i-use-nixos-btw

It would be unsettling for a software engineer to have little knowledge of the fundamentals.

But software engineers aren't the only people using python. I work with data scientists - with degrees in data engineering from computer science departments in very good universities - and I am certain that they believe a computer to be a magical box. I know for sure they're terrified of binary. Honestly, I'm looking forward to the day that they actually use functions and classes properly.

I wish I was exaggerating, I really do. It'd make my life easier. And it is no surprise - I've seen the supplementary material attached to papers that come out of those departments. I won't go into too much detail, but I don't know how any codebase could more closely resemble a house of cards and still function.

They still have successful careers in what they're good at. After all, one of the main reasons that python is so successful is that it can be used by people who don't know much - or care much - about programming. It can obviously be used by far more capable hands to do many more things, but for applied tasks it takes the pain out of learning something that they consider tangential.

There is no good measure for policy making. Goodhart and all that.

But it does serve as an often-indirect measure, as part of a plethora of other measures, to simply explore the effects of policy.

I’m not aware of policy that focuses on improving GDP per se (not saying there isn’t any, Im just not that tuned into politics) but I am aware of people criticising their government when GDP has dropped after a major change. That’s the appropriate use, though.

> Why should you care if the caller uses the return value or not?

Nodiscard is a way of “enforcing” a contract with the user about how your code needs to be used in order to avoid undefined behaviour.

(I say “enforcing” in quotes because, instead of being an actual constraint, it’s merely an attribute - so a conforming compiler can happily ignore it)

Here are two examples of where it is useful:

- Returning a success code that must be checked before proceeding with an operation that could have bad consequences if the previous operation failed. Unchecked operations are one of the major sources of bugs in the wild, so no discard at least points the user to the potential problem.

- Returning something that doesn’t make any sense to immediately discard. This is usually down to a mistake - such as calling vector::empty thinking that it’s going to clear the vector, when it actually returns a bool telling you if it’s empty or not (an awful name, but then so is vector…). It makes no sense to check if it’s empty without using that result, so the warning indicates that the user has made a mistake.

The thing is, the way I’ve always learned things is by doing. See a problem, and learn different angles to see that problem, different methods to approach it, play around with it some more, and keep probing it until it makes sense through intuition.

The mathematical approach with many introductory texts to this stuff do things completely backwards, from my perspective. They don’t present scenarios, problems, or anything really. They start with definitions, lemmas, theorems. If you’re lucky, they’ll give you proofs. To me, that’s like learning C by reading the standard, and only writing a Hello World program afterwards. Sure, you can get some good understanding that way, but it’s an entirely impractical learning method unless you’re already seasoned in the concepts.

To paint a more complete picture, I came across the concept of polynomial invariants in knot theory, and I managed to get my teeth into that because you can start coming up with problems, solving them, and getting some intuition. That also lead to TL diagrams, winding in (2+1)D, and I could get that down into code pretty easily and again start playing around with it. These are concrete things, and involved memorising nothing other than a handful of relationships.

I tried reading “Category Theory for the Practicing Physicist”, and it was great to begin with - but pretty quickly started just giving names for things. Names for types of categories. Names for types of relationships. Definition definition definition definition. This is through no fault of the author, it’s just how the topic is, and it’s how people who can digest that stuff understand things.

This is thing A. This is thing B. They are related through thing AB. Thing B is related to thing C through thing BC. Thing A is related to C through BCAB. Here’s a diagram. This is a theorem. Ok now on to the definition of thing D.

OK GREAT BUT WHAT DO I DO WITH IT? It’s one hell of an uphill effort for learning nothing in particular - except for words for things. That‘s why I paraphrased Fermi - “if I could remember all the names of these particles I’d have become a botanist”.

> I’m sorry but what do you expect

Introductions to be introductions.

> How did you manage to get a PhD in theory then?

Certainly not by being a walking glossary. If that was involved, I’d not have done it.

Same way that everyone does. I gravitated towards a niche, found a new method to analysing it, generalising that method to many more applications and spending the final year trying to ride the metaphorical unicycle on a tightrope hanging high above a cavern of nervous breakdown. The usual.

