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frezik ,

On the tank side, some planned updates/replacements for the Abrams were very suddenly canned and went back to the drawing board. The DoD didn't say why, but a good guess is that they saw how things were going for tanks vs drones in Ukraine, and decided that these new designs would be obsolete before they're built.

frezik ,

No way they're replacing the bigger ones, like the Moskva. That one was built in a yard that's now in Ukraine, and Russia hasn't gotten that part back. Even if they did, Ukraine hadn't really maintained it.

It was also launched in 1979, and they haven't built anything that size since the USSR fell.

They'd have to rebuild the infrastructure needed to build the ship. These losses are irreplaceable.

frezik ,

Depends. 40 RC sail boats? No, not very impressive. 40 supercarriers? Yes, very impressive.

At this point, I wouldn't put it past Russia to claim 40 RC sail boats as "new ships in the fleet".

frezik ,

Yeah, let's face it: the USSR collapsed for a reason, and its MIC was already failing by the time it did.

frezik ,

Not sure about GP, but that's basically what we did under "SAFe" (Scaled Agile Framework). PI planning means taking most of a sprint to plan everything for the next quarter or so. It's like a whole week of ticket refinement meetings. Or perhaps 3 days, but when you've had 3 days of ticket refinement meetings, it might as well be the whole work week for as much a stuff as you're going to get done otherwise.

It's as horrible as you're thinking, and after a lot of agitating, we stopped doing that shit.

frezik ,

Gmail and other big providers tend to consider new domains to be spam until they've proven otherwise. Can't prove otherwise until you've been up and running for a while. Catch-22. The way out of that is to host with an existing provider for a few years.

Does it cut down on spam? Perhaps. Does it favor existing providers like Gmail? Yes, definitely.

Honestly, hosting email has long been difficult to setup, and all the more so if you don't want your box to be a spam host within three seconds of plugging it in.

frezik ,

You know who is most fed up with YouTube's policies? Content creators on YouTube. They're locked in, they know it, and they hate it.

frezik ,

Good chance you could at this point.

OneDrive automatically backups folders in Windows 11 without users' permissions ( windowsreport.com )

According to the latest reports, Windows 11 has made an independent choice by automatically turning on OneDrive folder backup for Desktop, Pictures, Documents, Music, and Video folders without your permission. This signifies that, whether you approve or not, everything is becoming coordinated with the cloud....

frezik ,

Vote this up higher. I wouldn't be surprised at all if everything ends up in their models.

frezik ,

Coincidentally, they make it harder to use a local account with every update.

frezik ,

Not how that should work. They don't get permission to all that unless I say so.

frezik ,

I wonder about Microsoft's liability on this one. People store all sorts of things in there, some personal, and some corporate things that are at least non-public, if not outright sensitive. Yeah, people should be using an encrypted drive for especially sensitive info (not that this would stop Microsoft when they own the OS), but they don't, and it's not for Microsoft to force the issue.

Did their legal department actually sign off on this? Or did someone in MS legal just shit a brick when they saw the headlines?

frezik ,

There's almost always at least a little ASM sprinkled into any kernel, so that's not a big deal.

OTOH, there is the factor of "you know how Chrome takes up 2GB per tab? What if that was a whole OS?"

frezik ,

The Rust compiler tends to turn my impostor syndrome to 11. I assume she has some kind of humiliation kink and I do not consent.

frezik ,

It could be true. Catalytic converters do a pretty good job of filtering out most pollutants. They also increase CO2 emissions in a variety of direct and indirect ways. Everything else is lower, though.

The way to make EV tires pollute less is to not chase 600+ mile range. Keep them around 300-400 miles, and use further battery improvements to reduce weight. There's no reason EVs have to be heavier forever. With better charging infrastructure, 400 miles is more than enough.

The way to fix everything else wrong with them is to not make cars the default mode of transportation.

frezik , (edited )

Hardly a stretch. The comparison isn't to the power density of gas, but overall curb weight. EVs are roughly 10% heavier than an ICE equivalent. Batteries are the main reason for that (electric motors and the electronics to support them aren't that much). Batteries have also been improving Wh/kg by 5-8% per year. It only takes a few years of improvements to get there.

In fact, since the 10% number has been the case since around 2020 or so, the battery tech might already be there and we just need to get them into new models.

Edit: another way to think about it is what's been taken out of an ICE and replaced with something else. It's not just the engine, but an entire engine life support system. Coolant radiator, oil, transmission, gas tank, and ignition system. Possibly differentials, as well, depending on the electric drive train. It's replaced with motors (which don't weigh much for the power they output compared to ICEs), some electronics (which do need to be beefy to handle the current involved, but also don't weigh that much, relatively speaking), the battery (major source of weight), and the battery does usually need a cooling system, as well. So you don't need to compare it to the energy density of gas, but of all the stuff you replaced.

frezik ,

Hydrogen is probably going to get pushed out of every niche where it might be viable. Batteries tend to get better by 5-8% per year, and there's every reason to believe that will continue to be the case. Run that forward for another decade or so, and even things like heavy construction equipment and transpacific airplanes are viable on battery power.

