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treerock

417 karma · joined July 7, 2012

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treerock··on World conker champion found with steel chestnut, cleared of cheating
I was out for a walk yesterday, and kids were throwing sticks up trees trying to knock the chestnuts down, so I don't think it's dead completely.

I never really played it when I was a kid, but knew all about it from The Beano and Oor Wullie.

treerock··on The Lindy Effect
Not sure it fits, but I like The Gods of Copy Book Headings

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gods_of_the_Copybook_Hea...

treerock··on The Scottish Highlands, Appalachians, and the Atlas are the same mountain range
The Orange Order marches?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_walk

I'm not sure they can be described as "anti Irish".

treerock··on Large-scale ‘sand battery’ goes online in Finland
Maybe at a smaller scale, but that sounds like a storage heater I had in an old flat.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storage_heater

treerock··on Amazon warehouse employee in Poland dies at work
Amazon still has to abide by the laws and regulations of countries they work in. So I wouldn't be surprised if workers in Germany are treated a lot better than they are in countries with weaker laws (not talking about Poland here, I don't know how they compare).
treerock··on An Uncommon Cold
Randal Munroe tried to answer that in the book 'What If?' Basic conclusion is no. Virus would linger in a few hosts long enough to restart.

Also it would destroy the economy and potentially damage our health. 'It's possible mild infections serve serve to train and calibrate our immune system'

treerock··on Brexit VAT rules: shipping notice on a Dutch ecommerce store
> Royal mail will charge you another £8

Something similar happened to me. On top of the £8 charge, I had to drive 30 miles to the depot to pay the charge. The Royal Mail refused to deliver it.

treerock··on Brexit VAT rules: shipping notice on a Dutch ecommerce store
I'd imagine they'd then have to deal with a lot of returns/chargebacks, from customers refusing to pay to accept the goods.

Simpler to just refuse to deal with the UK.

treerock··on Levandowski sentenced to 18 months in prison as new lawsuit against Uber filed
> socialist view of an exploited proletariat is one of...a powerful force

May be mistaken, but historically didn't socialist view proles as a 'lumpen mass', with no real power?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumpenproletariat

treerock··on Show HN: Meta book recommendations from Ask HN threads
I'd guess this

https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/12/27/why-we-sle...

treerock··on Eat for $1.50 per Day – Layoffs, Coronavirus Quarantine, Food Shortages
I'm curious if anyone has numbers on how much a homemade sourdough loaf costs on average. My experience is that flour is quite expensive (and currently not available in UK shops).

I've also noticed a spike in electricity costs since we've started baking regularly. (Difficult to calculate exactly)

My guess is that baking your own is a bit cheaper than going to some artisanal baker, but a lot more expensive than a standard load.

treerock··on Team Structure for Software Reliability Within Organizations
Sounds like SRE are fixing bugs and introducing tools and processes that improve reliability.

> There are two main types of reliability work. The first is mitigation, which is a linear fix that’s often referred to as firefighting...The second is change management, which is a non-linear fix that proactively reduces the defect rates through projects like migrating to better tools and refactoring spaghetti code. While SREs support both these types of work, they should spend more time on the latter.

treerock··on Plastic Pollution
High-income countries...have very effective waste management infrastructure and systems; this means discarded plastic waste is stored in secure, closed landfills.

How does this match up to the estimates that "Roughly two-thirds of plastic waste in the UK is sent overseas to be recycled."[1]? Especially if some of that 'recycled' waste ends up in uncontrolled landfills.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-49827945

treerock··on Eat This Much – Automatic Meal Planner
I could only replicate that by setting the activity level to 'very active' (hard exercise 6-7 days per week). At 'lightly active' it recommends closer to 2400. Seems reasonable.
treerock··on Selme – A free tool to find your ideal customer profile data
Links aren't working. No information on front page. 'customer profile data' sounds dodgy
treerock··on We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes
Yeah I wish I could find a better picture bit this gives a sense of Edinburgh centre.

https://www.nfpplanning.com/uploads/2/4/0/5/24056719/taxi-tr...

Queues of buses, and during the day they will often only have one or two passenger.

Plus car drivers are advised to give a bike the same room as a car, so on mixed use roads a bike effectively takes up the same space as a car.

treerock··on Show HN: I've made a rotary dial number input, because why not?
Android's 'time picker' sounds very much like the blackberry version you describe.

https://i.stack.imgur.com/60z61.png

treerock··on The Passion Economy and the Future of Work
> Find something that is of value to society and pays enough, then work everyday to be better and better at it until you reach your maximum potential, and you will be rewarded.

Unless society changes what it values, at which point you are fucked.

https://genius.com/Pete-seeger-john-henry-lyrics

treerock··on Why is Middle School so hard?
England has it in some areas [1].

[1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_school#The_three-tier_mo...

treerock··on United Kingdom Budget Visualization
That's got to be offset by the increasing pension age?

Apparently accelerating the changes saved around £215bn (between 2011 and 2026).

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49917315

treerock··on UK Government to Ask Queen to Suspend Parliament
So the plan is for Parliament to be suspended between 10th September and 14th October.

But they were already due a recess between 13th September and 8th October for their yearly jolly at the seaside[1].

Having just returned from their summer recess between 20th July and 5th September.

[1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_conference_season

treerock··on What happens when you launch Google Chrome for the first time?
I tried opening Chromium on Linux yesterday (I use it sometimes for testing) and it prompted me to log in. I had to hit Cancel four or five times before being able to browse. Bizarre behaviour for a browser.
treerock··on I feel like im talking to the borg
Tried that. Top message:

Diana Wilde @rulesObeyer

16h16 hours ago Replying to @AmazonFCRafael

are you a robot, did they make a bunch of ai to lie for them instead of helping real workers

So still diving into the middle of a conversation.

treerock··on Web Scraping and Crawling Are Perfectly Legal, Right? (2017)
Except perhaps Google is actually better at search because it knows so much about you.

In that case a Google without the privacy issues is basically the same as duckduckgo.

treerock··on Manual Work is a Bug – Always be automating (2018)
in theory[1], yes.

[1]:https://www.xkcd.com/1319/

(I may have been doing a lot of automation recently because, I think, bosses have paid a lot of money for an automation tool and feel the need to use it, and therefore feeling a little cynical about the whole thing)

treerock··on Alan Turing to feature on new £50 note
I don't know. I first heard of the 'Turing Test' at school, long before I knew about his conviction. And his work during WWII gives him a bit of a hero status, even for people who aren't interested in computers.
treerock··on Surveillance cameras debunk the bystander effect
> decrease of probability that a particular individual will act, with decrease in group size

I believe the study did show that. I heard an interview with one of the authors on the radio (so my memory may be faulty).

So I don't think it really debunked the bystander effect, rather he made a point along the lines of, 'it doesn't really matter, the more people present means it's the more likely that one of them intervenes'.

treerock··on Surveillance cameras debunk the bystander effect
Could possibly have the opposite effect?

I believe the study showed that the probability of any individual getting involved increases if there is no-one else present. i.e. they are the only one who can help.

Surveillance cameras might make people feel someone else will take responsibility.

treerock··on The most effective way to tackle climate change? Plant a trillion trees
Trillion is 10^12 in both British and US English.
treerock··on In Japan, a growing number of car-sharing users don’t rent cars for driving
I've seen advertising boards on trailers parked by the side of roads in public parking spaces. Angled to face into the traffic, so probably not parked temporarily.
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