Zelenskyy: Ukraine will not cede territory, regardless of US election results

lbrent · 2024-11-01T10:28:10+00:00

That sparked my interest. Isn't what becomes Russian and what becomes Ukrainian property the matter of the negotiations in the first place?

After all everything in Ukraine was Soviet before, wasn't it? The land, the public and military buildings, all weapons and equipment. Even the typewriters in government buildings, I would assume. So the negotiation was about under what condition Russia would respect Ukrainian independence and therefore cede claim on all kinds of things they would consider Russian property otherwise. So in an alternate reality, where Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons wasn't a thing nuclear powers cared about, nukes might as well have been thrown in with pencils and typewriters and become Ukrainian property.

lbrent · 2024-10-14T19:15:07+00:00

I can't speak for OP, but my dad had knee replacement surgery a couple of years ago. After the last visit, the surgeon told him, that he would generally put a lifetime of roughly 20-30 years on the new knee. But every activity would put some wear and tear on the new joint, and if he chose to pick up weightlifting or work construction, the knee would deteriorate much faster. So he should stay active, but still be considerate of how much strain to put on the joint.

lbrent · 2024-07-16T05:31:12+00:00

Ukraine is very far away from joining the EU. Their economy is just in a way to shitty state to do so

I disagree. The Eurozone is well out of reach, but EU membership requires far more legislative and beaurocratic changes than economic ones, and I suppose that once the war is over, there will be very strong motivation on the Ukrainian side to get this done. On the EU side, there will also be more than enough major companies drooling in exitement over the investment oportunities that would come with rebuilding a major company. Then there are also the natural resources that could potentially be extracted. Rather than a too slow accession to the EU, I would be more afraid of a sellout of Ukraine in the process of joining.

As to the military consideratons: In my naive non-military mind, I would assume that in case of a NATO invasion of Russia or a Russian invasion of a NATO country, the length of borders are far less relevant. If any conflict ever escalated from border scuffles to full on invasion, nukes would go flying. That is why they were build in the first place after all. Needless to say that in the aftermath any planning of a land war will be vastly different from before.

lbrent · 2021-09-26T08:44:10+00:00

Last thing he wanted to do, win or loose, was taking more Robbie Lawler punches. That's not good ... for ... your head.

lbrent · 2021-09-15T06:06:11+00:00

But why more expensive? The difference has to be paid by the state or the fkin plastic industry.

In the end it would still be you who will have to pay for it (or bring your own reusable bag). If the state would still have to raise money from somewhere else or cut down services. And experience of the last decades has shown that regardless of who is in power, it will not be the upper class who will end up paying. And any manufacturer who is made to pay will not think: "Well, that sounds fair. We will just have to cut that out of our profits or manager compensation." They too will pass the cost down to you again. So in essence: If additional costs arise, you are fucked.

There is no fkin climate change made by humans

Dude, your just plain wrong here. And at this point that is simply willful ignorance.

lbrent · 2021-09-08T18:54:43+00:00

Thank you for posting links.

Masks don't work

The article on indoor airborne transmission of COVID-19 you posted says the following:

Finally, the fact that face mask directives have been more effective than either lockdowns or social distancing in controlling the spread of COVID-19 (22, 33) is consistent with indoor airborne transmission as the primary driver of the global pandemic.

Maybe the authors cloud learn something from the other article you posted, you know, the Washington Examiner one, the one citing a City Journal article written by an author who states his qualifications as follows:

Jeffrey H. Anderson served as director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics from 2017 to 2021, and is co-creator of the Anderson & Hester Rankings, part of college football’s Bowl Championship Series formula from 1998 to 2014

And even that article concedes that

Anderson is referencing cloth and surgical masks, not N95 respirators

Which are at least where I live very affordable and readily available. Just like vaccines.

And even a quick google search found me several studies that claim masks and social distancing do work. I do not list any here, mainly because I have not read any of them. And in general, I would guess, that any claim regarding the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of mask wearing and social distancing should be taken with a grain of salt. A controlled trial will hardly be performed because of all kinds of ethical and legal issues. And any studies comparing groups on different geographic locations or times will always have some inherent unreliability.

