Isn't 8 digits closer to 100 million unique numbers than to 10?
Readit Newsforth_fool commented on The international standard for identifying postal items akpain.net/blog/s10-upu/... · Posted by u/surprisetalk
forth_fool commented on EBCDIC Is Incompatible with GDPR shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/10/... · Posted by u/shakna
And good thing, IMO.
You try and have a weird name in a foreign country. If you're not careful, everyone will spell it differently, and then you'll spend ages going "No, I'm sure I'm in your system. Try this other spelling".
At least back in the 90s when I often had to deal with that, you were usually talking to a real life person, sitting on the other side of the desk. You could show them your documentation.
Today since everything is online and computerized, the risk is that a computer somewhere in the chain will just go "The bits don't match", and it'll be challenge to even reach a real person, let alone one capable of even understanding what problem you're having.
Here's a real problem this could cause: To get a visa you usually need to prove ties to your country. This normally includes a bank extract. If the name printed on your bank extract doesn't match what's printed on your documentation that means a very real risk of rejection, and not going anywhere if you can't fix it fast enough. And I can imagine other very not fun possibilities, like having some sort of KYC/AML snag where something decides you lied about your name.
So the bureaucrats are winning (as they always do).
Demanding that your name is written down in a specific way is just stupid.
I always found it elitist when people insist on a specific spelling. Typical examples are "Philip/Phillip/Philipp", "Stefan/Stephan", "Harald/Harold", "Erik/Eric/Erich", "Michael/Michel/Mikail" and so on... all these variations refer to the same name. Different dialect, different language, the spelling varies. So what? It's still the same name!
IMHO, the cited Article 16 doesn't necessarily demand a rectification of the spelling. This is about meaning, not syntax. But that's surely up to interpretation.
I first learned about this piece in a college art class. Reading about it again, I’m intrigued by how much of the surrounding discourse (including the artist’s own comments) talks about “audience” and “public” and “humanity” in the abstract.
It seems to me that the outcome would have been heavily dependent on _who specifically_ was in the room. In that way, the piece speaks more to the psyche of _an_ audience and _a_ public, rather than _the_.
I’m also curious what people think of the name?
Given that this performance has taken place in a large, western city with a random audience, what makes anyone think that the outcome would be significantly different if you would perform it multiple times, in similar contexts, assuming the audience has no knowledge of the other instances?
The pattern seems clear to me: you have a situation in which you are "allowed", even encouraged, to do harm to a person. You are "hidden" in a crowd. The crowd starts off with harmless actions but the get more intense over time, the boundary is pushed continuously. As long as you can hide in the crowd, you cheer. But as soon as you have to answer as an individual, you turn into a coward.
Of course you might think of specific contexts, in which the outcome would be different. But in a general setting? Why should this be the case?
The performance took place in 1974, barely 30 years after the fall of the Nazi regime. Under this regime, a whole people was put in a similar situation, where the treatment and dehumanization (i.e. objectification) of specific groups (in particular, Jews) got worse over time, publicly and continuously. I think in this historical context, the performance clearly referred to that time. I don't remember the 1970's, but in the 80's and still in the 90's, WW2 and the Third Reich were very much present in the public mind and often referred to in conversation. One example is Todd Strasser's novel The Wave from 1981, which shows how an "innocent" audience is transformed into an aggressive mob. I remember that this novel, and the movies based upon it, led to discussions where some people claimed "this certainly wouldn't happen here/to us/to me/now".
I think it needs a good explanation why today, or a different crowd, would be any different.
In practice or in fictional books? If in practice I’m sure you can share a handful of examples.
Some examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown_Christiania (ongoing experiment, I guess), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fordl%C3%A2ndia, Soviet Union
forth_fool commented on Lehman’s Laws of Software Evolution bartwullems.blogspot.com/... · Posted by u/kiyanwang
I got curious about the fact that the cited table from the paper only contains five laws, but the blog author describes seven such laws. So I read the paper. I have to say that the blog describes these laws superficially at best. I recommend reading the paper (instead of the blog post)! It's not too surprising (the results have long been digested into common knowledge since its publication, I guess) but anyway draws attention to the fundamental relationship between software complexity, program lifecycle, and the organization in which the software lives.
The first and second laws are more or less accurately described in the blog post.
The blog post reflects the third law as "... software development is an ongoing process that requires continual improvement and adapation." This does not match the description in the paper, where the third law is described such that over time, the system behaviour emerges from a (large) number of single decisions within a complex environment.
The fourth law is described by the blog post to be about feedback loops (which would be actually applicable to the third law). In the paper, it is about stability (no radical changes during a program's evolution).
The fifth law is described to be about incremental and radical changes, while the paper refers to quite the opposite. Organizations want to maintain familiarity, so the tend to reject big changes.
The sixth law in the blog post seems to refer to the actual fourth and/or fifth in the paper.
And the seventh law just seems to be made up.
I've watched a lot of Errol Morris and liked the Interrotron interviews but after awhile I noticed there's a certain feeling of artificiality, a feeling that there is a strange mechanism at work in between the two people.
It seems this technique is getting more pervasive. With such interviews, I always got the feeling these people are talking to a machine. Now that I learned about the Interrotron, I know they are talking to a machine.
forth_fool commented on Ask HN: Any recommendation for a good History of Science book? · Posted by u/mariedavid
I recommend "What is this thing called Science?" by A. F. Chalmers. It describes how science came about and how scientific principles were established. I found it highly accessible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_This_Thing_Called_Scie...
forth_fool commented on Resolving a workplace dilemma using game theory gist.github.com/koozala/b... · Posted by u/forth_fool
TL;DR: Work comes with a cost, whether you do the work or not.
What are the rules then? I'm typing words and it's saying they are not legal words?
The idea is, as in the original, that for guessing you have to enter valid words. In this case, it's 6-letter words. However, it's not easy to obtain a complete list of valid 6-letter German words, so the ones you are trying might be missing. Working on it.