davejohnclark

There's a good post about why this isn't as foolproof an approach as it might first seem here https://codeblog.jonskeet.uk/2019/03/27/storing-utc-is-not-a...

If billionaires and aristocrats were actually a sizable amount of a country's wealth

I might be misunderstanding your point, but I think they might be? E.g. in the UK:

By 2023, the richest 50 families in the UK held more wealth than half of the UK population, comprising 34.1 million people

https://equalitytrust.org.uk/scale-economic-inequality-uk/

Yeah I think that's a fair shout, the main element being that private banks create the money via loans. Thanks for engaging, I appreciate the discussion. One day I might grok how modern economies hang together, but I've a way to go yet.

Interestingly that paper from the Bank of England makes no mention of "fractional reserve" anywhere, but they do say:

Another common misconception is that the central bank determines the quantity of loans and deposits in the economy by controlling the quantity of central bank money — the so-called ‘money multiplier’ approach

While the money multiplier theory can be a useful way of introducing money and banking in economic textbooks, it is not an accurate description of how money is created in reality. Rather than controlling the quantity of reserves, central banks today typically implement monetary policy by setting the price of reserves — that is, interest rates.

In reality, neither are reserves a binding constraint on lending, nor does the central bank fix the amount of reserves that are available

Anyway, I think I'm digressing from the topic a bit here - but I _think_ what I've learned recently is that in the UK it isn't actually fractional reserve banking, which I was surprised by.

The main source of "money printing" is banks making loan

Sounds like a similar mechanism as the UK. I'm not aware if the system is exactly the same or not.

It was apparently so poorly understood in the UK that the bank of England wrote a paper (Money creation the Modern Economy https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-...) in 2014 to clarify where new money comes from. There's a good summary here https://positivemoney.org/uk-global/archive/proof-that-banks....

It's not something I was aware of until recently, but I was surprised that it was not more under the control of the government and central bank (in the UK, anyway, if it turns out it's different in the US).

Good write up here https://www.economicforces.xyz/p/stop-saying-a-value-added-t... about how VAT doesn't alter the levelness of the playing field re imports and exports

I have exactly this as well. My optician explained it as my brain would use the information from the lazier eye only if there wasn't any information from the good eye. Just tried the eyes crossed trick on the easy image in the article and the 3rd image in the middle is the right one. If I let them drift apart so there are 4 images I can see the left one and the difference (because I'd already found it), but as soon as I force them to overlap the left signal disappears and I'm only seeing the right image. I've also never managed to do a magic eye or anything, and 3d movies just give me a headache.

I thought the keel only needed to be down when they were something like 70 knots out at sea

60 nautical miles out to sea according to a write up by a former captain of the yacht (https://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/2024/08/27/former-bayesia...)

One section of the Bayesian Stability book related to the use of the moveable keel… and defines when it must be lowered. In this vessel’s case it was required to be lowered when using sails, and/ or when over 60 nautical miles offshore (regardless of whether sailing or only using engines). At all other times, it could be in the raised position.

Perhaps interesting for people, 'knots' is actually a measure of speed rather than distance and relates to the practice of counting how many knots in a line (rope) went over the stern of the boat during a certain time, giving the speed of the boat relative to the water (https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/knots-measuring-speed-s...)

Edit: typos

you don't need a license of any kind to listen to the radio.

I believe you did once upon a time, but I guess they were phased out as TVs became more popular.

The first supplementary licence fee for colour television was introduced in January 1968. Radio-only licences were abolished in February 1971 (along with the requirement for a separate licence for car radios).

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200405/cmselect/cmcu...

I absolutely love Chef John. Great recipes and the cadence of his speech on YouTube (foodwishes) is very soothing, while he cooks up something amazing. If you're a home cook I highly recommend his recipes and his channel.

You've articulated how I'd describe my experience as well. I'd not ever describe something in my mind's eye as 'floating like holograms'.

"Vague visual imagery appear in my head" resonates with me.

Edit: typo

Interesting, maybe it depends on when you were looking? Also central York and we popped outside just after half eleven and the aurora was very visible to the naked eye, not in full multicolour but very clearly not a cloud, quite thick and radiating out from a centre in the sky almost all the way down to the horizon. We have a reasonably dark place we can look from near us (and where we got some photos on a smartphone camera that show a sky full of vivid purples and greens) but I could see it clearly enough from right outside our house even with the bright led streetlights all around.

After 20 minutes it faded from view almost entirely and we went inside. I have no idea if it came back or what it was like beforehand, maybe we got very lucky or maybe it came and went through the night?

Clip for anybody who doesn't know the Futurama reference https://youtu.be/O4RLOo6bchU

I was stunned to read that, in the UK, after carefully separating out the microplastics with the solid waste, that waste is then... spread on farmland as fertiliser, microplastics and all.

In the UK, of the sewage sludge screened out by treatment works, 87% is sent to farms. The microplastics so carefully removed from wastewater by the treatment process are then spread across the land in the sewage sludge the water companies sell to farmers as fertiliser.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/26/microp...

I generally think of this as the same principle of "prefer composition over inheritence". Leave the top-level free to compose the behaviour it requires rather than inheriting the framework's behaviour, for exactly the reasons you describe.

Have you tried using something like telepresence (https://www.telepresence.io/) to get a better debugging story? It's not perfect but I've used it to good effect in the past to help with some aspects of the local development story, and they've made some pretty significant improvements in telepresence 2. Not affiliated in any way, just someone who's found it a very useful tool when working with kubernetes.

I did a quick trawl through the patents filed by SiTimes, and I’m guessing the MEMS oscillator chip contains at least two separate oscillators. These oscillators are intentionally different, so that their frequency drift with temperature also have different, but predictable, curves. They can use the relative difference of the frequencies to very precisely measure the absolute temperature of the pair of oscillators by comparing the instantaneous difference between the two frequencies. In other words, they took the exact problem that plagues silicon designs, and turned it into a feature: they built a very precise temperature sensor out of two silicon oscillators.

I finally got around to reading the excellent Logitude by Dava Sobel (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4806.Longitude) and to a lay-person this sounds like a similar principle that Harrison applied to design the bimetallic strip used to preserve the accuracy of his clocks in the face of temperature changes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bimetallic_strip). Very cool.

Second this. I first heard about this book in a comment on HN a few years ago (can't find it at the moment to link), and happily pay it forward whenever I can.

"where do you see yourself in 5 years?"

Don't say "doing your wife", don't say "doing your wife"

"Doing your... son?"

Sorry for the cheap laugh. I really needed it right now. Maybe some other people do as well.

I found the oatmeal's comic about Columbus enlightening (and disturbing) https://theoatmeal.com/comics/columbus_day

Cool, thanks. No idea how I failed to find it...

Thanks! I swear I searched the repo and didn't get any useful results, but yeah it's there plain as day...

I could never unsee it in this old easymock logo https://www.javacodegeeks.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/eas.... They have since changed it to something much more neutral, thankfully!

Looks cool, is the source code for promtail available? I can see there's an image available https://hub.docker.com/r/grafana/promtail (which is used in the readme) but I can't find the source anywhere. Anyone know where it is?

Have you come across https://www.provenance.org? It's outside the currency/wire transfer space. Looked like an interesting application to me, but possibly too nascent to be a shining example