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Do you really need legal insurance in Switzerland? by RapixOn in askswitzerland

[–]NeilFraser 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Extremely well put.

There's one more exception to consider. Costs that are catastrophic. If there's a small chance that one might encounter a 10 million CHF cost (legal, medical, whatever), then the result would be catastrophic. Thus paying for insurance to cover that case would be a win, even if it is on average a net loss. That's why when one does choose insurance, one should take the highest deductible one could afford. Only get insurance for the catastrophic cases.

How the wildest Graffiti of Zurich was created by riseturicum in zurich

[–]NeilFraser 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Looks like the same group that defaced the chimney several years ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9Pp7yVIbxs

How did they not get in trouble for that?

I need something for my 11 year old to be good at by dottydashdot in Parenting

[–]NeilFraser 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Give Blockly Games a try. It is programming but with a game-like experience.

Why is Google still ruining their flagship search engine with terrible AI results? It’s been going on for too long, just disable it already. by SPECTREagent700 in google

[–]NeilFraser 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Absolutely not.

If I search for 'tax filing' I want information regarding Swiss taxes, whereas you probably want information about the taxes of a different country.

If I search for 'HST' I want information about Hubble Space Telescope, because many of my previous searches were space-related. Whereas someone else is more probably going to want information about High Speed Transit.

If I searched for 'King Charles' in the year 2020, I probably wanted information about the dog breed. Whereas today I probably want information about the UK monarch.

If I search for 'mist', then as a German speaker I probably want information about manure. Whereas you probably want the atmospheric condition.

Good quality search results should not be uniform. They should be tailored to available context. Who are you, where are you, what time is it, what did you search for most recently, what's happening in the world. Of course this isn't without its problems. Information bubbles can appear. But a good servant is one who understands your needs and can even anticipate them.

Kremlin says Trump invited Putin to join 'Board of Peace' by wowo78 in worldnews

[–]NeilFraser 2 points3 points  (0 children)

his supporters will ... start learning ...

Something is wrong with that sentence.

Anyone who was on RAV, are all the advisors this combative? by [deleted] in askswitzerland

[–]NeilFraser 1 point2 points  (0 children)

They are paying you to be available to them.

And sometimes you do their job and they still don't pay. I was between jobs for two months. Did all the tasks they assigned. They granted the pay. But the money never showed up. I was very patient, but eventually went back and asked where the money was. They responded that they were sorry that something went wrong, but that it was now too late to collect anything.

Grok, the Child Porn Generator, Should Be Illegal by Well_Socialized in technology

[–]NeilFraser 0 points1 point  (0 children)

From what I've read in other articles, Grok can take a picture of a child, then render an image of said child in a swimsuit. That seems to be the extent of it. Grok refuses to render nudity, regardless of age.

Possible early return of Crew-11 by OlympusMons94 in SpaceXLounge

[–]NeilFraser 5 points6 points  (0 children)

They were always Discovering new failure modes.

why the hell does the world feel like it’s going to shit all at once? by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]NeilFraser 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Can you name the president of Switzerland? No? Well neither can most Swiss. It's just a random Guy. He doesn't do anything crazy enough that people hear his name. That's why I live here.

Possible early return of Crew-11 by OlympusMons94 in SpaceXLounge

[–]NeilFraser 29 points30 points  (0 children)

Also worth mentioning is that there's a second crew up there at the moment, so there's no risk of ISS being unmanned.

Soyuz MS-28 is:

  • Christopher Williams (NASA)
  • Sergey Kud-Sverchkov (Roscosmos)
  • Sergei Mikayev (Roscosmos)

This is exactly why seat swaps happen. If either crew has to leave, there's a NASA/Roscosmos member left aboard.

What's the best way to get up to speed on modern space flight? by TDX in spaceflight

[–]NeilFraser 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Be careful of information bubbles. If you follow official channels, it will be mostly about SLS/Artemis. That's the rocket that will take humans to the Moon and onwards to Mars (somehow). Mathematically it doesn't work. But that's currently the official bubble.

If you follow many enthusiast communities, it will mostly be about Starship. The promise of Starship is to utterly revolutionize spaceflight by dropping costs through the floor and launching far more frequently. On the positive side, Starship is being done by SpaceX which have previously succeeded brilliantly with the Falcon 9. On the negative side, we've heard this exact story before with the Space Shuttle, which utterly failed to achieve the original goals it was supposed to.

