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Clearly those Irish monks are to blame.

Most people, most of the time, should not be taking subscription medication.

It's a fix not a lifestyle. Those with chronic conditions sure wish they didn't need to.


Yeah I've heard this my whole career, and while it sounds great it's been long enough that we'd be able to list some major examples by now.

What are the real world chances that a) one's compiled code benefits strongly from runtime data flow analysis AND b) no one did that analysis at the compilation stage?

Some sort of crazy off label use is the only situation I think qualifies and that's not enough.


Compiled Lua vs LuaJIT is a major example imho, but maybe it's not especially pertinent given the looseness of the Lua language. I do think it demonstrates that the concept that it is possible to have a tighter type-system at runtime than at compile time (that can in turn result in real performant benefits) is a sound concept, however.


The major Javascript engines already have the concept of a type system that applies at runtime. Their JITs will learn the 'shapes' of objects that commonly go through hot-path functions and will JIT against those with appropriate bailout paths to slower dynamic implementations in case a value with an unexpected 'shape' ends up being used instead.

There's a lot of lore you pick up with Javascript when you start getting into serious optimization with it; and one of the first things you learn in that area is to avoid changing the shapes of your objects because it invalidates JIT assumptions and results in your code running slower -- even though it's 100% valid Javascript.


Totally agree on js, but it doesn't have the same easy same-language comparison that you get from compiled Lua vs LuaJIT. Although I suppose you could pre-compile JavaScript to a binary with eg QuickJS but I don't think this is as apples-to-apples comparison as compiled Lua to LuaJIT.


That would make it discontinuous, which means there's no information beyond the integer.

I think, though I don't know how I'd prove, that anyone truly used to an analogue wristwatch probably only looks at the hour hand when casually checking.

Many watches don't even have face markings.


I disagree with this. I read analogue clocks without having to do any conscious mental effort, but the minute hand is definitely a part of it.

If I have to think about how I parse them, I think the minute hand is more important than the hour hand. I'm usually roughly aware of what hour it is, and if I'm looking at a clock, it's to know what minute it is.



IDK, not having to worry about wifi, about if the ISP bill was paid, if the signal reaches their room, if they can do their school work while away from home, at a grandparents, etc. etc. Seems like an expensive but worthwhile call.


This is just plain corruption and the government officials were paid off. The parents of students should have been given the option to request the devices if needed and that would have been 1000x cheaper.


I think the students who have internet trouble at home may not always be in a situation where their parents are voluntarily going to the school to request these devices.


I find this comment amusing. How is this different than any non-means tested benefit? Or would the same criticism apply? (fwiw I think this money could have been spent better elsewhere).


I believe this closes the thread.


  systemd-networkd now implements a resolve hook for its internal DHCP
      server, so that the hostnames tracked in DHCP leases can be resolved
      locally. This is now enabled by default for the DHCP server running
      on the host side of local systemd-nspawn or systemd-vmspawn networks.
Hooray.local


Literally the first book I bought for my hellspawn. We had fun working out the mechanisms.


Yeah my eyes glaze over when I see the familiar tone.

If it's not worth writing it sure ain't worth reading.


Sorry, you lost at the Turing test


Stallman was right. Thankfully this seems like it should be relatively easy to replace. If anyone knows a friendly hacker collective to point this way...


So tell me why should I spend my time helping cities whose population are too cheap to fund necessary infrastructure? The article pointed out that firefighters are being forced to fundraise just to get their physical equipment fixed.

These same “rural departments” are in areas that claim to hate “big government” and are anti tax and aren’t willing to fund essential services and vote for national politicians who are defunding programs that could help them.

Yes I would be all in favor of my federal tax dollars being redirected to rural areas whose taxpayers can’t fund firefighters so they don’t have to fundraise to buy equipment.


> So tell me why should I spend my time helping cities whose population are too cheap to fund necessary infrastructure?

Why should anyone spend their time doing open source projects that might be adopted by organizations who can't afford it.

> Yes I would be all in favor of my federal tax dollars being redirected to rural areas whose taxpayers can’t fund firefighters so they don’t have to fundraise to buy equipment.

Absolutely, me too. But in the meantime, until you/we are able to convince the government to redirect your tax dollars, this is something that is in your/our capabilities to do something about.


The vast majority of the value that accrues from open source work isn’t organizations that are using it for free. It’s corporations.

> Absolutely, me too. But in the meantime, until you/we are able to convince the government to redirect your tax dollars, this is something that is in your/our capabilities to do something about.

And those communities are not only voting for, they are cheering on politicians who are defunding the departments who can help them the most.


My county is the size of Rhode Island and is covered in forest. We have huge wildfires all the time. We also established our own tax funded ambulance district and are willing to tax ourselves when needed even though we are a very Red area. We have volunteer firefighters, just like red state France (78% of their firefighters are volunteer), just like red state all their funding goes to the military Germany.


And this is the way it should be - not having bake sales like the article mentioned.


