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User: Ichijo

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  1. Re:Holy Jebus on Elon Musk: Faulty Strut May Have Led To Falcon 9 Launch Failure · · Score: 2

    3. Further testing of struts in stock found one that failed at 2,000 pounds of force

    I think it will work out substantially cheaper in the long run to test every strut rather than to go crazy with the material specification.

    That reminds me of the joke about the boy scout who would test all his matches and save the ones that lit successfully.

  2. Re:Avoidable? on Google Self-Driving Car Rear-Ended In First Injury Accident · · Score: 1

    Except into the turning lane.

  3. Battlefield surgeons of the future on What Happens When Your Own Limb Is Almost Good Enough? · · Score: 2

    Someday there will be little robots that swarm out after an explosion to quickly gather up all the people bits, identify which bits belong to which person, 3D print any missing or uselessly damaged parts, and glue them all back together, all within 5 minutes before the brain starts to suffer from hypoxia.

    Imagine getting blown to bits one day, then the next day you're right back on the front line.

    Maybe they could put a few of these into airliners also, made out of the same stuff as the black boxes.

  4. It's just like the Vinyl Revival on Neil Young Says His Music Is Too Good For Streaming Services · · Score: 1

    There are people who prefer grainy film to digital photos, even going so far as to purposely deface their digital photos to look like film. So why couldn't there also be people who prefer staticky analog broadcasts to digital?

  5. Re:Holy shit, this is some wank. on America's Technical Debt · · Score: 1

    a system composed of people can be debugged in the same manner as code

    False.

  6. o It's point to point; I start where I am and I end up where I'm going

    It's nice to have valet parking wherever you go, but I usually have to park and walk somewhere and then walk to the entrance.

    o It's considerably more secure; windows up, doors locked, only trusted riders are on-board, and I control the vehicle

    If only that were enough to make cars safer than buses and trains.

    o I have my music (and my ham radio gear), in short, the environment is customized for me

    With all those distractions, you're asking for trouble!

    o There's no waiting, no calling, and no communications problems

    There's also no reading or texting and you can't use your laptop while you commute. It's all dead time.

    I think the most common case by far is that people use it because they have to use it.

    People must not like driving very much either or cities wouldn't need to force property owners to have parking (why do we manage parking the same way the Soviet Union managed toilet paper and other basic provisions?), and the roads would pay for themselves 100% through gas taxes and user fees instead of less than 50%.

  7. Re:Insurance makes sense on Automakers Unwilling To Share Driver Data (Yet) · · Score: 1

    When you say the 85th percentile rule "has been properly and professionally researched and reproduced," I believe you are referring to the Solomon Curve published in 1964. But that was back when people drove more safely out of necessity because cars were deathtraps. Do you have any evidence that the 85th percentile rule reduces fatalities today? Bonus points if you can prove that it reduces car-motorcycle, car-bicycle, and car-pedestrian fatalities. Good luck!

  8. Re:Insurance makes sense on Automakers Unwilling To Share Driver Data (Yet) · · Score: 1

    It's unfortunate when speeds are set by the fastest 15% of drivers in a country where 80% of drivers think they are above average and are therefore unqualified to determine a reasonable and prudent speed.

  9. Re:Insurance makes sense on Automakers Unwilling To Share Driver Data (Yet) · · Score: 1

    speed limits are almost *always* way lower than the speed it's actually safe to drive.

    That's partially true, assuming a very broad interpretation of the word "almost". Speed limits are set according to ideal driving conditions (daytime, dry roads, perfect visibility, drivers paying attention to the road) with a small margin for safety. Under anything other than those ideal conditions, the Basic Speed Law requires (see link above) you to slow down to a reasonable and appropriate speed despite the posted speed limit.

  10. Re: Why do this? on NYC Asks Google Maps For Fewer Left Turns · · Score: 1

    The flashing red is the yellow phase.

    Where is that true? Not in California.

  11. Re:Why do this? on NYC Asks Google Maps For Fewer Left Turns · · Score: 1

    It's probably the same thinking that gave pedestrians two red phases (flashing and solid "don't walk"), one green phase, and no yellow phase.

  12. Re:California on Iowa Makes a Bold Admission: We Need Fewer Roads · · Score: 1

    But building more roads doesn't make people drive more...

    Actually, yes, it does.

  13. Re:Sounds like a lot of whining to me on Iowa Makes a Bold Admission: We Need Fewer Roads · · Score: 1

    People aren't going to "fill up" the freeway at times when they don't have a reason to be on it.

    Your logic is circular. That's funny.

    Anyway, whether a freeway fills up depends on the capacity of the freeway and the number of people who want to take their cars on it at the same time. You don't seem to believe it, but this is always true, even in the middle of the night.

  14. Re:Sounds like a lot of whining to me on Iowa Makes a Bold Admission: We Need Fewer Roads · · Score: 1

    You aren't going to pay people vast sums to incentivise driving in the middle of the night to keep your traffic flow constant.

    Why would you need to? Just wait long enough without widening a freeway and eventually it will fill up 24/7. If you use express tolling to prevent traffic congestion, it will never get congested and therefore it will never need to be widened to eliminate traffic congestion, even though it's moving 100% of its daily capacity.

  15. Re:We'll take them on Iowa Makes a Bold Admission: We Need Fewer Roads · · Score: 1

    Please elaborate.

