Recent submissions

Comment · 6 months ago
Comment · 9 months ago
Interestingly SNCF is expected to subsidise less profitable local services with funds from the profitable high speed routes.

Open competition kind of spoils this model. It's not really sustainable.

Comment · 11 months ago
Hmm, I didn't realise that's why the rollout was stopped. (Which doesn't really make sense as a given reason anyway because wouldn't the fibre just have become part of openreach anyway.

So I think new technology is generated through research funding, either public sector (universities) or R&D depts in private companies (today companies like Apple, previously old school companies like pre-Welch GE). I guess BT was more like the latter, except state owned.

In telecoms there's also a universal service obligation, which does not make economic sense when driven purely by profit motive. Cost of rolling out fiber to a small village will probably never be recouped. Thats why FTTH w/ Virgin Broadband was only available in cities for a long time, and expensive.

In the US where telecoms have regulatory capture, and no public access telecom network, you see stories of rural communities trying to fund their own infra. It's expensive.

Cost of rollout and universal service can be helped by rolling out at scale, building the factories, reducing unit price etc.

So all this together.... I think private companies _can_ have the foresight to do this kind of forward planning... But a big nationwide rollout of a public good? Where is their financial incentive? They would provide an environment for the acceleration of future commerce and technological development. But if they don't make money from it, why would they?

Comment · 11 months ago
BT was deep into preparations for a nationwide fiber rollout at the time of privatisation in the early 80s. The project was cancelled, the fledgling factories equipment and expertise were instead exported to South Korea, enabling their widespread fiber penetrance.

That delayed fiber rollout in the UK by decades.

Was that a success? Could be they were too early to justify the cost? But without someone pushing ahead, who develops the technology?

Comment · 1 year ago
I've been looking for a replacement laptop and this issue is making me look away from any future Macbooks.

Does anyone have experience if the issue been resolved in more recent designs, or is this something Apple users are now expected to live with?

Comment · 1 year ago
The results page usually should flag up results which are outside of a normal range, and what that normal range is.

I think that should then be enough to know to Google "Low platelet count". The person may not know the significance of that immediately, true.

Comment · 1 year ago
Don't see what an LLM really adds here that wouldn't be served by a sensible algorithm which flags up results needing urgent action. Maybe the end user get more clearly explained and non-bewildering information, which is useful, but also points to a failure of any health system / internet resources to provide this.

The LLM _HAS_ empowered the patient to act on his own health, which is undeniably a good thing.

Not sure about seeing the LLM as a companion.

Comment · 1 year ago
This may be a nice example of the benefits and drawbacks of GUI vs CLI software.

Sure OpenSSL has myriad inscrutable options, but the majority of these probably aren't going to be used by 90% of people. Yet including them in a CLI gives less clutter/overhead versus what they would in a GUI. They can just stay out of the way for the people who need them.

I guess the same could be said of an "Advanced Features" second page of a GUI though.

Comment · 2 years ago
My problem with Joplin is that on my M1 Macbook pro it really shows how much of an Electron app it really is, in the worst ways. Extreme memory use and UI lag for an application which displays text. That said, aside from performance it's quite satisfying to use. It's very simple and does its job well.

I recently migrated to Obsidian and although the learning curve is steeper, I'm quite happy with the results.

Comment · 2 years ago
One golden rule that I learned is that interface elements should not move unexpectedly after the interface has been drawn. Google is particularly bad for buttons which move between you lifting your thumb and pressing the screen, but they're not alone.
Comment · 2 years ago
Huh. So Android's push notification service is built on their instant messenger (GTalk), and Apple's instant messenger is built on their push notification service.

How cute.

Comment · 2 years ago
The only appreciable difference I see a need for a border guard to physically inspect and stamp passports, which I suspect slows things down. I guess EITAS checks in the future too.

Once EES comes into effect the stamps may not be necessary anyway, but much like fusion, it's perpetually 6 months away.

Comment · 2 years ago
Dramatic Headline. Only the direct trains will stop. The majority of the Amsterdam to London trains already involved a change in Brussels, where they do have a large and chaotic border control area for onward travel to London. These will still be running.

Eurostar wanted to change this to allow direct trains from Amsterdam around the time of the pandemic, but they always struggled for space. I suppose this construction will result in a definitive solution.

Comment · 3 years ago
Could you elaborate on that? I've not been aware of any.
Comment · 3 years ago
I thought teddit used something called "unofficial api" which uses reddits rss feeds to avoid using api keys and hitting rate limits.

Is this not the case?

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