cherrycherry98

I recently built a new PC and faced the dilemma of paying Microsoft for their experience or rolling the dice with Linux (nothing to lose). I've been running Kubuntu and while not perfect it certainly works well enough.

The sad part is that I'd gladly pay Microsoft double what they currently charge for something that basically works like Windows 7 did. It's like a theme park where I pay admission for the privilege to be upsold various add-ons. So now I just don't pay them anything.

Unless you're a big city you probably only have one library. At least by me municipalities have occasionally built new, bigger libraries and/or put additions onto existing ones in the last 30 years. The number of libraries would remain flat in those cases even if they have actually expanded.

I saw both a Rivian and a Cybertruck at an RV park just a month ago. No idea what kind of range they get towing but I was impressed someone was actually using them as real trucks. The vast majority of vehicles were three-quarter-ton or better trucks.

Glad to know I'm not alone in my mental modeling of Bloom filters as just hash tables that only track the buckets which have data but not the actual data itself.

GC usually only runs when the process wants to allocate an object but there's no space left on the heap. It's entirely possible that it did a bunch of work previously which created a bunch of garbage now waiting to be cleaned up. See the G1PeriodicGCInterval flag to enable idle collections (assuming G1).

Java is also fairly greedy with memory by default. It likes to grow the heap and then hold onto that memory unless 70% of the heap is free after a collection. The ratios used to grow and shrink the heap can be tuned with MinHeapFreeRatio and MaxHeapFreeRatio.

This has always been an issue with Gecko and the Mozilla codebase. It was a massive blow to the Mozilla community when Safari was released using KHTML instead of Gecko. Google then adopted WebKit (itself an evolution of KHTML) for Chrome, another slight for Mozilla. This despite prominent ex Mozilla developers like Lisa Melton, David Hyatt, Ben Goodger, and others being involved early on with Safari and Chrome development. Even Brendan Eich went with Chromium and not Mozilla technology for Brave.

> Honestly, probably rightly, because mediocre was previous the acceptable status quo, and now they have talented competition.

I stated factual observations of how I observed DEI being implemented, and some insight into how some perceive and react to them negatively. You're attempting to dismiss that with hypotheticals about the talent of the employees and the candidates, both of which you have no basis to make any claims about.

> So....only certain kinds of people are entitled to jobs? Those other kinds of people don't struggle with needing jobs or having kids?

This was not what was stated or implied. You do not get to take a sentence out of context, misrepresent it, and then attack your own misrepresentation.

Everyone deserves the dignity to be gainfully employed without being discriminated against based on their identity. The programs I described are explicitly designed to give advantages to some groups over others.

What has it lead to? There's some who become demoralized and resentful because they perceive their opportunities are going to be limited by their group membership. This is independent of whether these programs are actually affecting hiring decisions or not, the perception matters. It's also led to doubts when a diverse candidate does succeed. The emergence of the DEI hire meme is leveraged to downplay the accomplishments of diverse candidates.

> Gosh. Sure can't understand why you immediately followed up that statement with a highly defensive one about being "silenced" by being called racist or sexist lmao.

The misdirection to color my criticism of DEI as racist/sexist precisely proves my point. It's a tactic to silence opposition to an ideological viewpoint rather than confronting it.

My experience with DEI programs at Fortune 500 companies is as follows. At one, candidates got a special box ticked on the list if they met diversity criteria, where one is considered diverse if they're from what is considered an underrepresented group. HR uses it to pressure interviewers into being more lenient in their evaluations and guilt trip about how it's such a shame we're not be able to advance a diverse candidate. Conversely they love hearing when a diverse candidate does well "That's great they did well, and their diverse too!". It all feeds into this subtle culture shift that tries to encourage discrimination without being overtly illegal. At another they decided that management pay would be tied to advancing diversity in the workplace.

I hear all these arguments about how DEI is misrepresented, it's all about making sure everyone feels welcome at the workplace and people aren't discriminated against for their appearance, name, background, etc. It's about introducing diversity of thought to challenge the status quo and avoid group think (good luck expressing any moderately conservative opinion at any of these places though). It's also marketed as making the workforce better reflect the customer base so as to create better products for all. I am completely supportive of those aspirations and feel that DEI programs have done more harm than good in advancing them.

