In other news today...
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Hooo boy!
The attack halted production of 5.7 million barrels of crude a day, more than half of Saudi Arabia’s global daily exports and more than 5% of the world’s daily crude oil production. Most of that output goes to Asia.
At 5.7 million barrels of crude oil a day, the Saudi disruption would be the greatest on record for world markets, according to figures from the Paris-based International Energy Agency. It just edges out the 5.6 million-barrels-a-day disruption around the time of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, according to the IEA.
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@Dragoon TOO DUMB; DIDN'T READ.
Is there anything interesting in it other than "wherein Marianne learns about floating point"? I assume the magic is that COBOL uses decimal (and/or fixed point), and thatWe tried to rewrite the code in Java and Java couldn’t do the calculations right
is simply a sign of massive incompetence.
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She later clarifies that Java simply does the math differently (fixed vs. floating) and do to rounding, fails differently.
But really, like most medium articles it is incomplete. At the end of the day, a company can move away from COBOL if they want to, but for the places that haven't yet it isn't worth the time/risk to do so. This difference is just one of the myriad of reasons that companies can cite to stay with COBOL instead of moving a "modern" language.
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@boomzilla said in In other news today...:
Filed Under: Bad Ideas
"The couple decided to film their journey to prove that maligned nations are suitable for tourism."
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@jinpa said in In other news today...:
"The couple decided to film their journey to prove that maligned nations are suitable for tourism."
That's becoming such a cliche these days, but hey, they might actually be (relatively) right: at least they're only in jail. When people do that in other Middle Eastern countries, they usually end up murdered.
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@Rhywden No legal mandate to give part-timers insurance...
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Insurance isn't the solution; it's the problem. We aren't going to make anything better by having 20 million less uninsured people in the country, not when the insurance companies are actively manipulating things to make the problem worse. What we really need is about 300 million more uninsured people, and a system where people ordinary can afford ordinary medical care out of their own pockets.
Insurance for actual unforeseeable catastrophes? Car wrecks, injuries, cancer, etc? Sign me up! But that's not what our medical insurance system is actually like, and putting more people into it, through their employers or otherwise, will not make it any better.
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@topspin said in In other news today...:
@Dragoon TOO DUMB; DIDN'T READ.
Is there anything interesting in it other than "wherein Marianne learns about floating point"? I assume the magic is that COBOL uses decimal (and/or fixed point), and thatWe tried to rewrite the code in Java and Java couldn’t do the calculations right
is simply a sign of massive incompetence.
Thought so too. Turns out it's just awful writing - the actual reason makes sense: Java's
BigDecimal
, as well as most other implementations of fixed-point arithmetic, is just too slow.
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@Gąska said in In other news today...:
just too slow
Too slow for what? That depends heavily on the problem domain.
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@Mason_Wheeler Very few people can afford cancer out of pocket. Or a bunch of other diseases.
What you describe is what we have now: a system of catastrophic insurance, and cheap $60 copays for routine care.
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@Mason_Wheeler said in In other news today...:
@Gąska said in In other news today...:
just too slow
Too slow for what? That depends heavily on the problem domain.
Banking. You know, churning lots of numbers in kinda-real time.
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@Gąska said in In other news today...:
@topspin said in In other news today...:
@Dragoon TOO DUMB; DIDN'T READ.
Is there anything interesting in it other than "wherein Marianne learns about floating point"? I assume the magic is that COBOL uses decimal (and/or fixed point), and thatWe tried to rewrite the code in Java and Java couldn’t do the calculations right
is simply a sign of massive incompetence.
Thought so too. Turns out it's just awful writing - the actual reason makes sense: Java's
BigDecimal
, as well as most other implementations of fixed-point arithmetic, is just too slow.Well yeah, terrible writing. It could’ve used an introductory TL;DR of first pointing out what COBOL does differently and then the lengthy explanations what BCD / fixed point mean.
