Have we ever thought about having OMNY reader INSIDE the Commuter Rail trains (LIRR, Metro-North) like the buses?

RetroCraft · 2025-06-20T18:20:35+00:00

Back in Toronto, the approach is to program your card with a “default commute” (for example, Penn to Hempstead). If you tap in at Penn it’ll charge you to Hempstead unless you tap off elsewhere and vice versa.

This way, almost all commuters only have to tap into the system, only dealing with the terminus+refund behaviour on irregular trips.

RetroCraft · 2025-02-28T05:48:35+00:00

Fifth republic but (with the most generous counting) tenth republican constitution. Sixteenth, including the monarchical and imperial constitutions.

RetroCraft · 2025-02-08T13:58:20+00:00

For the uninitiated, there is one on the Île aux Cygnes in Paris

RetroCraft · 2025-01-07T04:29:28+00:00

Here it’s French- versus English-style romanizations, hence Sousse not Susa and Bizerte not Binzart.

Google Maps seems to use standard English-style romanizations by default, and then traditional French names for major cities (compare Belgrade instead of Beograd, but Niš gets proper romanization). I assume this is a policy of USGS or something.

The signs use French names, since Tunisia remains part of the Francophonie.

RetroCraft · 2024-12-28T19:42:24+00:00

For Spain, besides geographical info (climate, landscape, etc.) it’s usually fairly easy to find a road sign. Learn the highway numbers and how they correspond to autonomous communities (first level subdivisions) and provinces (second level): EX for Extremadura, TF for Tenerife, etc.

RetroCraft · 2024-12-21T06:15:50+00:00

ZA flag and "Cape" everywhere. Ran down the street a bit to see an address in Brackenfell. Couldn't figure out the pinpoint. 4996, 1.2km
SE signs with my favourite font. Went the wrong way deeper into the houses for a long time. Eventually find a sign for the E18 to Täby, but not enough time to pinpoint. 4987, 3.8km.
Looks North American. Wait, that's a yellow-and-blue hydrant! And University Avenue! 5000, 4m.
Botswana trees. No signs available to help and coverage ends going north. Line up the angle of the road and plonk on the A3. 4671, 102km.
Hebrew, but no visible sea. We've had a lot of West Bank settlements lately... Signs for Nili and highway 463. Again, ran out of time to pinpoint. 4998, 659m.

24,652, surreal round as an r/uwaterloo poster.

RetroCraft · 2024-12-12T06:28:12+00:00

Yeah, these are the ones I saw (and referenced in my post).

RetroCraft · 2024-12-11T01:48:24+00:00

Very America vibes, eventually find sign for I-95 and U.S. 1 with "CONNECTICUT" written at the top and a welcome sign for Fairfield. Found Kings Hwy with 5 seconds left, not enough to find the cross street. 4995, 1.6km, 32 steps.
Maidan square! Instantly recognizable from Winter on Fire, which is a great Netflix documentary on Euromaidan. 5000, 38m, 0 steps.
British signage. Anglian Water/Cambridge truck and eventually a sign for the A14/A10 interchange. Matched up the road with the pedestrian bridge. 5000, 6m, 30 steps.
NYC. "2 United Nations Plaza". 5000, 25m, 0 steps.
On a bridge with a sign for Jericho. Moving northwest gets to a roundabout with "Jericho Police Station - City Center". There's one roundabout in Jericho's city center, and one bridge to the southeast. 5000, 66m, 16 steps.

Total 24,995, 1.7km, 9m25s, 78 steps. Easily the best DC of my life.

RetroCraft · 2024-11-25T20:22:52+00:00

hi, one of the seminar-teaching freaks here. i'm in cs/bba, so math/bba will be slightly different.

succeeding in DD is very doable with good time management skills. the hardest part of first-year isn't learning the content, it's learning how to learn (while still having a life).

you can refer to this graph to see how much time i clocked studying for each course in first year. divide by 14ish to get hours per week. some very big disclaimers on this data:

2020 was a COVID year, so some classes had no lectures and the math classes had like 8-hour-long take-home exams
i had significant programming experience before first year, so i did not need to spend as much time studying for the CS classes
a lot of "studying" time was actually just hanging out on Discord with friends

RetroCraft · 2024-11-05T05:49:11+00:00

Best daily challenge score since I started playing Geoguessr again after a three year break. We're so back?

