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Cyph0n

9,720 karma · joined July 2, 2011

Software engineer @ Google.

All views are my own, etc.

* Homepage: https://assil.me

* Github: https://github.com/aksiksi

* Twitter: https://twitter.com/aksiksi

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/aksiksi; my proof: https://keybase.io/aksiksi/sigs/PhsFUqf4TTQdHrQvnrRhLU4bgilyPjSZjo5DQFHM9QU ]

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Cyph0n··on How to Earn a Billion Dollars
> But it is precisely the same as the capitalist model

It’s only the same if you consider natural resources and human labor to be equivalent. To me, that sounds quite reductive.

Cyph0n··on Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau
And you seem to not realize that a census has a much wider impact than allocation of federal funds. It’s a nationwide survey done once every 10 years. No other survey compares in scale.

Now think about the data you could collect and the decisions you could make based on this data to ensure a better future for all in this country; in fact, this is a stated goal of the survey that you either didn’t know about or are willfully ignoring.

On the flip side, think about the repercussions of tainting this data and basically wasting such a valuable chance that won’t come around again for another 10 years.

Cyph0n··on Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau
It’s because people are significantly more likely to lie or omit some facts if you don’t guarantee their privacy, which means your census data ends up being worth less than a pile of shit.

The alternative is to water down the census questions, which also leads you down the same path (i.e. manure as data).

Cyph0n··on Pentagon raised threat of Israeli spying on U.S. to highest level, sources say
Hogwash? More like state-backed propaganda disseminated by so-called objective and professional media organizations in order to justify an offensive war against Iran; a war that has achieved virtually none of its stated aims.

I personally trust OSINT sources more than NGOs these days. I would wager that the security forces numbers are higher. I would also wager that the majority of the deaths were CIA and Mossad backed insurgents operating in the context of a wider, legitimate, civilian-led protest movement.

Cyph0n··on Pentagon raised threat of Israeli spying on U.S. to highest level, sources say
Ah, so now none of the protesters were gunned down in the streets? How convenient.

> As many as 30,000 people could have been killed in the streets of Iran on Jan. 8 and 9 alone, two senior officials of the country’s Ministry of Health told TIME—indicating a dramatic surge in the death toll.

https://time.com/7357635/more-than-30000-killed-in-iran-say-...

Imagine infiltrating the Iranian surveillance camera network and being unable to produce footage of 30k people massacred across two days.

I do not like Iran because of its actions in Syria and Yemen, but even with my bias, I could hear the bullshit Western elitist consent manufacturing engine starting up from miles away.

Cyph0n··on Pentagon raised threat of Israeli spying on U.S. to highest level, sources say
I would love to see an agreement on the supposed number of (unarmed) civilians killed. Over the course of the past few months, I have heard claims of thousands up to 50k.

You would think the traffic and surveillance cams hacked by the Israelis would’ve shown the extent of this bloodbath.

https://apnews.com/article/iran-war-security-cameras-surveil...

Cyph0n··on Pentagon raised threat of Israeli spying on U.S. to highest level, sources say
Do you blame them? If a global ring of elite pedophiles turned out to be true in spite of all the gaslighting and denial, then why couldn’t the moon landing also be a conspiracy?

Keep in mind that the elite class couldn’t give two shits what the peasant class thinks. In fact, having us believe in false conspiracies helps distract the masses from the true conspiracies :)

Cyph0n··on Pentagon raised threat of Israeli spying on U.S. to highest level, sources say
Astounding to watch the mental gymnastics at play.

It’s like how Israeli lobbying orgs state that “claiming Zionist orgs control the media is antisemitism”, and then the solution is literally “we should use our contacts & supporters in the media to stop this kind of rhetoric”. Beautiful.

Cyph0n··on CT scans of BYD car parts
Yes, more specifically IBM -> AMD -> spin off.
Cyph0n··on CT scans of BYD car parts
IBM no longer has fabs (spun off as Globalfoundries and later sold), and no longer manufactures PCs (sold to Lenovo?), but it does make mainframes I guess?
Cyph0n··on CT scans of BYD car parts
So BYD for cars and Samsung for phones and consumer electronics more generally (from fab upwards).

In fact, I believe Samsung is the only company on the planet that can design & build a state of the art smartphone from scratch - silicon/fabrication, SoC, battery, baseband, camera sensor, memory, and display.

What other high tech vertically integrated producers exist in this group?

Cyph0n··on Love systemd timers
I never had the opportunity to try out quadlets, but they seem powerful.

I maintain one of the competitors listed in that README (compose2nix), so I am a bit biased haha.

For now, I prefer the ability to interop with Compose.

Cyph0n··on Love systemd timers
Ugliness is subjective :)

But my question was around readability: were you able to understand what the snippet I shared is doing?

Re: build-time checks - but systemd hasn’t done it, and I am also unsure where exactly this verification would even take place given systemd’s configuration model. Unless you’re talking about some kind of language server or IDE integration.

