Perfectly true. What I was getting at is that you should direct your frustration to the correct place: not with the efforts of wayland and kernel devs but with the stubbornness of the hardware vendors that don't want to make their code public, and in the case of nvidia, (or) use the same driver building blocks that the kernel community recommended.
What you seem to be missing is that a whole lot of people don't actually have any "frustration", except when people come along claiming that their new windowing system is "totally ready... except it doesn't support any good hardware".
For people like us, X works just fine, with our nvidia cards, and we're not actually interested in the philosophical purity of who's fault it is that wayland doesn't work with our nvidia cards. If we cared about that kind of stuff so deeply, we wouldn't be using the proprietary drivers.
IF you want people to switch to wayland, then solving all those edge cases, and making it work properly with proprietary graphics drivers (or maybe getting nvidia et al to open their code, good luck with that) is your problem.
Some people think it comes off as petulant and entitled when you create a new thing with no regard to being compatible with the old thing, and then demand that the entire world adapts to you and starts supporting your thing.
> I hope you'll invest some effort in supporting this new group of people prolonging its life.
If they can show some tangible progress and improvements I almost certainly will! :)
And here I thought the wave of the future was generative AI, which damn near requires Nvidia to even function. Sure can't wait for RedHat to deprecate and nuke and blacklist and hellban all Nvidia capability!
Similar to your suggestion, I implemented a wrapper around retries in Go before and despite liking the lookup table version quite a lot, I think it's more important to be able to parametrize the initial duration of the back-off and also the rate at which it grows, so that's what I focused on.
I'm not sure how my example fares against on a simplicity scale, but it feels a little more readable to me:
You still need the timezone name to map back to UTC, in case you want to make some types of computations, usually along the lines of "how long ago was this" and "remaining time until this thing happens".
You may argue that we can use local time to make the computations and be done with it, but during DST transitions, local time jumps so the number of actual seconds won't be consistent.
Instead of being in a landfill and leaching microplastics it's all bundled up and contained. I don't really understand this defeatist attitude where if something is not perfect we should drop it all together. From my point of view any effort at sorting trash is beneficial to the ecosystem because even if we don't have a method to deal with the problem now, we can wait a generation or two for technology to improve.
Some cynics think the plastic industry supports sham “recycling” efforts that don’t actually work, in order to alleviate customer guilt and forestall a ban or mandatory reformulation.
The bad thing, in this line of thought, is that we’re being lied to and taken for fools. Tricked into buying things we’re promised are recyclable when they’re not.
The costs of storing more and more plastics will only increase, storage is cheap at first, and that's why they did that, and when it starts getting expensive, they abandon ship. It is either classic fraud or incompetence.
These plastics will have to be dealt with eventually, recycling, burning or burying them. Waiting is just a waste of money. If we wait "a generation of two", we will be drowning in warehouses full of plastics like over-ground, inadequate and expensive landfills.
These are plastics, not nuclear waste. The "wait and see" strategy works for nuclear waste works because such waste is compact, hazardous and potentially very valuable. It also decays naturally, so the simple act of waiting makes it less hazardous. Plastic waste is the opposite of that: bulky, relatively harmless, mostly worthless, and it becomes worse as it degrades.
They tried to keep it secret that they were storing the garbage instead of recycling it. The trash still needs to be disposed. Your response is to question whether this was fraud and a bad thing. That’s a weird response.
> I don't really understand this defeatist attitude where if something is not perfect we should drop it all together.
No it shouldn't be dropped. But it certainly should be fixed. It's a bit disrespectful to the consumer to make them drag their plastic back to the store only for them to end up in the same place as their trash bin. That's the kind of thing that creates environmental apathy. Which makes it harder to drive change. People don't like being lied to.
I hate how despite all the rhetoric on HN surrounding how much better ethics companies in the EU must have to comply with regulation, as soon as that regulation slips, they turn out to be equally scummy as the rest of the world.
