StringJunky

Just now, studiot said:

Do you not think these statistics are misleading ?

Why?

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/999-and-112-the-uks-national-emergency-numbers

They are government-issued figures for 2024.

2 minutes ago, TheVat said:

Yes it's hard to imagine an issue of avionics more critical than unwanted fuel cutoff. Boeing is not having a great decade. I wonder if jet design might have to go back to a mechanical linkage for control of fuel lines. That would take some doing!

(I am relieved to learn that investigators are looking elsewhere than pilots turning off the fuel to both engines, flipping two separate switches, due to a misfire of "muscle memory." )

So am I. At least they are doing their best to eliminate all possibilities before blaming the pilots.

7 minutes ago, studiot said:

I don't since ChatGPT started of with an incorrect statement.

Stopping when a light is red is a very positive and active statement or instruction; it is most certainly not a negative or passive one.

The second run through was a better consideration so whould we always ask an AI twice for its best answer, like the postman who always knocks twice ?

But thank you for that work in progressing the discussion. +1

Yes that is a good point, but not quite correct as it is certainly not without consequences.

It is true that emergency travel under the blue light laws allows emergency responders to break traffic regulations.

But they retain a duty of care.

It is interesting that there are 2 - 10 deaths (mostly pedestrian) by police cars per year in the UK.

As compared to a very much lower incidence by the fire service and mostly zero by the ambulance service.

Especially as the last two services are more likely to be travelling in a life and death situation as compared to the police.

52% of 999 calls are for police, 45% for ambulance and only 3% for the fire service.

Here's a bit from a Telegraph article that may eventually eliminate the pilots as the cause:

"Indian media, however, reported that investigators were examining potential electrical and digital faults that could have triggered “uncommanded” actions.

“The probe will ascertain the possibility of an ‘uncommanded transition’ of the fuel control switches to the cut-off mode seconds after the lift-off,” an official aware of the investigation was reported to have said.

Just hours before take-off, a pilot flying the same aircraft from Delhi to Ahmedabad noted in the technical log a “stabiliser position transducer defect”, the newspaper said.

The stabiliser position transducer is a sensor that controls the up and down movement of the aircraft’s nose, and transmits the data to flight control systems. The official said the malfunction was checked and the engineer did the troubleshooting.

“The malfunction is a critical issue as it can trigger incorrect responses in flight control, including unintended fuel cut-off signal,” the official was quoted as saying.

There had been at least two more similar incidents on the aircraft in the weeks before the crash, the newspaper said."

On the 25th of July the UK introduces a law that requires 18+ sites to verify the identity and age of users before accessing them.

Info from BBC site: How will age verification for porn work and what about privacy?

How effective is this going to be in filtering young people out? Will it drive them to non-compliant sites containing blatantly illegal material and ideas... and as a byproduct automatically turn them into criminals? Will they use IP spoofers, vpn's and other masking technologies to get around them?

How savvy are today's teenagers with this technology, and what is the likelihood of it working when IT security staff can't keep 17-19 year olds out of the customer data of major UK shops?

My opinion is that this will have the same long-term social consequences as the substance misuse laws. It will likely drive impressionable minds in the wrong direction and consume material and information they might not have otherwise seen.

When has banning ever worked when there exists so many consumers of a product or activity? I've always felt one cannot effectively enforce a law that does not have the natural consent of the majority of a country's population.

4 minutes ago, Dhillon1724X said:

I dont need to consider you AI,what i lack is a person with whom i can openly discuss my ideas

Can you meaningfully discuss bridge design, beyond aesthetics, without knowing the physical principles underpinning good design and the maths to describe them? You can't have a theory worth discussing until you have in-depth knowledge of the existing theories. What you are wanting to discuss is 'make stuff up' without any bearing on what is already known. You can't do that in meaningful scientific discussion.

42 minutes ago, FloridaManPhysics said:

That is, admittedly, a very straightforward way to explain them, but what do you say when asked, "Where do the particles come from, then?" How would you explain, in a straightforward and intuitive way, that they come from nothing based on a mathmatical set of circumstances?

I think they arise out of the vacuum field, which is not 'nothing'. This is the field that has the lowest possible energy level, where things (virtual particles and their perturbations) only exist for fleeting moments and then disappear. I think the Casimir Effect is one piece of evidence of its existence.

@FloridaManPhysics I think it is more straightforward to understand a field as a region in space where a force has influence. It quantitatively describes the magnitude and distribution of its influence. As was mentioned here once: it is a map (description) of the territory, but not the territory itself.

2 hours ago, exchemist said:

Since I wrote that I've seen a bit more of the report, which claims both pilots were properly rested. However, there was a comment from an experienced pilot who said that turning these fuel switches on and off is such a routine action that it becomes delegated to "muscle memory". If so, a keys-in-the-fridge scenario could well be the explanation.

We do get these mystifying cases of human error from time to time. As far as I recall, nobody ever found out why the driver of the Moorgate Tube train accelerated into that blind tunnel wall

Right. Yeah, if something is muscle memorized, the conscious brain is likely not engaged to that task. That would explain having no memory.

