sofixa (u/sofixa) - Readit News

sofixa commented on Geneva makes public transport temporarily free to combat pollution spike reuters.com/sustainabilit... · Posted by u/kristjank

Avicebron · 10 days ago

I left out race specifically to plumb for people whose mind jumps and fixates on that

> educated and engaged populace that understands their civic duties.

This describes a homogeneous group. An environment that cultivates this unilaterally (relative to an arbitrary standard), is by definition more homogeneous than one that does not. It's a politics, standard of living, and equality economics dogwhistle that has nothing to do with race.

sofixa · 10 days ago

> This describes a homogeneous group

No, it doesn't. People being educated doesn't make them homogeneous.

sofixa commented on Blurry rendering of games on Mac colincornaby.me/2025/08/y... · Posted by u/bangonkeyboard

zamadatix · 10 days ago

Even if Windows wanted to push hard to get off x86 they still lack ARM hardware worth moving to in the first place. I wouldn't be surprised if the 13" M1 MacBook alone shipped more units than all Windows 8/8.1/10/11 ARM devices combined. The 32 bit -> 64 bit app migration for x86 was also much slower on Windows but, again, there wasn't any real performance gain to be had until your app needed more than 4 GB of RAM in a single process, so no real pressure there either.

The moment Windows actually has non-x86 hardware which people actually want to buy I bet native app support comes pretty quick.

sofixa · 10 days ago

> The moment Windows actually has non-x86 hardware which people actually want to buy I bet native app support comes pretty quick.

Snapdragon X laptops are here already, and reviews are generally positive (of course, use and workload dependent, nobody should get one to game, but for web browsing and long battery life it's perfect).

sofixa commented on Blurry rendering of games on Mac colincornaby.me/2025/08/y... · Posted by u/bangonkeyboard

dlivingston · 10 days ago

Microsoft has excellent documentation. So that's one counterexample. :)

sofixa · 10 days ago

No they don't. Just last week I was looking for something, found a Google result from Microsoft's docs, but opening it resulted in a page saying they're moving docs around, this one isn't being moved, fuck off. No content, no link to the content.

sofixa commented on Blurry rendering of games on Mac colincornaby.me/2025/08/y... · Posted by u/bangonkeyboard

cpgxiii · 10 days ago

One could say that "the point" of MCAS was to be an implementation detail, something that you would often deliberately hide from software documentation so that users don't design around internal details.

There's something of a history of aerospace vendors omitting "implementation details" that end up contributing to serious accidents (e.g. if you get an Airbus far enough out of the normal envelope protections, you lose stall warning), and an equally sordid history of flight and maintenance crews improvising procedures to the observed (rather than designed/specified) behavior of aircraft systems.

Arguably, the single biggest systematic risk in the current pilot training system is that crews overlearn to the implementation details of their training, rather than the actual principles and flight manuals (e.g. training inadvertently training for quick engine shutdowns, when the consequences of shutting down the wrong engine in reality are much more serious).

sofixa · 10 days ago

> There's something of a history of aerospace vendors omitting "implementation details" that end up contributing to serious accidents (e.g. if you get an Airbus far enough out of the normal envelope protections, you lose stall warning),

And Airbus control laws and protections are well defined and studied by pilots training for them.

sofixa commented on Geneva makes public transport temporarily free to combat pollution spike reuters.com/sustainabilit... · Posted by u/kristjank

dkiebd · 12 days ago

I completely reject the notion that direct democracy is bad because Politicians Know Better. It’s borderline if not completely authoritarian and frankly disgusting.

Maybe consider that Switzerland is one of the best if not the best country in the world because people can choose what they want it to be.

sofixa · 11 days ago

> I completely reject the notion that direct democracy is bad because Politicians Know Better

Not politicians, experts and administrators.

And yes, most people are limited in knowledge and vision. Look no further than Brexit, where the average UK citizen couldn't comprehend the complexity of the situation or the question, yet voted. The most asked question on Google the day after the vote was what is the EU... And it took years to begin to untangle the mess.

And again, look at Switzerland and their human rights travesty of not allowing half their population to vote because the existing voters said no.

sofixa commented on Geneva makes public transport temporarily free to combat pollution spike reuters.com/sustainabilit... · Posted by u/kristjank

Avicebron · 12 days ago

This issue with direct democracies is that the they can get out of hand pretty fast unless your population is somewhat homogenous and reasonable. Aka Switzerland. If you're too young to remember twitch plays Pokémon, that's direct democracy and it was wild.