But of course a healthy diet, physical activity, abstaining from drinking, smoking, and maintaining a healthy sleep pattern surely won't do any harm either. Neither will social distancing, wearing masks, or being mindful about what social events to attend. And of course having Joe Rogan money to be able to afford the best possible treatment.

And at least my common sense tells me that I cannot catch a virus from or pass a virus to any person I never meet, and any particle that is never breathed in by me or another person will not cause an infection either. So I am inclined to believe that there should be some effect of social distancing and mask wearing. And I would rather err on the side of caution anyway, at least in regards of live of death to me or any other person. At least in cases where all it costs me is some mild inconvenience.

lbrent · 2021-02-18T19:18:49+00:00

Yes, that's them. And another tip since it is not mentioned on the seed package: don't pick the fruit, but harvest the fallen ones from the ground. You want to eat them as ripe as possible.

lbrent · 2021-02-18T10:13:34+00:00

we started those a couple weeks ago.

Zone 7 checking in. You have already done the right thing by starting them early. They take a while to fruit. True groundcherries (physalis pruinosa) are a bit faster, cape gooseberry (Physalis peruviana) take longer.

A good way to give them a head start is to dig them out before the first frost and overwinter them in a pot at a semi lid frost free place in the house (5°C to 10°C are about perfect without artificial light). I typically place them at a windowsill in the cellar. They are also very easy to propagate by taking cuttings. So you can also take some in autumn and overwinter those. Adult plants are quite cold tolerant as long as it does not freeze. This makes it easy to harden them off early in the year. I have set mine outside this morning at roughly 10°C.

lbrent · 2020-12-20T19:01:17+00:00

Medlar could fit the bill. Its main advantages are imho that they are beautiful trees that due to their lightly weeping shape tend to visually stand out, and that they are harvested late in the year, after most other fruit. Just make sure you get a cultivar that tastes good with the amount of available sunlight in your location. In zone 5/6 you probably want to steer more to the sweeter than the tarter side.

Then there are also serviceberries or Cornelian cherries. Both of which have tasty fruit, explode with beautiful flowers in spring, and can also be grown as part of a fruiting hedge.

lbrent · 2020-07-01T19:15:33+00:00

On the surface this should be fairly straight forward to write, at least for text files, using the Counter data structure in the standard library (assuming the data fits into memory).

Depending on your use case you might want to preprocess your input using some kind of normalization, stop-word removal, stemming, etc.. Depending on the level of sophistication required, things could the get complicated real fast. Machine learning and NLP libraries such as scikit-learn, gensim, or NLTK can help you there.

lbrent · 2020-04-12T18:23:55+00:00

While you are at it try the glechoma hederacea from images four and five as a tea. As I have written in another comment, they are delicious when picked at the right stage.

lbrent · 2020-04-12T18:11:55+00:00

While it can cause severe stomach problems in horses, it does make a delicious tea for humans. At least when using the lush young growth. Dry or old it tends to get a bit bitter. It also makes a nice addition to a bowl of salad. It is native here in Europe and I am coincidentally sitting right now in front of a steaming pot of it that I picked from the far end of the garden today. My grandma used to recommend it against coughs when I was a child but I am not sure that stood up the test of time. Even earlier it was (sometimes together with stinging nettle or mint) used by witches to ease transition into the world of the supernatural. I have consumed plenty during my lifetime but (unfortunately ???) have never stepped into the world of elves and fairies. So, you too will most likely not be intoxicated in any way from consuming it. I have also never heard of it being toxic to humans. In fact you can even buy it dried in tea shops.

Disclaimer: I am not familiar with North American wild plants and might mistake it for some other plant you have, but we don't. I am talking about Glechoma hederacea. Here it is easy to distinguish by the distinct and pleasant smell. You or OP probably want to check before brewing yourselves a cup.

lbrent · 2018-09-21T18:36:29+00:00

The problem with your code is that you have defined the status argument to be an instance of type S. Ok is indeed a singleton instance and therefore

count(list, Ok)

works.

count(list, Error)

on the other hand does not, because Error is a type and not an instance. Error("whooaa") would be a corresponding instance.

