East coast snow storms are notoriously difficult to predict. I'm not surprised that even with modern technology they still can't get it perfect. In addition to the dynamic nature of the low-pressure circulation interacting with the coast and the gulf stream (like a hurricane) you've got the all-important freezing temperature line. It's even worse than "a line that might shift" though, because if the cold air intrudes under the warm you get freezing rain, not snow.

I grew up in that region (DC area) and it was always like this. I have no envy for those forecasters.

One of my fondest memories is of the 1978 storm. Hit in the afternoon, 2" predicted. 6PM, forecast increased 6-8". Next morning? Most of us had 24", some hit 36". I wonder if modern tech could have done better.

More often than not though, it seemed like DC always got cheated out of snow when I was a kid. Rain, sleet, snow that got rained on and turned into a soggy mess. Beautiful snow that you could play in on your day off was just all too rare.

Going to cause a lot of collateral damage to start doxxing people who may or may not be pedobears

Call me when anonymous starts busting down doors without warning at 3 AM and kills occupants. Call me when they snag people rolling through town who just took out cash to buy a car, and confiscate the money. Call me when they drag people through the court for years, ruining their good name with no real conviction. Call me when they just shoot you on the street even though you're un-armed.

Those are all things the "real cops" have been doing. When the authorities aren't doing their job, alternatives start to look better.

Unless the pilot has X-ray vision, his eyeballs ain't gonna help. Fighter Pilot: Yes, confirmed it's a plane that hasn't been hijacked and may or may not have a bomb on board. Commercial Pilot: Told you so.

What is there on a fighter jet that could possibly help? It's a bomb threat. Fighters have... bombs, guns and missiles. Well, since we already don't want an explosion at the airport, bombs don't help. Missiles, pretty much the same deal except there's a nice WhhoooooOOOSH before it hits something. Seems bombs and missiles would only make matters worse. That leaves guns, typically used air-to-air or for strafing. Since they aren't under threat of air attack, strafing seems to be the most likely course of action, should the fighters actually engage.

That doesn't make a lot of sense though. A device, if found, will typically be removed and detonated or detonated in place after the area has been cleared.

Maybe, just maybe... the logic is something like, "Hey, can we strafe the bomb this time?". CO: "No, EOD is going to follow procedure". Pilot: "Damned EOD. Maybe we'll strafe the bomb next time".

So like regular money, only fun. But wait... nothing in the park accepts Itchy and Scratchy money...

Knowing what failed is valuable. Now instead of engineers looking at rockets and/or parachutes, they can concentrate on the panel deployment system. Maybe they overlooked something and it was more easily fouled by dust than they thought.

Scrolled down for this. Walking to school with Mommie was a kindergarden thing for me in the 70s. From 1st grade on, I walked to school or the bus stop all by my ittle bitty sef!

Oh and yes, no cel phone of course. If you were in real trouble you could find some parent who was out in their garden, and ask to use the phone.

The best teachers aren't afraid of students who know something they don't. Teaching teachers all the knowledge is impossible. Teaching teachers humility is possible, though seldom seen.

Scrolled down for this. Left satisfied.

I thought ASN.1 was just a data representation, not a programming language. Went and googled a bit...um,.... seems to be right; but I only skimmed the Wiki. Of course you could represent code in any good data representation language; but why? I've heard people say that data is passed using ASN.1, but never "I wrote that application in ASN.1". That just sounds wrong.

Trouble is, a lot of today's appliances aren't worth fixing. I junked a blender recently. Problem? plastic coupling between the motor and the blades. What's that you say? Machine a new one out of metal? OK maybe... if the motor didn't already spark and smell like ozone when making one smoothie. No, crushing ice was not pushing this thing. It was specifically advertised as being OK with that. It was just. A piece. Of crap. Now a BlendTec, that'd be worth servicing... but even the consumer version is $400.00. Many of us can't afford that, or we rationalize the 5-year disposable $40 blender as potentially cheaper even though trashing things is somehow less satisfying. There is no pride in ownership when there's no pride in manufacturing. This is by design. The companies don't want people fixing things. Everybody knows it.

Maybe that's why the younger generation is more interested in making. If companies won't put pride in manufacturing, maybe individuals will.

It sounds like you might be somebody who learned to program someplace other than a CS degree, or who got a CS degree and forgot some academic stuff that you haven't used in your day-to-day work.

You've run afoul of the "functional" doesn't mean "uses function calls a lot" problem and some chest-pounders here are slamming you for that. As an EE who only had a few undergrad CS courses, I've had similar problems. Somewhere out there is a USENET thread in which I'm assuming that "side effects" are "bad side effects" as opposed to manageable outcomes of calling non-pure functions. Thus, I can empathize with you.

Chances are you're a fine programmer who just never studied functional programming. Forget the pedants, and google Lisp, Haskell, "pure function", "functional programming", etc. I'll wager you won't want to write programs in those languages but will find it interesting. You'll also be less likely to bring pedants out of the wood work once you're familiar with the terminology.

Good point. You left out the generation gap, and of course The Gap, which derived its name from the generation gap because it was selling casual clothing to Boomers.

When you see "Internet of Things" you know everything that comes after is usually pure idiocy anyway.

Holy crap, that's the last place I'd expect a cable. It sounds like the only reason they did that is politics because of Chavez. The latency will suck. Why couldn't they get to Mexico? If the relationship with the USA progresses, a cable from the Keys is a no-brainer. You'll get much better round-trips to Miami which a lot of Cubans will want for VOIP, video, etc.