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theneverfox theneverfox @pawb.social
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Boeing Has Lost a Staggering Amount of Money on Its Starliner Catastrophe
  • The problem is that there's an incentive to game the system, especially when there's requirements that restrict how the government picks contract winners

    If it's fixed cost, they cut every corner to be picked, then deliver something shitty and the government either lives with it or awards a second contract to fix it. Sometimes they don't even complete it - sometimes there's a bail where you put up collateral meant to be used as punishment and so someone else can be paid to finish your failed contract, but with large companies there's often so much proprietary shit/institutional knowledge that no one else could reasonably complete the contract without starting over... So they can fail a contract and still come back for more

    If it's cost plus, big contractors take a loss initially to basically buy revenue streams they can milk indefinitely. Sure, they can only make so much per head, but that's money they know will be coming in so they're incentivized to push the headcount on the project to the limit and keep the party going as long as possible

    That's the problem with rules, if you have clear boundaries corporations will inevitably exploit them. They are meant to fight corruption or bad/incompetent actors, but by codifying all of it they clearly divide what is illegal and what isn't, setting it all up to be gamed

  • Well deserved rule
  • Not really. You can run the 8b model with like 6-8gb of vram.... It's literally in the realm where people can run it on their phone

  • Well deserved rule
  • True, but who cares about the base models? Usefulness is what matters - the 8gb model is pretty useful, better than the free tier of anything I've tried

    Maybe the paid models are better... Just like adaptive cruise control, I refuse to rely on it until I can rely on it. I'm driving, I know the top models still need me to drive them, so I'm happy with what I have... Why rely on something that could be taken away?

  • Is there a smooth term for being ADHD?
  • Agreed. It's like they start looking for confirmation, so they start expecting and noticing every little mistake. Or they don't see it, and give you unsolicited speeches about how they struggle to focus to and you just need discipline... In fact, you should stop taking your meds

    I just tell people without telling people. "I can't sit still for too long, I have to walk", "the music/videos and stim toys help me focus", "my thought process is weird, I know that sounds unrelated but it makes sense to me", "I know you're writing up a list, I need to take notes to process what you're saying and if I don't doodle I can't pay attention to this boring ass meeting"

    If you take on the label, they don't see you as managing your symptoms, they look for the cracks. If you explain your compensation strategies and areas of difficulty, they usually are pretty supportive and will even respect the level of thought you put into it

  • Well deserved rule
  • Run it on your local machine if you can... The retirements are pretty modest

  • The Minimal Phone is now shipping (E Ink phone with a QWERTY keyboard) - Liliputing
  • Don't forget order sizes. If you produce 500 a batch, your costs are going to be way higher than if you produce 10k a batch

  • Trump faces backlash from business as tariffs ignite inflation fears
  • On a personal level, I have trouble maintaining any respect for people who voted for him... But that's one thing

    We still have to understand. We have to understand the why and the how, otherwise we're basically giving up - these people believe someone who's every accusation is an admission, so obviously that I can't even appreciate the absurdity anymore

    It helps me to remind myself that propaganda works, that if you hear something enough you internalize it - we all do to differing extents, and most people are unable to examine their own beliefs. It helps me to imagine how they'll feel when they finally look at things clearly. It helps me to think this isn't all for nothing, that the sheer amount of suck coming our way will galvanize us all to fight for meaningful change

    You don't have to forgive, but you've got to understand why, and use that

  • Trump faces backlash from business as tariffs ignite inflation fears
  • It's because Trump is so out of pocket on any given day that he has interpreters.

    When he says "maybe if we put the sunlight inside the body it could kill the virus, we should look into that" they explained it as "well actually there was an idea of using uv light to clean the blood, so it's not as crazy as it sounds even though there's no substance to it medically". And there's not just one interpreter, there's different messages for different audiences

    So when he said "were going to put tarrifs on our largest trading partners" the message to people who understood tarrifs was "this is an intimation tactic to get better trade deals, he's not going to actually do it"

  • TIL Earth's electric field can make spiders propel into the air and fly across entire oceans
  • In your defense, walking with Google maps is extremely confusing. I almost always end up having to use it like a map and look for landmarks

  • Canada and Mexico respond with own tariffs against US
  • Canada is putting a 100% tarrif on red State liquor, among other things. Which is hilarious and I love it

  • Giant catapult sends satellites into space without rocket fuel
  • You'd have to make it in a hyper tube or it'll just vaporize, which is damn near impossible to keep depressurized even without the rail gun. Or you could put it in a giant sabot, but those are expensive and their own technical challenge. Not to mention, good luck adjusting it for a different orbit... The power requirements are going to be insane too, which means a ton of huge capacitors

    This way, they depressurize a nice pancake shape, spin it up over the course of hours, and let the projectile pierce out through a brake away cap. If they can make it work, it's a better design in every way

  • TIL Earth's electric field can make spiders propel into the air and fly across entire oceans
  • I think we use it, just not consciously. It's not like knowing where north is helps much, but aligning your mental map of an area means a lot

    Have you ever come out of a forest or something not where you expected, then had a moment of disorientation before everything snaps into place and you realize exactly where you are?

