1,776 karma · joined September 30, 2014
Arvid Norberg is hardly a "beginner developer", yet look how hard it is to make a performant implementation of uTP: https://github.com/arvidn/libtorrent/issues/3542
- seeding a million active torrents (this is entirely possible and needed but drives a lot of architecture)
- a UI for a million active torrents
- be nice to trackers (keep-alive, batched reports; again, architecture gets tricky, iirc libtorrent can't do that still)
- correct pipelining
- congestion control on uTP
- I/O scheduling/batching
- testing all of the above
It is quite a lot.
What I find matters way, way more is two factors:
- Concentration of capital. The US has an ecosystem of wealthy people that want to put their money somewhere. This is good for startups, but can also backfire as we can see in the news.
- Unified market. EU is not a single market, it's several dozen markets with different regulations, different languages, and different cultures. You can't sell the same B2C product with the same marketing in Germany, Spain, and Sweden as easily as you can in California, Ohio, and Texas.
Someone has to make a call. The weight of the call rests on the person's life experience, their understanding of the context and the cost to the society, their empathy to both the defendant and the accused, and their conscience. Treating it as a black box exercise misses the point completely.
It's a blind spot that too many people have because we take those qualities for granted. LLMs unbundle them, so we need to start recognising the inherent value of humans, fast. I wrote a few words about it here: https://dgroshev.com/blog/feel-bad/
Everything is political, being "apolitical" is a political choice. You can't escape politics.
Whoever came up with an idea to attach CSAM scanning provision to it is an evil genius, what an incredible way to make sure it's not going to pass any time soon.
The scale of necessary repairs is mind boggling. Here's what just Europe alone shipped to Ukraine to repair the damage [1]:
- 8 827 power generators… with an estimated 1 258 590 kVA in power generators
- 3 597 transformers + 5 autotransformers
- 3 364 generators and 14 transformers from the rescEU stockpile
Then there is US support:
- 18 autotransformers "with more on the way" [2]
- 59 transformers just for Kharkiv [3]
…and that is just scratching the surface and is barely enough to keep the lights on, with Ukrainians installing private batteries and generation up and down the country.
Just last night Russia launched another massive attack at the energy infrastructure [4]. More expensive, rare, long lead time transformers getting blown up, and the raid doesn't even get any attention in the West.
[1]: https://erccportal.jrc.ec.europa.eu/ECHO-Products/Maps#/maps...
[2]: https://x.com/USAmbKyiv/status/1819094722754797600
[3]: https://x.com/USAmbKyiv/status/1792791129513218539
[4]: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-launches-large-s...
This is such a glaring disparity that the only explanation I can see is some kind of moral point, since clearly one is much more relevant to the global shortage of transformers than the other. What is the moral point you're making? What are you actually trying to say?
The claim is definitely extraordinary since both wars are extensively documented, and we just know (like, we have verifiable videos) that Russia has much, much less regard for civilian casualties, employs much less precise fires, and Ukraine is more populous and dense than Iraq.
Besides, the numbers I could find are the other way around. This study [1] estimates 3,750 civilian deaths in Iraq, and this UN report [2] says 10,582 recorded civilian deaths (that is, it's definitely an undercount, unlike the estimation in Iraq).
[1]: https://www.comw.org/pda/0310rm8.html#3.3.%20Total%20Iraqi%2...
[2]: https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/2024-02/two-year-u...
Putin is a paranoid coward and fears for his life like few people you know. No he's not going to "destroy the world", it would endanger his own life and the palaces he built for himself.
No it's not binary, there's a vast, vast gulf between limited nuclear use and a full-on attack on CONUS. In fact, any nuclear use by Russia would likely bring its rapid defeat, since their main allies (India and China) are nuclear armed countries with a border dispute and are very interested in the nuclear taboo staying intact.
No it's not "Mutually Assured Destruction", the mainstream of nuclear targeting is counter-force disarming strikes, and the US is perfectly capable of winning a nuclear war. "Winning" here means ending up in a situation where cities are mostly intact on both sides, but only one side is capable of threatening them. Moreover, being credibly capable of winning a nuclear exchange was (during the Cold War) and is necessary to keep European and Asian allies safe. No, militaries are not deliberately glassing cities if push comes to shove, it doesn't make any military or political sense. You don't kill a hostage to win a negotiation.
No, a nuclear war is not a "suicide". It's very bad news for everyone (although chances are we will see battlefield nuclear use in our lifetime), but there's an incredible amount of nuance and complexity. "Putin presses the red button and everyone's dead" is a take that is not even wrong.
[1]: Russia routinely fires cluster munitions into densely populated cities, eg https://www.bbc.com/ukrainian/features-60941459
[1]: https://www.ft.com/content/31b630b3-2639-456c-ba50-3caea7a9b...
Depends on which placement you mean.
"Boosted listings" in Facebook Marketplace? AcmeShop can't bid on that.
In-Marketplace ads like [0]? They are similarly in-Marketplace, I don't think it's technically possible to bid on them.
In-feed Marketplace ads like [1]? They are specifically Marketplace, I have no evidence that they enter the same bidding pool, and it seems improbable.
In-feed generic auto-placed ads like [2]? Maybe, maybe not.
> Remember, Facebook doesn't even make money if you sell something locally and pay in cash.
Facebook doesn't just make money from boosted listings, they also benefit from people just using Facebook. Even if Facebook didn't make any money directly from Marketplace, it'd still be worth it for them and it'd still be anti-competitive. If they can make themselves the main marketplace, it creates a large captive audience scrolling through their ads.
