Programming interolivary • 5 months ago • 100%

blog.stackblitz.com

One thing that pretty consistently drops me out of the flow state is having to dig through documentation for whatever I'm trying to use, or even worse having to dig through its source code because the documentation is either nonexistent or eg. plain wrong

Memes interolivary • 10 months ago • 98%

By https://www.gocomics.com/sunny-street

Technology interolivary • 11 months ago • 100%

www.ans.org

In today's episode of "weird shit I stumbled onto on the internet", I bring you: nuclear-powered pacemakers.  Some of the earlier pacemakers made in the US, around the 70's, were powered by a very small amount of plutonium. If you've ever heard of the term radioisotope thermoelectric generator or RTG in relation to eg. satellites, that's what the pacemakers used. The upside of using an RTG was that the device could run for decades without needing to get its power source replaced. The downside is that you now have plutonium sown in to your chest cavity – which actually isn't as bad as it sounds considering the amounts used, but it's still a highly radioactive element and presents some fun challenges, some of which are discussed in the article. Here's an article on the technical details on how they, and thermoelectric kajiggers in general, work https://blog.plover.com/tech/seebeck-effect.html

Memes interolivary • 11 months ago • 96%

The image has a stock photo of a chemist with Samuel L. Jackson's head photoshopped on, and he appears to be looking a graduated cylinder with some colored liquid in it. Near the bottom there's the text "ah, yes". Below it are two rows that look like they were copied from the periodic table, with atomic numbers at the top, then the abbreviation in the middle and the full name of the element at the bottom. The first row of elements is Mo, Th, Er (molybdenum, thorium, erbium) The second row of elements is F, U, C, K, Er (fluorine, uranium, carbon, potassium, erbium) **edit**: corrected term to "atomic number"

Risa interolivary • 11 months ago • 98%

Description: Meme format image. The top half has a picture of Star Trek: The Next Generation's bridge crew with the text "the prime directive forbids us from interfering. We cannot share our technology". The bottom half has a picture of Stargate's SG-1 team and the text "all your gods are false. Here, take these guns."

Ukraine interolivary • 11 months ago • 100%

The post's link is to the summary of the research report, and the full 100-page report is linked to at the top of the page. Here's the summary: > # Escalation in the War in Ukraine > > ## Lessons Learned and Risks for the Future > > Despite the devastating losses experienced by the Russian military and both the Ukrainian military and civilian population following Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, both sides have refrained from pursuing several escalatory options to date. Although Russia has escalated its attacks on Ukraine in several ways, including strikes against critical infrastructure and the civilian population, it has refrained from other options—notable given the high stakes for the Kremlin and the potential capabilities Russia could bring to bear in the conflict. However, if Russian territorial, personnel, and materiel losses continue to mount without improvements on the battlefield, President Vladimir Putin will face an unpalatable set of choices. In the extreme, the conflict offers plausible scenarios for Russia to become the first state to use nuclear weapons in warfare since 1945. > This report evaluates the potential for further escalation in the conflict in Ukraine, including the prospects for escalation to Russian nuclear use. It does so by evaluating Russian and Ukrainian behavior in the conflict to date and identifying and assessing the escalation options still open to both sides. The report is intended to inform U.S. and NATO policymakers as they consider how to avoid further escalation of the conflict while assisting Ukraine in its efforts to defeat the Russian invasion and to better inform the public debate around these issues. > > > ## Key Findings > #### Further Russian escalation has likely been restrained by three main factors > * The factors are (1) acute concerns for NATO military capabilities and reactions, (2) concern for broader international reactions, particularly the potential to lose China's support, and (3) the Russian perception that its goals in Ukraine are achievable without further escalation, making risker actions not yet necessary. > > #### Russian escalation to date has seen limited effectiveness > * None of Moscow's escalatory measures appear to have altered Ukrainian or NATO behavior in the ways that Putin and his inner circle likely sought. Instead, they have largely hardened Ukrainian and NATO opposition to Russia's invasion. > > #### Further deliberate escalation, including Russian nuclear escalation, is highly plausible > * Both Russia and Ukraine may still choose to deliberately escalate the conflict further. Six plausible options for Russian escalation were identified that would have the potential to fundamentally alter the nature of the conflict, ranging from a limited attack on NATO to the use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine. The most likely potential trigger for Russia to escalate the conflict is a perception that battlefield losses are threatening the security of its regime. > > #### Russian nuclear use could be surprisingly extensive > * Should Russia decide to use nuclear weapons, it may be relatively unrestrained in their employment inside Ukraine. > > #### Inadvertent escalation risks persist > * Inadvertent escalation could still occur as a result of military activities that are commonplace on both sides but happen to lead to different outcomes. The longer the conflict drags on, the more such risks will accumulate. > > ## Recommendations > * U.S. and allied policymakers should prioritize maintaining Alliance cohesion regarding the escalation risks of providing support to Ukraine. Doing so is vital both for ensuring long-term support for Ukraine and for maintaining deterrence of Russian aggression against NATO members. > * U.S. and allied policymakers should carefully evaluate the trade-offs between enhanced support for Ukraine, including the provision of weapons systems with longer ranges, and managing escalation risks, which may become more acute over time. > * U.S. and allied policymakers should be prepared to interrupt escalatory spirals from more-intensive Ukrainian attacks inside Russia. > * U.S. and allied policymakers should robustly plan for how to respond to further Russian escalation, including by prioritizing the maintenance of diplomatic and military communication channels with Russia that could become vital to arrest an escalatory spiral.

