* Posts by Dave314159ggggdffsdds

1596 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Apr 2019

Ad agency boss owned two Ferraris but wouldn't buy a real server

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What does 'per second' have to do with anything?

Network Rail steps back from geofencing over safety fears

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Re: because...

I think you're right about cross purposes. Let me try to break it down.

First, gps precision is possible, and cost isn't really a barrier here.

Second, GPS augmentation is the way to go.

https://www.gps.gov/systems/augmentations/

It is not hard to conceive of systems that would add to a GPS location in useful ways in this context.

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Re: because...

If you read it, your reading comprehension is evidently very poor, because it covers these exact points.

Obviously what you're saying is completely untrue; milspec GPS needs high precision during movement, and as the US gov site explains, this is entirely possible, but too expensive for consumer level devices. Static devices can achieve even greater precision.

It's telling that you still don't acknowledge the difference between precision and accuracy.

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Re: because...

Did you read the link I provided? It answers all your questions.

The short version is that dual-frequency devices are more expensive than consumer devices usually are, but that isn't a big deal in terms of rail infrastructure spending. Other methods of GPS augmentation are cheaper and may be enough under the specific circumstances.

FWIW, there is no significant difference in the precision of single-frequency GPS receivers. Well, maybe some shonky ones are even less precise than most. But mainly it's a physical limit, and not something that changes significantly until you get to the point of using dual-frequency receivers.

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Re: because...

"There are no silver bullets though."

There's the 500 Series Shinkansen...

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Re: Incoming in 3...2...1...0

It isn't a replacement, it's an augmentation to improve the performance of the banksman.

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Re: because...

Safety rules not working as well when people deliberately circumvent them isn't new. It's a related problem; ideal safety systems can't be circumvented.

It's analogous to machine tools which could take a hand off: a rule requiring workers to put both hands on a bar clear of the machinery isn't as good as a machine that takes two hands to trigger.

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Re: because...

Your consumer device intended to give approximate tracking isn't comparable to the higher-precision devices that exist. (Pedantically, they're all accurate, some are more precise than others.)

https://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/performance/accuracy/

Dual-frequency GPS devices can reliably resolve to within a few cm on-the-fly.

Dirty data shocks Indian taxpayers with huge bills

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Re: Advanced Tax No Job

The US way is to spend more on not providing universal healthcare etc than universal healthcare would cost, because fucking the poor is worth spending money on, apparently.

Job interview descended into sweary shouting match, candidate got the gig anyway

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Re: There's a strategy that few people employ

The conspiracy theories around here are _weird_. Radio stations have a set amount of time allowed for ads. The rest of the time has to be filled somehow, and obviously host chatter is cheaper than fees for playing songs.

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Re: The first one is free

Thing is, if you're applying for a junior position, there are always (relatively) loads of them going - and if you're applying for more senior roles, then not working for idiots is even more important.

Ultimately, it's a version of not being able to afford not to be picky, in the longer run. The time you waste working for the bastards who screw you over costs you far more than the extra week or two it might, at worst, take to find the decent employers.

All that said, of course it's all situational, and how hard you can afford to push back depends on your circumstances. But it's always a two-way street, and at the very least employers are showing you what working for them will be like.

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Re: Certification test

I know it took me a while to get to grips with that for things like Uber-driver ratings. I feel quite sorry in hindsight, but it seemed reasonable that 3 meant 'just above average/normal' and 2 meant 'just below', rather than that 2 was 'slightly better than the worst possible rating'.

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I think if you're going for an hour-long interview and not being paid for your time, you're screwing yourself. It's very much setting the rule, right at the start of your relationship with a (possible) future employer, than you're their doormat.

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Re: Yet another similar experience

That was my experience applying to a merchant bank, eons ago when I was a youngling. A friend pulled strings to get me an interview with his boss in a tower in Canada Square, boss chatted with me for a while, then told me 'you're much too bright to work hard enough to do well here - and please don't tell [friend] I said that, because I hired _him_'.

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Re: The first one is free

Interviews being a two-way street is something kids need to learn - and many potential employers, too.

Back in the day, when I had any interest in interviewing for potential employment, I'd ask how long the interview process took, and if it was more than a brief chat follow up by asking how much they'd pay me for that time. The responses weeded out most of the people I'd never have wanted to work for.

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Re: I may have told this one before...

I know someone who was asked to sell the interviewer a bottle of water the interviewer had just handed him. So he set fire to the interviewer's tie. And then insisted on receiving cash before handing over the water.

Got the job, too, which says a great deal about the degree of psychopathy considered desirable in a salesman.

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Re: I may have told this one before...

I was once asked 'if you were a fruit or vegetable, which fruit or vegetable would you be?'. I replied 'mango', and I went.

Tesla Berlin gigafactory to take week-long nap after suspected arson

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Re: Typical Elon argument

He didn't imply anything of the sort. That's a desperate reach even for a Musk-sniffing fanboy trying to pretend his evil, bloated, billionaire crush isn't once again talking complete bollocks to avoid the real issue.

The truly pathetic part is that the more you debase yourself, the harder Musk laughs at you.

