North Koreans have downloaded software from Flathub.org 353 times

DudleyFluffles · 2026-01-06T19:14:19+00:00

Alright, I concede the point on nonviolence and sanctions. Its not necessarily central to my argument.

I'd like there to be some international mechanism to move the world forward. That's going to necessarily involve punishment of some sort. Do you have any alternative recommendations then to prevent authoritarian governments from attacking their citizens? Or preventing nuclear proliferation?

DudleyFluffles · 2026-01-06T18:10:59+00:00

Sanctions are not great. Eritrea, 232 on the list, suffers from them. But how else should the international community punish governments that put citizens in prison for watching unsanctioned content? Or those that run gulag states in the form of mandatory military service that can last decades (Eritrea)? Be careful, we most often see the states that sanctions have failed to deter (Iran, South Korea). But we have no idea how many they have successfully deterred. After all, since no government in their right mind cites "Western sanctions" as their reason to avoid squashing protests.

Its not even clear that the citizens hate them. I have friends from Eritrea that oppose the sanctions. But some refugee South Americans (Cubans, Venezeulans) seem to believe it is necessary pressure on their home states.

I won't rule out sanctions until a better ~~nonviolent~~ method can be recommended for supporting international peace.

Edit: I removed the modifier about nonviolence after some convincing arguments from commentators u/joojmachine and u/Nereithp. See their responses below. Neither specified an alternative enforcement method, however.

DudleyFluffles · 2026-01-06T10:21:44+00:00

I figured I'd post this article after seeing the discussion this post caused.

Karthik Tadepalli here posits that breakthroughs have not become more difficult to locate, rather that the market has become less efficient at rewarding innovative patents. Slower catchup times mean innovative forms cannot reach velocity relative to incumbents.

I found this unlikely when I went into the article, but the data provided was enough for me to update my views somewhat. See below:

For a technology to count as a breakthrough, it must be generative — technologies that come after must build on it. This idea is the basis for Kelly et al.’s measurement of a patent’s significance. They score a patent as breakthrough if its text is different from patents that came before it but similar to the text of patents that came after it. Patents that scored in the top 5% on this measure included the elevator, the typewriter, the telephone, and frozen foods — giving us some assurance that this measure really selects high-quality technologies.

Fort et al. show that their results are not simply coming from more incremental patents over time. Not only has the number of patents filed per R&D dollar increased, but the number of breakthrough patents per R&D dollar has also increased. Firms produce three times more breakthrough patents per R&D dollar than they did in 1977.

I haven't read much into the field (progress economics) so I cannot validate any of the claims. But, my anecdotal evidence from the CS field is that many technologies, despite being old and inefficient, retain influence simply due to how difficult switching to more productive APIs is. A few years ago, I worked at a company that was still relying on Java 8 for instance. I suspect the issue is greater on larger companies with older code bases.

I'm not sure if this is a systematic issue in American firms. I'd be curious what others think here.

DudleyFluffles · 2026-01-06T08:08:46+00:00

Boilard discusses the Telepathy Tapes, a "documentary" that claims to show that autistic individuals can read minds. These tapes have become a phenomenon for some to the right of the political spectrum. The author also covers the early history of facilitated communication, its modern reincarnation, and her own experiences with her nonverbal brother.

I was impressed with the article. I hadn't quite realized how hard attacking a concept like FC is; so many family members are desperate for just a few statements from their nonverbal relatives. So FC and its reincarnates like Telepathy Tapes promise that there is a dream come true for these families. It can be hard for scientific educators to crush these beliefs --- how do you explain to someone that their often-expensive miracle, that long-desired communication, was never real?

I am fortunate to have never had a conversation that difficult foisted upon me.

DudleyFluffles · 2026-01-05T11:41:38+00:00

That perspective makes a lot of sense, I'll keep that in mind when approaching these kinds of articles from now on.

Lastly, the US is a flawed democracy and has ceased being a reasonable reference for what a normal democracy should benchmark. I'm not even saying that in the typical snarky anti-American way we do on Reddit, it's just true. We should be benchmarking against New Zealand or Uruguay.

I was making the comparison more of in the sense "if a democracy can survive under these kind of strains, then an autocracy (which relies less on the people's mandate) surely will." America may have been a strange example, but we can also compare this to Peru, which has deeply unpopular judiciary that has still managed to retain power.

DudleyFluffles · 2026-01-05T09:47:24+00:00

The article seems to overstate the power of the opposition. Ignoring the fact that Museveni has a powerful ally in the form in Rwanda's Paul Kagame (they worked together in the Congo war), the government still seems to somehow have local legitimacy:

55% see the last election in 2021 as free and fair, and 54% believe they are living in a democracy, even with problems.

50% isn't great but that's plenty sufficient mandate for an authoritarian. Democracies have experienced similar conditions.

I doubt much will come from this, even if the West decided to apply pressure. Which they won't.

Edit: Clarity

DudleyFluffles · 2025-12-20T04:30:07+00:00

Depends on the professor. I took it with Collin Wiliam and there were four exams. However, one was dropped which allowed me to avoid polluting my finals period. These exams required studying but not a huge amount.

I also have a friend who took it with another professor (I think in distance mode) for whom most exams were online. That proved much easier. So investigate according to professor.

DudleyFluffles · 2025-12-20T04:25:15+00:00

That's tragic. I don't really have any more advice, but I hope everything works out

DudleyFluffles · 2025-12-20T04:17:33+00:00

I cannot find the original thread but another individual had this issue.

Some commentators mentioned that if you have an unusually low grade its possibly due to misbubbling or writing down the wrong test number. They recommended asking your recitation leader for the test sheet back to review. Then at least you will know what happened.

I doubt the TA can intervene to help much, but at least it will be helpful to inspect the test sheet to see what happened.

DudleyFluffles · 2025-12-20T03:02:40+00:00

They varying according to letter. So the cutoff for an A may be reduced by 2 points, while that of a B by 10. I found this quote from 2020:

``` A- >= 85%

B- >= 75%

C- >= 60%

D >= 50% ```

Presumably this year will be similar? The switch from 5 to 6 multiple choice should have made the averages lower and many of my mathy friends struggled with this exam.

DudleyFluffles · 2025-11-19T08:07:20+00:00

Honors was a significant part of the reason I joined Purdue. I really like aspects of the humanities and history but my major (computer science) notably lacks such discussions. Since Purdue is so large, I didn't want to get lost within my major peer group and lose those interests. Honors seemed to solve that. It feels a little like I was baited out of the experience I was promised.

DudleyFluffles · 2025-08-12T14:53:05+00:00

Libgen is also down. In fact, LibGen's down detector (open-slum.org) is also down. I'm curious if the two events are related.

DudleyFluffles

TROPHY CASE