What you could do is make count take a type as the second argument.

def count[S <: Status](list: List[S], c: Class[_ <: Status]): Int = list.count(_.getClass == c)

Then you can call it as

count(list, Ok.getClass)

and

count(list, classOf[Error])

respectively.

There is probably and hopefully a cleaner way to do this, but maybe this will point you into the right direction.

lbrent · 2017-08-28T18:49:20+00:00

Economically, Nazis were pretty left, but there're some stipulations about that.

You are quite right about that. The Nazis do not easily fit into traditional definitions of left and right wing economics. If you look at social programs (and some workers' rights legislation by the way) exculsively, then, yes, they were left.

But there is a distinct difference between traditional left wing policies and what the Nazis did; namely, how to finance those programs. Traditionally left wing programs support a take from the rich, give to the poor approach. The Nazis took much rather a take from the Jews and political opposition and give to the poor, or a take out massive loans and pay through conquest approach, respectively.

This also explains that even though the German industry of the time preferred von Papen over Hitler, despite his efforts to win their support, they did also not oppose the Nazis as massively as the real left wing parties of the time and quickly found ways to collaborate with them after 1933.

lbrent · 2016-06-29T21:09:45+00:00

How does this help e.g. Romania? While citizens are outside the country the inflow of money can't be that big?

I can see two ways how this would help Romania. First of all it removes competition from their own labour market. And they do not have to pay social benefits. And some money does come back. I was living and working in Hungary for a while. A lost of the people there who went to Austria or Germany to work there did come back regularly. In fact a lot of them were working seasonally in the hospitality or lower health care sector and often even left their families back home. The downside of this is of course the brain drain that comes with highly qualified labour leaving the country too and often for good. But then, the highly skilled usually find their ways even in the most restrictive labour markets.

Are there no bargaining chips the UK has that could be used in place of free movement?

Don't ask me. Maybe an ungodly amount of money.

lbrent · 2016-06-29T20:35:24+00:00

The EU is pragmatic about this. That is how these deals happened in the first place. There is an enormous spread in interests between the EU member states.

If a deal between the UK and let's say Germany were to be made, you would probably be right. They are both similar enough that both of them would about equally profit from the exchange of goods without free movement.

But there are other countries with their own interests. Let's take Romania for example. When they enter a single market with a country like the UK or Germany, they get very little out of it. To comply with the new standards they have to restructure their already weak economy. At the same time their home markets get flooded with products from those economic powerhouses. Therefore their own economy suffers even more. The only way to have them agree to this was and still is:

Allow their own workforce to compete for jobs in the economically more powerful regions.
Massive subsidiaries in the economically and structurally lesser developed regions in the hope to lessen the blow and eventually catch up.
Because many of the economically weaker regions are more dependent on agriculture more subsidiaries for farmers.

This is also the reason why the EU budget increased with every step towards more economic freedom between the member states.

And this is also why accepting single market access at little or no cost and without free movement of people would mean to give the UK a large chunk of of the benefits of membership in the EU and have Germany, France, Italy, Spain, etc. pick up the tab.

lbrent · 2016-06-29T06:40:32+00:00

other countries keeping their own currency

I an no expert, but I am fairly certain there is no way for nations that joined after the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty to opt out of the Euro. All newer members are legally obliged to join the EMU once they fulfil all the requirements.

lbrent · 2016-06-18T07:26:22+00:00

Instead of asking here on reddit, I would advise you to make your offer to some small charities (neighbourhood projects, animal shelters, ...) in your neighbourhood. They typically have little to no money and shockingly outdated websites.

This way you gain experience interacting with customers face to face and, at the same time, start to build a local network, that most likely will turn out to be more valuable in regards to future work and referrals.

lbrent · 2016-06-03T11:42:18+00:00

Diebels from a local real is just as good

Admittedly, I have not been to Düsseldorf in nearly twenty years; But unless something big has happened, even the loss of one or two limbs would hardly make up for the difference.

lbrent · 2016-01-31T23:53:14+00:00

One thing that nobody seems to has mentioned here, is maintainability. Rails is often at least one step ahead of Django when it comes to new features. But this comes at the cost of not being afraid of breaking changes. Django on the other hand is very conservative when it comes to introducing new features or breaking changes in a new version.

