I did some contract work a few years ago here in the UK for a doctor who wanted to build out a system he had created to manage the subtleties of on-call staff scheduling. He went on to turn it into a very successful business. I think the key for him was knowing the domain and being able to articulate it effectively as well as being very business-minded. Also having excellent contacts within the the business helped.
I was shocked to discover how the British Library (millons of books, many many new ones every week) manages this. The first book to arrive earlier this year went on the shelf at 2025.0000001. The next went at 2025.0000002, right next to it. The electronic catalogue does the rest. No need to re-shuffle books around, but not a solution supportive of book-browsing.
Reminds me of how Amazon doesn't arrange its items by similarity like a store does, so a model of vacuum cleaner might be next to a set of kitchen plates. They actually intentionally avoid similarities so pickers won't accidentally grab a similar but wrong thing.
I lose track of so many infrequently used objects in my home -- which storage bin in which closet did I put the x-acto blade refills in? -- and one bin will overflow while another is half-empty because I try to keep similar items together. Sometimes I fantasize about tracking every possession in a spreadsheet that points to which bin, so I'd never lose anything and could always use storage space with maximum efficiency. But then I know I'd be lazy and skip updating the spreadsheet when I put something new away... plus it just seems so inhumanly weird, like something a robot would so rather than a person.
I used to drive a BEV to work early mornings - 6am typically. I'd see runners with headphones/earphones who were clearly not looking when they crossed at junctions. I quickly learned to anticipate that and always prepared to stop or even came to a standstill before they saw me. It was easy and quick, especially with regenerative braking on full.
Kids were better - they could hear the low-speed whining that the car put out below 20mph.
Yes, anecdata. It would be good to know age of victim / activity / whether the vehicle had the pedestrian warning thing.
Also, many more cars now have collision detection. How does that feature or not regarding pedestrians?
Yep. There's a well known firm here in Leeds, UK whose practices lead a lot of folks to say 'ugh, no thanks', me included. There's another firm that makes bogus cellphone towers for spying on protestors who I'd not work for.
Apart from that, the usual - credit firms, gambling companies.
Again, more anecdote than science but juggling with slightly weighted balls works for me. It's also a fantastic activity to fit into my pomodoro five minutes as it gets me out of the chair and moving around to retrieve the juggling balls from under my desk.
