azertyfun
@azertyfun@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on WHO officials admit they are preparing for possible nuclear weapon use in Iran 1 day ago:
This is not a humanitarian or ethics question. The rules of nuclear warfare aren’t governed by morality but by game theory. From Israel’s perspective nuclear weapons are a last resort for the reasons I outlined. Their leadership and military may be genocidal, but they still have a sense of self-preservation and act somewhat rationally – which you will notice is not at all the same thing as acting morally or honestly. Using nuclear weapons is simply not a tactically rational option for them even if when their explicit goal is genocidal imperialism.
What’s scary about Trump is that none of this applies to him. He is not a rational actor and he does not have everything to lose were he to launch a nuclear strike against Iran.
- Comment on What a nice blue and black dress. 2 days ago:
In every configuration, every lighting condition, every monitor, every color manipulation, I see that picture as white and gold. Not once have I managed to see the blue dress, except in separate pictures of the same dress.
I understand the actual dress is blue and I understand the color theory, but even with the picture very heavily tinted blue my brain still interprets the dress to be in shadow and therefore white.
- Comment on WHO officials admit they are preparing for possible nuclear weapon use in Iran 2 days ago:
So that’s making a very critical assumption: that Israel’s territory is being existentially threatened. Iran simply does not have the military capability to do that. And Hamas/Hezbollah is not an existential threat to Israel’s existence despite propaganda to the contrary. We’ve already seen the full extent of their military capabilities.
The Samson Option is a one time, last-resort deterrence option for when all other defensive and offensive mechanisms have failed. Israel’s small size and geopolitical situation basically requires such deterrence against a neighbor who might decide to blitzkrieg into Tel Aviv. Iran simply does not possess that capability.
If Netanyahu pops a nuke for any other reason, he fundamentally shifts his neighbors’ calculus in favor of uniting and attacking Israel because nukes are explicitly not a last resort anymore, therefore Israel becomes an immediate existential threat to all its neighbors that must be dealt with accordingly.
That’s the thing with nuclear deterrence: it works, but only if your enemies are clear on the lines they can’t cross. Otherwise you’re just a threat to be eliminated. And ultimately there’s only so much that propaganda can help with there. Israel may have convinced a majority of their citizens that genocide is good, but they can’t propagandize their enemies into believing that preemptive nuclear strikes are necessary. Netanyahu can whine about Iran’s nuclear program all he wants, none of his enemies seriously believe they are close to having nukes.
Using nuclear weapons as anything but a last resort is therefore an awful gamble that very significantly (if not entirely) weakens nuclear deterrence… All for relatively little military gain. There’s very little a nuke would do that Israel can’t do to Iran with conventional weapons. While there’s a whole lot that nukes don’t do to a prepared enemy with spread out military and command infrastructure.
- Comment on WHO officials admit they are preparing for possible nuclear weapon use in Iran 2 days ago:
That’s the point, I can’t see how it would help Netanyahu with self-preservation. Going nuclear would be unpopular and ineffective as Israelis understand that their arsenal is more effective in a “will they won’t they” deterrence capacity. He wants constant war and doesn’t need nukes to get it.
Now what he might do is convince Trump to send nukes and pretend he had nothing to do with it. It’s not like Trump is hard to manipulate and Miller probably loves the idea to begin with.
- Comment on WHO officials admit they are preparing for possible nuclear weapon use in Iran 2 days ago:
Nuclear weapons are great at leveling cities, but not so great at destroying military infrastructure. On a per-dollar basis they actually kind of suck as weapons of war. From a purely rational strategic perspective, they’re most useful as a deterrent (which is how Israel has been using them). Netanyahu is an imperialist genocidal maniac but he’s not dumb.
Whereas if and when Trump does get his wish to pop a nuke, it won’t be for strategic gain but because he just couldn’t be restrained anymore. This absolute moron wanted to nuke a fucking hurricane FFS. It’s only a matter of time before he gets his wish since the US military has lost all ability to tell him no.
- Comment on It's all SO simple! 2 weeks ago:
It can definitely have side effects. Psychological (eating disorders, persistent) and physical (unbalanced diet, or fatigue because the body gets in the “oh fuck must conserve energy” mode).
There is no one size fits all solution. A random 50 year old IT worker with a sedentary lifestyle and a Big Mac diet does not need the same help as a physically active 25 year old with severe hormonal imbalances. Using Ozempic is bad in the former case, but so is shaming the latter person for relying on it.
- Comment on You could be entitled for compensation 3 weeks ago:
We knew it was bad then too. This is cynical propaganda to try to normalise its use in the face of a mounting public health crisis.
