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trasz

2,810 karma · joined March 11, 2015

trasz@FreeBSD.org - FreeBSD committer, Cambridge researcher, NAFO fan, 50 Cent Army member. Likes Unix, HP calculators, and Skinny Puppy. Hates when people get killed, especially for religion and oil.

PS. To the Americans among you, the 50 Cent thing isn't really true; see https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcasm

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trasz··on China allegedly dumps bad chips on Russia
>sweatshop workers in areas with human rights violations

Such as USA with $11B of goods manufactured by forced labour in prison camps?

(Note: this is not whataboutism, it’s pointing out hypocrisy.)

trasz··on China allegedly dumps bad chips on Russia
Of course they do. To China, Russia is a cheap mafia-owned gas station. It can no longer provide any real business opportunities thanks to sanctions; see how the Russian part of Belt and Road got shut down and everything moved south to Kazakhstan.

Long term, Russia used to be a strategic problem to China, as its huge, aggressive direct neighbor. This problem has now been solved, but helping Russia develop would risk it becoming a threat again in a generation or two.

trasz··on An Accident at SpaceX
I don’t mean favoritism towards specific companies; I mean suppressing opinions that are inconvenient to companies. For example, blatant anti-Chinese xenophobia or hate speech towards economically disadvantaged seem to be welcome here, but just try to link something to Christian fundamentalism, or try to point out the kinds of hate speech that is still tolerated by American mainstream.
trasz··on Card skimming disproportionally affects those most in need
I’d say the real problem is not the technical insecurity - that’s a result. The real problem is in the last paragraph: the fact that banks are incentivized to use insecure mechanisms by being able to shed any responsibility simply by denying customers claim.
trasz··on Stop Writing Dead Programs [video]
Logging is a good example of how the opposite to what you say tends to be true. Have you ever wondered why Windows logs are so useless? It’s not windows-specific; when you look at journald you’ll see plenty of structured junk; the actually useful parts are plaintext.

“Every program as a function” would be a disaster for reliability and security. There’s a reason no mature operating system does that, apart from tiny embedded ones.

trasz··on 2/3 of kids bike to school in Assen because it was designed that way (2013)
So what makes you assume it was “homeless and junkies” who mugged them, and not some Christian republican human trash?

(“Human trash” as a counterpoint to your “junkie” slur; also note I’m not really interested in _your_ response, I already know what you are; the point of this comment is to show dang’s skewed moderation criteria. Might not work this time, so I’ll continue doing it for a while, of course without annotating it.)

trasz··on An Accident at SpaceX
HN is a publicity tool for YC, so they are suppressing topics that are politically inconvenient to their business partners.
trasz··on 2/3 of kids bike to school in Assen because it was designed that way (2013)
But it just so happens you never have problems with racism or other hate speech, only with people who point it out. I wonder why.
trasz··on Just witnessed a missile strike on Kyiv city
>The Russians themselves.

Ah. Now I suspect I know what you're talking about: the terror campaign. Essentially what Russia did in Syria - they don't stand a chance against a proper army, but they definitely can commit genocide and level entire cities, like they did in Mariupol.

So, yes, indeed, they are starting to do it again. But because they have already spent most of the tools they could use to do it - we know that because they are forced to use very expensive weapons in a way that doesn't make any sense, like attacking ground targets using anti-ship missiles - it will quickly fizzle out. They got one last push using Iranian ghetto-drones, but even those are in limited quantity - all of this stuff depends on western parts.

trasz··on Leak: Two-Thirds of New Amazon Employees Leave Within 90 Days
Realistically, how much can you make at Amazon pretending to work before they figure out and fire you?

Because, honestly, once you realize it’s ethical to do so, Amazon being a bad actor on purpose…

trasz··on Just witnessed a missile strike on Kyiv city
I’m not sure about the “plenty of equipment”. Case in point - over the past six months there have been _ten_ Russian plane crashes caused by malfunctions. Even though they almost don’t use their aviation because of lack of air superiority.
trasz··on Arecibo telescope won’t be rebuilt
> The veterans who died for the continental US beg to differ.

Only if they skipped their history classes - dying for the empire is a standard part of being a colony.

trasz··on GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion
One way to fix the problem would be to somehow feed Copilot a corpora of closed source code. This would either force Microsoft to add necessary copyright protections, or - which is imho more likely - would prove that those protections are already in place, but disabled for open source code.

