IFC_LLC

Good take, and most of the data in the article is quite correct. The problem is a total mix up of cause and effect. The US has had a decent communication network since way back. We had telegraph, telephone and telex. Bell and AT&T and all that stuff. We've invented and piloted modems, T1 and cable TV.

Our infrastructure at times goes back 200 years old. We have rules and words in today's networking linguo that go back 70 years old. You can't just go and tell that it would have been better this way. It absolutely would. And I'm happy for Swiss people who can have 25gpbs at a fraction of the cost. But you can't do that with an emerging tech that is trying to replace existing architecture.

Swiss guys built all that after the tech was wide-spread in the world, and they have built it over a very outdated infrastructure. It was a breeze.

US just unable to use this approach. We can't.

Should we come up with a new one? Yes. Should we look at the Swiss solution and try to replicate it. Yes. Is it awesome? Yes. Would it work here? No.

Sadly, but the whole buzz about social networks is built around the community. And any of federated networks require some technical knowledge that is over the head in 99% of regular users.

I wish this could be a bit more user-friendly, like p2p networking that does not require any user configuration, just install a client and it will p2p automatically.

There are magnitudes of mistakes. I can drop prod 4 times a day on a project that's being used by 4 old grannies to sync their excel file and get away with it. I can get scolded for 5 minutes of downtime at 6 am.

There is a point of responsibility in here, and it is up to the management to triage the fallout of this "mistake".

Yeah, so what exactly do you call entertainment?

Is slapping "Made for AI" label on every device in the known universe entertaining?

I think that's an expected thing.

G5 was the thing. And companies were buying G5 and other macs like that all the time, because you were able to actually extend it with video cards and some special equipment.

But now we have M chips. You don't need video for M chips. You kinda do, but truthfully, it's cheaper to buy a beefier Mac than to install a video card.

Pro was a great thing for designers and video editors, those freaks who need to color-calibrate monitors. And right now even mini works just fine for that.

And as for extensions - gone are the days of PCIe. Audio cards and other specialized equipment works and lives just fine on USB-C and Thunderbolt.

I remember how many months I've spent trying to make Creative Labs Sound Blaster to work on my 486 computer. At that time you had to have a card to extend your system. Right now I'm using Scarlett 2i2 from Focusrite. It works over USB-C with my iPhone, iPad and Mac. DJIs mics work just as good.

Damn, you can buy Oscilloscope that works over USB-C or network.

It's not the Mac's or Apple's fault. We are actually live in the age where systems are quite independent and do not require direct installations.

I'd notice one thing: I use LLMs to spellcheck and when I do, here is your barrage of em-dashes.

I mean, you do have a point, and I'll quite agree with it. The only way of monetizing your writing is to use Substack or Medium, or whatever.

Yet your approach is appallingly low on the other side of the spectrum. I've been in IT for the past 25 years. I have yet to see a non-IT person who knows what dedicated IP is. If you are not publishing it on the internet, then what's the point?

I've seen plenty of companies where the owner just had a read-only shared drive, where people can rummage thru a pack of PDFs. This' was all fine with that.

You have to understand, manage and work with the complexities of the tools, and offer tools quite enough for the task. It's alright to offer what you do to an engineer who has a spare Pi and a couple of days to kill. But it's quite useless for anyone else to adopt.

WHAT? The client size is 2 megabytes? It can fit onto two floppy drives! Man, this is something. It's even more 2002 vibes! And I haven't installed it yet.

Bravo!

Ah, this gives me 2002 vibes where coolest websites started to produce native clients for their websites so their users could read and comment offline.

This is sooo good.

I'm thoroughly perplexed as what is this doing on HN and how it connects to any Hacker News?

I don’t understand how this article is not at the top of all times

This is cool. Yet, there are levels of insanity and those depend on your inability to estimate things.

When I'm launching a project it's easier for me to rent $250 worth of compute from AWS. When the project consumes $30k a month, it's easier for me to rent a colocation.

My point is that a good engineer should know how to calculate all the ups and downs here to propose a sound plan to the management. That's the winning thing.

That proves only one thing. We just have nothing to do in our lives. The tenacity of government that invents useless laws directly proportional to nothingness to do that it provides to its citizens

Every time I see such an app and read their privacy notice... https://www.luffu.com/privacy-notice

It kinda scares me. Obviously right now their privacy notice is kinda empty due to just "wanting to join a wait-list", but even not it talks about saving the data. So it's another black-hole for ads, personal data collections and purposeless AI-agent integrations.

What does it solve that a group chat cannot solve? Do I actually want to share my personal information with my entire family? Am I unable to look at my dog and spot the fact that he is too fat or too slim?