  • Trump To Victims’ Families: ‘I’m Doing Everything Possible To Resegregate Flight Schools’
  • Hey, it's not the onions fault. Reality has been doing it's best to turn them into a news site

  • Pills here!
  • It's unempathic to tell people they're being judged by unfair standards?

    I don't know what you read, but it isn't what I wrote

  • Ahead of Chair Vote, Progressives Say DNC 'Failing Disastrously' to Learn From Loss to Trump
  • See, but you're making it complicated again. You want to stop black rock, but how? If I rent out a couple houses, are you going to come after me? What if this crashes my home prices?

    You need to be able to turn around and say "people are homeless. If you have a an empty house, rent it or sell it, otherwise get fucked"

    You can't get into commodificstion of housing or go after investment companies, that muddies the waters. People believe all these myths about how markets work, if you leave an opening they're going to start getting people worried about themselves losing something, or they're going to see it as an empty promise

    But you keep it simple - empty houses = get fucked

  • Ahead of Chair Vote, Progressives Say DNC 'Failing Disastrously' to Learn From Loss to Trump
  • You get healthcare, you get healthcare, everyone gets free healthcare.

    The rent is too damn high, we're going to put crippling taxes for owning empty housing

    We're going to tax corporations and close loopholes, and get rid of all income taxes for all

    Clear messaging with easy, simple solutions. Ram them through.

    They'll cause side effects, but who cares? The cost of rent will plummet, Americans will have more money in their pockets, and they'll get on board with more nuanced things. People will worry about their retirements or "the economy" at first, but they'll get on board when these simple promises are fulfilled and they feel it

    Then we work on unions, tax breaks and sweetheart loans for worker owned businesses, breaking up corporations, an actual green new deal, fixing elections, etc. All the nitty gritty most voters don't want to take the time to understand

    And we'll just keep hitting it. They say "Our economy is ruined, these people are destroying this country". We don't bring up facts and figures, just keep slamming soundbytes "is your rent cheaper? Is your paycheck bigger? These people want to tax you so they can pay off the 1%"

  • Ahead of Chair Vote, Progressives Say DNC 'Failing Disastrously' to Learn From Loss to Trump
  • The game has changed. The world has changed. Their strategy hasn't...

  • Looking for distro recommendations

    Between wanting to do more with local LLMs, wsl annoyances, and the direction tech companies have been going lately, I think it's time I start exploring a full Linux migration

    I'm a software dev, I'm comfortable in the command line, and I used to write the node configuration piece of something similar to chef (flavor/version agnostic setup of cloud environments)

    So for me, Linux has always been a "modify the script and rebuild fresh" kind of deal... Even my dev VMs involved a lot of scripts and snapshots. I don't enjoy configuration and I really hate debugging it, but I can muddle through when I have to

    Web searches have pushed me towards Ubuntu for LLM work, but I've never been a big fan of the window Managers. I like little flourishes like animation and lots of options I can set graphically, I use multiple desktop multiple monitors

    I've tried the one it comes standard with, gnome, and kde (although it's been about 5 years since I've last given them a real shot).

    I'm mostly looking for the most reasonable footprint that is "good enough", something that feels polished to at least the Windows XP level - subtle animations instead of instant popups, rounded borders, maybe a bit of transparency here and there.

    I'm looking at Ubuntu w/

    • kde w/ plasma (I understand it's very configurable, I don't love the look and it seems to be a bigger footprint

    • budgie (looks nice, never heard of it before today)

    • kylin (looks very Windows 10 which is nice, a bit skeptical about the Chinese focus)

    • mate (I like the look, but it seems a bit dubiously centralized)

    • unity (looks like the standard Ubuntu taken to it's natural conclusion)

    • rhino Linux (something new which makes me skeptical, but pretty and seems more like existing tools packaged together which makes me think the issues might not impact actual workflow)

    • anything the community is big on for this, personally I'd pick opensuze, but I need to maximize compatibility with bleeding edge LLM projects

    My hardware and hard requirements are:

    • nvidia 1060ti
    • ryzen 5500u
    • 16g ram
    • 4 drives nearly full, because it's a computer of Theseus running the same (upgraded) vista license that came with the case like 15 years ago
    • multi desktop, multi monitor
    • can handle a lot of browser Windows/tabs
    • ideally the setup is just a package mana ger install script with all my dependencies
    • gaming support would be nice, but I'll be dual booting for VR anyways

    I've been out of the game for a while, I'd love to hear what the feeling is in the community these days

    (Side note, is pine as cool a company as it seems?)

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