36 minutes ago, exchemist said:

I wonder about pilot fatigue. Air India has been in the news recently for failing to comply with guidelines for max hours and rest periods. Or maybe he or she just wasn’t thinking, for some other reason, preoccupied with a personal problem or something. A bit like someone absent-mindedly putting their house keys in the fridge.

If they are really knackered, I suppose that could happen. I think adding to flight protocol a rule that touching critical functions requires an explicit verbal declaration of ones intent and subsequent consent of the co-pilot before proceeding. Saying this, I think they do already before and on take off. I saw a YT video of two airline pilots verbally going through the motions of taking off prior to proceeding with an action.

It suggests to me the one who responded was lying about not turning them off. In the absence of poltergeists, I can't see any other explanation.

9 minutes ago, swansont said:

I’m assuming these are people, so slowing down the process makes then less efficient. e.g. it takes 5 minutes to spam us instead of 2. We become a less-attractive target

Right.

Does the software have this option?:

Honeypot Fields:

Creating hidden fields on registration forms that are invisible to humans but are easily filled by bots can trap spammers.

@swansont What would slowing down captcha and registration do? You mean if the inputs are entered sooner than a certain time because machines are quicker?

Here's picture of the fuel switch layout:

3 hours ago, Imagine Everything said:

Thanks for posting this @StringJunky

Interesting stuff.

Is the twin slot experiment also, almost directly, evidence of superposition. (We just can't see it right?)

Showing the effects of said superposition projected into the multiple slots they create on the other side.?

I think so.

39 minutes ago, swansont said:

In an undetermined state, like spin, the odds of getting one result is 1/2.

If I measure one particle and get a result and then measure another, it will be in a given spin state half the time

But in entanglement, the odds of getting the result is 1 or 0, depending on the correlation you have in how you prepared the entanglement.

Right, thanks.

Is part of the evidence for superposition that entangled particles are never found in similar states when their wavefunction is collapsed? Does it follow that If they weren't connected, we would expect to see some statistical frequency of similarity of states as well?

42 minutes ago, Luc Turpin said:

What I’m questioning is the idea that random changes in allele frequencies within a population are the sole drivers of evolution—that everything is random and we are simply machines executing a genetic program. It didn’t happen all by chance, nor did it happen by design, but it did happen. I feel that theory has sorely lagged behind recent discoveries in the field of evolution. Pardon the pun, but it is struggling to adapt.

The path evolution follows is not purely random. When chemicals interact is random, but how they interact is predetermined by their properties, which are fixed. So, we know what they'll do together, we just don't know when. Ditto more complex physical systems. You start getting these molecular machines that get modified by other passing molecules. The ones with the shortest energy pathway will perform the interaction with a given system. That's essentially what 'competition' is. Out of that molecular dance we start to see 'designs' of discrete molecular systems that co-interact to create the next level towards organism synthesis until we reach full organisms.

8 hours ago, swansont said:

Right. I wonder how such things are falsifiable. Seems like concluding the flashing light in the sky is an alien.

That's the long and the short of It, I think. It's interesting to me how many people can't leave unknown answers to questions on nature alone and have to make something up.

I find teleologically-driven evolution as a kind of 'god-of-the gaps' crutch when people reach an impasse in explaining aspects of nature that have not yet been fully described.

1 hour ago, MigL said:

One of my favorite movies.

He's not rehabilitated at all; he's still committing illegal and criminal acts, only now he's got Presidential immunity.

I think he meant "rehabilitated"; tongue in cheek.

39 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

I have friends participating in the NO KINGS protests where my mobility issues stop me from going, but I have a good speaking voice and an app called 5 Calls, where I make five calls a day to my Reps and Senators urging them to vote down this nonsense. For instance, did you know that TFG's Mean Ugly Bill eliminates the tax one has to pay for a silencer for your handgun?! I didn't even know they were legal! It also defunds the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which enforces federal financial laws and oversees financial institutions to make sure they aren't ripping people off. So much for law and order, right?

That's good that you are helping make a noise. It would seem to me that the GOP's love of all things arms could go against them in a lethal way if/when a critical mass of MAGA section realize they were never part of Trump and Co's plans and the effects of their policies sink in. I imagine their collective action will be highly visceral and physical. I think it's just going to get increasingly turbulent. I can't see Trump doing 4 years.

9 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

It seems like any other fascist push to redefine bias and truth in media in a way that flatters them more, but TFG's narcissism keeps pulling the spotlight away from any actual agenda they may be working under. Still, if this administration puts any more Project 2025 plans into effect, our government infrastructure may not survive. The Heritage Foundation will have brought the USA to its knees easier than any foreign adversary.

I was told as a youngster by a chap who was a communist that to beat the system, you have to be the system. That's what Trump's done and his acolytes. I hope American citizen's don't regret not doing anything now to change the direction.

Just now, Phi for All said:

Not sure about PBS, but I remember reading that only about 1% of NPR's funding comes from the US government.

That's good news then. It's clear what the tangerine tyrant's agenda is, isn't it?

I read earlier today that NPR and PBS have lost their funding. From the White House notices:

"a) The CPB Board shall cease direct funding to NPR and PBS, consistent with my Administration's policy to ensure that Federal funding does not support biased and partisan news coverage. The CPB Board shall cancel existing direct funding to the maximum extent allowed by law and shall decline to provide future funding 1 May 2025"