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Comment Re: Adapter (Score 1) 241

It seems you donâ(TM)t have a clue. If you have a USB-C port you can plug in anything from 40 or 80 gigabit USB-4 (display port), 20 Gbit USB 3.2, 10 Gbit USB 3.1, or 480Mbit USB-2, and it will all work. Thatâ(TM)s what you want. The USB-C ports are identical. You cannot confuse them. You get the speed of the plugged-in device.

If only that were true! Unfortunately there's nothing to stop a manufacturer putting a USB-C port on a laptop, and having it only support (say) USB-3.1 downwards. And so some of them do this - because it's cheaper. Maybe there's one USB C port that also supports TB/DisplayPort, with a tiny little logo next to it to let you know which one it is. If you're lucky...

Comment Re:roundabouts (Score 1) 181

How the hell do they grant right-of-way to entrants and still have a working roundabout? Doesn't that defeat the point?

Yeah it doesn't work well! But last time I checked (admittedly some years ago now) most of those roundabouts were being replaced with standard traffic-on-roundabout-has-priority ones.

Comment Re:Obligatory xkcd (Score 1) 259

If an abstract thing like what size any particular area looks like on a projection harms identity and pride, then pray tell what projection should be adopted that will show all areas at their true size, and won't harm children's identity?

There are a whole bunch of projections that preserve area. One is mentioned in the summary, but it's not the only one. These projections accurately depict areas by distorting angles (where Mercator does the reverse, accurately showing angles by distorting areas). It's a question of what map is more suitable for a particular purpose - I guess it's unlikely kids in school are going to use their map to circumnavigate the world?

Comment Re:History books (Score 1) 130

Are you smart enough to notice the title of that book? It's no accident, as Zinn would brag. It's like "The People's Car" (the Volkswagen), "The People's army", "The People's Committe" or any other Marxist thing which is named as though it belongs to all the people in a Marxist utopian society.

So apparently the American Constitution ("We the people...") is actually Marxist? TIL!

Comment Re:Will not overrun or segfault? (Score 1) 99

We are to believe it will automagically unfuck bad code. It is not to be taken seriously.

This is the correct answer. Having read most of the white paper, I'm left wondering whether this is an April Fool's joke released too soon. Some of my favourites:

TrapC is compatible with most C code

followed shortly afterwards by

TrapC compatibility when compiling C code is limited in a small way by the removal of ‘goto’ and ‘union’.

So that'll rule out probably 98% of real life C programs then!

also

how TrapC translation is implemented is a compiler implementation detail. Translations might be from a local dictionary, be captured ad hoc from user-provided input or be AI-generated across the Internet.

The paper claims that the standard unmodified C "Hello, world" program, if compiled with TrapC and run with LANG=fr_FR, will output "Bonjour le monde". With translation automatically provided by AI. I can see literally no way how that could end badly!

Comment Re:To what accuracy? 1km? (Score 1) 38

You only need two satellites and the surface of the earth.

No, that's not true. I'll try to explain why.

Each satellite transmits (very roughly) "My precise position is (here), and the time by my clock is (timestamp)". (In fact the satellites send a bit more - including each other's positions - but that needn't concern us here.)

With one satellite, this tells you nothing about your position: you know the timestamp the satellite thought it was when it sent its transmission, but you have no idea how long that transmission took to arrive. (Unless you already happen to have a pre-synchronised atomic clock, which most GPS receivers do not!)

With two satellites, you can compare the timestamps you receive - the difference in the times tells you that one of the satellites is closer to you than the other, and by how much. That's enough to narrow down your position to anywhere on a specific curved surface (a hyperboloid, as it happens),

Another, third, satellite then narrows the position down further - this time to anywhere on a specific curve. If you know you're on the surface of the Earth, that's usually enough to give your position - job done; if not, a fourth satellite will do the job.

But that's not the end of the story: while you know the positions of the satellites to rather high precision, the measurements of when you received the timestamps are approximate - for a variety of reasons, but including the fact that atmospheric conditions may change the propagation speed of the signal (and you have no way of knowing whether this has happened), and the fact that (since your receiver doesn't have an atomic clock) its local clock will drift slightly over time.

If all of the satellites you're tracking are close together, then the differences between the timestamps you measure from the different satellites will be small. But the absolute error in your measurement (due to local clock drift, atmospheric conditions etc) remains roughly the same - so the percentage imprecision in the differences becomes much larger - and so the uncertainty in your position increases accordingly. This is what is referred to as "bad geometry".

Comment Re:They come right out and say it (Score 1) 164

They allow a yubikey

What do you do if your Yubikey dies or is lost?

It's an important question. Sensible sites (and I think Google is included in this) allow you to register multiple Yubikeys (so you can keep one with you, and one in a secure place - or even more, depending on your level of paranoia). Other sites (Paypal, I'm looking at you - also Salesforce while we're at it) do not, and this is a big flaw.

Comment Re:wat (Score 2) 26

Yes there are 3.5mm / lightning adapters. They're cheap and ubiquitous. I had one at my last job for the headphones they sent me during Covid that didn't have a Bluetooth option.

The ones that are cheap and ubiquitous aren't passthrough though - at least, not the ones I've seen - you want one that will give you a headphone output and another lightning socket, so that you can still charge / connect another accessory...

Comment Re: $3.99 (Score 1) 509

I live in a country where the displayed price includes the tax. The tax isn't hidden, though - it's displayed on the receipt (and the rate is well known) - it's just that the ticket price represents what you actually need to have in your wallet (in the case where you're not paying by phone!), which is massively more convenient. But you are free to do things differently in your country :-)

Comment Re:Crazy idea (Score 1) 509

Why would they need to have an ID with them?

Err....to drive, you need to have your drivers license with you.

No, that's simply not true: I don't need to have my driver's licence with me to drive - there's no legal requirement to do so.

In the US, we drive....and slashdot being a US centric website, it's usually best to assume US if not specifically stated otherwise.

Sure, in general - but, if you read back up the thread, the context here is not "people in general": for some reason we're talking - specifically - about "most people I (psmears) know that pay for things with their phones". And those people do not need to have ID with them, even for driving.

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