And, for gawd's sake, I can't make my grandma to make a photo on a phone. Just a word VPN drives her into a panic mode. Why would anyone offer me to make her to log her medication in a group-chat app?

Just like an idea of using an oil-powered carriage instead of a good'ol horsie was in 1910.

Listen, I totally agree, the tech makes absolutely no sense. It does not. But the fact that someone is willing to spend money on figuring this out is pretty good. The worst thing is going to happen, we'll have a cheaper space travel. And let the guys to have the first hit at it, wasting money on an enormous amount of research needed.

Ain't my money being spent.

As long as we don't have to use Russian rockets to send the US payload to the orbit, I'm cool with it.

I mean, the idea kinda makes sense.

But, first of all, do you really HAVE to make your admins to set this up? https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/rooms/third... It requires Exchange re-configuring, URL re-writes and client setups.

But both teams and meet can be launched from a browser. And truth to be said I'm very happy about it. I don't want Teams client hanging around on my PC. So what is the exact problem that is being solved here?

I'm actually asking. Probably there will be some use for highly restrictive networks where all of the computers are managed and software lists are approved by admins. That kinda makes sense.

So what's next? People will re-flash their printers with an open-source firmware that won't do the checks? Who's liable in this case?

It's all fine and dandy until you realize that economy pays a big buck for faster and more comfortable ways of transporting a body. (And it's been this way since time memorial).

You either transport your body fast, or you are missing out. And the greatest thing to miss out is an opportunity. While programmers can live in one room for years and just use Zoom for everything, others can't.

Sorry to say, but most of my European friends who were much anti-car, have changed their opinion after... buying a car. Being able to move in whatever direction at whatever time and being able to carry some stuff in your trunk makes your life convenient. Add to that the privacy and your personal AC and you won't be able to top it off. In South Africa personal vehicle means security at night.

The only places where this works are the places where: 1. People live for retirement and pleasure. 2. The road infrastructure is just straight hell. (Like Portugal. It's bad in Lisbon. It is terrible in there). 3. Where you are not under any circumstances can be robbed by a random person on a street.

So, the so-called cars problem is not something solvable. You just have to handle other factors to and cars will follow. I've seen cities where improvement in economic and social conditions led to the development of nice pedestrian and bike infrastructure.

I have completed an interview with a neurosurgeon recently. I'm writing an article for a big magazine about AI and Brains, and I was given a chance to get some comments from a neurosurgeon about AI, thinkingness and how he things things work.

I can't disclose the contents of the interview, this is under NDA till published. But, gosh, was that bad.

I thought neurosurgeon would know something about thinking process, and stuff like that. The guy in a state of a total despair. When I was bashing him with questions about the purpose of a brain and all that stuff, he was almost crying.

He ended up telling me that he hopes that someone will find quantum entanglement in the brain, and everything will be fine after that. After he sent me to this from PBS Science.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xa2Kpkksf3k

I took a liberty in reviewing one of the recent submissions to HN. And it's just a bad name for Rust.

Gee, I'm sorry, but this is just over my head.

It takes over 282 crates to build this 1000 lines of code. It takes 1.3 gigs of space to display a window with a game on one's screen. And the AI does not work at all since it just crashes in itself. I'm not sure how this can be a good example of a program written in Rust. Rust is all about low-level optimized over-speedy small-sized binaries. Right now I see just a blob of something that barely works.

And yes, Light Cycle is in fact just a version of a Snake with a different ruleset.

You are stating exactly the problem.

A well written scientific book would never leave a reader in a state of “maybe”.

Also, if the numbers go down to 0.2% I can’t help but notice that this can’t be defined as a disorder. It is a statistical error.

There is a placebo effect. Furthermore any doctor knows the rule of self-diagnosis. “Any patient, given a chance, will self-diagnose anything”.

With no data on how the data about illness was obtained I can’t say if this is a statistical error or a fluke.

Also, as noted above, should there be a method of testing for such a condition that is objective, I would live with 2% or 0.2%. (For example, 0.001% of people are missing this and this chromosome, and we know that because we can do a DNA test.) But there is no way of saying something like this just cause you did a survey and ask people some vague questions about their mental state. There are people who would just fake answers in their responses for fun. And just cause of that I don’t trust numbers like 2% in this specific case.

How can one identify an illness where one can't even tell who and how often have said illness?

In fact, there is a way of doing that. And we, as programmers, have access to those methods. It's called Numerical Analisys. At times it's quite amazing to see how well mathematics can estimate data.

One of the examples, is German Tank Problem. https://www.numberphile.com/videos/clever-way-to-count-tanks

While being an extremely opaque problem we are able to handle it to an extremely precise numbers.