Many people quietly become upset when they see the comparatively mild practices like I have described. They start to wonder if they're going to be targeted unfairly during the next round of layoffs so some manger can help to improve their team's diversity score. They wonder if it's going to be more difficult for them or their kids to get a job. They don't like how any criticism of these programs is silenced and/or dismissed as racism/sexism/fascism/etc. Resentment builds, our society becomes more polarized, extremist views become more palletable, and they take their frustrations out at the ballot box.

Sounds rather similar to what The Economist purports to support (or at least used to) but with more of a tilt towards personal liberties. That's open to interpretation but could be pro free speech, pro gun rights, pro reproductive rights, pro LGBT.

From their 2009 about us:

"What, besides free trade and free markets, does The Economist believe in? 'It is to the Radicals that The Economist still likes to think of itself as belonging. The extreme centre is the paper's historical position.' That is as true today as when former Economist editor Geoffrey Crowther said it in 1955. The Economist considers itself the enemy of privilege, pomposity and predictability. It has backed conservatives such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. It has supported the Americans in Vietnam. But it has also endorsed Harold Wilson and Bill Clinton, and espoused a variety of liberal causes: opposing capital punishment from its earliest days, while favoring penal reform and decolonization, as well as—most recently—gun control and gay marriage."

https://web.archive.org/web/20090228231949/http://www.econom...

The percentage of federal taxes paid by income looks like this:

Top 1%: 40.4%

Top 5%: 61%

Top 10%: 72%

Top 25%: 87.2%

Top 50%: 97%

Bottom 50%: 3%

That hardly looks regressive. Is there some other standard by which you are judging whether tax policy is sufficiently graduated enough?

https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/latest-federal-in...

Hiring managers love referrals. You can spend weeks going through resumes and doing interviews hoping to find that perfect candidate (and they better be as perfect as can because you won't be able to just get rid of them on a whim if they wind up being a dud). There's also nothing more frustrating than giving an offer to a great candidate and then losing our on them.

Hiring referrals is great for both problems. The person is already vetted by someone your organization trusts. This is great because a referral is more likely to be someone that knows their stuff and thus pass the interview process. You also have someone vouching that this person is a good employee and not just a good interviewer. The candidate is more likely to accept when they have a contact on the inside that can vouch for the the company and team.

This all assumes that the company is going to do their own independent evaluation of the referred candidate.

You are trying to draw a parallel between mass deportation and genocide that I do find valid. Rounding up people for deportation may be considered a violent act but not nearly to the degree of intentional mass murder. Also alluding that migrant internment camps (which would be temporary holding facilities for deportees) would be like something akin to Auschwitz (an actual industrialized mass murder facility) feels like more of a smear than a realistic argument.

The law defines the process for legal immigration and many people have broken the law. Either intentionally or through incompetence the government has failed to effectively enforce immigration law. If the people of the USA wanted open borders then they should consent to it via the democratic process.

Illegal immigration is not a victimless crime. It strains local resources to accommodate the influx of people. Housing costs are driven up and labor costs down for the most vulnerable in society. Unvetted criminals or gang members entering pose a threat to public safety.

That being said I don't feel good about the mass deportation and the pain and suffering it would surely cause people who mostly mean no harm to anyone and are looking for a better life.

Depending on the specifics, that sounds congruent with some of Adam Smith's economic theories so it's not surprising to see such arguments used, especially if some of the authors are from the Adam Smith Institute.

His whole invisible hand metaphor is about society advancing as a whole from agents acting in their self interest.

It's more likely a sincerely held belief than an attempt at misdirection.

I think to say that "Taliban controlling Afghanistan obviously wasn't a problem because they still do" is inaccurate. The problem the US had with the Taliban is that being an Islamic fundamentalist political entity, they provided safe harbor for al-Qaeda. They refused to cooperate with the request to extradite Bin Laden. The west had every intention of eliminating the Taliban for good and failed to achieve this goal.

