That a building|property will have only one address.
Sometimes (eg: rural Australia) property addresses are updated from an older numbered lot based system (that goes astray when properties are subdivided and infill houses appear) to a system that numbers houses by driveway distance from last major intersection.
For five or ten years a house can be recieving mail or be on the records with both the old and the new address.
I think this idea that a building/property can have more than one address can happen in the United States too. The way I see it, it is because a ZIP code can be associated with a list of cities that are categorized as “recommended city name”, “other city names recognized for addresses in this zip code” and “city names to avoid”. [1]
So as an example, if you use the UPSP Cities by ZIP Code to research 77005 and you would see that they recommend using the city name of “Houston” for mail, but they would also recognize “West University Place”. There’s also a city called “Southside Place” which should be avoided when it comes to sending mail. But then that kind of makes me think that if a house is within the limits of one or these small cities, then it could in theory have the same street name but have two different city values in different databases.
Then on the other hand there’s a somewhat related problem where a small town or village (e.g. Somers, WI and Scotland, CT) can have multiple ZIP codes and that ends up causing a lot of headaches for the residents of the town since they all might live nearby but then each section of the town might end up associated with some other larger city it’s closest to.
I know of a house near Chicago that has two addresses with different street names. It's on the corner of an intersection and the "mailing address" is different than the "front door" address.
Not that there's a mailbox on the mailing address street. (There's only a small side profile of a house/yard on the mailing address street side). There doesn't seem to be a good reason for the mailing address.
> The way I see it, it is because a ZIP code can be associated with a list of cities that are categorized as “recommended city name”, “other city names recognized for addresses in this zip code” and “city names to avoid”. [1]
This one affects me personally and it bugs me programmers think that they know better than I do about my address when I try and enter the city name and zip code, then they "correct" the city name based on the zip code and make it read only.
a) what was the point of me entering the city if you were going to fill it in anyway ?
b) this has happened in the last two cities I've lived and is dirt common around a major metro area in the United States. Stop autocorrecting user entered data, let them be wrong!
You can pick from multiple city names on tons of addresses. But that's a lot less exciting than having multiple completely separate numbers or streets for the same building.
I suppose it is, but to me it came as a bit of a surprise that if I want to send mail to someone in a certain area, I can essentially toss a coin when trying to figure out which city name to use as long as I don’t use certain ones that are discouraged names. I believe my ZIP code has two city names I could use, but I would never use the non-main one because in my mind, that other city is miles away.
That struck me, although I already knew that a ZIP code could span multiple cities and sometimes even states. I just thought there would be no confusion about which city name to use.
This happens in metro areas quite frequently. I used to live in a suburb of Atlanta that had a valid address in "Atlanta, GA" and "Suburb, GA" - which was a common annoyance when using delivery apps or service area locating systems as which address was considered "valid" often changed depending on the provider of their mapping API.
There’s also the question of unit numbers and whatnot. In some addressing lookup systems in the US my address is 525 Some Road Unit G; but I have encountered systems that treat it as 525G Some Road.
The unit is usually formatted as either `{building number}-{unit number} {street name}` or `{building number} {street name}, Unit {unit number}`. But both resolve to the same thing.
What I like is that address box 2 (sometimes unlabelled, lives under the address box) exists specifically for unit numbers. So, I'll put in my street address in two lines:
Street Address :792 Charleston Avenue
Street Address 2:555
At which point, almost invariably, it'll say "Do you want to accept the Post Office's recommended address?"
Street Address :792 Charleston Avenue 555
Street Address 2:
Why provide the second address box if even in the one case where it's relevant and appropriate to use it, you're going to just stick the unit number in the first line anyway? It's so silly!
It also happens in places where a house/building spans two streets, and gets an address on both. Same reason some buildings get multiple numbers on the same street (happens a lot if they want to keep the option to later split entrances and give them numbers for instance)
I used to be a EMS call taker/dispatch (911) in Ontario, Canada. Addresses could be such a pain, especially in the the more rural areas. There were multiple townships around some bigger cities. They had different naming schemes and suffered from a similar problem that you mentioned. Many of the addresses also had old addresses. Our system would luckily often have both versions of the address stored, but not always. Additionally a lot of our roads have both numbers to address them by, such as "Regional Road 12", but then they'd also have an actual name. Almost every went by the actual name, however in the rural areas sometimes they had old real names, but it never was "official" so it isn't even listed.