Now, the way you talk sounds very familiar - I know mathematical physicists who are very much used to throwing mathematical terminology around. But on the theory side, it’s quite rare to generalise that far so early on in an academic career. It’s far more about the concrete application than the abstract viewpoint, unless it’s somewhere where the abstract viewpoint makes a lot of sense.

> This is where singular homology really shines: You prove that simplicial homology is isomorphic to singular homology and don't have to worry about that ever again. Also functoriality only works if you have maps which preserve the simplicial structure, whereas singular homology has no such restriction.

See, this is what I mean :D

I’m saying this level is perfect. I am not a practicing physicist, but I have a PhD in the theory side of condensed matter from many years ago - mostly focused on numerical simulations.

What is difficult is that most introductions to this topic tend to involve word soup, often employing terminology from category theory and topology that is completely alien to me. The result is that I can’t read a paragraph without looking things up.

And hell, you’ve managed to do that yourself. Homology groups? Simplicial complex? This is sounding more and more like botany to me.

But that’s the best think about intros like this. I’m not one for words, but concepts I can handle.

Very few.

I think I’m actually the target audience. I come from a physics academic background - with a focus on quantum computing on the physics side - and what I’ve seen so far (I’m about a third the way through) feels like it’s pitched at my level.

Because the word topology gets thrown around a lot in topological quantum computation (funny, that…), that gives a lot of authors the impression that they can start using terminology that mathematicians understand, but is fairly inaccessible to physicists. From what I’ve seen so far, this article is the first one I’ve seen that I think I might stand a chance at learning something from without consulting a mathematics glossary.

This was a delightful read. Two contrasting points of view coming together without a flame war. For a second I had to double check that I was on the internet.

Me, I don’t know where I stand. I think if it eliminated CSAM, terrorism and other such things, it’s a price worth paying.

What I need to be convinced of is the scale of that elimination, because if erosion of privacy is the cost paid, people (as in Joe Public) will want to see returns on that.

What I think it’ll actually do is move offenders away from those platforms and onto ones that are even harder to monitor. I mean, I’d assume that Meta will be able to see who is talking to who even without the content, which puts some pieces of the puzzle together in the presence of other evidence. I’d also assume end to end encryption doesn’t mean much if the app itself has a CVE that leaks information once decrypted, and it certainly doesn’t mean much if authorities have possession of your device (in the UK, not unlocking a device and apps when asked to is itself a punishable crime).

So if all this will do is drive people to platforms that eliminate such things and make the job of law enforcement even harder, it isn’t worth it.

But if there’s more to it than that, it might be. Im guessing it’s feasible that WhatsApp push out an update that sends them your private keys, because I’m assuming the app itself has access to them. If Im right, then in theory the end of E2EE could open up a huge backlog of messages and solve “historic” crimes. If that’s the case, it might be worth it.

Too many variables for me, so Im placing myself firmly in the “I don’t know” camp.

I hadn’t heard of Kanboard, but it’s always a good sign when a FOSS project shared on here already has an associated Nix package!

https://search.nixos.org/packages?channel=22.11&from=0&size=...

I look forward to trying it out.

As the project is in maintenance mode (also a good sign - it has completed its objectives and doesn’t look to go crazy with new features etc) I wonder how receptive the project is to stylistic changes. Subtly rounded corners, a bit of a gradient, and a bit of padding and the cards as shown on the screenshots would look a million times better (to my very subjective eyes).

Anyone with any insight as to why this topic is suddenly in the limelight in so many places at the same time?

I find it remarkable that, even though the UK government is desperate to demonstrate any form of tangible benefit to Brexit, and talks about independence and sovereignty etc, it is moving in exactly the same direction as EU nations on this, ignoring all advice to the contrary.

To be honest I’m kind of feeling left out. My messages are boring. Perhaps if this nonsense goes ahead I’ll start communicating dinner plans with my wife through our own custom key pairs, just to mess with them.

Common sense doesn’t dictate that. Ideology does. For every argument for it, there’s an argument against it - the disagreement between the two sides of it is rarely on the facts, but on the weight one holds on various things.

And that’s where ideology comes in.

