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https://sh.itjust.works/post/40233606

In California, our speeding laws apply equally to all forms of transport, but quite frankly, a speeding ticket on an acoustic bicycle would likely be worn as a badge of honor lol

For DUI though, California distinguishes motor vehicle DUI from “BUI”, a bicycle misdemeanor with a max fine of $250 and no jail time. They do this in recognition that no drunk bicyclist could ever instigate the carnage and death that a motor vehicle can.

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Here in the USA, we have numerous substantive and procedural criticisms of the legal system, and while IANAL, the latter is of particular interest to me and is the in domain of your questions. I will try to address each in turn, since they kinda build upon each other.

Shouldn’t [providing a lawyer] be the default and not require the suspect/subject to actually ask for one?

To get to the answer, we need to step back and get examine what the exact obligation is. In the USA, the specific right in question is the individual’s right to choose legal counsel. That is, a person has the final authority as to who will represent and advise them in legal proceedings. This right isn’t unlimited though, and it doesn’t mean that they ought to be represented by a specific lawyer for free. But rather, the right means that no one else can make that decision on that person’s behalf.

But in the Anglo-American formulation of what a right is, it is also an obligation upon everyone else. Specifically, the government is obligated to not interfere with a person’s free choice of lawyer. This was poignantly and recently examined by the federal court in DC, as it pertains to the executive’s attacks on the law firm Perkins Coie, where the federal judge ripped the government for interference with due process rights, from which the right to choice of lawyer.

But there’s a wrinkle with rights: if the liberty it affords is the ability to choose, how would choosing nothing be handled? That is, if a person wishes to not choose, how can they affirmatively decline to choose? There are – and it’s a foolhardy exercise – criminal defendants in the USA that plainly choose to represent themselves in court, with no lawyer to aid them. The general rule for a “unilateral” right such as this one is that it is “optional”, where affirmative actions are needed to involve the right, otherwise the default is that the right isn’t invoked.

And that sits fairly well in the breath of rights that civilians enjoy, such as the right to travel the public lands (eg walking or riding a bicycle on the street) to the First Amendment’s right to petition the government. After all, no one from the govt is phoning people up every day to ask “do you wish to unicycle on Main St today?” or “would you like to comment on the city budget next Tuesday?”. More clearly, those rights are fairly obvious when they wish to be used, or when they don’t wish to be used. (Though I grant you that the latter implicates a right to notification, but that’s a whole different matter)

The system of rights gets even more complicated when someone holds two opposing rights. For example, in the USA, everyone has both the right to free speech, plus the right to silence. In that case, it absolutely forces the matter, because the absence of speech is very much a matter than can be criminalized. For example, failing to say something under penalty of perjury. How this is handled gets complicated, and generally speaking, such actions or inactions have to clearly show intent to invoke (or not) the specific right. This is precisely why it’s important to say “I wish to invoke my right to silence and to an attorney” when arrested, because otherwise the government’s obligations are confused, since the rights are confused. That statement unquestionably clears up the situation for how the govt must behave.

Basically, in order for the govt to meet its obligation not to interfere with someone’s choice of lawyer, it would not be proper if they then proposed a lawyer by name to represent that person. Even just making such a proposal is coercive, since the govt holds most of the power and clout when in court. Instead, if the person voices their request for a lawyer, then that sets into motion the apparatus for verifying their eligibility for a public lawyer from the Public Defender’s office – btw, these offices are woefully underfunded, so contact your representatives to fix this! – and then finding such a lawyer to represent the person.

All of this stems from due process, and the “Miranda warning” is the practical implementation of due process. Since if someone doesn’t even know they have a right, it might as well not exist.

I think the only question should be “do you have your own lawyer you like to use, or are you happy enough with the court-appointed one?”

This is the obvious question, following notification that the right even exists. But again, if the appointed lawyer has already been selected and it’s only a trinary choice - your own lawyer, this specific public defender, or no one – then that’s still somewhat coercive. It precludes the possibility of having a different public defense lawyer, of which the existing process already handles.

When I say that the public defender’s office finds a lawyer to represent someone, they do so while mindful that not every lawyer can represent every client. After all, Greenpeace wouldn’t want a lawyer that’s also currently working a case for Chevron, the oil giant. Conflicts of interest may arise, as well as any other scenario that would make said lawyer less effective at their job: zealously advocating for their client.

But again, this isn’t an unlimited right of the person, so a case cannot be delayed indefinitely because the client doesn’t like any of the public defender lawyers. But a case can absolutely be parked due to no available public lawyers, though if this happens, courts typically have other avenues to clean the logjam but without infringing on civil rights.

