mastodon 4.7.2I'm a software developer and Marxist-Leninist. Currently living in Wellington. Interested in free software and sustainable transport.
Some day, the subordinate powers of the Western bloc will realise that the United States of America is the greatest threat to their interests. On that day, they will begin to act with some degree of sense.
I cannot say when that day is coming, but I hope it will be soon.
The prime problem with New Zealand’s economy and government is a lack of investment, both public and private. A lot of government attempts to achieve “efficiency” are trying to compensate for this lack of investment. This doesn’t work, because things can’t really get much cheaper.
The local government amalgamation is one such example of an “efficiency” project. I don’t think it’s without merits, but I don’t think the desired efficiency is going to be achieved.
The right wing in New Zealand predominantly responds to the left’s policy positions via ridicule and insults. They also lie quite a bit. The media is largely complicit in this.
It’s a rhetorical style that undermines political discourse, and that undermining leads to worse governance. Voters tend to make decisions based on melodrama, not rational analysis.
In a functioning system, such a pattern of behaviour would be seen as misconduct, and lead to penalties. Especially if bigotry was involved.
I find the idea of code generation worth considering.
Using natural language and an LLM is obviously dead end. Input is too ambiguous, output quality is dismal. It’s also impossible to verify.
Using a formal specification language as an input might work. That removes the ambiguity, and allow correctness to automatically verified.
That sort of system might be faster and less error-prone. It requires a lot of upskilling and novel technology, though.
Probably worth pursuing.
Kind of rich for Mr Rubio to claim Iran isn’t interested in making a deal. The Iranians made a deal with the US about a month ago, and then the administration he’s part of torpedoed it. Also, the president he’s serving under torpedoed another deal about a decade ago. It’s hardly surprising that the Iranians are skeptical of diplomacy at this point.
The main reason to have free public transport in an energy crisis is fuel conservation, not any sort of cost relief. If something is free, more people use it. The more people use public transport, which is more fuel-efficient than private vehicles, the less fuel is consumed. That reduces the intensity of the crisis.
Many people would not directly benefit because public transport is not practical for them. Some people who are relatively wealthy would directly benefit. I don’t think either of those facts are relevant, because the policy is not being proposed on the basis that it would relieve costs for individuals.
Kind of hard for me to care about National’s parental leave policy. Just another election bribe to the socially valuable.
This country sure loves finding the most heinous men and giving them the biggest microphone available.
New Zealand’s political discourse is in the gutter. I’d expect more respect and decorum from 12 year old boys.
Screw this country.
I really should not go on bluesky. Reading about horrible bigotry in the UK and USA is bad for my mental health.
There’s enough crap happening in Australasia to screw with my head, I really should not expand that.
It’s weird seeing so many people proclaim they are ignoring ethics. Standards differ in different contexts, sure, but there are always serious ethical considerations. Disregarding ethics can lead to PR disasters, regulatory action, and other consequences.
I don’t really like or support sport. As it is practiced, it’s inherently exclusionary of people who do not conform to the sex binary.
If a person does not conform to the ideal of a “male” body, they will not be competitive in “men’s sport”; Participation leads to humiliation, so it is exclusionary. If they do not conform to the ideal of a “female” body, they will be explicitly excluded.
How can I, a person who has never conformed to the sex binary, support that sort of thing?
I attended a seminar about burnout today. It was pretty good. Really helped me understand how burned out I was, and how my job lead to that. I was experiencing all 6 causes of burnout at once.
Okay New Zealand politicians, I read you loud and clear. Biological reproduction is socially valuable, as are the people who can do it. People who can’t, aren’t.
Since you all clearly don’t want me here, I’ll just leave. Enjoy your improved Volk.
I did some hypothetical budgeting around moving to Australia. After considering differences in incomes for my field, rent, and other key expenses, it looks like I’d be much off living in Sydney or Melbourne, by about 30k per annum.
It’s kind of hard to justify not moving, really. That kind of money would massively change my life for the better.
I want to lose weight, and yet I keep eating crap. Why? Not totally sure.
I suspect the answer is partially to do with stress. Also, I think my instinct for what a “healthy” diet is probably too low in calories, so I plan to eat too little, and then end up hungry and over-compensate.
Perhaps I could see a dietitian. That might help.
I just learned that Systemd does not load the PATH environment variables for a user when running a service as that user. That was unexpected.
Debates about transsexual women are not really about transsexual women. They are about a fictional kind of being that reflects misunderstandings about transsexual women. A lot of people conflate this fictional being with actual transsexual women, and are quite resistant to being corrected.
I’m very skeptical that the USA will reach any kind of deal with Iran. The Americans are very arrogant in diplomatic situations. Their demands are absurd and frequently illegal, and they have no real legitimate interest in any of them. They also don’t tend to respect diplomatic processes, and don’t abide by their agreements.
It’s not good foreign policy to capitulate to the absurd demands of a hostile and irrational enemy.