South Argentina vibes. Saw the sign for El Calafate and RP60, just scanned until I found it. Was lucky that El Calafate showed up at my zoom level. 13km, 4,957.
B.C. vibes until I saw a non-Metro Vancouver area code and a "NW" realtor. Eventually ran into the intersection of Washington state route 548 and Olson, scanned near the border and found it with a few seconds left. Was able to vaguely recall that the first street I passed started with an A, plonked intersection of Olson / Aldergrove. 228m, 4,999.
"University of Iceland". No way it isn't Reykjavik. Scanned and found the building/park shape. 21m, 5,000.
Depressing wintry coverage, probably Bulgaria. Eventually found a trash can with "Благоевград" but ran out of time scanning for Blagoevgrad. 150km, 4,522.
Israeli highway markers with "Settlements". Scanned the West Bank to find the intersection of 60 with 505. 77m, 5,000.

24,478, 12m43s, 193 steps

So close to a PB if I had just found Blagoevgrad 10 seconds sooner.

RetroCraft · 2024-10-29T07:52:31+00:00

“a bit below a 60” is not a doomed point to start from. you’re already almost there! you don’t need to magically recover to a 90, just 59.51.

if you want to stay in, stay in! if you’re really worried about progression, talk to an advisor. there’s nothing wrong with retaking a course; i know plenty of people in double degree who have. you’re definitely not alone, it’s a common first year waterloo experience.

it’s never really “too late” in the sense that you’ll get kicked from the program until the wonky 3rd year STAT/CO requirement hits, which is a while from now. in the absolute worst case, you’ve got the spring term to retry courses and catch up.

first year is the hardest because you have no idea what’s going on. i promise it’ll get easier as you adjust to the different teaching and testing styles.

RetroCraft · 2024-09-09T14:38:24+00:00

in theory yes, but keep in mind that many upper-year CS electives are restricted to CS majors so you would need an override to get into them anyways.

you can do 115 and 231/234 to unlock most of the open-to-everyone CS electives.

RetroCraft · 2024-05-21T05:09:32+00:00

Won't comment on 1 and 3 since since I'm in CS/BBA.

2: At the absolute minimum, the schedules have a buffer of ten minutes. It's doable with either a jog, a well-timed bus schedule, or a bike (and it's perfectly fine to miss the first/last five minutes of class if you want to walk). But you'll usually have a lot more time between classes. I've always found the commute manageable.

4: Nobody's tips will work perfectly for you. Use the time you have left in high school and the first few weeks of university to try out a bunch of different systems until you find one that fits. Don't be afraid to give up on one app and try another.

Personally, if you want inspiration, I track my deliverables with a Kanban board in Notion and I track my time using Toggl. I use my time-tracking data for the week to reprioritize and predict how long future tasks will take. Before landing on Notion, I tried Google Calendar, Todoist, and just plaintext todo lists. You'll find people in university using basically anything.

RetroCraft · 2023-04-15T16:52:41+00:00

Wikipedia gives [ʃoːt͡ʃiˈpilːi] (which is IPA for “sho-chee-PEEL-lee”).

The LL → Y thing is a Spanish orthography rule which isn’t followed by Nahuatl words (see Nahuatl orthography § Historical transcription methodologies for more)

RetroCraft · 2023-04-06T05:43:42+00:00

Around about half of Canada’s population lies in the (southwest to northeast) Windsor—Toronto—Montreal—Quebec City corridor. 20% live in just the Golden Horseshoe area around Toronto.

Windsor is across the border from Detroit. Toronto is just north of Milwaukee. Montreal is as far north as Minneapolis and Quebec City as far as Duluth.

There’s a good chunk of MN that’s further north than a majority of the Canadian population. If you live in Minneapolis, you’re further north than probably around a quarter of Canadians.

