Reading literature (academic and otherwise) on parsers, writing blog posts about what I learn, trying to implement the things I learnt. I've written about basic finite automata (for regular expressions), LL, LR (including the difference between SLR, LALR, and LR(1)), detoured into some optimisations for LR from the 80's, then generalised LR (RNGLR in particular). I'm now implementing these things, RNGLR is not easy to implement despite having understood it well enough conceptually to write a blog about it (https://blog.jeffsmits.net/generalised-lr-parsing/). I've read far more than I've written about, trying to keep that straight in my head as well / planning the next... probably year of writing ^^'
Is that legal in your country? In mine (Netherlands) there are way too many people with doorbell camera aimed right at the street even though it's illegal to record a public space like that. Most folks are ignorant about it though, or think that surely the internet-connected gadget sold by some anonymous corporation won't be abused....
On paper it's illegal to record the public street, but it seems to be given a pass for doorbell cameras, even going as far as the police asking people to sign up theirs into a database so they can request footage if needs be [0].
It's not legal where I live (Belgium), it can be legal if you have a driveway and only film your driveway, and if you declare that camera in some database. But since I don't have a driveway, it films the street, I am aware that this is not legal.
It's my personal decision and if I ever get fined for it, I will gladly pay the fine... with the money that my doorbell camera has already saved me. It helped me catch hit&runners that bumped into my parked car twice already, and the camera is now almost two years old.
It's not connected to the cloud, saves data locally, and only stores a couple of days of video. It's not very ethical to unknowingly film public spaces, I know. My lame excuse is that I personally think that catching people that damage my property with a camera is a lesser crime than damaging someone's property and running away. The sad truth is that living in a place where parents drop off and pick up their kids twice a day do not give two shits about others. Hit and runs happen every day here.
Of course it is. Is this controversial anywhere? I would expect surveillance cameras to be regulated in most parts of the world, certainly around Europe. In the Netherlands I believe you need to register such cameras with the local police and you are responsible for following the relevant regulations and data protection laws.
GDPR says no. Also, when you are using a cloud service it is no longer private use, you are sharing the surveillance video with Amazon (and almost certainly with the USA three-letter agencies) too.
It is the "systemic/constant/permanent" recording, record-keeping. etc. a.k.a. "processing" (GDPR "processing" means "if it exists and you touch it, your are processing it").
Back in 2005 I remember working with some physical sec company that were setting up cameras in a factory, and they wanted the cameras to 'not record traffic, be activated on if THIS part of the screen has motion')(sidewalk vs sidewalk-right-on-our-doorbell vs road). Also, sudden changes in lighting would trigger it :)
Then you need to have retention period (good luck). Most people use those door-cams are violating GDPR. UNLESS when people complain and take you to court (very very very rare), you can prove that "I auto-delete records after 24h when there is no incident", "I have proximity scanner so it is only 0m-2m from my front door", etc.) (violating GDPR because "hey you pervert why do you record my kids EVERY DAY going in and out")
Privacy and Data protection is very very very difficult with GDPR (and thank you Facebook for messing up back in 2015ish!!!)
You can set up your cam but have the "AI" automatically pixelating all license-plates, and the video recording (if any) should be post-pixelating, and not the original feed. How about you put something with a speed-measuring-sensor (that is NOT a camera), so you only get 'anonymised' data, i.e. "20 moving items", and their speeds. But you will not be able to tell if the 300km/h was done by a bicycle or a Hayabusa ;)
Video surveillance limited to your own private property is not actually subject to GDPR. See GDPR article 2 para 2 lit c. It's not my asswipe opinion, either, see this whitepaper from a state privacy commissioner: https://www.datenschutz.sachsen.de/download/Hinweisblatt_Vid...
The Dutch Public Broadcasting Foundation (NOS) published these models along with an article about the millions of drugs ads on Telegram, and responses by the Dutch police, Telegram, and some of the drug dealers. The article is in Dutch over here: https://nos.nl/artikel/2506160-miljoenen-drugsadvertenties-o...
