throwaway294566

No. You want a parametrized "Money" type, one that can do calculations in varying numbers of decimals, and configurable rounding. There are legal requirements that make this necessary.

One (from memory, not exact) calculation I've had to implement for a customer: Multiply prices by whole numbers. Prices are given in cents subdivided to 5 digit precision, result should have 10cent precision, rounded down. Then, for the tax calculation, get taxes from some tables, 3 different taxes for each line item. Apply the first two taxes, Euros with 10 digit subdivisions, then round "according to trade custom" (which is the usual "up from .5 cents, down from below .5"). Then add the third tax, Cents with 5 digit subdivisions, round down. Then add all the line items and their taxes, separately as well as together.

And if there is a Skonto, take care to properly unravel the tax stuff again.

I've had to do it in plain Typescript, it is possible, but it really sucks. Those days when you yearn for COBOL... ;)

Yes, but there is more to it: The compiler may assume that UB will never happen intentionally and optimize out the branch containing UB.

Out-of-order execution isn't the reason for this. The C standard assumes an abstract machine that allows OoOE, of course, but even with strict in-order hardware UB can hit you at any time, even before you'd think it could. That is because the C standard doesn't limit UB to any constraints like "following lines" or "subsequently executed instructions". Independent of the hardware, the compiler is allowed quite a bit of reordering of instructions. The standard just requires that (some) effects of those executions are ordered as written, but that doesn't include UB.

So if you have UB in your future path of execution, the compiler might just do whatever _right now_.

Roman imperial power isn't fascism in that some important aspects do differ. E.g. fascism uses a special kind of modern aesthetics that Romans wouldn't recognize, even if fascist monuments copied Roman building style. Fascism also practiced a cult of youth and rejection of conservativism that is quite the opposite of what the Romans practiced (as far as the 2000 years of separation allow us to compare this). In that sense, you successfully built a straw-man argument ("Imperial Roman power is not fascism") and disproved it.

But, more importantly, "imperium" doesn't mean what you think it means. There are two meanings to "imperium", one being the overall realm that Rome controlled, the Roman empire. This is the meaning you did use in your above straw-man. Usually, this meaning of imperium is represented by symbology such as the eagle and the S.P.Q.R. signature. Italian fascists also used those symbols, but the international fascist movement mostly didn't, because just the Italians wanted to rebuild their Roman empire. However, the fasces represent the second meaning of "imperium", which is the absolute power of one single individual official to rule and impose order in his assigned domain or subdomain. They represent the ordering principle of fascism and nazism that a strict hierarchy of individual leaders ("duce" in Italian, "Fuehrer" in direct German translation) should rule the state ("Fuehrerprinzip" in German). Fasces also represented the primacy of punishment and violence in imposing order, of swiftness and immediacy in carrying out justice, very much what modern day fascism wanted to return to. So Roman fasces are representing what modern day fascists intended for the principles of leadership, justice, punishment, and order to look like. But beyond those aspects, there can be no inference made, because modern-day Fascism encompasses more aspects than just those.

That there is a 2000 year difference between the cultures in which to interpret the aforementioned symbolisms is a problem indeed. However, it is a problem that was created by people like the americans thoughtlessly using symbols because "well, Rome was a republic, we want to build a republic, let's just steal all of their iconography". Even back in that day, the actual meaning of fasces was known and clear. It was known and clear to the Romans as well. Hell, look at the list of uses for fasces in the wikipedia article: mostly police forces and departments of corrections, monarchies and off-with-the-heads mobs (such as the early french post-revolution order).

> The fact that it appears on the Senate building probably refers to the Roman meaning.

The roman meaning is very much fascist, if phrased in modern terms. Fasces were carried by lictors accompanying a roman official, symbolizing the "imperium", or absolute, king-like power, held by that official over his domain. While for a time, the imperium of lower officials was somewhat curtailed during the republic, military commanders with imperium still held the absolute and immediate power over life and death of their subordinates (other officials still had power over life and death, there just was an opportunity for citizens for appeals and vetoes by equal-ranked officials) . Lictors with their fasces were not only bodyguards but also a small police force at the discretion of the commander, who would seize an offender, hold him for a drumhead trial by the commander and then punish (e.g. execute) him if so decided. Under the later roman dictatorships the dictator (imperator, emperor or caesar) of course also held those powers, with the same symbolism of imperium represented by the fasces. Fasces always have been a symbol of capital punishment, justice by drumhead or thumbs down, and absolute power.

