throwaway2037

What would you have suggested in the 1980s instead of a floppy disk? And today?

That is the first I ever saw the term "mog" used outside of bodybuiy/looksmaxxing.

More info here: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=mog

    > Towing with an EV is terrible.

As I understand, electric motors deliver instant maximum torque. Isn't that advantageous for towing? You can get a good list of pros and cons from an LLM with a prompt like this: "towing with electric motor vs ice engine".

What is your opinion on the upcoming Tesla Semi? I expect that it will be successful, useful, and efficient.

    > You can't check errno to see if there was a failure because, as the man page says, the value of errno is unspecified when crypt succeeds.

You can set errno to zero before the call. If the value is non-zero after the call, that is a good heuristic for failure.

From what I have read, methanol is harder to make 100% green. Ammonia does not suffer from the same limitation. As a result, some analysis says "methanol short-term, but ammonia long-term".

This is a great reply. Thank you for the code snip. It makes a lot of sense to me now. Basically: You need to have pre-conditions and post-conditions.

In the code sample above, can you explain why DCHECK is used instead of CHECK? I needed to Google to ask about those macros, but it looks like DCHECK is only enabled in debug builds.

Has there ever been a modern fighter jet built in the last 50 years that wasn't consider in one aspect or another an "failure"? At this point, the term "failure" seems almost pointless to describe very large, nation state projects that are heavily used and have thousands built.

Fair point. It would be better to say: "Primarily text-based GUIs". I was looking for a good way to describe apps that are not primarly showing video or rendering 3D graphics.

This is a very good reply! I stand corrected, and thank you to do so in a very polite and succinct manner. A better way to think about GPUs in 2026: They are used as a co-processor and are very efficient to paint pixels.

Uhhh, clickbait?

The opening sentence says:

    > To create this composite image, photographer Brendan Larsen captured almost 600 photographs over a two-hour period and then manually stitched them together.

So, no human eyeballs could ever see that image.

    > one place on earth where I will actively look around for ads, and that is London Underground stations

You raise a good point. I am similar. I am much more influenced by an advert that is somewhat artistic. Plus, I notice that size and scale really matters. Thinking about the same advert: One is a tiny graphic on your phone, the other is a two meter tall version on your subway platform. The second one is much higher impact.

For the same reason, spot FX commentary is utter garbage, yet there seems to be unlimited amounts of it.

What is the advantage of GPUI over Qt? As I understand, Qt has excellent Rust support in 2026.

From the website https://gpui.rs/, I see this description:

    > GPU-accelerated UI framework for Rust

Can someone explain to me why a text editor needs to be GPU-accelerated? Literally, you are only blitting a few icons and painting text. What am I missing? To be clear, I am not here to doubt that the toolkit is good. Rather, I am asking why is "GPU-accelerated" important? Most people in 2026 that use an IDE are also equipped with a multi-GHz CPU has has plenty of compute to paint whatever pixels necessary at more than 60Hz refresh rate.

I agree. In the last 10 years, a huge number of popular independent journalists and pundits (opinion writers) have moved to Substack. For me, in 2026, it is the OnlyFans of blogging.

For those too lazy to open the Twitter/X link:

    > @0xTMK: Why do companies acquire open source software companies if everyone can already access the repos?
    > @mitchellh: Because code by itself isn't valuable. Coding is the easy part.

So... acqui-hire? No hate on that, but this team must be wildly talented.

Wow, 30 years ago... 10K USD is a lot of money! What makes Sweden special that so many homes opted for this very expensive install for ground-based heat pumps instead of much cheaper (but less efficient) air-based heat pumps (mostly used in Asia)?

    > the single best improvements over the years have been atomics...

Of course, libatomic and friends have existed for a long time. Real question: Do you feel that the standardisation of atomics within the C++ base library is a material advantage over using libatomic? Also, maybe there are atomic APIs in the C++ base library that are better than libatomic. If so, please kindly share an example or two. I would like to learn more.

EDIT

I forgot to give a hat tip to your big upgrade from C++98 to C++23. In some projects, that can require an enormous amount of effort! Can you share a "stories from the trenches" that were difficult in that upgrade?

    > high-reliability

I never heard this term used with C++ before. Can you explain more? Ideally: Can you give an example snip of code that demonstrates it clearly?

As of writing, the most dense server CPU is the AMD EPYC 9965, which has 192 cores. It is possible to build a 2x CPU 1U server, so that is 384 cores per 1U. I am unsure what is the limiting factor: heat or space on the die (probably lots is just L1/2/3 cache). When you look at the interior of a vanilla 1U server, I don't think there is any remaining space to add more sockets (CPUs). Final note: SuperMicro also offers an Ampere ARM chip with 192 cores.

Do professional rugby players also suffer from CTE?

Next time there are other available units in your building on different sides or floors, ask an agent to show you the apt. You check if the sound is present in other units.

The AT&T Long Lines building[1] where this event occurred makes for an interesting read.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/33_Thomas_Street

I agree with a lot of what you say, except the bit about "cargo ships can all be electrified". It is more likely that they will use ammonia or hydrogen that are fully produced using only electricity (and some air/water).

I don't think it is such a big deal to ship old batteries from rich countries to low income countries for recycling. As long as those low income countries are (long term) friendly with the rich countries. Example: The US could ship old batteries to numerous countries in Central America that would probably be happy to have a factory with good jobs. Also: Vietnam, Bangladesh, India, etc. To be clear: I am not suggesting that rich countries use low income countries to "export their pollution". Rather, I say low income countries because the ROI for battery recycling will probably be low.

    > 100 meter borehole into the ground

I have heard from a couple of different Swedes talking about when this was installed in their childhood/high school years. It must be reasonably common at this point in Sweden. Are there special machines that pull up to your home and bore a deep hole? That seems like very specialised work for the average contractor! Also, does the gov't offer subsidies from this (presumably) expensive home improvement?

Cool post. I would like to learn more details!

Real question: As I understand, good insulation in your home helps two ways: Keep the heat inside in the winter, and keep the cold inside in the summer. Do I have that right? If yes, I understand there are lots of places in Australia with very light winters (or none at all), so they are mostly focused on cooling with A/C. Are you saying that installing significantly better insulation is not economically efficient for many Australia homes?

You raise an interesting point here. To use digital Suica/PASMO/whatever in Japan, your mobile phone needs to have NFC hardware called (Sony) "FeliCa (Osaifu-Keitai)". Few Android phones sold outside of Japan have this hardware. However, Apple is a bit special -- I think all modern iPhones sold globally support it. (Please correct me if wrong.)

Google also tells me:

    > Samsung confirmed it's working with JR East to bring Suica and FeliCa support to Galaxy phones sold outside Japan starting in 2027.

    > Google Maps doesn't have all the operators

Can you give an example?

Regarding booking train tickets, I normally recommend that people use a major, domestic tourist agency, such as JTB. The majors will have English language support. For a small fee, they can print the tickets and mail them to you, or you can pickup at an office upon arrival in Japan. For obvious reasons, they can also accept foreign credit cards.

The researcher is based in Hongkong, where Anthropic is geo-blocked.