Ukraine interolivary • 12 months ago • 100%

www.bbc.com

> One of Ukraine's staunchest allies, Poland, has said it is no longer supplying weapons to its neighbour, as a diplomatic dispute over grain escalates. >Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Poland's focus was instead on defending itself with more modern weapons. Other conservatives will likely want to follow suit

World News interolivary • 1 year ago • 98%

www.theguardian.com

> Democracy remains popular across the world, but faced with a global array of challenges from inequality to the climate crisis, young people are far less likely than their elders to believe it can deliver on what concerns them. > > According to a major international survey of 30 countries published on Tuesday, 86% of respondents would prefer to live in a democratic state and only 20% believe authoritarian regimes are more capable of delivering “what citizens want”. > > However, only 57% of respondents aged 18 to 35 felt democracy was preferable to any other form of government, against 71% of those over 56, and 42% of younger people said they were supportive of military rule, against just 20% of older respondents. I wish I could say I was surprised. Here in Finland we had a parliamentary election earlier in the year and ended up with the most right-wing government we've ever had, with zero leftist or centrist parties in the government. One fresh minister had to quit his post due to being a neo-Nazi, and the extremist party whose ministerial post it currently is replaced him with a _pedophile_ neo-Nazi (who won a vote of confidence, so apparently that's not a problem to anybody but leftists.) Almost half of the under-25's voted for right-wing parties. The most popular one was an extremist right-wing party (multiple neo-Nazis, politicians who openly fantasize about eg. murdering gay people, the works), and 2nd most popular was the "fiscally conservative" party (who really aren't much better than the extremists, and in many ways actually worse).

Memes interolivary • 1 year ago • 100%

Drawing, vaguely 50's retro style. In the center is an anthropomorphic egg character, dressed in a "sailor hat", a shirt and a tie, and shorts. The character is walking in a sort of jaunty-looking fashion, but on closer inspection the poor egg is looking a bit ragged, with a large network of cracks on its shell right next to its hat, a missing tooth, and bags under its eyes. The character is surrounded by the text "one minor hiccup away from losing my shit"

Europe interolivary • 1 year ago • 97%

Image description: Picture with a slightly run-down looking church's front door on the right side of the picture, and on the left a section of the church's wall and a graffiti-covered dumpster in front of it. On the wall is graffitied a 4x4 table with the columns labeled from left to right "M", "F", "N" and "PL" – for the masculine, feminine, neuter and plural forms. The rows are labeled from top to bottom "nom", "akk", "dat", "gen" for the nominative, accusative, dative and genetive cases. The corresponding definite articles are written out in the table each in its own spot (I hope screen readers don't barf with tables): | | **M** | **F** | **N** | **PL** | |-----|:---:|:---:|:----:|:---:| | **NOM** | DER | DIE | DAS | DIE | | **AKK** | DEN | DIE | DAS | DIE | | **DAT** | DEM | DER | DEM | DEN | | **GEN** | DES | DER | DES | DER |

Memes interolivary • 1 year ago • 98%

4 panel comic. In the top left panel there's a slightly antropomorphic tortellini that has eyes, and it has a thought bubble reading "I wish I was skinnier". Next to it is a similarly antropomorphic spaghetti thinking "I wish I wasn't so skinny". In the top right panel there's a small macaroni thinking "I wish I was bigger" and a ravioli thinking "I wish I was smaller". In the bottom left panel there's a… uh… tube-shaped pasta that I think is a rigatoni thinking "I wish I wasn't hollow inside", and a clam-shaped pasta (lol I give up with the names) thinking "I'm just an empty shell". In the bottom right panel we can see part of a plate that has the antropomorphic pasta on it, and then the top half of the face of a female-presenting person with dilated pupils, peering over a table edge looking at the plate thinking "I wish I wasn't tripping so hard".

