jnty

News websites are failing every day. Even Buzzfeed had big layoffs a few months ago. If your revenue model relies on making your website increasingly less user-friendly, it might have kept your head above water for longer than some competitors, but it can't be sustainable.

'Biodegradable plastic' is great I'm sure but it promotes bizarre thinking like this. How about we just decide not to have mass-pollution parties for no reason, rather than trying to reduce their impact with expensive new materials?

I'm all for 'thinking big' but not in a way that seems to have literally killed people in the meantime.

If we believe we can have driverless cars in 10 years, I don't understand why we can't have smart speed limiters as a first step now.

Good - so it keeps them honest. Are you suggesting they should be forced to publish timetables which they know will be wrong 10% of the time?

On trains and planes, my main critieria is that I arrive by the stated arrival time and therefore am pretty unfussed by stories about padding time etc - that's more of a long term structural concern than something that will bother me on the day. I think operators have figured this is all most people really care about over time (perhaps excepting highly competitive routes.)

You lose this ability to check timings with a non-fixed timings, and have to rely on 'oh, it's probably about half an hour from here to here' or google's guess at the real timetabled journey you'll do (which the operator hasn't really promised you at any stage.) People don't seem to mind this too much.

I wonder if part of this is that waiting for a bus is usually less pleasant than being on one in countries where there is often cold/windy/rainy weather. That's something you don't really get with long-distance trains or planes. I'm going to be grumpy if I have to wait in the pouring rain for 15 minutes, even if I still make it to my appointment on time.

It seems an odd thing to get hung up on, really. I'd rather have universal healthcare than lots of neon lights.

This is wrong on a higher level too as most commercial software will disclaim all liability for the correct operation of their software unless you pay them lots of money for a support contract. Turns this is just as viable a business model for OSS too, as Redhat and others found out.

It's an interesting project from a heritage point of view, but it feels like a throwback from when Havana was simply the playground of rich Americans. I wonder if this is a history residents really want to go back to? Having said that, I suppose a lot of retro fashions call back to a past that was darker in some respect, but people rarely care.

I wonder how many other articles could do with a conclusion entitled "None of This Matters"?!

I've seen the 'private supply' notices but I've never seen them say that water should be treated first (nor have I ever had problems with not.) It's disappointing if they're starting to do this in a blanket fashion.

This is getting closer to a solution but it assumes that damage is totally reversible given money. If you punch me and break my nose, I can sue you for 'damages' (loss of earnings, medical expenses etc) and in the eyes of civil law everything is OK - but really it would be much better if it hadn't happened in the first place! We recognise that by placing a blanket criminal ban on assault, and in the future I think we're going to have to accept that a lot more for negative-externality actions.

It sounds terrifying whatever your job happens to be to be honest.

The article doesn't touch on this but the machine's name, Bertha, is almost certainly a reference to the 80s UK TV show about a factory machine that could seemingly make anything. Quite apt! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertha_(TV_series)

> ALWAYS encrypt your secrets in transit and at rest

And the encryption secret for this is stored...how?

I think it's safe to assume that the comparison flat tariff won't be available that way (or, at least, at that price.)

£60/yr would be a good saving for a supplier switch, the comparision and admin from which could easily add up an hour's work. A good ROI indeed!

You currently get looked at weird if you say you're interested in trains or stamp collecting or something. I think this prediction is a bit too optimistic.

Yeah, same name and security (otherwise it would presumably never work.) The problem is the in-between area where there's bad reception for one and good reception for another.

The roaming point is very interesting - I do have a problem with devices 'hanging on' to the wrong AP in my home. I'm gonna try it!

I think we agree? There's a huge amount of effort being spent on extracting fossil fuels which will destroy our planet which could reasonably be used to develop sustainable technologies instead.

People used to heavily criticise Minecraft from a technical point of view. Their criticisms were often entirely reasonable - it was at one point a very inefficient and unstable piece of software. However, it's now the second best-selling game of all time. Sometimes it's better to churn out a release and fix the problems later than let quality worries block you from achieving anything.

It's pretty depressing to think of all the extremely talented people working their socks off to find oil fields, directed to do so by fools who don't realise we can never safely use them. It would be much better if they were working on sustainable technologies instead.

They're merely labels. You can imagine 'far left' as 'centrist'. I was going to name them A, B and Z but wanted to get across that Far Left voters might prefer to compromise on Left than Right, but might prefer Right to Far Right. Clearly this is going to be a more nuanced decision in real life.

I'm not sure I understand, nor how this would combat the problem that I can accidentally spoil my ballot by miscounting the number of choices I've made. An easy mistake to make - even easier if you have a condition like dyslexia.

I mean that we are left with a choice that has been traditionally dominant rather than a less prevalent but otherwise popular party.

This is very common in the UK which runs a mix (even if passenger trains do dominate.)

Our reluctance to spend the money to separate the passenger and freight traffic - even on the busiest lines - is part of the reason reliability of the network is often under question.

Surely this disenfranchises those most willing to compromise, who are probably going to end up being those who support small parties?

Let's say you a Right and Left party, and breakout Far Left which is actually very popular but has previously lacked electoral support due to its 'outsider' status.

People's favourites might look like this:

Right: 30% Left: 30% Far left: 40%

However, 75% of Far Left favourites actually vote for Left too, because they prefer them to right. This ends up with the following result:

Right: 30% Left: 60% Far left: 40%

So we are left with 'establishment' mediocrity instead of the most popular result.

Is this OK because a majority of people don't actually want 'far left'? Maybe. Intuitively though, I think taking preferences away will freak people out, particularly in situations where there might be different levels - what if there was a Far Right party that Far Left voters really don't want in - would some end up voting for Right to avoid that happening? They might win despite having 70% unpopularity!

I'd prefer difficult counting processes over a blunting of people's democratic will.

Using polling data to vote tactically is exactly what we want to avoid and gives undue power to pollsters (and the people paying them.)

Yet this would then increase spoilage significantly would it not?