Also, as far as I can tell finance stuff uses either cents or exactly 5 decimal digits1. That’s not hard to do even if your language doesn’t have fixed point support built in. Just shift everything by 5 digits and compute with that2. Easy peasy, no need for fractions at all and native performance. Also, I think even VB had a type
Money
orDecimal
or sth doing exactly that.1 I still remember from the top of my head the Deutsche Mark to Euro conversion rate from 20 years ago was exactly 1.95583.
2 You only ever add monetary values or multiply them by amounts, but never multiply/divide them (which wouldn’t make sense), so there’s no problem here.
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@Captain said in In other news today...:
@Rhywden No legal mandate to give part-timers insurance...
Yeah, maybe read the sentence again. It does not say what you just stated it says.
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@boomzilla said in In other news today...:
Daily Mail link is broken.
No, make that 2009:
Olga,allegedly:
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HTTP 451 sufferers
A pigeon apparently didn't think much of a lawmaker's ideas to address a messy situation at a Chicago Transit Authority stop known by some as "pigeon poop station."
WBBM-TV reports that one of the birds did its business on the head of Democratic state Rep. Jaime Andrade as he was discussing the problem with a reporter outside of the Irving Park Blue Line station.
During the interview, Andrade rubbed the top of his head and said, "I think they just got me." They did.
The sidewalks outside of the station are covered in bird waste and feathers.
Andrade has been trying to fix the problem. One of his ideas is to ask the CTA to install a hose line for power washing when it constructs new escalators at the stop.
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People aren't being milked for every last penny, and Spotify is not happy:
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@Gąska said in In other news today...:
@Mason_Wheeler said in In other news today...:
@Gąska said in In other news today...:
just too slow
Too slow for what? That depends heavily on the problem domain.
Banking. You know, churning lots of numbers in kinda-real time.
Heavy emphasis on the "kinda". Keep in mind you're talking about a world where it still takes 3 days to officially clear many transactions!
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@Mason_Wheeler though that's mostly for security reasons (and so the banks can use the not-yours-anymore-but-theirs-yet money for short term investments). I meant "kinda" as in it's processed in daily batches, but there's very limited time in which the batch must be completed so performance is still important.
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@Gąska said in In other news today...:
@Mason_Wheeler though that's mostly for security reasons (and so the banks can use the not-yours-anymore-but-theirs-yet money for short term investments).
Much more so the latter than the former. Speeding up transactions would improve security by making certain types of fraud that depends on those delays impossible.
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@Mason_Wheeler said in In other news today...:
@Gąska said in In other news today...:
@Mason_Wheeler though that's mostly for security reasons (and so the banks can use the not-yours-anymore-but-theirs-yet money for short term investments).
Much more so the latter than the former. Speeding up transactions would improve security by making certain types of fraud that depends on those delays impossible.
While making certain other types of fraud much easier to get away with.
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@Gąska ...such as?
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@Mason_Wheeler stolen card details.
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TIL Seinfeld was shot on 35mm film, and thus the 4k streams won't be some craptacular post processed version
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@Gąska That's not particularly relevant to closing time.
One time I was visiting a friend in Canada. We went out to lunch, and about 2 minutes after I bought some food, I got a text from my bank's fraud department asking if I was really making purchases in Canada. They didn't need 3 days to check on the legitimacy of my card use!
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@Mason_Wheeler let me guess. It was between 9AM and 5PM?
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@Gąska said in In other news today...:
though that's
mostlypossibly for security reasons (and mostly so the banks can use the not-yours-anymore-but-theirs-yet money for short term investments).AIUI.
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@hungrier said in In other news today...:
TIL Seinfeld was shot on 35mm film
TIAL that there are dumb-dumbs on Ars Technica that don't like it
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@Gąska It can be safely assumed, when speaking of lunch, that this is the case.