Memes interolivary • 1 year ago • 89%

Meme (??) image. On the left side there's a picture of a cylindrical metallic container with the text > DANGER > RADIATION > ☢️ (radioactivity warning symbol) > DROP > & > RUN > > Co 60 > 3540 > CURIES > 7-1-63 And below it the top part of a similar container is just visible. On the right side next to the first container are 4 lines that look like they measure out portions of the container, each with the text "mmm tasty." Then below those lines, "measuring out" the empty space between the two containers is the text "sadness", and then below it where the next container starts is the text "another :D yeey". (This might possibly be the worst description of a meme ever, but goddamn was this not easy 😅 Corrections / edits welcome)

Memes interolivary • 1 year ago • 98%

Screenshot of a social media post – maybe Mastodon? – by "Cuttlefish Brand Ambassador" @Sir__Ian. It has the text "Upstaged by cuttlefish yet again" and below it a screenshot of a preview of a news article. It has a photo of a pair of cuttlefish and below it the headline reads "Cuttlefish have ability to exert self-control, study finds"

Programmer Humor interolivary • 1 year ago • 98%

Screenshot of a Mastodon post by @nikitonsky@mastodon.online. The post has text on top and an image on the bottom. The text reads: > "How are you gonna watch Oppenheimer?" > "In Emacs" > "You mean IMAX?" > "No" Below the text is what looks like a screenshot of Emacs. There are a couple of text panes open with indistinct green text on black background, and one pane is playing Oppenheimer.

Memes interolivary • 1 year ago • 94%

meme image. Top part has text on white background: >Android: file saved successfully. >Me: and where exactly it is saved >Android: Below that is a black and white picture of a chimpanzee (or is that a bonobo?) dressed in a long sleeve shirt and smoking a cigarette, with the caption "who the fuck knows"

Memes interolivary • 1 year ago • 99%

I just saw the "slutstation" post and it reminded me of this ancient photo of mine

Programming interolivary • 1 year ago • 100%

In a comment on my "right to be forgotten" proposal I mentioned causality tracking (so eg. figuring out whether event A happened before or after event B) in distributed networks as an example of a hard problem, and I figured I'd share a blog post (not mine) on one of the more modern techniques that's still very much underutilized. This class of algorithms is called [logical clocks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_clock), and the first of them was the [Lamport timestamp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamport_timestamp) by [Leslie Lamport](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Lamport). Note that many of these algorithms can be used for tracking version changes and not just logical time, often with some changes like in the case of interval tree clocks. In many cases just plopping a timestamp on a message and using that to establish causality isn't good enough. If you rely on clients to attach that timestamp, you have to trust that their clocks are correct, or that they don't simply lie about the time for whatever reason (although of course that's a problem with logical clocks too.) Also, you might not want to base your causality on when a message was sent but on when it was _received_; even if message A is sent before message B, there's no telling whether A actually makes it to your system before B does. These are just a few common reasons for needing logical clocks, and they're necessary in a surprising amount of cases when you deal with distributed systems. The advantage of interval tree clocks compared to eg. [vector clocks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_clock) is that they're designed to work well in networks where participants are constantly leaving and coming back online and where you can't know the number of nodes in the network beforehand. These are cases most other algorithms don't deal with too well. Of course this means more complexity in the algorithm, but this is a case of "them's the breaks" as the problem is definitely not a simple one to solve.

