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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 26th, 2023

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  • I work in IT as PM, you’re pretty close.

    Modern technology is glued together NOT random shit that somehow works.

    Everything created has been built with a purpose, that’s why it’s not random. However, the longer you go on, the more rigid the architecture becomes, so you start creating workarounds, as doing otherwise takes too much time which you don’t have, because you have a dozen of other more important tasks at hand.

    When you glue those solutions together, they work because they’ve been built to work in a specific use case. But it also becomes more convoluted every time, so you really need to dig to fix something you didn’t account for.

    Then it becomes so rigid and so convoluted that to fix some issues properly, you’d have to rebuild everything, starting from architecture. And if you can’t make more workarounds to satisfy the demand? You do start all over again.


  • 980 pros are fine. You just need to update the firmware. Otherwise, there’s a small risk it’s one of the older batches that degraded quickly.

    My personal recommendation would be either SN850X, SN770, or 990 pro if you’re feeling fancy. Unless you need a drive for something very specific, you’ll be happy with any of the bunch.

    Should you bother with PCIe 5.0? Not really. The difference is barely noticeable. It’s like with monitors, big difference between 60hz and 120hz, but very small between 120hz and 240hz. Plus, you’re not reading and writing lots of data every second of using the PC.


  • Negotiations happen when one or, more likely, two sides don’t see a way to improve their positions with military force.

    The rumors you’re speaking of are a direct consequence of Russia being an autocracy. When you have a country whose ruler doesn’t leave on their own (a dictator), people start speculating on when he’s going to die. These rumors have been going around for about a decade, I believe, and are pretty much meaningless.

    Now, about “securing a legacy.” I think it’s much more trivial than that. Invading Ukraine was a good way to secure presidency for the next 1-2 terms and to eradicate opposition within the country. If that’s the case, then, in a sense, he got what he wanted, although he likely also expected the war to be short and victorious (judging by the state media narrative at the time). That didn’t happen. And now there are other issues at hand for him.


  • I look into those regularly. Those are credible sources that are often used by our scientists, but you have to be very careful with statistics during war periods.

    What do you think the majority of people hear when asked, “Do you support actions of Russian military in Ukraine?”. They hear, “Are you a traitor?” and answer accordingly. The majority (4 out of 5, I believe, if not more) refuse to answer at all. So, it’s not exactly representative.

    What we look at instead is questions that are not this direct. Such as “Do you think Russia should continue or start peace talks?”. The majority (58%) is for peace talks. This number has increased since September 2022 by 10%, whilst the number of pro-war people decreased from 44% to 34%. Their quality also changed. For “absolutely should start peace talks” went from 21% (out of all votes) up to 26%, whilst for “absolutely should continue military actions” went from 29% down to 21%.

    The longer things continue, the less support Russia’s government has. That’s what can be said for certain. The other conclusion we can derive is that war isn’t popular.

    Edit: Oh, and the youth, 67% of the youth (18-24) is for peace talks, 23% pro-war. 65% for ages 25-39, only 25% pro-war.

    The vast majority of pro-war people are elderly. Can you guess who also watches the TV the most? And who the TV is controlled by?

    For the full picture, I’ll also add “they started it, so it’s their responsibility, we had no choice in it” This phrase explains the whole mentality of Russians very well.







  • Finance management major here, I’d argue that governments aren’t inherently inefficient.

    On a local level, government organisations are essentially the same as non-profits. The only difference is in who they are accountable to. Even KPI are pretty much the same.

    The inefficiency of a government in contrast to the free market is in its inability to adjust to people’s needs quickly on a global scale. Imagine a company that has to sell a little bit of everything and then some. What kind of resource does it need to have to fully satisfy the demand? It’s practically impossible to make a vertically integrated system that would do this amount of research, let alone organize all the production and supply chains. It doesn’t matter if it’s a government or an entity. They all will drown in beurocracy, except the government is usually stricter as they tend to play it safe.

    Hence, it’s really a non-issue if a government takes control over parts of the market. And because they can’t facilitate it all, they take over socially significant parts of it, like municipality governance, military, and healthcare.

    Also, you (the person reading, not the person I’m responding to) should never be mistaken in thinking that the free market is perfectly efficient. It isn’t. Creating points of inefficiency drives a lot of revenue. Think purposefully limiting demand to drive prices up. This is what’s happening with insulin in the US, for example. If you have perfectly inelastic demands, you can make your product infinitely expensive.




  • In Soviet Union, the rock genre was for a very long time existing underground due to the inability of artists to be properly published.

    Only starting with the 1980s could the artists finally publish their songs officially. And even then Soviet government put a lot of measures to prohibit rock music in the country.

    This resulted in the appearance of many beloved bands and artists, like

    • Kino (tl. Cinema),
    • DDT,
    • Aria,
    • Chaif,
    • Grazhdanskaya Oborona (tl. Civil Defense),
    • Mashina Vremeni (tl. Time machine),
    • Sektor Gaza (tl. Gas Sector)
    • Korol i Shut (tl. King and Jester)
    • And many others

    The history of Russian rock is actually quite fascinating. It was inspired by bard songs and often touched darker subjects as well as being satirical and judgmental of Soviet government.

    Due to that, some artists, like Yegor Letov from Grazhdanskaya Oborona and Yuri Shevchuk from DDT, had troubles with KGB (Soviet FBI).

    Nowadays, rock artists are still being persecuted for their views. For example, DDT is de facto prohibited from performing in Russia.




  • I was interested in VR for a very long time. Recently, I got to actually try it out.

    I primarily view Apple Vision Pro as a proof of concept type of device. Sales being limited both in quantity and territorially indicate that. It has brought 3 major improvements to the table, compared to other headsets:

    1. Quality of passthrough
    2. User interface
    3. Display quality

    When you think about it, however, it’s not that much to make it an obvious choice over other devices.

    Passthough is needed for navigating through space. It does not help with productivity as your vision would be focused on the interface and not the environment. Remember warping on Quest 3? Much less noticeable than on videos for the exact same reason.

    There is no buts with the user interface and display. They are simply great, best that there is.

    Now, for the part that makes Vision Pro from a great productivity device on paper into a “dev kit available to masses” (I like that description, it does feel that way a lot, ty Ghostalmedia)

    Eye strain is a major issue. It is very difficult to use the device for more than a couple of hours without getting tired. This goes for all of the VR headsets out there. I guess you can get used to it over time, though.

    Limited usability. Quest 2/3, Pico 4, Valve Index, they all do things you wish Vision Pro could. Primarily usage of physical controllers. Imagine sculpturing without controllers because I can’t. Hand tracking is just not up to par.

    Battery solution is another issue. Not being able to swap what is otherwise a Power Bank without disabling the device and being unable to use any other battery than Apple’s own is at the very least annoying. Not exactly an issue if you’re too tired by the time it runs out.

    Finally, the VR space itself is unfortunately not mature enough. There’s a lot of work still to be done. Even when talking games, despite some amazing titles like Half-life Alyx, the vast majority where controls wouldn’t make you dizzy are all pretty much like arcade mini-games, where you either teleport from point to point or not move at all. Developers simply have yet to figure out an organic way of user navigating through virtual space. (Doesn’t mean they aren’t fun, though)

    Overall, I believe Vision Pro isn’t really a mass consumer product, but it did do a lot by bringing more attention to VR as a whole, as well as pointing out additional user-cases for the technology. Because of Vision Pro, Meta started paying more attention to details, which ultimately will benefit the consumer (in fact, it already has yeilded results).