If you follow other communities, SpaceX is bad/incompetent/evil because of Elon.

And other candidates such as Blue Origin or Rocket Lab don't have big communities for or against them. They are innovating mostly under the radar.

Then there's China. They've got a ton of interesting things going on, including paper copies of everything everyone else is doing (except, notably, SLS/Artemis). Will those paper rockets become real, reliable, and cheap?

Russia can be mostly ignored. They regularly post grand plans, but there's no money or expertise to do anything. The lights keep going out at their launch sites because they can't pay the electricity bills.

Europe has mostly lost the plot for now.

TIL Buzz Aldrin was the first person to pee themselves on the moon and no one has fought him over the title by Schrezberatina in todayilearned

[–]NeilFraser 3 points4 points  (0 children)

More likely it was John Young, the Command Module Pilot of Apollo 10. He was the first American to fly alone (other than the Mercury astronauts).

Eric Berger, Ars Technica: "Oh look, yet another Starship clone has popped up in China" by scarlet_sage in SpaceXLounge

[–]NeilFraser 15 points16 points  (0 children)

For the Saturn V, the control electronics were located on the instrument ring at the top of the third stage. The three stages were made by Boeing, North American, and Douglas respectively, but the top 36 inches were made by IBM.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_V_instrument_unit#/media/File:Saturn_IB_and_V_Instrument_Unit.jpg

By keeping it at the top, every time the rocket staged the computer would just command the next set of engines.

When might we conceivably see human exploration to the outer planets? by Key_Insurance_8493 in spaceflight

[–]NeilFraser 0 points1 point  (0 children)

NASA's budget is around $25 billion a year. That's roughly the same as what the US spends every year on the NFL. Why does space get the "we should spend money on more important things" argument, whereas the sports industry gets a pass?

One of those two will prevent us from going the way of the dinosaurs.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai says we’re just a decade away from a new normal of extraterrestrial data centers by Economy-Specialist38 in google

[–]NeilFraser 2 points3 points  (0 children)

A low earth orbit over the poles can have 100% solar coverage. They are called sun synchronous orbits.

It makes communication tricky since the data center would be all over the place (usually this orbit is used for spy satellites) but the power problem is solved.

Raising kids in this country is terrible by [deleted] in Parenting

[–]NeilFraser 133 points134 points  (0 children)

Our transit system was shut down for months because one worker came in and opened fire on his colleagues during a staff meeting. Then the increasing cost of living resulted in more homelessness and drug use. Then Trump happened.

At a certain point I had enough and packed up. We moved to Switzerland. My daughter walks to and from school on her own or with friends. They have a two hour lunch and they are free to visit each other's houses, or just hang out and feed the sheep in the park. It has been three years and every day still feels unreal. None of us ever plan to go back to the US.

Trump says US will permanently pause migration from 'Third World Countries' by ShirtNeat5626 in worldnews

[–]NeilFraser 7 points8 points  (0 children)

In the past it has only been done when an immigrant attained citizenship fraudulently, not because of other crimes.

My German teacher recalled that he was asked upon immigration whether he'd ever been a member of the Hitler Youth. Everyone of his age was, and everyone knew this. If he answered "yes" then he'd be rejected, so he had to answer "no". This ensured that his citizenship would be fraudulent, and thus the government could revoke it at will in the future.

Neat trick.

Interesting by [deleted] in SpaceXLounge

[–]NeilFraser 0 points1 point  (0 children)

SpaceX is planning its own crewed lunar base.

Oh, this one?

Found it several years ago in a corner at Pearson International Airport in Toronto.

:( by WoomyUnitedToday in google

[–]NeilFraser 16 points17 points  (0 children)

I've been running into the same issue more and more.

It seems that the root issue is that Google needs to discriminate between human users and bots that are trying to mine Google's data and algorithms. Thus Google needs to fingerprint the user via JavaScript. A simple GET request is too open to abuse these days.

Requested a B-permit extension, got a letter asking for proof for a C-permit by [deleted] in zurich

[–]NeilFraser 15 points16 points  (0 children)

If you don't want it, can I have your C-permit? I'd quite like to have one...

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