This is why you have a system like we have in British Columbia. There is an independent property assessment organization that re-assesses every property in the province each year. They don't collect property taxes, nor do they set rates, they simply collate data based on previous sales in the area immediately surrounding the property, depreciation on the structures on it (plus information from building permits etc...) and come up with an assessed value for the land (and/or strata lot, if in a condo). The cities then take the values from BC Assessment to figure out their mill rate, and that in turn determines your property taxes.
This also protects you from people complaining about their assessed value going up. If all the property values in the city go up by 10% in a given year, the net change to taxes is nil, because that just drops the mill rate. It's only if your property goes up dramatically compared to your neighbour's that your tax bill would go up, but since all properties are reassessed every year, the probability of that happening is fairly low.
Fond memories of operating my own bbs for 5 years as well. That said I went to a couple of the local Sysop meets and let's just say that... Well... Hygiene wasn't always the top priority.
It's more complex then that. Originally the impetus to fight fires aggressively (starting post second world war) was to appease the lumber barons. This led to 50 years of fuel building up in the forests. Combine this extra fuel with climate change, and we're long part where "Let it burn" is a viable option in many cases. The fires now are far more intense and damaging both in terms of economic damage and environmental damage then they would have been historically.
The only real solution, at least in the Pacific Northwest, is an aggressive program of late season prescribed burns to consume the fuel at a lower intensity, which better reflects historic fire patterns.
I think people don't quite understand the magnitude of some of these fires. A few years ago I was on the ride out team for a charitable organization that operates a camp in the wilderness. On the day of our fire evacuation, the fire for into an old burn and proceeded to consume some 5000 acres in under 2 hours. The fire sent a plume some 50,000 feet into the air. We were about 6 miles away and the best way I have to describe this is watching a nuclear bomb going off in slow motion. It was the most awe inspiring spectacle I have ever seen.
Anyhow, the only thing that the Airforce could really help with in these situations would be for the Air Mobility Command to turn some of their transport fleet into VLATs (Very Large Air Tankers) to help protect structures and people, and guide the fire. Directly attacking it is futile.
This has actually been done. There is a separate IC/DSP/Controller (whatever you want to call it) that listens for the "Hey Siri." When it hears it, it wakes up the main CPU and the rest of the process starts running. It would be far too power intensive for the main CPU cores to stay awake to analyze a constant stream of noise. This is also why the iMac Pro, and similar computers contain some of the chipset from the iPhones.
I work with a non-profit with just about 60 years worth of archives. In chatting with our archivist, we have set the following rules for what we archive digitally:
1) All data must be in open/publicly documented formats, and preferably those that already have a long history. 2) Filenames and directory structure must be desriptive. If the format supports metadata, it must be filled in. 3) The data is migrated to new media every 2 years. 4) Truly important documents (articles of incorporation, insurance paperwork, etc... ) is still printed off on acid-free paper, and kept in dry storage.
Well, first the probe isn’t designed for refuelling, so actually doing that would be hard.
Secondly, the probe is in deep space, in orbit around the sun, rather than about the earth. At the moment, it’s just a little less than 1AU (the distance between the sun and earth) away from the earth.
The SpaceX ones, at least, have been through the vacuum chamber testing etc... and the one that was flown on the Falcon Heavy Test Flight, sitting in the roadster, was real as well (though I don't know if it was actually pressurized).
I agree. If municipalities etc had the 'permission' to build ISPs as utilities, this would change the market immediately. Google Fiber was really just a threat that caused real changes in some markets. It just didn't turn out to be manageable for Google.
A great example of this is the PUD fiber systems in Chelan and Douglas counties, in WA. The PUDs have rolled out a GPON network that services virtually every residential and commercial address in their respective counties. As a resident of the county, you then have the choice of some 6 ISPs, and a similar number of television providers. If you're a business you can also get peering from Zayo and/or Level 3. In the end, your bill winds up being $10/mo to the PUD, and then whatever deal you have with your service provider.
