling suffix properly too). That said, I've somewhat recently started having trouble checking in for flights again -- I flew last month and it took the ticketing agent >20 minutes to find my reservation on both the outbound and return flights, even despite my providing the 'confirmation code' / itinerary email (we were checking bags & flying with infants, else I'd have done online check-in).
It can be really frustrating -- though I'm hopeful it will continue improving and hopefully be a smoother experience by the time my kids are adults.
Location: Las Vegas, NV
Remote: Yes
Willing to relocate: Yes, for the right opportunity
Résumé/CV: Available via email to qualified requestors
Email: hn@dantonio.co (just CO, no M)
Senior developer with 15 years of wide-ranging business, management, and technology experience. The breadth of experience along with my can-do attitude means I've done a bit of everything: from full-stack web development to racking/stacking servers, on-call/dev-ops responsibilities, server admin, DB admin & data warehousing, video servers from scratch, and everything in between. An additional 6 years of game-dev experience (Unity) in which I obtained funding, built & managed a team, wrote code, and eventually shipped a successful title to Steam.
LOOKING FOR
I am most interested in technology-related management/leadership roles where my efforts have the potential to make a large & material business impact.
I have not previously been actively seeking employment, but I am always open to potential opportunities; if you have something that you think I might be a great fit for then I'd love to connect and discuss further! :)
Specifically talking about the business of "essential oil diffusers" and the sales of essential oils. From my understanding, the diffusers are largely akin to ultrasonic humidifiers containing oil instead of water (though several forms of diffuser exist including ultrasonic, evaporative, heat, etc) -- which I would imagine is basically just putting oil into the air for later inhalation...
The article mentions several times, and somewhat unsurprisingly, that the inhalation of oil is not good for you or for the health of human lungs. Is this the case with all types & classes of oils (ie "essential oils"), or are oils used for vaping specifically bad/worse, or is there just not much data on the broader topic of inhalation of atomized oils yet?
I've read the relevant Wikipedia articles and read through the studies/sources that are freely available, but if anyone has any further insight or knowledge I'd really love to better understand it.
FWIW, my personal guess would be that the inhalation of most any non-gaseous matter is probably bad for you -- but if there's any science/data out there on it I'd love to hear about it.
What oversight is there on the ratings agencies themselves? How do we know the distribution of scores is the same today as 10 years ago (and proportionate to credit-worthiness)? Is there anything that prevents credit-ratings companies from under/over valuing the credit-worthiness for large swaths of the population?
Is there historic data available to correlate "consumer credit score" to distressed notes -- and can that be done in a forward-looking manner, to exclude credit score 'fudging' as a factor, and to better be able to know that it's apples-to-apples comparison historically speaking. Otherwise, could it not simply be that borrowers previously known as higher-quality borrowers are simply being rated more poorly/cautiously, for instance? I'm not saying that is the case, but I've always felt that the incentives seemed strange.
Are credit rating agencies paid (by lenders) based upon their prediction accuracy?
Perhaps the data exists on this, but to my unresearched mind there's a lot of "fudging" potential within it all by itself. For instance, maybe the current 'borrower state' that gets you a 690 previously would have given you a 725; or maybe it's the opposite.
I understand how averages work, but is there any oversight or auditing done on the rating agencies and the ratings themselves? It just seems ripe for 'gaming' at that level IMO; if banks need to sell financial products and they buy the ratings from the agencies, surely they can lean on an agency to 'fudge' numbers one direction or the other (I'm speaking in aggregates here)?
Anecdotally, every time I look at my credit score I cringe -- I've never carried much debt, have always paid it off on time or early, and yet my credit score stays somewhat low, seemingly because I largely don't participate in "the system". Furthermore, every time I've ever applied for credit I end up with scores (and offers of credit) far in excess of the numbers I see when I either get my 'free credit report' from the 3 agencies, and they're similarly different than the numbers I see if I pay to see my reports from the 3 agencies.
I don't know, it just seems like a "chicken-egg" problem to me, and one where the rating agencies are perhaps incentivized in a way that does not align with the "economy" as a whole -- and is instead much more closely with their high-value customers (lenders). I also feel like there's so much "missing data", which could probably tell quite the tale, for instance, if someone such as Google was to begin a 'ratings agency'. Half of my finds that to be a scary thought, the other half of me thinks that we'd probably end up with objectively better outcomes, both economically and probably, in many cases, even individually too.
In that case, it seems as though the rights-owner should simply take the standard route (even if suboptimal) to enforce their rights -- given the volume, they could likely work out a much better way to protect their IP (or automate it, in the worst case).
