I've been a fan of the 'simply static' plugin for wordpress for a few years now. Basically, install wordpress on a server, make it accessible only to authorized users (vpn, acl, htauth, whatever works best for you), then have it deploy to an apache server or s3 bucket.
The WP designer feels at home. Has a simple deploy button. The pages load significantly faster.
Works well most of the time. Sometimes forms can be a bit tricky, but the sites I've deployed it with usually don't have many of them.
I doubt we do. That would take out all forms of bird hunting. Most firearm owner's and hunters I know would say "Shooting in the air is a waste of ammunition and stupid - unless there was a target there."
They would also be impressed. I am. I never thought this would get to HN. Really nerding out on some of the math and insight that has been commented on here.
Think about it this way. They didn't have temperature sensors and wind gauges setup every 20 ft along the path to the target.
Someone said, "How can I do this." It's not that much different than saying "I'll jog around the block." Couple weeks later "I'll jog around the block in half the time when I started." Weeks later "I'll jog around the neighborhood."
It is a hobby. It is complex. Someone made it happen.
Hah. I don't think its feasible for someone to be sniped at that distance. After 69 shots over hours on a good day, security would have well figured out they were under attack. If they didn't, the target probably would have been done with whatever they were doing and long gone.
Think about it though, yeah they fired 69 shots. It took several minutes to setup each shot.
I can't hit a target at 50 yards. Its tough to get the mind clear and the heart rate down, breathing under control, and then try to figure out if the siting is off or you are off. Hell, siting in a firearm is a challenge. Changes in ammo have effects. The environment is always changing.
Anything at this range probably won't have any real world use cases. Nobody is going to try to shoot a deer at 4.4 miles. The military isn't going to use it in war.
What you will see is a ton of data being shared. Someone else will set a record in the future. And we will get to see that data. It really is interesting.
But I doubt you could take all the ammo in the world and randomly hit that target at that distance without a hell of alot of thought and planning.
Windy Wyoming as it's called. I live in the east side of the state - few hours away from where they did this.
While Pinedale is generally less windy, don't kid yourself, it changes constantly. Add in they did this test at like 8,000 ft elevation. The temperature is constantly changing.
I find it impressive they found a 4.4 mile stretch that was unobstructed, no risk to hitting something (person/critter) in that area. They found a ridge that allowed them a way to somewhat see the target.
No real world application for what they did, but the effort, the science, the planning - impressive.
I'm guessing they must have used GPS to find their location, and calculate the rotation of the earth. But even small changes - like repointing 1mm to the north or south would be huge over that distance.
I always phrase it as the principles (mostly add/delete) stay the same, but the methods are almost always different. Once you learn the principle, it's always about the method of getting there.
That's still work though. You might know all you need to know on the subject you will teach, but if the standard you have to fulfill changed, that means you have to change your plans.
I very much agree with that statement. It's been a decade ago since I read the article about this - and I'll try to fine and post it after I post what I read.
It costs federal taxpayers around $500 billion dollars a year to file their taxes.
Why can't that be more efficient? That is a hell of alot of money that could be handed back to the taxpayers - or added to the federal budget.
Just to live, people are paying part of that. Just to be incorporated, corps are paying that. Just to file paperwork - and have someone cover it for you.
What if we could use that money to start focusing on solving cancer? Mental health issues. Instead - we pay that money and all we get is some paper that goes through a 1960's mainframe eventually (which nobody understands the IRS mainframes anymore), and risk having them just stress us out more. That doesn't help anyone.
It's a mess to get into. It's a mess if your successful. I'm not so sure this isn't a mechanism to suppress parts of our population (or all of it).
IMHO - I think this is where we are really screwing up as a society. We shouldn't need accountants and lawyers just to live our lives. We need lawyers when we are in trouble. Need accountants to keep track of our finances. But should we really need them just to live, do something new in an unknown area?
My personal opinion is that we spend too much on lawyers and accountants. Our society should be optimized to let people focus on their ideas - bring in cash flow - and lift the entire society up when possible.
