The minor rants thread.
-
Why are red left-turn arrows on traffic lights a thing? Like, at all?
Happens all the time: I'm at an intersection, wanting to turn left. The intersection is clear, as is oncoming traffic in the other lane. The going-straight light in the lane to the right of me is green. It would be perfectly safe to turn left across there... but some idiot of a civil engineer put a red left arrow up.
Seems to me that as a general rule of thumb, red left arrows should not be used, and "left turn yield on green" signs should suffice.
-
-
@Mason_Wheeler said in The minor rants thread.:
Seems to me that as a general rule of thumb, red left arrows should not be used, and "left turn yield on green" signs should suffice.
That'd depend on peak traffic levels, yes?
-
@dkf Not really. Whether there's minimal traffic or heavy traffic, the same rule applies equally well: it's safe to turn if there's no cars coming in the lanes you're turning across, and if not, then you have to wait until it's clear.
-
@Mason_Wheeler said in The minor rants thread.:
Why are red left-turn arrows on traffic lights a thing? Like, at all?
Happens all the time: I'm at an intersection, wanting to turn left. The intersection is clear, as is oncoming traffic in the other lane. The going-straight light in the lane to the right of me is green. It would be perfectly safe to turn left across there... but some idiot of a civil engineer put a red left arrow up.
Seems to me that as a general rule of thumb, red left arrows should not be used, and "left turn yield on green" signs should suffice.
This does happen in NL. When there is no separate left turn lane, lights for straight ahead may be green on both opposing streets, and traffic turning left has to yield to traffic from the opposing direction going straight ahead even though they just passed a green light.
However, if there is a separate left turn lane then it will not turn green if the opposing direction's straight ahead light is green. However, it's common nowadays for traffic lights to be equipped with traffic sensing technology, so they will generally not turn green if there is no traffic waiting for or approaching that light.
-
@Mason_Wheeler Over here it's usually due to a pedestrian crossing - a left turn across a green light for pedestrians is a problem because you'll already have picked up a bit of speed.
-
@Rhywden said in The minor rants thread.:
it's usually due to a pedestrian crossing
or cyclist crossing.
I have one on my commute where the lights where rearranged earlier this year. It's called 'Conflict Free' e.g. if you have green you can get to move because you won't cross any other streams who have green as well, be it cars, pedestrians or cyclists. It took more then a month of additional tweaking to get the jams back to the level they were before the intervention.
-
@Mason_Wheeler said in The minor rants thread.:
Why are red left-turn arrows on traffic lights a thing? Like, at all?
Happens all the time: I'm at an intersection, wanting to turn left. The intersection is clear, as is oncoming traffic in the other lane. The going-straight light in the lane to the right of me is green. It would be perfectly safe to turn left across there... but some idiot of a civil engineer put a red left arrow up.My guess is that it's the same reason for "No Turn on Red" signs: at least one person was wrong about having enough time to make the turn.
-
@antiquarian that's the way of seemingly stupid rules. One idiot did something dumb, and someone either got sued or made a stink, and now we all have to suffer the effects of the rules.
As another example, schools wouldn't have uniforms or strict dress codes if kids could uniformly (hah) stick to "wear something appropriate."
-
@Mason_Wheeler said in The minor rants thread.:
@dkf Not really. Whether there's minimal traffic or heavy traffic, the same rule applies equally well: it's safe to turn if there's no cars coming in the lanes you're turning across, and if not, then you have to wait until it's clear.
Having a red arrow presumably also means having a green arrow and in that case you don't have to yield, as it means the lanes you're crossing are stopped. That's more efficient with high peak traffic because not every car has to check the lanes are actually safe to cross even though it looks like there's cars coming.
A compromise that we have here sometimes (but rarely) is a normal green light (i.e. no green left arrow), but then have an additional light that can change between a green left arrow and a blinking yellow arrow (or be off, that'd be the same default), the latter basically means yield. So depending on the other lane's light it changes between "you don't need to yield to turn, there's no traffic" and "yield if there's traffic".
-
@topspin Now that I think of it, it's probably more due to a rule that "you should not potentially be forced to stop in another lane's right of way".
That's why you're usually allowed to turn right across a pedestrian/cyclists' crossing because even if you have to stop to let someone pass, you'll still be in your own lane, blocking only people behind you (and thus only one side of the crossing). If you turn left, however and then have to stop in front of a pedestrian, you'll not only block the people behind you but also potentially block incoming traffic (i.e. both sides of the crossing).
