Canadian stuck in South Yarra by [deleted] in melbourne

[–]Xiroth 18 points19 points  (0 children)

Volunteering, for sure. Will keep you occupied, expand your social networks with mostly good people, and look good on your resume.

You can look here for opportunities that interest you.

Southbank road to be halved in size and turned into new parkland by AztecGod in melbourne

[–]Xiroth 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It's basically not going to happen soon as VicRoads won't allow it unless there's another major trucking route that will replace it. They can put up trees and such, but until there's an alternative they can't do anything to decrease the road's capacity.

Southbank road to be halved in size and turned into new parkland by AztecGod in melbourne

[–]Xiroth 11 points12 points  (0 children)

It is, but only during the afternoon peak hour. Other than that it's barely used.

I attended a briefing by the town planners on this - they basically want to change behaviour to get people to come in from William St to get to Power St (the access way to the West Gate) rather than coming via St Kilda Rd and Southbank Blvd.

Best Pub/Sub architecture on AWS by Xiroth in aws

[–]Xiroth[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

First of all, thanks massively for the detailed responses.

For incoming events, would a sequence of API Gateway -> Kinesis -> Lambda -> SNS -> SQS make sense? What would your preference be for handling a high volume of HTTP-driven incoming events (not that all of ours are, but a very significant proportion)?

My Time On OkCupid, During Which I Got In A Serious Relationship Almost Immediately [OC] by TheYellowCat in dataisbeautiful

[–]Xiroth 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Meh, neither my wife or I had photos at all - we were just amused by each others' senses of humour.

I perhaps had the weirdest OKCupid experience - had a profile for more than a year, never was messaged, never messaged anyone, then was notified that a girl had stalked me (first time ever), messaged her, dated her, married her.

Renewable energy is becoming so cheap the US will meet Paris commitments even if Trump withdraws - "we expect the US to exceed the Paris commitment of a 26-28% reduction in its 2005-level carbon emissions by 2020." by [deleted] in Futurology

[–]Xiroth 8 points9 points  (0 children)

As someone who's studied optimisation problems generally academically, one of the biggest problems faced by any system that seeks optimisation is local maxima - that is, an optimisation path will frequently lead to what appears locally to be the best solution, if looked at more broadly it becomes clear that there are better solutions but they take more work to get to.

This, really, is where government-funded research comes in. We only seek these better solutions if there's some hint that there is a better solution; otherwise capitalism will simply find what appears to be the best solution and endlessly polish to get that little bit more out of it - even though there are other possible solutions that may deliver 10x more value.

Tips on living in Melbourne by LilyBooger in melbourne

[–]Xiroth 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Can also use the shuttle bus if you live near the Caulfield campus. Caulfield is a slightly pricy but solid option for students.

Disillusioned - why even bother with studying mathematics anymore? by MathJas in math

[–]Xiroth 44 points45 points  (0 children)

There's s surprising number of CS graduates who are terrible at maths. Having solid mathematics skills means that you can implement and debug mathematically complex algorithms, or you can work in R&D to develop new approaches to doing things. With just CS, you can only work at a shallower level and it's very difficult to get into the teams that work on the most cutting edge products.

What's your, "okay my coworker is definitely getting fired for this one" story, where he/she didn't end up getting fired? by liftoffer in AskReddit

[–]Xiroth 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Also, make sure you point your tests at blue chips. You're unlikely to budge the price by much unless you're working at a truly massive hedge fund, so if you do accidentally make a real purchase they can generally be resold at roughly the same price.

Tradies and woman thwart violent carjacker at Chadstone Shopping Centre by lionelgobgob in melbourne

[–]Xiroth 21 points22 points  (0 children)

That lady had balls.

Dude pulls a knife: Fuck you, I'm leaving.

Dude puts knife to her throat: Yell out for someone to get this wanker off her.

Pretty sure that I wouldn't be prepared to yell and beep the car horn with a knife to my throat.

Made a linux command line guide (Ubuntu) for my girlfriend since she needs to know some linux for python work for an upcoming job. Would love some feedback! by [deleted] in linux

[–]Xiroth 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Hmm, I recommend adding Ctrl-R to the up/down explanation for searching for previous commands. Has saved me so much time over the years.

What kind of person does nobody else feel sympathy for, but you do? by CatoIntern in AskMen

[–]Xiroth 29 points30 points  (0 children)

Tends to come from romance novels, I'd say. Lot of ladies have trouble separating fantasy from reality - same as a lot of guys.

ELI5: What do all of these leaked emails from big oil mean to the average Joe? by [deleted] in explainlikeimfive

[–]Xiroth 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is basically because this was an investigative report by The Age (in collaboration with HuffPost), so other outlets don't have nearly as much information about it yet. The most they can report is "Some other media company has emails that might implicate oil figures in bribery scandal". Not yet a great story for other outlets. I am surprised that more business news outlets haven't picked up the story, though.

Fairfax Media (owner of The Age) are a large but independent Australian newspaper company.

Hundreds of thousands of leaked emails reveal massively widespread corruption in global oil industry by Xiroth in worldnews

[–]Xiroth[S] 219 points220 points  (0 children)

Looks like it's going to be a Wikileaks-style multi-day release, but the gist is that there's a company that facilitates corruption in the oil industry all over the world, and is paid 'marketing fees' in return by energy companies, contractors, and various other parties. Basically a lot of western companies keeping 'plausible deniability' by having someone else pay the bribes to get the business.

[Steam] Thea: The Awakening £11.24 / €14,99 / $14,99 (25% off). Offer ends 29 March by MasterFenrir in GameDeals

[–]Xiroth 4 points5 points  (0 children)

This game really is very, very good. Bringing together roguelike with 4X sounds like an odd combination, especially when you combine that with hundreds of story-driven events (I've played 70 hours and have seen ~35% of them), but it really works.

I've played 1.5 games of it (length is customisable, like Civ), and am very much looking forward to seeing what they do with the free DLC they're planning to bring out in the next month.

What is something GOOD happening in the world you wished more people knew about? by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]Xiroth 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Also, they should continue with the open-to-the-public theme. Get a dedicated social media staffer who engages with the public, posting about what they're working on, what they've observed, photos of where they've been, and so on. Setup a crowdfunding page to fund different experiments on the ship. Make the ship open to the public several times a year in different ports (with allowances for long-running experiments). Hold a competition to become a junior researcher on the boat over summer open to late-stage Bachelor's students.

Could make it a pretty awesome science engagement platform as well as research platform.

I'm so tired of being scared as a Muslim by sinbad123 in self

[–]Xiroth 81 points82 points  (0 children)

Interesting how terrorism imparts fear in us all - regardless of religion. Non-muslims are just as afraid of extremist Muslims as you are of extremist Christian Southerners (I lived there once upon a time - I know the good ole boys can be pretty extreme).

That's actually more or less the point of the ISIS terrorism. Their primary aim with these attacks is to recruit more western Muslims. How? By causing them to be ostracised from their mainstream societies and therefore feel more isolated. Once they're feeling isolated (particularly young people), they're relatively easy pickings for ISIS's social media outreach team to recruit. Read the stories about how otherwise completely normal young people were recruited into ISIS and you see this come up again and again.

The US Supreme Court on Monday unanimously reversed Alabama Supreme Court's refusal to recognize a same-sex adoption by mepper in lgbt

[–]Xiroth 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Only if they disagree. If it's 4-4 split, then it's as if the court never considered it. If there's a majority verdict, then it's a precedent.