anamax (u/anamax) - Readit News

anamax commented on FCC chair suggests agency isn't independent, word cut from mission statement axios.com/2025/12/17/bren... · Posted by u/jmsflknr

jakelazaroff · 4 days ago

Where are you reading that in my comment?

anamax · 4 days ago

My inference was that you were suggesting that the "independent FCC commissioner" was just as subject to control by elected officials as the Secretary of State because both are appointed by elected officials.

That's why I pointed out that the Secretary of State can be fired at whim by an elected official while the "independent FCC commissioner" can't.

I apologize if my inference was incorrect.

anamax commented on MIT professor shot at his Massachusetts home dies bbc.com/news/articles/cly... · Posted by u/mosura

IAmBroom · 4 days ago

My understanding is that the border security between those states is rather lax.

anamax · 4 days ago

On the off-chance that someone believes that there is border security between US states but that these states are an exception.

The US doesn't have border security between states.

The closest thing to an exception is the "don't bring agricultural products into California" stations. However, there's a bypass lane for folks who stayed within 10 miles of the border, and no one checks whether someone is using that lane inappropriately.

anamax commented on FCC chair suggests agency isn't independent, word cut from mission statement axios.com/2025/12/17/bren... · Posted by u/jmsflknr

jakelazaroff · 4 days ago

> You can't vote for the head of FCC.

FCC commissioners are appointed by the president (who is elected) and confirmed by senators (who are also elected). The chair is then chosen from those commissioners by the president (who, again, is elected).

Saying you can't vote for the head of the FCC is like saying that you can't vote for the Secretary of State. Sure, you don't cast a ballot for them directly, but you do wield influence by electing leaders to represent your interests.

anamax · 4 days ago

> Saying you can't vote for the head of the FCC is like saying that you can't vote for the Secretary of State.

The Secretary of State serves at the pleasure of the president.

You're arguing that FCC commissioners shouldn't.

anamax commented on Belgian Police exposed using botnets to manipulate EU data law impact assessment old.reddit.com/r/europe/c... · Posted by u/saubeidl

p-e-w · 22 days ago

7 million people protested against Donald Trump on October 18th, one of the largest protests in human history.

It meant Jack Shit.

If they had brought arms, they would have been gunned down by people with more powerful arms, and it would still mean Jack Shit.

anamax · 22 days ago

> 7 million people protested against Donald Trump on October 18th, one of the largest protests in human history.

What should have happened if 6 million people had protested against Biden? How about 8 million?

anamax commented on Surprisingly, Emacs on Android is pretty good kristofferbalintona.me/po... · Posted by u/harryday

sroerick · a month ago

I'm a little embarrassed by my current workflow, which is:

A. Emacs and org mode on my laptop

B. Neovim to do development via SSH on my dedicated Hetzner box, because my laptop is too potato for dev

C. A bash script to push up any random notes I have up to the server

I have used sshfs, syncthing and unison in the past, but never quite got the workflow for either to click.

After about 13 years of trying I still am not as functional as most Dropbox users. I just can't stand Dropbox.

anamax · 25 days ago

Does your bash script use rsync or does it duplicate some of rsync's functionality? (rsync also uses zip to speed things up.)

anamax commented on The EU made Apple adopt new Wi-Fi standards, and now Android can support AirDrop arstechnica.com/gadgets/2... · Posted by u/cyclecount

KK7NIL · 25 days ago

> USB-C is a worse mechanical connector for a device plugged in thousands of times over its lifetime.

USB-C connectors are usually rated for 10k cycles. Do you have any evidence that lighting connectors are rated for more cycles than that?

> The female port of a USB-C connector has a relatively fragile center blade. Lightning's layout was the opposite which makes it more robust and easier to clean.

This is very weak a priori arguing. I could just as well argue that USB-C has the center blade shielded instead of exposed and so is more durable.

Unless you have some empirical evidence on this I don't see a strong argument for better durability from either connector.

anamax · 25 days ago

> This is very weak a priori arguing. I could just as well argue that USB-C has the center blade shielded instead of exposed and so is more durable.

The unshielded Lightning center blade is on a $5 connector. If it breaks, I'm out $5 and it's reasonable to have spares.

The shielded USB-C center blade is part of an expensive device. If it breaks....

anamax commented on European Nations Decide Against Acquiring Boeing E-7 Awacs Aircraft defensemirror.com/news/40... · Posted by u/saubeidl

myrmidon · a month ago

I 100% agree that Europe regarded Russia as a potential trade partner (and possibly more positively than the US) even after the 2014 annexation.