I think it's fair to say (speaking as someone who repeatedly defends GIMP from criticism on this website) that GIMP is a flawed tool with several missing features. It works well for a range of things, but doesn't for others.
There are people who have hoped it would find the resources and developers to go to the next level, like Ardour, Blender, and Krita have in their respective fields. GIMP has shown no sign of this happening. It's been "good" for 15 years now, but never great, and not really making the strides you'd want to see if it was going to become "great". It's chronically underfunded and just doesn't get the necessary development time, and I have little doubt that keeping a project like this running for so long has accrued a fair amount of technical debt. I say all this without putting any blame on the developers, who have kept at a mostly thankless task for years now.
If you need a Photoshop replacement - something that can do graphic design work or generate documents appropriate for use by professional printers - GIMP is not and probably won't ever achieve that. (Some people also think GIMP should be a drawing tool, but I think it's better to let Krita handle that.) What GIMP is quite good at is quick edits of photos with proper color management and high bit depth support. It's also pretty good as a general purpose tool for a lot of things. (I've used it to manually debug QR codes.) But the high expectations some had for it have not been met, by a long shot.
There's an app called StreetComplete (recently discussed on HN) that allows you to easily contribute missing information like local business information to OSM. If you can find the time, you can use that to solve some of the issues you have and help others at the same time! :)
An important and sometimes forgotten thing about democracy is that it isn't as simple as the majority rules. It's the majority rules while taking minorities into account. In a well functioning representational democracy this is kept in mind my career politicians. In a hybrid between representational and direct like in Switzerland, the population can overrule and just go with majority rule.
For example, the Swiss pension system is similar to others in Europe, where the current working population pay taxes almost directly towards pensions of the retired. Since this system will break down if taxes aren't increased like crazy or pensions lowered, politicians have been trying to change the system. But there are too many people soon to be retired or already retired that care less about their country's youth and future than their own pension, so they keep blocking changes. So every democratic system has its tradeoffs...
I learned this from a young Swiss when I was visiting Switzerland and praising their way of democracy. It was a few years ago though, so maybe this info is no longer accurate. And I didn't fact check, it was just an example brought up in casual conversation.
Only partly right. The Swiss pension system is based on 3 pillars, and you described only the first one, namely the solidarity pillar. The second one is the mandatory saving which accumulates only for you, and there's a third one, optional savings - also tax exempt (up to some extent). So while yes the usually older politicians are looking at their own retirement horizon, there's wiggle room from the other two pillars. And adaptations of all three happen almost every second year with the goal to at least push further away the breaking point.
Yeah the description above is very outdated, currently the main focus is on everyone's own savings (2nd and 3rd pillar), its foolish to rely on the common 1st one for anything.
Switzerland has a bit unique position within Europe by having the highest salaries, so plenty of folks retire to places like Spain or Italy (or Bali) where your Swiss pension can give you relative luxury lifestyle compared to not so great lifestyle back en Suisse.
Generally everybody in Europe wants to have Swiss pensions, not only for the amount but also for the 3-pillar systems where you actually save decent amount for yourself to live comfortably and/or retire early. Not the case in most european countries AFAIK.
Germany, France or Romania have similar 3 pillars, so I'd say the system is far from being a Swiss particularity.
Edit: the Swiss pension is so high because the contributions are also that high. Nobody stops an Italian to contribute four times as much, in order to receive four times as much pension. But the difference as you say comes from the salary level - although the expenses are just as high, so if you spend your retirement in Switzerland you will feel just as rich as a German in Germany. Only the Swiss retired (and healthy) going abroad get to feel that advantage.
Any form of retirement works the same - young people working to serve the old. How you finance it is a different question - but clearly increasing taxes & lowering pensions is just one way of the system breaking down. Another way is, everybody saving while working, not having kids, then spending when retired (results in market crashes & massive inflation).
