MerManMaid (u/MerManMaid)

MerManMaid commented on A Math Lesson From Hitler’s Germany (2017) undark.org/2017/02/01/mat... · Posted by u/perihelions

holtkam2 · 5 months ago

“ It’s going to take most of our lifetimes to redo what’s going to get undone in the next four years,” Ault says

Honest question; why does everyone seem to assume the Trump administration will only be another 4 years? Is it hard to imagine him getting a 3rd term, or 4th or 5th?

The reason I ask is because I’m genuinely puzzled by this, not trying to make a political statement. I can’t imagine any incentive for trump to relinquish power so I’d assume he’ll attempt to hold onto it as he did at the end of his last term. Why does no one else acknowledge this nonzero probability? It seems everyone is taking for granted it’s only another 4 years and that makes me wonder if I’m crazy or if everyone else is just saying that because they haven’t thought it through.

MerManMaid · 5 months ago

The 22nd amendment and age. (for me anyway)

https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-22/

Not saying he won't try to circumvent it (definitely wouldn't be shocked) but if anything would trigger meaningful civil conflict, this would be it. (in my opinion)

MerManMaid commented on NAT Is the Enemy of Low Power Devices blog.golioth.io/nat-is-th... · Posted by u/hasheddan

LegionMammal978 · 7 months ago

An IPv6 router with a stateful firewall blocking incoming connections could have just the same issues with timeouts, I'd imagine. Switching to IPv6 doesn't just mean that anyone can make a P2P connection to anyone else (even STUN needs a third-party server to coordinate the two peers).

(D)TLS session resumption (I'm not sure if their "Connection IDs" are that or something similar) seems like the most foolproof solution to this scenario, assuming that the remote host can support it.

MerManMaid · 7 months ago

>An IPv6 router with a stateful firewall blocking incoming connections could have just the same issues with timeouts, I'd imagine.

You'd be surprised... PCP (Port Control Protocol) implemented by large vendors such as Cisco and Apple are able to punch through a firewall for up to 24 hours in a single session.

https://github.com/Self-Hosting-Group/wiki/wiki/Port-Mapping...

MerManMaid commented on Jimmy Carter has died washingtonpost.com/obitua... · Posted by u/gkolli

bluGill · 8 months ago

He didn't end the depression. it clearly continued right to wwii. You can dabate how things might have been if he had been allowed all his ideas (some of which were as undemocratic as what trump wants)

MerManMaid · 8 months ago

He steered us to join the war which did end the depression.

Whether it be the new deal or non-isolationist policy, his direction led us out of the great depression which started before his presidency and ended before he died.

MerManMaid commented on I sent an Ethernet packet github.com/francisrstokes... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

db48x · 10 months ago

Be careful about generalizing about Boeing here; it's not really a good example. The door plug incident was entirely caused by managers, not bad engineering.

In this case, the managers knew that if they went back and removed the door plug then it would have to be inspected again. That would cost time, and the plane was already behind schedule. Their bonuses were in the line, so they got together to find a solution. The solution that they found was to skirt the inspection rules using semantics. They decided to have their employees loosen the bolts, shift the door plug a little, do the required work, and then put everything back. This allowed them to claim with a straight face that they hadn't ”removed” the door plug, and therefore it didn't need to be inspected.

MerManMaid · 10 months ago

It was bad engineering full stop.

Yes the root cause might stem from management but good engineering would not have the doors flying off... thus bad engineering. Regardless of everything else, engineers are responsible for their designs at the end of the day. (Yes when management only approves cheap unsafe designs)

Otherwise you are "just following orders" which is not a viable leg to stand on.

MerManMaid commented on Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations bloomberg.com/news/featur... · Posted by u/JumpCrisscross

aniviacat · 10 months ago

I studied for a popular degree at one of the largest universities in Germany. I never had a course be taught by multiple professors. If a course had many attendants, the room just got bigger.

But that's just my personal experience. I don't know if it's different at other large universities.

MerManMaid · 10 months ago

In smaller countries like Germany increasing the class size makes sense but countries like the US, it just doesn't scale. Just to give a better sense, my quick google-fu (so take it with a grain of salt) shows Germany having 2.8M people actively enrolled in college vs the US with 18.1M.

So roughly 6x the amount of students.

MerManMaid commented on Starlink direct-to-cell enabled for hurricane helene emergency messaging twitter.com/spacex/status... · Posted by u/nynx

panick21_ · a year ago

is father was a somewhat wealthy engineer. That about it. His farther wasn't some billionaire. Being born in South Africa to a somewhat wealthy family isn't exactly the golden lottery ticket. Evidence by the fact that most people born somewhat wealthy in South Afirca simply try to buy a house in England and get a job at some banking company or work for some mining company.

If you to go back to Musk birth year and had to pick 'most likely to be most powerful non government person in the world' how many people would you go threw before Musk?

