I agree that buyers should have the option to purchase simpler cars. But I think backup cameras are too valuable of a safety improvement to leave out. About a year ago I saw a toddler very likely saved by the backup camera and proximity sensor. This is of course just anecdotal, but it sold me.
Yeah, I guess then you don't need a screen for display. And to be honest the proximity sensor may have had the greater effect in the situation I referenced. I could hear it beeping from where I was about 30 feet from the car.
My reading of the comment was that the German language is used enough that it would make sense to invest the time to learn. But that languages from smaller countries are less relevant outside of the given county.
My method for applying fitted sheets is to put the first corner of the sheet that I find onto any corner of the bed. Then try to add one of the adjacent corners to the bed. If I picked wrong, put the adjacent corner on the starting bed corner. I get it wrong half of the time, but I still think it's faster than spending time trying to determine which is the long side of the sheet (and often getting that wrong). In any case, the labels mentioned in the article would probably be better.
On a king bed that’s more difficult because the dimensions are close enough to be within tolerances for most sheets, but with a big enough gap that when you get to the last corner it will be right.
The last two sets of sheets I’ve had have a tag in one corner which I use to orient them. I’m not actually sure if I’ve chosen the right corner, but I know they fit that way.
The issue I’ve run into since getting a foam mattress is they are at least 50% thicker than spring mattresses and the flat sheet cannot be tucked into both sides at the same time. Expensive sheets by hipster companies, cheap overstock sheets from TJ Max and great hotel style sheets all have failed to make it across the bed with one side tucked in.
Ah yeah, I can see that would be a problem. The part I dislike is trying tell which side is correct and frequently getting it wrong. Which I can see would happen with a king bed. When you get to the second corner you have to discern whether the side between the corners is too tight or just right.
YMMV but as far as I can tell, the tag on a sheet is always at the (imagine you’re standing at the foot of the bed looking at the bed) bottom right corner. (Or top left, obviously.) It seems to be pretty standard on all my sheets.
bonus tag tip: the care label on pretty much every shirt I’ve ever seen is located always on the left seam of the torso area. Very useful as an additional orienting tool when dressing a kid, that tag should be on your right when you’re facing them.
My wife has had to listen to me complain for the last week about what a pain it is to get the absolute orientation of an iPhone from the browser.
On Android you can use AbsoluteOrientationSensor or deviceorientationabsolute event. These will provide a quaternion or Euler angles describing how to rotate the device from the default orientation (flat on the ground, screen up, with the top pointing north) to its current orientation.
The situation on the iPhone has almost reduced me to tears. As far as I can tell, it only provides Euler angles relative to some implementation defined reference frame, along with the actual compass heading. In practice, the Euler angles given are absolute with respect to gravity, but always treat north as the direction the phone was pointed when the first sensor reading took place. To deal with this, you can use the actual compass heading to rotate the relative orientation to the absolute orientation. But this will have problems near the poles, as the Euler angles and heading will give conflicting values. Beyond this the compass heading field is really weird. If you want to experience its behavior for yourself, take the iPhone compass app and starting from flat, rotate the phone 360 degrees through the pitch axis. Notice at what points the heading flips between its start heading and start heading+180. I bet it will surprise you!
To me it sounds like the solution is "We have detected you're using an unsupported browser, iOS does not allow websites to properly access device orientation and therefore this app cannot function"
I wish I had come to that conclusion a week ago, but I'm in too deep now. It's for a little side project, and it seems like the majority of people I want to show it to have iPhones.
I should have said zenith, not poles. The issues occur when the device is pointed up at the sky or down at the ground.
Edit: Though I would imagine it won't work too well at the poles either!
Are you saying you have to fight gimbal lock just to find which way to rotate the screen on iPhone? That was a problem on the 1960s lunar missions, no idea it'd happen in such a mundane application
This is why orientation should always be reported as a unit quaternion (or if you strongly care about using only 3 vs. 4 numbers, using "modified Rodrigues parameters", the stereographic projection of a unit quaternion).
