Viewing profile — marksweston

I'm not sure it's right to characterise Deep Blue or Stockfish as repositories of human chess theory. Fundamentally they were all based on a relatively simplistic function for calc…

I think, in practice, "justice" has always been a mediated form of vengeance. The state maintains its monopoly on violence by extracting enough vengeance from criminals that indivi…

In as much as this analogy is useful: when you lie to the lender about your income, spending and ability to repay the loan, you have committed fraud. But the EU is supposed to be a…

Are they "incredibly damning"? It's impossible to tell from the minimal amount quoted in this almost content-free article.

Historically it seems that the highest paid developers in London have been contractors, who can charge £600 ($780) / day for fairly non-niche skills in web-development. IR35 may ch…

> pesky hackers ...working on behalf of the KGB, seeking military advantage for the totalitarian police state they served. Yes, let's be on their side instead.

This is strongly overstating the case: The UK right to silence is pretty well summarised in the modern wording of the police caution: "You do not have to say anything. But it may h…

it is utterly bizarre that you're treating the fact that the party that got the most votes won the most seats as evidence that the electoral system is biased towards them. Have you…

This is simply not true. FFTP is biased in favour of the party with the largest share of the vote, or perhaps another way of putting is that the relationship between vote share and…

I read the author as being fully self-aware and assuming we understand that that is the case.

Name a thing and you summon it into existence. 'Brogrammer' started as a witticism and has become a social phenomenon that people discuss as though it was based on rigorous observa…

> It may seem “unfair” to toy with the idea of losing the assholes, particularly the unintentional assholes. Since they “don’t know better” it seems almost cruel to let them go sim…

It’s weird to me how persistent this story is. From the reported control traces, there was no prolonged period of dual input. There were 3 or so brief moments of dual control input…

It’s hard not to see this as purely a response to an article title. It bears no relation to the actual article content, which was thoughtful and interesting and really deserved a m…

I agree, but was responding to a post that was heavily criticising Lion Air for not paying for the option and implicitly laying the blame for the crash at their door. Either the op…

Who ships safety-critical features as an optional extra?

> Fascinating stuff, really interesting characters. I for one never knew the Germans were pursuing fission for the production of "engines". Do yourselves a favor and read the entir…

My understanding is that aerodynamic modelling and simulator runs have shown that a committed decision to push nose-down, regain airspeed and recover from the stall, could have bee…

To me, this moment is one of the failure points in the incident and is entirely the captain’s fault. Captain: What the hell are you doing? Benin: We've lost control of the plane! R…

This narrative is incorrect. The aircraft gave audio and visual warnings when there were multiple control inputs. And we can infer that the crew on AF447 noticed them because the 2…

To the American government, yes of course they are. The American government isn't supposed to be some even-handed dispenser of global justice; its job is to protect American citize…

Are they? My 20 month old (i.e. out of warranty and with no Applecare policy) iphone 6+ started showing the symptoms a week and a half ago. The "Genius" at the Apple Store immediat…

>Clients don't want to read Cucumber specs Far too broad a generalization I think. I currently work with a non-technical CEO whose first encounter with Cucumber was when we were tr…