The prevailing wisdom at the time was to remove the Taliban from power and to establish a deradicalized, democratic Afghanistan that would hopefully cooperate with the west in fighting terrorism as well as removing the conditions that would cause jihadist movements to flourish. The template for this being the destruction of Axis powers during WWII and their subsequent rebirth as deradicized, prosperous, militarily benign nations.

It took a decade long man hunt to locate Bin Laden which was unanticipated. When he was found in Pakistan he was in hiding, not being intentionally harbored by the government as in Afghanistan.

In hindsight it was probably unrealistic to expect a rebuilt stable Afghanistan free of the Taliban. Perhaps a larger "surge" level of troops for a longer period of time and greater focus on Afghanistan rather than invading Iraq would have achieved a different outcome. Let's not forget that the US was not being entirely rational at the time. The government and the public wanted revenge in a big way.

M-Disc is a digital optical medium for archival storage. Not indestructible but more resilient to degradation than the typical BD/DVD-R.

First $100M, then when that's not enough it'll be $50M, then $10M, then $1M, then $500k. The definition of "rich" will keep being adjusted down.

And for what? So politicians can spend it on some photo-op project for themselves? Maybe sending "aid" to other countries (bullets and bombs)? Using it to spy on it's own citizens and quell dissidents? Surely individuals can on average invest the money more productively.

Ideally you'd want businesses to voluntarily operate in these places but it's hard to get them to. It is difficult to operate at a profit in these environments. Margins are worse because poorer populations can less afford luxury items. Costs are higher due to increase in theft, the need for additional security services, and insurance.

In recent years there have been high profile closures of big brand stores in major metro areas for exactly these reasons. Proposals to address grocery store closures include regulating them in San Francisco with a lengthy 6 month notice period and other requirements. In Chicago the idea has been floated for government run grocery stores.

While the jump to call such moves "the moral equivalent of slavery" is a bit extreme, they do exist in the realm of compelled behavior and against liberty. In the case of SF it's with regard to making it more difficult to exercise the decision to close a store, which may require the operator to take financial losses for longer and incur additional compliance related costs. In the case of Chicago, it's using tax payer money (which is collected through threat of incarceration) to operate a service that's traditionally provided voluntarily by a private actor because it yields them benefit (profits).

https://www.axios.com/local/san-francisco/2024/01/31/grocery...

https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/mayor/press_room/press...

"I now believe that evolution, or de-evolution, never ends short of death, that no society has ever achieved an absolute pinnacle, that all humans are not created equal. In fact, I believe attempts to create some abstract equalization create a morass of injustices that rebound on the equalizers. Equal justice and equal opportunity are ideals we should seek, but we should recognize that humans administer the ideals and that humans do not have equal ability."

I feel like we've been seeing exactly this in contemporary political movements. Identify some perceived injustice with society, create a power structure to address it, more injustice is created in the process, festering resentment at the power structure develops and produces blowback.

I never understood why Hollywood insists on using A list actors to do voice acting for animated features. Most of the time it's not even apparent who's performing and I hardly find it a draw that some big name is listed on the billboard.

Dis we really need Chris Pratt and Jack Black to do the voices for the Super Mario movie? Especially when Chris Pratt is basically using his regular voice the whole time?

Bought our sectional from a Bassett showroom almost 10 years ago. Extremely comfortable and the thing still looks brand new. Checked a few items on their website and found that they're still made in North Carolina.

I find your take partisan. During primaries her competition tried to use it as leverage against her which is a completely normal thing to do in politics. It basically went away when Bernie, in one of the debates, decided he was tired of hearing about her emails, establishing that this is something we're just not going to talk about anymore because it's too damaging to our top candidate.

Trump harped on it with the whole "lock her up" stuff, again because it's politically advantageous. He reneged on it once in office, admitting he wasn't going to pursue any charges against her. It was probably calculated that doing so would be bad optics as using the justice system to go after the top candidate of the competing party would be considered divisive. It was also potentially unproductive as she had already lost. There's also the element of personal connection, Trump was an NY Democrat for decades and had known the Clintons personally. Their daughters had a friendship in the past.