-
@Luhmann said in The minor rants thread.:
@Rhywden said in The minor rants thread.:
it's usually due to a pedestrian crossing
or cyclist crossing.
You have to remember that @Mason_Wheeler is from a part of the US where walking (except in Designated Walking Zones) or riding a bicycle is regarded as something that's only done by Commies.
-
@Mason_Wheeler said in The minor rants thread.:
red left-turn arrows
Adam Carolla makes a point of ignoring them
-
@dkf
Alternatively our good friend could acknowledge the edge of his knowledge...
Nah ... who am I kidding.
-
Related question: When there are two right-turn only lanes, I know the one closest the curb can proceed after stopping for a red light without waiting for it to change. But can the second lane do likewise. It feels weird to make the turn while the light is still red and there's another lane to the right of you that may or may not have cars in it.
-
@da-Doctah here in Florida, you not only can, but unless you do you'll have lots of annoyed drivers behind you.
-
@Benjamin-Hall said in The minor rants thread.:
@da-Doctah here in Florida, you not only can, but unless you do you'll have lots of annoyed drivers behind you.
And here in CA, if you have a red right arrow, you'll still have annoyed drivers. (red arrow means
E_RIGHT_ON_RED_DENIED) Of course, all the No Right On Red signs don't make any kind of impression either, so
-
@dcon said in The minor rants thread.:
red arrow means
E_RIGHT_ON_RED_DENIEDI annoyed some drivers (presumably; nobody engaged in road rage) when I moved to WA, because I didn't know CA was special
in that regard; I assumed it meant that everywhere.
-
@HardwareGeek said in The minor rants thread.:
@dcon said in The minor rants thread.:
red arrow means
E_RIGHT_ON_RED_DENIEDI annoyed some drivers (presumably; nobody engaged in road rage) when I moved to WA, because I didn't know CA was special
in that regard; I assumed it meant that everywhere.
Of course it doesn't. (I would have assumed that too)Edit: Traffic laws are one thing I would like to see standardized at a national level. Screw state rights on something like that.
-
@boomzilla said in The minor rants thread.:
@tsaukpaetra said in The minor rants thread.:
I've held that if you're using distinct either your data is horribly corrupted or you're doing it wrong.
No, there are legitimate uses for it. But you should definitely be able to explain why you're using it or you're almost certainly doing something wrong.
: "I want to get rid of the duplicates that I'm seeing in the result data."
-
@djls45 said in The minor rants thread.:
@boomzilla said in The minor rants thread.:
@tsaukpaetra said in The minor rants thread.:
I've held that if you're using distinct either your data is horribly corrupted or you're doing it wrong.
No, there are legitimate uses for it. But you should definitely be able to explain why you're using it or you're almost certainly doing something wrong.
: "I want to get rid of the duplicates that I'm seeing in the result data."
-
@Rhywden said in The minor rants thread.:
@topspin Now that I think of it, it's probably more due to a rule that "you should not potentially be forced to stop in another lane's right of way".
That's why you're usually allowed to turn right across a pedestrian/cyclists' crossing because even if you have to stop to let someone pass, you'll still be in your own lane, blocking only people behind you (and thus only one side of the crossing). If you turn left, however and then have to stop in front of a pedestrian, you'll not only block the people behind you but also potentially block incoming traffic (i.e. both sides of the crossing).
Except in Breslau. There are several incredibly annoying intersections where you get a no-collision left arrow green light, and yet you have to stop on exit because the pedestrians there have a green light too. Ugh.
-
@Benjamin-Hall said in The minor rants thread.:
Minor rant of the day:
Whoever (yes, W3C I'm looking at you) designed the notation for CSS grid was brilant. How do you tell an element that it is supposed to occupy grid columns 1-5 (inclusive)?
grid-column: 1 / 6. Why?
It's using half-open syntax because the translator follows the pattern
grid-column: a / b→for(int i = a; i < b; i++)?
-
@djls45 so another C-ism. Because it was easier to implement that way. Sigh.
-
@Benjamin-Hall The easier things are to implement interoperably, the more likely that that's what's actually done.
-
@boomzilla said in The minor rants thread.:
Gah! Lately I am nearly incapable of typing words with
tionin them correctly the first time. I keep typingiton.We have one of those that got into our codebase:
getAnonymousDefiniton().
