explainplease

> Cool let me know how you handle explaining why they can't run some exe they downloaded on your GNU/Linux setup

The same way you explain that they can't run a Windows exe on Mac?

> Are device manufacturers supporting Linux?

...Yes?

But even better, there are people other than device manufacturers supporting them--which means better drivers, because they aren't motivated by bare profit to ship a minimally functional driver ASAP and reassign all the programmers to model+1. This is why upstreaming is a good thing.

BTW, do you read LWN?

I seriously don't understand the majority reaction here, either. It's just a simple, friendly, open-ended question. If you don't want to answer it, who cares. It's amazing what some people feel offended by nowadays. I guess these people would rather others just ignore them, as if on a subway.

It seems very strange to me that inviting a respondent to essentially fill in a blank as desired would be considered "calculated" or "trying way too hard." It's essentially saying, "If you would like to share something about yourself, go ahead." If one were going to describe it negatively, it seems more like lazily not even trying to ask a thoughtful, relevant question. Bizarre.

Aren't "reflecting on what they like, how they feel, and what they want to do" examples of "defining, describing, or even alluding to their personal attributes"?

Not if you know what you're doing. For example, say you added a bunch of TODOs and FIXMEs you noticed in existing code while working on something. Now, you're ready to commit. The TODOs and FIXMEs don't necessarily correlate to the code changes you made. Should they all be committed with the code?

Using the index to stage and commit hunks separately lets you easily add and commit the unrelated TODO and FIXME comments separately from the code. A tool like Magit makes it trivially easy to do.

And since they're comments, they have no effect on tests or the code.

Thanks for the updates. I have contributed to related discussions on GitHub for several years, but I haven't been able to keep up with all the issues.

> fwiw I find the sanity fish brings to process substitution with sane tokenization and automatic escaping of shell substitution output to be a huge boon to productivity over writing in (ba)sh.

I completely agree, this is why I would much prefer to use fish for scripting when feasible. I'm glad to hear that the scripting is being improved.

They are, but Borg is also modern.

Really? Doesn't that go against the stated fish design document and ridiculousfish's intention for fish?

I'm more concerned about making fish scripts work well than making fish run bash scripts. (Maybe fish 3.0 will improve that too.) I've tried to use fish for writing somewhat serious scripts several times, and I've always run into frustrating problems that sent me back to bash for scripting. Fish is an excellent interactive shell, of course.

Forgive me if this is covered elsewhere, but I haven't found it yet.

One of the things that I do like about GitHub is actually the community/social aspect. For example, I follow projects I am interested in, and I can see notifications from all of them on one page--without filling up my email inbox. I also follow users who have similar interests, and I often discover new projects when I see in my feed (which I read via RSS) that they've starred a project that sounds interesting.

I think it's great that you're supporting email as a first-class way to interact with the services, but will there also be anything like GitHub's "Notifications" page?

Another feature I enjoy on GitHub is the ability to view issues and PRs across all of my repos from a single search page (e.g. search for "user:repo-owner-username is:issue"). Will sr.ht have anything like this?

Thanks for your work and for sharing it freely.

What does it matter whether humans survive? If we're just animals with above-average intelligence and the ability to use tools, we're not ultimately more important than anything else in the universe, and we'll still amount to nothing in the end. So what does it matter whether the human species survives past this planet or past the solar system, etc?

This isn't a trite question, it's quite serious. Why do we assume that we are important enough that we need to survive as a species beyond earth? If humans are so destructive of their own environment, as many say, shouldn't we let that destructive habit end here, rather than spreading it to other worlds?

You might find the org-now package useful.

Have you ever tried editing answers as not-Jeff? It's rarely a pleasant, rewarding experience, and usually a waste of one's time. Rep-farming wonks run the place and will mindlessly shoot down thoughtful edits.

Yep, and then the better answer will sit at the bottom of the page, while the older one continues to be seen and gathers more upvotes.

I think there is a critical mass after which the site's focus changes from creation to protectionism, and then it becomes stagnant.

Only to have the edit be rejected by a wonk who's farming rep by mindlessly plowing through his edit queue so he can cite his SO reputation points on his LinkedIn profile. No thanks. If you want me to spend my time fighting against these kind of policy zombies on SO, you'll have to reward me appropriately.

When SO was new, there was incentive for people with expertise to contribute it. Now there is more incentive for Wikipedia-types to go around smashing others' contributions with their rejection hammers. It's a waste of time for those who actually have something to contribute.

The last time I tried that, I edited an answer that was several years out-of-date with a rewritten, up-to-date one that explained exactly how to do what the question asked, in a well-organized, sequential manner.

