seanos

I graduated with a PhD 10 years ago from the same university (Nottingham) as he did, in mechanical engineering, and have been working in academia ever since, working my way up to senior lecturer (UK equivalent to associate professor), and I'm still earning much less than him. I do a lot of coding in research projects in my job and have some experience in web development from side-projects, as well as contributions to open-source libraries (mainly statistics and simulation based in Python) etc. Been thinking of making the career switch into a software development role for a while but wondered if it's too late. This makes me think it may still be worthwhile, even if getting that first role might prove difficult given my academic background and I'd have to start at the bottom again.

It's not intrinsically better, it's just a convention, but it helps if everyone operates to the same standard for obvious reasons. Since neighbouring countries drove on the right, it was better to adopt the same standard. This was not an issue for islands such as the UK and Japan with no direct road links to neighbours, therefore they still drive on the left. Originally, before cars, the nobility rode their horses on the left to defend against oncoming traffic since they held their swords in their right hand. For that reason, peasants travelled on the right for safety. After the French Revolution it was prudent for the nobility to blend in, hence all traffic began to travel on the right which was then spread by the French empire.

"And if goalies are being irrational, why aren't kickers exploiting it?"

Two reasons I can think of. First, if you shoot to the left or right (particularly top or bottom corner of goal) then the goalkeeper has further to travel to reach the ball, therefore if it is done with sufficient accuracy and power it is harder, or even impossible, to save even if the goalkeeper guesses correctly. In contrast, a central shot, even if hit with high power is often easy to save if the goalkeeper keeps central. Therefore, shooting left or right more often than centrally can be a rational choice if the goalkeeper distributes evenly between going left, right and center - especially for high level players. Secondly, shooting centrally can look a bit silly if the goalkeeper guesses correctly, since it is usually an easy save, therefore it is seen as a bit of an arrogant, or show off, move. Therefore players may be reluctant to shoot centrally - this is somewhat related to the reasoning given for the goalkeepers in that the players want to be seen to be doing something.

It may be possible that they developed their internal compass due to their nomadic lifestyle and the use of absolute directions within language resulted from that (rather than vice versa). I have no idea if this is the case.

Doesn't it have a handbrake?

Except that for the Tesla it's days after reaching zero charge, not months.

From the manual "Important! Caution: If the battery’s charge level falls to 0%, it must be plugged in immediately. Failure to do so can permanently damage the battery and this damage is not covered by the New Vehicle Limited Warranty."

"Imagine the flip side, that electric cars were normal, and internal combustion engines were unusual. Then we could have stories about owners ruining their engines because they never changed their oil."

No you wouldn't because an oil change is part of the annual service for the car. Everyone knows that if you neglect to follow the manufacturer's maintenance schedule for a car you might get problems. On the other hand, many people see charging the car as analogous to filling up a tank with fuel - not as maintenance - that's why they are surprised that failing to do so for a few weeks could "brick" the car.

Once they offer a full set of modules, for say a CS degree, this could be very disruptive indeed.

Very good on Timothy's part too. In the same situation, I would probably sell the extra XBox to be honest.

A phenomenon I noticed in certain Latin American countries: there are vendors walking around and on every street corner advertising "Minutos" who carry a set of mobile phones on strings which they will rent to you. The main reason is that calls between phones on the same network are much cheaper, so it enables people to own a single phone and dodge the higher inter-network charges when making calls.