-
@lolwhat said in The minor rants thread.:
Ok, so a flashing yellow arrow (FYA) is more intuitive than the alternatives.
But what does a FYA actually mean, what are the alternatives, when would it be used, and why is it more intuitive?
-
@dcon said in The minor rants thread.:
@HardwareGeek said in The minor rants thread.:
@dcon said in The minor rants thread.:
red arrow means
E_RIGHT_ON_RED_DENIEDI annoyed some drivers (presumably; nobody engaged in road rage) when I moved to WA, because I didn't know CA was special
in that regard; I assumed it meant that everywhere. Of course it doesn't. (I would have assumed that too)Edit: Traffic laws are one thing I would like to see standardized at a national level. Screw state rights on something like that.
Fairly recently, Pennsylvania made it so that a red light can be treated exactly like a stop sign. I.e. if you stop and can see that the intersection is clear, you can proceed through the red light. The justification was that lights in certain areas, e.g. in downtown Philadelphia, were too long and people felt unsafe being stopped at an apparently otherwise empty intersection, especially late at night, while they waited for a green.
-
@djls45 I approve. Deploy to production! That also makes dead red laws redundant.
-
I have a reminder in Outlook (Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus) for a calendar item every Friday morning.
The reminder will pop up every week on Thursday evening as almost appropriate, except that it always says "6 days ago" for the scheduled time. And when I dismiss it, the reminder pops back up within a few seconds. It will not allow the reminder to disappear unless I manually engage the delay to "remind me again in " <x> amount of time or I dismiss it after the time scheduled for that event this week.
I've tried every method I could find to reset the calendar's events, cache, etc. short of deleting and recreating the event, but nothing has worked so far. I can't remove the event because it was created by management, and even if I were to tell them and they recreated it, I'm not sure that the problem wouldn't persist.
-
@djls45 said in The minor rants thread.:
except that it always says "6 days ago" for the scheduled time.
Oh, you mean you want to be reminded about events coming in the future? That's Different!™
-
@djls45 said in The minor rants thread.:
What does a FYA actually mean?
Apparently, it means vehicles turning left must yield to oncoming traffic, which has a green to go straight through the intersection.
In heavy traffic, it's the same as a red, but if traffic is light, it allows people turning left to proceed sooner than if they had to wait for the next left green arrow.
-
HOW FUCKING HARD CAN IT BE TO WEAR A FACE MASK CORRECTLY FOR THE DURATION OF ONE SHOPPING TRIP?
I've just been to a large supermarket where:
- Not a single employee was covering their nose. NOT A SINGLE ONE!
- A large family in front of me pulled their masks down while waiting in the checkout line so they could talk to each other more easily. FUCKING INCONSIDERATE WANKERS!
- Of course, half of the rest of the clientele couldn't be bothered to cover their noses, either.
I was close to going full Karen on the family and reporting the store to corporate, but
.
-
@dfdub You could at least boost social distancing by putting a Jason Voorhees mask on over the mask you're supposed to have.
-
@Benjamin-Hall said in The minor rants thread.:
@djls45 so another C-ism. Because it was easier to implement that way. Sigh.
No idea about CSS grids in particular, but in general half-open intervals is one of the things C got right, along with 0-based indexing.
-
EWD said:
I know of a student who almost failed at an examination by the tacit assumption that the questions ended at the bottom of the first page.
-
My BenQ™ monitor takes a full 8 seconds to start up, 5 of which are just showing the BenQ™ logo, then 3 more with just a black screen.
I know it's a cheap model, but it's obviously capable of updating the image in 1/60th of a second after that period, so why does it take almost 500 times longer to show the first one? Does HDMI need to "synchronize" every 5 seconds or something?
I really, really hope BenQ™ didn't just program a 5 second pause just to show me their fucking logo.
-
@anonymous234 said in The minor rants thread.:
I really, really hope BenQ™ didn't just program a 5 second pause just to show me their fucking logo.
They may need the 5 seconds just to sniff the incoming signal for frequency samples, to calibrate their oscillator against. That happens when you save $0.20 by omitting the crystal from the BOM. The longer the sampling time, the more accurate the calibration.
