peeters

> in 10 years time everyone will assume their driving habits are being monitored by their insurance company.

And even if there continues to be an opt-out, those plans will become so prohibitively expensive that you're essentially forced to allow your insurer to spy on you. Privacy is always priced out in the free market. Regulation is the only way. It's not a net benefit to society, just outlaw egregious data collection.

It needs more "Democratic" in it to make it clear it's definitely not authoritarian. Maybe "The Democratic People's Temporary Cyber Act for Freedom"

Most would consider it to be vanilla, when "vanilla" is used as a descriptor of the gameplay (i.e., as opposed to "modded"). There are some very minor differences, but almost anyone advertising a vanilla Minecraft multiplayer server is going to be using Paper or one of its predecessors/competitors. The released server.jar just really isn't optimized for more than one player.

Some things that you can tweak for performance reasons also affect gameplay. For example, you can tweak the radius at which items group together into stacks of entities. Enabling this can make certain farm builds not work, e.g. a piglin bartering farm might have the gold bar destined for one piglin merge with the bar destined for a neighbouring piglin, when in pure Vanilla settings that might not happen. Similarly, you can have XP orbs merge into single orbs with higher XP values. But this drastically changes how long it takes to use an efficient XP farm, where normally you would be waiting for minutes for your player to receive the XP one orb at time.

Can you expand on this? This bill seems to enable exactly what the author is attacking: exploiting the desperate hopes of terminally ill patients to sell ineffective drugs.

I agree with removing red tape and allowing accelerated trials when the drugs are for these purposes, but it seems like today, drug companies can make a profit off of selling snake oil. They already stand to benefit from the reduced regulations, so why allow them to sell the drug at all under these circumstances? If they're so confident in the efficacy, they should be willing to give the drug away for free to benefit from an accelerated path to approval.

This bill seems to allow drug companies to continue to sell under these regulations, and in fact goes even further by removing most liability from them.

I haven't seen most of the issues you describe, but I do know that AA is incredibly finicky with the quality of cable you use. When I first bought my car I would use a random cable from Amazon and Mazda's infotainment would straight up crash (can't blame that part on AA though). Mazda's infotainment is pretty notorious for being terrible; that it takes so long to connect (and get past the safety disclaimers EVERY SINGLE TIME) is truly annoying. I will say that I just bought a wireless AA dongle off Amazon and since I got that it's a lot more reliable because I'm not swapping cables all the time, though my Mazda still will take a while to connect to AA, then start playing my phone music, then switch back to radio for now apparent reason. It feels like the two subsystems are competing.

I've only used a Lexus that had a touchpad. I do however regularly use a Mazda with its commander knob, and it is far safer than a touchscreen in my opinion. You can do most navigation without looking at the screen, with just an occasional glance to confirm you're doing what you think you're doing. Whereas a touchscreen requires constant attention while you're manipulating the screen.

The only thing that annoys me about Commander Knob + Android Auto is that AA still forces attention breaks as you scroll through big lists (e.g. Spotify playlists) which is really stupid because you're not usually looking at the screen if you know you need to scroll say 75% down. You're just looking occasionally to see how far you've made it. By making the task take longer, it's reducing safety.

The biggest safety issue by far with Mazda+AA is Google's baffling regression in handling voice input for common tasks while driving.

I wasn't trying to extend the analogy to saying landing F9 is trivial. But F9 surviving re-entry is fairly trivial, which is the important difference between the two. Once you've survived re-entry and slowed down to terminal velocity, there's not a huge difference between landing from orbital and sub-orbital trajectories. I agree that the way it's phrased is fairly meaningless and reeks of baseball commentary cherry-picking, but surviving from orbit is still a very different milestone than surviving from sub-orbit.

No, they are not correct either.

You're quoting this article, but you're misunderstanding it:

https://phys.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/University_Physics/U....

This is calculating the gravitational potential between two point masses. In other words, the potential energy if both masses were singular points at a distance from each other.

I was quoting the potential energy differential between being 100km over the ground, and on the ground. This is 98 MJ for a 100kg object, and that's what you have to cancel out to land back on Earth. The total gravitational energy of that object to the Earth's centre is more like 6300 MJ, but that's a meaningless number.

I mean sure, there's ambiguity around the word "spacecraft". But Falcon 9's booster isn't orbital, its payload is. So it might still be a first for an orbital spacecraft.

