3pac (u/3pac) - Readit News

3pac commented on UK air traffic control meltdown jameshaydon.github.io/nat... · Posted by u/jameshh

cratermoon · 2 years ago

It was terrifying enough for me in the gig I worked on that dealt with reservations and check-in, where a catastrophic failure would be someone boarding a flight when they shouldn't have. To avoid that sort of failure, the system mostly just gave up and issued the passenger what's called an "Airport Service Document": effectively a record that shows the passenger as having a seat on the flight, but unable to check-in. This allows the passenger to go to the airport and talk to an agent at the check-in desk. At that point, yes, a person gets involved, and a good agent can usually work out the problem and get the passenger on their flight, but of course that takes time.

If you've ever been a the airline desk waiting to check-in and an agent spends 10 minutes working with a passenger (passengers), it's because they got an ASD and the agent has to screw around directly in the the user-hostile SABRE interface to fix the reservation.

3pac · 2 years ago

SABRE is pretty good compared to the card file it replaced.

3pac commented on NASA finally admits what everyone already knows: SLS is unaffordable arstechnica.com/space/202... · Posted by u/mpsprd

lmm · 2 years ago

> The US can spend this kind of money .. with not much progress .. and no real consequences for failure. Adversaries see this as weakness because that is what it is.

I've heard just the opposite about the similar SDI/"Star Wars" - that the US pouring billions into this blatantly impossible and pointless programme, and suffering no real consequences for doing so, was what finally convinced the USSR they couldn't win.

3pac · 2 years ago

SDI is not really comparable. The numbers for the orbital parameters did not add up at the time, but they had Edward Teller behind them.

3pac commented on Multiple Nation-State Threat Actors Exploit CVE-2022-47966 and CVE-2022-42475 cisa.gov/news-events/cybe... · Posted by u/freedude

tptacek · 2 years ago

It'd be useful if someone at State could inform CISA of the meaning of the term "nation-state", unless CISA is very subtly trying to signal which particular countries these attacks are coming from, since nation-states are a small subset of all countries.

3pac · 2 years ago

It's just a heavy metal umlaut for someone who could have written "state-level" or "country". Like forcing the word "geopolitical". I would not get too worked up about it.

3pac commented on Huawei's new chip breakthrough likely to trigger closer US scrutiny reuters.com/technology/hu... · Posted by u/prossercj

treestumpquiet · 2 years ago

"Overall the US-China tech war is likely to escalate" Because the US is going to make even better technology, right? With the same open standards that allowed its technology sector to grow in the first place?

No? How about we escalate by writing blank checks to scammers and passing more sanctions to further isolate ourselves.

3pac · 2 years ago

The more recent US hegemony in radio communications technology was held by pioneering Bell Labs work leading to patented implementation as 3G standards. I think the US rested on the laurels of those patents for too long. Microwave RF basebands were not too long ago considered advanced as alien technology. Now China has re-developed them on their own terms.

3pac commented on Huawei teardown shows chip breakthrough bloomberg.com/news/featur... · Posted by u/fspeech

bhouston · 2 years ago

100%. China was going to achieve this technology at some point but we we sort of forced them into Manhattan style projects for this as a result of the sanctions. So they are likely going to achieve technology independence from the US faster as a result and then may surpass it clearly if they continue this level of effort/investment.

To be fair the state of the art is 3mn as of now (eg iPhone 15 releasing next week or so.) But 7mn is pretty darn close.

3pac · 2 years ago

Won't errors due to cosmic rays be an increasing issue at these process sizes?

3pac commented on HHS Calls for Moving Marijuana to Lower-Risk US Drug Category bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/DocFeind

3pac · 2 years ago

You can't be sure what's in it these days, especially if it looks super professionally packaged.

3pac commented on Amazon insisted I report my missing package to the police theguardian.com/money/202... · Posted by u/6LLvveMx2koXfwn

namirez · 2 years ago

File a chargeback to your CC company. Don’t waste your time with Amazon reps after the first call. Chances are they’ll ban you from Amazon which makes it easier to transition to other services.

3pac · 2 years ago

My bank just said that there was "no error" when I did this after Amazon failed to deliver something last year. I imagine that Amazon makes up a good portion of their chargeback complaints now.

Separately, I had my bank block Amazon Prime from charging my debit card. It shows up as a different merchant so they were do it and I can still make one-off purchases (which I don't like to any longer). I did this because the UI to cancel Amazon Prime did not work on my new, updated MacBook. It did not respond to clicks on the "confirm cancel" or whatever button.

3pac commented on Longtime 'Price Is Right' Host Bob Barker Dies at 99 npr.org/2023/08/26/200752... · Posted by u/pseudolus

nickthegreek · 2 years ago

We might be the last generation with a largely shared monoculture. I don’t know if that is better or worse, but the future will be different.

3pac · 2 years ago

Is church/temple out of the question too? Where do people go these days?

3pac commented on California's Weapons of Math Destruction wsj.com/articles/californ... · Posted by u/rahimnathwani

kkarakk · 2 years ago

Devil's advocate - I personally wonder if having the average person be able to understand math is essential sometimes. Between smartphones having conversational agents that can do math to things like tax/tipping calculators being in-built into systems, does the "average joe" need algebra.

I'm sure we've all seen the viral math problems that show that even now the "average joe" doesn't understand even PEMDAS - and most of the time these are working functional members of society.

Will it cause problems "upstream" so that colleges/jobs need to include the course training? sure but isn't specialization what careers are about? The existence of computers doesn't mean that everyone needs to know how to "learn to code" as an analogy.

3pac · 2 years ago

On a printed receipt at a restaurant, I once saw suggested tip percentages where the corresponding currency amount was greatly inflated and nowhere near the actual percentage.