In other news today...
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@boomzilla said in In other news today...:
For Some Reason, New Hampshire DMV Has A Problem With This License Plate
The New Hampshire DMV wants Wendy Auger to change the plate she's had for 15 years because phrases related to excretory acts aren’t permitted.
Mom with license plate ‘PB4WEGO’ wins battle with state to keep it
NEW HAMPSHIRE – If you’re a parent, heading out the door before a car ride with the kids probably goes a little like this: Parent: “Did you go to the bathroom?” Child: “No, I don’t have to go.” Parent: “Go now, you may not get the chance later.” At least for one New Hampshire woman, that was pretty
For the benefit of East Pondians (HTTP 451)
NEW HAMPSHIRE – If you’re a parent, heading out the door before a car ride with the kids probably goes a little like this:
Parent: “Did you go to the bathroom?”
Child: “No, I don’t have to go.”
Parent: “Go now, you may not get the chance later.”
At least for one New Hampshire woman, that was pretty much the ongoing conversation she had with her four kids … so much that she made it her vanity license plate for 15 years.
Wendy Auger is proud of her “PB4WEGO” plate and told CNN she’s never had any issues with it. Until now.
New Hampshire asked Auger, in a letter she received August 16, to surrender her plate because it includes a phrase relating to “sexual or excretory acts or functions,” said Auger.
I’m not a political activist,” she said. “But this is a non-offensive thing that I’ve had and it’s part of who we are as a family and who I am and there was zero reason for them to take it away.”
The recall letter said Auger had 10 days to surrender her plate with the option to chose another vanity plate at no extra cost or have one assigned to her.
If Auger chose to get a regular plate, a portion of her vanity plate fee would be refunded to her, according to the letter.
After hearing about Auger’s situation from a mutual friend, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu got involved.
“Upon this being brought to my attention, I reached out to the Division of Motor Vehicles and strongly urged them to allow Wendy to keep the license plate she has had for the last 15 years,” Sununu told CNN in a statement.
“I recently left a message on her phone to share the good news that her plate will not be recalled.”
Auger said she was happy she got to keep a piece of who her family is with her.
“I wasn’t going to go down without a fight,” she said.
For New Hampshire residents, the cost of a vanity license plate includes the price of your town/city and state registration fees, plus $40 for the Vanity Plate fee, plus a one time $8 fee, according to the New Hampshire Division of Motor Vehicles.
CNN reached out to the New Hampshire DMV for comment but has not heard back.
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@dkf said in In other news today...:
language that actually deals with reality.
That doesn't seem to be a priority for most advocates of new languages.
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@PJH said in In other news today...:
CNN reached out to the New Hampshire DMV for comment but has not heard back.
Perhaps they were in the bathroom.
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@dkf said in In other news today...:
[…] being able to interoperate with C (especially at the ABI level) is the most important thing for any low-level language that actually deals with reality.
That's the point. To be fully interoperable you need to be able to represent all the unusual cases too.
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@Bulb said in In other news today...:
@dkf said in In other news today...:
[…] being able to interoperate with C (especially at the ABI level) is the most important thing for any low-level language that actually deals with reality.
That's the point. To be fully interoperable you need to be able to represent all the unusual cases too.
I don't see why you need unions to be interoperable with C. You just need byte arrays for that. The type punning you can do with memcpy.
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@topspin If you have them in the signature of something…
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@Bulb said in In other news today...:
@topspin If you have them in the signature of something…
As far as I can tell, if you have the following (taken from Win32)
typedef union _LARGE_INTEGER { struct { DWORD LowPart; LONG HighPart; } u; LONGLONG QuadPart; } LARGE_INTEGER; BOOL foo(LARGE_INTEGER *bar);the ABI is equivalent to
BOOL foo(LONGLONG *bar);
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Google Play Store listings will auto-play videos starting in September
Google is bringing auto-playing videos to the Play Store next month. Now when you browse apps with promo videos, it will play automatically.
Google says that auto-playing videos on store listings will “help more users discover your content at a glance.”
Ah yes, that's what people are saying about auto-playing videos. "They help more of us discover content at a glance. We love 'em!"
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"Legal Options Are a Better Way to Beat Piracy Than Enforcement" * TorrentFreak
A new article, published in the American University International Law Review, suggests that affordability and availability are the key drivers to decrease piracy. Focusing on the supply-side is more effective than enforcement options such as lawsuits, infringement notices, and website blocking, the...
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Sensor used at CERN could help gravitational wave hunters
It started with a relatively simple goal: create a prototype for a new kind of device to monitor the motion of underground structures at CERN. But the project—the result of a collaboration between CERN ...