One does not have to be that acquainted with the ways of math to figure things out. One can just use some data source and point such data source out. I mean, any book, be that a book on financing or programming book would have a list of references under such statements.

And here we have it. An absolutely out-of-wack statement saying that the poorest regions of Britain are affected by this condition more than others. Who? Why? Where? How was this number obtained?

Probably "contradictory" is not a right word for such a claim. But I would love to see at least anything that would prove such a statement.

In fact, flip to the end of the DSM and look for the list of references. You'll find none. I kid you not, there is not a single reference to an outside source in this book. This means that my work on "Use of Dynamic Library Link to execute Assembly code in C#" that I've written in 2005 while in the university has 6 more references to outside sources than the DSM itself.

The reason for my beef in here mainly that all the numbers are just stated, with no respect to what numbers are. And I would expect either an explanation of a numerical method to estimate this number, or a source as to where this number has been gotten from.

I took the liberty of indulging in some reading.

I must admit, it feels a bit strange. The truth is that I learned my first steps in programming by working through large, formidable books. In fact, my very first programming book was Assembly Language for Intel-Based Computers by Kip Irvine. After that, I read even larger books, many of them multiple times.

I have always been fond of reading well-written books by knowledgeable professionals. After reading such works, you come away with real understanding, greater clarity, and often new creativity. Books are valuable, and I have always respected a good one.

Yet the DSM-5-TR is quite the opposite. The Preface clearly states that the work is intended for everyone:

“The information is of value to all professionals associated with various aspects of mental health care, including psychiatrists, other physicians, psychologists, social workers, nurses, counselors, forensic and legal specialists, occupational and rehabilitation therapists, and other health professionals.”

I happen to be a social worker, and I have read a lot of books. I know how to study. I carefully looked up any words I might have misunderstood and used the dictionary freely.

But despite all my efforts, I often failed to make sense of what I was reading. One would expect a theory followed by a conclusion, or an observation leading to a conclusion, or a theorem that is then proven. Unfortunately, that structure is missing here.

A typical DSM entry begins with a statement presented as fact, only to be followed by other statements that seem to contradict it.

Take, for example:

“The prevalence of disinhibited social engagement disorder is unknown. Nevertheless, the disorder appears to be rare, occurring in a minority of children, even those who have experienced severe early deprivation. In low-income community populations in the United Kingdom, the prevalence is up to 2%.”

This kind of contradictory phrasing is standard in the DSM.

Again, the DSM is publicly available, and anyone can read it here: https://www.ifeet.org/files/DSM-5-TR.pdf

I would have expected more precision from a scientific book.

This will be just another boost for de-googled phones, alternative platforms and potentially Mobile Linux.

The only reason why google phones became so popular was the fact that they were much less restrictive than iPhones. Thus the platform became the biggest phone platform in the world.

Now they are asking for a new start to arise and take their place.

Oh, I will. I will. I'm quite amazed by the dedication of the team that supports the framework and how good of a care they have been taking about it.

Funny enough, one of my first articles I've ever written on the internet was about RoR. It's dated 1st of March 2010. Gosh, It's been 15 years. At that moment I used https://rubyforge.org to download RoR, Instant Rails for Windows and Aptana as an IDE. 15 years have gone by, but RoR is here just like PHP is.

So it's getting better and better.

Interesting how the Internet turned into a place where you have to search for a long time in order to find something valuable. In this case - you have a dedicated team that sits there and diligently works on the quality of their product.

I should have turned to RoR 3 years ago.

What options are there? Do we have a reliable distributed DNS? I'm genuinely asking, because I've just realized that for the past 7 years I've been happily using my provider's DNS server and never thought of it.

But now, I'm seriously considering something better than that.

Here are some thoughts from a U.S. citizen whose wife is an immigrant.

I have spent more than two and a half years filing forms and preparing paperwork for the U.S. government. I handled everything myself, without any “special” help or legal advice. I simply downloaded the forms from USCIS, filled them out using the required information, and submitted them.

What I can tell you is this: there is a massive market in the United States built on gray-area schemes, semi-legal shortcuts, and so-called expert advice. For example, there are companies charging $30,000 to submit a form that costs only $745 to file. Many “helpers” sell visa “upgrades.” The idea is that you arrive on a tourist visa and then follow a specific sequence of steps to convert it into a green card - something packaged and sold as a premium service for an extraordinary price.

This is a very large and lucrative slice of the pie that most people know little about. Both the U.S. visa process and tax filing system are riddled with gray practices and questionable “solutions.” Too often, the end result is that people are told to outright lie about their visa status or their taxes because they were instructed to do so.

From what I have observed, I would not call these practices outright foolish. Overblown at times? Yes, perhaps. But unnecessary? Not really.

The title of this article confuses me on many levels and layers.