-
Is this the monitor firmware rant thread? I've got an old Asus monitor that I don't use on my main PC any more, which has built-in speakers and the annoying (power saving? :who_nose:) feature where it shuts down the audio completely whenever there's a couple seconds of silence, and it takes it another couple seconds to turn the sound back on after the next time something plays a sound.
For example, take the Kirby's Adventure "quick draw" minigame:
Kirby`s Adventure - Quick Draw (NES) – 01:08
— TRAFFICLIGHT4There's a musical sting, followed by a few seconds of silence, and then an audio cue indicating that you can shoot. With this monitor, the audio cue doesn't play because the sound was turned off during the brief period of silence, and by the time it wakes up, the sound is done
-
@hungrier said in The minor rants thread.:
the annoying (power saving? :who_nose:) feature where it shuts down the audio completely whenever there's a couple seconds of silence,
My embedded PCs do that too. I keep a tone generator running in the background for cases like this.
Online Tone Generator
Simply enter your desired frequency and press play to hear your tone. It's free, simple and easy to use.
Assuming you can deal with the slight fuckery that happens with the mixer it works charmingly well.
-
@Tsaukpaetra Unfortunately the PS classic, even with custom firmware, doesn't support generating a constant 1 Hz square wave in the background as far as I know
-
-
-
My wife decided she wanted to order lunch from a local restaurant before leaving for a super hectic day's schedule at work. She asked me if I wanted anything, and I looked over their menu and decided on a soup/sandwich combo.
She headed out to pick it up, then came back with the soup, the sandwich, the complimentary bread they threw in... and a plastic cutlery packet containing a fork and a knife.
-
@Mason_Wheeler said in The minor rants thread.:
My wife decided she wanted to order lunch from a local restaurant before leaving for a super hectic day's schedule at work. She asked me if I wanted anything, and I looked over their menu and decided on a soup/sandwich combo.
She headed out to pick it up, then came back with the soup, the sandwich, the complimentary bread they threw in... and a plastic cutlery packet containing a fork and a knife.
You're lucky they didn't send chopsticks.
-
Goddammit, game developers are a bunch of retards. That is all.
-
@Applied-Mediocrity said in The minor rants thread.:
Goddammit, game developers are a bunch of retards. That is all.
Is devlopur, kan confurm.
-
Tried to watch Tales from the Loop on Amazon. Had seen some commercials for it and it looked like it might be interesting. I think there is still probably an interesting premise under there but if so they have completely wasted it.
My wife and I couldn't even get through the first episode. It seemed like every scene included us watching someone either doing something banal or just staring off into the distance. There was some kind of obscure Scandinavian music playing (according to the Amazon X-Ray feature that tells you who / what is in the show at that point...which is an awesome feature) and it all lasted at least twice as long as it should have.
The plot felt like it was barely being moved along and it seemed like you were really supposed to figure a lot of stuff out from watching. Which is pretty difficult when you're brand new to a show and don't understand the significance of stuff.
It felt like the director was a recent film school graduate who was too full of artsy fartsy cinematography shit. Which would have been fine if used sparingly but not in every goddamned scene. NO ONE WANTS TO WATCH KIDS WATCH TV AND EAT CEREAL.
-
VLC is garbage.
- Open a file in a folder containing multiple files. Now click on the big "next" or "skip forward" button. What do you expect? The next file in the folder? Sorry, that's not how we do things in VLC-land. If you wanted the next file you should have added the entire folder to the playlist. Instead, VLC will restart the same file.
And there's no workaround for doing that. No setting to automatically add entire folders to the playlist when you open a file, and no button to jump to the next file in the folder instead of the list.
And yes, as you would expect, there's a whole bunch of threads about it on the VLC forums and a whole bunch of mods and developers calling the users idiots for wanting a feature that literally every other media player has (and locking the thread). - VLC can't skip to the previous frame because it's, like, hard. MPC-HC seemed to have no trouble implementing that feature.
- Open a file in a folder containing multiple files. Now click on the big "next" or "skip forward" button. What do you expect? The next file in the folder? Sorry, that's not how we do things in VLC-land. If you wanted the next file you should have added the entire folder to the playlist. Instead, VLC will restart the same file.
-
@anonymous234 #1 sounds like you want Irfanview. #2... skipping to the previous frame is hard.MPC-HC did it by keeping all frames back to the last keyframe in memory at all times, which caused it to crash on certain videos I have which have no keyframes beyond the first.
