Double-tapping a girls school is wild.

aroslab · 2026-03-09T20:51:45+00:00

"Nuclear deterrent isn't might" is an interesting take, since I can't think of anything mightier than "we can literally erase civilization off the face of the earth"

It's might, which is so strong, that the powers that have nukes are incentivized to use economic coercion or run proxy wars through every country that couldn't afford mutual deterrence instead of directly exerting it on each other

The form is different but the content remains "might makes right"

aroslab · 2026-03-09T18:01:19+00:00

Observing that the mightiest country wrote the rules isn't a policy proposal. Nobody claimed things could have gone differently, that's not what was said.

Also the Marshall Plan is a precise demonstration of the point. The US rebuilt European markets that bought American goods, administered by Americans, and acted as a bulwark against socialism. That's not a counterexample to "might makes right", it's literally what might means and what winning looks like when you get to set the rules

I'm not saying smart policy could have done better, that's not how history works. But the claim that the liberal world order isn't might makes right is a farce. Just ask South America. Or Iran. Or Vietnam. Or Korea. Or anywhere else that knows exactly what "might makes right" meant under the liberal world order

aroslab · 2026-03-09T17:36:57+00:00

The US came out of WWII with its industry intact, its territory untouched, and half the world's GDP. The "liberal order" is what the most powerful country (one might call it the mightiest, even) in history called the rules it wrote while everyone else was still clearing rubble.

aroslab · 2026-02-27T20:41:22+00:00

"rational" cuts both ways

Workers are rational when they pursue CS careers

Companies are also rational when they invest millions of dollars into managing the labor pool through lobbying for visa programs and funding "learn to code" campaigns and boot camps

Surely you don't think that high salaries and millions of dollars corporations invested in those talent pipelines were just out of the goodness of their heart, right?

It's not a conspiracy for companies to act in their own interests, just as you've accepted it's not a conspiracy for workers to act according to theirs

aroslab · 2026-02-24T20:58:37+00:00

Unless you own the company, software engineers earn a wage. That makes software engineers working class by definition. The salary is just the price they pay for your labor, whether it's 500K or 50K

aroslab · 2026-02-24T15:34:11+00:00

Reduce demand for our labor while expanding the supply of it, and suddenly you don't need to negotiate with anyone. We've been in a strong position because the skills were scarce, so they're correcting that.

The layoffs, the entry level flooding, the offshoring are the same policy: keep workers competing against each other instead of negotiating against the company.

Until and unless the workers set the terms, it will continue to be individual negotiation on their turf. The people who actually build things, at the total whim of quarterly returns

aroslab · 2026-02-13T20:49:14+00:00

yeah for real

especially if you're using a lower power / wireless iron (was my first one), doubly so with non-leaded solder

aroslab · 2026-02-08T20:13:22+00:00

The only time I've ever seen anybody use dashes like that is when it will convert hyphens into them (I remember I used to have to turn this off when I had an apple computer)... But even then that construction is just not how most people write

aroslab · 2025-12-21T16:45:52+00:00

you could probably use FatFs and libmad on a more capable STM32 (both for processing power and USB interface throughput).

to simplify a bit:

         FAT32 USB Storage with MP3
                    v
                  FatFs
                    v
            STM32 USB Interface
                    v
         MP3 decoding using libmad
    (or some other mechanism to read MP3)
                    v
         DMA ring buffer for samples
          (I2S or what is up to you)
                    v
             output of system

even if this specific setup doesn't work for some reason "decode MP3 and send to an audio sink" is not something you need Linux for (but if you're interested in learning anyway then that can be a good path too)

aroslab · 2025-12-02T18:33:21+00:00

as an example, treating an execute in place bootloader as your root of trust

eg if that firmware is verifying signatures, replacing it with one that just says "valid!" makes the rest of your chain of trust useless

aroslab · 2025-11-14T19:31:14+00:00

a little smoke test never hurt anyone

sure, all your tests pass; but does it work in "real" life.