Dunno where you are, but in Vancouver, both TransLink and the driver's union are doing big campaigns to get people to come in and do the driving course. Heck, they pay you to do the course. The system is really hurting for new drivers, both the operator (CMB) and the union recognize this.
I guess I'm not the only one that remembers the days when that 640K of RAM was a major portion of the cost of building a computer.... Hell, I remember just being amazed that I could buy a 32MB stick for $60!
A good librarian is an absolute treasure. Last time I was in my local library, I witnessed a guy come in and pose a question to the librarian. The reply was "I don't know for sure, but lets figure it out." and the librarian then proceeded to walk the person through doing the research in a very thoughtful way, also hopefully teaching them how to think through similar questions the next time.
A collection of rarely read books is in some ways the fundamental purpose of a library.
One of my favourite sections of the library is the "Rare Books" and similar sections where you can't check anything out, and have to read it there. I have a particular interest in some local history and a lot of the accounts of these events can only be found in someone's memoirs or similar, where there may only be one or two copies in existence. There's also a certain je-ne-sais-quois about holding a real piece of history in your hands.
There are items that have been stored for decades and decades, and you never know when they might become useful. Digital data is far more ephemeral (can you pull that document you wrote off of that 5 1/4" floppy, stored in WordPerfect 5.1 format? I can't. Can you read a book, printed 50 years ago, never mind 300 years ago? probably.
This year, during the local prawn season, I remarked that it's interesting that in western culture, pretty much the only food that most people handle live any more is seafood. (for reference, we killed our prawns by bathing them in a bottle of Chardonnay, before grilling them).
Halal is the first example that comes to mind with animals being intentionally bled out by slitting their throats to kill them.
It might be gruesome, but done properly it's not especially inhumane. Slitting the throat cuts off the blood flow to the brain, rendering the animal unconscious in very short order.
Eh, I grew up around doing oil changes... but the only time I do it myself is changing the oil on the little diesel on my boat. For my car? I'd rather just pay someone to do it, plus they can get the supplies cheaper than I can.
Well, no... those harvesters are already being run through the fields to produce feed for the animals that we eat. Cutting out those animals would reduce the quantity of plant matter that needs to be harvested, as we're cutting out the (inefficient) step of converting it to meat.
That said, I'm still going to enjoy my 6oz steak along with all the other bits that go with it.
. The only difference is that with a central speedometer - not even that Model 3's is all that central - you're also looking somewhat to the right.
The bigger win with central speedometers is that it actually improves your response time. By putting it that much further away from your face, it increases your focus distance. This makes switching back and forth between the speedometer and the road just a hair quicker, which is more significant than most people realize, especially at highway speeds.
That said, I too prefer physical controls. I can adjust the climate control system on my VW completely by touch, as all the controls are fully tactile, and have appropriate detents (22C for standard temperature, a detent at each fan setting, and a detent at each vent combination). With touch screen controls, there is zero tactile feedback, forcing you to actually look at the system. Even my aftermarket stereo, which is primarily touch-screen based, has physical buttons for volume and mute controls, which I can hit without taking my eyes off the road.
It's really all about having to shift your focus, and how long it takes to go back and forth between the controls and the road.
Hopefully, though, software updates (such as Windows Update, Apple Update, etc...) will remain unencrypted. I run a network that services some remote communities via satellite, and those things are eminently cacheable (we have a WSUS server for our corporate computers).
Before you get your panties in a twist about that being insecure, the way I recall these things working is that the update client fetches SHA256 sums of the update files via HTTPS, and then downloads the files over HTTP. That way, the updates can be cached locally, but the end user can still be assured that they haven't been tampered with.
Slashdot Mirror
This is why you have a system like we have in British Columbia. There is an independent property assessment organization that re-assesses every property in the province each year. They don't collect property taxes, nor do they set rates, they simply collate data based on previous sales in the area immediately surrounding the property, depreciation on the structures on it (plus information from building permits etc...) and come up with an assessed value for the land (and/or strata lot, if in a condo). The cities then take the values from BC Assessment to figure out their mill rate, and that in turn determines your property taxes.