Programming interolivary • 1 year ago • 100%

Hey fellow nerds, I have an idea that I'd like to discuss with you. All feedback – positive or negative – is welcome. Consider this a baby RFC (Request for Comments). So. I've been having a think on how to implement the right to be forgotten (one of the cornerstones of eg. the GDPR) in the context of federated services. Currently, it's not possible to remove your comments, posts, etc., from the Fediverse and not just your "home instance" without manually contacting every node in the network. in my opinion, this is a fairly pressing problem, and there would already be a GDPR case here if someone were to bring the "eye of Sauron" (ie. a national data protection authority) upon us. Please note that this is very much a draft and it does have some issues and downsides, some of which I've outlined towards the end. ## The problem In a nutshell, the problem I'm trying to solve is how to guarantee that "well-behaved" instances, which support this proposal, will delete user content even in the most common exceptional cases, such as changes in network topology, network errors, and server downtime. These are situations where you'd typically expect messages about content or user deletion to be lost. It's important to note that I've specifically approached this from the "right to be forgotten" perspective, so the current version of the proposal solely deals with "mass deletion" when user accounts are deleted. It doesn't currently integrate or work with the normal content deletion flow (I'll further discuss this below). While I understand that in a federated or decentralized network it's impossible to guarantee that your content will be deleted, but we can't let "perfect be the enemy of *good enough*". Making a concerted effort to ensure that in most cases user content is deleted (initially this could even just be a Lemmy thing and not a wider Fediverse thing) when the user so wishes would already be a big step in the right direction. I haven't yet looked into "prior art" except some very cursory searches and I had banged the outline of this proposal out before I even went looking, but I now know that eg. Mastodon has the ability to [set TTLs on posts](https://fedi.tips/deleting-posts-automatically-in-mastodon-after-a-certain-time-period/). This proposal is sort of adjacent and could be massaged a bit to support this on Lemmy (or whatever else service) too. ## 1. The proposal: TTLs on user content 1. Every comment, post etc. (*content*) must have an associated TTL (eg. a `live_until` timestamp). This TTL can be fairly long, on the order of weeks or even a couple of months 2. well before the content's TTL runs out (eg. even halfway through the TTL, with some random jitter to prevent "thundering herds"), an instance asks the "home instance" of the user who created the content whether the user account is still live. If it is, great, update the TTL and go on with life 1. in cases where the "home instance" of a content creator can't be reached due to eg. network problems, this "liveness check" *must be* repeated at random long-ish intervals (eg. every 20 – 30h) until an answer is gotten or the TTL runs out 2. information about user liveness *should* be cached, but with a much shorter TTL than content 3. in cases where the user's home instance isn't in an instance's linked instance list or is in their blocked instance list, this liveness check *may* be skipped 3. when content TTL runs out and a user liveness check hasn't succeeded, *or* when a user liveness check specifically comes back as negative, the content *must be* deleted 1. when a liveness check comes back as negative and the user has been removed, instances *must* delete the rest of that user's content and not just the one whose TTL ran out 2. when a liveness check fails (eg. the user's home instance doesn't respond), instances *may* delete the rest of that user's content. Or I guess they probably *should*? 4. user accounts must have a TTL, on the order of several years 1. when a user performs any activity on the instance, this TTL *must be* updated 2. when this TTL runs out, the account and all of its related content on the instance *must be* deleted 3. instances *may* eg. ping users via email to remind them about their account expiring before the TTL runs out ## 2. Advantages of this proposal 1. guarantees that user content is deleted from "well behaved" instances, even in the face of changing network topologies when instances defederate or disappear, hiccups in message delivery, server uptime and so on 2. would allow supporting Mastodon-like general content TTLs with a little modification, hence why it has TTLs per content and not just per user. Maybe something like a `refresh_liveness` boolean field on content that says whether an instance should do user liveness checks and refresh the content's TTL based on it or not? 3. with some modification this probably could (and should) be made to work with and support the regular content deletion flow. Something for draft v0.2 in case this gets any traction? ## 3. Disadvantages of this proposal 1. more network traffic, DB activity, and CPU usage, even during "normal" operation and not just when something gets deleted. Not a huge amount but the impact should probably be estimated so we'd have at least an idea of what it'd mean 1. however, considering the nature of the problem, _some_ extra work is to be expected 2. as noted, the current form of this proposal does not support or work with the regular deletion flow for individual comments or posts, and only addresses the more drastic scenario when a user account is deleted or disappears 3. spurious deletions of content are theoretically possible, although with long TTLs and persistent liveness check retries they shouldn't happen except in rare cases. Whether this is actually a problem requires more thinkifying 4. requires buy-in from the rest of the Fediverse as long as it's not a protocol-level feature (and there's more protocols than just ActivityPub). This same disadvantage would naturally apply to all proposals that aren't protocol-level. The end goal would definitely be to have this feature be a protocol thing and not just a Lemmy thing, but one step at a time ### 3.1 "It's a feature, not a bug" 1. when an instance defederates or otherwise leaves the network, content from users on that instance will eventually disappear from instances no longer connected to its network. This is a feature: when you lose contact with an instance for a long time, you have to assume that it's been "lost at sea" to make sure that the users' right to forgotten is respected. As a side note, this would also help prune content from long gone instances 2. content can't be assumed to be forever. This is by design: in my opinon Lemmy shouldn't try to be a permanent archive of all content, like the Wayback Machine 3. this solution is more complex than simply _actually_ deleting content when the user so wishes, instead of just hiding it from view like it's done now in Lemmy. While "true deletion" definitely needs to _also_ be implemented, it's not enough to guarantee eventual content deletion in cases like defederation, or network and server errors leading to an instance not getting the message about content or a user being deleted

