Interesting Links for 13-07-2017

[andrewducker]

How video encoding works (a very simple introduction)

(tags: video Technology )

The touching effect of putting an autistic hero into a computer game

(tags: games diversity autism )

Overwatch: Bigger than the Premier League? (No. But people are trying...)

(tags: games sports money competition )

Is Decentralized Storage Sustainable?

(tags: design storage internet economics decentralisation )

Greening announces 'evidence champion' for schools

(tags: Education )

Pthalates linked to chronic disease in men

(tags: pthalates plastic disease )

Government refuses to release report into Saudi Arabia’s funding of Islamist extremism in UK

(tags: saudiarabia terrorism politics uk )

Inside the World of Chinese Bitcoin ‘Mining’ (Some great photos)

(tags: bitcoin china )

At 56, a ‘Light Bulb’ Goes Off and a Firefighter Emerges

(tags: fire age life )

The British View the War of 1812 Quite Differently Than Americans Do

As a Brit I have to admit that I had no idea that there _was_ a war with America in 1812
(tags: war uk usa france canada history )

The Facebook Algorithm Mom Problem

(tags: facebook algorithm mother OhForFucksSake fail )

Radiohead releases a surprise ZX Spectrum program for OK Computer anniversary

(tags: music software )

Visa To Pay Restaurants To Stop Taking Cash

(tags: restaurant money Technology )

A Kingdom for a Horse: Kokpar and the Future of Kazakhstan

“There are no Kazakhs,” he says. “Stalin made us up.”
(tags: kazakhstan horses )

Scientists replay movie encoded in DNA

(tags: dna genetics movies )

"I think I am becoming accustomed to the sight of guns."

(tags: guns society UK France Scotland )

Unix Time 1,500M – Friday July 14 02:40GMT

(tags: time unix thefuture )

New corporate criminal offences of failure to prevent tax evasion effective from 30 September

(tags: law tax uk )

Post-apocalyptic Dilbert

(tags: dilbert apocalypse comic )

Comments

[lilysea]

Visa To Pay Restaurants To Stop Taking Cash

Given that

a) waitstaff in the US rely very heavily on tips for their wages

and

b) when customers tip by credit card, instead of cash, the restaurant takes some or all of the tip (even when this is illegal!)

this has the potential to be VERY bad for waitstaff...

Of course, bringing in adequate wages for waitstaff and abolishing tipping would fix this, but that's not easy to accomplish.

[andrewducker]

Yup, totally agreed.

(I try to leave the tip separately. But am occasionally caught out by lack of change.)

[lilysea]

I didn't know tipping was A Thing in Scotland!

It's not in Australia (but we have good wages for waitstaff, $24.41/hour for people aged 20+)

[mair-aw.livejournal.com]

it's not a ... non-thing? I mean, compared to in a supermarket where you would basically never tip the cashier, in a restaurant/café/bar you might well choose to tip the staff ... but it's not culturally required, and there's no particular expected amount, if you do.

[lilysea]

Tipping in Australia is pretty much only when you go to a restaurant with a group of friends, and everyone puts in the for their meal, and at the end after you've paid your bill and been brought your change, there's a handful of $2, $1 and 50c coins left over in change, and everyone agrees to leave it for the waitstaff rather than be bothered trying to divvy it up.

[mair-aw.livejournal.com]

I shall bear that in mind when I go to Australia!

[andrewducker]

Leaving a tip is fairly normal. It's not _necessary_, but it's considered good manners if you've had decent service.

[danieldwilliam]

As an Edinburgh resident depending on the situation I would generally leave a tip if I'd had table service.

For a coffee & snack I'd round up to the nearest pound / not collect my change from the table. Similarly if there has been an at table drinks service.

For a meal I usually tip 5%-10%.

Very occassionally I'll tell a barman to keep the change. Not often.

If I've had to queue for service, collect my own order or pay in advance of receiving my order I generally don't tip.

What I notice is that the additional use of card payment, particularly contactless payment for small amounts make it less likely that I'll leave a tip. I find I'm being caught out by not having change.

