Spyke

Replies

Comment on

Why are we so weird about speed limits (US)?

Reply in thread

We had a driver for a trip near London. The driver was driving quickly, but then slowed before getting to a speed-averaging camera checkpoint, saying how they weren't going to catch him speeding.

I thought about it, I did. But I can't justify that logic. If you can't cross that line until a certain time (or else get a citation), then you're not speeding unless you break that rule. If you speed up and then slow down to average-out your speed, you're just driving bad, not saving time.

Anyways, I was just amused that they had a system that seemed more foolproof, and yet it wasn't accomplishing its intended goal for this one driver. That was just one person, I know.

Comment on

Canada to ban the Flipper Zero to stop surge in car thefts

"Flipper Zero can't be used to hijack any car, specifically the ones produced after the 1990s, since their security systems have rolling codes," Flipper Devices COO Alex Kulagin told BleepingComputer.

"Also, it'd require actively blocking the signal from the owner to catch the original signal, which Flipper Zero's hardware is incapable of doing.

Just politicians trying to appear to be doing something so they can keep their jobs.

memes

Comment on

Merry Christmas

This interpretation is valid. But I recently learned to see it a different way.

If you'll humor me, please consider this. Since Santa knows if you've been "bad or good," he knows the other reindeer have been bullies to poor Rudolph. And, while a red glowing nose is cool, it's not a useful fog light. It's just not.

So Santa "uh oh!" had an emergency where, for the first time ever, the fog was going to be too thick all over the world to deliver presents?

Nope, he set up Rudolph in a position to "lead" his peers in a situation that maybe needed a little help but was not, in any way, a true, worldwide magic-assed Santa emergency. Santa knew how to guide his reindeer to accept each other. The story of Rudolph was not about Rudolph doing something to prove himself. It was about recognizing a Rudolph in need and helping him rise to the occasion to bring him closer to his peers in a way that could heal division.

Rudolph isn't about how to triumph as a Rudolph. It's about how to be a good Santa.

(Edit: For everyone who already thought this was obvious in the story, thanks for letting this Rudolph have his epiphany anyway.)

Comment on

Air Canada must pay damages after chatbot lies to grieving passenger about discount – Airline tried arguing virtual assistant was solely responsible for its own actions

Reply in thread

That's what I thought of, at first. Interestingly, the judge went with the angle of the chatbot being part of their web site, and they're responsible for that info. When they tried to argue that the bot mentioned a link to a page with contradicting info, the judge said users can't be expected to check one part of the site against another part to determine which part is more accurate. Still works in favor of the common person, just a different approach than how I thought about it.

Comment on

Time travel

No problem. The same people arrive from even later in the future with enough built-in power for both machines and rescue themselves. Everyone returns to their own times. When they arrive back in the earlier time, now they know they have to build another machine with spare power to go rescue themselves.

news

Comment on

Right turn on red? With pedestrian deaths rising, US cities are considering bans

Lights have to get smarter. Right on red is half the traffic flow in my area.* I always see so many situations where a green turn arrow would be appropriate, and yet the intersection is relying on the right-on-red rule instead, causing each car to pause when it should be flowing through. And even more situations where a light always stops the majority direction of traffic on what must be a fixed timer that poorly syncs with some upstream lights, because it always seems to turn red as a clump of cars arrives, even when there's almost always no cross traffic. Maybe right on red is more dangerous in some places, and we can get rid of it, but we have to replace it with some actual civil engineering instead of making traffic even worse.

*±100% margin of error, sample size 1