My edit was quickly rejected by a user who had no knowledge whatsoever of the technical domain in question, claiming that my edit went against the spirit or intention of the original answer's author. I then submitted mine as a separate answer, where it languishes at the bottom of the page, rarely noticed by users who come looking for the answer (and it's virtually the only hit on Google for the question, has been for years). They all see the outdated, poorly organized one instead.

So my work was a waste of time, shot down by an ignorant, mindless policy wonk whose only goal is to farm reputation points.

I have not contributed to SO since. I have better things to do with my time, like publish my own documentation on readmes on GitHub.

"Also here's a thought experiment. Why don't you use your real name instead of a username handler and post the same thoughts online." --digitalzombie, Hacker News, 2018

This is some top-tier trolling, right here. Thanks for the laugh.

You read one article about it, and now you're demanding that he feed you links? You're on the Internet. Google is the topic of discussion. If you cared about the truth as much as you claim, you would do your own homework and seek out your own sources. I guess you really are a digital zombie.

> None of those things you've mentioned requires voter ID, so I'm not sure why you're advocating for a solution that fixes nothing you claim is an issue.

Respectfully, you're putting words in my mouth. I did not advocate for anything.

I was responding to the OP's assertion that, "democrats are working to improve election security while republicans are not." That assertion is facially incorrect, and Voter ID (whether you like it or not) is a reason why.

> Specifically: You can figure out if a voter is registered by cross-checking with the voting rolls, you can figure out if someone is alive by cross-checking obituaries and the other two issues can similarly be figured out by cross-referencing across all elections in a state. None of this requires strict voter ID to figure out.

Voter ID solves those problems at the ballot box. The volunteers sitting behind the desk aren't cross-checking obituaries or all elections in a state. You know that, so why did you say all that?

> voter fraud is incredibly rare in practice.

Why do you think that? After the last election, we saw video evidence of people being bused across state lines to vote where they weren't registered. That's just one example.

> Additionally all of those checks actually open up more avenues for hackers or less honest individuals to take advantage of said systems.

How would requiring photo ID matching that on the list of registered voters open up more avenues for attack? It's an additional form of authentication.

> For example dropping a bunch of people off of voter rolls to ensure that they have trouble voting or can't meet the deadline, mistakenly registering people as deceased and so forth.

What does requiring photo ID have to do with those forms of attack? Those can be done right now, without requiring photo ID. Why are you confusing the discussion with irrelevant issues?

> I think your assertion seems more knee-jerk than the person you're responding to.

Actually, your comment is the most knee-jerk in this thread so far. You've put words in my mouth and torn down a bunch of strawmen. You've identified me as an enemy when I haven't even advocated for one side or the other. All I'm doing is making logical observations. If you disagree with those observations, by all means, show me why.

Why do you think that that threat has proven to be minor? From what I've heard, I suspect we have only seen the tip of the iceberg. Voter fraud has been going on, no doubt, for as long as voting has.

> It does absolutely nothing for the much more serious threat model of digital tampering.

I agree that they solve different problems. I think we should use only paper ballots, and eschew all forms of electronic voting.

The point I'm making is that our elections have worked well, because they're still going on, and our nation still has its original form of government. If we ceased to have elections, as you hypothesize, it would no longer be the same nation, because it would have abandoned its form of government. So the fact that we're having this conversation, talking about elections that have been going on for over 200 years, indicates that, yes, they're actually working pretty well.

When we eventually stop having them, then we can revisit this conversation and long for the good old days. Meet you back here in...a few centuries?

So, how many billion years more would it take to convince you that it's not going to happen? If earth is 4.5 billion years old, that's already more than 25% the age of the universe.

What does the evidence show? Are you willing to believe the evidence?

> Somebody here on HN just very recently claimed the exact opposite. Could it be a regional dialect thing?

FWIW, I have never liked the "back=later, up=sooner" thing. Thinking of a calendar, and time going left-to-right, back seems to me to mean "leftward," which would mean "sooner." This tended to confuse me for a long time, but finally I figured out how to think of it in a way that could stick with me, i.e. the "back=further, up=closer" thing.

> This is how science and engineering works, you keep revising and improving your models taking new evidence into account.

That's one way to look at it. But eventually you have to say that enough is enough. We aren't revising and improving models of the Aether. And just like the Aether, the models and predictions of the IPCC have proven to be inaccurate.

So you seem to be applying science backwards here: you're trusting the models first, and trying to make them accurate as you go. That's not science at all. Indeed, it's much like ancient philosophers who imagined a way that the "invisible" (i.e. microscopic) world worked and then devised a model to explain it.

The scientific thing to do is to remain skeptical until a model is proven to be accurate.

> This is the exact opposite of religion, which never changes its opinion regardless of any new evidence.