I get the impression the USA is encouraging ships to use routes through the strait of Hormuz that Iran does not approve. That is resulting in strikes from Iran, which the USA uses as a pretext for aggressive action against Iran.
I find it quite disgusting, honestly. They must know they’re risking mariner’s lives, and Iran is allowing ships to transit via their approved corridors. There’s no need to put people in danger like this.
My workplace has implemented something called CoPilot code review. It’s an LLM that attempts to do code review.
I dislike it. It produces a lot of nonsensical comments, and I think it will degrade tram performance by wasting contributor’s cognitive energy.
But I seem to be completely unable to influence any decisions in this organisation. They keep pushing ahead with this LLM stuff.
I am somewhat confused by the USA’s continued focus on the Iranian nuclear program. Their stated motivation is to prevent Iran from creating an atomic bomb, and they seem to regard the issue as urgent. But Iran denies it is developing an atomic bomb, and all the reputable analysts agree.
I am not sure what to make of it. Rationally, I suspect the USA’s government has some ulterior motive or is engaging in some sort of deception. However, I can’t shake the feeling that at least some of the leadership genuinely have beliefs about the nuclear programme that don’t match the reliable analysis. Perhaps they have managed to mislead themselves.
Why is every ad for a painkiller about preventing pain from affecting your life. I would have thought not experiencing as much was an adequate selling point. It’s not bad to take a break or rest, you don’t have to push through everything.
I am so alone. I wish I had people to relate to. People who understood what I have experienced. Pain is harder to bear without support.
Donald Trump is gearing up on a big decision: Should he escalate the Iran war to the point of a crushing defeat that ends the USA’s status as a world power permanently?
It’s a difficult decision. On the one hand, further escalation would kill thousands, disrupt the world in economy in ways that will cause massive suffering, and render his nation a doomed shadow of itself.
On the other hand, going out in a blaze of glory like that would be pretty sweet.
If you claim that a state-owned grocery store is communism and will lead to bread lines, you should no longer be allowed to run for political office.
I think the yanks are about to lose an aircraft carrier.
Trump wanting to charge tariffs on the Strait of Hormuz is absurd. They don’t control that waterway, it isn’t their territory, and I doubt a naval escort would be able to meaningfully defend against a missile attack anyway.
It also destroys trust. The USA has been trying to get the other Western Powers on board with military action for “freedom of navigation”, and now their leader is proposing actions that are blatantly against it.
My job is destroying my wellbeing.
Or more, accurately, it is failing to provide the sense of wellbeing that I am utterly dependent on it to provide.
I guess that’s the natural outcome of social isolation, emotional neglect, and being told you’re gifted; Workaholism.
I would be alarmed if someone didn’t give me at least $250,000.
This AI-generated proof OpenAI has come up with does not strike me as very impressive. From what I’ve read, the process involved running 10,000 “AI agents” for 88 hours. Collectively, that’s 880,000 hours of runtime on complex statistical models - Probably well over 100,000 hours of runtime on advanced GPUs.
It doesn’t strike me as much of an advance. Given that sort of computational power, I think it’s likely that other ML techniques could accomplish the same task - probably more efficiently, since they aren’t dealing with the overhead of language processing.
The biggest change is that there is now a company, OpenAI, with the resources and commercial incentive to do this. OpenAI hopes to use this output as a demonstration of supposed “super-intelligence” to the general public.
Strikes me as a more of a stunt.
Perhaps I should learn French. For geopolitical reasons.
Been a bit down lately. Had some issues with estrogen patch supply, and I guess my body responds really badly to inconsistent hormone levels.
I have survived, however.
The people running EUNAVFOR Aspides do understand that the Red Sea is not being blockaded, right? The Houthis are preventing ships serving Saudi ports from transiting the bab el-Mandeb. They haven’t announced any other action against vessels.
Since I need a hobby, I bought myself an Aeldari combat patrol. I used to paint minis, but I got into a creative rut about a year ago. I have a pretty well-developed Tau army, but I started doubting the colour scheme, and with everything else going on in my mind, I just kind of stopped.
Hopefully a new style of miniatures will help me reignite the creative spark.
The sadness over my childhood has returned. Hmmm. I suppose it’s necessary.
How is the USA planning to escort merchant vessels through the strait of Hormuz? It seems impractical. Some of their ships have anti-missile and anti-drone systems, but it must be difficult to defend two vessels simultaneously, particularly against Iran’s advanced capabilities.
I hope ship owners are smart enough to not endanger civilian mariners by trying attempting to transit the strait in these conditions.
Been worrying massively about the rise of transphobia again. It’s terrifying. A huge force that wants to ruin my life for no reason, because of an irrelevant detail of how I was born.
It is hard to live and function with that sort of threat.
I’m not sure if it will become a problem in New Zealand or Australia yet, but what I’ve seen in the US and UK is terrifying, and they seem hell-bent on exporting it.
I’ve been feeling this recurring sadness about leaving software development. I know it’s the right choice, but I feel a sense of loss. I was so invested in it, and I don’t really know what I am without it.