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akira2501

11,987 karma · joined June 10, 2010

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akira2501··on NYC Subway Station Layouts
> because of terrorist concerns.

The New York bureaucracies favorite excuse for not doing work they are responsible for.

akira2501··on Memories are not only in the brain, human cell study finds
> It's expected there is another stimuli

Yes, and your link then identifies it:

> They have at least three different compasses at their disposal: one allows them to extract information from the position of the sun in the sky, another uses the patterns of the stars at night, and the third is based on Earth’s ever present magnetic field.

They clearly do not "know" paths anymore than water "knows" what gravity is.

akira2501··on Memories are not only in the brain, human cell study finds
The immune system is several systems. One of my favorite parts is the Thymus.

It's literally setup like a gauntlet. New immune cells from marrow come through the Thymus and are tested. They need to pass through and attack foreign cells then pass through and _not_ attack host cells. They are essentially tagged and filtered by this process.

Most cells are let go into the body, some cells are reserved as self regulatory cells, and the others that do not pass are destroyed.

It's a literal quality control and selection machine for your immune system.

akira2501··on Memories are not only in the brain, human cell study finds
> migration routes that animals know

How do you know they "know" them?

> all of these things can be encoded as chemical signalling

Why do you presume they are chemical signals?

> pattern matching

Psychedelics show the absurd power of layered pattern matching in our brains and what happens when you disrupt those mechanisms. I would not discount it so readily.

akira2501··on Memories are not only in the brain, human cell study finds
Except the "trauma informed ayahuasca ceremony" is $500 a pop with a minimum of 5 ceremonies. Plus you have to travel outside of the USA. Good cottage industry.
akira2501··on The 'Invisibility Cloak' – Slash-Proc Magic
> Couldn't you use the same trick on /proc/mounts itself?

Unfortunately, yes. 'bind' allows mount to bind over individual files and not just directories. Which is a little bit insane.

In any case, if you are suspicious, 'umount /proc/mounts'. It either returns ok or it returns "umount: /proc/mounts: not mounted."

akira2501··on The 'Invisibility Cloak' – Slash-Proc Magic
> What are the legitimate use cases to not treat /proc as readonly,

Only some parts of proc are "read only." /proc/sys is filled with writable controls.

> my first impulse is "Why do we allow this?"

The user is allowed to do whatever they like with their machine. It's the reason I use linux. It never puts me in a position where "system policies" or other default "security theater" nonsense disadvantages me on my own hardware.

If you're that concerned you can easily add a policy framework, like SELinux, or others, which would prevent this from happening or raise an exception if it does.

> that seemingly doesn't have any legitimate use case on a server.

There are dozens of other ways to achieve this same effect that rely on mechanisms that have legitimate use cases. In particular if you are root you will not struggle to find ways to hide processes. In this case you can just observe "/proc/mounts" to see that something perfidious is occurring.

> I can still nuke and rebuild it in an hour or so.

As long as there is no important data at rest within the server. This isn't always the case.

akira2501··on Claude Shannon: Mathematician, engineer, genius and juggler (2017)
My grandfather had Alzheimer's. I visited him in the nursing home. He mistook me for his late brother, and presumed that we were about to go on a trip, that he had already taken decades ago, to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

I didn't know what to do so I just played along with it. We spent the next hour having the most in depth and amazing conversation about the history of hist Baseball experiences from his youth. He remembered nearly everything from that period of his life and we discussed it in exceptional detail.

I walked away both elated that we could have that moment and incredibly sad that most victims of this disease seem entirely trapped within it. They're still in there. They're still that same person.

akira2501··on Even Microsoft Notepad is getting AI text editing now
They spent all this money on training. Massive amounts of one time and recurring costs. They have no idea how to write it all down. They never planned that they might have to.

