Unfortunately, those scores are not reliable. It is a recurring problem with the USA for the PISA studies.
The preliminary chapter explains why data has lower confidence is some places. For the USA, there were many problems, including political reluctance in some states or schools, that lead to uncontrolled biases. Notably, the ratio of unreachable children is 40 %, twice more than their upper limit for valid results.
Yes, bzip3 compresses that 1GB text file into 170 MB while zstd needs 213 MB (SI units, from my own tests with the "enwik9" file of the GP's page, and the latest releases of both programs, same commands). But the decompression (memory and speed) is a different story.
On my desktop, decompressing with zstd requires 128 MB and 1 s, while bzip3 uses 3.2 GB and 90 s.
Without `-b 511`, bzip3's ratio decreases and decompression requires about the same memory as zstd. But the decompression is still two orders of magnitude slower.
Feels like it's the opposite of what it should be. It's fine to impose the world on the compression side, but decompression should be optimized for low-end devices. This is where deflate and zstd get it.
Maybe in Japan it will be effective. Since their "zone 30" creation was apparently a success, it seems probable that people will generally comply. My experience in France differs.
I live in a French town where the default speed limit is 30 km/h instead of the national 50 km/h. In the street where I live, the drivers that willingly (sometimes they can't overtake bikes and slow cars) observe that limit are a tiny minority. Why would they, since there are no automated controls in the city, and police sets manual controls once in a blue moon.
My street was already at 30 km/h in 2016 when the global speed limit was introduced by the city council. I'm pretty sure the mean speed has increased since then, though I don't have hard facts to prove it[^1]. At first I thought that, since all road signs were removed except on the city borders, the drivers needed a constant reminder of a limit that they'd prefer to ignore. Now I just think that people soon saw that there was almost no risk in breaking the law.
[^1]: There was a study, but the methodology was so poor that it was inconclusive. They monitored the speed in a dozen streets before and after the change, but it was done for different lengths of time (one or two weeks), at different times of the year, and with explicitly no attention payed to potential popular events or roadworks. So the average speed was globally lower after the change, but in most streets it had increased!
Street bumps are much more efficient in lowering speed than either "automated controls" or "manual controls". You (plus neighbours, probably) could petition your council to put one (or several) on your street.
The elegant way to implement such a speed limit is to have the driver do a "slalom" between things like trees or parking spots set alternatively between the two sides of the street, or green islands in the middle of the street. It forces a low driving speed without the discomfort and potential damage caused by speed bumps.
Street bumps are a discomfort even for those who respect the speed limit, and sometimes for residents (more noise) so they don't have popular support unless it's a problematic area, with a low safety record. There are high tech bumps that incorporate a radar sped detector and instantly raise in front of speeding cars but there are costly and require more maintenance.
Yes, the idea is to provide drivers with clues as to the relevant speed. Straight roads are usually designed to prioritise motorised vehicles and often need speed limits to try to control the drivers. By designing in chicanes and narrow sections, drivers don't usually have to be told to slow down. Also, having plenty of trees makes roads a lot nicer and you may even get free road bumps from their roots.
I pass three speed bumps on my street every day. I'm driving at low speed, and the bumps are designed so to not create discomfort at these speeds. I don't even brake before them. They only create discomfort to people who drive way above the limit, which is the whole purpose, and the bumps are very effective at that.
> I pass three speed bumps on my street. I'm driving at low speed [...] I don't even brake before them
That's a lot of "I"s for something so many other drivers in the world have to drive across, in many, many different designs. Bumps, "nipples", cushions, tables, bars, made from rubber, asphalt, cobble stone, metal, with different ratios between height and width, different profiles, etc.
But it also depends on the car, doesn't it? Some suspensions are harder, some cars are lower, this creates discomfort or damage. Sometimes they have to rev the engine to cross over at very low speed. Not to mention larger and heavier cars like vans or garbage trucks which also damage the bump on top of everything else. Sometimes even cyclists have to put their butt on the line. The Wikipedia page would have put your personal experience in context [1]. Speed bumps are the cheap for the city but there are compromises.
Many countries with well thought out traffic use bumps where safety is paramount, like raised pedestrian crossings (table). The rest of the speed limiting effect is achieved with smart road design wherever possible.
You are likely referring to prefabricated rubber speed bumps, outlawed because the material becomes very slippery when wet, endangering motorcycles, scooters, and bicycles.
Asphalt and concrete street bumps seem to be legal in 30 km/h zones.
Street bumps damage cars, make noise and create even more pollution. I head of a neighborhood action were drivers were honking on newly installed speed bumps. Until they got removed.
Reducing the speed limit often does little in itself because the v85 (85th percentile of speeds) is more dependent on how fast drivers feel it is safe to drive. Streets should be (re-)designed so that the limit and drivers’ intuition match, but that, of course, takes time and money (and will). Still, it’s much more economical in the long run than active monitoring/enforcement.
