• 10 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 8th, 2023

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  • I think it was PS3 that shipped with “Other OS” functionality, and were sold a little cheaper than production costs would indicate, to make it up on games.

    Only thing is, a bunch of institutions discovered you could order a pallet of PS3’s, set up Linux, and have a pretty skookum cluster for cheap.

    I’m pretty sure Sony dropped “Other OS” not because of vague concerns of piracy, but because they were effectively subsidizing supercomputers.

    Don’t know if any of those PS3 clusters made it onto Top500.



  • Can’t disagree with anything you said. You’re a hero for watching the Joe Rogan interview, I cannot listen to Trump for more than 5 minutes at a time, it breaks my brain trying to parse what he’s actually saying instead of treating it like some sort of Rorshach test.

    I will say he gets the vibes. The US economy is doing pretty well. They’ve done better on inflation than any other OECD country that I’m aware of, their economy is growing, unemployment is low. But… it feels bad. It feels bad for too many people just trying to pay the rent and put food on the table. Is it because too much of that wealth has accrued in the pockets of the wealthy? Maybe, but paying more for a place to live and more for dinner tonight have a visceral reality that talk of housing starts doesn’t.

    We’re in a similar position in Canada. I would actually point to the Daycare program as one of the most significant programs that’s helped working class families in years, but I also don’t think it matters really, because I don’t know how well the LPC ahs captured the “vibes” of it.


  • Domestically, they made their bed, they can sleep in it. Yeah, I feel sorry for a lot of Americans, who will certainly suffer but then I also feel sorry for lots of people around the world who are suffering. In the US, they have a democracy, even if flawed and imperfect. At the end of the day, this was the will of the people. Maybe not so much that they wanted Trump (many certainly do) but rather enough people weren’t bothered enough to care.

    Unfortunately, this is a central Russian propaganda aim in democracies. Why bother voting? Politicians are all crooks. Mainstream media is all lies. Just give up, don’t engage, just… surrender. Why even try? It’s found fertile ground in an increasingly disillusioned public, and you don’t need to convince everyone to sit out the election, just enough.

    Not to stress you out, but have you considered a Trump dynasty? What if Trump endorsed one of his children? This could go on long past this Presidency without even amending the constitution.


  • The Trudeau administration weathered the first Trump presidency pretty well. This time, I don’t know. PP and the CPC seem to be ascendant, and it’s only a matter of time before a Federal election, and then what?

    It’s disheartening to admit, but despite plenty of warning I’m not confident that the other liberal democracies are well prepared to handle this second Trump administration. It won’t be all bad I’m sure, and there has been moves towards resilience and autonomy, but I fear it just hasn’t been that effective.

    To take one clear example, NATO and Ukraine. From a pure Realpolitik position, sending old US military equipment to Ukraine is probably the single best ROI you could get for US military expenses. It’s unclear how things will shake out under Trump, but considering what associations were uncovered around Stone, Manafort, and Bannon, I’m not real confident on Trump’s abilities here. Sure, NATO defence spending overall and as % of GDP has climbed dramatically since 2022, but despite more Euros in the Bundeswehr budget, there isn’t much more ammo in the cupboard yet. Once Russia is done with Ukraine, Georgia, perhaps the Baltics, Poland, who knows will be next. The longer Russia is bogged down in Ukraine and the more degraded Russia is by the war, the better for everyone around Russia.

    Combine this a likely tariff spree and trade war with China, we are likely going to be entering a time of fragile supply chains, back to inflation, decoupling from the US as an unreliable partner, and I don’t really know what else.

    The success of Trump in this last election probably means that Trumpism will be a force to be reckoned with for the foreseeable future, with history remembering Biden as the last gasp of “normal” political administration. The next President of the US will likely be a Trump appointee or part of a Trump dynasty (maybe the first female US President… Ivanka?)

    Canada will have to not just manage Softwood Lumber, renegotiating NAFTA, and salvaging the TPP, but also trying to fill a void left by US withdrawal and diminishment. I don’t think Trudeau is strong enough domestically to be able to focus on an 8+ year plan, and I don’t trust PP to have any capacity to even have a plan. Although Maybe Pierre Poilievre will have a snappy slogan.

    Maybe that is the best play for Canada here, have Poilievre bend the knee and commit to flattering Trump. A new Trump Tower in Vancouver would be a small price to pay.

    I think if we had a fresh-faced Trudeau without any baggage, there is a path that Canada is suited for to navigate these coming troubled waters, and I commend him for getting the ball rolling, but I’m just not confident it will play out as well this time.










  • Doesn’t pay the mortgage, my man.

    Although I would pay a single cent, but I also grew up on a farm, and know hunters… so I’m not exactly PETA material. I do hate wasting meat, a creature died so that I may eat, and one day we all shall be food for others (classic worm meat). Still, the sheer scale of industrial agriculture when it comes to the meat industry is staggering.

    Overall though, we are all cogs in this machine, and we need to recognize the levers and control inputs of this machine and use them. Just like “carbon footprint”, good feelings for consumers is something that can be sold at a premium. This is why I reject the premise of your question. I shouldn’t have to pay an extra cent to reduce suffering, We should structure our markets so that there is less suffering.

    This concept is one of the reason why meat substitutes probably aren’t widespread, because by using it as some virtue signal it is able to be sold at a premium. Beyond Meat and Impossible burgers should be cheaper because the fundamental inputs are cheaper and we haven’t skewed the market to make them more expensive.


  • Yes, but if you are using a save that has already claimed the reward, it won’t be available in the Anomaly even when in “expedition mode”. At least I couldn’t reclaim the Utopia Speeder.

    This is the one drawback of the new ability to start an expedition from an existing Save. I used to do exactly this on a new expedition, as soon as I could access the Anomaly I’d claim the Utopia Speeder.

    I have unclaimed rewards I could access, such as the Iron Vulture, but I don’t want to “consume” them on an expedition. You can also “copy” your ship or multitool from your Primary save, but that requires nanites. I did clone my multitool though (S class staff with a massively upgraded everything). I’m going to try cloning my cloned multitool when I’m done with the expedition, to have even more ultimate upgrades.

    Overall, I find taking advantage of the ability to load up supplies in the Anomaly for an expedition is well worth the loss of ability to claim expedition rewards. In either case, a nice ship near-ish the start of an expedition is pretty damn useful. And I’ll probably clone this one back into my Primary save or just grab it again.



  • Colloquially referred to as “Tankies”. America = Bad, therefore Not America = Good mostly sums up Tankie takes, but more properly Tankies is a pejorative for authoritarian communists, usually apologists for China and the CCP nowadays. IIRC originally it referred to communist parties in Western countries that excused Soviet actions during the Prague Spring and such, although I’d say that is an obsolete term.