Very fair point, although I didn't imply that it might break this year. Whenever it breaks though, I hope the usage remains low, just in case such an event reccurs.
2,736 karma · joined February 15, 2012
I may be wrong that the Gold Coast one is mothballed, but there were also issues about how it was funded, which means it's facing funding problems now when the drought is gone.
Systems to do this exist in the country (eg, moving water from Lesotho to the Vaaldam with the Highlands water scheme), but that project was 15+ years in the making, and is still ongoing.
From what I can see, nothing like this was realistically expected for Cape Town, and thus never planned for.
The drought broke in January 2011, and it's a little sad to see how much that was learnt, has been forgotten in the last 7 years. Desal plants all but mothballed, average consumption gone up (almost double the drought levels again), etc. I really hope the drought in Cape Town breaks soon (I have many friends there), but I hope they don't unlearn the lessons, and kill infrastructure when it does.
Interestingly, late last year, it was pointed out by the authorities that the dams are at warning (pre restriction) levels again here, so I dare say we will see it all again.
Sure, they take up more space than Lego or Mecards or Beybaldes, but absolutely can't beat them for entertainment value.
2. Move in with parents, and have them pay for everything
3. Do nothing outside of work
4. Possibly dodge taxes
5. Success!
Seriously though - are you talking about making $200k to save, or are you earning enough to live, AND put away $200k, but are looking for ways to streamline your living expenses?
This made my day, and I'll be repeating it to others - thanks :)
Children thrive on boundaries. It gives them an 'area' within which they can fully explore, learn, play, etc, while KNOWING that as long as they stay within those lines, everything will be fine.
I call it THE VOICE, and I try and keep its use to the minimum, so as to not reduce its effectiveness. However, when I do use it, mine knows he has to stop pushing boundaries, or there will be repercussions.
And this is where so many people go wrong. Parents are teachers too, and it's their job to teach their children how to fit into society, behave, be decent people, etc.
A lot of rules, like math tables, help you learn the basic foundational building blocks. Once you have those, you have a reference to understand more things.
School is, basically, for most of the other stuff.
Every now and again, I go through spurts of activity where I try and contribute to SO with reviews, comments, edits and answers (rep a bit below 2k). Two things happen every time I do this:
1. While there are lots of 'please do my homework' questions by new users, every now and again someone will post a question where they are genuinely trying to get their head around a concept as a new programmer, even though the question doesn't necessarily meet the MVP requirements, or could be seen as too broad or off-topic. I try and engage in the comments section, and quite often, it turns out to be a viable (but poorly asked) question, worthy of a good answer. The amount of aggressive downvotes, abusive comments, etc in these cases by other users (new and old) is absolutely astounding.
2. When I post answers, I try and tailor them to the OPs level, so it might not be 'by the book' accurate, but will explain the basic concept and offer a possible solution. For some reason, especially on C/C++ based questions, any answer that is not referencing the C/C++ standard and absolutely factually correct and accurate in terms of terminology, etc, will get aggressively downvoted, or destroyed in comments. What this has done, is to effectively stop me from even attempting answers in these categories.
So, yes, there are lots of 'bad' questions and 'bad' answers, but generally the voting and moderation system works. However, I think that 'older' users are as much to blame for some of the issues on the site, as new users who come there to have their homework questions done.
The really sucky bit here is (I've had that happen) when the market then immediately turns - you simply couldn't buffer the immediate losses ;-)
At some point, in a speech or introduction, some high ranking official misread that as SR-71, and after that all documentation was updated to show this new designation.
There are two stages to any defence procurement project - too soon to tell, and too late to stop.
EDIT:
Found it. A Ernest Fitzgerald, and Fitzgerald's First Law: "There are only two phases of a program. The first is 'It's too early to tell.' The second: 'It's too late to stop.'
I thought it was about time I submitted something other than a story or a question :)
This project was born with Troy Hunt's Lenovo competition for Have I Been Pwned, but I think it's useful enough to show here.
It provides a (fairly minimal, at this stage) commandline Python script to check a list of e-mail addresses against HIBP, and report back any hits. It will keep tabs of what has been reported, and subsequently only report new items. It can also optionally e-mail affected accounts (useful if you want to monitor other people's addresses, or if you have multiple addresses that you don't want to sign up to HIBP).
The script can be run directly, or via a cron job. The outputs can be parsed to provide feedback on the commandline (or elsewhere) - see some examples in the README.
For a list of planned updates, please see the README.
This is my first Show HN, so go easy, but I'd be very happy to hear thoughts and suggestions!