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@topspin said in In other news today...:
As far as I can tell, if you have the following (taken from Win32)
typedef union _LARGE_INTEGER { struct { DWORD LowPart; LONG HighPart; } u; LONGLONG QuadPart; } LARGE_INTEGER; BOOL foo(LARGE_INTEGER *bar);the ABI is equivalent to
BOOL foo(LONGLONG *bar);Yes, but it's exceptionally desirable to also be able to comprehend the union type in the other languages as a significant amount of the API documentation will refer to it. This is especially true for interfacing with operating systems and when dealing with multi-layer APIs.
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Australian sues her neighbours for being Australian...
Vegan woman sues neighbours in bid to stop them barbecuing
An Australian vegan woman sued her neighbours to court to stop them barbecuing.
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@PJH Sometimes the courts actually work...
She sought legal orders to prevent the alleged nuisances, but a tribunal and the state's highest court rejected the claims as unreasonable and lacking in evidence.
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@PJH reposting this:
Vegan denied passport for being 'too annoying’
Nancy Holten has campaigned publicly against the use of cowbells and other Swiss traditions
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Welcome again to brexit news!
Today on brexit news, now that the hard brexiteers look to be getting their way, everyone else frantically unites to bar their way, putting the country's politics back into deadlock.
This was another normal day in brexit news!
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@PleegWat why are they trying to force postponing one more time? They got a 6 month delay and since then exactly nothing happened.
Postponing again until January won’t change that unless they actually come up with some new propositions.
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@topspin said in In other news today...:
@PleegWat why are they trying to force postponing one more time? They got a 6 month delay and since then exactly nothing happened.
Postponing again until January won’t change that unless they actually come up with some new propositions.Because as long as they keep pushing it, they are still in the EU with all the perks that gives, while still appearing to be doing the brexit thing.
Sooner or later, someone will hopefully get fed up and the whole farce comes to an end.
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@PleegWat said in In other news today...:
Today on brexit news, now that the hard brexiteers look to be getting their way, everyone else frantically unites to bar their way
and sabotaging the negotiations with that.
@Carnage said in In other news today...:
Sooner or later, someone will hopefully get fed up and the whole farce comes to an end.
Well, the prime minister is and is trying to.
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@PleegWat probably should be kicked to the garage but this is the funniest thing I've seen in the whole saga. A couple European negotiators have probably drowned from laughing so hard.
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@DogsB said in In other news today...:
@PleegWat probably should be kicked to the garage but this is the funniest thing I've seen in the whole saga. A couple European negotiators have probably drowned from laughing so hard.
The rest of Europe is simply annoyed with the clowns. And for the no-deal clowns - they should take heed because if they found negotiating about a deal hard now (when we still have an incentive of preventing some of the harm), what do they think about the difficulty of getting a good deal when they have precisely zero leverage?
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@Rhywden no deal clowns? They're effectively neutered now. No deal was the UK's only bit of leverage. The EU can basically dictate terms now. If the tabled legislation is passed the UK can't legally leave on no deal. The EU can maintain the status quo indefinitely with minimal effort while throwing the current withdrawal agreement at the UK. I have to doff my hat to the EU. Got just about everything they wanted while the British happily shot themselves in the foot. If I live to be a hundred I'll never see anything quite as idiotic as this. And I work in IT.
I also read somewhere that it will cost the UK a billion a month in penalties to the EU while this continues. I'm almost speechless. Depending on how today goes it might game, set and match to the EU.
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@DogsB said in In other news today...:
The EU can basically dictate terms now.
Interesting. I was under the impression the EU has been dictating terms for the last 3 years.
And yeah, negotiations aren't going to get easier after a no-deal. Any attempt to negotiate something specific they're going to get the current deal and "please sign here then we'll talk". Sure, EU will negotiate if the UK has a better concrete solution for the Irish border problem - but there isn't one and everyone knows it.
I also saw an interesting one regarding paying the EU bill last week - if the UK decides to not pay the bill, that could very well be reflected into their AAA credit rating. Not a good prospect for a country trying to retain their international financial sector.
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@PleegWat said in In other news today...:
Interesting. I was under the impression the EU has been dictating terms for the last 3 years.
Well, the EU has a few already existing levels of cooperation that the UK could get pretty much instantly. But if you want in on the market, there are requirements tacked on, and this is where the UK is throwing all it's toys out of the pram. They want a one way access to the inner market. The EU is not gonna give them that, because then the entire basis for the EU is gone in one fell swoop.
