Post version 8 work was done to modularise core Java. You can now generate a stripped down custom run time to bundle with your application:
415 karma · joined January 16, 2012
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightering
due to draft concerns for the larger vessel.
About 1% of the population could be considered psycho paths.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4059069/
So there is a high probability of anti-social behaviour well below 10,000 people.
The thieves would be looking for small change that people leave for parking (ie $1-2 worth of coins). Break into enough cars and they get enough for some more meth ($20-30 might be enough for a small hit). They would ignore any larger or easily traceable high value items in the vehicles (or houses for that matter), preferring items they could carry in a bag and reasonably claim were their own. The train was often used to transit quickly away, so any ill-gotten gains had to not be obvious.
We never left our cars on the street at night. Our neighbours that had no other option would simply leave the car unlocked or the window down. The cars were never stolen and the cost of replacing multiple windows or door locks per year would quickly exceed the cost of insurance (typically only one window/windscreen replacement per year via insurance would be excess free).
Economic downturns and interestingly Covid have had a huge impact on meth use here. My state has imposed a hard border with the rest of the country, so interstate drug trafficking has had a major decline. Consequently there has been an increase in cannabis use and alcohol consumption has gone way up.
I can't recall the last smashed car window in my street. So there are knock-on effects on crime as well.
A huge amount of research and development went into aeroplane design as people quickly realised they could be used very effectively for reconnaissance, strafing infantry, bombing and resupply. This led to the development of air to air combat which led to faster planes and eventually jet engines.
The German development of the V2 rockets for bombing London from a great distance led to a lot of work on rocketry which was then able to built on for the space race.
The space race was two super powers pouring enormous resources into research and development to ensure there would be no military gap from lack of capability in near earth orbit.
From a military perspective, colonising Mars is unlikely to have any major military benefit on Earth. I'd guess there are many other hot topics for the military to focus on (autonomous/semi-autonomous warfare, cyber warfare, biological warfare etc).
Colonisation of Mars is (currently) more likely to be pursued by commercial or non-military scientific purposes. Perhaps some of the commercial entities now rival small countries in terms of economic might. I doubt though that a commercial entity (Space-X) will be able to get very large groups of people to unite (and sacrifice other interests) in pursuit of a common goal in the same way that they do during times of conflict.
I have been cycle commuting to school, university and various workplaces since the 80's on BMX and MTBs. I started out commuting in casual clothes (school), continued with casual clothes when I began cycling significantly further to university, but needed to carry a change of clothes due to sweat or rain. I joined the university cycle club and was introduced (admittedly with considerable skepticism) to the benefits of lycra (less chafe, faster to dry) and eventually also bought a road bike. The road bike made a big difference to my commute times/effort.
As a post grad student I had access to showers in my department. So I could ride faster/further (for fun) then shower and change before starting my day. Almost all my work places since leaving university have had shower facilities that allowed me to continue cycle commuting. Almost all the other cycle commuters at those work places that rode more than ~5km would opt to shower also. Why? because they got sweaty or wet and dirty.
If the weather is so good for cycling why do people want the end of trip shower?
By far most people I have worked with will not cycle commute at all (too far, too hard, don't want to mess up their hair with a helmet, too unsafe on the roads, take too long etc). Of those that did cycle commute, many are not all year round commuters, for the reasons I outlined above.
You may be comfortable riding in all kinds of weather. My experience is that the vast majority of Australians are not - even when end of trip facilities are available.
Most commuters in my city that ride more than 5km to work have adopted at least some lycra as part of their kit. It handles sweat better in summer and can be rinsed of sand then spun and air dried in winter, so you aren't getting into cold wet gear for your ride home.
My city commonly has a sea breeze with a wind speed over 35 km/hr in summer. A lot of committed cycle commuters end up adopting road/racing bikes simply due to it being more efficient energy wise. Riding a hybrid or MTB into/across the sea breeze is significantly more fatiguing.