My wife and I appear to operate a system where one of us (usually me for reasons which I can't quite fathom) pays for the meal and the other one sorts out the tip.

(I suspect the reason is that my wife buys all the petrol and runs the household errands.)

[andrewducker]

I don't go for delivered food where I've paid by card either.

[danieldwilliam]

Yes, that also.

Although I rarely get food delivered. Both of the takeaways that I go to often are within a five minute walk so unless it's raining it's easier and quicker to phone the order in and then stroll round and pick it up.

How video encoding works (a very simple introduction)

[jack]

This is very similar to what I'm working on. I should actually talk about it at some point.

Re: How video encoding works (a very simple introduction)

[andrewducker]

You really should!

(If you're allowed)

[mlknchz]

"I think I am becoming accustomed to the sight of guns": I was in the military, so I saw many there, held, and used, by both men and women, white peoples, African-Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans.
I am a gun owner, so I see them in my home, in the homes of some of my friends, and at gun ranges. I see them used for recreational shooting, and (though I personally don't hunt) for hunting. When at the gun range, I see them used responsibly by men and women, white people, African-Americans, Latinos, and Asian-Americans.
I understand the point the author is making, but I think she's incorrect in her conclusion. The problem isn't the presence of guns in the hands of police, it's the situation that's caused that to happen. She's mistaking a symptom for the disease.

Unsafe in Paris

[nojay]

The number of people shot and killed each year in the US is about 30,000 or so, or about 90 a day on average. That death rate would be classed as a war zone in any other nation.

The prevalence of guns adds to the sky-high murder rate, about 40 homicides per million population a year compared to places like Japan where the murder rate is something like 7 per million a year.

Re: Unsafe in Paris

[mlknchz]

Which has nothing to do with the article.

Re: Unsafe in Paris

[fub]

The point is that no-one in Europe wants to normalize guns the way they are normal in the US. And yet that still seems to be happening.
Men with guns patrolling the streets do not make us safer, and they don't even make us feel safer. And yet it still happens, because of some vague-defined "emergency".

Re: Unsafe in Paris

[mlknchz]

Which is exactly the point I was making, the problem isn't the guns themselves, but the situation that has caused them to become nearly-ubiquitous.

[calimac]

The article on the War of 1812 is quite good, though not entirely purely introductory. The war may not come up much in the UK, but it's a big source of arguments between US-Americans and Canadians. The former think they won it and the latter think the US lost it. In reality it was more of a tie. The US surprisingly beat the pants off Britain at sea, supposedly Britain's specialty, though Britain didn't really try very hard; but on land the US forces were hopeless, except for the Battle of New Orleans, which didn't affect anything since it was fought after the peace treaty was signed (but before the news reached America). It also made the fame and reputation of Andrew Jackson, so there's that.

So the US did not get Canada, which contrary to Canadian suspicions was not the real purpose of the war, but it was thought of as a very big bonus. Essentially the peace treaty provided for status quo antebellum, and that the British would stop impressing American sailors and the Americans would stop complaining about it.

The weird difference in histories

[nojay]

The popular histories of the US are full of Mad King George being the reason the American colonists rebelled against the British government but I dare say they couldn't name the Prime Minister who was actually in charge in the run-up to the First Treasonous Slaveholders Rebellion of 1776. (I saw a reference once, a semi-official list of the Founding Fathers of the US. It had seven names on it if I recall. Adjacent to each name was the number of slaves they owned. The total was easily in three digits).

Re: The weird difference in histories

[mlknchz]

Slaveholding was still legal in the British Empire at the time, and continued to be so until 1834, IIRC

Re: The weird difference in histories

[calimac]

The irony was pointed out at the time, and by none other than Dr. Johnson, who said, "How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?"

However, I wonder who was on this list of Founding Fathers. If it only had 7 names, maybe it was "the Founding Fathers who were the biggest slaveholders." Because many of them were not. John Adams owned no slaves. I don't know for absolute, but I'm also pretty sure that Benjamin Franklin, Gouveneur Morris, Alexander Hamilton, Roger Sherman, and many other leading Founders owned no slaves.