I'd be a little bit surprised if they cared a whole lot, given that finding the fonts is trivial for the reasons stated above. Almost comes across blog-spammy at that point, heh.
When you say 'the right to serve the font from your webserver' -- in this case, 'your webserver' may simply be GitHub's web-server, a service they provide to you as part of your payment to them (either because it's part of the app you host on GH, or as a piece of the website hosted via GH Pages [0])...
Assuming that the font's usage for the repo'd app/site is OK per the license terms, then I'd be surprised if its availability in the repo would solely cause it to fall out of compliance with the license. I suppose that the licensor could, if they chose to do so, specifically include terms to preclude the usage of the font on any sites hosted with "repository or other open file listing indexes", or any other similarly restrictive arbitrary terms.
I don't mind paying a delivery fee or tipping the driver. I do however take issue with pretending that there is no delivery fee despite that clearly being an outright lie. Not that I'm overly inclined to do so (at the current fees), but it also makes it nearly impossible to compare pricing & shop around -- because you aren't going to see the actual delivery fee ("service fee") on a "Free Delivery" order until you're at the very end of the checkout/confirmation process.
It's obviously not very ethical, though it's unclear to me if it's illegal or not. It probably should be illegal though, and they should have to declare "cost = $0 delivery + XX% service charge" or similar IMO.
It seems to me like we've recently (~15-30yrs) had a lot of new technology deployments (and accessibility to the underlying data that's produced) which might considerably help us with gaining an understanding over time. Things like high-resolution, high-precision aerial & satellite radar/lidar/photography and the like.
I tend to think it's just a function of time at this point, but on geological time scales that may still take quite a while I suppose.
-It's not in the affected serial number range.
-Our records show that your device has already been serviced as part of this Program.
Was my serial number originally part of the recall, and they already knew about the issue and fixed it for refurbs going out? Is it incorrectly stating that my device is unaffected? Am I truly in the clear with this serial?
To be clear, I have never taken this MBP in for service since purchase -- and it was purchased as a refurb directly from Apple.
Finding fun mechanics that add to CPU load is awfully easy. ;)
The issue is primarily that of the reward versus cost -- especially the opportunity cost.
When the system is rewritten, will the business have increased revenue or decreased cost? Will it do so significantly, surpassing at least the cost to rewrite (salaries, etc) -- that's the absolute minimum bar, but then you have to consider the opportunity cost which is the real concern:
If you had instead spent the same amount time adding new features, implementing an A/B test suite to increase conversions, improving marketing capabilities, retention mailers, or really any other activity that could positively impact the company business metrics -- would the impact be better than the impact of the rewrite?
In most cases the customers (internal or external) don't really know or care how good/bad the underlying code is, as long as the product serves their needs. When that's true, even partially, the value of 'rewrite' almost never exceeds the opportunity cost alone, let alone the absolute cost (and that's to say nothing of the risks).
Sometimes you manage to catch some of these early on, but often they aren't caught until later in the process -- at which point the cost for the change (and the impact on budget/timeline, and potentially even the very architecture you set out to fix!) is drastically higher.
I've seen it happen a number of times where the 'spec' seemed simple enough at commencement & throughout most of the project; then you'd have each department test & the reports would start coming in... and the result would inevitably be a multiplier on the project scope.
Not from missing features mind you, but via the omission of 'complexity handling' / business logic which was documented -- but the code itself was the documentation, which isn't overly unusual (and IMO isn't even a particularly bad thing in many cases, though not all).
Furthermore, it's often nearly impossible to even be able to ascertain the 'right answer' until you've gained significant exposure to both the application & the business needs; in my experience, you'll have a far better understanding & appreciation of the architecture after a year (or three) of exposure. At that point you are much better positioned to objectively understand the potential ROI (or lack thereof) on a rewrite project vs a more conservative but concerted effort towards incremental improvement over time.
When mentoring developers on this general topic, one of the key things that I emphasize is that a functional application (even if substandard in architecture) is already solving a business need and often generating revenue/profit/positive ROI (as the case may be) for what was probably a "[re]write" project at some point in the past. Rewriting is a large undertaking with many unknowns & high costs, often higher than anticipated, and with no guarantees of reaching full functional parity in a given stated timeline. That results in difficult budgeting & ROI calculations (read: risky), and typically means the project itself is risky -- meaning the potential reward would need to be quite large to be worth it & offset the risks. I find that to rarely be the case when you already have a functional application, even if substandard. ;)