If civilians have access to private communication, and can pay for enhanced features, why should govt organisations not? OTOH why are the implications on transparency? It’s a hard one.

Is personal privacy more important than the ability to prevent domestic terror and the distribution of material that we can all (I’d hope) agree is abhorrent? That’s not a trivial question.

The list could go on. There are arguments on both sides and they’re far from settled. Me, I just get fed up of seeing people adopt these ideas as if they’re gospel and (as in the mastodon thread) start screaming fascism, as if they have any idea what it is.

> Are public safety and a functioning society something to oppose?

To some, that seems to be the case.

Most of the replies I read misunderstood the wording. But some took a clear ideological stance against providing services to the police.

It’s those kind of interactions that made me leave Mastodon in the end. I’m neither right wing nor left wing, I’m just pro-common sense, and people who flaunt their ideology through megaphones make me hate this planet.

> analyst941 had such a source, and was able to reveal numerous details about iOS 17. That includes a promise of significant changes to the Control Center, the detail that Apple Maps Lock Screen directions could get a new look, a new grid-based user interface for working with Lock Screens, revamped UIs for the Wallet and Health apps, and more.

Oh wow, with such incredible upgrades coming along I’m not surprised they’re cracking down on it. /s

Every so often, the hype is worth protecting. The m-series device releases and the fabled VR headset are the big ones. iPhone remains a good phone, but Apple really hasn’t done anything groundbreaking with it for some time.

Nonetheless, it’s their company policy and the sister got caught red-handed, and by such simple means. I don’t know why analyst941 felt that deleting their account 24 hours after posting the thread was necessary for their safety though.

Looks like it to me. Imagine putting in all that effort only to miss the deadline by TWO DAYS.

I find the nix language beautiful.

The vast majority of the issues I have faced have been down to nixpkgs. Of course, nixpkgs is an incredible project, but it lacks direction, uses bad practices everywhere, and pretty much all of the flaws you’d expect on a vast monorepo with a somewhat laissez-faire management approach.

Oh, one other problem I had, I guess, was when MS removed a link to a Teams binary that was baked into nixpkgs, which meant I couldn’t rebuild my system without losing teams, until I fixed it with a custom derivation. I could also have fixed it by pinning the nixpkgs it came from to one with a working teams URL, but that seemed like too big of sledgehammer for a single application.

One of the key assumptions made by nixpkgs, and by many hermeticity-focused projects, is that URLs stay alive and unmodified. They don’t promise that something will always build. They promise that it will build perfectly, exactly as you specified, or not at all. There’s a nice security element to that I guess.

Nonetheless, NixOS is the best distro I’ve ever used. I certainly spent much more time fighting Arch, etc than I do NixOS - and I’ve never come across a problem I can’t work around with some nix code.

So my position, I guess, is that NixOS is the second best distribution for me. The best is the one that builds on NixOS and has learned some mistakes, thrown away some technical debt, etc.

I think it does.

See, if a comment like that crops up on a civilised society like this, it demonstrates that the barren wastelands of “the outside world” will have similar examples.

The reply made it clear that the problem is with the email landscape, not the protocol:

> you're entirely dependent on how the other servers run by the recipients view you.

A protocol can be bulletproof. But spammers will spam, blockers will block, trusted platforms will control.

Nobody said it does. The clarification of it detracting from email the standard is yours.

It nonetheless demonstrates how Pareto allows popular providers to make decisions that negatively impact those who want to exercise the freedom granted to them. It doesn’t run in isolation, after all.

They’ve changed meaning, but companies do that all the time - especially under new leadership. Twitter has a huge user base and huge financial problems. If the plan is to FINALLY leverage the former to solve the latter then good on them.

Turning blue check into a paid service with features seems reasonable to me. I have no incentive to be prioritised in threads or be seen by more people: I’m not trying to sell services, or bring people to my platform to make some ad revenue, etc. For those that do, it makes sense, and I feel sorry for the people that are torn between a cheap way of getting exposure and a crowd of bullies who mock them for it.

It also makes sense that people with large followings get it for free, because they’re contributing to the platform. I saw people comparing their free subscription without consent to “r*pe” and, well, there’s no reasoning with that kind of lunatic.