Tell me why you should spend time on a kernel, or a driver, or a blog generator, or anything else.

Your point "states and federal government should pay for this" is a valid opinion, but it is muddled with your attitude that anyone offering to write open source software to support emergency services is a fool.


Well, the overwhelming percentage of open source contributors to Linux are from corporations. I bet you will see the same for most popular open source projects


That didn't answer my assertion.


Well would the fact I have never written a single line of code since 1992 that wasn’t directly in service of my getting a degree for the next four years or getting paid for the last 30, tell you how I feel about free labor?

I was a hobbyist assembly language programmer for six year prior to going to college and did some BASIC.


Clarifies things.

You've spent more time criticizing open source development and struggling fire departments than you have spent criticizing predatory capital buying up every competing piece of software in order to raise the price.

Even if the state and federal government funded firefighter management software, this is still a story of predatory PE.


Predatory buying up of software is not the reason firefighters are having bake sales to maintain equipment - also stated in the article. Do you think companies wouldn’t be interested in making more money if it weren’t for PE?

And I assume you are okay with what YC does?


This isn't cities, these are fire departments in rural counties that may have a few thousand people living in it at most.


And then we should be helping them on the state and federal level. I have replied a couple of times here that I have no problem with my tax dollars going to help them.

Unfortunately, they overwhelmingly vote for politicians that believe just the opposite on the state and federal level.


> And then we should be helping them on the state and federal level.

That’ll just lead to people on the opposite side of the spectrum (politically and in terms of being more urban) asking why their tax dollars are going towards a bunch of rednecks living in the middle of nowhere and destroying the earth with their heavily car-dependent lifestyles. _They should move to the city if they want a fire department! Otherwise, pay for it yourself or quit yer bitchin!_

> Unfortunately, they overwhelmingly vote for politicians that believe just the opposite on the state and federal level.

Perhaps the reason is because the people they “should” be voting for, according to you, are tied to a lot of social policies that these rural folks find deeply disagreeable. In a similar vein, if the 2024 Republican president campaigned on true free healthcare and massive taxes for the rich, you wouldn’t chide Democrat voters for not voting for that candidate on account of his social policies, now would you?


If the Republican politician campaigned on universal healthcare a larger social safety net etc I would be all for it.

But all that being said, I wouldn’t vote for a Democrat that said they wanted free health care and also bring back segregation and laws against miscegenation. The first affects me and everyone in my family and the second would affect my son and my soon to be daughter in law.

Democrats are not saying they want universal healthcare only for blue areas.


You're fine with your tax dollars going to help them, but not your time?


It’s taking my best to even go that far seeing they continue to deify people who demean people that look like me and say I - someone who has been coding either as a hobby or professional for literally 40 years - only got ahead because of “DEI”.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/11/charlie-kirk...

They can’t afford $5000 a year for software. I work in consulting, that is less than half of what my company bills me out for a week as a staff consultant.


You shouldn’t be stereotyping rural people like this. Rural communities differ wildly in population and political leanings. On average they are older, whiter, and Republican voting, but this is shifting. Many small communities that were dying out are being revitalized as artist colonies and tourist zones, and many active farming communities are gradually becoming more Hispanic. Framing urban vs rural as red vs blue plays into the hands of the divide-and-conquer strategy that elites use to prevent the population from successfully pursuing radical change.


How many rural communities in the United States by population didn’t vote overwhelmingly Republican?

Suburbs of Austin is not what people call rural America


If you look at a precinct-level map of election results you’ll see speckles of blue everywhere, as well as areas that were narrowly split. Those speckles represent real communities with people living in them. You can’t just write them off.

There’s also small towns or clusters of homes in the middle of nowhere where most of the residents disagree from the communities surrounding them. They don’t necessarily have enough votes to make a dent, but they also exist.

Assuming people’s politics or worth based on where they live leads to unpleasant outcomes.


Whose writing them off? I have repeatedly said that I have no issues with taxpayer funded assistance on the federal and tax level. But you can’t help people who are more interested in “owning the libs” and “fighting wokism”.


I was more responding to the notion that rural = Republican and therefore bad/hopeless. I think it’s a mischaracterization that needs to die before we can make real progress towards reform in this country.

Rural people face different challenges than urban people, although there’s some overlap. Finding agreement on the overlap—while attempting to solve the unique urban and rural problems in parallel—would be more effective than the tug of war that we have now. US politics has developed a winner-take-all attitude that’s clearly not working.


So exactly how am I as a Black man suppose to find “overlap” with people who deify Charlie Kirk and claim the only reason I got ahead was “DEI”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/11/charlie-kirk...

Even though I’ve been coding as a hobby or professionally for 40 years - and have done my bid in BigTech?

How is a gay/trans person suppose to find common ground with someone who literally thinks the country is going to be consumed in fire just because it’s legal for them to get married?

How is Latin American going to find common ground with someone who thinks they are taking their jobs, at the same time are not working getting welfare and lowering test scores and keeping them from affording housing? Oh yeah abs it’s only because of H1B visas that rural American can’t get one of them good tech jobs.