The gravitational potential energy of a 100kg payload in 100km orbit is 98 MJ. The kinetic energy of a 100kg payload in 100km orbit is 3042 MJ, over 30x more. So surviving reentry from orbit is orders of magnitude more difficult than surviving a straight up/down shot.

Now F9 boosters obviously have a horizontal velocity as well that they need to cancel out, but suborbital and orbital spacecrafts are very different beasts and it's absolutely noteworthy. It's the difference between surviving a car crash at 20 mph vs 95 mph. One is trivial, the other requires a heck of a lot of engineering.

Because they would otherwise be denied a service or freedom they are legally entitled to. "Undue advantage" is a bribe like "hey choose my company for this lucrative government contract." A harassment bribe is more like "hey here's some money for you to not charge me with a made-up traffic violation", or "hey here's some money in addition to the actual driver's license fee, so that you'll actually do your job and give me my license".

Typo in original and submission: 155mm, not 155M (which could be interpreted as 155 million something--dollars?) as in the submission, nor 155m (metres) as in the original.

The context is "should I go for the 2-pt conversion?" When you're making that decision, you've already received 6 points for scoring the corresponding touchdown. The scenario presented is that you were down by 14, then you scored a touchdown to be down 8, and now have to decide whether to kick the PAT or go for 2 points. That's why it's correct to say "when you're down by 8". They're talking about a scenario where you'll still have to score another TD.

> But if you're at a slot machine and you can put in an extra dollar for a 10% extra chance to win the jackpot, and in fact you chances increase from 0.001% to 0.0011%, would you think that's honest or scummy

Casinos in general are scummy, but I can't fault with the phrasing. What's the threshold at which the world is allowed to use percentages in the way they're meant to be used, without having to be accused of being dishonest?

If you are given the option of taking one lottery ticket or two lottery tickets, is it dishonest to say that taking two lottery tickets would increase your odds of winning by 100% over taking just one? Do you need to know the odds of a single ticket winning to make that claim?

I think you're using a restrictive and non-standard interpretation of percentages. They can be used to convey overall probability, but also a change in probability. Only allowing one usage is just a communication deficit.

This is a very long article which seems to just reveal the author doesn't understand the difference between percentages and percentage points.

50% to 62.5% in the simplified calculation is a 25% improvement, not a 12.5% improvement. It's a 25% improvement on already low odds (after all, nobody is actually saying that it's 100% probability that your D will stop the next drive and then you will score another touchdown. It's just assuming that those things have to happen either way so the odds cancel out, and this is looking at win probability assuming that those things happen). Laura's calculations, for a similar scenario (4 possessions remaining), projects the overall probability of winning going from 11.2% -> 12.9%, which is a 15% improvement, roughly the same order of magnitude as the simplified example. I don't have the exact breakdown for a two-possession scenario, but in her slideshow she says this, which seems to be what the author is citing:

> If down by ...16 (before the 6 TD points), the strategy improves the win probability by <1%.

But I am convinced she is talking about absolute percentage points here (e.g. 10% to 10.9%), not a <1% change (e.g. 10% to 10.09%). Why? Because the slide has this before it:

> Rationale: if you are down by 15, you have to score two touchdowns while keeping your opponent from scoring

She is demonstrating that it's not a silver bullet given it's exceedingly unlikely you will win anyway.

I'm guessing you haven't done much with prompt customization. Try starting a conversation with something like "I'm the research assistant for a policy maker and often need to summarize complex topics for my boss. Please avoid any fluff or boilerplate language in your responses, including not reiterating the question, and favor brevity while still using a paragraph structure instead of bullet points." You'd be surprised by how much different your answers will look.

> If we are being pedantic about it

It's not pedantry; you're just taking two roughly analogous things and acting like they have no differences. It IS relevant that EVs call it "regenerative braking" because it does "magically recharge the battery".

> that is what the EV manufacturers want you to think via their marketing.

And yet we're in a thread for an article from the U.S. Department of Energy, not a car manufacturer.

> Because basic physics dictates that you're playing a net-net zero-sum game ... i.e. what you "generate" you then loose when you next stop at the lights and accelerate again

You're missing the point entirely. The point of regenerative braking isn't that it's more efficient than maintaining a constant speed the whole time. It's that it reclaims energy when you would have to stop anyway, traditionally with the brake. i.e. city-driving when you hit stop lights.

