VolatileVoid

This is awesome!

Whilst we were in lockdown the first time, I wrote a small Logo interpreter for my son with almost exactly the same commands: https://freememory.github.io/azlogo/ (https://github.com/freememory/azlogo)

My code isn't nearly as elegant, not at all animated, and my parsing is awful but I had a lot of fun doing it.

There's something magical about Logo, and even now as an adult of almost 40 I continue to enjoy playing with it and making pretty line graphics.

Really? What in their status update read to you as "the problem is on our side, not yours"? Understand that I'm a programmer and couldn't figure that out.

Is it just me or are Discord's status updates legendarily bad to the point of being entirely useless? As a user of the discord app, don't tell me the "API is having issues." Just tell me, "Discord is currently down. We are working on it and apologise for the disruption." Everything else is unnecessary line noise.

Garmin is the perfect example of a company that could have been displaced by the advent of smartphones with built in GPS receivers (which probably cannibalized the market for dedicated GPS devices in cars) but has remained relevant due to how they've explored other form factors.

My Garmin FR235 is an indispensable part of my running gear, and no mobile phone has come even close to replicating it.

It's funny to see this. I have a similar story about a MMORPG I've been playing for the better part of 20 years. It's got more in common with MUDs than typical MMORPGs and is an enforced roleplaying environment.

I've personally been volunteering my time to help add new features on the client and server for the past few years. The game is entirely free to play -- no adware junk or anything like that -- but sadly the community is tiny.

If it's something you might be interested in head to: http://underlight.com or find us on Discord, https://discord.gg/vamWXCk

I have, generally, 1-2 drinks per day, where a drink is 1.5oz of something like bourbon or whisky or scotch. I use it to unwind when I get home from work, usually whilst working on personal projects. That being said the definitions you've given above are interesting. A "light drinker" who drinks a fifth of Jack in one night drinks significantly more than I do, but if he/she only does it once a week are they truly light drinkers?

Volume/time is probably a more accurate benchmark.

Yes, it makes searching for a job harder. If you start looking for a position outside the banking/finance industry as a developer, nobody understands what a "VP" or an "Analyst" is and that it's meaningless (especially if you don't live in the US or on the east coast of the US).

Recruiters encouraged me to change it and/or edited my resume to read "Software Engineer" and then "Senior Software Engineer."

It's interesting the different experiences people have.

I've found LLBG to be downright pleasant. I get there at most 90 minutes prior to an international flight, breeze through security in about 15-30 minutes depending on queues and often have time to spare to get a coffee and browse through the duty free shops at my leisure.

Full disclosure: I am an Israeli citizen, but I've had this experience even prior to becoming a citizen, when I was only a US citizen.

You're comparing cost of living without taking into account median salaries?

I don't think any comparison is complete without some sort of salary survey.

Every time you talk about "Yo" an angel loses its wings or a kitten dies or... whatever.

If you stop talking about it, it will just fade into obscurity like Doogie Howser - only to appear years later as a successful, charming actor that can --- wait, where was this going?

Right. Stop talking about it and it'll go away. Don't be bitter about Yo; there's no point in it. Just let it go. Keep calm and carry on.

Hypoxia?

I know, I know, I'm reaching. But it'd explain the "mumbling."

Why?

I don't know, maybe to make aviation safer so it doesn't happen again, whatever "it" may be.

Why should Twitter bother debugging outages? Why should Facebook bother issuing post-mortems when bad things take their systems out? Just chalk it up to solar flares or blame some rogue developer and shrug your shoulders.

Sure, although the NationAir DC-8 tragedy was a different jet. The 777 is significantly more advanced and I believe has some sort of fire detection in the wheel well; they would have known very shortly after takeoff if there was smoke. Unless we're saying that the fire immediately disabled the ability to communicate the fact that there WAS a fire to the pilots...

...but that seems unlikely too, because I imagine the 777 has backup systems that would alert pilots in case a system as critical as the fire detection equipment in the wheel assembly was not responding.

I'm not saying the fire scenario is impossible; I'm still erring on the side of this being a tragic systems failure, and not a malicious act. I just think it might be entirely unlike anything we've seen in the past.

Never underestimate "pilot familiarity." In an emergency, a pilot is going to favor an airstrip he/she is familiar with over an unknown one. Perhaps the captain was more familiar with Langkawi?

Although one wonders how intelligent the name comparison "algorithm" (ha) is. I bet if you DID type in "David Fricken Jones" (sic) you'd be fine.

Depression isn't just /like/ physical pain. It can cause real, physical pain. Pain, for which you go to doctors who say "oh, you're fine." Pain for which you go to dentists only to hear "oh, you're fine."

In many (most? all?) people depression has a physical manifestation. It hurts. It aches. It's not a "hole in your heart," it's like having the flu. All the time. It's not like a toothache. It is a toothache. This distinction has to be made because it's important: the pain is real - even if it is just created by brain chemistry.

I know a female Michael.

I think this is cool, but I think the true power of this really is in the answers bit. Wouldn't it be cool - after getting engagement from a few thousand people taking pictures and asking questions - to snap a picture of something and have the answer pop up automatically without asking the question?

If they did that - i.e. compare the photo to other similar looking photos - it would reduce a lot of redundant questions and also make it immensely powerful. At that point it isn't a social network anymore; it's a collective intelligence search engine.