And people wonder why some of us were so insistent on not allowing this garbage pile of technologies to be open labeled 'AI.'

akira2501··on Even Microsoft Notepad is getting AI text editing now
> And clearly its a useful too in a writing app that users would like

I don't believe it's useful. I don't think Notepad is a "writing app." And I'm fairly certain not a single user in the history of ever has asked for this.

akira2501··on Australia proposes ban on social media for those under 16
> What could possibly be better for children who look for purpose in life?

They sort of naturally do that if you have the appropriate challenges and opportunities around them.

> ancient pyramid aliens or discussions about how veganism will help your body.

There used to be a tabloid called "News of the Weird." This stuff just exists. You'll find it anywhere people gather. We're story tellers. When we don't have a compelling story we just make stuff up. It's identical to the point above.

> even all the adults can't come to a shared understanding of what is "good" or true.

It's not possible. If the children are intended to inherit the future then this is a flawed and reductive strategy. You will not achieve what you seek through parochial means.

Really.. I think your biggest problem should be advertising. It should be nowhere near children. Ban _that_ but keep the social media.

akira2501··on Trump wins presidency for second time
> Biden was utterly incoherent at the debate.

Which was so totally unpredictable?

> and got the party behind her immediately

I remember this quite differently.

> and brought hope back to the Democrats.

I honestly doubt it was anything other than trepidation masquerading as hope. She was the worst performing Democrat in the last open primaries. This hope was not based on anything other than an exigent fear of Trump.

> she did far better than we could have reasonably expected.

The metric, as always, is votes / campaign spend. Are you sure you've evaluated this earnestly?

akira2501··on Sin taxes are suffering from a shortage of sinners
There's a ton of money in it. The arbitrage is that one farmer can produce hundreds of pounds of product but cannot possibly warehouse and sell it all themselves. The resulting wholesale prices make setting up a shop that charges retail prices an incredibly reliable way to make money.

There is no mechanism, as there is in food, to support farmers or to control consumer prices. There is also no government funded free marijuana program. It seems like it would have analogs, but marijuana is truly a unique market.

akira2501··on Sin taxes are suffering from a shortage of sinners
It's a signal that existing funding mechanisms are no longer capable of supporting governments demands. So governments have gotten very creative at "off label deficit spending."
akira2501··on Switch 2 will be backwards compatible with Switch
> can be more or less perfected

When it comes to video games. That's not much of a demonstration in the grand scheme of things.

akira2501··on Trump wins presidency for second time
> and thrown to lime light.

She threw herself under the bus. She went thought a great deal of effort to end up there. It's the deftest act of self immolation I've seen in politics so far.

akira2501··on Trump wins presidency for second time
They lost because they forgot about wages and retirement savings.

Inflation was uneven. It impacted prices but not wages or savings. It reduced citizen wealth directly and transferred it to corporations and the already wealthy.

They wanted to publicize the problem but not actually take the cure. Now they have zero mandate in any institution. That's what selling out your base gets you.

akira2501··on WebSockets cost us $1M on our AWS bill
> A single 1080p raw video frame would be 1080 * 1920 * 1.5 = 3110.4 KB in size

They seem to not understand the fundamentals of what they're working on.

> Chromium's WebSocket implementation, and the WebSocket spec in general, create some especially bad performance pitfalls.

You're doing bulk data transfers into a multiplexed short messaging socket. What exactly did you expect?

> However there's no standard interface for transporting data over shared memory.

Yes there is. It's called /dev/shm. You can use shared memory like a filesystem, and no, you should not be worried about user/kernel space overhead at this point. It's the obvious solution to your problem.

> Instead of the typical two-pointers, we have three pointers in our ring buffer:

You can use two back to back mmap(2) calls to create a ringbuffer which avoids this.

akira2501··on Mozilla is eliminating its advocacy division
Then they take Google's money and fail to influence open standards meaningfully.
akira2501··on The Antitrust Revolution
A consequence of monopolization is that produced products drift far away from actual market demands. I believe most of what you propose to fix is actually caused by this mechanism.

