hej

Can you hear that sound? It’s the sound of my eyes rolling.

So, uhm, I’m not exactly sure what you want. Why are you so convinced that this updated design will also fail?

But they are aware of the problem and trying to fix it. The strain relief of this year's iPad cable tripled in length compared to last year.

The last time, SpaceX had the sexier camera angles (including on-board cameras), so I would say everyone should watch their stream.

Get off your blinders is all I can say.

Ah, ok, now the picture is becoming a lot clearer. Thanks for the clarification!

Nice victim blaming.

I don’t understand what you mean. I’m even more confused now. How many different 5by5 apps are there?

Can someone please explain the whole story from the start? I do not understand anything.

5by5 has an app, only recently released. Why would there be another one? Is the app 5by5 has the same as this Mule one? What is this Mule thing? Is it completely new?

Take a look at the Cinema Display. Thunderbolt is Apple’s docking station replacement. That’s its purpose and it’s awesome. They are pushing Thunderbolt because it’s a perfect solution for a problem Apple has had for a long time. You have to be blind to Apple’s ecosystem to not see that.

They are not pushing it to replace USB3. That doesn’t even make sense. When Ivy Bridge MacBooks ship without USB3 you can claim that. No second earlier.

Yes, Apple is, like Intel, not enthusiastic about USB3. They don’t think it’s so important to move super fast. It’s just not top-priority. They will add it when it doesn’t cost them much and doesn’t add constraints to their design. But they are not stupid enough to believe that Thunderbolt could replace USB. Both technologies complement each other.

What? No.

Intel doesn't support USB3 yet. USB3 devices aren't even yet widespread. Since space is at a premium in the Airs, Apple obviously doesn't add an extra USB3 chip in them just to support what still is a niche feature.

Ivy Bridge does bring USB3 support. If the next generation of MacBooks (coming this summer) doesn't support USB3 you get to make your claim that Apple is trying to force Thunderbolt as a mass market technology. But no second earlier.

That’s not really what I meant. Most people do not know what algorithms are in the first place. That’s what you have to teach. You would tell them that some of the most common tasks are searching and sorting, for example, and then show different ways of doing it. It’s not about picking out the best algorithm, it’s about showing which types of problems are usually solved with algorithms and also explaining some of them, maybe also in a second step how those algorithms can be combined to solve more practical and complex problems.

That way people learn what’s possible. But you are of course right, in most cases even a naive implementation is better than manual labor.

This is a pervasive problem, one of the prime examples of why knowing the basics about algorithms and programming is a great skill to have.

Many people do not think about whether they can automate certain things. Even if you tell them too, they will often not have the right mindset for it and be unable to recognize that something is automatable.

This is not the fault of those people, it’s a fault of education. Automation is not intuitive, it’s not something humans understand instinctively. To know what works and what doesn’t, to know what’s possible, people need to learn the basics about how to code. (Maybe some will even be able to do some of it themselves, while others can at least ask around for an actual implementation.)

No, it’s not the solution to the failing education system in the US. No, it’s not the best thing since sliced bread. It’s not the savior. What it is, though, is just a good idea.

What’s the difference? I can’t see one.

What’s the difference? One is just a more abstract definition of the other.

You should feel responsible. You should be willing to learn something. I certainly do.

What’s the perspective, though?

Mass protests (ala OWS) were never really a focus of the Pirate Party. They were always about direct political participation (i.e. competing in elections). That’s not so realistic in the US where majorities are necessary to win seats and offices.

The Pirate Party very clearly represents a minority and has no realistic perspective of ever representing a majority. They are also not very geographically clustered. In democracies with proportional elections that’s not so much an issue.

The Green Party in Germany very clearly also represents a minority and has no realistic perspective of ever representing the majority, nevertheless it has been phenomenally successful during the last decades, not only as a opposition party but also as a party with government participation, both on the state and federal level. (The Greens were Gerhard Schröder’s coalition partner on the federal level.)

In the US, much of this has to happen inside existing parties with a realistic perspective (consequently, parties in the US are quite a bit less organized and there is much more fierce competition inside parties). Ron Paul tries to be different within the pre-existing framework of the Republican Party. The Tea Party Movement tries to be different within the pre-existing framework of the Republican Party.

Also, remember that this is only happening in Germany. A very special set of circumstances seems to have conspired there to create that success. This isn’t even happening elsewhere in Europe (at least not yet), not even in countries with political systems very similar to that in Germany. It seems like Germany is the special case here, not so much other places.

You are funny. Those stats have always looked quite similar for Germany, back to the fifties. Alone for that reason they cannot be a good indicator for whether a country is civilized. I’m sorry, but state sponsored murder of 11 million innocent people is not outweighed by the police only shooting very few bullets at criminals. Talking in those terms is just bullshit, it’s a weird worldview, one that especially Germans should be ashamed for expressing.

But that arrogance is common. It’s annoying.

Possible. Unlikely. I couldn’t find anything by googling around. It’s pretty obvious that those warning shots have an extremely low probability of actually hurting anyone.

Something with a low probability of hurting someone and done with good justification cannot be reckless in my eye. Celebratory gunfire? Reckless. Warning shots? Not.

Yes, I think saving two lives is preferable to saving one life. What’s so hard about that? That’s simple math.