This also protects you from people complaining about their assessed value going up. If all the property values in the city go up by 10% in a given year, the net change to taxes is nil, because that just drops the mill rate. It's only if your property goes up dramatically compared to your neighbour's that your tax bill would go up, but since all properties are reassessed every year, the probability of that happening is fairly low.
Fond memories of operating my own bbs for 5 years as well. That said I went to a couple of the local Sysop meets and let's just say that... Well... Hygiene wasn't always the top priority.
It's more complex then that. Originally the impetus to fight fires aggressively (starting post second world war) was to appease the lumber barons. This led to 50 years of fuel building up in the forests. Combine this extra fuel with climate change, and we're long part where "Let it burn" is a viable option in many cases. The fires now are far more intense and damaging both in terms of economic damage and environmental damage then they would have been historically.
The only real solution, at least in the Pacific Northwest, is an aggressive program of late season prescribed burns to consume the fuel at a lower intensity, which better reflects historic fire patterns.
I think people don't quite understand the magnitude of some of these fires. A few years ago I was on the ride out team for a charitable organization that operates a camp in the wilderness. On the day of our fire evacuation, the fire for into an old burn and proceeded to consume some 5000 acres in under 2 hours. The fire sent a plume some 50,000 feet into the air. We were about 6 miles away and the best way I have to describe this is watching a nuclear bomb going off in slow motion. It was the most awe inspiring spectacle I have ever seen.
Anyhow, the only thing that the Airforce could really help with in these situations would be for the Air Mobility Command to turn some of their transport fleet into VLATs (Very Large Air Tankers) to help protect structures and people, and guide the fire. Directly attacking it is futile.
This has actually been done. There is a separate IC/DSP/Controller (whatever you want to call it) that listens for the "Hey Siri." When it hears it, it wakes up the main CPU and the rest of the process starts running. It would be far too power intensive for the main CPU cores to stay awake to analyze a constant stream of noise. This is also why the iMac Pro, and similar computers contain some of the chipset from the iPhones.
I work with a non-profit with just about 60 years worth of archives. In chatting with our archivist, we have set the following rules for what we archive digitally:
1) All data must be in open/publicly documented formats, and preferably those that already have a long history.
2) Filenames and directory structure must be desriptive. If the format supports metadata, it must be filled in.
3) The data is migrated to new media every 2 years.
4) Truly important documents (articles of incorporation, insurance paperwork, etc... ) is still printed off on acid-free paper, and kept in dry storage.
How many microfilms can you store on a 10TB HDD?
Will your 10TB HDD still be readable in 100 years?
Well, first the probe isn’t designed for refuelling, so actually doing that would be hard.
Secondly, the probe is in deep space, in orbit around the sun, rather than about the earth. At the moment, it’s just a little less than 1AU (the distance between the sun and earth) away from the earth.
Cardboard (Corrugated and not) is pretty much second only to metals in terms of recycling, and most of that is done domestically.
The SpaceX ones, at least, have been through the vacuum chamber testing etc... and the one that was flown on the Falcon Heavy Test Flight, sitting in the roadster, was real as well (though I don't know if it was actually pressurized).
Exactly. The USFS (United States Forest Service) has or at least had a supercomputer cluster for modeling wildfire behaviour well over a decade ago.
I agree. If municipalities etc had the 'permission' to build ISPs as utilities, this would change the market immediately. Google Fiber was really just a threat that caused real changes in some markets. It just didn't turn out to be manageable for Google.
A great example of this is the PUD fiber systems in Chelan and Douglas counties, in WA. The PUDs have rolled out a GPON network that services virtually every residential and commercial address in their respective counties. As a resident of the county, you then have the choice of some 6 ISPs, and a similar number of television providers. If you're a business you can also get peering from Zayo and/or Level 3. In the end, your bill winds up being $10/mo to the PUD, and then whatever deal you have with your service provider.
