GeneralMayhem

13 ms·

61.
by GeneralMayhem 2y ago
As found elsewhere on this thread, the rate is based on trade deficit. Trump believes that having a negative trade balance with a country means that they're cheating somehow, as opposed to meaning that you just buy a lot of manufacture
62.
by GeneralMayhem 2y ago
If you're sane and rational and decided that you liked Trump's promises (with "rational" implying that you were actually listening to what he'd do, and not blindly accepting his nonsense about "I'll make e
63.
by GeneralMayhem 2y ago
The Central Valley is an incomprehensibly vast area of incredibly fertile soil, due to its history as a seabed and collection basin of all the mineral runoff from the mountains. It also has California weather, which means one of the longest
64.
by GeneralMayhem 2y ago
Go panic isn't really usable as catch/rethrow because it can only be done at function scope. To make them useful for that pattern, you need a scoped `try { }` block where you can tell what part failed and continue from there. Eith
65.
by GeneralMayhem 2y ago
One thing that `if err != nil { return err }` lets you do, which panic/recover doesn't, is annotate errors with context. If you're throwing from 5 layers deep in the call stack, and two of those layers are loops that invoke t
66.
by GeneralMayhem 2y ago
One could start by not violating every labor, environmental, and financial law all at once. Does it make more sense that every business in the US has the constant attention of every federal agency? Or that Elon has done some particular th
67.
by GeneralMayhem 2y ago
It's going to dramatically depend on department. EPA? Probably a passion, but also not a lot of other places to work for those exact jobs. IRS auditor? Maybe; maybe that's the job they could get, or maybe it's a choice betwee
68.
by GeneralMayhem 2y ago
Most of these workers had better-paying jobs in the private sector. 18F existed specifically to hire top tech-industry talent to work on federal-government modernization and efficiency projects. The people there almost certainly took a pa
69.
by GeneralMayhem 2y ago
No shit. Vandalizing the government has been the only goal of the Republican party since at least 2016. They're just taking the masks off now.
70.
by GeneralMayhem 2y ago
Yes, you are being too cynical. There is no way that anyone who chose to work at 18F - a place that exists to make government actually more efficient, that has a reputation for quality and execution, and that doesn't pay nearly as we
71.
by GeneralMayhem 2y ago
Because they were designed and implemented by a team in Zurich. I'm not joking, that's literally the reason.
72.
by GeneralMayhem 2y ago
Yes... that's what I said
73.
by GeneralMayhem 2y ago
Trump is very obviously a far-right president. That's an incontrovertible fact that even he wouldn't disagree with. It is also a blatantly true fact - as evidenced by their words and actions over the last several decades, and espe
74.
by GeneralMayhem 2y ago
While I agree with you, the "parasitic" act I was referring to was specifically taking over the USDS. The image I had in mind was the fungus that mind-controls insects. Trump doesn't have the authority to create new federal a
75.
by GeneralMayhem 2y ago
18F - and its sibling the US Digital Service, before it was eviscerated to become the host for the DOGE parasite - is exactly the sort of thing you would create if you want government to run efficiently. Creating room for well-meaning techn
76.
by GeneralMayhem 2y ago
That link doesn't contradict the person you're replying to. Actual orthogonality still has a probability of zero, just as the equator of a sphere has zero surface area, because it's a one-dimensional line (even if it is in so
77.
by GeneralMayhem 2y ago
But the training data isn't open... I agree that open source doesn't mean open assets, but neither does open assets mean open source. You could make a linguistic argument that the training data is part of the "source"
78.
by GeneralMayhem 2y ago
> If I write a program, then obfuscate it and then release the obfuscated code under an open source license, would you consider it open source(I would)? I wouldn't. Most definitions of open source say something like "in the for
79.
by GeneralMayhem 2y ago
It's not a purity contest, it's a clarity contest. If Meta and Deepseek want to operate the way they have been, where they release baked models and whitepapers, that's fine - and you're right, it's certainly more th
80.
by GeneralMayhem 2y ago
Games like that, or the open-source clones of commercial games that require original assets to play (e.g. OpenXCOM), actually give a very clear analogy here: open source does not mean open assets . The software code is under a separate l
81.
by GeneralMayhem 2y ago
We knew this was going to happen. That doesn't make it acceptable. The correct response in this situation is not to say "well, they were mean to him, therefore he gets to hit them back". It's to notice that he committed
82.
by GeneralMayhem 2y ago
Not the person you're replying to, but I often use "fractal complexity" to describe problems with a certain character, and I (and I assume this poster as well) mean it in the more precise sense: as Wikipedia puts it, fractals
83.
by GeneralMayhem 2y ago
> what does the left mean by "free speech". One difference is that the left doesn't generally advocate for absolute free speech, so it isn't hypocritical. I think the left is generally more open about the areas where
84.
by GeneralMayhem 2y ago
When Trump (or Republicans, generally) say "free speech", they patently do not mean what the rest of us mean by free speech. They mean: 1. Everyone should be able to say horrible things about sexual and racial minorities. 2. Every
85.
by GeneralMayhem 2y ago
Today's Russia is not communist in any way. It's a far-right-wing autocratic kleptocracy, where all power is held by a single individual and those who have personal favor with him, all wealth is managed through a cycle of corrupt
86.
by GeneralMayhem 2y ago
> It isn't possible to implement incoherent policies If you assume that the goal is to implement a policy, no, it's not possible. But that's never the goal with such chaos. The goal is to make it unclear what's allowe
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by GeneralMayhem 2y ago
Also relevant: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/16/i-knew... . It's incredible, really. I thought the main point of being a billionaire was independence. "Fuck-you money"
88.
by GeneralMayhem 2y ago
Yeah... there's no such provision. The only mentions of the president in that bill are: 1. In the definition of a "covered company". The bill itself already saus that TikTok is covered; this is only a provision to add other
89.
by GeneralMayhem 2y ago
Okay, fine, let's play this game. What did Trump do to get TikTok back online?
90.
by GeneralMayhem 2y ago
I'm pretty sure there are exactly two reasons for Trump going on about Greenland: 1. Putin suggested it to him at some point, because he knew it would cause chaos among the Western alliance bloc. 2. Mercator projection. It looks big on

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