Companies anywhere have no ethics. If you want them not to do things that have negative consequences to others (squatting on domain names, polluting the environment, etc.) the only way to do it is to have laws against the behaviors and enforce them (ideally with fines that exceed the financial gain the companies get from the behavior so they don't just see the fines as a cost of doing business).
Lawmakers and enforcers anywhere have no ethics. If you want them not to do things that harm the public (passing corrupt laws, selectively enforcing rules, ignoring corporate crimes, etc.), the only way to stop it is to have strict accountability systems and enforce them; but wait, they are the accountability system and the enforcers. Uh-oh.
This is bullshit, plenty companies have plenty of ethics.
I don't disagree that laws are important, but to claim that companies can't behave ethically removes responsibility from the people who are, primarily, responsible. To behave as scummy as Lieferando has been doing here is a choice and plenty similarly successful companies have not done things this bad. People make up a company and when these people behave badly, we should call them out and not only say "it's the government's fault for not making/enforcing laws about this!"
> but to claim that companies can't behave ethically removes responsibility from the people who are, primarily, responsible.
That's literally what happens today everywhere. Companies are downright evil everywhere and nobody's held responsible.
But what I think GP means is that companies don't inherently have any ethics since they are not people.
If a company behaves ethically it's because its owners and employees are doing so, but the company can't have any ethics of its own.
Regular people doing their day to day jobs on these criminal health insurance companies, for example, will perform acts that are extremely unethical as an individual, but since they're representing "the company" all that goes out of the window.
> we should call them out and not only say "it's the government's fault for not making/enforcing laws about this!"
We can call them out but we, the people, can't enforce anything. Maybe we could collectively try to sue them, but at best that's a civil lawsuit and they'll have to pay a bit of money (likely an already accounted cost for businesses that use shady tactics). But to make that criminal, as many times it should, then only the government is empowered to.
But we should never forget that we are the ones that keep the government accountable. If they don't do their job and we let them, it's all of our faults.
I mean, one of the reasons companies exist in the first place is to allow individuals to behave unethically IMO. Anyone can do bat shit crazy things that they would never get away with when they're behind the protection of a company.
> Companies are downright evil everywhere and nobody's held responsible.
As the co-owner of a small company I'm more than a little offended. We're not evil at all, we try our best to do right by our customers, our people, and our community.
The idea that no company can ever be held responsible for anything is a weird ultracapitalist pipe dream (and consequently a marxist straw man). Companies are groups of people. Yes we need laws to restrain badly behaving companies but that does not mean people running badly behaving companies get a pass until an inevitably slow and imperfect government gets their shit together.
I'm happy that there are exceptions, but the fact is that most companies will throw ethics out of the window the second it hits profits. It's easy to be ethical when it's for free.
> The idea that no company can ever be held responsible for anything is a weird ultracapitalist pipe dream (and consequently a marxist straw man).
I never said that. What I said is merely what we see in today's capitalism: barring a few exceptions, companies are almost never held responsible.
Probably one of the most egregious examples of this is the health care industry in the US but we often forget how banks ruined millions of people's lives in 2008 and almost nobody from the big banks went to jail. We bailed those criminals out and they felt zero consequences. They got a pass.
I agree with you that nobody should get a pass, but I'd be naive if I said they don't.
> until an inevitably slow and imperfect government gets their shit together.
How else are we going to do anything? Aside from taking justice into our own hands like Luigi Mangione, the best we can do is try to sue them and spend huge amounts of money to maybe get them to pay a small fine. Or perhaps employees inside of these companies can be whistleblowers and blow up their own lives trying to get some sort of justice.
I hate that this is the reality we live in but we can't pretend it's not.
I'd wager the the majority of small and medium business in my hometown act ethically. You pick out the worst behaving faceless bigcorps and generalize that to every company out there. But the vast majority of the world's economy is small local companies. By and large, these companies aren't evil. Also some larger companies try their best (eg eco-banks, brands like Patagonia, etc). I'm not saying they always succeed but to blanket call all of these "evil" as you keep on doing is ridiculous.
