A couple more from around the world (esp. Paraguay):
1. To drop a passenger off where there is no street parking, just turn on your hazard lights and stop in the middle of the road.
2. In the seconds before a red light turns green, the cars behind you will honk to get you moving.
3. Be prepared for squeegee men at traffic lights who clean your windscreen for coins even if you say no.
4. Most city parking spots are controlled by guys who "take care" of your car while you're away for notes (really your car would be better off without them, they sometimes scratch your car if you don't pay).
5. Asphalt streets have preference over cobble stone.
6. Speed bumps come in all shapes and sizes (and are not always marked).
7. Drove through a pothole? Hey, you should've been looking where you're going.
8. Pedestrian crossings (zebra crossings) have no real significance.
> 4. Most city parking spots are controlled by guys who "take care" of your car while you're away for notes (really your car would be better off without them, they sometimes scratch your car if you don't pay).
I've had this happen at a large city in the midwest US.
They basically said, "most people here will break into your car. give us a few bucks and we'll make sure no one does." I didn't want to, but I figured its a few bucks and gave them it.
I got out of the concert and went back to my car. They were still walking around. They ran up and talked to us a bit, said nothing happened, thanked us again for the money and offered us a hamburger from McDonalds.
I'm not sure if they were "good" guys or bad guys yet, but they are around.
> 4. Most city parking spots are controlled by guys who "take care" of your car while you're away for notes (really your car would be better off without them, they sometimes scratch your car if you don't pay).
Back in the 90s this would routinely happen at English football grounds. The ‘watchers’ were the local kids - at Roker Park in Sunderland, in my case.
The point is that your car is guaranteed to be scratched if you don’t pay the fee.
>3. Be prepared for squeegee men at traffic lights who clean your windscreen for coins even if you say no. 4. Most city parking spots are controlled by guys who "take care" of your car while you're away
It's standard for banking apps to go through all sorts of testing including penetration testing before going into production (here in Paraguay that's how we do it).
That this went unnoticed suggests that:
- the API architect (assuming this web site obtained data via an API, not directly from the database) forgot to validate that requested account belonged to the provided cookie
- the web developer didn't think to test this
- there was either no penetration testing (the author mentioned that this feature was likely released in a rush), or it was not properly performed
If his fears were rational (based on actual evidence) instead of irrational (based on mere belief), then perhaps he would have had a legitimate point to make... but as it stands, until there's evidence that he was correct, he was just a baseless violent offender
>invasion of privacy (through computers)... environmental degradation through excessive economic growth (computers make an important contribution to economic growth)
Computers also enable absolute privacy via current-gen public/private-key encryption protocols. In fact, this is the first time in history that absolute privacy is actually achievable. This is also the first time in history that I can evade arguably-unethical government controls on my money by using a cryptocurrency. Also enabled by computers. The fact that everyone is willfully crowding themselves into just a handful of un-end-to-end-encrypted for-profit services is just laziness.
> environmental degradation through excessive economic growth (computers make an important contribution to economic growth)
I would agree that computers accelerate economic growth, but they also accelerate solutions to problems created by that economic growth, so I don't see how computers alone can be faulted for this. Also, if my laptop was solar-powered or if I paid for green energy for my home, then my carbon footprint is effectively nil (which reminds me, I need to get on that!)
"Fear of the unknown" is a terrible thing to choose as a motivator, because the unknown will continue to exist for the foreseeable future, we might as well take everything to its logical conclusion and see where that takes us all.
A lot of this seems to just be belief based on an antagonistic worldview ("the world is out to get me unless I'm vigilant and mistrusting") vs. a more positive worldview ("let's just move ahead; we'll figure it out as we go along; I'll trust others until proven otherwise; we'll collectively be fine")
IMHO Kaczynski experienced a traumatic event that changed his worldview to an antagonistic one. His literal trust in the world itself somehow got eroded or poisoned.
...because of computers, it's very, very easy to literally track anyone throughout their day...every location, every activity, every thought they have posted idly, what they like to watch, what they read, etc. I'm sure if the state wished too, they could easily counter encryption if just by forcing you to give the key.
The only reason we are sanguine on the power of tech is that we have the historical luxury of non-predatory government. If the state truly wished to be oppressive, the technology the tech sector has created would allow it to be efficient beyond measure in doing so.
He does cite some evidence for his fears. Of course, what he fears is based on speculation to where he sees technology taking us in the future, but that's also true of, for example, Musk's and Hawking's fears of AI, and of many other works, or works like Brave New World.
Switching jobs would incur a slight penalty of 1) removing chip, b) re-programming chip, c) leaving chip. I think this is something a lot of people would like to avoid.
My guess is that there would be no need to remove or reprogram. I assume the chip simply presents a unique identifier and nothing more. The old company could just remove access based on the identifier and in a similar way, the new company could grant access using the existing chip.
At 177 light minutes into the journey, there is the following message:
Emptiness is actually everywhere. It’s something like 99.9999999999999999999958% of the known universe.
leaving 4.2E-21 or 0.0000000000000000000042% non-emptiness in the universe.
I can't find any sources backing up this figure, but I wonder if it was the author's intent to smuggle in a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference.
Edit: Just saw the second reference to this at 208 light minutes.
There are some models out there which could be used but i'm not sure that forecasting is actually what you would use.
I would think if you're already assigning credit ratings, you can set that as your dependent variable and use things like company revenue, number of employees, age of company, etc. as your independent variables. You can use a number of different models to assess credit worthiness based on this data. Evaluate several to determine the most accurate.
