Belgian here. You want to criticize Belgium's handling of the situation? Please do.

Back in March, everyone was taken by surprise. Mistakes of all kinds were made, maybe understandably.

But now? Cases are increasing exponentially again. Federal, regional and community governments don't understand the gravity of the situation. The main statistic they use to set policy is based on the number of new Covid-19 patients in hospitals, smoothed out over a week, meaning they base their decisions on numbers that lag the new infections by 2-3 weeks or even more; and when those numbers start to rise, the still don't grasp that something needs to be done now instead of next week. We supposedly have contact tracing but when it even works it works way too slow to have any meaningful impact. We don't have nearly enough testing capacity. At least local administrations are trying to do what they can.

We have a whole labyrinth of governments, meaning a whole lot of policitians who want to take credit but not a single one who really takes responsibility. Politicians ignoring and/or misrespresenting scientists' advice has become completely normal. It's become a complete clusterfuck of incompetence. When confronted with the abysmal statistics, politicians are in denial (it's "because we count all Covid-19-related deaths instead of only the ones where Covid-19 is confirmed to be the cause of death", which is true but can only explain a small amount of the excess deaths).

I try not to think about it too much because it doesn't help anyway and it just makes me sad.

I don't understand it. I really truly don't understand this "feature". What is the advantage? What is the problem with making it optional?

Can someone explain to me why this "feature" is worth the time and effort of the developer(s) who implemented it, and the disappointment of users like me who much prefer the normal non-obtrusive method of not blowing up user interface elements? I don't mean vague abstract words that don't really mean anything; I mean real concrete reasons for why the new behavior is better than the old one.

The Swedish higher first wave does nothing to prevent a high second wave. Or at least I don't see how a high second wave can be prevented by following Sweden's approach. They're worlds away from reaching herd immunity, just like other countries.

Indeed. The moon is directly lit by the sun, and so it is just as bright as a rock 50 meters away from you on a bright sunny day. But the brightness off the surroundings differ drastically, which is why the automatic exposure in cameras get one case right but not the other.

And yet, in discussions about the metric system vs US customary units, people defending the latter always say that it's so much easier to use fractions as is routinely done with inches and feet etc. than using decimals as is done using metric units.

> I've never heard of a mob mentality against coding on a vertical screen. No one cares how set up your display for reading text.

It seems some of the sibling comments to yours demonstrate that there is such a mob mentality after all, unfortunately.

In a sibling comment of yours, user Rakhar says "I've never heard of a mob mentality against coding on a vertical screen. No one cares how set up your display for reading text." It seems you proved them wrong: there really are people that mock other people just for their preference of portrait over landscape.

In reality, there's a place for both. I like coding on a portrait screen, because I like having an overview of the structure of the code and a vertical orientation works better for that. With a big enough screens it's less of an issue, since they have (almost) enough vertical space.

With today's multi-monitor capabilities, it's not hard to setup systems with both horizontal and vertical displays. In fact that's exactly what I did at work. It turns out the vertical display is useful for things other than coding. For reading or writing documents for example, that for better or worse are in portrait format: full pages fit easily, without scrolling. Again the disadvantage of horizontal displays diminishes when they get large enough to do that too easily.

Actually it's the other way around: North America is considerably farther south than most people tend to think. New York City is further south than Rome even, and at approximately the same latitude as Madrid. The whole USA excluding Alaska is further south than the most southern point of my own country, Belgium.

Or rather, what most people tend to think of when one says "most people" very strongly depends on their point of view.

I suppose MS caters only to people who have one full-screen window on one monitor at any one time.

There is a way to improve issue: in the Windows settings, go to Colors, uncheck "Automatically pick an accent color from my background", choose a conspicuous color. That color will be used for the title bar of the focused window.

But how do you know if an estimation is close enough? Yes, you can estimate using 2 straight lines. But I highly doubt the result is correct to one decimal place. What's more, in a case like this there's no way to know how close you are without working it out in full.

Now thinking about it, instead of trying to calculate it it might be a better idea to construct a little scale model and measure it, if you have a few rulers and a piece of rope available.

I agree that questions like this are annoying and not effective for finding the right match between developer and employer.

That being said, a little tip: in all kinds of tests, it's always a good idea to start by having a look at all the questions, and possibly (temporarily) skipping a question if it seems too hard. Do the easy ones first, they might even give you an idea how to solve the more difficult ones.

Also wrong.

A 737Max without MCAS is not really unstable, but it's not stable enough to comply with FAR 25.173. More specifically, in high-AoA situations the aircraft tends to increase the angle of attack even more, even without increased stick force from the pilot.

It's certainly not disastrously unstable, and a competent pilot (who is aware of the issue) shouldn't have any problem with it. But it doesn't comply to the rules.

This issue is caused not by the thrust of the engines, as many people seem to think (the thrust of the engines do cause a pitch-up moment, just as on many other airliners, but that's not the problem here). Instead it's caused by lift generated by the big engine nacelles so far forward of the wings.

It's in FAR 25.173: see https://www.law.cornell.edu/cf...

> The 737 MAX is perfectly safe and certifiable without MCAS.
> The "no MCAS" behavior of the 737 MAX exists in other planes without problems.

No, it's not. As I said in another comment: it's repeated very frequently, but that doesn't make it true. Many airliners have that behavior. Pilots know it and can deal with it, as you say.

The real reason for the existence of MCAS is something else. For certification of airlines it is a hard requirement that increasing the angle of attack requires increasing force on the yoke. In the case of the Boeing 737 MAX, the large engines relatively far ahead of the wings generate lift of their own at high angles of attack (mostly in steep corners, in practice). The effect is that at those high angles of attack, the plane increases the angle of attack even more even without increased force from the pilot. That is not certifiable.

> So the nose pulls up a bit at full power. Might need an hour in a simulator to really get used to that. Is that really such a big deal?

That is not the problem. It's repeated very frequently, but that doesn't make it true. Many airliners have that behavior. Pilots know it and can deal with it, as you say.

The real reason for the existence of MCAS is something else. For certification of airlines it is a hard requirement that increasing the angle of attack requires increasing force on the yoke. In the case of the Boeing 737 MAX, the large engines relatively far ahead of the wings generate lift of their own at high angles of attack (mostly in steep corners, in practice). The effect is that at those high angles of attack, the plane increases the angle of attack even more even without increased force from the pilot. That is not certifiable.