Much like fossil fuel companies today will continuously put out statements and ads and fund studies that either refute their impact or minimizes it. The cigarette industry pioneered this approach which essentially consists in putting just enough doubt and uncertainty into the public discourse to make regulation seem unnecessary overreach, despite overwhelming consensus from the subject matter experts who unlike lobbyists can’t just buy their way into getting real estate in magazine stands.
- Comment on Hard drive prices have surged by an average of 46% since September — iconic 24TB Seagate BarraCuda now $500 as AI claims another victim 2 months ago:
A weak dollar will work great for you when you bring back all those manufacturing jobs from overseas and start exporting the surplus production. Any day know. Any day.
- Comment on who's gonna tell him? 2 months ago:
He’s a child of apartheid and, according to his own daughter, was always an awful person in private.
There’s lots of precedent for white supremacists keeping a low(-ish) profile when it suits them. Just look at famous card-holding Nazi and prolific mass-murderer Werner Von Braun and his public perception in the US. If he could cultivate the image of America’s Dearest Scientist, literally anyone could.
- Comment on Stop using MySQL in 2026, it is not true open source 2 months ago:
I mean, Nestlé killed hundreds of thousands in impoverished countries. I think the Oracle service APIs can’t be that bad, though I’m sure they would be if it made Larry Ellison $50.
- Comment on Yale Posting It's Ls 2 months ago:
Also Trump literally illegally kidnapped a head of state to the U.S. And we’re supposed to pretend the first thing they did was not simply… Move the murderer somewhere out of state where they couldn’t reach him even if they tried (which they won’t because no blue state has the balls to meaningfully stand up to Trump)?
I mean, realistically that guy could twerk in front of the Minnesota Capitol with some ICE buddies to back him up and giant sign saying “I did it” and Minnesota still wouldn’t do shit.
“State’s rights” are exactly like the “2A rights”. They only serve conservatives, whom the law protects but does not bind.
This is not just me being salty BTW. I am trying to get across the point to anyone reading this that if your plan to bring back U.S. Democracy relies on the Constitution playing in your favor, you’ve already lost.
- Comment on What's it going to take to truly stop the US? 2 months ago:
So half your country won’t be moaning and denouncing and overall being sad next time and assassination attempt is made against Trump, right?
… Right anakin?
Yeah, right.
- Comment on Welcome to the thunderdome? 2 months ago:
Few Celtic roots*
For instance char comes from the Celtic carros.
Furthermore French has a strong Frankish influence, hence the name of the language and its relative distance from Italian Spanish or Portuguese which are more directly descended from Latin. But also many other influences. French has a surprising amount of Arabic vocabulary for example, and not just from recent immigration/colonisation.
- Comment on 2 months ago:
Either way if you ignore regional languages you’re not doing linguistics. And the author could not even get it right for national languages, if we even accept that arbitrarily picking one makes any sense.
This map is a masterclass in what not to do and it almost feels like intentional engagement farming.
- Comment on Skier narrowly avoids a crevasse 3 months ago:
Same, and I’m not well-versed into the neurology of it all but I think it’s something way worse than the symptoms of ADHD.
Five seconds is well within my attention span. I forget everything the minute I open a door or open a new tab, but this ain’t that. I can watch something in silence, my brain distracts itself, that’s kind of the whole problem. This though? This is about promising an impending dopamine hit to a restless junkie who was about to scroll down for a quicker hit.
No, scratch that. This is about the video editor constructing a strawman of that restless junkie, pandering to that, followed by a (proto-)fascist algorithm eeking out every last bit of video retention from its users for maximum profit. Even if 95 % of users don’t actually need the countdown to keep watching, and the 5 % remaining really should not be using that app for their mental well-being, the algorithm will mercilessly incentivize creators to put in the countdown.
Since legislating algorithmic attention-hoarding doesn’t sem likely to hit the political docket anytime soon, the only winning move is not to play.
- Comment on Trains cancelled over fake bridge collapse image 3 months ago:
My guess is the same thing as “critics say [x]”. The journalist has an obvious opinion but isn’t allowed by their head of redaction to put it in, so to maintain the illusion of NeutTraLITy™©® they find a strawman to hold that opinion for them.
I guess now they don’t even need to find a tweet with 3 likes to present a convenient quote from “critics” or “the public” or “internet commenters” or “sources”, they can just ask ChatGPT to generate it for them. Either way any redaction where that kind of shit flies is not doing serious journalism.
- Comment on Tattoo Ink Moves Through the Body, Killing Immune Cells and Weakening Vaccine Response 3 months ago:
All three of your examples were known to cause ill effects for centuries. The ancient Romans knew the asbestos mines were killing their slaves. Their overuse during the 20th century was not due to ignorance but corporate lobbying and political complacency.