I'm a busybody. I have bought radar guns from eBay. I have lightly shamed the local authorities with data. There are now more physical speed controls (more signs, speed bumps, one way roads) in my local area. Perhaps my nagging helped. I like to think it did. Start chipping away at it. If not you, then who?
It will probably never happen, but maybe it's a way to facilitate the creation of traffic calming infrastructures (chicane, bump)? There's not better way to reduce the average speed than being forced to pay attention to not ruin your car (see the sibling comment with a picture of a narrow Japanese road)
The average American voter does think the USA play a positive role for the world, while the average non-American think otherwise. In details, a 2026 study from the Pew Research Center states that:
- 57% of A. think the USA contribute to peace in the world a great or a fair amount.
No, that implication is not automatic. The Babylonian numeral system evolved over milenaries, and the simple space noting the absence of a digit between two digits was later noted by a "0" digit. But this symbol was never used by itself, so it did not mean "nothingness". In the same way, a civilization having the concepts of addition and subtraction does not automatically induce the concept of negative numbers.
On the other side, ancient Egyptian numerals did have a zero, but it was only for nothingness. But they did not have a placeholder zero, because their systems was similar to Greek and Roman numerals.
The question is the title is left unanswered by this shallow article. At least it's not AI slop since there are spelling mistakes ("You’re best hope").
> Say you’ve found 17 numeric symbols. You might infer that the writing used a base 20 system
Reals numerical systems are much more diverse than that. For instance, Babylon used a base 60 (hence our minutes and hours). But there were much less than 60 numeric symbols, since they had a symbol for 1 and 10. So 2 symbols for a base 60!
> never appears at the beginning of a number, you might infer that is a zero
In the later times Babylonians had a kind of zero, but it was very limited, only used to point the lack of a number between two, i.e. "2∅1" but never "21∅∅" which was written "21" (so numbers were ambiguous if the context didn't give the magnitude).
And Babylonians had floating numbers. So "4" could also mean 4/60.
What I mean is that Babylon had a zero, but it only covered a part of the positional modern zero. They could not write 0 - 3. And if their zero had been fully positional, there would have been numbers beginning with it, i.e. sexagecimals floats.
> Reals numerical systems are much more diverse than that. For instance, Babylon used a base 60 (hence our minutes and hours). But there were much less than 60 numeric symbols, since they had a symbol for 1 and 10. So 2 symbols for a base 60!
>In the later times Babylonians had a kind of zero, but it was very limited, only used to point the lack of a number between two, i.e. "2∅1" but never "21∅∅" which was written "21" (so numbers were ambiguous if the context didn't give the magnitude).
Was it really like this or could it have been like "21 h" meaning "2100"?
Same here. I immediately visualized one of my juggling balls (the hard kind, pastel blue) on my kitchen table, so the scene was clear. But I was focused on the ball, so I only felt someone approaching and saw their hand pushing the ball, which rolled and fell.
I tried to visualise a scene with more unfamiliar objects (a box in the street then a flood wave arrives) and I also built the scene from my own memories. But I'm obviously biased after the first test.
With objects that I've never seen myself (e.g. a handgun), I have a hard time imagining them and placing them in my imaginary scenes.
I'm sorry, but I can't understand how AFL++ could be applied to the Gleam case.
The main presentation of the tool lacks any description of its coverage, but from deep inside the documentation[^1] I gather that AFL++ is only relevant for GCC/LLVM languages. Gleam is not one of those.
I was under the impression that AFL (I don't know much about AFL++) could instrument arbitrary binaries (with obvious limitations like requiring a known calling convention.)
The fact that 62% of Americans have little or no understanding of statistics may be related to those 40% of Americans that believe in Creationism, i.e. human (and fossils) were created by God a few thousands of years ago, and not of randomness and evolution over millions of years. I think no other industrial country has that disbelief in science.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/261680/americans-believe-creati...
This problem with science is apparent in another survey: in 2009, a Pew Center publication showed that 33% of scientists in the USA believed in God (and 18% in a transient power), which is much lower than the 80% belief of the general American population at the time. Of course, this is not a proof of causality in either direction, but scientific knowledge is seemingly inversely correlated to religiosity. And the USA are still more religious than any other industrial more-or-less-democratic country.
Your link goes beyond your 40% figure as well if you add in the 33% who don't believe in strict Creationism but believe that Christian God guided the process of evolution.
Unfortunately, those scores are not reliable. It is a recurring problem with the USA for the PISA studies.
The preliminary chapter explains why data has lower confidence is some places. For the USA, there were many problems, including political reluctance in some states or schools, that lead to uncontrolled biases. Notably, the ratio of unreachable children is 40 %, twice more than their upper limit for valid results.
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