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Hidden motors in cycling: Van den Dreissche banned for 6 years, titles stripped

cyclingtips.com

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Re: Hidden motors in cycling: Van den Dreissche banned for 6 years, titles stripped

#61

Post by mikestew »

ars wrote: post #17

This is unrelated, but that has to be the most confusing way to write a price I've ever seen: 2.699,00 - a period for the thousands separator, and a decimal comma for the cents. I am aware of decimal commas - but a period for the thousands? I thought they used a space, or an apostrophe? 2'699,00 It must be tough writing code in Europe - computers only use decimal points, not decimal commas. And how do you make an int…

It must be tough writing code in Europe - computers only use decimal points, not decimal commas. And how do you make an international interface for money, when you never know how people will enter things?

I'm kind of confused as to why you're confused, so bear with me if I oversimplify, but are you aware of the globalization settings in your OS? It determines the display and entry format of things like currency. Yes, one will have to mentally switch back and forth when writing a float in code (float i = 3.14159) and paying bills with online banking ($1.345,12 sent to my mortgage company, please). But for the most part, you set bankBalanceTextField.text = $12000.01 and let the OS handle properly displaying it to the user.

To put it another way, for the globalized/localized applications I've worked on, I put a little effort into making sure it's globalizable (not hard-coding strings, not making assumptions about currency formats, make sure display fields are set to pick up display settings from OS, etc.), let the OS handle putting commas and decimal points as appropriate, and haven't had major complaints so far. No complaints, despite not having the faintest clue how currency is formatted in, say, Russia.

Re: Hidden motors in cycling: Van den Dreissche banned for 6 years, titles stripped

#62

Post by ars »

rikkus wrote: post #56
ars wrote: post #17

This is unrelated, but that has to be the most confusing way to write a price I've ever seen: 2.699,00 - a period for the thousands separator, and a decimal comma for the cents. I am aware of decimal commas - but a period for the thousands? I thought they used a space, or an apostrophe? 2'699,00 It must be tough writing code in Europe - computers only use decimal points, not decimal commas. And how do you make an int…

I can't tell if the parent is a joke. If not, I should tell you that decimal separator is usually regarded as variable and therefore just part of local representation, in a similar way to time and date formats. Plenty of code is only able to cope with a particular representation, or has bugs around dealing with varying ones.

I'm mostly talking about the programmer, not the presentation. You need one kind of number for the program, another for humans.

Re: Hidden motors in cycling: Van den Dreissche banned for 6 years, titles stripped

#63

Post by davidw »

Yeah, but that's yesterday's news.

Today had Marcel Kittel winning a snow-shortened stage in the Tour de Romandie and Sacha Modolo winning in the Tour of Turkey.

Also, the guidebook for the upcoming Giro d'Italia has been published: http://static2.giroditalia.it/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Gar...

Looks to be a great race, although I think there's a risk that stages 19 and 20, which thread their way through the Alps on the French-Italian border will get cancelled or rerouted due to snow.

The stage in Friuli looks like it could be particularly good, and the Dolomite stage is going to be awesome!

On a personal level, watching the Giro will make me nostalgic, I'm sure. One stage, Modena-Asolo even goes over some of the roads that I used to ride on near Padova.

Re: Hidden motors in cycling: Van den Dreissche banned for 6 years, titles stripped

#64

Post by dang »

ars wrote: post #17

This is unrelated, but that has to be the most confusing way to write a price I've ever seen: 2.699,00 - a period for the thousands separator, and a decimal comma for the cents. I am aware of decimal commas - but a period for the thousands? I thought they used a space, or an apostrophe? 2'699,00 It must be tough writing code in Europe - computers only use decimal points, not decimal commas. And how do you make an int…

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11581036 and marked it off-topic.

Re: Hidden motors in cycling: Van den Dreissche banned for 6 years, titles stripped

#65

Post by fahadkhan »

shpx wrote: post #38
Xylakant wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It was controlled by a Bluetooth switch installed underneath the handlebar tape." (in the article)

They should install Bluetooth sniffers before steep sections, it would be cool to see a little ping on the radio and then watch one of the racers magically pull ahead.