But I doubt they'll do that.

This is relatively similar to how it works in Israel.

To get internet access you actually need two things: infrastructure and an ISP. Infrastructure is through one of two companies (although it may be more now? I'm not sure): Bezeq (DSL) or HOT (Cable). After that you choose your own ISP.

Typically infrastructure is the more expensive of the two, and the ISP is quite cheap.

It's also illegal to have binding contracts for utilities here so if HOT pisses me off, I can switch to Bezeq. If my ISP pisses me off I can switch to another one within 20 minutes. I think this latter point is actually the most effective in getting what I want from my providers. Customer service here is pretty awful usually (and this is from a person who used to live in NYC and had TWC), but when they know they risk losing you very easily it's easy to get what you want.

I think if you unbundle and do away with contracts you'll get a pretty powerful combination.

That's not at all the problem.

What about navigating TFRs? Class B airspace? What about failures of the rotors whilst flying over heavily populated areas? Will these things be equipped with TCAS to avoid oncoming traffic? What happens if the path-finding algorithm to get from Amazon's warehouse to your house goes batshit insane and flies it in the approach path to LAX? Who files the flight plan for each of these things?

To quote Steve Yegge, "people will die... if it's YOU... you're going to be really pissed off." [0]

[0] http://steve-yegge.blogspot.co.uk/2009/04/have-you-ever-lega...

Israeli border control also no longer stamps passports. They give you a little slip of paper with your picture on it. This piece of paper is your "temporary visa."

Or at least that's how it was a few months ago.

Incidentally, the FAQ on the OMS CS page says explicitly that you do not need to have taken the GRE.

I was actually wondering the same thing.

I took the general GREs back in 2008 but I'm just over the arbitrary 5 year cutoff that the ETS imposes on score validity.

As an American who's living in Israel let me tell you that the backwardness of the US banking system doesn't even begin to COMPARE to the sheer inconvenience of banking here.

* No chip and PIN. Yep, same here.

* You have to interact with your branch for EVERYTHING. EVERYTHING. Not your bank. Your branch.

* The banking websites are all uniformly atrocious. Every single one looks like they designed it back in 2002 and just stopped and said, "meh, this is good enough."

* You pay for everything. Want to withdraw money from an ATM - your bank's ATM! - 1.76 ILS. You want to withdraw cash from a teller? 10 ILS. You wrote a check? 1.80 ILS. You thought about the bank on your way to work? 2.40 ILS.

* Checks can not be stopped. In fact it is illegal to issue a stop-payment on a check.

* The bank scrutinizes EVERY CHECK YOU WRITE. If the signature doesn't match the signature they have on file -- even a little bit because you were in a rush -- they reject the check. Oh, yeah, and they examine it by hand, not by machine. Oh and when they reject your check for technical reasons? 9 ILS.

* Direct debit... ok, actually, they've got this one covered. It's super easy. Except you still have to fill out a form that authorizes said payee to debit your account.

* You pay a monthly fee to the bank for the privilege of banking there. Not all banks have a monthly fee necessarily, but they all have surcharges so it all amounts to the same thing at the end of the day.

Oh gosh, don't even get me started on just how awful and inefficient the system is here. It is ripe for disruption except that the government has pretty strict controls around everything that goes on in the banking sector.

This, except I'm not a frequent flier.

I was wondering exactly the same thing: are boarding passes really _so opaque_ that they require significant redesign?

In fact, I don't even find boarding passes to be ugly. Or pretty. Or anything, really. They just /are./ I usually print my boarding pass at home and fold it into a little square and put it in my pocket.

If you want to redesign the inefficiencies of air travel I think boarding pass redesign comes at the very bottom of a very long list.

Thanks, I'll browse it.

Ideally I'd like to start something of my own with someone else, and ideally it'd be aligned with my time zone (and maybe even someone who I can meet face to face).

But this is definitely a good start. Thanks.

Vaccines? I don't have an answer, but here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_Catholic_cleric%E...

I'm not particularly religious (or Catholic), but let's not minimize the positive impact members of the clergy have had on science.

Sure, except that Taibbi's writing is /also/ so predictable that he practically <expletive> <amusing metaphor> Goldman Sachs.

See what I did there? :)

Perhaps this isn't the best place for this question, but I know that this is a community of hackers and I can't think of a better audience for it.

I've been eyeing a Raspberry Pi board for some time, but I can't think of what I'd like to do with it. I have NO background in EE - I'm really just a programmer. But I think it would be cool to, say, somehow make a raspberry pi turn my house lights on and off remotely (or via some timer). Now I know that there's the GPIO port on the Pi, but... how do I use it? How do I wire it up?

I think that's my biggest challenge. I have lots of old electronics, and potential uses for the Raspberry Pi, but I haven't the faintest clue about how to wire it all together. Perhaps I'm way out of my element, but I don't even know where to get started. I'd love to see very, very simple Rapsberry Pi hacks using the GPIO ports to interface with existing electronics, so I can get some ideas and so I can learn.

I guess what I'm saying is: I think the Raspberry Pi is really cool for hardware hacks, but I've not got the faintest clue about where to start - only that I want to start somewhere! Does anyone have any ideas?

Another nonsensical conversion? MMCF to MMBtu or, worse, 10^3m^3 to MMBtu.