Cyph0n··on Love systemd timers
I believe that probably won’t work unfortunately; the generated unit files have a bunch of hardcoded Nix store paths.
Cyph0n··on Love systemd timers
No. Is that not readable to you lol? I think anyone with even a passing familiarity with systemd would understand what that chunk of Nix is doing.

Compare it to the alternative of using plain systemd (including command(s) required to enable units).

Also, consider what build-time validation you get prior to starting the unit/timer. Hint: zero.

Cyph0n··on Love systemd timers
I define all units in Nix because:

a) It is way nicer and you get decent validation at build time

b) A LLM can port units over if the need arises; it’s a very light abstraction around systemd syntax

c) I personally don’t see how I would ever move to another distro :)

Cyph0n··on Love systemd timers
+1, NixOS makes working with systemd a breeze. Defining units in Nix beats wrangling INI files.

  systemd.services.sync-recyclarr = {
    serviceConfig.Type = "oneshot";
    path = [ pkgs.podman ];
    script = ''
      podman exec -it recyclarr recyclarr sync radarr
      podman exec -it recyclarr recyclarr sync sonarr
    '';
  };
  systemd.timers.sync-recyclarr = {
    timerConfig = {
      OnCalendar = "daily";
      Persistent = true;
      Unit = "sync-recyclarr.service";
    };
    partOf = [ "sync-recyclarr.service" ];
    requires = [ "podman-recyclarr.service" ];
    wantedBy = [ "timers.target" ];
  };
Cyph0n··on What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?
Uh, downvoting is definitely a useful tool to signal that you don’t agree with an opinion or subjective statement.

But yes, downvoting a factual statement makes no sense.

Cyph0n··on United Airlines 767 returns to Newark after Bluetooth name sparks alert
u/fortran77 used the phrase so-called “Palestinian” movement (slightly edited since), so I simply responded with the same rhetoric :)

Of course, I somehow doubt that you would have a similarly strong reaction when Palestine is erased.

Cyph0n··on GTA 6 Developers Unionize
And how exactly is this situation worse than the unfair allocation of salaries and bonuses in companies today? Even within the same company, people can get paid more based on the org/division they work in (e.g. core AI teams), or even based on their (team or individual) perceived value to higher ups.

At least with the Samsung union, the decision is being made bottom up vs. top down.

Cyph0n··on GTA 6 Developers Unionize
No, that is not a “complex” position at all. On the contrary, it’s a fairly simple position where you take no strong stance but still want to claim the positive aspects from each side.

Are unions universally good? No, because humans are in the loop, and humans can do bad things.

Does that change the fact that the concept of a union is one of the greatest innovations in all of human history? No.

Can unions today help disparate human workers collectively improve their working conditions? Yes, because this is what unions were designed for, and I think is the key outcome the Rockstar folks are betting on.

For a recent example, read up on the Samsung union bargaining for company wide bonuses in the wake of the huge profits made off the surge in demand for memory.

Cyph0n··on IBM Confidential: System/360 File Organization [video]
Interesting. So that explains where the inspiration for the cult-like elements in Severance came from. The parallels between Lumon and IBM were fairly clear to me, save for this part.
Cyph0n··on AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale
> without needing to pay a rent or ask for permission

Firstly, the ability to “build” the best and most capable software is still locked behind frontier models, so rent is still and will always be due.

Secondly, OSS is about giving users the option to be in control of and have visibility over the software they run on their machines.

But that doesn’t mean that humans do not want or deserve recognition for the work they do to provide these libraries and tools for free, which is IMO partially why copyright and attribution are critical to OSS as a movement.

Cyph0n··on Iran starts Bitcoin-backed ship insurance for Hormuz strait
Replace Iran and IRGC with Israel and IDF and you have a winner - one that is actually in possession of undeclared nuclear arms and refuses to cooperate with the IAEA.
Cyph0n··on The vi family
Vim is definitely more efficient when it comes to navigation and manipulation (esp via macros), which are the two things we do the most as programmers.

The added benefit I found is that Vim’s purely keyboard based design is much, much easier on the wrists. Heck, I pushed myself to learn Vim because I started to feel wrist pain due to KB and mouse switching.

Cyph0n··on Kickstarter is forced to ban adult content by payment processors
Huh, the same person who was behind crushing the campus protests & blacklisting/cancellation of protestors at Harvard that were in opposition to the Gaza genocide.
Cyph0n··on I returned to AWS, and was reminded why I left
I may be biased, but I find that GCP’s IAM story is simply way better.
Cyph0n··on Meta's embrace of AI is making its employees miserable
One of humanity’s greatest inventions imo. Just imagine a world where we didn’t have the ability to mobilize a workforce in pursuit of a common goal.
Cyph0n··on UAE to leave OPEC
It’s doing its own thing, mainly in Syria, Libya, and Somalia afaik.
Cyph0n··on UAE Leaves OPEC and OPEC+
Which country?

Kuwait was “saved” by the US. The Iraq invasion was approved by the GCC, partly as payback for Kuwait, and anyways Iraq is not part of the GCC. The Qatar blockade was self-inflicted (and extremely stupid).

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