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Pet_Ant

3,409 karma · joined February 10, 2020

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Pet_Ant··on China's 450kmph bullet train is the fastest ever built
What about if they added “wings” to trains? That could generate some lift reducing the effective weight is my shower thought.

No idea how much the wings would add versus the lift help.

Pet_Ant··on NetBSD 11.0 RC1
> New port to the RISC-V processor architecture. NetBSD 11.0 is the first stable release to include support for 64-bit RISC-V

This is very exciting!

Pet_Ant··on Oxide raises $200M Series C
After my dates of employment I will parethetically add (bankrupt) or (shutdown) to indicate that it wasn't related to me personally. My best job was 18 months.
Pet_Ant··on Notepad++ hijacked by state-sponsored actors
Checking for updates and pulling in plug-ins. Both are valid.
Pet_Ant··on What does Werner Herzog's nihilist penguin teach us? (2017)
My personal favourite work of his is "Happy People: A Year in the Taiga". Most of the people are doing immediate purposeful work and are much more present. There is so much resilience (the bear destroyed hut), and there is also tragedy in it as well (the fire).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_People:_A_Year_in_the_Ta...

Pet_Ant··on If you tax them, will they leave?
I’m assuming they think that rich people spend more so they pay more. This is a fallacy, because poor people spend a higher portion of their income (over a 100% a lot of the time).
Pet_Ant··on 'The old order is not coming back,' Carney says in speech at Davos
> all but one member of NATO share the same values currently

Turkey? Hungary? Slovakia?

Pet_Ant··on 'The old order is not coming back,' Carney says in speech at Davos
It's worth mentioning that David Frum is Canadian and a Republican (the author of "Axis of Evil")

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

Pet_Ant··on String theory can now describe a universe that has dark energy?
Can you expand on this? I’m guessing that it’s something to do with preservation of mass & energy? Like mass doesn’t have to be preserved over a spatial dimension (eg rotating an object) but does over time.
Pet_Ant··on De-dollarization: Is the US dollar losing its dominance? (2025)
This is a non-sequitor.

Google has no constitutional right to exist or have accurate search results either. However, it's value depends on the quality of their search results.

People outside the US don't care about the particulars of the US constitution like it's a holy document, but rather the US governance as a whole and whether it's well-ordered, lawful, and predictable.

Pet_Ant··on Why Arab states are silent about Iran's unrest
https://youtu.be/s1DyDRn4_Fw?si=hFcWL0wzKeoisBCh

That would give you a sample of the language. Watching it seems pretty definitive that it is. A more eclectic member of the Arabic family, but it’s definitely Arab.

Pet_Ant··on Government drops plans for mandatory digital ID to work in UK
They want to have rigorous well-indexed system for the people in a country, when the system of the country isn't rigorous.

When your constitution is ad hoc, it seems only fair that everything else is. Start with the foundation before formalising everything else.

Pet_Ant··on Why Arab states are silent about Iran's unrest
Quick research, but it appears that the population are descendents of the Emirate of Sicily from 1000 AD, which was colonised by people from Tunisia, who would be considered Arabs generally. So a splinter group cut off from the main body for a thousand years (if my reading is correct).

Are they still Arabs? That's subjective.

I'd consider America and England two capitals of the Anglo empire much like Roman and Constantinople, but there is lots of room for nuance. (Romans & Byzantines saw themselves as the same, whereas Americans and English see themselves as different... but I chalk that up to the tyranny of small differences, just look at how the elites jump back and forth across the pond and how their politics harmonise, Trump/Farage, Reagan/Thatcher, Clinton/Blair).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltese_people#History

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

Pet_Ant··on Government drops plans for mandatory digital ID to work in UK
All this rigor for a country without an actual formalised constitution. I mean, maybe the government should work on that first and make sure it has a right to work there first?

> Unlike in most countries, no official attempt has been made to codify ... thus it is known as an uncodified constitution.

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

Pet_Ant··on Why Arab states are silent about Iran's unrest
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltese_language

> Maltese is a Central Semitic language derived from late medieval Sicilian Arabic with Romance superstrata. It is the only Semitic language officially written in the Latin script. It is spoken by the Maltese people and is a national language of Malta, and is the only official Semitic and Afroasiatic language of the European Union

Maltese is the official language of Malta and 77% of people in Malta are Maltese. Now, what's the definition of Arab is debateable, but I think it's reasonable. I think they are sort of like Romanians where they are surrounded by Slavs, but their bretheren are on the other side of the continent. This is a simplification and as primer, I'm sure people have more nuanced takes.

Pet_Ant··on Why Arab states are silent about Iran's unrest
Haven't read because of paywall, but for anyone who might not know:

Ira_n_ is not Arab. They are Persian and speak an Indo-European language.

Ira_q_, is Arab. Neighbors, some of the same religion^, similar name, same-ish alphabet, similar skin tones... very different language. Arabic is semitic language, think Hebrew.

Most Muslim middle-east countries are Arab... Iran is an exception (as is Turkey who come from Central Asia, eg Turkmenistan)

Most Arab countries are predominantly Muslim. Malta is the exception, Lebanon is complicated.