What actually helped him more then wealth is that his mother was Canadian and that allowed him to study in Canada and that eventually allowed him a way to get to Silicon Valley. That doesn't just happen, most people from South Africa don't end up in Silicon Valley creating startups. He struggled more in collage then many others because he wasn't at good terms with his father. His father eventually invested a few 10000s $ in his first startup, many people with small business get more from their parents to get started.

And the idea that his companies 'thrive' in spite of him is just wrong. Tesla was going to shit before he stepped in. Literally everybody that worked closely within would disagree with you, and that includes many people that have long left his employment. Companies with terrible CEO don't just trip into being worth 100 billion $ or more. If he was CEO for a year or so and the company was already successful, maybe. But SpaceX started with a few people in shed and he took over Tesla when it was basically a pile of garbage.

To claim a successful business person was lucky is possible, if it happened once. But being CEO of two multi-billion $ businesses at the same for 20+ and both being considered incredibly successful and influential, that's all luck. You got the be kidding. And these are not some random internet companies, space and car companies routinely were considered some of the hardest industries to break into. There is a whole grep of people wealthier then Musk who tried to break into Space, they all failed. There are tons of failed car companies. Even when Tesla was created, they had problems getting funding and many other companies got more, nobody remembers companies like 'Good Place' anymore.

Again, I understand that somebody doesn't like Musk, but your position is utterly ridiculous. It takes a truly dissociated mind to come believe that nonsense.

MerManMaid · a year ago

Just some quick fact checks:

>is father was a somewhat wealthy engineer.

At the time Errol & Maye were divorcing they had 2 homes, 5 cars, a yacht, and a plane. Most people don't own homes at the moment, let alone a private plane.

>What actually helped him more then wealth is that his mother was Canadian and that allowed him to study in Canada and that eventually allowed him a way to get to Silicon Valley.

Having generational wealth is by far the largest contributing factor. Otherwise he wouldn't of been able to move across the globe to get a better education, focus on college and network, ect. Also not sure what Canada and Silicon Valley have to do in common? It is not like every Canadian ends up working in the Valley. That said, it does seem like most wealthy people over the past 40 years has in various capacities ;)

I'm not going to argue he isn't a successful CEO, (The results speak for themself) But I don't need to refute his business acumen to think he is an awful CEO who actively abuses, manipulates, and lies to his employees whenever it suites him. You can be a very successful yet bad CEO, these aren't mutually exclusive concepts.

MerManMaid commented on Wi-Fi Goes Long Range on New WiLo Standard spectrum.ieee.org/wi-fi-l... · Posted by u/thebeardisred

jessriedel · a year ago

You can re-phrase my main question as: why is there enough interest in doing these minor improvements when there is apparently little interest in fixing the major and long-lasting deficiencies?

MerManMaid · a year ago

In the context of this thread, IEEE aren't the ones who can improve such things. WiFi 6E and WiFi 7 both make considerable improvements on connect time but at the end of the day, they deal with the "backend" if you will.

They have no control over crappy WiFi NIC cards that delay connections or how Apple displays captive portals.

MerManMaid commented on OpenAI to become for-profit company reuters.com/technology/ar... · Posted by u/jspann

lolinder · a year ago

I don't think so. If Altman is prepping for an exit (which I think he is), I'm having a very hard time imagining a world in which he also sincerely believes his company is about to achieve AGI. An exit only makes sense if OpenAI is currently at approximately its peak valuation, not if it is truly likely to be the first to AGI (which, if achieved, would give it a nearly infinite value).

MerManMaid · a year ago

What's the effective difference between exiting now and if it does achieve in your words "nearly infinite value" to him personally?

Either way he is set for life, truly being one of the most wealthy humans to have ever exist... literally.

MerManMaid commented on Support for IPv6 backblaze.com/blog/announ... · Posted by u/HieronymusBosch

LegionMammal978 · a year ago

I was asking about practical issues, not just complaints of subjective ugliness. While I'll grant that CGNAT can be pretty bad (though not entirely indefensible for mobile networks), I don't think we can ever return to "every node being a peer" in any case, not when any typical network will have a firewall that denies incoming connections.

MerManMaid · a year ago

IPv4 as well as IPv6 was designed with endpoint to endpoint communication in mind so when NAT was conceived (originally intended to be a stop-gap while we moved to IPv6) we also had to re-write many other protocols and create many new ones since NAT broke IPv4's design principle (each IP needs to be unique)

This has lead to many context specific problems as many of the re-written protocols don't work as well not to mention the added complexities of protocols designed specifically with NAT in mind. As another network engineer I can attest to the problems this has caused. Pretty much everything from overlay VPN networks, VoIP solutions, security and ACLS, and just our day to day maintenance tasks are complicated by NAT. It has gotten so out of hand that many of us have dedicated NAT routers just handling NAT translation.

It's so weird to me that so many people in our industry spout scalability but then laugh off IPv6... How the heck do you guys plan to communicate to the ever increasing amount of smart devices? IPv4 literally ran out a space years ago...