Also see George Santos as a counterpoint. Fellow NY Republican congressmen went after him knowing that their party would likely lose his seat. Again, I interpret their actions as self serving, they wanted to distance themselves from his shenanigans to their own constituents and appear to be acting objectively rather than in the interest of their party but the right result was achieved regardless.

In case my point there wasn't clear, it's common for people to adorn their property with their support for a campaign, such as lawn signs, bumper stickers, or pins. Such displays are rare at work, as most people have more tact than that, but I've still seen Obama, Hillary, and Bernie campaign logos. A Trump one or "Make America Great Again" one in these environments would be a faux pas to say the least.

If we really cared about "our workforce reflecting our customers", as the mantra goes, we'd want people that empathize with those points of view. Instead there appears to be nothing but active disdain for them in this industry.

"Bring your whole self to work" is a joke unless you hold progressive opinions. Antifa and "resistance" stickers on laptops or backpacks are fine, as is openly wishing for the death or bodily harm of sitting politicians from the "wrong" party. Diversity groups for just about everyone except you know who. Meetings on work time openly pushing progressive agendas.

God forbid you display MAGA swag or even a Gadsden. Diversity is supposed to yield benefits of expanded opinions. Now there is no diversity. Everyone looks a bit different but the only opinions expressed are in one direction.

You're equating giving money to the government with contributing to society, which is not the same thing. Politicians will give your money to any cause that will get them reelected, be that vanity projects or cronies that contribute to their campaigns. That's not even the worst case, they can spend it on the military killing people, spying on the populace including you, or distributing it in some other unjust way.

If you want to actually contribute to society you are better off investing it in some productive way or giving away to people in need as directly as possible. Government is a necessary evil, don't give it a dime more than what's absolutely needed as it can get out of control with little room to escape.

I believe Java virtual threads/project Loom fits what you are describing. No separate async APIs, everything is coded using a thread based model. The user decides between using platform/OS threads (thus delegating scheduling to the kernel), or using virtual threads and letting the JVM take over scheduling.

Seems like there's a bunch of us with the same idea. Once W10 is end of life my plan is to build a new PC and run Linux on it. Gaming is my only reservation but hoping mostly a non issue by 2025.

Yeah more than HLS. It would need to handle authentication and authorization such as is the user subscribed and what content is available them that they may have purchased a la carte. It would need listing of available content for search and indexing by the client. Presumably the major forms of content are standalone (ie movies), series which are a collection of content broken up into seasons, and potentially live streams. Finally it needs a way to purchase new content.

The industry is standardized enough to agree on distribution formats (VHS, DVD, etc) and to have awards for different established categories and video rental companies used to be able to organize their collections well enough. I want studios to handle distribution, that is operating a streaming farm for their content, and get out of owning the storefront. I want a digital Blockbuster type experience with everyone's content commingled. No having to go to the Disney store, and the HBO store, and the Paramount store and oh last month this content was on Netflix and now I can't find it because it's on Amazon this month.

I would like to see a standardized streaming protocol be developed. That way there can be a market for the client side (different apps that organize content you've subscribed to) and for the server side (like web servers are commodities). It would eliminate content providers having to roll their own streaming back ends and front end apps for so many platforms.

That and the need to introduce large denomination bills. The $100 bill has been the largest in circulation since 1969 while it's buying power has significantly reduced due to inflation.

$100 in 1969 is over $800 inflation adjusted dollars. Our government seems insistent on phasing out cash in favor of digital mechanisms they can track more easily.

I my guess is that what's really happening is that Apple is being paid off not to compete in search. As Google has shown, search can be incredibly lucrative. The profit motive would be pushing Apple to this end. They have a large base of loyal users that Apple Search could be be pushed out to as the default.

Google pays Apple enough not to take the risk in trying. If Apple Search was a hit it would be a threat to Google. There's always the possibility that it would be the next Bing or Apple Maps, an inferior money pit, so Apple is happy to take the cash.