Firing shots at people is also illegal in most situations pretty much anywhere. The police gets an exemption from that blanket rule under very specific conditions. I’m consequently not sure of what the fact that firing shots in the air is illegal is supposed to convince me.

I don’t think people or the police should be allowed to fire in the air for no reason at all. That’s obviously stupid. That does certainly not mean that firing in the air can never be a great idea under very specific conditions.

I do not deny that bullets fired in the air are dangerous – but the probability of them actually being dangerous is extremely low. That’s the whole point.

I'm also not sure what that dig about probability is supposed to me. I think that probability is easy enough to roughly estimate and that any estimate leads to extremely low numbers. Estimate the area of humans exposed to the sky that would also lead to death if hit, compare it to the area of ground. For that second one you can use some densely populated area to get an upper bound.

That celebratory gunfire is common in some countries and that it – despite hundreds of shots being fired in the air – leads to only very few deaths should already tell you something about the low probability. (Celebratory gunfire is obviously stupid, though. There is no good reason to do it, nothing that could outweigh the probability of hurting or killing someone.)

That's largest as in most popoulos. 18 million of 82 million people. Federal elections are next year, the party is currently polling well above 5% nationwide, that's the required threshold for entering the parliament.

Reckless? Hardly.

Think about risk and probability. The probability of any of these warning shots actually hitting, hurting or even killing someone is extremely low. I'm not aware of any warning shot fired by the German police ever hurting anyone.

So, 50 years or so of warning shots and no one was hurt. If a warning shot kills someone today, those 50 years of warning shots only had to save two lives (someone decides to give up instead of seeking confrontation and being killed) to be worth it.

I think it's pretty simple, actually. On the whole, warning shots seem quite beneficial, that more than outweighs the low probability of hurting or killing someone.

But humans are bad at dealing with probability, so your error is understandable.

I’m not sure where (legal) liability comes in play here. I don’t think there is a way to successfully sue Dell for this (nor do I think there should be).

Uhm, no, that’s not what apologies are about. When you apologize for something, you are also expressing regret for doing something. If you could decide again you would decide differently.

In this case, a honest apology would be one where Dell apologizes for hiring that moderator: if we could go back in time and hire a moderator again, we wouldn’t hire that person.

Maybe their apology for the offense is supposed to imply that (presumably, since they are apologizing, they want people to not be offended, one option for them to prevent that is to not hire people like that in the future), but why not say that directly?

(I think the view that offense doesn’t matter and can be safely ignored is extremely damaging. And besides, it’s not as though offense is the worst thing about this. Dell gave someone the stage who legitimizes very weird views that would be disastrous if they became – even more – widespread in society or even the basis for policy. That’s why people are offended. And that’s a very good reason to be offended. Yes, words do matter.)

You (and I) are responsible if you are enjoying your privileges while – through no fault of their own - others suffer.

Sweden and the west got rich through luck and exploitation. You are privileged. You are lucky. Recognize that and act on it.

Uhm, it’s Google that doesn’t allow turn-by-turn navigation, not Apple. I bet Apple would be delighted if they could.

Can Apple do it in their own app? That’s the relevant question. Third party apps are irrelevant.

Google doesn’t allow third party developers (and that includes Apple, obviously) to offer turn-by-turn navigation. Here are the terms (10.2 c): https://developers.google.com/maps/terms

Letting Google build the maps app is obviously out of the question. That’s a pretty ridiculous idea. Would Google let Apple build a critical piece of Android? Obviously not.

(Also, where has Google made that clear? That’s a serious question. I’m not aware of any such statements from Google, so it would be awesome if you could point me in their direction.)

I’m sure Apple would if the could. They obviously can’t, though. I can’t imagine that Google would allow them to implement those features. So Google is the holdup. Apple uses Google’s API and is completely dependent on them in what they can do. (Hey, that’s their right. No problem with that. You don’t have to allow your competitor everything.)

That is exactly the reason why Apple has to do it on their own. It might be worse than Google Maps (at least in the beginning or forever), but at least it will allow for progress.

I’m totally in favor of mild punishments and I do think that imprisonment is barbaric and should be avoided if at all possible, but money as a punishment, for example, is not without problems.

It basically gets rich people of the hook. If there is a flat rate to pay, that’s the case anyway, but even if the punishment is a percentage of someone’s income, this disproportionally hits poor people. Poor people need all their money to survive – pay rent, pay heating, pay food – there is nothing extra, no money to save. Once you are making several dozen times that money, a monetary punishment hits you disproportionally milder.

It’s funny that you seem to be worried about the poor for which this type of punishment is probably absolutely devastating and not very likely to have any positive results at all. The poor are a problem, not because they might not pay, but because the punishment might be excessive and not lead to a positive outcome for them (i.e. it doesn’t prevent repeat offenses).

Preventing repeat offenses and being a deterrent seem like the only two legitimate justifications for punishment to me, and I’m not sure whether money can do that.

No idiotic juries in Sweden. Get out of your bubble.

400€/month. Paid the rent and some living costs. Non-technical internship. The other place I interviewed at and was named the pay I would have gotten 300€/month or so. (That's in Germany, by the way.)

Both was ok for me. I was still a student, so paying a bit less than I needed to survive on that wage alone was ok. It shows appreciation of my work and trust in me.