Many people here also cycle casually for exercise. These are more leisurely rides specifically for fitness. It is rarer for people to ride to the shops, restaurant or a friends house. Why? because they don't want to turn up sweaty in summer or wet in winter.
Note that cycling in general has grown in popularity in the past decade here, regardless of the above:
http://www.roymorgan.com/findings/6237-cycling-participation...
Australians are a sports mad bunch. We have had the Tour de France televised on a free-to-air channel for over 20 years now. Since the early 2000's this lead to many more people becoming interested in road cycling, especially men. This resulted in more cyclists on the roads (especially MAMILs). The increased number of cyclists on the roads, has in turn lead to more people being inspired to get on they bike for a leisure ride or to try cycling to work. Prior to that many people I spoke to would cite having to ride on the road as a big factor in deciding not to try cycle commuting as they perceived it as too dangerous.
So cycling as a sport has had a big part to play in getting more people cycling in general over here.
The laptop is now out of warranty, so I contacted Dell to see about a replacement battery. "Sorry, we don't support laptops more than 4 years old" was the response. The support person suggested I source a replacement battery on Ebay and find a local laptop repair place to do the swap.
I deliberately chose to purchase a high spec (for the time), expensive laptop so it would have good longevity and previously I have had good support from Dell. Seriously disappointed by Dell's response this time.
Will be giving careful consideration to repair-ability and long term support before making another laptop purchase.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0OdmRtuQew
Admittedly they are now "older" :)
Every now and then the fans wind up but that is usually down to browser tab going rogue.
Increasingly, modern car drivers are enclosed in noise dampened, environmentally controlled environments with some sort of sound entertainment playing (music, podcast, talkback radio). So car drivers are less able to make good use of sound and other cues for detecting other traffic.
The lack of sound from hybrid cars, for example the Toyota Prius when accelerating in electric mode, has caught me by surprise while cycling. Not knowing you are about to be overtaken can be dangerous because there is an instinctive fight/flight response which can cause a sudden flinch or overreaction away from the surprise and you naturally turn your head to look at the perceived danger. As you are normally cycling on the edge of the roadway there is a higher potential to now accidentally ride over/into an obstruction (drainage grate, kerb, pothole) and come off your bike.
So from that experience I would say Java definitely lived up to Write Once Run Everywhere. FWIW we used the Nimbus Look and Feel. Other LAFs may not have had as much polish applied.
There is a good answer to this question here:
https://bicycles.stackexchange.com/questions/10231/why-dont-...
Due to its roots, Hacker News started out with a community heavily biased towards people with entrepreneurial tendencies who are often optimistic by nature. Over time more tech people were told about Hacker News and started participating. These people in turn brought in other people from other academic fields (e.g. law, medicine, engineering, physical sciences etc). Many of the newcomers, especially those who had training beyond their graduate degree, are likely to have been immersed in an academic culture where ideas are put up to be critiqued. At a high level the goal being for ideas to be tested in a collaborative fashion and any weaknesses addressed so they can be improved. Everyone working together to move their field forward through the refinement of shared knowledge and understanding.
Having spent some time doing post-graduate research in science then transferring to working as a self taught software developer in industry - this difference in culture is something I've become aware of multiple times.
In my experience executives and business development/sales oriented people often struggle dealing with technical colleagues who point out problems in their ideas/plans. They perceive the challenges as negativity or pessimism instead of an attempt to refine the idea/plan to something workable or less risky. On the critics side, they have been sufficiently interested in the idea/plan to give it serious consideration so it can be disheartening to be ignored or rebuked for offering a critical response with the aim of refining the approach.
I've also noticed this difference in approach even when working with other software developers who went into industry straight out of university. From my perspective many of them don't routinely apply critical thinking in their work. They rarely question why the system is designed a certain way and simply try to jam whatever feature they are implementing into the current design even if it is a bad fit. This usually means adding many changes in lots of places throughout the code base, because it is quicker to do by the deadline (pace over perfection). Compared to stepping back a reviewing the business model at a higher level which would take longer to change but make the code easier to maintain in the long term.