Companies exist for one reason: to generate profits. There's not way around it.
An ethical company will pay fairer wages, will not exploit users, apply dark patterns, stifle competition, etc. and non-ethical companies will do all of the above to generate more profits than the ethical one.
In the utopian world where there's endless competition, perhaps people could choose the ethical companies and they'd win fair and square. But the second you add reality back in, you add monopolies, oligopolies, geographical restrictions, etc. into the mix and these companies can get away with whatever behavior they want since consumers don't have a choice.
That's not even accounting for the fact that many people couldn't give a single f** to ethics, as long as they can buy their products for cheaper. Many would love to care, but simply cannot afford it, since all companies optimize to compress salaries.
I could go on, but hopefully my point is clear. Traditional companies will eventually become evil in their pursuit for profits even if they don't intentionally do so.
Ethics is not part of the equation at all.
It's bleak but until I see proof that this is incorrect, my point stands. Both the logical conclusion of capitalist theory and the real world we live in right now agree. Small and medium businesses are not yet big enough to optimize themselves to become evil (although it doesn't stop them from being evil for other reasons). Since the end game of competition is monopoly, we can see how big conglomerates are straight up buying up the competition which will eventually tip the scales to being a majority of big companies.
The reality is that the only businesses that stay small are the ones that don't scale. Otherwise big players would've already swooped in and enshitified them.
I'd love to imagine when I grow my company I'll be ethical, fair and structure it in a way that the goal is to make everyone in it rich while producing something good. But the most likely outcome is that it'll get crushed by competition that will not care or if I hit big, it'll grow enough and become evil.
Yeah yeah I know the theory but then how is it possible that my local bakery pays fair wages, does not exploit customers, does not stifle competition etc? I keep bringing this up and you keep responding with abstract generalisms. Look around you, there's plenty non-evil companies. Something in your theory doesn't hold up in practice.
My local bakery pays workers that actually do everything to run the bakery as little as possible while the owner has a mansion, sports car and a boat.
It's more likely our definitions of "fair" are very different. Besides, I already wrote why small companies may not yet be evil, which you seem to completely ignore, so whatever, there's no point in arguing anymore if it's not in good faith.
You moved the goalpost from "all companies are evil" to "well, some companies are not yet evil". I indeed jumped over that but only because it's a ridiculous accusation! You can call anyone "not yet evil" and they'll have no way to prove you wrong. It's a completely meaningless thing to say.
Frankly I'm baffled that you think I'm not arguing in good faith for skipping over an argument as weak as that, and instead choosing to address your general point (which I think is a lot less more sensible, even though I disagree with it).
Companies are inherently evil because they capture the surplus profit from the workers that actually do the work.
I agreed with you that small companies are many times not yet taking this to the extreme and might not be as evil as a mega corporation, but they are still evil by default.
We've definitely normalized this, but being normal doesn't make it good.
I didn't mean to skip over that but since it's the entire base of capitalism so I thought it would be implied.
I admit that I should've guessed, but I'd have appreciated it if you had led with "I'm a Marxist so I think any form of entrepreneurship is evil". Our definitions of "evil" are so far apart that we'll never come to an agreement, and you well know that yours is (totally fine but) not the mainstream definition on this site. You're not going to convince anyone by using words completely differently than the rest.
If you had said things like "inherently exploitative" or something like that, then we might've gotten a lot closer. I think I might actually concur with that (but then argue that it's possible for businesses to also do good, eg provide a service that people need and a compelling job and bread on the table etc, that may offset the badness of the "inherently exploitative" part, so that below the line it's a net positive for society). We'd then have an IMO much more interesting argument about how bad it is for companies to, by definition, be at least slightly exploitative, and whether it's possible to offset that or not. By just calling me "evil" instead (for running a business), you removed all nuance.