That said - I'm not sure I have a good solution here. I don't think we should tax income (don't punish people for working). I go back and forth on sales taxes (I kinda like use taxes, but again, that negatively affects a significant amount of the population un-proportionately). A chunk of the world uses VAT. I'm researching VAT closer.
We can make this a more fair, easier to operate in world than we have now. I'm a supporter of that.
We don't need accountants and lawyers just to live our lives. We don't even need them if we have a well paying job, a mortgage, a fulfilling long term relationship, and a clutch of progeny.
But we do need them to run a business, because --and this is the part that explains why-- your brain is finite, and you cannot be an expert at accounting, and law, and your actual profession. The willingness to outsource expertise to other people is what makes society possible.
As for calling income tax a punishment: that's a bit weird, because you're not paying taxes on "your money", your money is what's left after taxes, the amount before taxes was your employer's money. Only some of that is going to be yours. If you live in the US, you unfortunately live with an idiotic system in which you are handed the full sum, being way more than is actually yours, and then making you responsible for splitting it up correctly and punishing you if you don't. However, if you live in a more modern country, at least in terms of how tax is handled, you wouldn't need to do this at all. The taxes will be withheld as part of the transaction, paid by the party doing the paying, and what is received is 100% the receiver's money, with no further taxes owed. (we see the same idiocy vs. sensibility with sales tax: some countries like Canada or the US have the insane habit of listing untaxed price in stores, with an inflated price at the till. More sane countries instead list the actual price of goods, with the tax processing taking place in the computers that handle the payments)
Remember: your country needs to make money for it to stay a country. Setting a rule where any monetary transaction taking place in the nation (made possible only because there is a working national economy in the first place) has to include a portion that gets used to fund the nation that makes the economy possible isn't too crazy. Sales tax, income tax, capital gains tax, etc. are basically all the same thing (money changes hands, the nation gets a portion of it so it so that it can keep operating) using different rates (mostly) adjusted to be appropriate to how much is necessary to prosper. Of course, in a good tax implementation, you don't "get that money and then you have to pay taxes", instead those taxes are withheld as part of the payment and when the tax date rolls over, you have nothing to do (something that a number of countries actually do).
It's when you get into levies (property tax, fuel surcharges, etc) that things become a bit more questionable, and one of those "what kind of country do you live in" differentiators.
I've thought for a while if you want to stop drunk / impaired driving, that the system could be reworked.
1. Require an electronic drivers license that stores data on your driving skills, reaction time, and some metadata about solving problems.
2. When you get into the car, you have to solve a medium complexity puzzle. Eg hit a certain color in a row on a touchpad - think simple simon. Or a math, quiz, something.
3. If you can't solve it, the car won't start. Or have an emergency button that allows you to start the car, but then it turns on the hazards and honks the horn while your driving (showing that you haven't proven that your reflexes are up to par). This allows everyone to watch out for you, and can bring the attention to LE.
Eek. This is just captcha for driving. I don't like it. But it might save lives!
Might get women raped as well. Having to solve a captcha while you're under stress and you want to get the fuck away from wherever you are is a terrible idea. Honking the horn may also be horrible if what you want to do is not alert anyone that you're getting away until you get somewhere safer.
This was immediately what I thought also. My wife was attacked in a parking lot late one night and managed to kick the guy and run to her car and drive off before he could recover. So now we have to run to the car and do a math problem before the car starts?
this captcha business is adversarial. I would refuse to drive a vehicle that treats me as a criminal by default (same reason I avoid airports).
Having a different class of license effect the cars performance is interesting tho. I guess you'd want to rely on biometrics so that high-skilled-drivers don't become a target to steal their license. Probably need a way to revoke licenses, which means the car will need to stay online at all times. Brings to mind those rental cars that won't unlock if they're in an underground garage or out in the woods.
IMO it's all too much complexity to rely on, a car should be a machine that goes when you hit the gas. If you want to save lives, more public transport and slower speeds + roundabouts is the answer.
The WP designer feels at home. Has a simple deploy button. The pages load significantly faster.
Works well most of the time. Sometimes forms can be a bit tricky, but the sites I've deployed it with usually don't have many of them.