Overall addresses are such a mess, and they are a mess even for governmental agencies like this one.
That's neat, thanks for sharing! We had the ability to accept a what3word location however it was a really convoluted process to actually attempt to use it. Unfortunately I never personally had anyone use it to give a location, even though it probably would have helped in many cases.
Had some calls where people would be hurt in a forest on a trail system and it was pretty common for people to not even know the name of the trail they are on nor which street they entered it from. Sometimes the GPS location the phone provided to EMS would help, but it also wasn't always 100% reliable, especially if they were in a forest. So being able to have them look at a map on their phone, pin where they are, and give a what3word location would have been immensely helpful.
The kind of system you linked to would also have been quite helpful for the other problems I mentioned.
I don’t know how they came to be, but in rural America I have seen houses which have signs very explicitly saying that two or more addresses are all this one house, so please deliver anything addressed to any of them.
The building in that example does have only one address. The old address is not valid any more. People just accept the erroneous use of the old address for the sake of expediency.
It has at least two official addresses each with a [time frame] of official validity.
When merging records the old address, no longer valid with the local land management agency, still appears on old notices and on current state and or federal records (as land naming agencies are layered in some locales with changes taking time to perculate).
The old address is "the correct address" in the context of birth records, old newspaper articles, last years tax records, etc.
You're technically pedantically correct .. but in a manner that's moot when faced with the realities of day to day day reconciliation of meaning of text on an envelope or document.
Besides that, in Buenos Aires, for instance, every access to the street has its own address. A building with 2 entrances (front door and garage) has 2 addresses, etc.
Where I currently live, my street has no name, my house has no number. If a package is delivered by mail, my phone number needs to be put on the package, and the local delivery operator calls me to either pick it up, or I send my location through telegram and they deliver it to my house.
It’s almost entirely impossible to order through Amazon et al using this type of system, it’s just not supported at all.
The same goes for my country or origin (in EU), they require my address in order to be able to send important mail. It’s just not possible because of the computer systems not accepting anything without a zipcode, address and house number.
What's preventing some local authority from just naming your street?
And what's preventing you and your neighbors from having a meeting, agreeing on a numbering convention, and putting street numbers on your house? I guess it would be a bit silly/meaningless if you don't have your street name.
Because most of my neighbors are expats and only renting and don’t actually own the property they live in.
Local authority doesn’t care, because it’s a very western problem. Locals rarely have problems with it, and use “go left the second street after the big tree near the market, and then it’s the third house on the right”.
Local people generally don’t use navigation apps like Google Maps, they don’t know how to use it.
A unique characteristic of Carmel-by-the-Sea is that there are no street addresses. Properties are identified, for example, as being on the "west side of San Antonio Street, 3 houses south of 12th Avenue". In addition to this, many owners give their homes a name. The name you choose does not have to be approved or registered with the City.
It’s just not accepted. So I’ll just fill in random numbers at zip code and street names and the delivery companies over here generally know how to deal with it.
I provide an address that looks technically correct, ensure it’s delivered with DHL, and then override DHL to pick up at one of their locations.
Also, there are special delivery companies like CamboQuick that take the whole process out of your hands and use (slow) ships freight to ship stuff from Amazon et al to Cambodia. You’ll have to wait 4-6 weeks, but they handle the custom clearance and everything and deliver it to your house for a $2 fee.
Why don’t you name your road and assign a house number? Either just make it up, or to make it more official contact your local government and propose a name and numbering scheme for it.
I remember a time before Ireland set up postcodes (zip codes) for the whole country. If postcode was mandatory field in an e-commerce address form, you couldn't mail stuff from the UK unless it was in Dublin. Dublin had postcodes.
I managed to find one site that would accept 'null' so the form would submit.
> From where the Chinese restaurant used to be, two blocks down, half a block toward the lake, next door to the house where the yellow car is parked, Managua, Nicaragua
Eventually it made sense that boat-speed only changes the "apparent wind", as it's only simulating wind-boat interactions, not water-boat interactions.
But to get the sail-wind interaction you need the movement of the boat. To get the movement you then need the hull-water interaction. Modeling just a static, vertical, sail doesnt really demonstrate anything practical. It is more akin to similating a captive foil in a wind tunnel.
