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Comment Re:Why?! (Score 1) 100

Wireless controllers have a reliability rate SUBSTANTIALLY lower than wired controllers.

They picked carbon fibre that was past it's best by date from storage.
The "source" wasn't fine if it's cast offs. Details matter. If it were a prototype used for evaluative testing without live occupants, all good. But that's not what we're talking about here.

Have you ever actually worked with wireless electronics or protocols? Here's a hint: Bluetooth and WiFi are not protocols that should be used in any life-or-death situation. There are ways to use them, and to do so safely; this wasn't even CLOSE to that.
RF interference can come from many places, in an emergency situation a partially faulty motor can saturate RF bands and block transmissions. I've worked in environments were a failed electric motor wiped out an entire network. You can;t eliminate all risk, but you can certainly increase safety margins. Now imagine a minor failure eliminating their control system.

Comment Why?! (Score 5, Insightful) 100

Why?!

I truly find this story uninteresting after learning enough regarding decision making on the project.

The decision making was so poor they used a wireless controller as the only real controls.

They not only picked questionable materials to build it from, they picked questionable sources for that material, skipped doing any real testing of the material while ignoring legitimate concerns.

Pushing the limits is one thing, but so many of these decisions were just simply daft.

Hardwired controls with wireless for convenience; override the wireless in an emergency.

Check the sub before and after each launch, looking for material issues and documenting any changes. Not a cursory glance at it, but using equipment to actually scan the surface for defects as is used in related industries. (Ultrasonic, radio isotopes/xray, etc)

These two things alone would have increased the safety factor of this project immensely.

But ignoring them all? Boring. You made a coffin with a randomization factor

Comment Re: Apt comparison (Score 1) 103

On another forum a user recently complained because someone had edited their question on Stack Overflow. The final question no longer represented what they were asking about and expressed distain for the edit; someone else on the forums who has enough editing powers in Stack Overflow to do such then justified it. Or tried to.

Editing a users question as if it was the original question they asked is NOT ok.

Refreshing the question and answering that version of it may be useful, but sometimes obliterates the subtleties that the original question is based on.

The arrogance of SO is extreme.

Comment Re: Street parking does not signifcantly affect bu (Score 1) 144

"Studies show"...

While this can be true, if you go find those studies you'll see it listing the criteria for which it isn't universally true; or toss the study because it's garbage.

This particular street won't see an increase in pedestrian traffic via the bus route, it'll be speeding past these businesses like they weren't even there.

Within 3 years it'll be a ghost town of a street with all but 1 or 2 businesses gone; some corporatatiin or billionaire will then buy it up and replace it with something else and get transit to have a stop there as part of his deal with city hall.

Basically, it's how to buy up property for pennies on the dollar 101.

Comment Re: cheating your way through college with AI (Score 1) 115

Chances are they were imperfect, your chance of noticing certain types of mistakes is related to how engaged you are with the material as presented. I've seen PowerPoijt slides presented by a good presenter, with errors all over them, but nobody really noticed until it was explicitly pointed out.

If you're not engaging with the material, or you're looking to find fault, you'll notice things like that significantly more than others.

If the professor is particularly sloppy with the materials then there's every reason to complain, if nothing else it is a distraction from the materials.

Too many people misunderstand what education is for, and what they are intended to get out of it.

So many fellow students of mine complained about the course we took at college because they'd never use ______. They all seemed to miss that nobody knew which materials we would actually use, so it was overly broad to be mined for gold when we knew where we were going with it.

Students are ignorant. It's in their nature.

Comment The governing body is incompetent (Score 4, Informative) 141

Firefox has had enough money at various points in time to have invested it into a trust and to pay out from annuities to support the entire development team for the indefinite future lasting decades at a minimum.

Mozilla foundation has burned money left and right on frivolous adventures having little or nothing to do with Firefox.

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