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?

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

A comment about "Freedom" from the land where it's against the law to even cross the road where you want to *rofl*

Yes, indeed - not to mention Sarbanes-Oxley!

More recently I've been writing a lot more Python than C/C++/Java that I'd have been writing previously, so fewer semicolons is to be expected...

it_has_thin_bits_and_bulges

... that they will no longer issue certificates for your domain to someone else? Sounds like a good thing, on the whole!

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:

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

also

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!

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".

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.

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...

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 :-)

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.

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.

The post I responded to literally said "If this has not been the case, in your experience, someone else has fucked up.". I was simply pointing out that there is another explanation than "someone fucked up".

IDK, you clearly cared enough to reply!

Things are different in the US, but here in the UK I don't need ID for any of those things. Personally I do tend to carry my driver's licence (occasionally it comes in useful, and I generally carry a wallet anyway so it's nbd), but many people just don't carry any ID around. Indeed, there are people who don't have a passport and can't drive - and they may not even have any ID to carry! (Probably the most common reason for people to carry ID is to purchase alcohol, but once you get beyond a certain age (or at least look it!) that's not needed either...)