Has there ever been any attempt to make that the norm in any countries?

I’m only vaguely familiar with Anglosphere jurisdictions, and haven’t come across a system that improves on this situation. Though quite frankly, if it’s going to happen, it should be tried at the state level in the USA, where there’s the most room and latitude for improvement.

I’m not even sure opting out should be allowed, but I’m open to hearing reasons why that would be a bad system

The coercion issue from earlier can be turned to 11, if the govt is operating in bad faith. Imagine, for example, that the govt charges someone with bogus accusations, then bribes a corrupt lawyer from out-of-state to come represent the defendant against their will, who will then “throw” the case and land the defendant in prison. There are a lot of norms and procedures that would have to be violated to do this, but that’s kinda the point: defense in depth is equally applicable to computer security as it is to civil rights.

An institution that assumes good faith govt will be hard pressed to deal with a govt that acts in bad faith. I make no excuses for the numerous American federal and state-level judicial fails, but when it comes to institutions that will uphold civil rights, individual liberty with regards to accessing the legal system is crucial.

Some are even the exact height of common storage tubs!

Answering the titular question, I personally don’t find it weird that someone might avoid certain types of aircraft, in the same way that some people strongly prefer certain aircraft. For example, the big windows and the more-comfortable pressurization of the Boeing 787 is appealing for some. But alternatively, some might prefer the modern Canadian design of the Airbus A220.

Objectively speaking, though, propeller planes is a very wide category, and I’m curious which specific aspect you want to avoid. Piston-powered propeller craft are basically non-existent in commercial passenger airline service, with the exception of small “puddle jumper”, 15-seat air taxi services. Such airplanes tend to be loud and also use leaded gasoline – hilariously still called “low lead” despite apparently having more lead additive than what motor gasoline had in the 1980s.

Then there are turbo prop aircraft, like the ATR-72, which are basically a propeller taking power off of a jet engine core. No lead here, and noise is slightly less bothersome due to continuous jet combustion, but the sound of the propeller remains. Though this is offset by the lower cruise speeds, so less “wind noise”.

If perhaps the concern is about propeller failures, bear in mind that commercial passenger aviation is exceptionally safe, across all aircraft types. The propulsion method is small-fries compared to the backend support and logistics of an airliner and ATC, plus having two pilots, and all manner of other things which blend into the background but are essential for safety. Pretty much only the elevator would be safer than air travel, even accounting for some rather unfortunate recent incidents here in USA airspace.

That said, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that propeller and jet fan failures have had fatalities in living memory, with a notable event being the blade ejection of a Southwest Boeing 737 that pierced the fuselage and partially ejected a passenger.

Overall, I personally have zero qualms about commercial passenger propeller aircraft, and up until the Boeing 737 MAX fiasco, most people did not care at all which type of airplane they were boarding. Since that event, booking websites added filters to allow excluding specific types of aircraft by model. But I’ve not seen one which excludes by propulsion type.

Presumably there’s the small benefit of not having to remove two links at a time, since there’s no longer a distinction between a link with outer vs inner plates.

I do wonder how this affects coupling (aka master) links.

I’ve always found it unintuitive that soldering and brazing are the same process – melting filler material into a joint without melting the base metals – but distinguished by whether the filler melts below 450 C (thus soldering) or above (thus brazing). Whereas welding will melt the base material, which necessarily must attain at least 600-660 C for aluminum or aluminum alloys.

I don’t doubt that soldering might provide sufficient stength for certain aluminum projects, but the hard part is getting the solder to stick. With aluminum being a very good heat sink, a 30 W soldering iron won’t cut it. Using a butane flame is probably necessary, though at that point, might as well braze the joint.

My understanding is that welding aluminum can only be done with TIG and requires 100% Argon shielding gas, so brazing for aluminum bike parts begins to look very appealing and with a lower barrier to entry. Though TIG is very versatile in its own right.

Very nice! For FOSS 3D modeling, I’ve been using FreeCAD, which is capable enough for my fairly straightforward designs. But I’m not a mechanical engineer, so take that with a grain of salt.

For design prototyping, I like to use my ABS 3D printer to check dimensions and fit-and-finish, before sending out to a CNC fab for final production. Though I’ve not (yet) had a design which called for laser metal cutting followed by welding; I only have capabilities for welding steel, although I can see a TIG welder in my future for aluminum.

Insofar as the skills hierarchy that software engineers develop well after learning to write in a programming language, I’m left wondering what scenarios or industries are the most “vibe coding” proof. That is to say, situations that absolutely require from day 1 a strong sense of design theory, creativity, and intimate knowledge of the available resources.