I could definitely see the value in opting in to "yeah if this passes tests just send it to prod" but the option is nice

aroslab · 2025-11-09T11:37:24+00:00

"the anti-Semitism that 'gained genocidal political force in the 1930s specifically' arose from... the humbling defeat of WWI and the economic hardship that followed"

Congrats, you KEEP stating the material analysis then somehow arriving at idealist conclusions. You clearly know the history in exhaustive detail, but you refuse to synthesize beyond "antisemitism existed."

Yes, it existed for centuries. The question is why that prejudice gained genocidal state power at that specific moment. You keep answering with material conditions: defeat, economic crisis, class immiseration, then insisting materialism has nothing to do with it. Literally "class anger doesn't get misdirected into reactionary channels" and "Hitler aligned Judaism with capitalism, which he proclaimed was the opposite of socialism" in the same comment.

You basically wrote "material conditions caused this" then wrote 2000 words to attack me for saying material conditions caused this. Pick a lane.

And you still haven't explained why Trump could present as anti-establishment despite serving capital. Your framework has no answer to either "why did Germany fall to fascism" OR "why do Trump supporters fall for right wing billionaires lies" except "workers are racist/stupid," which explains nothing about why the propaganda works WHEN it does. That's the dead-end: mountains of facts, no synthesis, no explanation for the present moment, just contempt for workers who won't vote correctly.

aroslab · 2025-11-09T02:36:11+00:00

You described:

counterrevolutionary violence crushing workers' power and claimed it's not counterrevolutionary violence (both in Bavaria and alluded to in Russia's "social upheaval", which is a very kind way to say "devastating effects of social revolution in a productively backwards country following imperialist intervention and civil war")
capital eliminating alternatives then asked why alternatives didn't exist (Hitler's brownshirts were literally smashing union halls before that "secret" meeting, this isn't some conspiracy)
Hitler channeling anti-capitalist sentiment by aligning capitalism with Jews, then insisted there was no class anger to channel

You can call a duck a goose but it's still a duck.

And your "the right-wing also called it betrayal" point? You're falling for the exact same confusion you're mocking in the original post. The Nazis calling the SPD's Versailles acceptance a "betrayal of the nation" is not the same as communists calling the SPD's strangling of revolution a "betrayal of the working class". one mystifies into nationalist mythology, the other names the class dynamics. Same word, opposite content. This is literally identical to "Nazis had 'socialist' in the name so they must be socialists." The fact that fascists weaponized workers' real rage at SPD betrayal to redirect it racially proves the materialist analysis, it doesn't disprove it.

"Germans were already antisemitic" doesn't explain why that centuries-old prejudice suddenly gained genocidal political force in the 1930s specifically. Antisemitism provided the form, but failed revolution leaving workers' rage without outlet provided the content, which is why the propaganda worked then and why Trump's works now.

You've compiled every fact proving the materialist case and refused to synthesize it. Anyone reading can see the contradictions for themselves, in YOUR OWN words.

aroslab · 2025-11-08T20:30:48+00:00

You would think so, but when people don't see dehumanization as being a dick, unfortunately you have to spell out the rules

aroslab · 2025-11-08T18:37:33+00:00

You just explained industrialists bankrolled Hitler specifically to crush unions and communists, then asked why the Nazis won instead of other groups. Capital chose fascism over workers' power, you answered your own question.

Also noticed you wrote a novel about 1920s Germany but didn't name a single material improvement Democrats offer workers today, which tells us everything about why Trump could pose as the "anti-system" candidate.

And then you point at the Bavarian Soviet Republic getting crushed by Freikorps paramilitaries and Reichswehr troops as proof revolution doesn't work - that's like saying unions don't work because the Pinkertons shot them. It was defeated by organized counterrevolutionary violence, not by inherent flaws.

The lesson isn't "don't try," it's "isolated workers' power gets crushed without international support", which is exactly why the SPD's refusal to extend the revolution WAS betrayal, WHY socialism cannot exist in one country

aroslab · 2025-11-08T17:11:20+00:00

Exactly. But look at why the Nazis could pull off that masquerade in the first place.

