NTV Mir - 18 Aug 2016 - Another Lie

I've caught another lie of Russian TV yesterday in NTV's Mir news from 18.08.2016 transmitted by Australian SBS on 19.08.2016. 

In the segment about possible moving of atomic weapons from Turkey to Romania, around 4:45 mark, the station tells its viewers: 

"[...] experts remind that even during Cold War, in Romania, as in other Warsaw Pact countries, there were no Soviet nuclear weapons". 

There were.  

Wikipedia: 

Prior to the end of the Cold War, the Soviet Union maintained large amounts of troops on Polish territory. These troops were equipped with nuclear weapons.

Nuclear Identity in Central Europe by Erzsébet N. Rózsa and Anna Péczeli:

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union altogether 3,000 Soviet nuclear weapons were withdrawn from Central Europe – 2,100 warheads for ground forces and 900 for the air force, among them SS-21, Scud and SS-23 missile warheads; nuclear artillery; and nuclear bombs. Moscow started the deployment of these weapons in the late 1960s. The majority of Soviet nuclear weapons were stationed in East Germany (16 sites) but there were nuclear weapons in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland, as well.

Cairns

Another weekend trip thanks to Jetstar: this time to Cairns (pronounced like 'cans' - no 'i', no 'r').

First, the good. The location of the city and the approach to the airport are spectacular:

Cairns airport

The airport seen from the "blue arrow" walking track on Mt Whitfield.

The city seen from the "red arrow"

From the ground level - looking towards The Pier shopping centre.

The shoreline (The Esplanade) with playgrounds and sports facilities:

One of the playgrounds on Esplanade

Beach volleyball courts and the hospital on Esplanade

Art installation near the wharf

I think I saw these metal rocks at the Swell Festival in Gold Coast

The Tanks Arts Centre, the Botanical Gardens, the Rainforest Boardwalk, the Butterfly Garden, the Esplanade:

Near the entrance to the Tanks Arts Centre. The tanks were used during WW2 to store oil.

Art gallery in tank 4

Butterfly garden

Butterflies

Rainforest Boardwalk

There are a few historical buildings in Cairns.

RSL (Returned and Services League) club

Former Customs House, built in 1937, now a Cafe

The Boland Centre, built in 1913

Airport - top left, Tanks Arts Centre, Botanical Gardens and Mt Whitfield below.
The Rainforest Boardwalk to the right of Botanical Gardens.
Top: Esplanade and the wharfs on the right. 

Second, the bad.

Primarily the design of the city: it was designed for cars, not people. The streets are too wide, the sidewalks in the CBD too narrow. It is easy to park, it is hard to walk or ride a bicycle. Walk 150 meters, come to a red light, press a button, wait for a couple of minutes to cross the street, walk 150 meters, come to a red light... There are no shortcuts for pedestrians, no little parks, very few trees. There are a few historical buildings, but it is hard to spot and appreciate them in the sea of cars.

Also, the neglect and mishmash of buildings.

And the noise: of helicopters landing near one end of Esplanade and planes taking off near the other end, of cars at parts of the red and blue arrow walking tracks (Captain Hook Highway) and everywhere else in the city.

Trinity inlet at low tide provides an opportunity to see mudskippers, but doesn't look pretty.

Promenade or esplanade? Trying to confuse tourists?

Most graves in the city cemetery are neglected.

Too wide streets - same problem as in Mackay.
These streets were designed maybe 100 years ago,
and are wide enough for an avenue of an imperial capital.
Today Cairns is 52 km long north-south and has a population of 157 thousand people.
This street is in the centre of the city.

Neglected old houses.
This one looks abandoned, but there are others in not much better shape with people living in them.
Oh, and this is off Esplanade.

Former Telegraph Office barely visible because of cars.

The Central Hotel, built in 1909 - it would be nice if this was a pedestrian plaza, not a sea of asphalt. 

A Peace Park plaque that could use some loving care.

United Nations Manifesto 2000 in Peace Park on Esplanade

 - please maintain it, these are beautiful ideas worth promoting.

Mishmash of new and old off Esplanade

The first tank you see of the Tanks Arts Centre - I thought that was it until I found the other tanks.

No people, no business, concrete ugly sidewalk, and the street so wide, the other side barely fits in the camera.

In Mackay I saw a city beautification project in progress. In Cairns I saw nothing like that. From that short trip I got an impression that Cairns is primarily a base for reef and national park trips, and not a destination in itself.

The Great Australian Census Fail of 2016

Yesterday was the online census night. The previous census night was 5 years ago and the census was a paper form. This year, the ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics) wanted a representative of every Australian household (there are about 9 million) to log on and do a 30 minute census form. On a Tuesday night.

From my experience, Australians go to bed early during the week. Long commutes, full time work, and after school activities mean that the weekday evening lasts maybe a couple of hours. Most Australians live on the east coast, and on 9th August 2016, Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne had the same time. Adelaide was only 30 minutes off. Perth was 2 hours off, so let's say it does not count. Population of Western Australia is only about 2.5 million out of 24 million for the whole of Australia.

Excluding Western Australia, we had about 8 million people (2.6 people per household) trying to access a website, and do a 30 minute form, within a 2 hour window. The window could have been more likely only a 1 hour window - people tend to have similar routines.

To accomodate that traffic, I would design and test the system for the worst case scenario: 8 million submissions in about a 15 minute window. Using a 15 minute window gives us a theoretical throughput of 32 million applications per hour.

What load did the ABS plan for? 1 million applications per hour. Any wonder it failed?

Planning for traffic 32 times heavier than ABS did, might also give us some breathing room in case of DoS attacks (not much really in case of a serious one), although to fight them off I would turn before-hand to a specialist web hosting company that offers DDoS protection.

There is also the question of design. I would not go with server-heavy JSP:

I would design the website to mirror the paper form (with a smart phone friendly option): static html5 delivered by CDN with client-side validation of data, no server-side validation on submission either, just storing the document. Processing of forms would happen later, using internal servers, and could take hours or days - as much time as it needed.

15.08.2016 Update:
By a security specialist: Censusfail and the fog of war