Thanks, for computing some useful statistics! As much as I believe the implied hypothesis that working at Amazon is bad for one’s health, I think the guardian intentionally tried to present the largest number possible with no context.

Frankly, “Amazon warehouse employees 10x more likely to need an ambulance” is a more impactful headline anyway.

Please somebody correct me if I’m wrong, but I really don’t find the “chip makers don’t have to pay licence fees” a compelling argument that RISC-V is good for the consumer. Theres only a few foundries capable of making CPUs, and the desktop market seems incredibly hard to break into.

I imagine it’s likely that the cost of ISA licencing isn’t what’s holding back competition in the CPU space, but rather its a good old fashioned duopoly combined with a generally high cost of entry.

Of course, more options is better IMO, and the Linux community’s focus on FOSS should make hopping architectures much easier than on Windows or MacOS. But I’d be surprised if we see a laptop/desktop CPU based on RISC-V competing with current options anytime soon.

Am I right in thinking that the article’s main complaint, namely that the means testing excludes those too poor to retire, is wrong? You can still claim pension credit if you’re on a low income.

We have bad/corrupt governments sometimes, that doesn’t mean we should get rid of governments. (Though maybe the libertarian Fraser institute might disagree with me there.)

Firstly, I reckon it’s debatable whether having an active monarchy is a net gain financially (how much could we charge for admission to Buckingham Palace?).

But, for me at least, it’s simply a matter of principle. I believe we are all born equal, and that nobody should be given special treatment due to something as trivial as their ancestry. Having a monarchy flies directly in the face of many values I think we as a nation value deeply.

Also they have a lot of land that their great great … Grandad nicked from the Saxons and I wouldn’t mind that being nationalised.

I feel this. I remember spending ages trying to figure out how to remove the bar in doom modeline (yes eventually I realised I could just make it the same colour as the background…), only to discover that it was necessary to control the size of the modeline.

I imagine this stuff is really deep in the internals of Emacs, which is why people are less keen to touch it. But if we were in the mood to do that, I would like even more CSS-like features, such as the ability to configure each side of a box property independently

In my experience it Just Works ™️. I spin up a distro/toolbox, compile some software (e.g. Emacs) then run the executable inside the container, and up pops the GUI window.

If you use distrobox, you can even distrobox-export desktop files, at which point a containerised gui application is practically indistinguishable from one installed on the host system

Its just the symbol The Register uses at the end of an article. Like how some papers use a filled in square.

Kotlin targets the JVM right? I think you’d need either a port of the runtime (dalvik?) Or an api translation later a la WINE.

But I don’t actually know anything, so don’t listen to me. Having a fully Foss phone with support for the android app ecosystem would be wonderful though

I always thought that people using searx etc over duckduckgo were just gluttons for punishment. Having gone an entire morning without search, maybe now is the time to dive down that rabbit hole…

Machine learning is just gradient descent through a subset of algorithm-space

Whilst I’ve heard lots of talk that lunduke is getting increasingly politica, and I disagree quite strongly with his politics, I’ll have to agree with him here. IA did something unnecessarily risky (redistributing unauthorised copies of print books), which has more jeopardised their mission of archiving the internet.

I also agree with everyone here saying that current copyright laws are ridiculous (and not just because they are “outdated”, the Victorians had better copyright laws than we do). However, I think only the most radical overhaul of copyright law would condone what IA did, and that isn’t coming any time soon (If ever).

There’s a former apple designer on the team I think, which they’ve been leaning into hard to get the hype train rolling.

How bloody dare you!

Thanks, fixed! (TIL you need the https:// bit on Lemmy)

There is, they just don’t publicise it. Actually one of my favourite features of the service tbf. Just load up a web page and all my messages are there, regardless of where they came from.

Iirc microkernels have been the future since before Linux existed. There was a bit of a flame war between Linus and the guy who wrote the MINIX kernel about how being monolithic would be the death of Linux.

GNU Hurd also wanted to show the world how good microkernels could be, but sadly never got off the ground.

I’m not saying microkernels are bad, but I do wonder if there’s some reason we don’t see them out in the wild much.

Isn’t production JavaScript usually minified/obfuscated to make it hard to read?

Also wasm is actually bytecode, which I believe has a 1:1 conversion into a text-based format called wat.

I agree with your main point though, it’s kinda creepy when you realise just how much we are expected to allow other people’s code to run on our machines.

There’s a common thread between a lot of the missteps listed here and Embeacer group’s recent troubles. The idea that you could fund 230 Spiderman 2’s for the same price as buying 1 Activision-Blizzard-King really drove the point home to me.

The problem (in my obviously uneducated opinion) is that when you spend so much money in acquisition, especially of established companies, you’re neither funding nor rewarding innovation. You spend $70B on ABK and some randos in suits get a huge payout that they invest in oil or crypto or whatever. Spend $70B on talent and early career devs and you could unleash a tidal wave of creativity and experimentation.

The mention of cost has me curious. Are by-elections costly for (I’m guessing) the electoral commission to run?

I imagine the main costs involved are party funds for campaigning, but they probably see it as a proxy for the main event, so hardly money wasted. Even if it were, its not public money.