Wherever there are human beings, a subset of them behave unethically. The EU is a more regulated place, but stuff like this happens all the time. It is a continuous process of improvement. The status quo is never going to be ideal - it should be the trajectory of change that we always have to be mindful of.
If there were regulation, this wouldn't be a problem. Unfortunately, there is no regulation against typosquatting, Google is free to trust whoever they wish for compiling their database of trusted addresses, and DENIC has no policies preventing someone from doing this with .de names. The best restaurant owners can do is file a trademark lawsuit, maybe call the cops on Lieferando for fraud, and hope for the legal system to decide in their favour.
Also, nobody is saying companies are more ethical in the EU. In many cases the existing legislation forces unethical companies to comply with ethical regulations, but they don't do it because they're nicer than companies outside of the EU.
This is using the same flawed logic that has had people shouting about overpopulation since the 70's: assuming current* population growth rate will continue indefinitely
The difference is that this is a change in the demographics of a population, not the overall growth, which is limited by resources available. The growth of Islam isn't constrained by anything other than the cultural practices that lead to them having more children than the rest of the population and the tolerance of the country for immigration. These things could definitely shift to balance the scales but there's no guarantee that happens and there have absolutely been many times in history where a native population has been displaced by the growth of an immigrant group.
Nicholas, is it clear that at any point in the near future, let's say two generations (30-40 years) the Muslim population will not be a majority in the UK? I don't understand why you continue arguing.
You are not making your point any favour. It is right that everyone is calling you out for your xenophonbic BS.
If it grew 10x between 2001 and 2009 (starting from a very small base), then between 2009 and 2023 it grew by only 0.3x (see graph below).
So rate of growth went from 10x to 0.3x in around a decade, this is a hugely significant deceleration. It actually implies muslim community as portion of population is heading lower.
You're not comparing the same stats. The original stat was growth rate compared to the rest of the country. Islam's overall growth rate has been fairly steady for decades, although admittedly it has slowed, but at a rate that could conceivably stop above Christianity, which your chart shows is decreasing about as rapidly as Islam is rising. I think it's reasonable to project that it may settle below Islam eventually. Realistically, there will be continued backlash by native English and that may temper immigration, though even if immigration stops, the birth rate of Muslims in the UK is still much higher than native population.
However - if we're including atheist then clearly that'll be the majority position.
Ah, it's the same argument that my mum uses to say that if we don't do something about "the gays" then straight people will disappear, after all "there are a lot more of them than there used to be".
The most recent birth rate stats I can find is 2005-2010 where Muslims have a birth rate of 3.0 while the rest of the country is at 1.8. Estimates say it's more like 2.5 now, but the current overall UK birth rate is only 1.57 from a quick Google.
Yes I know the stats hover around roughly that, which is why I requested you to post those numbers as proof for anyone questioning it. There's also the very concerning fact that the last census conducted was before the immigration boom period (2010 or 2011 iirc), so literally everyone is working on outdated data.
Maybe not in one generation, but in 2-3 generations, the UK will definitely turn Islamic, especially given the exodus of other communities. The irony is that the well-off British are settling in the UAE en masse, a distinctly Islamic country, and driving property prices up there. It's not that much of a concern since local housing is distinctly separated from expat housing.
Actually, OP has given information that proves exactly that. Maybe not in one generation, but Lebanon was in a similar situation where the Muslim population, which was firmly a minority in the 1940s, outbred the Christian population and is currently more than the latter.
I don't have a horse in this game - I'm Muslim after all. But I've experienced London pre-immigration boom and post-immigration boom and I definitely prefer the former, like some of my Muslim peers. The fabric of London has already been destroyed, especially when given the fact that London natives have been priced out of their own homes. Given what I've seen firsthand, and what's preached in the mosques of the UK by unleashed and unhinged Imams, the UK is on track to become a Muslim country in 2 or 3 generations.
And yet the solution is not to fight poverty, but immigration. Why?
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