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@Carnage True, but as I understand they haven't even been talking about that yet. It's all about the bill of separation, which includes financial wrapup, rights of each other's citizens, and the followup on the good friday agreement.
Negotiations about future relations (if they ever get that far) are also likely to include such pieces of firework as the future status of Gibraltar, or convincing Spain to sign an agreement in which it does not become theirs.
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@DogsB said in In other news today...:
If the tabled legislation is passed the UK can't legally leave on no deal.
Not how it works, sadly. In order to prevent a no-deal, two things have to happen:
a) They have to apply for another extension and
b) they have to show that this extension is actually the way to get something done and not simply kicking the can along.Remember, crashing out of the EU with no-deal is the default on October, 31st. They have to actively provide a working alternative.
Merely passing some law "we don't want no-deal" would be like standing still on the rails of an incoming train while muttering: "I don't want to be run over."
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@PleegWat said in In other news today...:
@DogsB said in In other news today...:
The EU can basically dictate terms now.
Interesting. I was under the impression the EU has been dictating terms for the last 3 years.
And yeah, negotiations aren't going to get easier after a no-deal. Any attempt to negotiate something specific they're going to get the current deal and "please sign here then we'll talk". Sure, EU will negotiate if the UK has a better concrete solution for the Irish border problem - but there isn't one and everyone knows it.
I also saw an interesting one regarding paying the EU bill last week - if the UK decides to not pay the bill, that could very well be reflected into their AAA credit rating. Not a good prospect for a country trying to retain their international financial sector.
Of course it will reflect their credit rating. Because the bill is completely independent of the mess they're creating right now - it merely reflects commitments of the UK they made several years ago (e.g. pensions).
It's a bit like a dispute with a bank where you have two lines of credit (say, one for a house, the other one for a car). Just because you're arguing about the validity of one line of credit, doesn't mean that the other should be affected by that.
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@Mason_Wheeler said in In other news today...:
432 Wh/kg = 1.56 MJ/kg. While it's significantly better than previous batteries, it's still puny compared to the 43 MJ/kg of common hydrocarbon fuels even if we only consider 30% efficient heat engine extracting it.
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@Rhywden ideally Europe will say "fuck it! We're tired of this bullshit" and kick the UK out on their arse. No deal isn't the end of the world and would end this part of the saga. I suspect that everyone will take the safer route and keep applying/extending this deadline. The EU will make a tidy profit out of it too.
Given the shitshow this has become I honestly can't wait until the trade negotiation starts. The EU is going to own Wales.
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@Bulb Sure, but that's not a particularly useful metric. Cars have a very limited fuel storage space; you can put a lot more battery than gas into a car. For example, my highly fuel efficient Ford Focus gets around 400 miles on a full tank; Teslas are getting over 300 miles on a full charge. To get 300 miles on this energy density, would mean they're fitting approximately the weight of...
... about 260 gallons of gas into a single car. But this is, as you pointed out, significantly better than the batteries they're currently using, which means they're actually hauling a lot more battery weight than that, and still getting 300 miles of range and also performance that beats the pants off of ICE cars.
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@PleegWat said in In other news today...:
Irish border problem
It's actually interesting that the British still think of it that way. The problem isn't that it's a border with Ireland but a border with Europe. This isn't a negotiation between two small nation states with an obvious power dynamic in their favour. It's a negotiation between the UK and the supranational entity that is the EU. I don't think that has sunk into the UK yet. They're arranging meetings with Irish PM thinking that he can actually do something but the reality is he's just a small cog in the EU's giant machine.
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In an effort to help make modding the game easier, we have decided to publish our game obfuscation maps with all future releases of the game, starting today.
Pinch me, I'm dreaming. Microsoft open sourcing WinForms and suchlike was thoroughly wacky, but to make stuff like this available for something they actually make a ton of money off of? What year is it?
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@pie_flavor They appear to have taken a very strange and roundabout road to get there, though! If they want to make things easier for modders who are having trouble with the obfuscation, it would be much simpler on everyone involved to just stop obfuscating it rather than publishing the obfuscation maps. I look at a decision like this and think
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@Mason_Wheeler said in In other news today...:
Sure, but that's not a particularly useful metric.
That depends on the application. For some it is essential metric. For cars it's not that important, though hauling all the extra mass does have some effect on the efficiency and manoeuvrability.
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@Bulb said in In other news today...:
That depends on the application. For some it is essential metric. For cars it's not that important
Then why did you bring up internal combustion engines?
though hauling all the extra mass does have some effect on the efficiency and manoeuvrability.
