9nGQluzmnq3M's comments

9nGQluzmnq3M | 5 years ago | on: Ride through Wuppertal on ‘the flying train’ in clear footage from 1902

There's nothing quite like the Schwebebahn, but there are a few other suspended monorails out there, also known as SAFEGE monorails after the French company that commercialized the technology. The largest is the Chiba Urban Monorail near Tokyo, which is actually a two-line network:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiba_Urban_Monorail

Pro tip: JR trains from Narita Airport to central Tokyo pass through Chiba station, so you can hop off and go for a suspended monorail ride!

9nGQluzmnq3M | 5 years ago | on: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable

> The only problem is that off the cuff remarks can be part of the permanent record now.

I don't think you appreciate the scale of how many headaches this can create for a large company. Previously, A says something mean about B at the watercooler, even if somebody overhears it's all he says, she says. With Slack (or any other group chat/IM system), if A says the same thing, it's broadcast to everybody else on the channel and anybody can take out of context screenshots and run squealing to HR/EEOC/lawyers/whoever. And it's all accessible to anybody with a subpoena on a fishing expedition as well.

And you can't just fix the company or the people: beyond a certain scale, no matter how good your hiring process and training, no matter how awesome your company culture and benefits, you'll get permanently unhappy people, shit-stirring trolls, wackos with extreme views and all the other weird creatures that populate any Internet forum. So eventually you have to converge on reserving chat only for strictly work-related comms and training people to take anything with the mildest whiff of controversy to talking in person/over video.

9nGQluzmnq3M | 5 years ago | on: From farm to factory: the unstoppable rise of American chicken

> “If breast meat is worth two dollars a pound and dark meat is worth one dollar, which would I rather have?”

Western countries are weird about this. Chicken breast, particularly the industrially produced Tyson broilers and their ilk, is bland, dry and tasteless. (There's an Anthony Bourdain quote which I can't find right now about chicken being what people who don't like food order in restaurants.)

In Asian countries "dark" meat is preferred and sells at a premium, because it actually has some texture and taste.

9nGQluzmnq3M | 5 years ago | on: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I

Elementary school in Japan is OK. It kind of goes off the rails after that though, with success in life largely dependent on a few exams, the content of which is not properly taught in school so everybody with the slightest ambition has to go to cram school (juku) to make up for it.

9nGQluzmnq3M | 5 years ago | on: Trump gives nod to Oracle buyout of TikTok in US

I don't think you need the /s tag there, that's exactly what I expect to happen.

I really don't understand what Ellison is trying to accomplish here? Aside from making more money, of course, but I'd be hard pressed to think of a less synergistic combo than Oracle's aging dinosaur enterprises and TikTok's fickle teenagers.

9nGQluzmnq3M | 5 years ago | on: I’m A Teapot – HTTP status code 418

There's a FAANG office which also uses 4xx status codes, but as you would expect, 404 is missing, and 403 is permanently locked (spoiler: it's a door mounted on a wall with nothing behind it). 418, on the other hand, is decorated with whimsical teapots.

9nGQluzmnq3M | 5 years ago | on: Two more restaurants in Toronto just got rid of tipping

The thing I don't understand that mandatory fixed service charges (in lieu of tips) are already standard for large groups in many if not most US restaurants, because negotiating tips and who pays what in this situation is even more complex.

Why is it so hard to just extend this existing, well accepted practice to smaller tables?

9nGQluzmnq3M | 5 years ago | on: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

Minecraft has arguably evolved into its own "platform" with people building and sharing their own worlds (some on Minecraft's own managed Realms, many not) and tons of third-party games built on top of Minecraft accessible to the public. Fortnite may evolve in this direction some day, but it hasn't yet.

9nGQluzmnq3M | 5 years ago | on: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

Why would even a NIMBY not be in favor of burying power lines? Power lines & poles don't exactly add to property values, and you'd think that underground you would get less electromagnetic 5G corona cancer rays implanting microchip vaccines too. But I guess trying to apply logic here isn't going to work...

9nGQluzmnq3M | 5 years ago | on: Response to Google open letter

Yup, the actual wording of the bill uses the awkward term "registered news business corporation" specifically for this reason, since ABC/SBS are not "business corporations".
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