Posts by parlei 239 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Aug 2020
Back in the 90's there was a totally insane "plot summary" iof the LotR books, intended to be both (a) entertaining for those in the know and (b) perhaps luring lazy kids into copying it into their book report. Now we have invented an automated systerm that could end up doing that for all books, even all knowledge.
Yes. Is anyone here even the slightest surprised?
Back when "all" of them was reading random love letters or running the AnnaKournikova-worm[1] in hopes of god-knows-what anyone who thought there was any limit to the "will someone fall forn this?" should have handed in their BOFH-card.
[1] For a short while i had a screen grab of the vbs-code on the screensaver image rotation...
I work in a hospital: I'm not allowed to use myself as a test query, another real person even less so. There are specially designated test patients, that are guaranteed not to have national ID number that will ever be used for a real person.
And yes, technically I could get fired for checkoing my own records. Even if I in the role of a patient have the right to see those same records.
Apart from disagreeing with your notion I wonder how you/they will prove in court that the fact that the 17th letter in this post is or isn't a wovel is a signaificant message. And the fact that the next to last word in the first sentence was misspelled? Steganography done right is hard to prove, in particular for short messages.
Sweden went that path. Split off services as wholly state owned companies -- which had to show a profit, and did not have the pesky rules governing public services -- and then a few years later sell them off their pal the asset stripper VC.
The problem is that even a non-tanker ship carries quite a bit of fuel oil, all of which will then necessitate an cleanup to limit the environmenta effects. Is there had been a plan for this kind of events there would have been "cable corridors" where one could limit and monitor shipping, but that ship sailed a log time ago. And the Baltic is a busy shipping region[1]
[1] https://www.marinevesseltraffic.com/cargo-ships/BALTIC%20SEA%20AIS/ship-traffic-tracker#gotomap
Nah, it is just the expected response. You know "Surely you, great, wise and powerfull Lord, would never stoop so low as to act like those vile scum that we both despise, and which act would, in the practially inconcievable event that You would chose such a path, seriously inceonvenience and undermine me, your loyal and ever faitheful servant and worskipper". The only difference is tbat he is not exepect to do a full prostration and kiss Musks feet, and that we try to avoid the more flowery language: the expectation is still there.
One possible explanation is that she had a lifting (ballasted) keel and a very tall mast. If they had lifted the keel when at anchor -- not unreasonable -- she would have been very succeptible to capsize. According to the news the nearby yatch had to use their motor to stay correcly aligned to the wind.
And once a yatch is filling with water she would go down very fast: a boat with a ballasted keel is only boyant if the water is on the outside.
Liferafts deploy automatically when sufficiently submerged.
Heathrow security in the 90's: "As long as it is Swiss Army it is ok". Times have changed.
OTOH, La Guardia in the 80's: they took a Swiss army knife from me (got it back when we landed!), but missed the 6" bowie knife in my carry on luggage (I was young and had only a small carry on duffel bag).
OTTH: do not ask someone with a chemistry degree what they could arrange...
Actually I would say it is not a bet, but more of a lottery. Kind of. A lot of people pay the premiums (lottery tickets). Then a maller portion of them recieves paid medical care, exceeding the cost of the premiums they paid (a win). Of course the analogy quickly breaks down, for various reasons. And that society as whole looses out by it not being universally available, regardless of the ability to pay the premiums.
Back when a certain Supreme was in the news for not seeing all expense luxury vacations as a problem a lot of normal government employees described the rules they operated under. As in if they inspected a facility they had to pay for their own coffee. Supposedly some companies kept a separate coffee machine where you could pay for it just for this purpose, even if everyone else got theirs for free.
So I suspect that the risk category is rather "politically appointed government official".
I cant find the exact proportion here in Sweden, but it might very well be about 90%. Including various home owners. The process this year for me (owns a condo apartment, so not totally simple).
1. Tax office send me a copy of their pre-filled simple form to my secure digital mailbox
2. I look at it: can't think of anything to add or adjust: amending the form is dead simple in most cases. If I was a financially complex person (owning a business, etc) I might need to do the full form instead.
3. A week or so later I can digitally file my taxes, accepting all their calculations: salaries, interest, etc are all reported to them, so they know better than I what the numbers are. This takes about 1-2 minutes, and I naturally get a digital receipt.
4. A few week later I get the money they owe me* directly into my bank account
* I have my employer deduct a bit more then the tables suggest, such that something exceptional would have to happen for me to need to pay extra tax. Keeps my life simple, and I can afford to push a little bit of salary in front of me.
This could e.g. be small children. My (insane) hybrid schedule was for about one year this:
0400-0430: breakfast., shower
0430-0600: work at home
0600-0700: get two children out of bed and prepped for daycare, deliver said offspring to daycare
0700-0830: commute
0830-1690: work (on prem)
1600-1700: commute, pick up children
1700-1900: feed and "entertain" children
1900-1930 (ha): bedtime
1930-2200: work (remote)
(the other parent did a weekly commute, so I was a "semi-single" parent during this period)
For some inexplicable reason I once woke up just as my car was starting to leave the road during this period.
From my employers standpoint there was no problem, I most certainly did what was needed.
Yes. A lot of science is asking questions like
* "How do we know this?"
* "We think this is (or may be) true, but actually there is no hard evidence backing it up. Could we test our assumptions?"
* "We are pretty certain this is true, but we have no idea of the details: how does this actually work?" and
* "There are several ideas about this with no clear data as to which one is actually true, can we test them to gain a better understanding?"
And hidden in this is everything from new drug targets to better ways to recycle plastics, by way of more efficient hard drives and understanding why Iceland has so many volcanoes.
And fairly basic research gives the background for thew people one day developing the end product (and these days making someone rich, but that is incidental-to-annoying to most scientists). In 10-15 years this may be the origin for a better Alzheimer treatment. Or not: this is one study, and we have no idea if this is even correct, or will lead somewhere "useful".
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