chesimov · HackerTrans

chesimov

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il y a 6 ansdiscuss

I have recently moved to a macbook pro for work, having used Ubuntu on my prior machine. In my experience, the mac (despite having significantly more modern specs) is more buggy and just not quite as snappy for these little things. Opening windows, menus, terminals takes longer (even with the swoopy animations turned off). Wake from sleep also takes longer, and a few times a week it is frozen for a few minutes on wake. Maybe I have a lemon.

il y a 8 ansdiscuss

Contraction last 2 quarters in South Africa

il y a 8 ansdiscuss

I'm not sure I understood your comment correctly - did you return to the same institution 10 years later, or did you go to a new one?

il y a 8 ansdiscuss

LiFePO4 batteries are significantly safer for a penalty of 14% less energy density

il y a 8 ansdiscuss

Do mean that a government is less trustworthy than an independendent corporation? That a corporation will better look after the interests of its citizens than a government?

il y a 8 ansdiscuss

Depending on the class of Bluetooth, the signal strength is around 100 times less than a cellphone.

il y a 8 ansdiscuss

Some people say this kind of populist stuff (and worse) on campus here too. I feel like some of the polarising optimisations in social media that have happened in the US etc spill over to here - but the stakes are much higher here.

il y a 8 ansdiscuss

My anecdote: In undergraduate engineering, a lot of the people around me were on ritalin. I never felt disadvantaged because I felt it didn't give anyone a clear advantage in the hardest subjects like mathematics or nonlinear control. From what I saw, it didn't seem to improve intelligence that much; rather it helped the distractable people to not get distracted from studying for example.

il y a 8 ansdiscuss

This is something I wonder about. I'm certain they never delete anything, because in aggregate all that data is surely very valuable and will be for years to come. However, I hope that by marking it for deletion, it becomes more likely that it gets stored on increasingly distant/cold media, increasing the likelihood that over the years it gets overwritten or corrupted or some drives fail. If times get difficult, maybe they'll mark my data as low priority, and let it get overwritten to save some money. Can anyone shed some light on this - is this just wishful thinking? Is storage too cheap?

Another thing I wonder about: perhaps if some companies want your facebook data, they might pay a rate and see all current information on your facebook. By deleting your data, you've denied these lower-tier companies from accessing it. I suspect that with enough money, they could buy access to deleted posts too. But such companies are probably fewer in number.

il y a 8 ansdiscuss

What would be the sort of dispute you envisage?

il y a 8 ansdiscuss

For me, in both of these videos, the audio is severely mangled (across different browsers). Have never experienced anything like this on youtube before. Does anyone have any idea why this might be happening? Edit: solved, some strange driver issue it seems.

il y a 8 ansdiscuss

Also available in SA. You have to share your facebook data with the mobile company though.

il y a 8 ansdiscuss

There was a recent Icelandic (I think) TV show with a premise along these lines

il y a 8 ansdiscuss

I also associate succumb with die for some reason, although I'm not sure why. Maybe in the newspapers if they say 'x succumbed to their injuries' it would imply that?

il y a 8 ansdiscuss

It was a different time - my understanding is that having a multiply redundant system was important for an isolated pariah state. Think of it like the strategic petroleum reserves in certain isolated states of today. Of course none of that was necessary once SA rejoined the global community. This extra capacity could have been carefully mothballed for later use; instead we are now building 2x brand new coal stations, each of which will be the largest coal plants in the world.

il y a 8 ansdiscuss

Fair point, but choosing the electricity crisis as an example is not helping your claim - the Apartheid lot left us with something like 50% overcapacity and almost the cheapest electricity in the world at the time. We actually have less electricity generating capacity right now than at that time. The lack of generting capacity has severely constrained our economy since. When the crisis first bit in the 2000s, many mines had to shut down for the first time in 200 years of continuous operations.

The government had an initial plan to redirect overcapacity in many areas (not just electricity) to rolling out services to those neglected by the Apartheid govt, and then after that to start building infrastructure again (not sure of specifics, maybe 5 years on?). The problem is that in most cases, this never happened. Hence the limits of most infrastructure are gradually being hit, with a knock-on effect for the economy.

il y a 9 ansdiscuss

Well, there's an exodus from the rest of the country to the W. Cape. They call it 'semigration'. Property was up 12% a while ago when all other provinces saw a decline I think (except Gauteng; they were up 3%). As a young person of the wrong demographic here though, myself and most of my friends are preparing for possible departure for a few different reasons. If you are already established in a field with an overseas nest egg that can't be touched by SA inflation though, then Cape Town is probably one of the best cities to live in on the planet. If you know what you're doing, living here is fantastic.

il y a 9 ansdiscuss

The people you are speaking about, the Bushmen, were wiped out by the Nguni pastoralists and the European settlers. A few descendents remain. They are not in power here. As for Westerners... they haven't been in power for more than 20 years (if you call the Apartheid government western?). Infrastructural development has slowed down mostly due to graft. Secondly, we are talking about a tiny region of Southern Africa. The rest of it is mostly fine.

il y a 9 ansdiscuss

There is at least one self-sufficient desalination ship for hire that could apparently just about cover the entire city's needs on its own. It is also apparently very exensive so we are hoping to avoid that. I'd expect that's the kind of company that would be useful in these sorts of disasters.

il y a 9 ansdiscuss

The heaviest offenders have also had mandatory electronic limiters fitted to their properties, permitting no more than 350L per property per day (as of now)