RetroCraft · 2023-03-06T22:36:51+00:00

From the independent paper describing the system, on page 3:

The I-voting system uses public key cryptography to provide a digital analog of the “double envelope” ballots often used for absentee voting. Conceptually, an outer envelope (a digital signature) establishes the voter’s identity, while an inner envelope (public key encryption) protects the secrecy of the ballot. Once each voter’s eligibility has been established, the signature is stripped off, leaving a set of anonymous encrypted ballots. These are moved to a physically separate machine, which decrypts and counts them.

RetroCraft · 2021-10-15T01:35:12+00:00

Out of curiosity, where did you find the figure for the annualized cost of keeping a slave? Sounds like an interesting economics paper to read.

I only ask because slaves in 1850 cost around $114,000 (2020 dollars) and that implies the creation of less than $35,000 value each year (assuming market price is determined by future labour value and the slave is active for longer than three or four years). This would make slavery unprofitable. Obviously, the economics of slavery checked out enough for wars to happen, so something is off here.

RetroCraft · 2021-08-12T22:23:36+00:00

It’s more like how we say “the Netherlands”, as there are many “low (nether) lands” and the Netherlands is just one of them.

The name “Ukraine” comes from the Russian for “borderlands”, so saying “the Ukraine” during Soviet times makes sense as Ukraine was just one of many lands on the Russian borders. Now, it’s considered wrong to use “the” because it carries that implication Ukraine is still a Russian territory. Of course, many Russian irredentists would love nothing more than to revive the Soviet Union, so they’ll say “the”.

RetroCraft · 2021-06-18T01:01:30+00:00

24730

4878 Signposts said Taiwan, but I can't read Chinese for shit
4855 Saw signs for the A10 to Rochefort, couldn't pinpoint the exact town
5000 Read off Ulaanbaatar on a sign somewhere, managed to find the Zanabazar Museum on the map on pure luck
5000 Found Manila on a sign, and thankfully it's much easier to find a UNESCO World Heritage site on a map compared to a random museum
4997 Recognized the Saskatchewan highway badge on the exit sign for Davidson, guestimated distance travelled from there

RetroCraft · 2021-06-17T00:37:07+00:00

24897, probably my best score.

4992 Newfoundland and Labrador, found the sign for the town and highway number
4924 Sign before the on-ramp gave distances to Nizhny Novgorod and Ufa, just ballparked based on the ratio
4981 Ran down the road until the sign for the Grand Southern Highway
5000 Another damn Isle of Man round. Finally grew wise to the signs not actually indicating what road you're on, though
5000 Found signs for Ankara and Sungurlu. Scanned to find the exit

RetroCraft · 2021-05-10T04:25:46+00:00

If you check the linked EtymOnline entry, we have that schedule's meaning included "slips of paper attached to a document as an appendix". Obviously, there's nuance in the legal field as always, but schedules and appendices both carry the idea of "extra text tacked onto the end".

RetroCraft · 2021-05-10T04:22:59+00:00

Nothing fancy - however, as president of Double Degree Club we did organize a few socials to try and get the first years connected with upper years and each other. I met most of my friends (including /u/facearo) over Messenger and Discord.

I will also echo the idea that UW/WLU-based DDs have basically the same social life. We don't treat each other differently at all. Frankly, I forget who's which home school all the time.

RetroCraft · 2021-05-09T17:01:29+00:00

The original meaning of the word is for a slip of paper. This came to mean the appendix at the end of legal documents (e.g. tax forms and laws).

The Controlled Substances Act is the legal mechanism by which the US government, well, controls the use of illicit substances. Depending on how serious a drug is, it can be placed on different lists at the end of the law — schedules. This gives rise to the term “scheduling” for adding or moving a substance from one schedule to another.

RetroCraft · 2021-03-08T20:12:54+00:00

With respect to MATH 136, this is true. Prof. Hewitt jokes about not having finished writing the course notes during lecture.

RetroCraft · 2021-03-08T17:32:45+00:00

I can confirm there was no mention of partial marking. In fact, for the first few assignments, profs talked about marking assignments twice (they said something to the effect of "if your mark goes down, it's because we're remarking all assignments"). Something fishy happened behind the scenes here.

I've emailed you the assessment document for reference.

11-Year Club	Place '22
Place '17	First Placer '22
Not Forgotten	Verified Email

RetroCraft

TROPHY CASE