You noted pedantic comments get upvotes. People who are deep in the details of a field have to be particular about word and language use to avoid misunderstandings and make communication with other people in the field more efficient (this often leads to heavy use of jargon). Marketing and sale oriented people like to be looser with word use to portray something with the best possible interpretation (ie "organic" products).
As a simple example, in a previous job I refactored an old code base doing Monte Carlo, Markov Chain simulations from doing each iteration sequentially in a single thread, to being able to run in parallel in multiple threads. For many workloads this meant a significant (many hours) reduction in simulation time. For other workloads the added overhead of collating all the results back into a single data set meant a slight increase in run time (a few minutes). The marketing people wanted to claim an X times speed up when promoting the new version (best possible interpretation for increased appeal to customers). I wasn't comfortable with that as I knew some existing users wouldn't have that experience (being pedantic).
I would see the marketing teams version as being way too loose with language (bordering on being untrue at times). They in turn saw my revisions as not sexy enough or too wordy. It took effort from both sides to get to something we were all comfortable with.
Having said all the above, I agree that sometimes HN can be unnecessarily negative of people's fun projects/weekend hacks. I sometimes like to play with sub-optimal solutions to problems because I have a sudden inspiration to try something and don't want to spend hours researching perfect approaches. These projects usually don't have any commercial or academic purpose, it's just an itch being scratched and an opportunity to do some greenfields coding with no restrictions (not something I get much opportunity for in my current job). I have seen other people's projects torn to shreds when they happen to make it onto HN and it always makes me a bit sad.
Is the critique and pedantry good or bad? I'd say it depends on the situation. Sometimes very good information or ideas will come from the critiques and the pedantry can help eliminate ambiguity from a conversation and lead to some new and interesting places (one of the main reasons I come to HN is the high quality of these conversations). Sometimes it can devolve into academic point scoring for no apparent purpose.
Maybe something for people offering critical feedback (including myself) to consider would be to lead or end their contribution with a positive note. This would at least signal their intention is to collaborate on getting to something better.
I'm sure what I've said above will be picked apart. I have generalised a lot to keep the response shorter. I do not believe all startup founders are optimists or technical people are all pedants etc. My point is more that the HN audience is composed of a wider mixture of people from different fields than when it started. This undoubtedly will affect the nature of the conversations.
I hope this response doesn't come across as negative :) It has been interesting to me to think about and speculate as to why it has occurred.
He quite quickly became distrusting of what people say and would adopt a negative analysis of situations. Why? - because for the majority of his shifts he has to deal with people who _are_ lying to him.
Lots of domestic violence calls, drug dealers, thefts, reckless driving, people with serious mental illness (danger to themselves and others). The perpetrators inevitably lie and often the victims are not telling the whole truth (to protect themselves from incrimination for something else or to exaggerate what happened).
Prior to joining he was a well rounded and very grounded person. As far as i can tell, he hasn't resisted the power-tripping trap but I can see some racial and socioeconomic stereotyping creeping in to his world view. It's sad to see but it shouldn't be surprising that people's jobs strongly shape their world view. Some other examples I've encountered personally:
- emergency medical workers strongly against motorcycle riding as they see so many horrific injuries and fatalities from accidents - a child services worker who assumed men interacting with children were pedophiles as her work involved re-homing children who had been abused
For the above occupations, the work involved exposes the workers to highly charged/traumatic situations often daily. A good place to start looking for a solution would be how to help these workers regain a balanced view of society.
There are serious challenges to recycling or repurposing lithium batteries:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1682-5
Granted there might be another battery breakthrough that could resolve this:
https://www.androidauthority.com/graphene-batteries-explaine...
At this stage, we should be exploring all options as some are likely not to pan out as expected.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-51697803
This means a reduction in the length of the cooler stable weather periods when prescribed burns are able to be performed:
https://www.dpaw.wa.gov.au/management/fire/prescribed-burnin...