But I don't think that this makes EU policy necessarily incorrect: Would German military spending of 5% GDP have prevented the Crimea annexation?

We won't know, but I don't think so, and European militarism in the 2000s might have led to significantly worse outcomes than we actually got.

I also think that painting this as a clear "US stance proven right in hindsight" is an outsized claim; EU military spending only really came up under Trump, and was a very minor topic before. You could make a similar argument that "the cowboys" were all wrong with the whole middle-east interventionism thing (in Afghanistan and Iraq), but the military side of that was at least competently executed (unlike Russia in Ukraine), collateral damage lower and war crimes somewhat minimized/prosecuted.

I sadly agree that Costa-Rica-style pacifism appears a non-viable approach for the EU now despite looking somewhat workable 15 years ago.

anamax · a month ago

> Would German military spending of 5% GDP have prevented the Crimea annexation?

Probably not Crimea, but you'd think that the annexation would have caused some rethinking of "soft power".

The lack of European defense spending since 95 means that Europe doesn't have much to help Ukraine. (EU countries brag about "100% to Ukraine" but never talk about how little that 100% is.) It also means that Europe doesn't have much in the way of a defense industry. (And then they whine when money gets spent on US weapons.)

Getting serious in 2014 (after Crimea) would have given Europe options.

> EU military spending only really came up under Trump

Trump's comments, the actual words, on EU defense spending were basically the same as Obama and W's.

The difference was in how Europeans, especially the Germans, reacted.

BTW - do Europeans know how "But we have better work/life balance" comes across? The reaction by many Americans is "Why am I paying to defend their work/life balance?"

anamax commented on European Nations Decide Against Acquiring Boeing E-7 Awacs Aircraft defensemirror.com/news/40... · Posted by u/saubeidl

saubeidl · a month ago

See, this is exactly what I mean.

In international law, they were treaties. Your internal squabbles do not concern us and just make you look unreliable.

anamax · a month ago

> In international law, they were treaties.

Please provide a verifiable reference to the specific international law or laws that says that a US president's signature is sufficient to create a binding treaty.

The US Constitution, specifically Article II, section 2, says "[The president] shall have the power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided that two-thirds of the Senators present concur". That's pretty clear that the President's signature alone is not enough.

anamax commented on European Nations Decide Against Acquiring Boeing E-7 Awacs Aircraft defensemirror.com/news/40... · Posted by u/saubeidl

saubeidl · a month ago

The US doesn't really see Russia as an adversary under Trump.

Which begs the question, why should the EU see China as an adversary? That's mostly an American thing, the Pacific doesn't really concern us.

Maybe alliances will reshuffle in the future?

anamax · a month ago

> The US doesn't really see Russia as an adversary under Trump.

From the fall of the Berlin wall until the Ukraine invasion, the US saw Russia as more of an adversary than Europe saw Russia.

Yes, even after Russia annexed Crimea. In fact, it's only this year that Europe has started to significantly increase defense spending, three years after Russia invaded Ukraine. And, even then the most aggressive increase plans end up short of where spending was during the Cold War.

Every US president after Clinton (and maybe Clinton as well) urged European countries, especially NATO ones, to keep funding defense and they cut instead.

It turns out that the cowboys were right, that there was a bear in the woods, and that "soft power" wasn't power.

anamax commented on The Single Byte That Kills Your Exploit: Understanding Endianness pwnforfunandprofit.substa... · Posted by u/andwati

cobbal · a month ago

Little endian does appear strange at first, but if you consider the motivation it makes a lot of sense.

Little endian's most valuable property is that an integer stored at an address has common layout no matter the width of the integer. If I store an i32 at 0x100, and then load an i16 at 0x100, that's the same as casting (with wrapping) an i32 to an i16 because the "ones digit" (more accurately the "ones byte") is stored at the same place for both integers.

Since bits aren't addressable, they don't really have an order in memory. The only way to access bits is by loading them into a register, and registers don't meaningfully have an endianness.

anamax · a month ago

> Since bits aren't addressable, they don't really have an order in memory.

Bits aren't addressable in the dominant ISAs today, but they were addressable by popular ISAs in the past, such as the PDP-10 family.

The PDP-10 is one of the big reasons why network byte order is big-endian.

That said, I forget whether the PDP-10 was big-endian or little-endian wrt bits.