QasimK

In the five years I have used Arch, I have not had a single issue.

I don’t know if kids notice, but I can smell the air pollution every time I drive into outer London from outside London. It’s how I know I’m entering London.

My 2002 MINI was ULEZ-compliant.

I agree with you. The idea that ULEZ means people must give up driving is ridiculous and overblown. It does not affect the vast majority of people at all.

Ah, so _that’s_ why the ente photos app feels so “off” - it’s using flutter.

I’ve tried the app a few times over the last couple of years and had a dislike of the UI because it did not _feel_ right, like it was slow or something. I can’t say exactly what.

It is almost certainly because it is using flutter rather than native DOM elements.

(I’ve been keeping track of ente but never quite made the jump - not solely due to the UI though!)

This is what self-hosted software should be. An app, self-contained, (essentially) a single file with minimal dependencies.

Not something so complex that it requires docker. Not something that requires you to install a separate database. Not something that depends on redis and other external services.

I’ve turned down many self-hosted options due to the complexity of the setup and maintenance.

I've been thinking about doing this myself, so it's fantastic to see a project.

I find a files-centric (and more broadly filesystem-centric) approach easier to grapple with than one that focuses on apps (and hiding away the data). It makes it much easier to access my own data for other purposes outside of what the app provides. In particular when the files are in plain-text or otherwise human-editable. I can reuse all of the existing tool that I'm familiar with to search, modify or re-purpose the data.

Super confusing! Through different reasoning I get different answers:

1. More likely to be red because the urn has a greater chance of having more red balls

2. Equally likely by considering all remaining urn possibilities to be equally likely

3. More likely to be green because obviously there is one less red ball than before

I wrote a Python program to simulate the problem. It tells me that the correct answer is (2) - it's equally likely that the next ball is red or green.

I wonder if I've made a mistake, or if that's really the real answer!

    #!/usr/bin/python
    import random
    from collections import Counter
    
    def experiment():
        urn = random.choices(["R", "G"], k=100)
        if urn.pop() != "R":
            return
    
        return urn.pop()
    
    results = (experiment() for i in range(1_000_000))
    results = (result for result in results if result is not None)
    print(Counter(results))

EDIT: I did make a mistake! The above produces a binomial distribution of urns with red/green. As in, the most common urn is one with an equal number of reds and greens, and the least common is all reds or all greens. Whereas they should have equal probability. To actually match the question:

    #!/usr/bin/python
    import random
    from collections import Counter
    
    def experiment():
        num_red = random.randint(1, 100)
        num_green = 100 - num_red
        urn = ["R"] * num_red + ["G"] * num_green
        random.shuffle(urn)
        if urn.pop() != "R":
            return
    
        return urn.pop()
    
    results = (experiment() for i in range(1_000_000))
    results = (result for result in results if result is not None)
    print(Counter(results))

The answer is indeed (1) More likely to be red.

I’ve used Cloud Run and it does allow for background threads.

That’s not right because it implies that only new cars since 2015 can drive inside the ULEZ.

The ULEZ standard requires diesel cars to conform to Euro 6, available since 2015 - the diesel emissions scandal notwithstanding. (The in-practice standards for diesel cars are much much more lenient than for petrol cars.)

The ULEZ standard requires petrol cars to conform to only Euro 4, required since 2005 but some cars manufactured as early as 2001 meet the standard including my 2002 MINI.

This means relatively few people are actually affected by ULEZ, compared to the implication that you need a car manufactured from 2015 onwards.

Do you really think someone is going to read that, start ignoring their doctors, throw all their medicine in the bin, and become some kind of natto evangelist?

It’s a common Japanese food and he just said give it a go.

The idea of societal benefit is very nebulous. It sounds like your idea of it is very different to mine by the fact that you believe in an absolute answer to it.

How do you measure something like societal benefit?

I'm sure we could agree that eradicating disease is very beneficial, but would we disagree about the entire tourism and entertainment industry as a whole?

I can guarantee we have different opinions about the value of things. That's why we should be free to make our own choices. We don't need everyone in the world to help define what "societal benefit" is for them, they can do it every time they pay for something out of their own pocket.

(There is one thing that I think fulfills your criteria though, flights for holidays. They contribute more, and increasingly more, carbon emissions than bitcoin does while delivery little "societal benefit" - whatever that means. However, I'm not arguing anything here because I think it's morally wrong to focus on specific activities that affect a minority of people. And yes, banning taking flights for holidays would only affect a small minority of people globally.)

You're right in a sense. I would certainly notice the change if it happened very quickly. However, I would quickly adapt and think it was just normal. (Mind you, my room is about 17 C at the moment.)

Certainly, if someone told me my room was going to be 2 degrees hotter permanently, I wouldn't think twice about it.

This is useful to understand what this report actually is. It lays out the physical science basis for climate change. The full impacts, and possible mitigations will come in later months as two separate reports. Finally, there will be a summary next September (2022).

Unfortunately, it looks like these won't be published in time for COP26 in Glasgow later this year.

I disagree that it was unavoidable. I said to my family in February that the UK should stop all - absolutely all - flights into the country. The cost of this would have been miniscule compared to what ended up happening.

(Not just flights - everything except essential goods including via trains, ships and lorries. Certainly all people should have been disallowed entry.)

They'll have a choice between two similar products. One is $10 because of a $5 carbon charge, the other is $6 with a $0 carbon charge. What will they choose?

They'll choose the $6 one, and keep their carbon tax dividend in their pocket too.

They won't really be worse off.

On the other hand, the rich will be worse off because they take more flights, consume more resources, and generally cause more carbon emissions anyway from their day-to-day lives.