I think a lot of web services talk about reliability in terms of uptime (e.g. down for less than 5 minutes a year) but in reality operate on failure ratios (less than 0.001% of request to our service fail).
Can you share more about education in the USSR? My impression is that for all its faults, education is one area where the USSR excelled, with very high standards and outcomes.
TP is largely correct - there was no “advanced track” or any kind of differentiation at a normal school systemically. There were “gymnasiums” - a kind of specialized schools starting grade 8 or 9 and only in big cities and you could apply if you test well and/or your parents knew somebody who knew somebody
Your impression is correct. OP's fallen into the classic trap of equating the American "left" (which isn't left at all) with socialism, and that with the USSR. It's all nonsense free association of "things conservatives dislike", from the same mine that yielded gems like "cultural Marxism" (another nonsense).
The distinction in the article really is between calling malloc for every added node in your data structure (“pointer”) or using the pre-allocated memory in the next element of an array (“index”).
This is only one of the advantages discussed in TFA. The others are those due to using indices instead of pointers (like smaller size, cache locality, range checking, possibility of data exchange between systems with distinct address spaces).
California has the opportunity to be a beacon in North America for environmental and climate action e.g. by expanding solar production, finishing the CAHSR, and other projects like expanding and electrifying mass transit and commuter rail networks, but they are their own worst enemy.
California has already fallen behind both Texas and Florida in new utility grade solar. As for CA-HSR, no comment. But if you don't want to wait, you can buy a ticket today and ride Florida's new high speed rail between Orlando and Miami.
The fact that Brightline can take you from Miami to Orlando is wonderful, and I'm really happy Florida is embracing more efficient, less dangerous, and less stressful forms of transportation.
But using it to make a subtle jab agains CAHSR isn't really fair -- they're two very different projects (for one of them, it's genuinely a stretch to call it "HSR") in two very different regions.
Yes, it's harder to get big projects through the red tape in California than it is in West / Panhandle Texas or Central Florida. Go take a drive through those regions and you'll quickly see some reasons why, besides just NIMBYism, Californians are a bit more protective of their landscapes. If a massive wind project were proposed across large swaths of the Texas Hillcountry, you'd see a lot more push-back.
> But using it to make a subtle jab agains CAHSR isn't really fair -- they're two very different projects (for one of them, it's genuinely a stretch to call it "HSR") in two very different regions.
Well, CA HSR doesn't exist. It's missing the R part of the HSR. So that must be the one it's a stretch to call "HSR".
Brightline is too slow to call it high speed. But we have it today which is worth something unlike maybe some year with all the other options - so brightline gets the win today. things are likely to change in the future but I don't see anything I'd bet on (but I only bet very sure things)
> or one of them, it's genuinely a stretch to call it "HSR"
How fast is California's HSR?
That's both sarcasm and an actual question. It doesn't go anywhere now but I keep hearing it's speed get downgraded as they encounter the real world. Plus, the goal of LA-SF is practically abandoned and now it takes you from a place you don't want to be to a place you don't want to go.
You really can't compare the two because one exists only as a goal and the other is an accomplishment.
In US terms it's very fast. The US lags behind other developed countries in rail, but I hope it can improve. And, if it improves with electric propulsion, better.
The climate problem is an emergency. Reaching net zero in 2100 is going to be at least one more century of suffering for our offsprings than reaching net zero in 2040.
And things that are a net improvement do not preclude other things that are net improvements. It is a tactical blunder to attack people who are improving things, for not improving them "enough". The journey of a thousand miles, etc etc.
Rather, become one of the people who's improving things – or, if somehow your only skill is attacking, attack the people who are making things worse.
By the by, "net zero" is not enough. The vast majority of offsetting schemes are little more than accountability laundering and on-paper games, not translating to any concrete offsetting in the real world. We need gross zero.
> things that are a net improvement do not preclude other things that are net improvements.
That's a good framework to think about things. Going all-in on renewables implies keeping fossil fuels around, because storage tech is several breakthrough behind. Renewable proponents like to point out that every kWh not produced with CO2 emission is still a win.
Yet deploying renewables means they flood the market with cheap electricity when the weather is good, hurting the profit, thus viability, of (i.e. precluding) stable low-carbon sources (in other words I'm butt hurt about nuclear).
> The vast majority of offsetting schemes are little more than accountability laundering and on-paper games, not translating to any concrete offsetting in the real world.
A case I heard is that they count the carbon captured by planting trees, yet ignore it when the carbon is released back to the atmosphere in a wildfire.
A telnet terminal isn’t a terminal by this logic because the text isn’t rendered on the server. A telnet server sends data to your device and your device renders it.
I believe you are interpreting “business need” as “commercial need” when I think it’s more like “what is your business here?” Purely anecdotal, but when I visited Moffett Federal Airfield to visit the aviation history museum there I asked the security guard at the gate checking my ID if I could ride my bike around the base afterwards. He said I needed a business purpose to being on the base and that visiting the museum was a business purpose but biking around aimlessly wasn’t.
I think if the goal is to “de-regulate”, there are other agencies that could be shut down instead. CSB provides all companies with the know-how to choose to prevent giant disasters. Shutting down this agency may be motivated by a desire to reduce regulation but it’s really counterproductive.
Someone who is against regulation might still support the work of CSB because it assists the operations of any de-regulated industries.