It's a waste of time and money at this point.

frezik ,

It's how journalists apply pressure to companies to respond. "We have statements x, y, and z from the public about you. Do you care to respond? We need to go to press with it in two hours." Companies can ignore it if they want, but the statements will go uncontested.

frezik ,

There really shouldn't need to be a 12V battery at all. Stepping the voltage down isn't that complicated, but the supply chain for the necessary parts aren't there for the car industry.

Plus, it'd be really nice if everything could run off a 48V line instead of 12V. The wires can be thinner due to less current draw. Getting that to work across all the electronics for everything is a whole separate level, though.

frezik ,

Compared to what the main batt can provide, there's barely any draw from the other electronics.

frezik ,

Battery management electronics don't let you drain lithium batteries to 0%. It's a severe design flaw if it does.

frezik ,

You're probably in a country that got a ton of allocations in the 90s. If you came from a country that was a little late to build out their infrastructure, or even tried to setup a new ISP in just about any country, you would have a much harder time.

frezik ,

JSON and XML can be "real" languages. Mostly because of people who didn't stop to ask if they should.

frezik ,

Not every problem is amenable to GPUs. If it has a lot of branching, or needs to fetch back and forth from memory a lot, GPUs don't help.

Now, does this thing have exactly the same limitations? I'm guessing yes, but it's all too vague to know for sure. It's sounds like they're doing what superscalar CPUs have done for a while. On x86, that starts with the original Pentium from 1993, and Crays going back to the '60s. What are they doing to supercharge this idea?

Does this avoid some of security problems that have popped up with superscalar archs? For example, some kernel code running at ring 0 is running alongside userspace code, and it all gets the same ring 0 level as a result.

frezik ,

There isn't a debate.

The 14th amendment provided for the US Constitution to be incorporated down to the state level. The intent seems to have been to bring it all in together, but the US Supreme Court eventually decided on a more piecemeal approach. As cases came through about specific sections of the Constitution, the Court would decide if the section in question applied to the states. For the Establishment Clause in question here, that happened in 1947.

So yes, the text of the Establishment Clause specifically refers to federal Congress, but the 14th amendment then steps in and says it applies to the states.

Incidentally, the 2nd amendment wasn't incorporated until 2008. If states didn't otherwise have an equivalent section to their constitution (some do, some don't), they could have put up whatever gun control measures they wanted.

frezik ,

There are a ton of translation differences, and it can also change depending on if you look at Exodus or Deuteronomy.

AFAIK, Louisiana also picked a version that aligns to the KJV, which is a shit translation advocated by the dumbest dullards of Christian Fundamentalism.

frezik ,

Moses: WTF is a "Christian"?

frezik ,

This is the same language where you have to say PLEASE sometimes or it won't compile. But if you say PLEASE too much, the compiler will think you're pandering and also refuse to compile. The range between too polite and not polite enough is not specified and varies by implementation.

frezik ,

Here's one that's not as consequential as other posts here. It's not going to change the world, but would make things slightly better.

Split lock washers are worse than useless. They're supposed to be a spring against the bolt to help resist it turning back out over time. They don't. If anything, they make it worse.

Here's a NASA publication on fastener design (because of course there's a NASA publication on fastener design): https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19900009424

The lockwasher serves as a spring while the bolt is being
tightened. However, the washer is normally flat by the time
the bolt is fully torqued. At this time it is equivalent to a solid
flat washer, and its locking ability is nonexistent. In summary,
a Iockwasher of this type is useless for locking.

This was published in 1990, but we're still using this shit. Stop. There are many other kinds of fastener locking that work, like nylon locking nuts or threadlock, and we don't need these.

frezik ,
import tensorflow # we don't actually use this anywhere, but my boss told the client we use AI
frezik ,

Which should pair well with the whiskey and coke. According to a friend.

I Will Fucking Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again — Ludicity ( ludic.mataroa.blog )

How stupid do you have to be to believe that only 8% of companies have seen failed AI projects? We can't manage this consistently with CRUD apps and people think that this number isn't laughable? Some companies have seen benefits during the LLM craze, but not 92% of them. 34% of companies report that generative AI specifically...

frezik ,

College? Pythagorean Theorem is mid-level high school math.