Pretty much. The iPhone browser api only exposes compass data in one dimension, around the z-axis. So there is indeed gimbal lock-like behavior near the axis. Which is crazy since the magnetometer is 3 dimensional.
For my use case, I want to know the exact way the phone is pointed in all three axis. Which requires more information than determining the screen orientation (and which I believe can be done as you say). Unfortunately, the term "orientation" seems to be overloaded and used to describe both concepts.
Just out of curiosity because you might know: does the deviceorientation event (without absolute) work on iOS? Because I've just used it for a toy website of mine and have no iPhone to test.
Agreed, the deviceorientation does work fine for relative orientation. I've been able to hack it for absolute orientation. What I am doing is: 1) taking the relative orientation euler angles from the event and converting them to a quaternion for easier manipulation. 2) taking the webkitCompassHeading from same deviceorientation event. 3) Calculating the "relative heading", eg how far the relative orientation is from its fake north. 4) calculating the difference between the relative and actual heading. 5) building a quaternion to describe the bearing difference, eg how far the relative orientation need to be corrected by spinning around the z-axis. 6) Multiply the two quaternions to get the final absolute orientation quaternion.
This does work, though has the issues I mentioned previously, and relies on the undocumented fact the the relative orientation is actually absolute with respect to the down/gravity vector.
I read this and thought surely the center of gravity still has to pass over the bar. But right you are, the center of gravity can pass below the bar since it's just the average point of the mass. Cool!
I seemed to remember reading something similar about Austin's buses when they went fare-free in the 80s. I found this linked in the Austin CapMetro wiki page: http://www.nctr.usf.edu/pdf/473-132.pdf
This reminds me of MetaFilter, where a one-time $5 payment is required to post. Just this small speedbump seems to do a pretty good job of keeping opportunistic trolls and vandals off the site. "Free" is too often an invitation to abuse.
They mentioned in the press conference that it was very unlikely that the implosion would have happened after more listening equipment was in use on the scene. I believe there were sonar buoys dropped on Monday, so the implosion likely happened before then.
I'm currently studying at the Technical University of Munich, and I quite like the grading system. Most or all of the grade is the final exam. If you fail an exam it doesn't go on your record, and you can retake it. If you pass, the grade goes on your record, and cannot be retaken. The thing I particularly like is that you don't have to decide if you want to take an exam until after you've completed most of the class (and even if you sign up for the exam, you can just not attend, thus not getting a grade).
Also worth mentioning regarding Deutsche bahn ICEs, my understanding is that prices only increase over time. They never decrease like plane tickets do. And there's only a predetermined number of saver fares, so once those are gone, you have to buy the more expensive tickets (which are also more flexible, as opposed to the train-specific saver fares).
All true and with that it makes sense to either book in time or forego on the more expensive connections when you book - just choose the "best price" option. It is when you hit your first delay which causes you to miss a connection when things become interesting since then you suddenly can use those ICE trains which were much more expensive to book. A reservation costs €5.90 (for the whole trip, no matter how many trains are covered) when done the same day so as soon as you miss your first connection you can reschedule your trip to one with fewer changes - including ICE and IC. Thus far there has been only one connection I could not take, this being the night sleeper between Hamburg and Göteborg (SJ EuroNight) since it is not bookable through DB and has special fared not covered by the "ICE Fahrkarte, Super Sparpreis EU" train-specific ticket I tend to buy (which becomes non train-specific after a schedule change or connection-missing delay).
Having said all this it is remarkable that ICE and to a lesser extent IC seem to be far less reliable than RE (regional) trains in Germany. I've spent large parts of several nights in the dank tunnels of German train stations with alcoholics coming by every few minutes to ask for money to start new lives (i.e. get a new can or bottle) waiting for ICE trains which are delayed up to 4.5 hours.