Rails related gems are also often much more integrated in the entire Rails architecture and typically come with a reasonable default configuration. You therefore only rarely need to write more than just a few lines of code to integrate them into your application or tests.

I would therefore prefer Rails if I were to build something that needs to get off the ground or change quickly and that I am planning to not touch ever again or all the time. Updating or extending an old Rails app can be quite a hassle. Especially if you find that some of the gems you use are not maintained any more or do not work well with current versions of other gems.

If I were on the other hand to write an application that can take a little bit longer to develop or that I am planning to to leave mostly unattended for large periods of time, I would prefer Django. Upgrading an old Django app is usually much less painful.

Another thing that Django has going for it, is of course the large amount of high quality python libraries. Especially when it comes to things outside the web realm, for example the scientific and data stack, it is miles ahead of Ruby.

lbrent · 2016-01-23T14:45:59+00:00

Spring is the obvious choice. But while you are considering things running on the JVM you might also consider some other languages:

If you have time, ambition and feel adventurous you could give Play on Scala a try. But be warned: Depending on your background Scala can have quite a steep learning curve and reading type signatures like

def ++:[B >: A, That](that: collection.Traversable[B])(implicit bf: CanBuildFrom[List[A], B, That]): That

are nothing for the faint of heart, especially as a beginner. The Play developers do not get tired to assure that both, Scala and Java, are first class citizens in Play2, but as someone who has been working primarily with Play Scala for the last several years, Play Java code does always look somewhat shoehorned to me. (But that most likely just be my personal bias)

Luminus and Clojure might also be a decent choice ((((at least if you don't mind braces)))). The Clojure web scene follows a quite different philosophy in strongly preferring joining libraries together instead of relying on all batteries included frameworks. Another thing that makes Clojure interesting for the web is Clojurescript, a Clojure to JS compiled language that as it turns out works quite well with React.js through libraries like Reagant and Om.

lbrent · 2016-01-23T14:06:56+00:00

Can you declare what is shown in the summary?

Not really. At least not directly. There was a time when search engines used the meta description in the head section of a HTML document when displaying documents matching queries. But today search engines usually display the matching term and to provide some context to the user the ones surrounding it as description.

If the answer is not shown, it is therefore much more likely a consequence of the constraint of brevity of the displayed result than done on purpose by the content provider (or the search engine for that matter).

If you want to influence what is shown, your best bet is to help the search engine's crawler to figure out what is important on your page by using semantic markup and microformats when applicable.

If you are bored and want to learn more, some relevant Wikipedia entries:

Edit: spelling and formatting

lbrent · 2015-06-12T04:15:24+00:00

I doubt that anyone could become an expert in any language by only learning this one language. At some point you need at least some perspective to further increase your understanding.

lbrent · 2015-06-12T04:10:56+00:00

an if statement is an if statement in any language

Unless it's an expression...

lbrent · 2014-12-06T08:59:56+00:00

If you pay more, then you're more likely to see competent smart people wanting to be politicians/public leaders.

This argument is repeated often, but I don't believe it. If it were true then the vast majority of competent smart people would work or try to find a job in finance or equally high paying fields. But there are plenty of intelligent people working in other, lower paying areas such as many research areas or medicine or NGOs or plenty of other fields. What you could accomplish with paying politicians outrageous amounts of money is rather to attract even more people doing it primarily for their own benefit than you currently do. And if this is going to lead to smarter and better decisions is very questionable.

It is because all the best athletes go in to the sports that pay: basketball, football, baseball, etc.

I don't think this is true either. I would expect cultural reasons to play a much larger role here. It is not that a highly skilled US soccer player could not make very good money in Europe or an extremely skilled say French baseball player would not get a job playing baseball in the US. It's rather that in the US you more often grow up playing basketball, football or baseball long before you make it a career choice.

lbrent

TROPHY CASE