You need to get an observation bird over a new hotspot, or one of your existing NRO birds goes dark. That's what this concept is for.
No wonder this game is so easy... I was wondering why I always saw them!
Dunno where you are, but in Vancouver, both TransLink and the driver's union are doing big campaigns to get people to come in and do the driving course. Heck, they pay you to do the course. The system is really hurting for new drivers, both the operator (CMB) and the union recognize this.
I guess I'm not the only one that remembers the days when that 640K of RAM was a major portion of the cost of building a computer.... Hell, I remember just being amazed that I could buy a 32MB stick for $60!
Now, get off my lawn!
(You realize there is no power source in the ball, right?)
You've clearly never heard of The Thing have you? </tinfoilhat>
A good librarian is an absolute treasure. Last time I was in my local library, I witnessed a guy come in and pose a question to the librarian. The reply was "I don't know for sure, but lets figure it out." and the librarian then proceeded to walk the person through doing the research in a very thoughtful way, also hopefully teaching them how to think through similar questions the next time.
A collection of rarely read books is in some ways the fundamental purpose of a library.
One of my favourite sections of the library is the "Rare Books" and similar sections where you can't check anything out, and have to read it there. I have a particular interest in some local history and a lot of the accounts of these events can only be found in someone's memoirs or similar, where there may only be one or two copies in existence. There's also a certain je-ne-sais-quois about holding a real piece of history in your hands.
There are items that have been stored for decades and decades, and you never know when they might become useful. Digital data is far more ephemeral (can you pull that document you wrote off of that 5 1/4" floppy, stored in WordPerfect 5.1 format? I can't. Can you read a book, printed 50 years ago, never mind 300 years ago? probably.
This year, during the local prawn season, I remarked that it's interesting that in western culture, pretty much the only food that most people handle live any more is seafood. (for reference, we killed our prawns by bathing them in a bottle of Chardonnay, before grilling them).
Halal is the first example that comes to mind with animals being intentionally bled out by slitting their throats to kill them.
It might be gruesome, but done properly it's not especially inhumane. Slitting the throat cuts off the blood flow to the brain, rendering the animal unconscious in very short order.
Eh, I grew up around doing oil changes... but the only time I do it myself is changing the oil on the little diesel on my boat. For my car? I'd rather just pay someone to do it, plus they can get the supplies cheaper than I can.
Well, no... those harvesters are already being run through the fields to produce feed for the animals that we eat. Cutting out those animals would reduce the quantity of plant matter that needs to be harvested, as we're cutting out the (inefficient) step of converting it to meat.
That said, I'm still going to enjoy my 6oz steak along with all the other bits that go with it.
. The only difference is that with a central speedometer - not even that Model 3's is all that central - you're also looking somewhat to the right.
The bigger win with central speedometers is that it actually improves your response time. By putting it that much further away from your face, it increases your focus distance. This makes switching back and forth between the speedometer and the road just a hair quicker, which is more significant than most people realize, especially at highway speeds.
That said, I too prefer physical controls. I can adjust the climate control system on my VW completely by touch, as all the controls are fully tactile, and have appropriate detents (22C for standard temperature, a detent at each fan setting, and a detent at each vent combination). With touch screen controls, there is zero tactile feedback, forcing you to actually look at the system. Even my aftermarket stereo, which is primarily touch-screen based, has physical buttons for volume and mute controls, which I can hit without taking my eyes off the road.
It's really all about having to shift your focus, and how long it takes to go back and forth between the controls and the road.
Hopefully, though, software updates (such as Windows Update, Apple Update, etc...) will remain unencrypted. I run a network that services some remote communities via satellite, and those things are eminently cacheable (we have a WSUS server for our corporate computers).
Before you get your panties in a twist about that being insecure, the way I recall these things working is that the update client fetches SHA256 sums of the update files via HTTPS, and then downloads the files over HTTP. That way, the updates can be cached locally, but the end user can still be assured that they haven't been tampered with.