af78

I've had Fairphone 3 for a few years. The camera isn't fancy but I don't care. The original battery died at some point. Replacing it was very easy; no tool needed. Just like it was in the '90s with most phones. The repairability promise is kept, IMO. The only issue I had with this phone is that after some system update the fingerprint sensor was regarded as not meeting some security level and stopped being usable by sensitive apps (banking).

AI or not, if a machine finds an answer so complex that no human can understand it, how useful is it?

True but russian security services spare no every effort to make potential defectors think twice; russia has a long history of punishing defectors. Recent examples include the Skripals in the UK and a helicopter pilot in Spain.

CBS partnered with The Insider for this investigation. This article contains a lot more details: https://theins.ru/en/politics/270425

TIL construction went on for 137 years without a building permit. I find it hard to believe no one realized in such a long time.

English: Sweden, Switzerland

In Slavic languages its arguably somewhat close: - Russian: Швеция, Швейцария (translit: Shvetsiya, Shveytsariya). - Ukrainian: Швеція, Швейцарія (Shvetsiya, Shveytsariya) - Polish: Szwecja i Szwajcaria etc.

Romance languages, as well: - French: Suède, Suisse. - Italian: Svezia, Svizzera. - Spanish: Suecia, Suiza. - Catalan: Suècia, Suïssa. etc.

This may lead to confusion. In Spanish, for example, Pena and Peña are not the same.

> Pretty much all Russian factories run on US/Europe equipment. It's not really a secret, not sure what's surprising about that.

More of a little-known fact than a secret. For me at least: two years ago I had no idea.

> If west really wants to deal a blow to Russia then they need to make oil super cheap somehow, that would stop Russia really fast. Unfortunately that will never happen too...

That’s the idea behind the price cap on Russian oil. Agreed, it should be lower. And seem to have found a way around it: https://www.npr.org/2023/01/21/1149745629/russia-oil-shadow-...

I used to think so. According to this page https://freekorea.us/sanctions/ existing sanctions are not enforced as strongly as they could. North Korea and Russia are much more reliant on foreign technology than one may know. See this fascinating article about Western CNCs used in the production of Iskander missiles: https://rhodus.substack.com/p/how-to-make-an-iskander

Think also secondary sanctions, i.e. sanctions against countries and organizations that help circumvent sanctions. For example, companies in, say, China or Uzbekistan profiteer by selling to Russian companies components bought from the West. Let’s make them face a dilemma: if you do business with Russia or NK you will be cut off from the West.

Thanks for expanding.

I disagree about this part: “if they stay and continue to operate - the government leaves them for the most part alone”

Foreign businesses are known to have been coerced to make ‘voluntary donations’ to the military. Here’s an example: https://sanctions.nazk.gov.ua/en/boycott/13/

See also: Russia’s subsidiary of Danone seized, its director replaced by a nephew of Chechen warlord Kadyrov. https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/chechen-lea... Chechen leader's 'dear' nephew made head of seized Danone subsidiary in Russia

farmer's daughter, not wife.

The thread seems to have been written by a Greek, a bit of Roman-bashing is par for the course :)

Relevant thread: https://twitter.com/cleptok/status/1611622181665923075

Ok. Let's do a short thread on Roman cement for the 3 people out there that might be interested. You often hear that the Romans had some sort of superior and arcane knowledge on superior cement mixes that has been now lost. And still today we cannot replicate it. This is complete nonsense. Modern day cement (and any other building material, really) is far, far superior than anything from the past. There is simply no comparison. Above everything we understand the chemical composition, interaction and quality control for consistent results.

Romans were making mortars based on volcanic ashes. There was no set recipe. Every builder had their own. Volcanic ash from Pozzuoli, crushed brick, slaked like, animal fat, hair etc. Some basic rules existed (as recorded by Vitruvius on the 10 books on Architecture).

Millions of structures were constructed these way. With the exception of a handful, most of these do not exist anymore. But why the ones that exist are still standing strong?

Usually via a simple Darwinian process. Most of these times those builders got it wrong. But in a few cases, out of luck, they got the chemistry just right. This would result in a ok-ish material, with decent properties. Not only that. Unreinforced (without steel) concrete will not suffer any serious deterioration, with few exceptions. (Pantheon in Rome) Also the very coarse pozzolan they were using, will chemically react very very slowly producing low initial strengths Vs any modern material.

In the long term (centuries) though, it will continue gaining strength. Totally useless for the original purpose of the builders, but quite good for the few surviving buildings.

So what the latest MIT research told us? That lime in very small quantities will be "self-healing'. And this somehow is something that the Romans knew and used to create a superior cement.

This is simply not true. It is well known that lime expands (the pompous "self-healing" tag), so in very small and precise quantities it will counteract the shrinkage and cracking behaviour of cement binders. But you have to be pretty lucky to get it just right.

So not intentional. Just survivor bias in the remaining Roman cement structures. Beyond this, lime is a definite no-no for any concrete with steel in it -it corrodes it. The reason we use concrete today is precisely the embedded steel. It allows to build all modern structures.

And steel is the reason modern concrete deteriorates. It corrodes, expands and cracks the surrounding concrete. An unreinforced concrete (like the ones Romans used) with modern materials and understanding would last forever. But you wouldn't build anything worthwhile.

Final. Remember. Cement = the glue, the binder that holds everything together, activated by water. Concrete= the actual building material with binder, water, sand and stones. Mortar= only binder, sand and water (maybe small stones)

How do you end a war you did not start? Surrenders have consequences.

Are there still people using graphics card for crypto? I thought specialized chips had made them noncompetitive years ago.

Quoting one of the lawyers who helped draft sanctions law:

https://freekorea.us/sanctions-nkspea-faq/

""" Section 207 of the NKSPEA contains broad exemptions for food imports and humanitarian aid, and provides for waivers for humanitarian reasons, or when a waiver is important to the national security or economic interests of the United States. The Treasury Department has also published general licenses permitting humanitarian aid. """

While affirming power is one likely purpose, a complementary one is to sow confusion. I like this quote:

> Dictators don't do propaganda so you believe something. We do it so you believe nothing. And more importantly, do nothing.

https://twitter.com/DarthPutinKGB/status/999220156147621888 https://twitter.com/DarthPutinKGB/status/1251573397265530880

> I don't know why they couldn't have chosen something like `std::hash_map`

According to Herb Sutter the name `hash_map` (or `hashmap`) had already been taken by some C++ standard library implementation that shipped a class with this name in the std namespace: http://www.gotw.ca/publications/mill20.htm