Even the slave-holding Founders, notably Jefferson, were aware of the problem and desired a solution. (And if you think that would have been easy, read Gordon-Reed and Onuf's Most Blessed of the Patriarchs.)

For what it's worth, the Declaration of Independence makes a lot of references to the king, none to the government. That's because, to a large degree in practice as well as in theory, in those days the government was the king's government, and reflected his will as well as acting in his name.

However, if you want to find Lord North making an impression on Americans, just before the bicentennial of the Revolution, a US TV network aired a lengthy interview with him. North was played by Peter Ustinov, who worked without script but had extensively researched the subject, and mounted a robust defense of British government policy.

Re: The weird difference in histories

[nojay]

Benjamin Franklin earned money stabling slaves for their owners. I believe it was in situations where slaves were hired out as craftsmen and women in urban workshops or as servants rather than as field hands on rural plantations.

The list I recall seeing may be this one: John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington which was compiled by an American historian a while back.

As for the King's powers and influence over the British government, the supremacy of Parliament was demonstrated to King Charles 1 with the edge of an axe back in the 1600s and Parliament has been supreme ever since then, including during the Revolutionary period. I think the Mad King George straw figure was a suitable target for the traitors to propagandise as the reason for their decision to rebel but I doubt that they themselves believed the King was actually in charge of anything.

Re: The weird difference in histories

[calimac]

That would be a reasonable list of the top 7 Founders, but I'm pretty sure at least 3 of them, not counting Franklin (Jay would be the third) owned no slaves. Of course they did, including Franklin, economically benefit from being part of a slave-owning economy, but then so did the British. Liverpool in particular was a major slave-trading center, and many fortunes were made in it there.

If you think that Parliament has been unquestionably supreme, and the monarch a nullity in government policy, since the Civil War, then your knowledge of history is as blunt as the axe that cut off Charles I's head. The supremacy of Parliament in the final instance was not established until the settlement after the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89, and even that was only a matter of putting some curbs on the monarch's power and establishing Parliament as supreme in case of irreconcilable conflict. When there was not irreconcilable conflict, the government still worked for the king, in a real and definite sense, for about the next century or so, and he had the unquestionable right to fire any government he was unhappy with, so long as the successors he chose could gain the consent of Parliament - which (with exceptions) he usually could, as in those days most MPs and peers had no firm party attachment and could be wooed by patronage. It wasn't until 1834 that was the last time a king fired his government out of his own will, and only by then it didn't work because by then party lines had firmed up too much; since then the power has gone into abeyance. Even after that, PMs like Gladstone and Disraeli had to take Victoria's wishes into account with their policies; that the monarch is completely apolitical and signs off on whatever the government says without complaint is a 20th century development.

As for the American Revolution, the Americans had a strong suspicion that the government was doing what the king wanted them to do, and in fact this was correct. That they were doing so in the king's name as well as with his approval made him the suitable head to blame. When underlings are doing the will of the head, you point to the head.

[naath]

It comes up so little in the UK that I associate 1812 with Napoleon in Russia not the war in the Americas. I mean, I know it happened, but just about nothing else about it.

[cmcmck]

And the fact that the powers that were (not to mention the public) had their minds very much on other things and other places is why the war of 1812 isn't all that well remembered in the UK.

I'm a military historian and get reminded from time to time that there are oodles of ballads about the Napoleonic wars and almost none about the war of 1812.

[calimac]

There are a few American ballads about the Battle of New Orleans, which Americans were insufferably proud of. We beat the guys who beat Napoleon, yadda yadda.

The war also gave rise to a few catchphrases famous in the US, of which "Don't give up the ship" and "We have met the enemy and he is ours" are the most famous, though the latter has since been eclipsed by Walt Kelly's altered version, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

[armiphlage]

Here's one of the more popular Canadian songs about the War of 182:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVC677-YmfM