The lobbyist play is to fund counter-studies to sow FUD even though the scientific consensus that [X Bad] is well established, because it gives an easy out for bought out politicians. However the tatoo lobby is certainly not one that I expect to be have the pull to fund FUD scientific studies to delay legislation, and if they are doing that it should be pretty easy to point to.
- Comment on It improves the morale of the future worker. 3 months ago:
On top of the other point.
Capitalism is uninterested in your healthcare policy. That’s your country’s failure, not capitalism’s, for once. Market pressures did not invent a gaggle of middle men siphoning the money between patients and care providers. That’s a result of government failures that ossified into a corrupt system benefiting a select few, a scheme which is not unique to capitalism and is actually reminding me of soviet bureaucracy.
The distinction is not purely academic, because correctly pointing out that you’re not fighting capitalism but corrupt bureaucracy makes reform a much easier sell, which is why healthcare reform is a transpartisan issue until donors and lobbyists get involved.
- Comment on RAM is so expensive that stores are selling it at market prices 3 months ago:
Altman secretly secured 40 % of the world’s DRAM manufacturing capacity last month. Supposedly Samsung and HK Hynix weren’t aware they were both signing up for it.
That alone would be enough to call collusion if it wasn’t an obvious play to strangle his competition by literally choking them out of hardware.
- Comment on Every new Mass Effect playthrough since the first 3 months ago:
I read people complained that ME1’s character creator was ass. I guess it must have gotten that reputation by being kind of ass for making a dude, because my Shep was a badass bitch. Voice actress was on top of things too. She’s by far the most memorable custom character I played.
Until ME3 where they yassified her from a 40-something war veteran to a glossy-skinned 25 year old lifestyle vlogger. Interestingly that made me - a cis man - feel viscerally connected to the injunction to look a certain way for the male gaze, and I got so fucking mad at bioware during that intro cinematic.
- Comment on 16 minutes of HyTale gameplay 3 months ago:
So happy to see the game is not dead.
Combat and movement look fun and satisfying, graphics look amazing. So many moody areas, from gritty snowscape to colorful caves. Mojang could learn a thing or five from this trailer.
I do hope there will be more breadth of gameplay especially on the creative side so those promising exploration mechanics do not feel stale after a few hours of running around and blasting skeletons. That’s one thing mojang does get right, if anything they have too much breadth and not enough depth.
Not sure about the ease of movement when scaling multiple blocks. Figuring it how to get from point A to point B with the limited movement options is a core part of most Minecraft gameplay loops, especially when caving and/or fighting. Seems they made up for it with good fighting mechanics, but they will have to make up for it in the other gameplay loops as well.
Either way I wish them the best and hope they light a fucking fire underneath mojang’s ass.
- Comment on People are playing fewer games and new releases are "struggling", say Ubisoft UK, warning of falling revenues 3 months ago:
The more accurate picture is “A/AA games are doing great in terms of creative&cultural output with many mainstream successes despite being completely choked out by out-of-touch AAA studios capturing most capital investment”. 2025 has objectively been a great year for (semi-)indie games and a humiliating slap in the face for AAA studios.
But yeah I would still strongly advise against switching to a gamedev career regardless of whether the industry eventually sees reason and shifts away from AAA to AA. As with the rest of the entertainment industry, it’s ontologically exploitative and is famously a dream-crushing machine. Too many starry-eyed kids to be a healthy job market.
- Comment on Just FYI 4 months ago:
On maybe the third day of my first programming job, a colleague pulled me aside and said “don’t give me ‘shoulds’ and ‘probablys’. You need to sound confident so I can know to trust what you’re saying”.
That guy was a bit of a dickhead in general but there’s a lot of truth there. To the question “what’s the expected impact of this change?”, “None.” is a good answer. “Well it should work…” is not useful feedback and a good Operations Manager will rightfully reject the change.
Of course it is better to be hesitant than falsely confident, but far too many (software) engineers hide behind indecisive language to dodge the necessary hard work of validating their hunches. If you didn’t test your shit fully, just say so. If you’re right, say it. Personal ego doesn’t belong in an engineering discussion.
- Comment on Minecraft is removing code obfuscation in Java Edition 4 months ago:
And Hytale got shitcanned!
It’s actually amazing that in an industry so hell-bent on copying successful formulas ad-nauseam (e.g. Quake&Doom spawning the whole genre of First Person Shooters), Minecraft has not seen anything reach the status of spiritual successor in over 15 years of charts-topping sales performance. Not from its own studio, not from its former creator, not with the Late Hypixel Studios.
