I "identify" strongly as Democrat (meaning, I vote consistently, but not purely, Democrat). I've also subscribed to The Flip Side for a number of years, which will take a news story a day and present viewpoints on it from left-leaning, right-leaning and libertarian news sources. That seems like a form of balance. I find more often than not it lowers my stress level about the news, not so much because of the voices reinforcing my own perspectives, but because the opposing perspectives are usually well-presented. I can read those and think "Well, I don't agree with that, but now I can see how the facts could be interpreted that way by a reasonably intelligent person." That gives me hope that it's actually possible to have a dialog about seemingly partisan issues, and a reminder that having different viewpoints is human and worthy of respect, not inherently malicious.
Depends on the workload. In the past, I've worked on several workflow-based systems that performed lots of OLTP operations to drive live workflows forward, but once a workflow was done the operational data became a lot less interesting. So there it made sense to (say) partition the operational data and table by month, and roll off partitions after 3-6 months.
To continue the speculation ... as a ship that size is slow to turn or halt, that seems to suggest that even if the ship hadn't suffered a power failure then it would have passed quite close to the bridge pier anyway. Was that expected?
Yes, it was expected. Ports have "channels", essentially traffic lanes. Until the first power failure, the Dali was in the proper lane and would not have collided with anything if she had remained there.
In our galaxy, or anywhere? In our galaxy, potentially 1-3 times per century but there are reasons (besides probabilities being what they are) that we humans haven't actually observed one in some time: https://phys.org/news/2021-01-milky-supernovae-millennium.ht... . Across the universe, the estimate is one star goes supernova every ten seconds. Actually observed: about 1-2 per week. There are systems and amateurs who regularly scan the night sky looking for evidence of supernovas and other "transient" objects. And a central database where they are reported: https://www.wis-tns.org/ . Get an account and sign up for notifications, and you'll get several a week reporting things that probably went boom far, far, far away. Looking to place bets? Betelgeuse is considered a strong contender for the next supernova progenitor that we humans will see with our naked eyes, probably even during daylight hours.
Yes: I find "what" comments critical. Naming things is hard; getting two people to agree on the concept the name represents is harder. I write "what" comments -- usually at a class, class field and method level -- religiously because it articulates the concept the class/field/method is supposed to represent. The whole point of writing code is to build a logical model of real-world concepts; if you can't articulate the concept, you can't write the code to model it. Sometimes these comments help others, but I find their greatest value comes when I finish writing the comment/documentation and compare it to the code. I often find that they don't quite match -- my code isn't doing what I just said it is -- and that forces me to either clarify the concept or fix the code. Either way, the model ... erm, system ... is better than it would be if I just relied on names alone.
If God is omnipotent, surely that would include the ability to do things that we mere mortals would construe as harmful or self-defeating, wouldn't it?
certainly, but Christ specifically prayed not to have to through with it (or the ordeal in the garden, depending on your interpretation), when He prayed:
>Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.
And there is further the question of our own suffering: if we're supposed to get some "good" out of it, why not just wave a wand and give us the good without the bad?
I conclude that God lives in a world with rules like you and me, though they are likely quite different.
It seems to me that an omnipotent being could, in theory, create some environment or scenario in which events can unfold outside of their own control? Otherwise they wouldn’t truly be omnipotent?
I mean, that right there is sort of a logic disproof of the concept of omnipotence---"Could God make a rock so heavy He couldn't lift it," etc.
But more seriously imo is the why. Why make yourself less powerful? And any answer to that faces the question: if you're so omnipotent, why not wave your hand and get that good thing without disempowering yourself?
Interesting. As long as the limitation in power is self-imposed by the omnipotent being, I don’t find it logically inconstant at all.
The “why” question is a good one. I’m not well versed in theology, but I thought the general idea was that God’s goal was to create independant beings with agency and free will. And in order to accomplish that God (an omnipotent being) would by necessity have to limit their own power. Without doing so it would be logically impossible for other free beings to exist.
It might be obvious as far as it goes, but it's also incomplete in at least two ways. One is that as tweaks and optimizations and "supplementing the system in some way" often involves increasing its complexity, even if just a little bit at a time. It adds up with time. The more important thing is this: if you're already constrained on vertical scaling, and you don't have a firm grip on how fast your system is scaling, then you can't just stop with making the db more efficient. That's just postponing the inevitable, and possibly not for more than a couple of years. If you're in the position the author portrays, get the database under control first -- for sure -- but then get started on figuring out how you're going to stay in front of your scaling problem, whether that's rearchitecture, off-loading work to systems better suited for it, or whatever. Speaking as a former owner of a very large Amazon database that fought this battle many times, trying to buy enough dev time to build away from it before it completely collapsed. We were too content with performance improvements just like the ones described in this article, before finally recognizing we were just racing the clock.
Generally for anything other than casual viewing, the mount that the telescope rides on is generally considered most critical. You can put a modest telescope on a good quality mount and produce some great photographs, or amateur science if you want. No telescope will be able to overcome the faults of a mount that can't drive it with great accuracy. Notably their site has very little to say about the mount itself (except that it's "direct drive").
In my experience, a decent refractor just does what it needs to do, without drama. There's no mirror to collimate, no mirror to flop. Once the imaging train is dialed in, you let it cool for a bit, you focus, you take pictures. It just works. I confess to missing a reflector's diffraction spikes, but the unobtrusiveness of a decent refractor is almost luxurious given everything that can go sideways with astro-imaging.
Agreed. I debated for a long time but went with refractors (StellarVue). The simplicity and quality are nice, and as you say it just works. I'll probably get a large reflector at some point, maybe, but refractors are great for simple high quality. Astrophotography is my primary interest.