OTOH it’s extremely funny to see blue check accounts with 12 followers, especially ones that have been active for years and just post photos of their dog every few days. WHAT WERE THEY THINKING? WHY ARE THEY PAYING IT MAKES NO SENSE

Nice idea. Not sure it’s fully ready yet, and I have a few suggestions.

One, you need more content to explain the concept to the user. A table and an input box is not sufficient. Sure, I could mess around and figure it out, but for all I know I’d be missing out on all the cool features.

Two, provide some examples, and some alternative datasets (e.g. tabular, nested, relational).

I’m not sure how to use it, so I gave the prompt:

> plot speed vs defence

on the Pokémon dataset. It provided me with an empty scatter plot.

Three, you need an FAQ. Some example questions: Can I run this locally? Can I integrate this with private data sources such as Prometheus? How does the project work? Who worked on it? Are there terms and conditions? What kind of data sources does it currently work on? What are the ongoing plans? Etc.

I want this to make sense - so if anyone can point out where I’m wrong I’d appreciate it.

According to Copenhagen, an observation is an action that changes the state, which Bob is unable to because that would imply that information escaped the black hole. Bob fails, Alice sees the interference pattern.

According to many-worlds, a measurement doesn’t change the state, it changes the observer via entanglement. So Bob would observe the path of the particle and not see the interference pattern. Alice, completely isolated from Bob, would see the interference pattern. The two seeing different things doesn’t seem so odd - causality and black holes have a funky relationship anyway.

I’m also curious about the claim that “The laws of physics behave the same just inside the horizon as outside”. What backs that up?

I’m wondering what PDDL is for, in practical terms.

Planning, yes, but that’s a verb that casts a very wide net.

When might one write PDDL? Be it specific tasks, or industries it is used in - the examples I’ve found online all have a robotic theme, yet the idea seems much more general.

What do they do with it once they’ve written it?

What does it solve (as opposed to just having the existence of a file that outlines objects, predicates, actions etc)?

I have a love-hate relationship with Brave search. I love the browser, but the first thing I do (after disabling the crypto stuff) is change the search to Google. I’m tempted to change it to ChatGPT.

For searching every day things, brave search is great. For searching technical things, such as scientific articles or programming errors, the results are not just badly ordered - they’re often missing entirely.

At least, that’s how it was the last time I used it, which was admittedly about a year ago. If things have changed, let me know.

> maple/octave/mathematica/python

I’m no mathematician, but I’d be very surprised if the overlap these tools have with mathematical research is very large.

Who could possibly have thought that it was a good idea? It makes absolutely no sense.

A general rule of thumb is that if it’s a theory of consciousness, take it with a pinch of salt.

Unless it includes the word “quantum”, in which case take it with a truckload of salt, preferably intravenously.

Honest question - is bonding over the nationality of ancestors really that big a deal in the US?

It seems to be a solid theme in this.

It just strikes me as odd that a nation with such a patriotic mentality define themselves as Welsh, Irish, Scottish etc because their great grandparents came from there. Besides, it’s a well established fact that if you can’t sing Yma o Hyd from start to finish, your Welsh credentials are confiscated.

I was in the field briefly, but long enough to realise that graphene is a solution looking for a problem.

At least for a while, the approach was a blind search - with huge funding available to anyone claiming to be researching graphene applications, people were doing all kind of daft things with it. I don’t doubt that we’d be printing the stuff in metre-wide sheets by now if we hadn’t thrown so much money at trying to use it for everything from tuneable transistors (with the slight issue that mobility is inversely proportional to the bandgap) to throwing it into every conceivable medical application to see what sticks (with the slight caveat that every such paper I read at the time was actually talking about 50+ layer graphene, or as I’d call it “an actual pencil”).

I hope it’s in a better state now.

Strongly agree on the philosophy - but alas my experience with this specific case has not been great.

I’ve seen it simplify patches of code here and there, and that does apply to the trivial examples given in the post this topic links to - a function call involving a known child class. But add some basic real-world complexity and it quickly gets too complex for the optimiser to prove that it knows for sure what child class it is dealing with.