^ The biggest split amongst Muslims is Sunni vs Shia (think protestants vs catholics), Saudi Arabia is Sunni, Ira_n_ is Shia, Iraq is mixed.

Pet_Ant··on We can't have nice things because of AI scrapers
I wish more resources were available legitimately. There is a dataset I need for legitimate research that I cannot even find a way to contact the repo owners.

Mind you I take effort to not be burdensome by downloading only what I need and taking time between each request of a couple seconds, and the total data usage is low.

Ironically, I supposed you could call it "AI" what I'm using it for, but really it's just data analytics.

Pet_Ant··on “Stop Designing Languages. Write Libraries Instead” (2016)
Have you considered PowerShell? It's open-source, and typed, and definitely usable from the command line with lots of resources for.

https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell

Pet_Ant··on How the “Marvelization” of Cinema Accelerates the Decline of Filmmaking
I love Cinema... but I'd never invest my money in an independent film. I'd take stock in a Marvel film. Actually, this might actually be a place where Kalshi might be legitimate. Take a position, and the information lets cinemas decide whether to run the film... (I have no idea how modern cinemas are run).
Pet_Ant··on As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise
To me art has always been "an interesting idea". Decorative things that take skill to me are crafts. Sure, it's a water color of your garden, but what does it tell us about the human condition? Sure, it's skilled... but it's empty. Give me Jackson Pollock or Picasso. Give me a new way to see the world. Pure skill to me is as impressive as cup-stacking personally.

Not saying you have to agree, but it is a distillation of how some portion of the world sees the world.

Pet_Ant··on US Confirms Strike on 'Big Facility' Inside Venezuela
I suspect that the United States are trying to assert their dominance over the entirety of the Americas (both north and south). Hence this, the talk of fentanyl from Canada, Canada the 51st state, and annexing Greenland. See Orwell's 1984's Oceania, though without Australia, but add Taiwan (to check Eastasia).

I think the passivity towards Ukraine is part of relinquishing as seeing Europe as partners or seeing them as part of strategic value. Russia can take Europe, or Europe can fight back, they are good either way.

Because of Maduro and the cocaine, Venezuela is an easy first step. They are both hard to stand up for except in principle. I would not be surprised if Cuba is round two. It's the Truman doctrine on steroids.

I even wonder if the idea is to replace cheap Chinese labour with each South American labor eventually.

Pet_Ant··on As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise
> I don't believe that there is near enough room for creativity to shine through in the prompt-generation pipeline

I mean you are building a prompt and tweaking it. I mean even if you didn't do that you could still argue that finding it is in itself a creative akin to found art [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Found_object

Pet_Ant··on I'm returning my Framework 16
I mean, this could literally be the last laptop shell, screen, keyboard and power adapter you ever buy. That's a fantastic sustainability story. Not to mention that if it dies you are never at risk of having to replace the whole thing unless it melts in a fire.
Pet_Ant··on If you don't design your career, someone else will (2014)
Going all-in beats hedging your bets when the gravy train is running thick. But when times go sour, fortunes reverse. Unfortunately, that's when survivor bias shows up. Being diversified (almost) leads to being in the upper-middle, but if you only listen to those currently on top, you'll hear only the benefits of going all-in.
Pet_Ant··on Carnap – A formal logic framework for Haskell
Thanks... you just ruined it.

I was so happy that finally that splendid slumber during transportation was finally getting the recognition it so richly deserves.

;)

Pet_Ant··on Are We Loong Yet?
I mean isn't this equivalent to "are we MIPS yet?"? I don't know the technicalities, but aren't they suspiciously close aren't they? ...and MIPS has been supported for a loong time already.
Pet_Ant··on California minimum wage set to rise in 2026
I think of it as creative destruction. If you can’t generate jobs that pay a living wage, then let’s let people back into the labor pool to enable the growth of a company that can.
Pet_Ant··on AMD officially confirms fresh next-gen Zen 6 CPU details
But they are still gonna fab the Zen 6 chips. So for people already with AM5 motherboards populated with RAM but rocking a Zen 4 CPU this could be a good time to upgrade that CPU with your existing setup. You passing this generation just means less competition for those CPUs which should make them even cheaper.
Pet_Ant··on AMD officially confirms fresh next-gen Zen 6 CPU details
Higher DRAM prices might mean that there is less demand from new system builders mean depressed prices so it might be more tempting to upgrade your existing AM5 CPU to Zen 6
Pet_Ant··on Linux Kernel Rust Code Sees Its First CVE Vulnerability
It's not moving the goalposts at all. I'm not a Rust programmer, but for years the message has been the same. It's been monotonous and tiring, so I don't know why you think it's new.

Safe Rust code is safe. You know where unsafe code is, because it's marked as unsafe. Yes, you will need some unsafe code in an notable project, but at least you know where it is. If you don't babysit your unsafe code, you get bad things. Someone didn't do the right thing here and I'm sure there will be a post-mortem and lessons learned.

To be comparable, imagine in C you had to mark potentially UB code with ub{} to compile. Until you get that, Rust is still a clear leader.

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