The obvious next step would be to calculate the cog and tilt the entire rig in response to sail forces, which sheds wind until a balance point is reached, or the boat flips.
Products are often cheap enough that the labor costs are too high compared to getting a new unit. It would generally work for appliances that are built into a house or hard to transport because then the relative cost would be offset by the cost of labor to remove and install a replacement.
For example, people generally wouldn’t do this for a TV when they can get a decent replacement for $300 new.
It would probably only work in countries where services are cheaper than buying new.
For example in south america is is common to get shoes repaired or customized. Clothing altered to fit or be repaired etc. In the US it really only makes sense if that article of clothing is > $200-300. Its pretty hard around me to find a tailor that will do much of anything more than basic hemming for less than $75-100. whereas in south america it would only cost me around $5 to get something altered or a shoe repaired.
I would get something altered about once a month in south america. In the US, maybe once every couple years.
You write "Products are often cheap enough" as if that is a law of nature — it isn't. That is the result of a global production chain that has valued efficiency of production over nearly everything else. This is currently changed, now national interests became more important in the most careless way possible.
There are many examples of countries where old technology has to be maintained because the new is unavailable or unaffordable.
Presumably the "decent replacement" will also be too smart for their own good and there will be people who will pay extra on purchase for a "de-smarted" device.
Speaking of which, I shudder to think what will happen if my current TV ever breaks. Would getting a "smart" TV and physically removing the wifi help?
My prediction is that more devices will start to come with an eSIM that phones home and downloads more ads or uploads user data whether you give it WiFi access or not.
Amazon Sidewalk can also be used - it automatically finds devices on other networks (like your next-door neighbor) and sends data through their devices in case you don't connect your device to your own network.
Have you ever seen TV not connected to the Internets? Some models refuse to work with "no free storage" alert if it has spywared too much data about the used (used is any user of proprietary sw). When the used connects the snoop-TV to the network it of course unloads the data.
I still have a dumb monitor that costs more than a TV that would have a larger diameter with an HTPC that is really just a regular Linux install and that runs open source software on it. Which software has changed over the years, as has what kind of "TV" I get on it, from actually having a cable TV tuner in there to all streaming or local files. Over that time frame, it has become increasingly harder to get things to work "properly".
As in, yes there are caveats to this of course. Like there's no Netflix (/insert your favourite streaming service) app for it and you probably can't get 4k and/or surround sound from in-browser. As in, they're intentionally making the experience of people actually paying money to them worse.
It doesn't need to be lifetime, only as long as devices are supported. Also, electricity meters makers somehow solved this problem. I am sure a subscription won't be expensive if the device doesn't use too much data. Also the device maker can pay with collected data or advertisement.
Start with luxury items. You're right, not many people would pay $500 for a dumbed down device when they can buy a smart device for $300. But, I know for a fact that there are enough people that would pay $5000 for a $3000 tv if it had the default OS removed and replaced with something sane.
A lot of things are about to become very, very expensive in the US, if Trump isn't stopped somehow. If there's a silver lining, it's that people are going to want to hang on to what they have and keep it working.
Yes, it's more of a convention where we assume language like "...ignoring the trivial case of 1 being an obvious factor of every integer." It's not interesting or meaningful, so we ignore it for most cases.
"...ignoring the trivial case of 1 being an obvious factor of every integer."
I remember quite a big chunk of GEB formally defining how integers are really not trivial! The main problem seems to be is that you soon end up with circular reasoning if you are not razor sharp with your definitions. That's just in an explainer book 8)
Correct, it's impossible to specifically and formally define the natural numbers so that addition and multiplication work. Any definition of the natural numbers will also define things that look very similar to natural numbers but are not actually natural numbers.
>Any definition of the natural numbers will also define things that look very similar to natural numbers but are not actually natural numbers
This isn't correct. This is only true for first-order theories of the natural numbers using the axiom schema of induction. Second-order Peano arithmetic with the full axiom of induction has the natural numbers as its only model. This property is called "categoricity" and you can find the proof here [1] if you're interested
This isn't correct. While it's true that in second order logic the natural numbers admit categoricity, second order logic lacks axiomatic semantics. So yes, there is a single set which can be called the natural numbers in second order logic (namely the intersection of all sets that satisfy Peano's axioms), but this set has no interpretation.