Because, while the same problem exists, it doesn't exist to the same extent. The average size of the vehicles is smaller, even bigger European SUVs are far smaller than what americans call trucks. And there are less of the really big and deadly ones, almost none with a neck-breaking-bar, etc.

You don't need oil, just rope works as well. Every DIY store (at least over here) has loose manila fibre for that purpose. Wrap into the thread, screw it together, done. The not-so-nice problem: It might leak at first. The nice feature: The fibres will soak up water (thats why oil is actually counterproductive), swell up and make a tight fit after half an hour or so. You can even readjust the angle (other than with PTFE tape), it'll just drip for another half hour.

Yes. My question is always "show me the shop where I can buy it". Never an answer ;)

The official argument is that fining public institutions is a game of taking from the right pocket to put in the left pocket. It's the state fining itself. Also, officially, public servants are thought to obey the law as a matter of cause. A certain interpretation of the law can just be made an official order to all subordinate government agencies, and any civil servant disobeying that interpretation is at fault for not performing their duties and treated accordingly.

However, that all leads to the obvious workarounds: the official interpretation is usually the most lenient possible, compliance is put off to some time next century due to lack of personell/budget/willpower. And if something is found to be amiss, the data protection officer may order a government agency to fix whatever is wrong, but can neither fine nor discipline a civil servant. Because disciplining is up to the direct disciplinary superior, which cannot be (due to them being independent) the data protection officer.

The first example isn't enforcement, it is due diligence and compliance in companies. That does happen, of course, sometimes in a useful way, sometimes to just have some fig leaf to point at in case of a complaint.

Google analytics and Google fonts are regularly enforced, but not by data protection officials. "Enforcement" of those is, as you've said, done by scummy private lawyers, scanning websites and sending expensive letters ("Abmahnungen") en masse. Basically, due to a weird precedent, those lawyers are allowed to give you unasked advice on your wrongdoing and billing you for it. But that is, afaik, a specialty of German law, and mostly limited to stuff that can be fully automated. So while you can scan for a website using Google Fonts, you cannot as easily scan for someone using Office365. Although you might, maybe, get a hint by looking at the DNS MX records.

Don't know about Norway. But whether fines apply to public institutions is up to the member states, and most member states, including Germany, have decided not to fine their public institutions for GDPR violations.

Yes. But there is too few of them, and usually in situations where other companies can still wait and see. "We aren't Facebook", "We are too small to be noticed" and "but we had them sign a waiver" are still prevalent in most companies.

For things to change, there would really need to be something like:

- data protection fines the whole of the customer list of Amazon/Google/MS cloud

- data protection fines a high-profile company a lot of money for using Office365

- a court forces a public institution to cease using Office365 (no fines possible there)

- enforcement accelerates to a point where, from complaint to fine, things take only a few weeks, instead of a few years, so that lots of medium and smaller businesses are hit. Currently enforcement seems to be starting with the big cases, and being bogged down in the complexity of those.

It would really depend on the situation to be decided, whether MS would have to pay up, or rather the company using MS products to handle customer data. One can imagine a way to use MS products that might not be illegal, e.g. never use it to process personal data, use anonymized accounts that are not bound to a real person, swap around accounts and computers to prevent association with a person, etc. Then, all it would take for MS to get its 'get out of jail free'-card is to publish that in a whitepaper and make all the problems just be an unfortunate misconfiguration by the company using MS products.

Imho, the "FUD" is largely right and most cloud platforms are indeed illegal.

However, due to enforcement being absent or taking ages, there are too few legal decisions and big expensive enforcement actions that one can point to. Currently everything is really still fear, uncertainty and doubt, the hammer hasn't come down yet. I'm not sure if it ever will, at least not before EU institutions or other member states such as France force Germany to stop dragging its feet.