robryk @robryk@qoto.org

@lauren @fheinderyckx @dangillmor

Let me then be more verbose: I myself can't imagine making it my life goal to do well at a ~single prespecified point in time, like Olympic athletes do, even ignoring the arbitrariness of the source of that limitation. However, there are life goals of that shape that aren't so artificial/arbitraily-set: the most obvious example having been "land on the Moon".

Are you pointing at this success-decided-in-a-moment property, or it in combination with arbitrariness?

@jonstahl @dangillmor how do they differ? If you have an objective score, but subjective additional conditions, then brinkmanship on the additional conditions creates the same impact of subjective judgement on results as subjective scores would.

@whitequark do you have a hypothesis for a mechanism that causes that?

@jonstahl @dangillmor nearly all sports have some amount of human judgement involvement in determining whether rules were followed (in sports with multiple players they are often as messy as determining intent).

@lauren @fheinderyckx @dangillmor Does that extend to e.g. Apollo astronauts?

@_thegeoff hmm... Perhaps you want to ask about Epic Parts Of Systems, which contributed to many safety wins?

@_thegeoff

There were a few US space examples: Apollo 13, Armstrong's Gemini (where straightforwardly using a backup system without any special cleverness saved the day), Apollo 11 landing (where knowing the ways failures should manifest allowed it to continue), Apollo 8(?) launch (where if not for engine limits, the second stage would have pogoed itself to destruction).

In aviation pretty much every single powerless landing satisfies the criteria.

There are surely many rail examples in the UK, where detonating caps (which were a UK invention) or the like saved the day. There's the amusing case of the train collision next to Żywiec in 2005, where a train derailment into a river was avoided by deliberately colliding two passenger trains (with no injuries) -- one can argue that having robust communications saved that day.

@mcc

I would agree of ytalk-style chat was available. Chat delimited in full messages with people I don't previously know feels somewhat stilted.

@lauren is this all from that interview?

@_thegeoff Therac-25 was ~due to missing anew category of risks (even if the computer is not broken, the suggested might do something other than what was intended) and due to missing feedback channels from users of equipment.

Kaprun fire is a good example for usefulness of defense in depth (and how a strong single layer defense might disappear due to mistakes/game of telephone).

@rabbit as in they were advancing at different rates, or same rate but different effective update frequencies?

@rabbit do they actually advance with passage of (actual) time?

@xgranade @mcc the Earth's magnetic field is doing large party of the job

@_thegeoff in general, why isn't it a better idea to weigh liquids? I would assume that their density is usually accurately known, and scales omit a few silly problems with graduations: nonlevel ground, gross mixups (e.g. of multiple graduations), and deformations of the container (dents or squeezing for metal, heat -related ones for plastic).

@munin

Then I think I phrased it poorly. Alternative phrasing: satisfying curiosity is the most important thing ever. (And maybe it's essentially equivalent to what you said now?)

@munin

There's also an approach that you might see as in-between or as significantly different from both: it's your responsibility to learn, but mine to answer any questions you might have, for as long as it takes to do so.

@thebaldgeek @lauren

Apart from wireless nature, I saw two complaints that imo made sense: one was that a portable controller risked accidental inputs more than a fixed one and the other was a lack of ~independent "stop everything" control.

@cstross I don't understand why thermobaric grenades alone, before the introduction of drones, haven't caused a significant fraction of those changes. Is it because the range of a grenade launcher is much smaller than the range of a rifle?