Discussion
Can Democracy Survive the Next Financial Crash?
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/10/bubble-bailout-trump-authority/689190/?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub
Posted into All Stories @all-stories-TheAtlantic
RE: https://fedi.kbg.sh/@kevin/117492212328430426
I’m torn on this. On one hand. TeX *itself* is a beautifully crafted and well-documented piece of software.
But, once you layer LaTeX and a pile of random CTAN packages on top, some problems become apparent:
- poor error messages
- slow compile times
- packages that must be loaded in a certain order, or can’t be used together at all in one document, etc
I’ve never used Typst so I cannot compare, but I think TeX ought to be replaced at some point. It has served us well, but at this point it’s more than 40 years old. Which in itself makes it an incredible achievement of course!
This is absolutely mad
Meanwhile in Mexico City:
@Migueldeicaza Dios de Los Meuertos is kicking Halloween's butt here.
anyone know anything about skeletons please give me relevant or irrelevant information to my problem
@ben giraffes have the same number of neck bones as humans
@Norore Quand je passe à la caisse avec plein de bonbons en promo :
– Les enfants vont être contents. – Oui, les enfants, c’est ça.
Un mois de provisions pour ma gueule \o/
The Midterms of Good and Evil
https://www.theatlantic.com/books/2026/10/midterm-elections-and-return-of-good-and-evil/689145/?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub
Posted into Books @books-TheAtlantic
Ok, looks like this is the week of funny experiences.
Customer: "I had an AI check our server and it says the SSH port is open and that's not very secure."
Me: "Yes, you asked us to open it so you could access the server via SFTP (actually, you wanted FTP, but we discussed it a bit and found this compromise). Don't worry, it's only accessible from your IP and you land in a dedicated FreeBSD jail. From there, you can only access the 'exchange' directory on your server, where you can upload and download files without affecting the application."
(NB: I had suggested a VPN, but they declined because it was too complicated.)
Customer: "Yes, but maybe it's still insecure. Can't we close it?"
Me: "No, unless you want to lose access to that directory."
Customer: "Ok, thanks."
One hour later:
Customer: "Hi, I think we've found a solution. We've just created an app (!!!) with AI that lets us access the files anyway, but more securely than SSH (!!!). Can we install that and close SSH? Oh, and not in the dedicated jail, but directly in the application's jail, because it needs access to the application's files."
Me: "Frankly, I trust SSH in a dedicated jail, restricted by the firewall, a lot more. I don't think this is a good idea."
Customer: "Ok, thanks."
Half an hour later:
Customer: "Ok, now it's secure. I had another AI check it and it found some security issues, but it fixed them all. Can you install it and disable SSH?"
Me: "I strongly advise against it. I can see problems coming."
Customer: "Ok, thanks."
One hour later, my phone rings.
Their internal IT guy (who has access to the machine, which, after all, belongs to them) had given the AI the login credentials to go ahead with the operation.
Except the AI had managed to lock itself out via the firewall, without even starting the app. And now they couldn't get back in.
Fortunately, I had my own access, via VPN, to a separate jail that the AI hadn't touched (or even considered).
Customer: "SORRYSORRYSORRYSORRYSORRY! From now on, we do things your way."
Well, at least it ended well.
PS: The customer knows I'm sharing this story and agreed to it.
@stefano Idiots + LLM = disaster. Always.
This is FASCINATING. Researchers were able to pin down the cause of measurable global 60 second power spikes to software that does regular checks on the minute mark. They found large scale battery installations as one cause, but obviously this is true for any other computerized system that does cron jobs and has a synchronized clock. As weird as it sounds, adding random 0-59.999s delays to cron jobs in Linux distributions and other software would actually help the power grid.
“Big Oil Walked so Big Tech Could Run | Newsletter - Drilled”
https://drilled.media/newsletter/big-oil-walked-so-big-tech-could-run-newsletter/
> The natural end of this trajectory, if left unchecked, is fascism, the end of democracy. Both Big Oil and Big Tech have made it clear that they have no problem with that.
~20% VTE speedup I mentioned the other day by getting UTF-8 directly into buffers in bulk.
This is similar to what I did early on with my terminal prototype before working on VTE that made it so much faster than everything out there (at the time). Thought I most definitely do not use GString much these days.
Depiction of Bael, “the first king of hell”, with the head of a toad, a man, and a cat — one of the many illustrations by Louis le Breton for the 1863 edition of Jacques Collin de Plancy’s "Dictionnaire infernal". More here: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/defining-the-demonic/
@ai6yr CM87st. Same 6-character grid locator for Fort Point on south side of bridge & Vista Point north of the bridge - operated from both ends of the bridge that day.
@wd9ewk fun!
What in the Mary KKK?
@Alice "Hey, if I'm gonna get abuse for driving a Tesla, let's make it look like they're just Pink Haters!"
@mcc First thing popped in my head is, how is this illegal? What law says you can't do this?
Found another article that said the charge was disorderly conduct. I am still at a loss how you twist disorderly conduct to fit what she did.
My parents got their Covid shot this morning.
My mom only gets it because I practically begged her to keep getting it every year.
My dad only gets it if my mom brings him along.
They don’t even get any negative side effects like I do.
This year for whatever reason my dad declared he wouldn’t get the shot.
He is notorious for being contrary just because. Like a pouty toddler who just wants to say no.
You know what convinced him to get it?
My mom told him about the research she read that it can help ward off Alzheimer’s. His mother had Alzheimer’s so he’s seen first-hand what that looks like and he doesn’t want to experience it.
So if you know an elder who needs some selfish reason to get the Covid vaccine, that might convince them.
With a few exceptions (mostly towers atop downtown switching offices in populated areas), no one was trying to make any of this utilitarian communications infrastructure beautiful. It was form strictly following function, built to be reliable and rugged.
But there was, I think, quite a bit of beauty to find in it. Perhaps we'll look at our current neighborhood cellular towers, now often regarded as visual blight, the same way decades after they're (inevitably) gone.
Infrastructure is heroic.
@mattblaze An increrdible construction, especially for a network engineer. It's size feels difficult the judge correctly, even if a few hints could give it away, but the adjustment of perspective doesn't help. Great shot !
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