In the pseudoarchaeology space you see a lot of equivocation between digital circuit configurations (e.g. the paths on a main board) and the designs of various ancient sites, particularly in Central America. In the crank version this is a sign that the Aztecs had digital technology and computers of some kind. In reality I think it’s neat to see the same design patterns crop up for trying to route non-overlapping paths for foot traffic as for routing non-overlapping paths for electrons.

There’s a whole lot of ontological confusion going on here, and I want to make sure I’m not going too far in the opposite direction. Information, in the mathematical Shannon-ian sense, basically refers specifically to identifying one out of a possible set of values. In that sense, no underlying physical state could be said to hold “more” information than any other, right? Like, depending on the encoding a given amount of information can use a different amount of space on a channel (TRUE vs T vs 1), but just changing which arrangement of bits is currently in use doesn’t increase or decrease the total amount of information in the channel. I’m sure there’s some interesting physics to be done about our ability to meaningfully read or write to a given amount of space (something something quantum something something) but the idea of information somehow existing independently rather than being projected into the probability distribution of states in the underlying physical world is basically trying to find the physical properties of the Platonic forms or find the mass of the human soul.

No V0ldek, you are the small shell script. And then V0ldek was a zombie process.

Anyone remember when Chrome had that issue with validating nested URL-encoded characters? Anyone for John%%80%80 Doe?

On a related note, shout-out to the banner image of a neatly spaced rectangular grid of trees, the one part of the book that if I remember right Scooter did actually read and sort of understand, even if he was unable to generalize beyond early modern forestry.

Ironically that review was where I first encountered the work of the late James Scott.

Yeah. It’s not the mole people you’ve got to worry about, it’s the moles, man.

I mean, I think actually having to interact with these loons would be a strong incentive to liberalize their theology which would be a good thing.

Wait hang on you only read 2? I’m disappointed, I put a solid fifteen minutes into googling to find those 11 separate links.

Poland is a legal fiction invented by Russians, Germans, Poles and Lithuanians to disguise the true and righteous destiny of East Dakota.

What constitutes a terrorist organization is up to the electric officials and police organizations to define.

That’s kind of the point, mate. In the current political climate I half expect them to start describing any organization giving humanitarian aid to Palestinians as terrorists.

But to ask the real questions: is providing material support to terrorists not already a crime in Sweden? Does having a Swedish criminal record not complicate eg visa renewals and make it harder for someone to stay in or return to the country? Assuming that’s the case, why is this something that needs to be specially handled now? Is this actually a problem, or just a way to stoke racism and fear for political benefit?

These are actually two slightly different options. Mouse sensitivity is how far the cursor or camera moves based on how far the mouse moves. More sensitivity means that the camera moves more if you move the mouse the same distance.

Mouse acceleration tracks how fast the mouse moves over that distance and extends the amount the camera or cursor moves if it moves faster or decreases it if it moves slower. In some cases this can feel more natural, but in others it can make it harder to be both fast and precise in your movements, since moving faster can make you overshoot compared to making the same movement more slowly.

Right.

Russia’s immense respect for Ukrainian culture has defined this war

So the difference is not whether they’re trying to be imperialists, but in their relative ability to do so. I’m sure there’s some fascinating and useful graduate level historical analysis to be done in understanding why Russification was relatively unsuccessful, but that doesn’t change the fact that Russia has time and again attempted to impose Russian culture, Russian language, and Russian law on parts of the Russian empire that were very happily doing their own thing.

lolwut

Given that his codefendant was hit and killed by a car three days after the acquittal, I’m not sure if they even hired assassins or if they have some kind of black magicians on staff.

Self-reply because a few hours later I could be arsed after all, and what I found was confusing.

To start with, this wasn’t a scooter original; it was a response to a post by a different Scott A, and according to a very brief examination (I read both the Wikipedia article and the talk page) it looks like it’s based on some questionable history. The story is that Andrey Kolmogorov kept quiet and used his influence to shelter Jewish academics and others from persecution under the purges. However, the most noteworthy example of his actions during the purges were his active testimony in the prosecution of his doctoral advisor, Nikolas Luzin. There’s some ambiguity about why he participated but the two theories appear to be that the cops forced him to do it by blackmailing him about a (historically disputed/unconfirmed) gay relationship he was in or that the whole thing was driven by personal animosity between Luzin and his students. Notably after being convicted it seems like Luzin wasn’t enough of a threat to Stalin to actually be properly disappeared or even fully removed from academia.

I don’t know enough about the relevant history to make a reasonable determination as to who’s right, but it’s telling that neither story meaningfully supports the idea that the Scotts seem to be pitching of keeping your head down and muddling through to protect you and yours under authoritarianism. If that “Kolmogorov Option” exists it’s only because you’re in a decently liberal society. Otherwise the authoritarian power of the state will be used against you either for their own purpose or as a tool by whoever can catch their ear and doesn’t like you, and all your attempts to avoid being the nail that sticks out will have been pointless.

I don’t know. I feel like the prior for putting tech billionaires on massive single-masted yachts with high waterlines and low air vents is still pretty positive. This is only one bad voyage; consider how many trips provide evidence that this is a good plan.

Much like Titan, which had several successful voyages to the Titanic that other billionaires should seek to emulate by using the exact same sorta-procen design and construction that Titan did.

On one hand, if inflating the value of the startup you’re offloading onto a tech giant is a crime we should put half of Silicon Valley in prison. On the other hand, maybe we should put half of the Valley in prison.

I’m pretty sure they’re referencing an old ssc post on “kolmogorov complicity” - referencing the Soviet scientist who either spoke out against the purges and got gulag’d or who realized that they were bad but didn’t say anything to avoid getting gulag’d and tried to protect his peers from the same fate. I forget if he was the example to follow or the counterexample, and I can’t be arsed to look it up.

Now imagine if instead of a Soviet citizen trying to steer your people away from stalinism you were a fascist living in a broadly progressive culture looking to steer the world away from liberalism and towards Yarvin and friends. I try not to go down the conspiracy rabbit hole, but I’m not sure how Scott’s output meaningfully differs from what such a person would write. Honestly if he hasn’t written the kolmogorov complicity post outlining the whole concept I don’t know if I’d be more or less inclined to think he’s doing it actively.

Kinda stretching the definition of “plausible”. It’s less about external deniability and more about internal rejection. They want to avoid thinking of themselves as fascist-adjacent right-wing loons without giving up on being one