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180528069
comment
bygillbates
2026 @12:12PM
(#65905865)
Attached to: Corporation for Public Broadcasting To Shut Down After 58 Years
Or perhaps they instead voted for a better economy, and this was a part of the package deal, whether they wanted it or not.
We have a republic, not a democracy. We didn't vote for this, but for the person who would occupy the office of the President. How much different would our country be if legislation proposed by congress had to be passed by national referendum? It's not the 18th century anymore. The bills are published on the Internet. We could create an electronic voting system which would allow the public to vote every spring and fall for proposed legislation, except for the fact that such a system would take power out of the hands of the politicians and return it to the people.
180413801
comment
bygillbates
17, 2025 @08:18PM
(#65865621)
Attached to: Linux Kernel Rust Code Sees Its First CVE Vulnerability
I don't get the Rust hatred. C has implicitly had an "unsafe" mode for much longer than Rust.
If you're a C kernel developer, you can jump on the Rust bandwagon very easily: just put the keyword unsafe in your comments and you can write code just like Rust developers.
Maybe, just maybe, this mistake was caused by the fact that the same sort of people who are likely to write bugs into their code are the same types of people who prefer "safe" languages because understanding the subtle nuances of how computers work is difficult. They would prefer a system where they couldn't make mistakes, rather than a system where they had to understand the code and the machine to a high level. There's a place in the world for these sorts of people, but it's not in OS/kernel development. The sort of I-can't-make-mistakes-with-Rust mindset probably lulled the coder into a false sense of security, with the predictable outcome.
179923328
comment
bygillbates
2025 @12:33PM
(#65764520)
Attached to: Python Foundation Rejects Government Grant Over DEI Restrictions
1.) I just want to see a reference for this. You do understand that it's possible for a Left leaning person to have African ancestry, right?
2.) I've never heard someone with African ancestry living in America ask the public to refer to them with the term mention in the GP. Maybe the reference to #1 will clear this up?
3.) Even the SPLC puts the number of KKK between 3000 and 4000 individuals, in a nation of 330 million plus people. During the 1930's, one in ten Americans was a member of the KKK; today it's less than 1 in 100,000. Put another way, the concentration of white supremacists in the United States has gone from 100,000 ppm to just 10 ppm in less than a hundred years.
The reason Left leaning people never celebrate the gains made by minorities is because the underlying principle of Leftist politics is to condemn the innocent majority for factors and circumstances beyond their control. It doesn't matter how little racism actually exists, as long as there exists a shocking incident in the past, the Leftist can find reason to condemn people today, who had no actual connection to the incident or policy in question. Witness, for example, how Barak Obama characterized as racist the nation that just elected its first minority President. As a nation, the pendulum has swung so far back in the other direction that Leftists now justify DEI policies, as if more racism would somehow bring about a fairer, more just society for all. It didn't work in the past, doesn't work now, and it won't work in the future, and if the Left is realizing anything, their recent loss to an absolute imbecile must certainly have shown them that America would much rather have an asshole as President than a Left-leaning racist. You may have been able to say that you were on the right side of history 60 years ago, but you can't say that today. America has realized that racism doesn't work for us, we don't want any part of it, we've moved on, and the sooner you recognize that, the better.
After all, even the Democrats are now ashamed of their past association with the KKK, and you should be too.
179906552
comment
bygillbates
29, 2025 @11:30AM
(#65758840)
Attached to: UK Cyclist Receives 3D-Printed Facial Prosthetic After Crash Left Him With Third-Degree Burns
And DHMO preloading for those long rides. Really makes a difference.
179906524
comment
bygillbates
29, 2025 @11:26AM
(#65758822)
Attached to: Python Foundation Rejects Government Grant Over DEI Restrictions
First off, African American is an offensive term coined by Left leaning folks to imply that people who were born here, but have more melanin than most, aren't truly American, or perhaps belong somewhere else. I know a person who was born a Negro, raised as a colored person, worked as a Black person, and retired as an African American, all without anyone ever asking who he was. He was never asked if he wanted a racial identity, but was assigned one by the Blacker-than-thou folks who insisted on seeing everyone in the world through the lens of race.
But if we can move on from that, I hear in your telling of America that you believe America is a cesspool of the worst kind of people imaginable. While I agree that there are bad people in the world, I disagree with the proportions. Americans, for the most part, try to be good people, and find that getting their government to actually serve the people is quite a challenge, especially when the political ruling class wants it otherwise. To characterize all Americans according to the worst examples is to commit the logical fallacy of mistaking the part for the whole.
This does not mean that we don't have cultural problems, but that those problems have been exacerbated by the DEI folks ignoring the problems of integrating different cultures into the whole. Simply put, DEI inevitably creates unnecessary conflict. If everyone can get past the idea of seeing everyone through a racial lens, (and therefore assigning them a racial identity), we can, together, solve the greater problems facing America. Otherwise, the political ruling class exploits the division DEI creates, to the detriment of everyone else.