It has multiple effects, some bad, others good. For example, putting a big, heavy battery pack on the underside of the car lowers the center of balance, making it more stable and improving handling in some regards.
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@pie_flavor said in In other news today...:
In an effort to help make modding the game easier, we have decided to publish our game obfuscation maps with all future releases of the game, starting today.
Pinch me, I'm dreaming. Microsoft open sourcing WinForms and suchlike was thoroughly wacky, but to make stuff like this available for something they actually make a ton of money off of? What year is it?
com.mojang.blaze3d.Blaze3D -> cve: 20:21:void youJustLostTheGame() -> a
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@DogsB said in In other news today...:
@Rhywden ideally Europe will say "fuck it! We're tired of this bullshit" and kick the UK out on their arse. No deal isn't the end of the world and would end this part of the saga. I suspect that everyone will take the safer route and keep applying/extending this deadline. The EU will make a tidy profit out of it too.
Given the shitshow this has become I honestly can't wait until the trade negotiation starts. The EU is going to own Wales.
Yeah, kick them out already. I'd prefer if the UK had stayed in the EU as I think that would be beneficial for both sides. But if they want out so bad and don't accept any deal that's not "have your cake and eat it too", that's their choice.
By now,
I'm certainly very, very tired of hearing about this.
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@DogsB It's referred to as the Irish (or North-Irish, I'm not sure including not sure if the news providers are consistent) border problem here as well, and I'm in NL. But yeah, attempts to discuss with Ireland directly were cut off by Brussels quite early in the process and I don't see why it'd go differently now.
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Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a bomb - The Old New Thing
Even though it doesn't tick. Do bombs even tick?
I particularly liked the last couple lines...
They returned the blown-up computer to him, and he brought it back to the hotel.
“Why not?” he figured, and plugged it in and turned it on.
It booted up.
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Anyone else see that and immediately think of Maxim 24?
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@Mason_Wheeler said in In other news today...:
Cars have a very limited fuel storage space; you can put a lot more battery than gas into a car.
Try as I might I can't figure out a way that this makes sense. The max amount of charge or fuel you can put into any particular car is already built into the design. If you want to put more in, you can design a car to accommodate a bigger battery, but if you're designing a new car you can go with a bigger gas tank just as easily.
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@hungrier It's directly related to gasoline being made of volatile hydrocarbons. Energy density (energy/kg) is one thing, density (kg/unit of volume) is another thing entirely, and light hydrocarbons have an extremely low density, which means it takes a lot of physical space to store those kgs.
Batteries have a much higher density, so you can fit a lot more battery than gas tank into a car of the same size.
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@Mason_Wheeler I see what you mean now. But in terms of energy density per volume, gasoline (9500 Wh/L) and diesel (10700 Wh/L) still beat the pants off even this new battery technology at 1122 Wh/L.
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@hungrier Then why are electric cars able to get about 3/4 of the range of comparable-sized ICE cars, with approximately 3X the gas mileage/energy efficiency? By some quick back-of-the-napkin math, they should be getting closer to 1/3 the range.
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@Mason_Wheeler My back-of-the-ass guess is that a combination of huge (by volume) batteries, ethanol content in gasoline making it less energy dense, and some cooked numbers to come up with the MPGe figure all contribute to that.
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Let us see:
The 85 kWh battery pack weighs 1,200 lb (540 kg) and contains 7,104 lithium-ion battery cells in 16 modules wired in series (14 in the flat section and two stacked on the front).
vs.
E85 weighs 6.49 lbs/gal, for a 17gal tank that is 110.33lbs.
So, 3/4 the range for 11 times the weight.
Which aligns okay with:
432 Wh/kg = 1.56 MJ/kg. While it's significantly better than previous batteries, it's still puny compared to the 43 MJ/kg of common hydrocarbon fuels even if we only consider 30% efficient heat engine extracting it.
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Teacher Sparks Controversy for Making Students Wear Cardboard Boxes to Deter Cheating on Exam
A Mexican teacher has come under fire for allegedly making students wear cardboard boxes on their heads to prevent cheating on exam.
LOL:
“We denounce these acts of humiliation, physical, emotional and psychological violence, to which the students of Campus 01 El Sabinal, Tlaxcala, are subjected.
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@boomzilla That doesn't even seem like it would deter anything.
Jeez, put some cardboard walls in between. Or just get in front and actually look at them while they take the exam instead of surfing the web on your phone.
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@anonymous234 I guess it means that in order to look to your side you'd have to turn the box, which would be pretty noticeable.
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Minecraft Snapshot 19w36a