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@hungrier said in In other news today...:
@hungrier said in In other news today...:
TIL Seinfeld was shot on 35mm film
TIAL that there are dumb-dumbs on Ars Technica that don't like it
@error_bot tvtropes SeinfeldIsUnfunny
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TV Tropes said in https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/It/ConflittoCrescente:
Ogni buona storia ha bisogno di un po' di Conflitto: è una regola. Eppure, limitarsi a mettere contro Il Protagonista e L'Antagonista non è sufficiente. Per produrre la tensione necessaria a condurre il pubblico dall'inizio alla fine della storia, l'autore deve fare in modo che il Conflitto aumenti gradualmente durante tutto il suo corso. Ecco dunque il Conflitto Crescente.
Visto che è quasi un obbligo che la resa dei conti tra protagonista ed antagonista non si manifesti fino al Momento Culminante, la storia deve affidarsi a forme minori di antagonismo prima di quel momento: combattimenti con scagnozzi, Mini Boss e draghi potrebbero essere adatti a preparare il terreno per una imponente ed emozionante battaglia finale tra il protagonista e l'antagonista.
Ma non tutti i film fanno uso dei cattivi classici, e dunque il protagonista potrebbe semplicemente dover avere a che fare con ulteriori complicazioni ed ostacoli che lo separano dal suo obiettivo. Come conseguenza, questo tropo viene spesso chiamato anche Azione Crescente o Complicazioni Crescenti, con l'enfasi che si sposta dallo scontro tra bene e male alle continue peripezie del protagonista.
Trattandosi di uno dei Tropi Onnipresenti, questa pagina non ha bisogno di alcun esempio.
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@hungrier Representative sample:
Also, am I the only person who found Seinfeld less funny than The West Wing?
e: Why am I reading Ars comments anyway
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@Mason_Wheeler said in In other news today...:
The via link is there to show you how it found that article.
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@error_bot tvtropes Seinfeld is unfunny
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TV Tropes said in https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeinfeldIsUnfunny:
"I don't know what the big deal with Hamlet is, it's just one famous saying after another, strung together by a moldy old plot."— Old JokeThere are certain shows that you can safely assume most people have seen. These shows were considered fantastic when they first aired. Now, however, these shows have a Hype Backlash curse on them. Whenever we watch them, we'll cry, "That is so old" or "That is so overdone".
The sad irony? It wasn't old or overdone when they did it, because they were the first ones to do it. But the things it created were so brilliant and popular, they became woven into the fabric of that show's genre. They ended up being taken for granted, copied and endlessly repeated. Although they often began by saying something new, they in turn became the new status quo. It's basically the inverse of a Grandfather Clause taken to a trope level: rather than being able to get away with something that is seen as overdone or out of style simply because it was the one that started it, people will unfairly disregard it because it got lost amidst its sea of imitations even though it paved the way for all those imitators. That is, a work retroactively becomes a Cliché Storm.
There may be good reason for this. Whoever is first to do something isn't likely to be the best at it, simply because everyone that comes after is building on their predecessors' work.
Named after the sitcom Seinfeld, which many people won't watch any more because everything about it has been copied. Most likely will result in Fan Haters and accusations of Rule Abiding Rebels. This can also occur in countries that get the shows years after they originally come out.
Compare Appeal to Novelty, Older Than They Think, Discredited Meme, Unbuilt Trope, Franchise Original Sin, Hype Backlash, Rule-Abiding Rebel, Early Installment Weirdness, and Dead Horse Trope. Contrast Vindicated by History. This is a special case of Older Than They Think, when the Trope Codifier is still around or still highly regarded. The same principle applied to ethical or cultural issues is Fair for Its Day. The exact opposite of Values Resonance. The worst outcome is Deader Than Disco. Occasionally overlaps with Values Dissonance.
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@error OK, then it needs a bit of an adjustment. If the thing you give it is the title of a page, as that was, it shouldn't need to search for it. (It will return a valid page for any entry, but it at least gives you a HTTP 404 if the page doesn't exist.)