A good start would be to take a leaked code of Windows, and then mechanically adjust all the names, constant values, and code formatting, and then publish it and observe.

trasz··on Arecibo telescope won’t be rebuilt
I’m absolutely not trying to shame anyone; I’m pointing out they are being exploited.
trasz··on Boeing 787s must be rebooted every 51 days to prevent 'misleading data' (2020)
Here’s a properly technical explanation of the problem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33239443
trasz··on Boeing 787s must be rebooted every 51 days to prevent 'misleading data' (2020)
No idea about 787, but usually there’s a bunch of fuses in the cockpit (eg https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/fuse-panel-airliner-18627188...), and they are made easily accessible for a reason.
trasz··on Arecibo telescope won’t be rebuilt
Yukon is a territory. Here, the "territory" is just a pretty name for a colony. You can't vote, US constitution doesn't quite apply, you're getting peanuts from federal aid, and when there's a humanitarian catastrophe you're left for a month without electricity - but you are very welcomed in armed forces, because you're competent and when you die it doesn't matter to decision makers, because you can't vote. In short - you pay the price, but you don't get the benefits. How's that different from a colony?

And yeah, becoming a US state would be better than independence, but it won't happen, because - you guessed it, you can't vote. By becoming an independent country you could get major powers to compete to do business with you - I'm pretty sure China would invest billions into your infrastructure, you could literally become America's Taiwan.

trasz··on Just witnessed a missile strike on Kyiv city
I’m not sure if using nukes would get NATO directly involved. First, it would be counterproductive wrt Putin’s goal above. Second, it could provoke strikes against NATO - Russia stands no chance militarily, but they can still kill civilians. Third, I don’t think isn’t even necessary - looking at experiences so far, Ukraine is more than capable of wiping the floor with Russian army, provided they get the hardware necessary. So far NATO has been very (way too much imho) careful to only provide Ukraine with defensive weapons; they didn’t give them cruise missiles or fighter jets, for example. Likewise Ukraine so far avoided striking anything that’s not strictly a military target. Nuclear strike would probably change that.
trasz··on Arecibo telescope won’t be rebuilt
Puertoricans are American citizens by name only - they can’t vote, for example. It’s a colony, and US treats it as such - it doesn’t enjoy the privileges of actual US territory.

If you want to help, becoming a proper, independent country could be a good start. The majority of citizens opposes the current colonial status, as evidenced by several referendums, but, well, it’s not theirs to decide - because they are just a colony and aren’t allowed to vote.

trasz··on Just witnessed a missile strike on Kyiv city
>How spent are the Russian forces? They haven't even applied 15% of their full forces to this operation

This is in stark contrast to what analysts are saying, which is that Russia already _lost_ about half of its military. Visually confirmed losses of Russian tanks alone are over one thousand units. Russians are so desperate they had to introduce mandatory conscription, despite it being a suicide from political point of view.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs, and you hadn’t provided a single source that would support your view.

>as democratic as West

Lol, no. Russia isn’t even a dysfunctional democracy; it lacks basic prerequisites to become one. You’re probably imagining Russia is kind of like Eastern Europe, only poorer. It’s not - the "cultural distance” between Russia and, say, Poland is much greater then between Poland and, say, UK.

trasz··on Just witnessed a missile strike on Kyiv city
I know, because it wouldn’t make any sense for them to do it - there aren’t any specific individuals they could target to make any difference to them - and they don’t have the capacity to. Comparing Russian army to American is just silly, and proves you’re not following the situation at all.

Once again - how do you explain Russia taking worst losses since WW2 and not being able to do anything about it, if they had any capacity to prevent it?

trasz··on How truffles took root around the world
Not true: https://gastronomica.org/2008/11/03/truffle-wars/
trasz··on Just witnessed a missile strike on Kyiv city
What you’re saying is pure fantasy. Russia is hitting whatever they can, not any specific targets.

Generally speaking US, and now Ukraine, have precision guided weapons available. Russia doesn’t, because they lack technology.

trasz··on How truffles took root around the world
https://www.truffle.shop/statistics-of-truffle-producer-coun...
trasz··on Just witnessed a missile strike on Kyiv city
Those attacks are pointless from military point of view. Their objective is to spread terror among civilians, since orcs can’t effectively fight against proper army.
trasz··on Just witnessed a missile strike on Kyiv city
Putin had a whole bunch of opportunities to withdraw and minimize his losses, and didn’t take any of them. At the same time it’s been obvious for some time now that there’s no way he can win.

One theory that explains it is that his objective at this point is to lose - but lose to USA or NATO, not to Ukraine.

trasz··on How truffles took root around the world
Anyone noticed how the article carefully avoids mentioning the worlds largest truffle producer, and instead tries to pretend its mostly Europe?
trasz··on GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code
This is very much a standard damage control. Notice how the drone completely ignored actual problems and instead derailed the whole thread with fake ones and broken analogies.
trasz··on XCheck at Meta: Why it exists and how it works
Facebook pays a _very_ tiny amounts for their moderation team, compared to the number of users.

XCheck is all about content moderation, in particular about saving work (ie money) on content moderation.

trasz··on Announcing KataOS and Sparrow
Sure, but there’s a fundamental difference between Russia and China - about as big as between Burma and US.
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