Cyclist also (legally) use wireless candance, speed, power, gear ratio, heart rate sensors, etc. Though they're normally ANT+ and not Bluetooth.

Re: Hidden motors in cycling: Van den Dreissche banned for 6 years, titles stripped

#66

Post by untog »

ars wrote: post #54
chinathrow wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's common. 18 hits in: http://www.thefinancials.com/Default.aspx?SubSectionID=curfo... Writing code is not that tough in Europe - just use a proper i18n library.

> Writing code is not that tough in Europe - just use a proper i18n library. That only goes so far - the actual code you write has to use decimal commas. You can't even export, say a list of numbers, and then directly copy that in to your code. Or for example: Use SQL to print a list of numbers to use for testing queries. If you used i18n, all the numbers would have decimal commas, so you can't combine them with a co…

Huh? That's not the case at all. Numbers are represented the same way as in the US throughout your code, your just put it through an i18n library when presenting it to the user.

It's really not as difficult as you're making it out to be.

Re: Hidden motors in cycling: Van den Dreissche banned for 6 years, titles stripped

#67

Post by ars »

mikestew wrote: post #61
ars wrote: post #17

This is unrelated, but that has to be the most confusing way to write a price I've ever seen: 2.699,00 - a period for the thousands separator, and a decimal comma for the cents. I am aware of decimal commas - but a period for the thousands? I thought they used a space, or an apostrophe? 2'699,00 It must be tough writing code in Europe - computers only use decimal points, not decimal commas. And how do you make an int…

It must be tough writing code in Europe - computers only use decimal points, not decimal commas. And how do you make an international interface for money, when you never know how people will enter things? I'm kind of confused as to why you're confused, so bear with me if I oversimplify, but are you aware of the globalization settings in your OS? It determines the display and entry format of things like currency. Yes,…

I don't know about you, but for me it's pretty common to output numbers that I then use in the program.

So you have to distinguish between output meant for a program and output meant for human.

Say someone gives you a logfile of problematic transactions - you then have to convert all the numbers to decimal points before using them in some one-off program that checks them.

Re: Hidden motors in cycling: Van den Dreissche banned for 6 years, titles stripped

#68

Post by davidw »

chinathrow wrote: post #52
davidw wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Writing code is not that tough in Europe - just use a proper i18n library. Not even having to think about that initially is sure handy for US startups. You can get pretty big without worrying too much about other languages and all the confusion that entails.

True - until you go north and need a french translation ;)

Spanish is probably more likely in the US, depending on the market you're addressing.

Re: Hidden motors in cycling: Van den Dreissche banned for 6 years, titles stripped

#69

Post by ars »

untog wrote: post #66
ars wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Writing code is not that tough in Europe - just use a proper i18n library. That only goes so far - the actual code you write has to use decimal commas. You can't even export, say a list of numbers, and then directly copy that in to your code. Or for example: Use SQL to print a list of numbers to use for testing queries. If you used i18n, all the numbers would have decimal commas, so you can't combine them with a co…

Huh? That's not the case at all. Numbers are represented the same way as in the US throughout your code, your just put it through an i18n library when presenting it to the user. It's really not as difficult as you're making it out to be.

> when presenting it to the user.

That's what I mean - sometimes the user is you, i.e. the programmer, and you have to put those number back in the program - but of course you have to convert them first.

> It's really not as difficult as you're making it out to be.

Not ever having done it, I will take your word for it.

Re: Hidden motors in cycling: Van den Dreissche banned for 6 years, titles stripped

#70

Post by mfoy_ »

mgberlin wrote: post #30
buro9 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And there was the race at the Koppenberg where she smashed everyone up the hill setting the Strava QOM, then lost lots of positions on the descents and technical parts, right until the next lap of the hill where she smashed up it again. Rinse repeat. It's not surprising the ban starts at a date earlier than when she was caught, the UCI strongly believe she was using the motor earlier.

I'm not familiar with that race specifically, but it's not unheard of for a young rider to have massive strength, but little technical skill. The ability to descent and maneuver technically only comes with years in the saddle.

Presumably her competition wasn't significantly older...
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