The original problem is not having kids. The “direct transfer” system simply keeps incentives more aligned.
Many countries have realised that relying on a continuously growing population has its own problems.
So you need a pension system for a population that doesn't grow. Basically that means that everybody has to pay for their own pension. It doesn't really matter whether you do it as taxes that get paid to the people currently retired or by saving money.
The solution The Netherlands came up with (next to moving to an individual pension system) to try to raise the retirement age to 67. This is quite unpopular. But it's either that or a low pension.
Pension isn’t about money. It’s about work. Less working adults => less surplus value created by society => less resources available for retired people.
How you finance that - via direct payments / taxes, or via individual savings - is besides the point. Neither of these can defeat the economics of supply (of working-age adults’ labour) and demand (of the retired non-producing population). If you try to force it, you’ll just cause other issues (e.g. housing / market crashes caused by all pensioners cashing out at once, or wage/food inflation caused by labour shortages).
That why I specifically mention The Netherlands raising the retirement age. That causes both more labor to be available and reduces the number of people who are retired.
Pensioners don't cash out at once. The number of pensioners grows slowly which many result in gradually lower demand for stock or real estate. No need to expect a crash because of this.
No need to expect anything to happen to food either. Food production is highly efficient and relies on only a tiny fraction of the total labour
This, TBH. Far too many people think economics is about money. Economics is really about distributing goods and services and work. Money is just one possible means to that end (perhaps the best one).
It does matter, because all the saving and dissaving of the saving-based scheme distorts financial markets and sometimes doesn't work anyway. For example, imagine a system where everyone buys an extra house, then sells it when they retire. Now there are twice as many houses as there need to be. And therefore everyone has to commute 1.41 times farther on average; twice as much lumber is used up; twice as many builders are needed. Now imagine the next generation invests in something other than houses because houses are too expensive because of all this extra demand. Let's say tulips. So the first generation goes to sell their houses to retire and... wait, nobody wants one? They already have one and they don't want to buy a second one for their own retirement savings? Well, then the housing market crashes and all those people lost money on their retirement. (And the third generation will buy up all these cheap houses and say screw the second generation's tulips, we don't want tulips...)
I naively assume that if you buy an extra house as investment, you rent it out. So the house is actually being used, no need build extra houses or have a longer commute.
Blindly investing and then assuming that it still has value when you retire has a lot of risks. This sometimes happens with owners of small shops who hope to retire with money they get from selling the shop.
Many European countries have massive pension funds collected over the decades, with accumulation and payout planned in advance to match the demographics. This is the better model parent suggested that is hard to get through if it wasn't started during the boomer generation.
> For example, the Swiss pension system is similar to others in Europe, where the current working population pay taxes almost directly towards pensions of the retired. Since this system will break down if taxes aren't increased like crazy or pensions lowered, politicians have been trying to change the system. But there are too many people soon to be retired or already retired that care less about their country's youth and future than their own pension, so they keep blocking changes. So every democratic system has its tradeoffs...
Other European countries (not all) have similar pension systems that you describe, with same problems, and even though they don't have the Swiss direct democracy, they have been equally unable to change their systems.
Is this better or worse than the OTHER kind of pension system, where people are required to hoard resources over their lifetime and then in their retirement, slowly release those resources back to younger people (who will then hoard them for their own retirement)?
Make sure to test your RPi 0W with the Bluetooth speaker you had in mind asap. Mine won't connect to my soundbar, which is complicating my setup for connecting my projector and soundbar wirelessly :(
The article mentions Radiolab. I remember listening to a Radiolab episode about War of the Worlds, but that must have been a later revision, because in that episode they go into how the first airing of the play did not cause a panick, but other airings of the play in other places certainly caused panick and violence.
When The Burkiss Way spoofed War of the Worlds in one episode in 1979, it apparently still generated enough complaints that for the repeat (and any repeats since) they had to stick in a totally out-of-place announcement about "You're listening to The Burkiss Way, the not-to-be-believed comedy show".
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