AskBeehaw interolivary • 1 year ago • 100%

I'd love to hear about your quirky habits. One of mine is that when I'm out in nature I tend to collect cool looking rocks, sticks, cones etc. My window sills have become a geology exhibit (and I have zero clue about what I'm collecting, I just go by "ooh shiny") and more often than not I'll have small rocks in my pockets, bags, backpacks etc etc

Beehaw Support interolivary • 1 year ago • 100%

I've made some comments and posts on a community on another instance, and I just realized they're not showing up on the other instance at all. Eg. I made [this comment](https://beehaw.org/comment/520977) on !suomi@sopuli.xyz, but it's not visible [on the original instance](https://sopuli.xyz/post/990274). The same has happened with all comments and posts I've made on sopuli.xyz for the past few days, which leads me to believe it's due to sopuli upgrading to 0.18

World News interolivary • 1 year ago • 100%

www.theguardian.com

The good people of Finland decided to elect the most right wing government in the history of the country just a couple of months ago. The government is a coalition of an extreme right wing party, a right wing christian party, the Swedish People's Party (nominally centrist) and a "fiscally conservative" party – ie. they _mostly_ leave saying the bigoted shit out loud to the other two parties, but occasionally eg want to fund a Waffen SS volunteer "memorial organization" with government money, to spread "true information" about the SS volunteers who totally weren't ideologically motivated and totally didn't participate in the Holocaust (they absolutely did and we have archived war diares as proof, but it hurts the neo-nazis' feelings if you say that out loud.) The parties finally managed to come up with a plan on how to run things 10 days ago (hint: not well), and the extremist party has already gotten into multiple PR fuckups due to being full of neo-nazis and neo-nazi sympathizers, and now one of the newly minted ministers had to resign _officially_ due to making a "joke" (ie. it's not a joke until it gets him in trouble, and then it's a joke) about how climate change could be solved by forcing Africans to abort children. The _actual_ reason is that the fresh minister in question also made a speech at a neo-nazi rally and made "jokes" about HH / 88, made a klansman snowman complete with a noose, hired a senior adviser who is a literal neo-nazi and has made eg. social media posts admiring Hitler, lied about almost literally every achievement in his life – university, multiple years of work experience, etc – and the list just goes fucking on and on. And don't get me started on what these people are doing to the country's public sector funding. Education is fucked, public healthcare is double fucked, welfare is extra triple fucked with fuck on top.

Science interolivary • 1 year ago • 100%

profmattstrassler.com

I'm a layperson when it comes to physics, and I've always been a bit confused about what virtual particles actually are, especially since the terminology is often downright misleading – "virtual particles in and out of existence", other particles "exchanging virtual particles" etc. This blog post by theoretical physicist Matt Strassler was really helpful in explaining the concept (as far as it _can_ be explained without going elbow deep into math, I guess)

Space interolivary • 1 year ago • 100%

Source: NASA's [Astronomy Picture of the Day](https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap230630.html). > Explanation: Are asteroids dangerous? Some are, but the likelihood of a dangerous asteroid striking the Earth during any given year is low. Because some past mass extinction events have been linked to asteroid impacts, however, humanity has made it a priority to find and catalog those asteroids that may one day affect life on Earth. Pictured here are the orbits of the over 1,000 known Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs). These documented tumbling boulders of rock and ice are over 140 meters across and will pass within 7.5 million kilometers of Earth -- about 20 times the distance to the Moon. Although none of them will strike the Earth in the next 100 years -- not all PHAs have been discovered, and past 100 years, many orbits become hard to predict. Were an asteroid of this size to impact the Earth, it could raise dangerous tsunamis, for example. To investigate Earth-saving strategies, NASA successfully tested the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission last year. Of course, rocks and ice bits of much smaller size strike the Earth every day, usually pose no danger, and sometimes create memorable fireball and meteor displays.

Programming interolivary • 1 year ago • 100%

Good explanation of the difference between work efficiency and step efficiency when talking about parallel algorithms.