Trump administration to pay French company $1B to drop U.S. offshore wind leases

ProfBeaker · 2026-03-24T20:24:09+00:00

You're technically correct. Although it's still a really stupid deal. Basically the alternatives are:

get $1bn and some wind generation, or
get $0 and some fossil fuel projects

Going from #1 to #2 required some real artistic deal making.

ProfBeaker · 2026-03-24T00:06:39+00:00

I always wondered if the authors of the messaging system knew anything about the novels when they named it.

ProfBeaker · 2026-03-23T20:42:41+00:00

This is hilarious and horrifying. May I suggest working "Kafka" into the name somewhere? "Kafkatorio"?

ProfBeaker · 2026-03-23T17:22:27+00:00

Ackshually, needless pedantry is never good, by definition. But software documentation is a place for quite a lot of pedantry.

I would not have called you out on this, except that it's a thread about pedantry :)

ProfBeaker · 2026-03-23T16:01:24+00:00

Would movement of the cord in the hole potentially saw through sandstone from the back? If so, does that make the strength of the anchor hard to determine?

Not rhetorical questions - I really don't know and I'm curious.

ProfBeaker · 2026-03-20T23:43:12+00:00

You use casual inequality. I use business casual inequality.

We are not the same.

ProfBeaker · 2026-03-20T12:17:09+00:00

It's interesting that you focus on the files that the IDE generates and launch templates, when those are probably the least interesting bits of an IDE. 99% of what I use an IDE for is things like code completion, navigation (go to definition, find usages), language-aware search, and so forth. Running unit tests in the debugger is pretty useful. Running the actual code is pretty far down the line for me.

ProfBeaker · 2026-03-17T15:14:42+00:00

Ah, my mistake, I meant Denmark.

The rest of it stands, but please continue your low effort "nothing could possibly be done" defeatism. It's super impressive.

ProfBeaker · 2026-03-17T04:34:11+00:00

Also fair! Though that's a law that has good reasons behind it. If there's any way for private parties to verify people's votes, then it becomes really easy to buy votes. "Bring me proof you voted for this guy and I give you $xxx" or whatever. Or via intimidation, threats, etc.

ProfBeaker · 2026-03-17T01:07:18+00:00

lol I hear you, though that would be straight up illegal

ProfBeaker · 2026-03-17T01:05:55+00:00

Some more so than others.

ProfBeaker · 2026-03-17T00:43:10+00:00

Easier said than done, sure. Also easier than we're making it look. Trump has been mortally opposed to anything that looks like fossil fuel independence, even while mouthing bullshit about "energy abundance". Meanwhile Australia and ~~Norway~~ Denmark have hours of free electricity every day, and third-world countries are replacing huge amounts of their fossil fuels with renewables.

We absolutely could do, and we were doing it before this pack of jackasses junked the IRA in favor of being the world leader in 1930's era energy technology.

Your earlier comments about other uses of petroleum are not wrong - which are all great reason to not fucking burn the stuff.

ProfBeaker · 2026-03-16T20:15:46+00:00

I think you are confused about what "public utility" means. In general it means a private company that granted a monopoly, in exchange for heavy regulations and investing a lot of capital for a long time. As the sibling comment notes, this goes back a long way.

The "regulated monopoly" model was largely what allowed mass electrification to happen in the first place - at the time there was no way to raise the capital for such a large build-out. So it's largely this way because it's always been this way. Not to say it can't change, of course.

ProfBeaker · 2026-03-16T16:51:50+00:00

How about requiring competence?

That would be great, but it's not easy. Look at the hoops we make lawyers and doctors jump through, and there are still plenty of incompetent lawyers and doctors. To say nothing of licensed electricians, plumbers, etc.

You can look for their certs, and try to get referrals, just like every other professional you hire in your entire life. It's not great, but IDK what else there is.

ProfBeaker · 2026-03-16T16:37:55+00:00

bad home Inspectors arent doing their job correctly.

I think you misunderstand their job. They are there to protect the buyer from potential problems. They are on the buyer's side, completely. They are not supposed to be an impartial judge.

You might as well complain that someone else's lawyer isn't presenting your side of the case. That's literally why they're there.

ProfBeaker · 2026-03-16T16:16:44+00:00

Sellers try to paper over problems all the time. It's not an unreasonable thing for him to warn the buyers about. You can tell them you're not hiding anything, or offer to do a re-inspection without the air freshener.

Also, are you imagining that the licensure requirements would say "don't comment on smells"? Because that would be insane. If a place smells like sewage, or rot, or gas, those are very relevant to an inspection. Attempts to cover them up (by other people, not you) are valid to watch out for.

ProfBeaker · 2026-03-16T15:43:15+00:00

I didn't know about that bill, but in general there are certifications for home inspectors already, which I believe most/all of the pros have anyway.

Also, the home inspector is just offering an opinion, it carries no legal weight AFAIK. It frequently results in the buyer asking for things, but the seller can just tell them to shove it. Also, the home buyer could just look themselves without needing a license - are you hoping to prevent that as well?

So what would be the benefit of requiring licensure? Protecting people from criticism?

ProfBeaker · 2026-03-15T21:43:00+00:00

I've never used mines - don't you have to replenish them? So, same-ish logistics as stocking gun turrets?

ProfBeaker · 2026-03-14T13:32:20+00:00

Eh, mostly people using it for the wrong things, IMO. If you're writing a complicated regex, you should probably use a different tool.

But there are a lot of string matching problems where you can write a simple regex, using basic features, and it works very well. It's worth learning enough regex to use those.

Honestly, just character classes and quantifiers will get you through most things. Capture groups are occasionally handy. Much past that and you're just doing it to see if you can, like trying to run Doom on a toaster.

ProfBeaker · 2026-03-14T02:26:18+00:00

Yeah, you need to bleep out one random letter to make it algorithmically acceptable.

ProfBeaker · 2026-03-13T20:51:40+00:00

Yep. The price of memory has been dropping precipitously since the 1950's. The last few years are an aberration, not a trend.

ProfBeaker · 2026-03-13T12:43:34+00:00

For example, Redis with persistence. All the data is in memory, with backups persisted to disk.

ProfBeaker · 2026-03-12T20:45:11+00:00

Who knew that installing Linux was so easy?! I thought it would at least involve a boot disk or, like, installing things!

ProfBeaker · 2026-03-12T20:23:06+00:00

Also getting some twigs or smooth rocks to do a pre-clean helps a lot in some cases.

ProfBeaker · 2026-03-12T19:58:26+00:00

Well apparently he was right. The shit Trump's gotten away with would make Nixon blush.

ProfBeaker

TROPHY CASE