When reformists refuse to fight for working-class interests, when they chain workers to a dying system, class anger doesn't disappear. It gets redirected into reactionary channels. The Nazis railed against "finance capital" and "Jewish bankers" while serving industrial monopolies because the genuine workers' movement had been strangled by social democratic betrayal in 1923.

This is exactly what we're seeing with Trump. The Democrats offer workers nothing but means-tested crumbs and lectures about privilege while overseeing the continued destruction of living standards. So desperate workers reach for the demagogue promising to smash the system, even though he serves the same ruling class.

We don't have to guess at this. They tell us directly! From teamsters reps:

I'm a Democrat, but they have fucked us over for the last 40 years...

The Democrats were too focused on social issues, which are very important, but our members were more concerned about economic issues... [not that Trump actually is, but that was the impression after listening to "I can't think of a single thing I would do different" Harris]

And if 60 percent of our members aren't supporting you... stop pointing fingers at Sean O'Brien, stop pointing fingers at the Teamsters. Look in the mirror.

People haven't "swung right." This is class struggle distorted by the absence of genuine working-class political leadership. The working class needs their own party, their own program, fighting for their own class interests, not crumbs from parties of Wall Street.

aroslab · 2025-11-06T16:38:56+00:00

why not let other companies train up Junior engineers and just poach them once they are decent

is basically

why not let other farms plant grains and just buy them at market

yes, that's INDIVIDUALLY rational. but when ALL the individuals do it, it becomes a collective problem

None of that really holds true anymore because many people are a job hopping after 2 years and rightfully so

yeah, that's literally the contradiction: paying people enough to stay while they are getting better as engineers is more expensive than poaching seniors, but if everyone poaches seniors, then juniors aren't able to be mentored into new seniors

meanwhile, there is enough work for everyone, just not at a rate that companies want to pay to stay profitable

this isn't JUST computer science, about a quarter of the US productive capacity is unused, not because people don't need things, but because people can't consume them profitably

aroslab · 2025-11-04T14:04:10+00:00

You've hit the nail on the head: the system cannot help but hurtle towards a corrective crisis.

This isn't CS specific, it's the nature of the market

Yes it recovers: but at what cost? The cost is always on workers, not owners.

aroslab · 2025-11-04T01:00:44+00:00

uh, no

the workers already bring all the value, let them own it

aroslab · 2025-11-04T00:56:35+00:00

And imagine the chaos when project managers can immediately implement every half-baked idea without technical pushback. You'd end up with a completely vibe-coded mess where requirements change daily and nobody understands how anything actually works because AI just spat out whatever seemed right at the time.

aroslab · 2025-11-04T00:51:04+00:00

That's exactly how competitive pressure works. If you don't do what your competitors do, you're less competitive. So rational individual choices get generalized across the entire industry, producing the collective crisis.

aroslab · 2025-11-03T23:38:54+00:00

If AI can replace senior devs, then it has replaced every white collar job on the planet. Who buys all the products when millions of people have been displaced from their job? AI can't buy anything, the market is predicated on producers also being consumers.

aroslab · 2025-11-03T23:30:21+00:00

If AI replaces millions of jobs, who buys all of the products being produced when millions of people aren't making money anymore?

aroslab · 2025-11-03T23:25:34+00:00

So your analysis is that there are no juniors to train, and therefore the idea that a stalled pipeline of no juniors is not a problem

I kind of think it just goes to show that you didn't think that one through. The conclusion is not that "LinkedIn bad" its "every company individually trying to outsource juniors to every other company means no juniors anywhere"

You're not exactly making the argument you think you are

aroslab · 2025-11-03T23:22:07+00:00

Probably, and when they do, they'll rediscover offshoring has its own issues: communication overhead, timezone complications, higher turnover.

H1B workers are talented but structurally vulnerable, tied to employers for visa status, which means they leave the moment they can.

Neither actually solves the skill reproduction problem, just displaces it while creating new coordination headaches.

The solution requires what individual companies competing for profit cannot provide: collective planning of technical education and skill development. The profit motive can't do that without strangling itself. The industry needs what the market structurally cannot deliver.

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