My issue with this is that it works well with sample code but not as well with real-world situations where maintaining a state is important. What if rider.preferences was expensive to calculate?

Note that this code will ignore a rider’s preferences if it finds a lower-rated driver before a higher-rated driver.

With that said, I often work on applications where even small improvements in performance are valuable, and that is far from universal in software development. (Generally developer time is much more expensive than CPU time.) I use C++ so I can read this like pseudocode but I’m not familiar with language features that might address my concerns.

That’s actually a very low price for an anti-air missile. For comparison, the Stinger shoulder-fired missile costs more than twice as much. A Patriot missile costs four million dollars (but is much more capable). Presumably minimizing cost was a high priority when this missile was designed. Nonetheless, the cost asymmetry is one reason why degrading the ability of Hamas and Hezbollah to fire missiles at Israel is important.

It’s funny because I have the opposite impression. Some Americans feel guilty after studying American history. (Why feel guilty? You’re not the ones responsible.) These Americans seek to absolve themselves of that perceived guilt by identifying something far away that matches the “white vs non white” pattern that they’re looking for, so that they can feel righteous by condemning it without actually having to change how they live their own lives.

I meant manual transmissions, not supercars.

I want my next car to be a Miata.

This is the first time I’ve seen a machine with both a 5.25 floppy disk drive and a CD drive. It wasn’t like that stock, was it?

I thought I would never possibly want an EV, but the acceleration of the Teslas is impressive enough to tempt me. The guy I know who has one accelerates hard enough to push me back into my seat during city driving. As in, he’s stopped at a red light and then he’s going 30 the moment it turns green. His Tesla goes from 0 to 60 in 3 seconds, as opposed to over 6 in my '08 328i. The M series BMWs can match a Tesla’s acceleration, but the BMWs cost a lot more.

I mean, I’m still not getting an EV. But now I am tempted… Maybe if they had real, physical dials instead of a computer screen?

I would guess that there’s more demand for manuals from older people than from younger people. Younger people can’t be nostalgic about stick shifting.

Subaru WRX with the Performance Transmission

I haven’t tried them myself (I’m not a big WRX fan in general) but I hear a lot of complaining about them and not a lot of praise.

I have only tried paddle shifters on other people’s cars so I couldn’t do anything too exciting. They will really refuse to shift sometimes even if the result would be within the operating parameters of the engine/transmission? Is that just a problem with some models or is it universal?

I do admit that I enjoy the feeling of being able to blow up my engine if I feel like it… (Actually I’m not sure the synchros would let me do that.)

CVTs, in apples for apples comparisons, kind of are the best of both worlds.

In theory they have advantages, but in practice they’re probably the worst kind of transmission you could get right now unless you’re driving a low-horsepower econo-car. (Even then I don’t think I’d want one; I’d rather pay a little more for gas than risk an expensive early transmission failure.)

I love manuals but while they do give more control than a basic automatic transmission, I don’t think I could argue that they give more control than an automatic with paddle shifters.

The M series cars still have manual as an option, although IIRC the automatic versions have better performance. They’re a bit outside of my price range, so I’m trying to keep my old manual 328i running as long as I can.

Please see this comment. Also, I don’t know how exactly albinism works on the genetic level but it’s a recessive condition and those are often caused by loss-of-function mutations. I prefer the word “nonfunctional” rather than “dysfunctional” to describe genes and proteins in order to avoid the appearance of a moral judgement (although albinism is harmful, especially without modern technology) but “nonfunction” isn’t a word.

I’m not aware of any negative ramifications, but the naming is not a matter of ramifications. This isn’t just an abstract change from more body odor to less body odor. Proteins are machines, there’s a particular protein machine for moving certain molecules out of cells and into sweat, and in people with this mutation that machine doesn’t work. Consider an analogy to a light switch. It’s not a toggle between “emit brightness” and “emit darkness”. There’s a machine on the ceiling for converting electrical energy into light. When the switch is in one position that machine is functioning, and when the switch is in the other position the machine is not functioning. In other words, darkness isn’t an alternate way for the machine to function, but rather the consequence of the machine not functioning.

The lightbulb analogy isn’t perfect because you could say that the switch and lightbulb together are the machine, and that the function of this machine includes the capability to switch on and off in response to a signal. There are many proteins that can also be switched on or off and they’re not “nonfunctional” even when they’re “not functioning”. However, this mutation doesn’t create a protein that can be switched on and off, so I suppose you can think of it like smashing a light which you can’t control with a switch. Maybe the light was annoying and you’re happier without it, but you still broke it.

The condition is caused by a loss-of-function mutation. It’s a statement about a protein, not about the whole person.

Edit: ChatGPT explains it better than I can.

The ABCC11 gene encodes an apical efflux pump that helps transport fatty compounds, or lipids, from cells into sweat. When the gene is non-functional, these lipids can’t cross the membrane barrier to reach the armpit. This prevents bacteria from accessing and metabolizing the organic compounds in sweat, which in turn reduces the production of odorant substances.

The old Disney princess movies (Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty with the exception of Maleficent although I suppose she’s not a princess. She should have known not to turn into a dragon because a Disney Prince can’t physically hurt a woman.) were not very interesting but that might just be because they’re old and we have different standards for movies now. Ariel, Belle, and Jasmine were cool (keeping in mind that Jasmine wasn’t the main character). Those were the ones I’m old enough to have seen as a child.

As a boy I liked reading about boys going on adventures, but I also liked pirates, aliens, superheroes, knights, robots, etc. I think I liked all those more than I liked boys going on adventures. The ideal was a combination of the two, like Treasure Island. A girl going on an adventure was also more interesting if the girl was a princess, and in fact I liked Disney movies.

I don’t think I would have liked Ghibli movies when I was a kid. Nausicaa and Mononoke would have been too scary and the others would have been boring. (But I confess that as an adult I only like those two scary ones and I think the others are boring, which is an opinion other people tend not to share.)

There were ones that unambiguously looked like women but the proportions of the Lego minifig are so unfeminine that they were quite ugly.

They had Lego sets in the 90s that seemed to be designed for girls - the “Paradisia” line. These were like doll-houses (and doll-beaches, doll-horse-ranches, etc. - the sort of places Barbie might go if she were Lego-sized) with tasteful use of pink and plenty of Lego people with feminine outfits and hairstyles.

My sister would get Paradisia sets because she always wanted to do what I was doing, but she didn’t actually like playing with them very much. I would end up putting them together myself along with my robots and spaceships.