That's not true at all. Actual religions change over time. Actual religions study ancient texts and invent new theories about how to interpret them, which often spawn new sects. Actual religions even discover new texts (e.g. the Dead Sea Scrolls) and update their interpretations based on them.

Or to put it another way: religion does not have an opinion--people do. Some people are stubborn--and that includes some who claim to be scientific.

And the way science is currently organized is not so different than many religions: schools which educate experts who study and discuss and write peer-reviewed journal articles and offer simplified versions to laypeople through the media. That's literally true for both science and religion today. Perhaps we should be less concerned about "science vs. religion" and more concerned about searching for the truth.

I think you're conflating a "runaway feedback loop" with "a slightly less extreme event that simply eliminates 90% of life on the planet," which says nothing about whether it was caused by a runaway feedback loop.

Earth is 4.5 billion years old. A runaway, climate chain-reaction hasn't happened yet.

I find your lack of faith disturbing.

From the paper:

> Richard S. Lindzen was Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology until his retirement in 2013. He is the author of over 200 papers on meteorology and climatology and is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and of the Academic Advisory Council of GWPF.

Does meteorology count as "atmospheric science"?

Does climatology count as "climate change" or "climate modeling"?

Does 200 papers count as "published papers"?

Does being a professor at MIT count?

By your own criteria, he is an expert.

Therefore, by what reasoning do you dismiss him?

Religion.

What could possibly go wrong?

1. With no fossil fuel-based energy available, global food production will plummet, and distribution of what food exists will become prohibitively expensive. Millions will starve to death.

2. Go, tell the farmers they are not allowed to eat their chickens' eggs. I will wait for you to report their answer. Or do you intend to enforce your decree by force?

3. If you are allowed to tell other people how many children to have, I am allowed to tell you how many children to have: You may have none.

> also, with 1 and 2 in place, we have prolly no need for the one-child policy. we'll have food and land plenty!

I wonder if you actually believe what you say.

> If anything, the date gets pushed back.

That's what "pushed into the future" means. "Back" means "further away," "up" means "closer."

> With every subsequent IPCC report it turns out the previous as an underestimation.

So, every IPCC report has been wrong. How long are you going to keep believing them? Sounds like a religion.

Zero. The hotter the planet gets, the more water evaporates from the oceans, which condenses into clouds, which reflect sunlight, which cools the planet.

> All it means is a foreign entity like Russia just attacks each state differently. It won't stop them. Clearly, we are doing literally what you're saying, and it hasn't worked.

This country has been around for over 200 years. Our elections have worked well, or else we wouldn't be having this conversation.

> Elections, in the 21st century, should fall within the range of national defense. Power grids and other types of infrastructure are, why not the democratic infrastructure like elections and voting?

No, they shouldn't. I want my city, county, and state elections run by my city, county, and state, so that when something goes wrong, I can go to the city, county, or state to see about making it right, and even run for office locally to fix it myself, or go to the state capital at worst--not have to go to Washington, D.C. and complain to some bureaucrat that hasn't even heard of my city and couldn't care less about my state.

> Or you know, the ability for elections to actually be fixed in a systemic fashion. It's really the only way.

Bald assertion.

> I really don't understand this attitude. To take an example from the software industry, would you rather have your users on one OS, for you to secure, or 20+ different ones, where you need to plug holes independently?

You're looking at it the wrong way. What is easier to attack: a homogeneous network in which every machine has the same, known vulnerabilities, or a heterogeneous network in which only subsets of machines have certain vulnerabilities? What is easier to destroy: a forest comprised of a single species with the same vulnerabilities to certain pathogens, or a forest with a variety of species?

Recent history shows the inherent risk of homogeneous networks, e.g. the NotPetya worm that took down global IT infrastructure for the biggest companies in the world in a matter of seconds: https://www.wired.com/story/notpetya-cyberattack-ukraine-rus...

This country was designed around compartmentalization. If one state enacts bad policies, has corrupt government, etc, it doesn't necessarily affect every other state. But when the federal government makes bad decisions and becomes corrupt, it does affect every state.

You want our elections to be more easily compromised, more easily controlled by third parties? Nationalize them. Use the same systems and rules and policies everywhere. Make every election, everywhere, have the same, known flaws and vulnerabilities. Make every election, everywhere, reliant on the slow-moving federal government to fix problems that states and localities could fix independently and quickly.

> Fix one issue with a voting machine, fix them all, as opposed to just fixing Florida's specific homegrown crap.

How about letting Florida worry about fixing Florida's elections, and you fix yours. I don't think you'd like Florida telling you how to run your elections, but that's exactly what you propose in reverse. It's antithetical to liberty.