You can adopt Henkin semantics to give the naturals an interpretation, which is still second order logic, but then you're back to lacking a categorical model of the naturals.
> So yes, there is a single set which can be called the natural numbers in second order logic (namely the intersection of all sets that satisfy Peano's axioms), but this set has no interpretation.
Can you explain what you mean here? Full semantics for second-order logic has a unique interpretation i.e. the standard natural numbers
Interpretation under full second‑order logic is not intrinsic to the logic itself but is always supplied by a richer meta‑theory, usually set theory/ZF. The sentence "All subsets of N" has no standalone meaning in second-order logic, it must be defined inside of the meta-theory, which in turn relies on its own meta‑theory, and so on ad infinitum.
Thus, although full second order Peano axioms are categorical, second order logic by itself never delivers a self‑contained model of the natural numbers. Any actual interpretation of the natural numbers in second order logic requires an infinite regress of background theories.
My understanding is you can specifically and formally define the natural numbers with addition and multiplication, although multiplication means the language is no longer decidable.
You can define natural numbers with just addition ( Presburger arithmetic ) and it’s decidable.
Im not sure how undecidable <=> “will define things that are similar to natural numbers but are not” but maybe I am missing something
If a sentence S is undecidable from your axioms for the natural numbers then there are two models A and B satisfying those axioms where A satisfies S and B satisfies not S. So which one is the standard natural numbers, is it A or B?
Either A or B will be an example of something that satisfies your definition of natural numbers and yet is not the natural numbers.
> Correct, it's impossible to specifically and formally define the natural numbers so that addition and multiplication work. Any definition of the natural numbers will also define things that look very similar to natural numbers but are not actually natural numbers.
Are such objects not inevitably isomorphic to the natural numbers?
Can you give an example of a formal definition that leads to something that obviously isn't the same as the naturals?
In that article you'll see references to "first order logic" and "second order logic". First order logic captures any possible finite chain of reasoning. Second order logic allows us to take logical steps that would require a potentially infinite amount of reasoning to do. Gödel's famous theorems were about the limitations of first order logic. While second order logic has no such limitations, it is also not something that humans can actually do. (We can reason about second order logic though.)
Anyways a nonstandard model of arithmetic can have all sorts of bizarre things. Such as a proof that Peano Axioms lead to a contradiction. While it might seem that this leads to a contradiction in the Peano Axioms, it doesn't because the "proof" is (from our point of view) infinitely long, and so not really a proof at all! (This is also why logicians have to draw a very careful distinction between "these axioms prove" and "these axioms prove that they prove"...)
All of these models appear to contain infinitely sized objects that are explicitly named / manipulable within the model, which makes them extensions of the Peano numbers though, or else they add other, extra axioms to the Peano model.
If you (for example) extend Peano numbers with extra axioms that state things like “hey, here are some hyperreals” or “this Goedel sentence is explicitly defined to be true (or false)” it’s unsurprising that you can end up in some weird places.
We are able to recognize that they are nonstandard because they contain numbers that we recognize are infinite. But there is absolutely no statement that can be made from within the model from which it could be discovered that those numbers are infinite.
Furthermore, it is possible to construct nonstandard models such that every statement that is true in our model, remains true in that one, and ditto for every statement that is false. They really look identical to our model, except that we know from construction that they aren't. This fact is what makes the transfer principle work in nonstandard analysis, and the ultrapower construction shows how to do it.
(My snark about NSA is that we shouldn't need the axiom of choice to find the derivative of x^2. But I do find it an interesting approach to know about.)
No additional axioms are needed for the existence of these models. On the contrary additional axioms are needed in order to eliminate them, and even still no amount of axioms can eliminate all of these extensions without introducing an inconsistency.
I know this is a great book, it’s been on my to-read list for about 5 years. But I never get to it. Is there not another (shorter) discussion I could read on this? Even an academic paper would be acceptable.
You could read Kurt Godels paper,but it's literally undecyperable. The book is one on the best reads ever. It will also teach you how to think in very very formal ways. It made Calculus half the class it was, and I breezed through finite math.
Propositional Calulus will teach you to think in symbols you cannot even fathom. This alone is worth every minute reading the book.