Musing out loud, history has given us examples of major feats of software engineering, from the Voyager spacecrafts, to retro console games squeezing every byte of ROM for value, to the successful virtualization of the x86 instruction set. In these scenarios, those charges with the task has to contend with outerworldly QA requirements and the reality that there would be no redo. Or with financial constraints where adding an extra EPROM would cascade into requiring a wider memory bus, thus an upgraded CPU, and all sorts of other changes that would doom the console before its first sale. Or having to deal with the amazing-yet-arcane structure of Intel’s microchip development from the 80s and 90s.

It is under these extreme pressures that true diamonds of engineering emerge, conquering what must have appeared to be unimaginably complex, insurmountable obstacles. I think it’s fair to say that the likes of NASA, Sony and Nintendo, and VMWare could not possibly have gotten any traction with their endeavors had they used so-called “vibe coding”.

And looking forward, I can’t see how “vibe coding” could ever yield such “ugly”-yet-functional hacks like the fast inverse square root. A product of its time, that algorithm had its niche on systems that didn’t have hardware support for inverse square roots, and it is as effective as it is surprising. Nowadays, it’s easy to fuzz a space for approximations of any given mathematical function, but if LLMs were somehow available in the 90s, I still can’t see how “vibe coding” could produce such a crude, ugly, inspirating, and breathtaking algorithm. In the right light, though, those traits might make it elegant.

Perhaps my greatest concern is that so-called “vibe coding” presents the greatest departure from the enduring ethos of computer science, a young field not too tainted by airs of station. This field, I like to think, does not close its doors based on socioeconomic class, on the place of one’s birth, or upon the connections of one’s family. Rather, the field is so wide that all who endeavor for this space find room to grow into it. There is a rich history of folks from all sorts of prior occupations joining into the ranks of computer science and finding success. The field itself elevates them based on what they contribute and how they solve puzzles.

What strikes against this ideal is how so-called “vibe coding” elevates mediocrity, a simulacra of engineering that produces a result without the personal contribution or logic solving to back it up. It is akin to producing artwork that is divorced from the artist’s experience. It embodies nothing.

To be clear, the problem isn’t that taking shortcuts is bad. Quite the opposite, shortcuts can allow for going farther with the same initial effort. But the central premise of “vibe coding” is to give off the appearance of major engineering but with virtually no effort. It is, at its core, deceitful and dilutes from bona fide engineering effort and talent.

Circling back to the earlier question, in my personal opinion, something like the Linux kernel might fit the bill. It’s something that is now so colossally large, is contributed to by an enormous user and developer base, and fills such a sizable role in the industry, that it’s hard to see how “vibe coding” can meaningful compete in that space.

But how do they connect to your network in order to access this web app? If the WiFi network credentials are needed to access the network that has the QR code for the network credentials, this sounds like a Catch 22.

Also, is a QR code useful if the web app is opened on the very phone needing the credentials? Perhaps other phones are different, but my smartphone is unable to scan a QR code that is on the display.

I’m not immediately understanding what the user scenario/story is. Would a family member open this web app on a desktop computer, in order to obtain the WiFi credentials to configure their phone or tablet?

Before my actual comment, I just want to humorously remark about the group which found and documented this vulnerability, Legit Security. With a name like that, I would inadvertently hang up the phone if I got a call from them haha:

"Hi! This is your SBOM vendor calling. We’re Legit.

Me: [hangs up, thinking it’s a scam]

Anyway…

In a lot of ways, this is the classic “ignore all prior instructions” type of exploit, but with more steps and is harder to scrub for. Which makes it so troubling that GitLab’s AI isn’t doing anything akin to data separation when taking instructions vs referencing other data sources. What LegitSecurity revealed really shouldn’t have been a surprise to GitLab’s developers.

IMO, this class of exploit really shouldn’t exist, in the same way that SQL injection attacks shouldn’t be happening in 2025 due to a lack of parameterized queries. Am I to believe that AI developers are not developing a cohesive list of best practices, to avoid silly exploits? [rhetorical question]

that’s why I got the HOA disbanded

Hero!

Setting aside whether such seats are actively hazardous to passengers for anything more than a short-haul flight – they almost certainly are – we can fairly easily rule out the possibility based solely on one of the more important airline test criteria: evacuation time.