There are survival games and base-building games and exploration games, but none of them are “Minecraft-likes” in the way that early FPS were “Quake-likes”. CS has Valorant. LoL has Dota. Tekken has Street Fighter. PUBG has Fortnite has Roblox. Minecraft somehow remains truly one-of-a-kind, a gaming UFO that eludes suits looking for a replicable formula. I actually believe Mojang themselves don’t understand why Minecraft works in the first place either, which is why every update seemingly either underwhelms or angers everyone. That game is lightning in a bottle and no-one knows what to do with it.
If Nadella had a stroke so bad he decided to make Minecraft FOSS, I’d be really interested to see what would happen. If any for-profit company was allowed to make direct Minecraft derivatives, I do think we would see a level of creativity and innovation that would dwarf even the already extremely prolific current modding scene.
- Comment on Study Claims 4K/8K TVs Aren't Much Better Than HD To Your Eyes 4 months ago:
I think the premium thing is a channel option. Some channels consistently have it, some don’t.
Regular YouTube 1080p is bad and feels like 720p. The encoding on videos with “Premium 1080p” is catastrophic. It’s significantly worse than decently encoded 480p. Creators will put a lot of time and effort in their lighting and camera gear, then the compression artifacting makes the video feel like watching a porn bootleg on a shady site. I guess there must be a strong financial incentive to nuke their video quality this way.
- Comment on The Sodium-Ion Battery Revolution Has Started 4 months ago:
Technology Connections and Hank Green have been shouting this for a while, but that whole issue is way overblown. Some first gen EVs around 2010 had issues, but every major manufacturer since then has way exceeded expectations on battery lifetime thanks to advanced BMS and thermal controls. Car batteries don’t just rapidly degrade out of the blue, the tech has nothing in common with what’s in your phone. But public sentiment has not caught up because most people think Li-Ion = smartphone = dead after 2-5 years, so second hand EVs are way undervalued. Which is great for buyers.
It’s not like you can’t easily total a second-hand ICE by mechanical failure. Just ask anyone who own(ed) a puretech engine. If you went by manufacturer recommendations, the fucking thing might just eat your timing belt one day and grenade itself. And there’s no way a full engine swap on a 5-10 year old economy car is economically viable.
There’s always something that could go wrong when you buy a car. Unless you get comprehensive insurance and warranty, you need to accept the fact that losing the entire car to an accident, catastrophic mechanical failure, or theft is always a risk. If that’s too much anxiety to deal with, get a lease.
- Comment on Fight me 4 months ago:
If we’re going to be pedantic, let’s do it correctly.
Even with the blinds shut, a space heater will emit a surprisingly large amount of radio waves (mine actually disrupts USB devices with a small EMP when it turns on, and anyone with an RTL-SDR can tell you those 50 Hz harmonics are rough). Some of those radio waves will penetrate the walls/blinds and a tiny fraction might escape the atmosphere and head off into space. From there some will find their way to interstellar space and potentially drift “forever” (well, until the heat death of the universe or whichever theory you subscribe to; I think at that point saying “the photon never got converted into heat energy” is a good enough approximation).
- Comment on Fucking math... 4 months ago:
Speed limits are trickier than structural safety margins because of several factors:
- In some areas, particularly remote areas, the process isn’t very well defined. Sometimes the speed limit will be set by one guy who just felt like that was fine. Doesn’t even have to be an engineer really.
- Standards evolve over time (trending towards lower speed limits) but speed limits only change when a tragedy or major road renovation happens. Where I live there’s sometimes a 40 km/h spread on posted speed limits for similar roads depending on whether they were rebuilt last year or 50 years ago.
- Car culture means drivers hold a ton of political power. There are a myriad of traffic devices that cannot be built not because of practical or financial constraints, only because they would “inconvenience drivers”. Lower speed limits are often one of those. People complain so the government backs down despite engineering recommendations.
- A driver is always liable if they drive too fast for the conditions, not the traffic engineer. That goes to the previous point, with zero penalty for not sticking to the sensible engineering choice, political pressure easily wins out. Hard to argue against a work order when the person signing off on it cannot be sued for negligence.
The upshot is speed limits in my local experience have a lot more to do with the municipality/region’s political climate than engineering standards and safety factors. Sometimes I feel like I could safely go 2x, sometimes the limit is 90 km/h on a two-way one lane road with 30 m of visibility where 30 km/h feels like I’m pushing it.
- Comment on Honestly Bizarre 4 months ago:
Oh, fun! The debate over the culinary vs botanical meaning of fruit intersecting with the debate of culinary vs topological meaning of soup.
Breakfast cereal is soup[topological] but not soup[culinary]. It is therefore not a contradiction for it to be fruit[culinary].
- Comment on Honestly Bizarre 4 months ago:
Water is debatable, everything else why not. If a recipe is generic enough to call for “vegetables”, you wouldn’t be wrong to include any of those things.