So if you really want us to become one America, one culture, all getting along, you need to drop the DEI. The average person has the interpersonal skills to resolve personal conflicts and treat others fairly, even without respect to race. Just because you struggle with discrimination doesn't mean everyone else does, and it's time for the DEI folks to realize their worldview is making everything worse for everyone else. We don't need racial identities, and seeing everyone through the lens of race has never served us well. Wherever you find people seeing others through the lens of race, ulterior motives are always present. It is time to instead see people not as black or white, but as children of God. Otherwise, the offenses against human dignity will continue, regardless of the degree to which DEI is embraced.
179865096
comment
bygillbates
2025 @04:49PM
(#65748638)
Attached to: Wikipedia Drama Goes Mainstream
Yes, conservapedia exist(ed). It might still - but at least they were honest in how they were biased.
The reason these sites should exist is because, generally speaking, the opponents of a political ideology tend to be the worst sources concerning what the ideology actually believes, versus what its detractors say it believes. If the enemies of the state are not allowed to speak, how will the public at large differentiate tyranny from the rule of law?
179858814
comment
bygillbates
3, 2025 @02:32PM
(#65746190)
Attached to: Trump Pardons Binance Founder Changpeng Zhao
The land where the well-connected get pardoned for money laundering, but those who cross the border illegally or don't have documentation of the fact that they're American can be deported to countries they've never seen, where they don't even speak the native language.
Please, someone explain how this makes sense.
179852994
comment
bygillbates
22, 2025 @04:50PM
(#65744118)
Attached to: Rubbish IT Systems Cost the US At Least $40 Billion During Covid
Let's not forget the Cowbell++. It's like Rust and Java, except that it won't corrode your car, or spill your beans. It's a safe, secure language, backward and forward compatible with Rock, Hard Rock, 70's Rock, and even Rock'n'Roll.
When writing in Cowbell++, there's no possible problem that can't be solved by adding more. It's really the ideal of the fictional programming languages.
179852960
comment
bygillbates
22, 2025 @04:42PM
(#65744104)
Attached to: Jaguar Land Rover Hack Cost UK Economy an Estimated $2.5 Billion
I'm willing to bet that some executive, somewhere, was able to meet and exceed his KPIs for IT cost, resulting in a bonus. The most important thing is that the executives get paid for continuing the status quo.
Whether said executive still works at the company or has moved on to another company misses the point: the circumstances which enabled the hack were created by the manner in which the company rewarded cost control, rather than security . Security is not quantifiable; no one was ever rewarded for the hacks that didn't happen. The only question remaining is if the board has enough sanity to hire a CEO who won't incentivize financial performance at the expense of security.
179006924
comment
bygillbates
04, 2025 @10:02AM
(#65638634)
Attached to: Sweeteners Can Harm Cognitive Health Equivalent To 1.6 Years of Aging, Study Finds
Sugar is addictive too.
Oh really? I can quit any time I want, I just choose not to!
178977280
comment
bygillbates
02, 2025 @09:54AM
(#65632678)
Attached to: The US Population Could Shrink in 2025, For the First Time Ever
Because the lifetime earning potential, even after paying for that devalued degree, is still much higher than can be achieved without a college degree
While this is true, it's also true that if one subtracts the cost of education from lifetime earnings and amortizes that over the time spent getting an education, unpaid overtime, keeping current in one's career field, etc... the average hourly pay is worse than that of a truck driver.
Yes, you will make more, but you'll give more of your life to your employer and enjoy less of your life.
178783052
comment
bygillbates
0, 2025 @10:59AM
(#65602614)
Attached to: Passengers Sue Delta, United Over Windowless 'Window Seats'
Some people have vertigo and dizziness due to a medical condition, or a side effect of a drug they're taking (antidepressants, for example). For these people, seeing the motion of the aircraft (via the window) helps avoid the nausea of motion sickness, and makes the difference between a pleasant trip and hours of nausea and possibly vomiting.
If Delta is going to lie about window seats, this means I can't fly Delta.
178642840
comment
bygillbates
2025 @09:37AM
(#65581418)
Attached to: How Python is Fighting Open Source's 'Phantom' Dependencies Problem
You misunderstand institutional security. The end sought is not true security, but rather, plausible deniability. The institutional users want to be able to point to this SBOM and say, "It passed all our security audits", not "Our analysis missed the security vulnerability which brought down our systems." No one in a large institution wants to take the blame for the inevitable security vulnerabiliity, so things like the SBOM provide the requisite blame deflection back to the package maintainer. This way, nobody is held to account, and everyone keeps their jobs.
Seemingly idiotic corporate decisions are much more easily understood when one realizes that a corporation is largely a machine for avoiding responsibility.
178603480
comment
bygillbates
2025 @09:01AM
(#65572596)
Attached to: 'Facial Recognition Tech Mistook Me For Wanted Man'
Perhaps you'd like to live in China or North Korea where you can be randomly apprehended and harassed by the police just "because you look a bit sus".
Versus the United States, where a US citizen born in the US can be deported to country they've never been to, where they don't speak the language, just because they look like an illegal immigrant?!
I don't like communism or socialism, but I can't deny that the Western world is having a Soviet Moment, with Britain and the US leading the way in violating civil rights.
178592112
comment
bygillbates
6, 2025 @09:13AM
(#65569834)
Attached to: NASA Satellites That Scientists and Farmers Rely On May Be Destroyed On Purpose
If the Earth identifies as a cool planet, who are we to say otherwise?
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