Hardware consoles suck because three (count 'em!) companies make them. They sell them at a loss even because monopolizing the sales and distribution and development channel is profitable enough to make up for this. If you want better consoles you need more companies making them in a market place they cannot fully control.

akira2501··on Why Aren't There B Batteries? (2022)
This is a latern battery. You put other batteries in it. That's why it's called the 3R12. There are 3x R12 batteries in it.

https://www.google.com/search?q=European+4.5-volt+lantern+ba....

akira2501··on The US Navy Put Cameras on Dolphins and the Results Were Wild
You just have to drug them first.

https://williamgibson.fandom.com/wiki/Jones

akira2501··on Only 5.3% of US welders are women. After years as a professor, I became one
> I’m resentful of these silent evaluations, particularly when I’m learning something new and trying to keep all my fingers.

I don't think this is unique to Women at all. There's a tendency in these authors to perceive Men's interactions in the workplace as "easy" or "natural" or even desired for some reason. They typically aren't.

> Stoicism is a workaround to credibility.

It also comes with a high price. Those who pay it typically do not last. Ironically they often refuse to recognize the source of their suffering. If the job is hard, modify the tools to make it easier, your class of use just hasn't been typically considered but it wouldn't be impossible to create.

> The pontificating metal-shop customer should be, too.

It's everywhere. The number of times my credibility has been assumed based upon my appearance is huge. Customers often have to choose between two Men if a Women isn't working, and the same tropes apply there as well.

It all seems like the right idea for the wrong reasons and so the interpretation is heavily compromised by it.

akira2501··on Nvidia and its partners built a system to bypass U.S. export restrictions
There are people who are worried about the economic market. Others are worried about the military impact. Them being a "global chip leader" isn't the problem.
akira2501··on Nvidia and its partners built a system to bypass U.S. export restrictions
They'll be disassembled and studied.
akira2501··on Nvidia and its partners built a system to bypass U.S. export restrictions
> This is just market forces at work

Laws are just market forces at work.

akira2501··on DB48X: High Performance Scientific Calculator, Reinvented
Built in algebra system. Mathematica is nice. Also very expensive.
akira2501··on How the British Airways' breach kickstarted today's web security challenge
> I think money is not the main driver for those people.

I think you're forgetting the risk involved. To me, of course, it's the money because there are plenty of ways to get the satisfaction you're describing. It may not even be a crass need for money but people who live in poorer areas of the world taking a job and earning a cut as possibly the only worthwhile means of using their talent.

> amount of talent, knowledge and passion is wasted for a hack like this.

It's not as if worthwhile outlets for talent are easy to come by. It could be easier. The world we live in does not prioritize this outcome.

akira2501··on Why systemd is a problem for embedded Linux
> Poettering actually took his idea to completion.

One of them. The others didn't work out so well. That's a curiosity in and of itself.

> A lot of people claim the same, but the proof is in the real life pudding.

Those claims are true. Those systems exist. People use them. Every day. I've got tons of business riding on them. Systemd's defaults are simply a non starter for any real production environment.

> Don't forget that geeks idealize perfection and especially minimalist perfection.

They prefer a system which leaves the options open. Systemd removes them in the name of simplistic cohesion. It's all based on the flawed idea that linux will ever be a popular desktop operating system if you just make it work like windows does.

It misses the point on what computing is entirely, but hey, as long as it's "complete" implementation of this flawed vision I guess that's good enough for some people. And yet we're still no where near windows.

akira2501··on Aldebaran 1959 Spacecraft Concept (2010)
> the fallout wouldn't be an environmental issue.

"It's outside the environment."

> has considered a high-thrust nuclear

Of course we have. Always start at NTRS: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19690000736

> Certainly sci-fi has!

Our Solar system is a gravitational well that tends to put things in solar orbit. You really want the waste products to leave the solar system, which isn't terribly difficult, or you want them to land on the sun itself, which is exceptionally difficult.

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