jschwartzi

Population clustering actually follows from the way people travel. It's a virtuous/vicious cycle where in the US we've been building in ways that reduce or eliminate the usefulness of high speed rail while countries that have favored rail have been doing the opposite. The US has always heavily-subsidized roads and automobile travel and as a consequence sprawl. I think it's catching up with us socially, economically, and physically.

In my opinion focusing on cost versus fares is myopic to the point of insanity. As long as we're laser-focused on the economic viability of rail we'll never see any of the other benefits.

We have a responsibility to future generations to not just keep things the same but to make them better, and I think rail does that. If you look around and you dislike your current mode of living, hate your commute, and want to have access to cities, then guess what rail is a solution for all of that. It takes decades to see any real benefit from it though, which is why nobody ever goes for it.

I guess Texas has finally figured out what Coleco already knew back in the 80's. Warm Dead Bird is a much more accurate name than fried chicken.

What a terrible loss for me as a person to be able to go to the store and buy a "milk" that doesn't come from a cow but that I can put on breakfast cereal and drink with my coffee.

Meanwhile I don't see Texas aggressively defending the truth that a tomato is really a fruit and shouldn't be placed with other vegetables in the store.

Oh damn it now I have to throw my laptop away.

I was actually making the point that the FEMA Director for the Pacific Northwest probably knows a lot more about the scenario in question, and that his statement may be grounded very deeply in fact such that it's not hyperbolic at all.

I'll cede this point. If you're accounting for the quantity of pennies down to the precision of individual penny atoms then your accounting must be accurate to within the quantity of penny atoms that are rubbed off the penny during normal handling during the transaction.

YLL is a horrifying metric because it values someone who is 20 over someone who is 60. The only argument I can see for its "usefulness" as a statistic is if you want to imply that the old are less useful than the young. This kind of statement about the bare utility of a human life is the same statement that underlies a lot of how we have treated the disabled or those on welfare in the past. And it only makes sense if you think about a human life in terms of its economic usefulness as some sort of cog in the economic machine that wears out and can be discarded safely after age 67.

It's more accurate to say "never use floats for accounting." You should be able to state with 100% certainty how much money you owe no matter how much money you owe.

"That's more money than my boss makes in a year."

Could you do it with mineral or tool oil?

I'm not sure I would call statements by a FEMA director "unscientific."

"Okay, let me toggle the bootloader in. Call me back in about an hour."

My experience was different. I ended up going to one of the Shane Company stores on the west coast and the salesperson didn't push diamonds at all. She showed me damn near every red/pink sapphire in the store until I found one I wanted to present. And when it turned out my wife didn't like the color as much as I thought they bought the old stone back at full-price and sold us a new one in a color she loves.

Use an axe or a chainsaw.

Are you saying that people don't ever zoom in on images on the web? Because my wife does this regularly to look at details in photos.

They can actually use formal methods to prove that their software is bug free. This technique is often used in safety-critical systems to ensure that they function as-specified. As long as the specification is correct, the software system should perform to specification under all input conditions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_methods

We should consider the cost of QA and of engineering process against the cost to these 39 people of their freedom and a large part of their lives due to an accounting error in the software.

One of many problems that are only solvable with a software watchdog.

Well to be fair the hospitals are the same people who have been complaining that they can't get enough qualified nursing staff for the past 15 or 20 years.

It's probably related to the huge difference in how my wife and my mother are treated by "professionals" and contractors when I'm around versus when they're alone.

Except in this case "throw away money" is a euphemism for "paying workers enough that they don't need welfare to support their families."

One of the really high-end Garmin watches have solar charging: https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/p/641375

According to their docs it increases the battery life by up to 3 days when you're not using the GPS.

Garmin watches also have transflective displays. I've never needed the backlight since I've always got either sunlight or a headlamp.

When you're doing this, please be careful to pick up the leftover peanuts. One of our neighbors does this and our property is constantly being invaded by rats who are attracted to her discarded peanuts.

Cockatoos are remarkably cheeky. When I was in high school a girlfriend I had at the time had parents who owned one. That Cockatoo would scream her name at the top of its lungs in her mom's voice. It was like the bird knew exactly what would get her attention.

TI's technical reference manuals for their MCUs are some of the best I've used, though. That's not saying much. But compared to Marvell or NXP/Freescale they're really good.

The third thing that sucks about I2C is a little thing called Clock Stretching which can completely blow up your latency when reading sensors. The last company I worked for had to design a sensor out because it would stretch clocks unpredictably for several milliseconds, which was enough to blow our latency requirement to maintain real-time operation.

https://www.i2c-bus.org/clock-stretching/

I think there's a really big difference between being FORCED to get the vaccine, and being reminded that your actions have consequences on other people and not just on yourself. Nobody is saying that you should be required to get vaccinated. So really this is just a straw man that you're burning down.

> insurance is in most cases part of the job contract and that there are huge (cost) inefficiencies due to insurers battling over coverage costs with health providers.

To say nothing of how maddening it is to have to change doctors every time we change jobs, or to lose coverage for certain conditions when we change jobs, or to have to perfectly time certain life events such as childbirth or pregnancy to either before or after we change jobs, or to make sure we don't get sick during the probationary period while we're changing jobs, and so on.

Also it's worth noting that the smoke point is different for extra-virgin versus other olive oils. A purified olive oil has a much higher smoke point and can be used for higher-temperature pan-frying. EVOO can be used for pan frying or baking but you have to control the temperature and keep it below about 375. Below that is actually a good temperature for frying mushrooms in my opinion.

That makes sense to me. I'm used to people not understanding that getting an address solves a lot of problems for a lot of homeless people. And since we're on the same page about that I understand now that you're wanting to focus elsewhere.