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@Mason_Wheeler I think this way is better
@error_bot tvtropes SomethingRelevant
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TV Tropes said in https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/It/ConflittoCrescente:
Ogni buona storia ha bisogno di un po' di Conflitto: è una regola. Eppure, limitarsi a mettere contro Il Protagonista e L'Antagonista non è sufficiente. Per produrre la tensione necessaria a condurre il pubblico dall'inizio alla fine della storia, l'autore deve fare in modo che il Conflitto aumenti gradualmente durante tutto il suo corso. Ecco dunque il Conflitto Crescente.
Visto che è quasi un obbligo che la resa dei conti tra protagonista ed antagonista non si manifesti fino al Momento Culminante, la storia deve affidarsi a forme minori di antagonismo prima di quel momento: combattimenti con scagnozzi, Mini Boss e draghi potrebbero essere adatti a preparare il terreno per una imponente ed emozionante battaglia finale tra il protagonista e l'antagonista.
Ma non tutti i film fanno uso dei cattivi classici, e dunque il protagonista potrebbe semplicemente dover avere a che fare con ulteriori complicazioni ed ostacoli che lo separano dal suo obiettivo. Come conseguenza, questo tropo viene spesso chiamato anche Azione Crescente o Complicazioni Crescenti, con l'enfasi che si sposta dallo scontro tra bene e male alle continue peripezie del protagonista.
Trattandosi di uno dei Tropi Onnipresenti, questa pagina non ha bisogno di alcun esempio.
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News today: @error_bot likes Italian.
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Looks like @error_bot is using an ElasticSearch based service.
detected!
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@Mason_Wheeler said in In other news today...:
That's not particularly relevant to closing time.
There are a substantial common class of frauds that involve fooling people into unwisely making transfers to other accounts (controlled by the fraudsters). The primary defence against them is that the banks still hold the money; it's not until the transfer completes to another bank or cash is withdrawn that they can actually be considered to have gotten away with it. The faster the transaction processing gets done, the more vulnerable people are to those sorts of things.
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@dkf I suppose that kinda makes sense, but... isn't what you're describing literally "a technological fix to a social problem"?
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@Gąska said in In other news today...:
@Mason_Wheeler let me guess. It was between 9AM and 5PM?
I've gotten fraud alerts at all sorts of times. In the US, the fraud teams are 24/7.
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@Mason_Wheeler said in In other news today...:
@hungrier said in In other news today...:
@hungrier said in In other news today...:
TIL Seinfeld was shot on 35mm film
TIAL that there are dumb-dumbs on Ars Technica that don't like it
@error_bot tvtropes SeinfeldIsUnfunny
Curiously enough, that was my exact thought (that Seinfeld is not funny). Might be because I only saw a few episodes in German and humor doesn’t always translate well.
We have dubs for everything, and since we do those dubs are actually really good, unlike many other places. I also seem to remember that Seinfeld aired pretty late and massively underperformed with regards to the expectations of its big success in the USA. So either the humor really didn’t work well here or the translations were bad. And maybe I was too young, too.
Anyways, I guess I should try watching a few episodes in English when it comes on Netflix.
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TL;DR: It turns out that at the end your knife is still shit.
Filed under: With apologies to the Ars commenter whose joke I just stole, But then again, copying is the greatest form of flattery
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@Benjamin-Hall said in In other news today...:
@Gąska said in In other news today...:
@Mason_Wheeler let me guess. It was between 9AM and 5PM?
I've gotten fraud alerts at all sorts of times. In the US, the fraud teams are 24/7.
In Germany too.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in In other news today...:
@Gąska said in In other news today...:
@Mason_Wheeler let me guess. It was between 9AM and 5PM?
I've gotten fraud alerts at all sorts of times. In the US, the fraud teams are 24/7.
I only get fraud alerts when I buy fuel in neighboring states. Actual obvious fraud committed fifteen hundred miles away always escapes their notice and I have to shut things down myself.
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@mott555 Argh. One time I moved to another state, driving over 1000 miles. Buying gas, meals, and hotel rooms in a more-or-less straight line from my old home to my new one never tripped any fraud alarms, but for whatever reason, attempting to purchase furniture once I arrived at the end of my straight-line journey I'd been moving towards the whole time put my card on lockdown.