ldp01

Our governments appear to be pursuing mutually contradictory aims. On one hand there are increasingly frequent and powerful cyber attacks which can only be resisted through superior cyber-security and encryption. Then on the other hand we get this rubbish.

Is it even possible to solve both these problems at once in a way which preserves the freedom of the net and doesn't involve some crippling PRC style regulation?

Absolutely. There are plenty of examples where the job completely dictates the hours: Operational roles can either require shifts, or on-call availability. And hours only get worse for people with critical skillsets!

> Practically everyone is doing all they can to pretend to be busy, to the point that many people actually believe that they are, and all to avoid meaningful interactions with the people around them.

This is a big generalisation. Perhaps true in some specific contexts but certainly not in general. "Practically everyone" is not pretending to be busy to escape meaningful interactions. But many people are indeed pretending to be busy for the reason Bakary stated.

> Think about it, how many people, other than your family, really give a shit if you live or die?

Several tens at least. If you maintain good friendships and have a healthy work environment there is no reason why this wouldn't be the case.

To be honest I think automated sandwich/burger making has been possible for a long time already. But fast food level labour is just so cheap that it never caught on.

I haven't been to SF but it certainly sounds familiar.

Perth circa 2011/2012 was quite the boom town.

Of my friends who graduated in 2012/2013 and found jobs in O&G/Mining, most of them have since moved interstate/internationally and switched from resources to different industries or gone back to study after the boom receded. But for a while there engineering graduates were going straight into 120k salaries doing fly-in-fly-out work on mine sites.

I find the notion that there can be a "broad mentality of data transparency" very encouraging. Culture is definitely one of the biggest obstacles to effective utilisation of data.

In my experience managing physical assets, a little bit of broad knowledge (SQL, relation databases, statistics) has greatly improved my own capabilities: I can speak the language of the IT folks who shepherd my data, and I can keep a skeptical eye on the quantitative risk folks. I can stand by my analyses because I trust the ingredients and can enumerate/quantify the risks.

Conversely though, without being bit of a data jack-of-all-trades, it's harder to see the cool potential in our existing datasets. Especially if the environment/culture doesn't contain the right people to share this knowledge.

I'm hoping that some sort of data-basic-training becomes standard in undergrad engineering courses in the future.

Personal opinion inbound...

This will never happen.

Public opinion will be completely against any proposal to do this. Partly NIMBYism, but also legitimate fear of a bungled process which exposes the public to radiation risk (e.g. a truck/ship crash). This would also potentially tarnish the international brand of Australian tourism and agriculture industries, which both like to project an image of a clean and protected environment.

Any smart politician will recognise the nightmarish public relations battle is not worth the reward for them personally, so the project will never get a fair hearing to begin with.

Personally I would support the establishment of a nuclear waste facility in Australia in principle. But I don't think it will happen unless our economy goes right down the toilet and we become significantly more desperate for funds.

I always thought different paradigms suited different problem domains rather than different people.

I'm not a software engineer by trade, but just for example, I've recently been mucking around making my own videogames and the object-oriented paradigm using the components pattern seems like a very natural way to conceptualise a videogame. E.g. Objects in the game (NPCs, environment) start as a basic object and are given specific behaviours by adding components.

Alternatively, I sometimes have to write R code for data analysis and in that case the style of using pipe operators to chain lots of functions together is perfect for readability and for reasoning about the code.

bjelkeman-again is referring to kVA- a unit of power rather than voltage.

Systems which run a higher consumer voltage (e.g. 230V) will tend to use higher kVA transformers compared to the American system (~110V).

I believe this is because it is feasible to run longer cables when using higher voltage (higher voltage -> lower current -> lower thermal losses per metre of cable), hence it is economical to use fewer, larger transformers in a higher voltage system vs. a lower voltage system.

It seems like there is an inherent trade-off here between the usefulness and vulnerability of our systems.

Each feature we add for our own convenience makes a more tempting prize for a potential adversary.

Edit: Whether or not a particular feature/behaviour is reasonable or crazy depends entirely on the level of threat.

Taipai, Taiwan. I believe it had trouble in one engine briefly after takeoff, and the pilots tried turning it on and off again. Unfortunately they turned off the still-functioning engine and it plummeted into a river.

You might remember the shot of it flying over a bridge, rolled 90 degrees and so close to the ground that the wing partly sheared off.

It's a similar situation for Australian universities. Foreign students are considered a major cash cow.

That's fair enough, biosecurity is indeed important. But the cabin spraying specifically has always struck me as a bit cavalier...

It's not hard to imagine a scenario where 10 years later whatever chemical they use is linked to some form of cancer and then a class action lawsuit follows.

I have to agree. And it's a similar experience in Europe and South East Asia.

Maybe this is a generational thing? I've only been traveling for the past 3 years and to me everything seems normal.

Edit: There is one thing that really bugs me: The insecticide spray they release into the cabin on some routes. What's next? Barnaby Joyce personally raiding the cabin looking for traces of Pistol and Boo?