Every few years I reread it, and get a new sense of solving problems. The book can be divided into parts... But the whole...
As I said above, I'm not an expert. However, I read GEB on a whim when bored at school and I think it still informs my thinking 35 years later.
Move GEB up the reading list right now! The edition I initially read was hard bound and was quite worn. I bought and read it again about 20 years ago and found more treasures.
It is a proper nerd grade treatise for non experts who are interested in maths, music and art. Really: maths, music and art from a mostly mathematical perspective. Hofstadter's writing style is very easy going and he is a master of clarity without complexity.
I don't think you need any more Maths than you would get up to age 18 or so at school to understand the entire book and probably less. Even if you gloss the formal Maths the book still works.
I mean it's logically impossible to formally and specifically define the natural numbers without introducing a logical inconsistency. The best you can do is define a set that has all the properties of natural numbers but will also define things that aren't natural numbers as well.
As an analogy you could imagine trying to define the set of all animals with a bunch of rules... "1. Animals have DNA, 2. Animals ingest organic matter. 3. Animals have a nervous system. 4. ... etc..."
And this is true of all animals, but it will also be true of things that aren't animals as well, like slime molds which are not quite animals but very similar to them.
Okay so you keep adding more rules to narrow down your definition and stamp out slime molds, but you find some other thing satisfy that definition...
Now for animals maybe you can eventually have some very complex rule set that defines animals exactly and rules out all non-animals, but the principle is that this is not possible for natural numbers.
We can have rules like "0" is a natural number. For every natural number N there is a successor to it N + 1. If N + 1 = M + 1 then N = M. There is no natural number Q such that Q + 1 = 0.
Okay this is a good starting point... but just like with animals there are numbers that satisfy all of these rules but aren't natural numbers. You can keep adding more and more rules to try to stamp these numbers out, but no matter how hard, even if you add infinitely many rules, there will always be infinitely many numbers that satisfy your rules but aren't natural numbers.
In particular what you really want to say is that a natural number is finite, but no matter how hard you try there is no formal way to actually capture the concept of what it means to be finite in general so you end up with these mutant numbers that satisfy all of your rules but have infinitely many digits, and these are called non-standard natural numbers.
The reason non-standard natural numbers are a problem is because you might have a statement like "Every even integer greater than 2 can be written as the sum of two primes." and this statement might be true of the actual natural numbers but there might exist some freak mutant non-standard natural number for which it's not true. Unless your rules are able to stamp out these mutant non-standard natural numbers, then it is not possible to prove this statement, the statement becomes undecidable with respect to your rules. The only statements you can prove with respect to your rules are statements that are true of the real natural numbers as well as true of all the mutant natural numbers that your rules have not been able to stamp out.
So it's in this sense that I mean that it's not possible to specifically define the natural numbers. Any definition you come up with will also apply to mutant numbers, and these mutant numbers can get in the way of you proving things that are in principle true about the actual natural numbers.
It seems you know what you are on about! Thank you for a cracking comment.
I've always had this feeling that the foundations (integers etc) are a bit dodgy in formal Maths but just as with say Civil Engineering, your world hasn't fallen apart for at least some days and it works. Famously, in Physics involving quantum: "Shut up and calculate".
Thankfully, in the real world I just have to make web pages, file shares and glittery unicorns available to the computers belonging to paying customers. Securely ...
The foundational aspect equivalent of integers in IT might be DNS. Fuck around with either and you come unstuck rather quickly without realising exactly why until you get suitably rigorous ...
I'm also a networking bod (with some jolly expensive test gear) but that might be compared to pencils and paper for Maths 8)
There have been many periods in US history where sets of laws were purposefully created that criminalized activities that nearly ~100% of the population engage in. The intent of those isn't to stop those activities, and there's no intent of prosecuting everyone. The intent is to be able to prosecute any individual person or someone close to them, at any arbitrary point in time.
Many of today's lawmakers no longer have that intent, but the system as a whole still keeps running in a manner that allows tools of that nature to be used against targeted individuals and populations.
Corporate America is very similar in that regard. If the bosses like you, they will turn a blind eye to all sorts of things. But if they have it in for you, they WILL find a way of getting rid of you for cause.
https://gist.github.com/almereyda/85fa289bfc668777fe3619298b...