> But I think it has to be shown that Facebook is actually engaging in that kind of anti-competitive behavior. We can't just assume it.
Aren't we commenting under an article about a fine for anti-competitive behaviour?
[0]: https://storage.googleapis.com/website-production/uploads/20...
[1]: https://newsfeed.org/wp-content/uploads/Marketplace_boosted_...
[2]: https://storage.googleapis.com/website-production/uploads/20...
- AcmeShop is paying Facebook money to run a targeted marketing campaign on Facebook
- to do this, in practice AcmeShop is forced to share visit data with Facebook (this bit could be done differently, but for some reason that's how Facebook does it)
- a customer goes to AcmeShop, doesn't make an immediate purchase, leaves
- AcmeShop is paying Facebook to run a remarketing campaign for that customer, showing them the same product leading to AcmeShop
- at the same time, Facebook is using information that they obtained in the process of providing paid services to AcmeShop to show goods on their marketplace platform to the customer. For Facebook, it's not "remarketing", it's just "marketing" at this point. Not only that, but they control which ads they are showing, and naturally with Marketplace-only placements Facebook has an advantage over AcmeShop (again, using information that they effectively forced AcmeShop to provide)
Does this reframing make the problem of Facebook being both an ad seller, an ad manager, and offering the same service as their customers any clearer?
Google doing the same thing is hardly a good excuse.
In your analogy, you don't just "see". You're employed by a nearby stall because you're one of the few plumbers in the town, so you're in that shop a lot, but you're also making photos of their customers and then use those photos to find them on the street and advertise your frobulators. You really don't see anything weird about this scenario?
Besides, if a shop has only one chance ever, what are remarketing ads (marketed by Facebook to businesses) for?
Not really, that's exactly what "remarketing" ads are for — companies track people's interest and remind them of their products. However, in this case, Facebook is double dipping by taking money from their paying customer (AcmeShop), and then using data they obtained whilst serving their paying customer to frontrun the customer.
If you or I tried something like that with Facebook — say, taking salary from Facebook and also using data we accessed through our role to undermine Facebook's business — it'd clearly be both illegal and immoral. Somehow, with enough layers of indirection, for a lot of people the same play is acceptable when Facebook does it.
> Unilaterally imposing unfair trading conditions on other online classified ads service providers who advertise on Meta's platforms, in particular on its very popular social networks Facebook and Instagram. This allows Meta to use ads-related data generated by other advertisers for the sole benefit of Facebook Marketplace.
Consider this:
- A local marketplace AcmeShop wants to advertise itself on Facebook, paying Facebook for ads.
- The only practical way to do so requires AcmeShop to install Facebook's tracking on their website. The tracking is always dual purpose: on the one hand, it gives AcmeShop data on conversion from their ads (which is vital for AcmeShop), but on the other it also gives Facebook data about AcmeShop users.
- Alice wants to buy a used 3D printer. She goes to AcmeShop, searches for 3D printers, checks a few listings out, but doesn't buy anything.
- Alice opens Facebook. At this point, Facebook registered Alice's visit to AcmeShop 3D printer listings, so of course they serve ads for 3D printers selling on Facebook Marketplace.
- Alice buys a used 3D printer from Facebook Marketplace, cutting AcmeShop out.
AcmeShop has a tough choice: they either advertise on Facebook, pay Facebook, and help Facebook to undermine their own business, or they forgo Facebook as a marketing channel altogether.
Usually different parts of this scenario are discussed in isolation (performance marketing, user tracking, privacy on Facebook, etc.), obscuring the larger picture. I don't see how Facebook's behaviour taken as a whole is anything but predatory and abusive of their position.
How is it different? What "panic reactions"? What "panic reaction" can connect a low-yield explosion over Black Sea and a suicidal strategic strike on the continental US?
> I'm just advocating that we observe the cautionary principle here
"The cautionary principle" is only applicable if you disregard hundreds of thousands of killed and maimed Ukrainians, millions of refugees, unknown number of abducted children, and entire cities raised to the ground. Letting a genocide continue for years is not a default safe option.
Again, I invite you to reflect on this exchange: you'd "rather not delve into scenarios", but when weighing what's basically just vibes against very material, prolonged, ongoing suffering of the second largest country in Europe you decide to advocate for vibes. Putin's bullshit has already won and his deterrence succeeded, because you give it enough credibility (whilst refusing to outline a credible scenario) to talk about "WW3" as a real risk worth more than dead and maimed Ukrainians.
How? What plausible pathway do you see between Russia exploding a nuke over Novaya Zemlya and their suicide by American nuclear response?
> A major shift in the ground situation Ukraine's favor (effectively signaling an eventual Russian defeat) could do the trick.
I don't understand what trick. Russia directly attacking NATO? They'd get pulverised, and they have no forces left. Russia committing a suicide by launching a strategic attack on the US over Donbas? That's implausible. They just lost a chunk of Russia proper and took it on the chin.
> I guess everyone who doesn't agree with your assessments is either paralyzed by irrational fears, and/or a useful idiot, or just looking for a cop-out.
I see how it's easy to interpret the earlier reply personally, my bad, sorry. I was referring to the people establishing the narrative (media, politicians, and people with large platforms). It's self evidently working! A direct confrontation with Russia (a country with an economy smaller than Italy's, glaring manpower problems, and largely depleted army) evokes the idea of WW3, but I see very few people talking about the very likely war over Taiwan (with a much, much, much more powerful country) in "WW3" terms. This narrative doesn't make any logical sense, we just got used to it, even though it's not grounded in reality.