But it's a private market? the only people who should be suffering are those who own generation equipment which can't keep up with the higher rate of change of dispatch. E.g. Steam turbine operators.

I think your point has some merit if the net effect is higher power prices overall. Unfortunately I don't have this information...

Either way, the reality is that renewable technology is making the slow-ramping generators uneconomical. Even if you remove wind-farms from the supply side of the equation you still have roof-top solar eating into the demand side and creating a daily demand profile which requires gas/liquid fuel generators to match.

I've seen a recent example of a cool summer day (Australian) where the daily demand minimum actually occurred at mid-day due to coincidence of maximum roof-top solar generation and low air-conditioning use! Under this kind of scenario your nuclear/coal steam turbine will be running at a horrible financial loss...

How would your example differ from a government simply putting a price on various tasks (helping elderly, etc) and paying with regular money?

I'm not saying it's a bad idea (I actually like it!), but conceptually it seems no different to the current monetary system, just with governments taking a more inventive approach to paying for public services.

> I only believe in real contracts that I actually sign and agree to.

I think this position is a bit idealistic, since some level of State power is unavoidable and taxes will be levied whether or not we agree with them. (Unless you escape to a desert island)

So if the tax money is real and the consequences of not paying are real, then I expect something from the government in return!

(I do agree that State power needs to be kept in check.)

I imagine it boils down to a question of expense.

Pests can probably arrive through:

  - People's boots/clothes.
  - The water.
  - The soil/fertiliser.
  - The air.

Each of those inputs would need to be filtered. And the cost of filtration (or the entry/exit protocols for the workers) would need to be balanced against the cost of losing a crop.

> You can get to approximately 50% penetration safely without storage[1], then you have to start adding factors that can deal with intermittent sources like wind and solar[2].

Keep in mind that this number will vary depending on generation mix. Specifically, it will depend on the response time of your dispatch-able generators. If your primary source of non-renewable generation is big steam turbines with a painfully slow ramp-rate (e.g. coal generation) then you're going to have a bad time.

Yeah that is a fair point. I had actually forgotten what a pain that was initially.

Nonetheless, if you can make it through setup the end results are quite attractive.

Well, fair enough then. I plead guilty as charged. Linux is definitely not great.

In what way was I pushing others to switch to Linux? I literally said I do not bother trying to make others switch.

I simply gave the reasons I prefer desktop Linux to Windows and yes I believe desktop Linux is "great". In my experience it is certainly not "subpar" compared to Windows, hence why I use it.

Desktop Linux is great but I don't expect anyone who's uncomfortable with a terminal to use it.

For someone like myself who is fine with a slightly more technical desktop experience, using Linux gives me a setup I can shape to fit my requirements and then never have to think about ever again. It's very relaxing compared to using Windows because I don't have to deal with all the little annoyances e.g: Constantly forcing me to install updates; big UI changes between versions; vast quantities of bloatware.

However for the people who are strictly averse to the technical aspects of Linux (most people), I would never bother trying get them to switch. It's a pointless uphill battle which ends in frustration.

When was the last time you tried desktop Linux?

I dual boot Ubuntu 15 and Windows 10 and I prefer the UI experience of Ubuntu. You just have to chuck a decent theme on (I use Arc) and icons (Numix) to get rid of the yucky defaults.

I highly recommend Yanis Varoufakis: The ex Greek finance minister who was in office during the Grexit crisis. He advocates basic income as a solution.

This is a speech rather than an article, but I found it pretty relevant and compelling (He starts talking about AI at 7:50) [Yanis Varoufakis: Basic Income is a Necessity] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvgdtF3y0Ss

Another one of these articles. It's almost like there is a robot somewhere writing them...

> I'm closer to the tin foil hat end of the spectrum than most of the population, ...

You and me both! I only work with data for machines and reliability, so I can only guess at what nefarious stuff might happen with this data.

But I think it's important that society has people worrying about information security. Many (most?) people just don't care.

Yep, that sounds just like what he was describing.

I can see the advantages for legitimate policy development from this new system... But one can only hope they don't let everything get leaked.

Right, that makes more sense now. Great links, thanks.

Slightly off-topic but I've been having an argument with my friend around the security of census data. I wonder if anybody on HN might be able to shed some light...

I made the comment that, potentially, a data breach could result in a flat table containing names, addresses, household incomes, etc being released online. This has obvious potential for easy identity theft, stalking, etc. Mainly due to the existence of name and address (since without these fields an abuser cannot target individuals or individual addresses).

My friend insists that it is impossible for a breach to release all of the census information in a denormalised form, as the names and addresses are "unlinked" from the rest of the data and stored in a separate table in a separate system.

This does not make sense to me. Do the ABS seriously remove the address column from their data? Wouldn't this cripple their ability to do spatial analysis on anything more granular than a suburb level? Security concerns aside, do they seriously pay 300m for data and then throw it away?

I wish the ABS would be a little more clear about exactly what they do with the data...