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Ask HN: How do I re-learn maths as a middle-age person?

33 pointsby noneeeedقبل 6 سنوات25 comments

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السنة الماضيةdiscuss

It's a big issue there but it's very localised to that specific area (which is itself in the bottom 25% of areas in the UK). They are like having a whole load of idling lorries sat near your house all at the same time, normally for several days at a time. And all of that is on top of the general level of pollution from being in the centre of London. I'm going from a documentary and a couple of article from a few years ago, which I should try and find.

Hopefully with all the work on both improving the fuel used, and providing grid hookups so they can turn their engines off, that will have made a big difference. Hopefully the effects of the congestion charges have made a big difference too. A lot of the kids featured in the documentary had a really crap life because of it all.

السنة الماضيةdiscuss

Cruise ships certainly used to moore up in the Greenwich stretch of the river at the and a few years ago there was quite a lot of coverage of the issue around it. Cruise ships require a lot of power while docked, and unless they connect to the grid they used to create a lot of air quality issues.

If there are a lot less docking then that's great, but there do still seem to be a number that dock there https://blackheathandbeyond.wordpress.com/2024/03/27/fairly-...

I know there was a push to develop a big new cruise port in the Greenwich stretch which was strongly opposed by locals for that reason.

السنة الماضيةdiscuss

There are still cruise ships that dock, and they have been a big issue for local kids. They use a lot of power while docked. I believe the solution is to hook them up to the grid, but that requires that they and the dock both have the facilities.

There is a dock in the Greenwich area, and another one further down the Thames estuary.

السنة الماضيةdiscuss

The other striking aspect for me is how, as has often been the case, those most affected are the poorest.

Levels of asthma in London are highest among kids in the vacinity of the docks where cruise and container ships and moor. They sit there running their engines for power, churning out SO2 and other pollutants. These areas are some of the poorest in London.

The same was the case in industrial cities during the industrial revolution. The poor factory workers lived close to the factories, and their kids grew up breathing the smoke. The wealthy owners moved to the outer suburbs (often upwind) where the air was clear.

There was a bit of an uproar a few years back about how many premiership football players were using asthma medication, a higher rate than the general population. The implication being that they were using them as performance enhacning drugs. But if you take into account that they disproportionately come from poor inner-city areas (not all, but many more), the proportion with asthma looks much more in line with the background rate.

Urban air pollution is insidious. Unlike the dreadful smogs of previous generations that lead to things like the Clean Air Act and the banning of open fires in urban areas, today's is invisible, and so doesn't create the same political problems. In fact if you try to do anything about inner city pollution you can pretty much guarentee an angry pushback.

السنة الماضيةdiscuss

Ah, sorry, I missed that.

السنة الماضيةdiscuss

In this case it's not communication, it's using the school buses as power supply

From the article: > V2X technology, which lets vehicles feed power back into the grid, is currently concentrated among a small number of US companies. Some are focused exclusively on commercial or residential applications, while others cover multiple segments.

السنة الماضيةdiscuss

Aha, I did wonder. The language was just so spot on.

Keep up the excellent work.

السنة الماضيةdiscuss

I love how closely this matches how GDS built flows work, not just the visuals. The careful step by step pacing, the direct wording, it's all absolutely spot on.

Perfect.

السنة الماضيةdiscuss

a) That is a fantastic way to put it. It does feel like the whole world seems focused on just moving money around

b) I really must make the time to watch The Wire.

السنة الماضيةdiscuss

I feel like a portion of it is the way that many/most companies have been captured by their finance departments. Everything is accounting. The CFO in many organisations has become the most powerful exec, and many CEOs seem to come up through the CFO role.

Outside of places like Meta, who are printing money at a ridiculous rate, finance acts as a break on any long-term or big bets. There can be no risk taking.

I feel like this is one of Google's problems now. Once upon a time they were willing to take big swings with their piles of cash, now it's all about revenue maximisation at the low level. I forget which change it was, but they started charging for something, or limiting quotas on something, and the email contained the phrase "in line with industry norms", and I just thought that was very tellings. Back in the early 2000s Google was constantly defying and upturning "industry norms", now they are just like everyone else, squeezing every last drop from the smallest stones. Getting rid of the previously grandfathered in free Google Workspaces was a good example. I find it hard to imagine that the cost of those even registers in their accounts compared with everything else.

السنة الماضيةdiscuss

I've always appreciated Ada's approach to arrays. You can create array types and specify both the type of the values and of the index. If zero based makes sense for your use, use that, if something else makes sense use that.

e.g.

  type Index is range 1 .. 5;
  type My_Int_Array is
     array (Index) of My_Int;

It made life pretty nice when working in SPARK if you defined suitable range types for indexes. The proof steps were generally much easier and frequently automatically handled.

السنة الماضيةdiscuss

That reads like the script from a sitcom. Amazing.

السنة الماضيةdiscuss

I moved across country and left all my friends behind at the age of 9, The Sign was a hard watch. I was those kids. I can still remember my reaction to being told we were moving (I would have been about 8).

Bluey is a certified work of perfection. My kids have stopped watching it now. I'm tempted to watch them all from the start by myself.

السنة الماضيةdiscuss

In the UK Craigslist was never really a thing. eBay is too complex for many of the things people sell.

My wife sells a lot of our old stuff on marketplace. It's quick and simple to do, and there is a huge market. It's all small stuff that no one will pay shipping for, but if you are local and can pop round it's absolutely fine. Things like kids toys, books, mostly low value stuff. We've got rid of knackered old furniture for free on there because it meant someone else would take it away.

It has the advantage of market size. A lot of people are still on FB for things other than marketplace, so it's an obvious place to look when you want to buy something second hand. It's also easy to share your listings on FB.

السنة الماضيةdiscuss

It's frustrating. They have completely stomped every other marketplace in the UK. Things like Gumtree are ghost-towns in comparison.

I don't use it but my wife has sold loads of stuff that we no longer need. In that sense it's fantastic, it's made local selling very easy, but I really wish it was almost anyone but FB.

السنة الماضيةdiscuss

Great, thanks I will have to check them out.

A UK firm would be perfect as a brit, but just not-US is great.

السنة الماضيةdiscuss

Who do you host with btw? I'd love to avoid the big US SaaS providers if I can but would like something a level above a VPS, especially for database.

السنة الماضيةdiscuss

Perfect timing. I've been working on a little side project which is getting close to actually being done. Being able to use at least one non-US company for it will be great.

السنة الماضيةdiscuss

Just to add one more wrinkle to the link between DNA and the presentation of sex, there is also androgen insensitivity syndrome, in which the person has a Y chromosome, but the developing body does not react to the testosterone produced by the testes.

The result is someone who may appear to be female, have female genitals, but has testes where ovaries would be expected. It's often not discovered until puberty doesn't happen as expected, and they discover they can't have children.

Like all these conditions, this is on something of a spectrum depending on how total it is.

As you say, genes are complicated. So much more so than is often implied in reporting of discoveries of "a gene for X".

السنة الماضيةdiscuss

Thanks, I hadn't known about the connection. It's a great film.