Tesla Berlin gigafactory goes dark after alleged eco-sabotage

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Re: It is not left wing extremists

The DPRK is not North Korean? It's not democratic, a republic, or of the people, though, I agree.

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Re: It is not left wing extremists

Nurse! He's off his meds again!

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They aren't actually against everything, they're against anything that lets poor people in Africa and Asia get on equal terms with the West. It's a white-supremacist thing, but obviously admitting as much doesn't go down well in Germany, so they pretend it's an eco-loon thing.

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Re: It is not left wing extremists

I'm not sure what your snide smiley is for. Are you unaware that Corbyn and Galloway have been praised by Nick Griffin and other neo-Nazis? Surely no-one at this point can be unaware that Corbyn is an antisemitic conspiracy theorist, and Galloway has a long and sordid history of taking money from the far right.

Or do you somehow think that people can be Holocaust deniers without being far right?

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Re: It is not left wing extremists

What's the name of the law about 'anyone who cites Godwin's law doesn't know what it actually says'?

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Re: If they're camped in a German forrest...

No, you just don't have the education to understand the reference to Dresden.

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Re: It is not left wing extremists

I'm not sure how you get any of that from my comment. I can spot all kinds of nutters, including your kind.

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Re: It is not left wing extremists

If you can't accept that the Nazis were actual socialists - fascist socialists, so far right socialists have been proven to be possible for a century or so - then you're just as nuts as the guy who believes the J6 coup attempt was just a protest, and the insurrectionists are being persecuted. Hitler presided over vast transfers of wealth, from Jews, from France, and so-on, to (generally the poorer) Germans. Hitler's rise to power was based on a promise to help the Great War veterans, and he actually started off meeting that promise - and it later caused him problems with the Holocaust, because so many Jews were veterans.

The irony is that based on your post, most notably the conspiratorial views expressed, you are closely aligned with old-fashioned far right politics, so your only issue with Trump should be that he's a pretender, not the true new fuhrer you'd support.

Dave314159ggggdffsdds Silver badge

Re: It is not left wing extremists

Of course it's from the far right - but many of them lie about being on the far left, because that's more effective. Corbyn, Galloway, etc. Holocaust deniers are far right, always and only.

That said, most of the people joining the antisemitic marches and so-on are just useful idiots who believe Iranian propaganda wholesale (especially when the BBC and Guardian repeat it uncritically). The number who actually understand that 'from the river to the sea' means 'wir mussen die juden ausraten' is small.

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Re: It is not left wing extremists

Could your bias be any clearer? Responsibility has been claimed, while actual culpability remains up in the air, but you know for a fact it wasn't left wing terrorists and that's just [insert conspiracy theory here].

The irony is that you far left nutters are basically indistinguishable from the far right types you claim to be opposed to.

Web archive user's $14k BigQuery bill shock after running queries on 'free' dataset

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I'm sure that is the default setting, but for whatever reason this idiot was running queries on an account where the default settings had been deliberately overridden.

Dave's not here, man. But this mind-blowingly huge server just, like, arrived

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Re: After booting for the second time

Sounds like your car has skunks living in the boot. Weed isn't called skunk because it smells like skunk-spray; it's just that it smells very strongly of weed.

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Re: It's a shame

I find it hard to believe that a weed habit alone would have run up sufficient debts (let alone with nasty-enough types) that anyone holding down even a basic job couldn't pay them off at a rate that would satisfy the pusherman. Bit of nose candy, though, and it's a whole different story.

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Re: After booting for the second time

The worse smell is a result of prohibition. Making it illegal favours strains and growing methods which give a less-fragrant product.

Personally, I quite like the smell of the good stuff. Even the worst of it isn't nearly as bad as chicken shops and other fast food outlets; smelling bad isn't a reason for prohibition, obviously, as you seem to agree. If we do decriminalise, though, it would (perhaps counterintuitively) make it easier to have some social rules about where it's acceptable to smoke the stuff.

Air Canada must pay damages after chatbot lies to grieving passenger about discount

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Re: And if that position was legally defensible

A person acting wholly outside the bounds of their role can be held to be acting independently. For example, if a person working for the company, but without the right to say such a thing, says 'you can have free flights forever, if you pay a dollar', then it would not be binding.

It's far more complicated than 'if someone working for the company says something, the company is bound by it'.

You're not imagining things – USB memory sticks are getting worse

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Re: Magnetic storage

I'm not sure what possible good letting seized bearings 'acclimatize' [sic] could do. They are already seized from sitting in the same place for too long.

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Re: Magnetic storage

A hard disk that hasn't been spun up in a few years is likely to be toast for mechanical reasons like bearings seizing. The platters may still be readable with specialist equipment. However, bit-rot is also significant even over relatively short timescales unless the data is very robustly stored. Things like jpegs are _extremely_ flaky in that regard, where a single bit flipping can significantly alter the image; other formats, like ascii text, are much more robust, since a single bit flipping will usually be obvious, and only lead to corruption of a single character. But, you can't rely on the data stored that way to be absolutely correct.

So, if you want to store data on magnetic hard disks, extensive error correction and multiple copies are necessary, and so is powering the disks up fairly often.