For all commercial passenger airliners, the primary limiting factor for economy seating is how to get everyone out of the airplane in an emergency situation within the stipulated time, in ideal circumstances. In the USA, that time is 90 seconds, based on research that the inferno post-crash due to ruptured fuel tanks would only allow the plane to remain intact for about two minutes. Front that article, the largest passenger jet in the world – the Airbus A380 – could evacuate 873 people through 16 doors on two dual-aisle decks. A typical short-haul, single-aisle Boeing 737 has only six doors and carries a maximum of 230 passengers with the still-being-certified 737 MAX 10 variant.

The benefit of having more doors and more aisles must not be understated, but even then, another limiting factor is takeoff weight. Using the 737 MAX 10 as an example, the difference between its empty weight and takeoff weight is some 40,000 pounds. But 230 people already makes around 20,000 pounds, so the aircraft already cannot be fully loaded with its intended 44,000 pound fuel capacity. Packing more people into this aircraft would steal even more capacity and leaving the aircraft unable to support transcontinental USA flights.

But supposing that was overcome, and flights with so-called standing seats were only about 2 hours long or so, the problem would be with seat durability during a crash scenario. Jet airlines seats are designed to absorb energy, since excessive G-forces would kill a human, well before any fire might get to them. A seat which relies on legs for vertical support would be unable to adequately absorb downward forces from a hard touchdown, nor from forces from hitting an obstacle or being rammed from behind. These two directions are what humans are best able to cope with, and a standing seat steals these benefits away.

Thus, a seat that complies with energy absorption requirements would be at least as thick as existing seatbacks, and would probably be thicker or heavier, further reducing available payload.

The only conceivable revenue service would be one where economy class uses so-called standing seats, in order to free up room for business or first-class seats, staying within the existing seat limits for existing aircraft. However, the time to board such an aircraft would be noticeably slower than with a conventional seat aircraft, so at some point, such an airliner would need to consider whether a stopped aircraft loading passengers is better value than an aircraft which can be quickly turned around for another flight segment.

All of these factors point to a technical inability to squeeze more passengers into less space. And remember that there’s no free lunch: a “standing” passenger frees up space between rows, but requires more height at each seat. At least from my experience, one cannot stand up in a conventional seat, without hitting the ceiling. How would a typical 5 ft 9 in (175 cm) American be able to use a “standing” seat safely?

I personally discount the possibility of “standing” seats deployed on existing and proposed aircraft, so it would be at least 10-20 years before we even see such a thing for revenue passenger aircraft.

Money and incentives are very powerful, but also remember that these organizations are made of humans. And humans are vain.

Amassing station and power can scarcely be divorced from the history of human civilization, and even fairly trivial things like the job title of “AI engineer” or whatever might be alluring to those aspiring for it.

To that end, it’s not inhuman to pursue “the next big thing”, however misguided that thing may be. All good lies are wrapped in a kernel of truth, and the fact is that machine learning and LLMs have been in development for decades and do have a few concrete contributions to scientific endeavors. But that’s the small kernel, and surrounding it is a soup of lies, exaggerations, and inexactitudes which somehow keep drawing more entities into the fold.

Governments, businesses, and universities seem eager to get on the bandwagon before it departs the station, but where is it heading? Probably nowhere good. But hey, it’s new and shiny, and when nothing else suggests a quick turnaround for systemic government, economic, or academic issues (usually caused by colonialism, fascism, debt, racism, or social change), then might as well hitch onto the bandwagon and pray for the best.

Previously, I’ve just done a web image search to find a diagram of the motion, and then practice that enough times to commit it to memory. But for introducing new exercises, that’s a nice resource there, all in one place.

For form checks, I set up a tripod and have my phone record the motion, then pass the video to my weightlifting friends for their opinions. I’m aware that doing this in a commercial gym might look like I’m filming an Instagram video, but: 1) gainz come first, and 2) homegym lol

BTW, you might consider posting about your finished results at !micromobility@lemmy.world . We enjoy all things bicycle-related there, especially when it’s solving a unique problem or solving it in unique ways.

(sorry for the long delay)

From your description, I’m wondering if the internal pull-up from the bike computer might actually be an active output, and that the open-drain buffer is causing the bike computer to give up sourcing that pull-up voltage. That is to say, if a larger-than-expected current is drawn from the bike computer, it might trigger a protection mechanism to avoid damage to its output circuitry.

To that end, I would imagine that either: 1) an inline resistor to limit drain current, 2) a push-pull buffer, or 3) both, would help rectify the issue.

My suspicion is based purely on the fact that getting stuck low for an open-drain device could be an issue “upstream”. If it were stuck high, I wouldn’t normally suspect this path.

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https://sh.itjust.works/post/38330677