amiga386

It's a moot point, as Signal isn't going to support self-hosted notification servers any more than it'll support self-hosted communication servers.

Signal works without GMS or any alternative, at the cost of more phone wakeups. This is much more preferable to everyone whose WiFi or data service you use see you connect to "push.myownname.com", or for you to rely in some rando gatekeeping your message delivery.

CHA is not a dump stat.

Getting elected is table stakes and shows you have the soft skills needed to organise, campaign and convince. Which is the minimum you need to get disparate groups of humans to pull in the same direction and make progress in advancing the country.

Theres no consolation if you get experts to plan solutions to problems but 1) the people you need to implement the plans have their own opinions or priorities and 2) the public want focus in some other priority and are start rioting if they don't feel heard.

You need schmoozers as much as you need tacticians.

According to the government's own report, it did not. The meddling was insubstantial

Do you wonder why there even was a referendum?

Compare 1997: Sir Jammy Fishpaste hates Europe, spends millions of his own money promoting his Referendum Party, gets nowhere. Because it's "cool Britannia" and the common man is doing well for himself. People think he's a nutter and all he achieves is keeping 4-11 Tories out of power by sapping their votes

But the 2008 crash wrecks the country. UKIP builds a voter base over years, and gets an enormous share of the vote. That's a warning shot for the Tories, whose voters UKIP are sapping. They only just squeaked through a hung parliament with a Libdem coalition. Hence Gambling Dave offers a referendum to bring Europe haters back to his party so he can remain in power.

Those percentage points were already in place before Russia even got going.

Exactly. My fellow countrymen fucked my country (Brexit). Foreign meddling didn't help, but it also didn't hinder to the point of changing the outcome.

It was my fellow countrymen, and their long held Eurosceptic views, that fucked us. Russia posting divisive pish in 2016 has nothing on our decades of native politicians and newspapers blaming Brussels for everything bad (often its their own policies being policywashed) and pretending everything good came from them.

Not necessarily, but do you think voting in the guy who held power for 13 years is going to help?

He clearly redirected the railway station maintenance budget to his friends instead, because he assumed the public were suckers who'd vote him back in no matter how badly he fucked up. Then the station canopy collapsed and killed people. Entirely avoidable.

When your leaders are nakedly corrupt, and through sheer luck you still have free and fair elections, you vote those fuckers out. Otherwise they'll fiddle while your country burns.

It looks like the public want someone else in charge, they'll give them a fair shake. Maybe the new lot will direct the treasure more appropriately.

This would fail at the first hurdle.

1. Planes can determine their altitude. Trains don't know which track they're on. You'd have to re-engineer existing signalling systems designed around the inverse. Track transponders and axle counters know which trainset passed a specific piece of track, but the trains don't know which track transponders link together on the same track. They don't even know which track they'll be going down next because that's up to the signallers controlling the points, not them.

2. Planes fly in the air and can send omnidirectional radio signals with little to no interference. Trains run on the ground, often in valleys and tunnels. There is no guarantee that trains broadcasting "I am here" signals can be picked up by the next train within the stopping distance.

Many trains did broadcast "I am here" signals, but once speeds got faster, the broadcast range (about 1km) wasn't far enough for a train to stop in time before a collision, which is why trains need to communicate, using on-track wires that run the length of the track, to each other and central control. Which therefore means that the central control system needs to work, and when it doesn't, the trains have to stop.

Planes use radio signals because they don't have signalling cable following their entire route. Trains do, and it's usually much more reliable than radio.

Not only that, but the only area he's authorised to name is a stretch of the US coastline and its EEZ.

He has no authority to name international bodies of water - i.e the large part in the centre where Google should be writing "Gulf of Mexico" because that's its name.

But he does have the ability to cause trouble for the giant corporations based in his country that serve map images to most of the rest of the world. The giant corporations also see that he grants favours for fealty. So it's actually the unofficial power he has that's the problem, rather than what's within his legal remit.

So in the end it comes down to cost-benefit.

As Skytrain has no attendants, there's a certain level of risk of passenger injury and death no matter how good the sensors are. If Skytrain had platform doors, there would likely be less, but probably never zero, and TransLink baulk at the cost (for now).

Other systems, e.g. the Docklands Light Railway, which has attendants that can also drive if needed, are OK with paying those attendants (for now). I presume they've done a cost/benefit analysis and decided that it's cheaper to keep paying humans to ensure every train departs safely, and to operate the manual controls if the automation fails, than it is to upgrade the system to the point that doesn't require them and is also considered safe.