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Re: Simple solution?

Rubbish. You tell them it's not working, and they issue a refund - send them a message instead of using chat, if you really find the five minutes on text chat to be too long. They very rarely want to pay to get things back so they can throw them away - unless, of course, you've repeatedly scammed them.

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Re: Quality, schmality

If you buy from the Kingston store on Amazon, you're buying from Kingston, but with Amazon's CS and delivery mechanisms. If you can't tell the difference between Kingston's store and other sellers, I don't think any of the advice here will help.

Not buying Kingston at all is defensible.

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Re: Quality, schmality

"claiming warranty on them is slightly less pleasant than nailing your eyelids to a table."

If you buy them via Kingston's Amazon store, the process is painless, IME. You send them a message (through Amazon) describing the problem and they refund your money.

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I bought a 128gb Kingston one recently, well aware it was incredibly slow. Wrote to it once, leaving it going in the background for however many hours it took to fill it up; reading is a bit slow, but once it's indexed (by my car's audio player) it's fine for the purpose.

Thing is, it cost about 6 quid. Really, nothing to complain about at that price. If you want fast ones, they cost much more - but they are available for those who so choose. For what I'm using it for, I'd rather have a super-cheap slow one, and I suspect most people are happy with that trade-off.

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Re: Simple solution?

They make it incredibly easy to claim. You send them a message, they send you a refund. One and done, almost every time.

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Re: Simple solution?

Make them liable? They voluntarily accept liability. Conspiracy nuts will conspiracy, though.

Billions lost to fraud and error during UK's pandemic spending spree

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Re: Oops, we stole it

You conspiracy theorists twist everything to fit your view.

Back in realityland, the law was changed, and with it the system of contracting: anything that was not at arms-length prices can be clawed back after the fact, which is the stage in the process we're currently at. But, there just wasn't that much which was dodgy, rather than wasteful, other than the outright fraud by criminal gangs, who have now scarpered with the money. All the government cronies either made money supplying things at the same prices as everyone else, or have ended up - or will soon end up - losing the entire sum paid, rather than just the profits.

It's typical tinfoilhat behaviour to conflate completely different things; in this case, wastage, fraud, and crony deals. The latter is a tiny proportion of the total.

Developer's default setting created turbulence in the flight simulator

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Re: Fuses?

"the Boeing 737 Lawndart which exists because pilots etc. can't be retrained."

There seems to be widespread misunderstanding of this. Boeing didn't make it handle like the old one because it's cheaper, or because the pilots can't be retrained, but because retraining pilots carries its own set of risks; training isn't automatically successful. You can argue about whether they struck the right balance of risks, but it's not unreasonable to suggest that we'd have seen at least as many accidents (and possibly more) on a significantly different platform due to (re)training failures than we have seen this way. The air industry has stats on this sort of thing, and I would imagine they show that Boeing got that part of it right.

It's also worth pointing out that there were multiple MCAS incidents, and only two of them resulted in crashes. It's no coincidence that they were in parts of the world where pilot training and experience are not up to rich-world standards. In all the other cases, the pilots successfully managed the situations.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/magazine/boeing-737-max-crashes.html

That's not to say Boeing didn't do anything wrong, but understanding what really went on is important in preventing future crashes - which Boeing-bashing doesn't actually achieve.

Tesla Cybertruck gets cyberstuck during off-roading expedition

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Re: Why do people keep trying to go off road in those things?

There are some guys on YouTube who have turned a written off Model 3 into a rock crawler with suspension and wheel mods (and some skid plates). It does a surprisingly good job.

The Post Office systems scandal demands a critical response

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Re: I fail to understand

A better question is how none of the victims have broken a Vennels leg or two. Perjury etc have very high bars to get over for convictions, and 'I was incompetent, not malicious' is a very easy defence.

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Re: We need more articles like this one

The answer is really very simple: no-one who's any good at this stuff wants to work for clients who will bugger them around, and no-one buggers you around like governments. So, there's a special ecosystem in which only the people who will work for the government only work for the government.

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Re: It's still happening

It was cheaper to keep making manual corrections than to fix the software, which is fine, if not as good as writing the code properly in the first place. The bit where loony bosses managed to conclude that data errors were evidence of criminality is the scandal.

I have mentioned here before that what actually appears to have happened is that Fujitsu reported to the PO brass that they were having to correct lots of errors, totaling to some very large sum, and the idiots at the PO managed to conclude that if they stopped correcting the errors, they'd have that much more money. Everything else followed: lots of lower-level PO employees were given directions on that basis, and had no idea that the errors existed.

Tesla owners in deep freeze discover the cold, hard truth about EVs

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Re: irony

Rubbish. The warmer the planet gets, within reasonable bounds - not, say, Mercury - the more common weather extremes become.

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Re: Sounds like an "Oil Company" sponsored story

Oh look, a climate science denier. Well done destroying any credibility you might have had.

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Re: article might be missing something

Oh, the irony. A Tesla fanboy, with the delusion field operating at full power, says that other people need to 'educate themselves'.

Back in realityland, this is a Tesla-only problem.