So the opportunities when the weather is "just right" for conducting a fuel reduction burn are fewer. Various regional fire departments have stated they are not able to complete their planned burns as a result.
https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/hazard-reduction-may-be...
Not risking a prescribed burn getting out of control due to unfavorable weather conditions doesn't sound like shitty forest management policy.
Another factor leading to fuel load build up is the decimation of native wild life like quendas and woylies due to predation by feral cats, dogs and foxes:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-06/quenda-poo-helps-tree...
These small marsupials eat the leaves or dig the leaf litter into the soil while foraging. This reduces the build up of dry leaves on the ground and thus reduces the fuel load.
Depending on where you are, exposure would be the next biggest risk (many hikers get into trouble in the Stirling Ranges when they underestimate how cold it can get).
When you are hiking, you generally make enough noise/vibration to warn snakes of your approach. They will usually get out of the way. There is more risk if the temperature is still a bit cool. Snakes will then be sluggish, won't have moved away and may get startled. Wear gaiters it you are concerned and you'll be pretty well protected.
At certain times of the year, male kangaroos can get a bit obstreperous. It is rare though for one to get aggressive unless frightened or provoked. As with hiking trails elsewhere in the world, keep your food well sealed. This is minimise the risk of mice or quolls eating through your pack to get to the food.
If you are interested in hiking the South West of Australia check out the Bibbulmun track:
https://www.bibbulmuntrack.org.au/
Which meanders for ~1000km from Perth (state capital of Western Australia) to Albany. It passes through or close to many towns, so you can resupply relatively often.
There is also a MTB trail, the Munda Biddi, that follows a similar route:
https://www.mundabiddi.org.au/
Both trails have huts placed reasonable distances apart. The huts also have rain water tanks to help with the water access problem.
https://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/where-does-fat-go/11015048
The overall balanced equation is quite simple, showing fat molecules convert to CO2 and H2O. It shows quite clearly that you have to breathe oxygen in and carbon dioxide out in order to lose weight. I guess this is why high intensity exercise or endurance exercise aid in weight loss - in both cases you are elevating your breathing while at the same time exhausting your muscle glycogen stores.
The collision safety regulations appear to have caused side and rear windows to get smaller (probably to improve side impact intrusion protection) and pillars to get wider (rollover protection).
Aerodynamic drag is a major contributor to fuel efficiency. To my eye there has been a trend (in Australia at least) to blur the line between sedans and hatchbacks. Sedan boots/trunks are getting taller and more sloped to smooth the transition from the rear window. The rear of hatchbacks have been also getting more sloped. Both are attempts to get a more tear-drop shape without overly compromising utility.
After many iterations working within the same industry wide constraints, it is not surprising that designers all optimise their designs to similar shapes and sizes.
The same effect can be seen in road bicycles. The UCI imposes limits on wheel size and other physical dimensions on bikes that are allowed to be used in UCI events (pro and amateur racing). Above 30km/hr aerodynamic drag starts to a major effect on the power a cyclist needs to output to maintain speed or accelerate. In recent years bike manufacturers have been wind tunnel tuning their designs more rigorously. This has resulted in the aero road bikes from the major manufacturers converging to almost identical designs. Cycling commentators and journalists have started agitating for relaxation of the UCI rules to try to get some innovation happening again.
https://agedcare.royalcommission.gov.au/Pages/default.aspx
One of the 3 major issues identified in the interim report is:
to respond to the significant over-reliance on chemical restraint in aged care,including through the seventh Community Pharmacy Agreement
I found this handy when doing large refactorings (e.g. that took multiple weeks or months). I could define a custom TODO for that refactoring for labeling tasks that I knew I would need to resolve before completing the refactor but was not able to tackle immediately. It made it less stressful knowing I would be easily able to find the tasks again and the central list made it efficient to clear them all.
You don't get to iterate much on a building design once construction has begun.