  16. Re:Sounds like a lot of whining to me on Iowa Makes a Bold Admission: We Need Fewer Roads · · Score: 1

    If any highway anywhere moves half of its peak capacity in a day, the transportation engineer responsible for it should be fired.

    But doesn't a demand curve show a way to keep traffic demand, and therefore traffic flow, constant, even 24/7?

    And because the fiscally optimal amount of road is the amount where the marginal cost of adding a lane equals the marginal revenue from adding it (MC=MR), doesn't this prove that a nonzero amount of traffic congestion on an unpriced road is optimal?

  17. Re:California on Iowa Makes a Bold Admission: We Need Fewer Roads · · Score: 1

    The idea that you may not need more roads is... completely foreign.

    Perhaps the hamburger analogy will help:

    Let's give everyone free McDonald's hamburgers. Let's put 10,000 hamburgers a day on a table in front of the Capitol (or wherever).

    What would happen? People would take and eat the hamburgers, and once word got out, all 10,000 hamburgers would be taken very quickly every day. We may thus infer that because people need food and they really seemed to like those burgers, McDonald's hamburgers are an important public good.

    A city planner might notice a problem: those 10,000 hamburgers just aren't enough. They get taken very early in the morning, so not everybody has a chance to get a hamburger. The obvious solution -- because burgers are a highly-valued public good -- is to provide more free burgers. So the city planner starts to provide 20,000 hamburgers a day.

    You can see where this is going. People start going out of their way to get the free hamburgers, and planning their day around that trip. The city has to keep providing more and more free burgers -- eventually millions a day -- to keep satisfying the demand for free hamburgers. The competing food markets crater, because who would pay $2/lb for apples when you can get as many free burgers as you want (although maybe you have to wait in a 30-minute line). Public health goes to hell, because everybody's eating six burgers a day. And yet, everybody likes their free burgers and the Hamburger Department is an untouchable political powerhouse. Proposals for a 10-cent hamburger fee to cover the huge costs of hamburger provision get shot down by public outrage.

    What's the problem here? The problem is that food is indeed a necessity, and yes, people seem to like McDonald's hamburgers -- but the fact that people will take free burgers does not prove that they are "highly valued" by the market. We are not seeing actual demand for burgers. We are seeing induced demand for a good which is being provided at artificially low prices.

    But for some reason, replace hamburgers with roads and everybody goes nuts.

    In short, the fact that a new lane or road immediately fills up with traffic does not "prove" that there was a high demand for that road -- it proves that people will use way too much of something that's free.

  18. Re:Sounds like a lot of whining to me on Iowa Makes a Bold Admission: We Need Fewer Roads · · Score: 1

    Personally outside of some of the most rural parts of the US I've NEVER seen "empty highways".

    Mostly empty highways then. Can you name one that moves even half of its daily capacity (peak hour capacity times 24)? Good luck! Ha ha!

  19. Re:We'll take them on Iowa Makes a Bold Admission: We Need Fewer Roads · · Score: 0

    They're putting an expensive new tolling system on 405's commuter lane that will dynamically increase tolls in response to increases traffic so that it stays clear for busses... Of course, that's actually going to make the normal 405 traffic *worse*, because they're simply pushing the traffic into the normal lanes.

    That's most definitely false, and here is proof:

    On the S.R. 91 Express Lanes, vehicle throughput during the most congested hours exceeds 1,600 vehicles per lane per hour on the priced lanes, while the adjacent free lanes carry only about 800 vehicles per lane per hour.

    So as you can see, the express lanes move twice the auto traffic as the regular lanes, not less.

    No, Washington doesn't need more lanes on the 405 at this time. You only need to manage the existing lanes better.

  20. $50,000 dollars on Bitcoin Snafu Causes Miners To Generate Invalid Blocks · · Score: 2

    Fifty thousand dollars dollars?

  21. Re: Above Congress? on Surveillance Court: NSA Can Resume Bulk Surveillance · · Score: 1

    the government which should have the most influence, and over which the electorate should have the most control, should start at the local level.

    Like an HOA?

  22. Re:And ticket prices? on Airplane Coatings Help Recoup Fuel Efficiency Lost To Bug Splatter · · Score: 1

    Where companies don't pass on cost savings to their customers, it's not a competitive market.

  23. Re:Um... Did you actually read the program? on My United Airlines Website Hack Gets Snubbed · · Score: 1

    Try 10 times and assume that there isn't a cap after that... But he also blatantly broke the rules.

    Please provide pseudocode that determines whether he used brute-force. Be sure to fully justify, with citations where possible, any violation of the zero-one-infinity rule in your answer. For example, why 10 attempts? Why not 9, or 11?

    If you can do this, then your claim that he "blatantly" broke the rules might be valid. Good luck!

  24. Re:Um... Did you actually read the program? on My United Airlines Website Hack Gets Snubbed · · Score: 1

    run a short test case

    Sorry, that would be brute-forcing. Try again.

  25. Re:Um... Did you actually read the program? on My United Airlines Website Hack Gets Snubbed · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Serious question: how could someone determine that PINs can be brute-forced without brute forcing them? Without the ability to prove it, it's the bounty hunter's word against the website, and we already know websites will do anything they can to avoid paying.