I did once talk to a high school math teacher about a graphics program I was hacking away on at the time, and she was surprised that I actually use the stuff she teaches. Which is to say that I wouldn't expect most programmers to know it exactly off the top of their head, but I would expect they've been exposed to it and can look it up if needed. I happen to have it pretty well ingrained in my brain.

frezik ,

Sneaky fuckers thought I forgot about the third amendment.

frezik , (edited )

There ought to be more servers.

Will the app for the smart thermostat be updated three years from now and still be useful? If it was instead a web server app on a routable IP, it wouldn't matter provided they didn't fuck up the authentication and access control.

frezik ,

The other app off the top of my head is VoIP. You should be able to "dial" a number directly. Most solutions go through the company's data center first in order to pierce through NAT. Which makes it more expensive, less reliable, slower, and more susceptible to snooping.

There's a "if you build it, they will come" effect here. Once you can address hosts directly, a whole bunch of things become better, and new ideas that were infeasible are now feasible. They don't exist now because they can't.

frezik ,

There's one practical thing. Routers have had years to optimize IPv4 routing, which has to be redone for IPv6. Same with networking stacks in general.

In theory, IPv6 should be faster by not having to do bullshit like CGNAT. There's every reason to think it'll match that advantage if we just make it happen.

frezik ,

Every time I see a defense of IPv4 and NAT, I think back to the days of trying to get myself and my roommate to play C&C: Generals together online, with a 2v2 game, with one of us hosting. Getting just the right combination of port forwarding working was more effort than us playing C&C: Red Alert on dial up when we both lived at home.

With IPv6, the answer is to open incoming traffic on the port(s) to the host machine (or just both since the other guy is might host next time). With IPv4, we have to have a conversation about port forwarding and possibly hairpin routes on top of that. This isn't a gate for people "who know what they're doing", it's just a bunch of extra bullshit to deal with.

frezik ,

Do it again for "only Siths deal in absolutes".

frezik ,

What about All of the Above?

frezik ,

AR15 is very popular for wild boar hunting. Not in its original caliber, though. See, one of the advantages of the platform is that it's highly modular, and can put out 6.5 grendal just fine by switching the upper.

frezik ,

. . . anything and everything to do with space.

No. Just no. Soviets had their successes, but they were bad at building fundamental tech. Their space program was callous towards both human and animal life. They were focused on being the first at everything, and tended to run with the solution they could implement immediately. It wasn't built in a way where successes could be leveraged for more successes. Nor did it build fundamental tech in ways that could be used in the economy at large.

Ironically, capitalism was able use space technology to improve the lives of the working class better than a supposedly communist system did.

frezik ,

Yeah, they were so bad at it that they ended up in space first. Just absolutely terrible.

And rushed it so bad they didn't have fundamental tech that was applicable to a wider economy.

Their space program was callous towards both human and animal life.

Show us your proof, PragerU fan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laika#Ethics_of_animal_testing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nedelin_catastrophe

https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2011/05/02/134597833/cosmonaut-crashed-into-earth-crying-in-rage

The Soviet rocket program failed a lot, but they covered it up at the time. It's largely come out in the time since then, and it was horrific. If NASA lost an astronaut, everything shuts down and they figure out what happens. When a test site in Russia blowed up and kills over 50 people, including the head of the development program, that's just Tuesday.

capitalism was able use space technology to improve the lives of the working class capitalist parasites better than a supposedly communist system did.

FTFY.

Nah, I like my version better. The proof is the machine you're using to type this.

Also, I'm a socialist. I just don't think the USSR was very good system. There's both positive and negative things to learn from it, but the most important is "let's not do that again".

frezik , (edited )

Don't just put "TODO". If they're in the final pull request, they need to mention a ticket that's intended to fix that TODO. If you/your team decides it's not important, then remove it and close out the ticket. Either way, you're required to do something with it.

frezik ,

Because you enjoy it. If you're fixing your issues, it must be through pain and suffering. If it doesn't involve pain and suffering, then it isn't fixing your issues. The "Protestant work ethic" doesn't come right out and say that, but it's the implication.

See also: denial of LSD and psilocybin for mental health purposes.

frezik ,

The problem with LEDs isn't the bit that emits lights. It's the power supply, specifically the electrolytic capacitors. Good designs either use higher quality caps, or use designs that avoid electrolytic caps altogether. Either one takes a bit more money, but the market is always in a race to the bottom.

Long term, I think we should be avoiding traditional light fixtures entirely. It's better to have a lot of little lights spread over an area rather than a few point sources in the room. That gives us the opportunity to separate the power supply from the lights entirely, like LED strips do.

frezik ,

Which was also true of ICE cars. The Model T Ford had a major design flaw: everyone could work on it easily, parts were plentiful, and there was no reason to buy a replacement once you had it. In fact, there's enough of them still running, with an associated parts market, that you could still daily one if you wanted to.

frezik ,

Linux IPchains from the 2.2 kernel days?

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