seanos's comments

For Python, there is the Pint library: https://pint.readthedocs.io/en/stable/

I graduated with a PhD 10 years ago from the same university (Nottingham) as he did, in mechanical engineering, and have been working in academia ever since, working my way up to senior lecturer (UK equivalent to associate professor), and I'm still earning much less than him. I do a lot of coding in research projects in my job and have some experience in web development from side-projects, as well as contributions to open-source libraries (mainly statistics and simulation based in Python) etc. Been thinking of making the career switch into a software development role for a while but wondered if it's too late. This makes me think it may still be worthwhile, even if getting that first role might prove difficult given my academic background and I'd have to start at the bottom again.

It's not intrinsically better, it's just a convention, but it helps if everyone operates to the same standard for obvious reasons. Since neighbouring countries drove on the right, it was better to adopt the same standard. This was not an issue for islands such as the UK and Japan with no direct road links to neighbours, therefore they still drive on the left. Originally, before cars, the nobility rode their horses on the left to defend against oncoming traffic since they held their swords in their right hand. For that reason, peasants travelled on the right for safety. After the French Revolution it was prudent for the nobility to blend in, hence all traffic began to travel on the right which was then spread by the French empire.

MagLev did pan out though, just not in Britain. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Maglev_Train

"And if goalies are being irrational, why aren't kickers exploiting it?"

Two reasons I can think of. First, if you shoot to the left or right (particularly top or bottom corner of goal) then the goalkeeper has further to travel to reach the ball, therefore if it is done with sufficient accuracy and power it is harder, or even impossible, to save even if the goalkeeper guesses correctly. In contrast, a central shot, even if hit with high power is often easy to save if the goalkeeper keeps central. Therefore, shooting left or right more often than centrally can be a rational choice if the goalkeeper distributes evenly between going left, right and center - especially for high level players. Secondly, shooting centrally can look a bit silly if the goalkeeper guesses correctly, since it is usually an easy save, therefore it is seen as a bit of an arrogant, or show off, move. Therefore players may be reluctant to shoot centrally - this is somewhat related to the reasoning given for the goalkeepers in that the players want to be seen to be doing something.

The estimated worth of the gold in jewellery privately owned in India alone (mainly by housewives) is estimated to be worth $600 billion. To put that in perspective, total US gold reserves are valued at around $420 billion.

http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2011/07/14/indias-600-bil...

It may be possible that they developed their internal compass due to their nomadic lifestyle and the use of absolute directions within language resulted from that (rather than vice versa). I have no idea if this is the case.

Lojban is a constructed, syntactically unambiguous language based on predicate logic that was originally conceived to examine the influence of language on the speaker's thought:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban

Doesn't it have a handbrake?

Except that for the Tesla it's days after reaching zero charge, not months.

From the manual "Important! Caution: If the battery’s charge level falls to 0%, it must be plugged in immediately. Failure to do so can permanently damage the battery and this damage is not covered by the New Vehicle Limited Warranty."

"Imagine the flip side, that electric cars were normal, and internal combustion engines were unusual. Then we could have stories about owners ruining their engines because they never changed their oil."

No you wouldn't because an oil change is part of the annual service for the car. Everyone knows that if you neglect to follow the manufacturer's maintenance schedule for a car you might get problems. On the other hand, many people see charging the car as analogous to filling up a tank with fuel - not as maintenance - that's why they are surprised that failing to do so for a few weeks could "brick" the car.

In the UK, if you work for a company with 250 or more employees, you are also entitled to request time off work to train (including degree study): http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Employment/Employees/Timeoffandh...

Once they offer a full set of modules, for say a CS degree, this could be very disruptive indeed.

Very good on Timothy's part too. In the same situation, I would probably sell the extra XBox to be honest.

A phenomenon I noticed in certain Latin American countries: there are vendors walking around and on every street corner advertising "Minutos" who carry a set of mobile phones on strings which they will rent to you. The main reason is that calls between phones on the same network are much cheaper, so it enables people to own a single phone and dodge the higher inter-network charges when making calls.

"At some point they are discussing whether they are ascending or descending, while the stall alarm is blaring throughout. I don't think anyone will consider making the stall alarm go "Stall! Losing attitude!"."

Yep, but your missing the fact that they didn't believe it was actually stalled or about to stall. They thought that was impossible since normally the fly-by-wire protects against it, so that warning can safely be ignored. That is why they ignored it. It's kind of like the boy that cried wolf. Normally, the warning can be ignored and so when it started sounding when it really mattered, they ignored it. Maybe interlacing "Stall! Stall Protection Disengaged!" (when in alt mode) and "Stall! Push Stick Forward!" (when stick back) is the ideal solution.

The dual input warning doesn't inform specifically that copilot 1 is pulling back on the stick. It's clear from the report that was the problem, copilot 1 was pulling back the whole time and nobody realised.

I'm not suggesting adding "warning after warning" but an improvement to the existing warning, after all, when the plane is heading for the ground the warning is "Pull Up! Pull Up!" not "Ground!". If you want a software analogy, "Stall" is akin to "Error: Read Failure" and "Stall! Push Stick Forward!" akin to "Read Failure: Insert Disk".

Anyway it's a cheap to implement improvement and could save lives.

The crash report says that the second pilot and pilot (when he arrived) were both unaware that the other copilot was pulling back on his stick. E.g. at one point the other copilot had his stick forward (causing an averaging of the two inputs resulting in nose still up) and right before the crash when the copilot replies "But I've had my stick back all the time!" the other two get a shock. The warning "Stall! Push stick forward!" would therefore have saved the day, even if the copilot pulling back ignored it (and it seems he thought he was doing the right thing by pulling back, so the explicit advice "Push stick forward!" might have helped in his mental state), the other two would realise he was contravening normal response.

One obvious improvement would be to replace the warning "Stall!" with "Stall! Stall protection disengaged!" when flying in alternative mode. Even better might be "Stall! Push stick forward!" when a stall is detected and the pilot is simultaneously pulling back on the stick.

UK = £ Sterling