A direct democracy could decide tomorrow that we wanted to fuck China sideways with nukes because it's funny and based all because a tiktok went viral.

sofixa · 11 days ago

> This issue with direct democracies is that the they can get out of hand pretty fast unless your population is somewhat homogenous and reasonable. Aka Switzerland

Sorry, but that's just a racist dogwhistle. Switzerland has four main ethnic groups, and has had multiple rounds of migration (e.g. after the Yugoslav wars). Look at their various national sporting teams. Just because you can't look past people's skin colour that doesn't make them "homogeneous".

You need an educated and engaged populace that understands their civic duties.

sofixa commented on Geneva makes public transport temporarily free to combat pollution spike reuters.com/sustainabilit... · Posted by u/kristjank

dfxm12 · 12 days ago

Governments do a lot of wildly unpopular things. I can't speak specifically for Switzerland, but one recent example is UK's Online Safety Act 2023. Even related to drivers, speed cameras are enabled despite being unpopular.

sofixa · 12 days ago

Unfortunately, that's not how Switzerland operates, because it's a very direct democracy where the status quo and the will of the majority takes priority over common sense and long term thinking. Full franchise (women being allowed to vote) didn't happen in all cantons until the 1990s (after it being made possible in the 1970s), because the existing voters (men) just voted against it.

sofixa commented on Perplexity Makes Longshot $34.5B Offer for Chrome wsj.com/tech/perplexity-m... · Posted by u/eduction

viccis · 13 days ago

My tax dollars are already funding genocide, so for like 10 cents to go towards Yandex a month, of which some fraction goes towards Russia's quixotic war effort (which is an international crime but not a genocide in intent or effect), is not something that's gonna keep me up at night. Almost every other purchase I make comes with harm roughly commensurate with that of Kagi. The damage to the environment Perplexity and Google (and Kagi) cause with unnecessary AI usage is a much bigger concern to me personally.

sofixa · 13 days ago

> which is an international crime but not a genocide in intent or effect)

Why not? Russia has kidnapped hundreds of thousands of children, gives them for adoption to Russians, and claims that Ukrainians are just confused Russians.

If it smells like a genocide, fits the definition of genocide... it's a genocide.

> The damage to the environment Perplexity and Google (and Kagi) cause with unnecessary AI usage is a much bigger concern to me personally.

Multiple things can be damaging at once.

sofixa commented on Perplexity Makes Longshot $34.5B Offer for Chrome wsj.com/tech/perplexity-m... · Posted by u/eduction

viccis · 13 days ago

https://kagifeedback.org/d/5445-reconsider-yandex-integratio...

tl;dr: It's way overblown. One of their search integration partners is a large Russian company (Yandex).

sofixa · 13 days ago

I don't disagree with the gist of their argument, but the fact that they try to whitewash an actual genocide [1] with "politics" is absurd.

1 - if anyone is confused, the UN convention on genocide explicitly lists taking children of an ethnic group to give them to another in the definition of genocide. Russia is quite openly and blatantly doing this.

sofixa commented on Perplexity Makes Longshot $34.5B Offer for Chrome wsj.com/tech/perplexity-m... · Posted by u/eduction

onlyrealcuzzo · 13 days ago

Unless Google is banned from providing a browser entirely, they'll just re-fork Webkit and release another browser, and it will very quickly replace Chrome usage.

Especially on Android - which is the most used OS in the world.

It seems strange to ban Google from offering a Search Engine, when all the other big tech companies can get into any field just fine, but the legal system is primarily a weapon for corruption these days, so who knows.

I mean, sure, if you want to start limiting what big companies do, and there's some fairness in how it's applied, fine.

But that's not what will happen.

sofixa · 13 days ago

> Especially on Android - which is the most used OS in the world.

In the EU, they're forced to ask you which browser and which search engine you want.

> It seems strange to ban Google from offering a Search Engine, when all the other big tech companies can get into any field just fine, but the legal system is primarily a weapon for corruption these days, so who knows.

Letting one instance of blatant anti competitive and anti consumer behaviour fly because others are allowed isn't the way to go. Google are a bit monopolistic abuser, fix that. Apple are too? Good, that's the next job.

> I mean, sure, if you want to start limiting what big companies do, and there's some fairness in how it's applied, fine.

> But that's not what will happen.

That's how the EU is approaching with the DMA and DSA.