lxgr

11 ms·

211.
by lxgr 4mo ago
All of it. You can't really get around physics. Iridium has historically targeted low-power, omnidirectional terminals (antennas can be larger at lower frequencies without requiring steering than at higher frequencies). They recently h
212.
by lxgr 4mo ago
They didn't circumvent phone antennas being largely omnidirectional (unlike VSAT or phased arrays, which are highly directional) and as a result having much lower gain, they just work with it, just like Iridium, Globalstar, Inmarsat, T
213.
by lxgr 4mo ago
Iridium is launching 5G standards-based direct-to-device capabilities this year: https://www.iridium.com/services/iridium-ntn-direct
214.
by lxgr 4mo ago
> I think a more sane approach would to require every copyright takedown to require a court order. In a country with an efficient legal system, maybe… Requiring the claimant to put something at stake (make it a nominal deposit you get ba
215.
by lxgr 4mo ago
> you use binary floating point where a value of 1.0d = 0.000001 dollars Is that actually better than just defining one dollar as 1.0? In my (pretty limited) understanding of floats, this doesn't seem to add any precision or prevent
216.
by lxgr 4mo ago
Financial applications need user interface elements too, and doing these poorly has caused quite some [1] harm in the past... [1] https://financialregulation.linklaters.com/post/102j8af/the-...
217.
by lxgr 4mo ago
Why wouldn't I take it personally if some corporation decides that blocking their existing customers based on purported geographic location (VPNs exist, people travel etc.) is acceptable collateral damage in their presumably largely in
218.
by lxgr 4mo ago
Too many American websites these days put random geoblocking in place. What’s even more frustrating is when it happens without any explanation in mobile apps via breaking a few specific APIs. Just yesterday I was struggling with a bank&#x2F
219.
by lxgr 4mo ago
I think you’re mixing up clouds here… It’s really annoying, but even if Cloudflare/AWS etc. offer a big “block all access from abroad/evil GDPR abroad/…”, I feel like the site owner is still the one to blame for pressing it.
220.
by lxgr 4mo ago
Usually that, but in binary, which causes lots of headaches for financial math.
221.
by lxgr 4mo ago
Ideally it’s not, but I’ve seen it leak so often that I’d rather be safe than sorry.
222.
by lxgr 4mo ago
That’s alright, the important part here is that they’re decimal, not binary. You don’t want 0.1 + 0.2 to equal 0.300…004.
223.
by lxgr 4mo ago
Because it's much more explicit. Computers are fast, engineering is expensive. You usually never want to optimize prematurely when dealing with monetary amounts.
224.
by lxgr 4mo ago
Please show me the regulation that tells me whether to use big decimals or integers in my internal monetary amount representation. Regulations usually care about outcomes (sometimes high, sometimes low level); they often don't tell you
225.
by lxgr 4mo ago
Yes, definitely always include the number of digits, but at your system boundary you still have to pray that whoever you're working with isn't silently dropping that number and re-deriving it from their own, almost-4217-compliant
226.
by lxgr 4mo ago
If there were a simple one-size-fits-all solution to these problems, there wouldn't be a need for a handbook, nor for a discussion, would there? I can't design everybody's systems here, but I was hoping that sharing some war
227.
by lxgr 4mo ago
True, but this is usually your least concern when you're dealing with monetary amounts/math.
228.
by lxgr 4mo ago
You'll have to decide when and how to round. Keeping individual billing items at high precision and rounding after summing them up can work; defining and documenting a rounding policy (or complying with whatever's legally required
229.
by lxgr 4mo ago
> The semantics for your string “10.00” are complex - is it considered equal to “10”? Yes, but "10 USD" would be a non-canonical representation and you probably serialized incorrectly. > To “10.000”? Yes, but same caveat as
230.
by lxgr 4mo ago
"Not thinking, just complying" isn't the panacea for good outcomes you make it out to be. You definitely want to limit the amount of excitement, but I've seen many issues caused by legacy formats and practices as well. &
231.
by lxgr 4mo ago
Native decimal types, if your system has them. Many languages and databases used in financial contexts do.
232.
by lxgr 4mo ago
The brittleness comes from the fact that the number of implied decimal digits per currency isn't always well-defined across all stakeholders and systems. If you're only working in a single currency, there's usually no issue.
233.
by lxgr 4mo ago
> Keeping the financial data whilst trashing the customer names, addresses etc. instantly on-demand before the expiry of the relevant time periods [...] Where does TFA recommend that? As I see it, it recommends separating PII data you&
234.
by lxgr 4mo ago
Big decimals are widely available and don’t require any expertise but avoid many of the footguns of implied decimal integers.
235.
by lxgr 4mo ago
Except that now you have a new problem: Opinionated theorists that haven’t been part of a nasty “oh no, we accidentally considered some amounts as 10x/100x/1000x larger/smaller than expected” incident in their career yet…
236.
by lxgr 4mo ago
> thank you Rust decimals represented as JSON floats What do you mean? JSON doesn’t have floats, it has numbers, and how they’re used after being parsed is not part of the spec. > If I ever see a monetary value stored in something els
237.
by lxgr 4mo ago
Unary is exactly as expressive as decimal or binary for integers, but somewhat less efficient, so why would you?
238.
by lxgr 4mo ago
JPY not having any minor units is arguably not a “third party quirk” but just how the currency works. The same goes for various three decimal digit currencies.
239.
by lxgr 4mo ago
If you’re only trading in USD and other two-decimal currencies it can work fine, yes. For anything else, it’s much worse as also detailed in TFA.
240.
by lxgr 4mo ago
Not at all, and thanks for writing all of this up!

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