Something I've observed as someone who works in the physical sciences and used to work as a software engineer is:
Very few software engineers understand that tolerances are fundamental.
In the physical sciences, strict equality - of actual quantities, not variables in equations - is almost never a thing. Even though an equation might show that two theoretical quantities are exactly equal, the practical fact is that every quantity begins life as a measurement, and measurements have inherent uncertainty.
Even in design work, nothing is exact. It's simply not possible. A resistor's value is subject to manufacturing tolerances, will vary with temperature, and can drift as it ages. A mechanical part will also have manufacturing tolerance, and changes size and shape with temperature, applied forces, and wear. So even if a spec sheet states an exact number, the heading or notes will tell you that this is a nominal value under specific conditions. (Those conditions are also impossible to achieve and maintain exactly for all the same reasons.)
Even the voltages that represent 0 and 1 inside a computer aren't exact. Digital parts like CPUs, GPUs, RAM, etc. specify low and high thresholds, under or over which a voltage is considered a 0 or 1.
Floating-point numbers have uses outside the physical sciences, so there's no one-size-fits-all approach to using them correctly. But if you are writing code that deals with physical quantities, making equality comparisons is almost always going to be wrong even if floating-point numbers had infinite precision and no rounding error. Physical quantities simply can't be used that way.
I hope Adobe dies and becomes a warning to others - sorry, a "case study" - that is taken seriously. I adored Photoshop, starting with version 3, and watched in horror as Adobe stripped itself for parts. The damage is done, but hopefully we can still get some good out of this if it makes other companies realize that abandoning your users is a death sentence.
I’m sure the 40 years of people utilizing Adobe as an investment vehicle to make money would definitely be a warning to all the other upstarts who hope to completely monopolize an industry for four decades.
Airlines and aircraft manufacturers are already heavily incentivized to be fuel efficient. It's the most expensive part of a flight. (Sometimes crew salaries are more expensive but not by much.)
The difference here is between incremental improvements using incremental funding and glacier-speed if any of regulatory framework evolution vs. crisis situation changing calculus and providing option for large funding for the previously perceived far-off alternatives as well as jolts to change regulatory frameworks. And i'm not talking just about airplanes.
They seem to be implying that because they are a "service provider," they aren't responsible for complying with CCPA rules even though they are the ones with the data.
Does this hold water? I'm reading the CCPA rules now but if anyone knows, it would save me some tedious research.
Anything that doesn’t break even suffers from its own success.
If you have a public transportation system that loses money on every rider, then more people using it means everyone has to pay more (in taxes).
This can all work out when the economy is good and taxes can be increased, but it’s an inherently fragile system. At exactly the moment when most people will be dependent on a publicly funded system — when times are tough — is exactly the same time when tax revenues drop.
By creating a system that can’t sustain itself, you are making the system more likely to collapse in a crisis.
Energy production doesn't have to be profitable, but no private investor would invest into a unprofitable business.
If energy production in Denmark would not by profitable, the Government of Denmark could nationalize the energy production, or push households to install more solar and sell the energy at predefined price to the grid, or increase taxes to pay out subsidies to make energy production profitable again for private investors. Or combine all this approaches.
The Mac desktop era before its iOS-ification was, in fact, awesome. It was a triumph of consistency. The UI guidelines were excellent. Nearly every application worked in predictable ways. I appreciated it at the time and I miss it terribly.
Very few software engineers understand that tolerances are fundamental.
In the physical sciences, strict equality - of actual quantities, not variables in equations - is almost never a thing. Even though an equation might show that two theoretical quantities are exactly equal, the practical fact is that every quantity begins life as a measurement, and measurements have inherent uncertainty.
Even in design work, nothing is exact. It's simply not possible. A resistor's value is subject to manufacturing tolerances, will vary with temperature, and can drift as it ages. A mechanical part will also have manufacturing tolerance, and changes size and shape with temperature, applied forces, and wear. So even if a spec sheet states an exact number, the heading or notes will tell you that this is a nominal value under specific conditions. (Those conditions are also impossible to achieve and maintain exactly for all the same reasons.)
Even the voltages that represent 0 and 1 inside a computer aren't exact. Digital parts like CPUs, GPUs, RAM, etc. specify low and high thresholds, under or over which a voltage is considered a 0 or 1.
Floating-point numbers have uses outside the physical sciences, so there's no one-size-fits-all approach to using them correctly. But if you are writing code that deals with physical quantities, making equality comparisons is almost always going to be wrong even if floating-point numbers had infinite precision and no rounding error. Physical quantities simply can't be used that way.
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