A 5-10% net gain is an incredible benefit; I don't know why you're downplaying it. If I could make a 10% improvement to my fuel economy solely by coming to a gentle stop (which I already do anyway) it would be amazing.

Give me an idea of how often you'd hit the brake pedal while trying to use one pedal. A few times an hour? Week? I feel like if it's a regular enough thing the natural impulse would be there for new drivers too, but if it's something you're doing every couple months, probably not.

You're making a lot of assumptions about me and flipping them into a big false dichotomy.

It's actually entirely possible to both drive at a safe speed and even still want to be able to brake quickly when you see potential hazards on the road.

What was the impetus for manufacturers to design it this way I wonder? It seems to me like you could easily implement regenerative braking in the same way by having the brake pedal respond to light pressure with regenerative braking, and firm pressure with brake pads. Then you don't lose the ability to coast, nobody has to learn anything new, and you don't have to transition from pedal to pedal if you need to surpass the capability of the regenerative brake.

Was there an engineering challenge? A safety concern? Do they think that using a single pedal has enough innate advantage that it overcomes the disadvantage of having to be learned? And if so, what's the innate advantage?

I mean GP specifically mentioned "no cruise" and while I doubt that's common in EVs, to their point in an ICE you can take your foot off of the gas, do some stretches, give it a quick rest, and put it back on the pedal all before you would noticeably change speeds. In an EV with regenerative braking you'd be noticeably decelerating if you did the same. I think that's what they were reacting to; the idea of not being able to give your foot a rest. But again...your EV is probably going to have cruise.

How fast does the regenerative braking start? When I drive in an ICE with two pedals, when driving in an area with hazards, kids, etc, I frequently will take my foot off of the gas and hover it over the brake so that I'm able to respond quickly. I can do this because taking my foot off the gas while maintaining speed doesn't make an abrupt impact if I'm maintaining speed in a flat area.

I would still want to be able to respond equally quickly in an EV, but it seems like it would lurch quite a bit if I did the same in a one-pedal setup?

I don't know that I'd want a full toggle in an inaccessible spot to be able to coast. Do any EVs have like a paddle to coast/disable regenerative braking?

> The title says he objects to diversity

I don't know if the title has been updated in the last 15 minutes, but the title currently says "A math professor who objects to diversity statements". Not "to diversity".

What mechanism for user tracking could you possibly use to do this?

> Six lines of code tell me exactly what it does

I like the minimalism too, but I don't think it tells me "exactly what it does". I have no idea from that page what the backend requirements are. Is it a hosted solution? Is it using some browser profile functionality? Do I have to set up a server?

It demonstrates the simplicity of the client side code for sure. But the server stack is obviously where the details are going to be.

I wonder how many road deaths their declining hands-free quality has contributed to? I'd wager the number has more than two digits. It's one thing to never have supported something hands-free, but when something that you used to be able to regularly do hands-free all of a sudden doesn't work, drivers are bound to get frustrated and use the device hand-held.

Another step in Android's steady progression of become less and less useful hands-free. It's incredible to me that my experience with my Nexus One in 2010 was better than it is today with a Pixel 7. The fact that it arbitrarily decides to not recognize some contacts on some days. The fact that it can't handle me spelling out a street name when it insists on replacing the street name that I'm saying with something completely different. The fact that YouTube Music would always play "some driving music" that it chooses over my playlist literally called "Driving Music", when I would say "Play my Driving Music Playlist on YouTube Music". And now the assistant is getting even less personalized, which means it will care even less about what you're literally saying, and just send you into a swamp of generic assumptions.

Assistants were SO much more usable when they would require strict trigger language, and interpret it literally and formulaically. Yes you would have to learn its language, but once you did, you could actually accomplish what you wanted to accomplish, unlike today.

> Bill Gates was bitching about us changing JS all the time

Emphasis mine

> Lookup tables for computable values are not novel, nor are they a joke

It's been ages since I've done anything low-level, but I don't think 4 billion if-statements are compiled to a "lookup table" when optimizations are turned off. Each and every if statement would be evaluated in order to determine if it matches the input. This seems to be supported by OP's program outputting in much less time for small numbers than for large numbers--since the small numbers appear earlier in the code.

A 4 billion case switch statement on the other hand, I would expect to compile to some kind of lookup table. Though when the data type is an unsigned int even then I'm not sure what the compiled code would look like without optimization.