The only reason they are opposed to “socialist” programs is because there is an off chance that someone who doesn’t look like them might benefit.

Oh and by the way, I had a house built in Forsyth county and lived there for 6 years and moved to Florida and downsized when I knew I would be working remotely and after my youngest graduated. Yeah this Forsyth County.

https://youtu.be/WErjPmFulQ0?si=MVrJUwjZ2DfonHjw

Those folks haven’t gone anywhere. They have been overrun by more of the Romney/Bush type conservatives moving in.

You still see in Facebook groups where they are opposed to a Hindu temple nearby. But not opposed to a large church.

Myself, my wife, my (step)son and his (white) fiance still get disapproving looks there (where my son still lives) that we don’t get when they visited us in Orlando.

It’s not about a difference of “needs”. Yet I as a decently well off tech person continuously vote for policies that would help them and not me.

They are fundamentally opposed to a governmental system that works for everyone.


Do you think those Hindus building the temple in the middle of nowhere are voting Republican? What about Hispanic farmers who are getting harassed due to their ethnicity? What about rural LGBT people? It certainly sounds like you have some common ground with these people.

There’s rural people of all backgrounds (including straight white folk) who feel that the system has failed them and there’s no point in voting. Roughly 40% of eligible people don’t vote. That’s a lot of votes.

Lumping in a potential constituency with your opponent is a loser’s game. It just turns away and demoralizes potential allies.


Because of the electoral college unless you are in a battleground state. It doesn’t matter if you vote on the Presidential election. If I lived in Mississippi would it really make a difference if I voted Democratic for President? We have seen twice in my lifetime where the popular vote was different than who got elected.

You could say the same for the heavily gerrymandered house districts.

An ally in Forsyth county or Mississippi doesn’t help.


So because those voters won’t be able to help you, even though they want to, you feel justified in lumping them in with your opponents or pretending they don’t exist? Aren’t their lives hard enough as it is? Don’t you think they could help in other ways, like fundraising or volunteering?

It’s a mistake, in my opinion, just as it’s a mistake to ignore that non-swing states can and have flipped unexpectedly.


Which states that are red and not battleground states have the chance of flipping? I see Texas and maybe Florida. If you get a good candidate. Not a Kamala or Bernie type a middle of the road slightly left White guy (said as a Black guy).


If you voluntarily choose to live at such low densities that the cost of fire protection per person is too high to pay, I struggle to understand why that is a public or government problem. Either accept that you’re preferred density is difficult and uneconomical to service and you’ll have to pay a lot in tax or private fees or whatever, or go without.

On the other hand, if you involuntarily live at low densities because of gatekeepers in the city who have prevented housing from being built for the last dozen decades or so, then we should fix that so that anyone who wants to live in a city with excellent and cheap fire protection can do so.

Importantly, neither of these have anything to do with capitalism or private equity.


Who needs farmers anyway? Alternatively, they could all move to the big city and farm there.

My issue is not that rural America is poor. My issue is that there vote for politicians whose explicit goal is not to help them. But that’s okay as long as the politicians “fight the woke”.


I agree with your broader political point re: voting preference. I also don't understand why this is a thing.

Re: farmers - are farms themselves a big farm risk? I can imagine farm workers living in nearby towns requiring fire service, but not the farms themselves or farm owners. I can see the case for public funding of fire service for such towns, but density still matters - if 1000 farm workers each live on their own acre (~42,000 sqft), it's going to cost more to provide fire service than they live on a 1,000 sqft lot, or in a 1,000 sqft apartment in a 4 storey building. Most of North American land use will require them to live much less densely than they might have otherwise, driving up the cost of infra & fire service.


Farms usually have large quantities of dry and flammable goods, whether it’s fertilizer, fuel, hay, straw litter, or dried harvested crops. Fields of dry corn or wheat could be flammable as well. Rural forests can also have wildfires which quickly get out of control and require massive intervention, so it’s better to put them out early.

These places use volunteers because fire is rare, but they still need some kind of fire service just in case. They often get their expensive equipment from grants, it’s the labor that’s provided by the community.


despicable attitude completely detached from reality. volunteer fire fighting services provide critical public services across broad sparsely populated areas of the United States and those volunteer services benefit everyone by preventing wild fires that threaten everyone. this kind of PE activity is parasitic and directly threatens lives and property by diminishing emergency response capacity. bad business to be in. it will get shut down very quickly.


My attitude is “despicable” by my saying “take my federal and state tax dollars and help communities so they can pay for firefighters and equipment”?


they aren't "your" federal and state tax dollars. if you want to privately provide welfare for PE out of your own pocket, go ahead, but leave the public's tax dollars out of it.


You did see the parts of the article where the same fire departments aren’t able to pay for equipment like fire trucks and training firemen?

Would you be okay if the software companies were charging the same amount and not funded by PE? What if they were funded by YC?


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