And supposedly Stong A.I. Is just around the corner...
Crazy.
On the heels of an IT error leading to Great Western Rail advertising a first-class journey from Taunton to Trowbridge for £10,000 comes an exponentially more expensive offer from National Rail. Our thanks to Reg reader Andrew for sending this screenshot in, dug up from his personal chuckle archives, advertising the "cheapest …
AI learns from humans.
Humans make errors.
If 'judgement day' does come and we get wiped out it'll probably be because it learnt how to be stupid, and stupidity without any sort of conscience is some scary shit.
For god's sake don't let AI watch Jackass, or any 'reality' tv for that matter.
I recall from the documentaries I've seen about the Apollo programme that nutrition came from packets of goop consumed through a straw and all defecation, etc. was into a bag.
To be fair, that sounds better than the facilities on some trains that I've traveled on in this country in recent years.
To be fair, that sounds better than the facilities on some trains that I've traveled on in this country in recent years.
At Harlech, not too far from the school, the tracks cross the main road. Points would be scored for flushing as the train crosses the tracks the day after an evening at the 'Passage To India'.
Double points would be scored if the barriers held back scores of school children and mumsies.
anon for obvious reasons.
"And how, pray, is one meant to differentiate?"
Assuming you missed A level maths, you start by placing a tangent to the (rail) line and moving it till it intersects two points. Then you work out the x and y coordinates of the points, and work out y in terms of x. Then subtract the coordinates of one point from the other (X). Then extrapolate what will happen as the value of the interval delta-x approaches zero. You have now calculated the gradient of the line, dy/dx at the point X. While at the points, please make sure the bolts are tightened correctly. Also ensure the line is continuous. That has led to problems in the past. Extra marks will be given for handling the case where the line has the wrong kinds of leaves on it.
Rail tickets? Sorry, that's senior wrangler stuff.
Funnily enough, I also started thinking about how to do differential equations when I saw the word "exponentially" in the article. AFAICR, differentiating ex with respect to x (can't do fancy LaTeX or mathml markup here) is ex. "Exponential" means that we have a superincreasing sequence since the dy/dx (slope) at each point is constantly increasing (approaching infinity) in the x direction.
It doesn't make sense to compare two numbers and say that the second is an exponential increase over the first. There's no curve (or an infinite number of curves), just a straight line between two points, so "exponential" doesn't apply.
There may be an order of (base 10) magnitude between the two prices, though, which would be mathematically correct.
(Yeah, I know, I'm being really pedantic here. That's why I'm making a comment, not using the "make corrections" link.)
Apparently £999,998 was the price in 2011.
I don't know the details but I presume that these are cases where data has been input either with the correct price not available - so replaced with 999999 or whatever - or never to be used for some reason, e.g. the rail service is freight only, so, the out-of-range value should ensure that this data is never offered as the price of a passenger ticket. Except when it is.
There also are the secretive so-called modern day "Parliamentary trains" which they do not want people to use. Or at least they don't encourage it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_train
Some of these do not run as trains (and possibly couldn't) but as either so-called "replacement bus service" or, if I remember rightly from a BBC radio programme, if you want to go then they call (and they pay for) a taxi for you.
In a different circumstance, an accidental line closure when I wanted to travel recently, the masses of passengers in one direction got buses booked hastily, and I was one of a few passengers going in the opposite direction for whom a shared taxi ride was provided. Nice!
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Yes, it's £22 if you want to arrive today or in the near future, but if you want to arrive in Cambridge on the 15 January 2011 then £999,998 seems reasonable; £22 for the rail travel and £999,976 for the time travel.
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Which is why some of us have switched to using a TARDIS for those types of trips.
I have noticed that there are some interesting options come up for St Pancras to Kings Cross.
First option is typically 1 minute walk.
Other options include (for £6):
St Pancras -Blackfriars - Kings Cross
St Pancras - Kings Cross - Finsbury Park - Kings Cross
St Pancras - Highbury & Islington - Finsbury Park - Kings Cross
Curiously Kings Cross to St Pancras only comes up with the 1 minute walk and a comment "No fares are available"
A lot of those are meant for money laundering or drug deals. The seller puts up a $100 item up for sale, but charges $1000 for it so that no one would buy it normally while providing cover for their criminal activity. Everything looks legitimate from Law Enforcement's and Amazon's point of view, so the risk of getting caught is minimal. The only way they could get caught (without getting either end to give up the other) would be for someone knowledgeable about that specific item and what it should cost to report it.
This happened to me a few years back, I ordered some parts for an old system, so ended up buying a module that was 10x the price as it should have been (needed it last minute and needed a new one, it was the only one available at the time). Arrived the next day and overheated after a few hours of use, pulled it apart to discover that the fans were blocked by a bag of cocaine wedged into the device. Reported it to the police and they took it away for evidence, but still haven't gotten the damn device back...
We can't be bothered adjusting for inflation, currency fluctuations and whatever other processes might be necessary to cobble this numerical comparison into something remotely resembling anything other than a back-of-a-beermat chuckle, but we're pretty sure that, had Andrew purchased the ticket, he would in some way or another be the equal of Armstrong and Aldrin.
USD$61 in 1973 is, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics' CPI Inflation Calculator about USD$350 in 2017.
GBP£138.88 is currently USD$178.25.
So the train ticket is roughly half as expensive (per second) as the Apollo program was.