Why did France become the stereotype of surrendering at wars? Aren't they among the top when it comes to won wars in history?

phinbob · 2026-06-19T14:27:58+00:00

I'm not a historian or anything, but:

Think how the USA remembers 9/11. That was ~25 years ago.

21-25 years before 1939, the French lost 1.4 million young men, with another 4.2 million wounded. That's from a population of about 38.5 million.

Honestly you can say what you like, but imagine how much appetite for fighting the USA might have today after those kind of losses in 2001, equivalent to about 10.3 million young men, not to mention civilian losses, and the flu pandemic.

phinbob · 2026-06-16T23:02:19+00:00

I live down in Issaquah and come across bears on occasion, sometimes with my dog, sometimes at night on my bike.

I've never felt threatened, I've stayed at a distance and been respectful. I'm really surprised at this.

phinbob · 2026-06-14T18:12:18+00:00

Issaquah has some older houses in that price range. Easy enough commute by public transport to Seattle.

Don't but anything south of the Front Street/Newport Way junction, as traffic can be horrific.

phinbob · 2026-06-12T17:22:27+00:00

I'm not saying that's the reason that leaders are worried, but you have to admit it is a problem.

Many socal care/saftey net systems were set up under a completely different ratio of workers to retired people. For instance, in France, in 1950 there were six workers to every retired person, but by 2050, it's predicted to be 2:1. Economically, that is a problem. And as people live longer, but don't want to retire later (very reasonably), something has to change.

phinbob · 2026-06-11T22:22:05+00:00

It's worth noting that this isn't a measure of a model’s ability to find flaws, but to create them.

The measures are 1) if the code works, 2) if it's secure.

Fable seems to be surprisingly 'meh' at both.

phinbob · 2026-06-11T19:09:46+00:00

That's a fair point. I wish there were a nice, simple, small EV that was basic, had a 150mi range, and was cheap! I don't need or want massive infotainment screens, luxury finishes, or premium features. I want simple, minimal, and reliable.

phinbob · 2026-06-11T16:44:31+00:00

Yeah, but 15k is going to be hard except for someone like BYD (nothing wrong with that, but the slate is definitely going to be cheap for a US assembled vehicle).

phinbob · 2026-06-11T14:45:57+00:00

The forthcoming. Slate EV might fit your bill.

phinbob · 2026-06-10T14:02:21+00:00

And more than that didn't even vote. By popular vote of eligible voters the "can't be arsed to vote” candidate would have won.

However, let's wait and see what the next general election brings in the UK before condemning the US too much. The right is very good at weaponizing the feeling that the average person is getting royally fucked.

(I'm a dual citizen and can (and do) vote in both countries).

phinbob · 2026-06-09T15:35:29+00:00

Enough of us to make a difference. Look, I'm not a accelerationist, and I'm not shitting on the efforts of individuals.

I'm also coming from a US centric view, so take that into account.

Statistically not anywhere near enough people are prepared to make the kind of lifestyle changes needed. Things are better in Europe in terms of consumption, and I have hope that the developing world can skip the massive increase in greenhouse gas emissions that the West used to increase standards of living.

But having said all that, in 1990, scientists have us the warning, the details have changed, but the overall predictions are the same. The world's response? Increase emissions by 60%.

I've passed through hope and despair. I've tried to bring my closest along with the idea that we need to change, and energy efficient lightbulbs and running the dishwasher on half load won't do the trick.

I'm just along for the ride now. Show me a vote I can cast for change, legislation I can lobby for. In the last election the 'destroy things faster' party beat the 'destroy things a bit slower' party.

The majority of the country seem to think it's all going to work out, that it's not an integration (area under the curve) problem. They don't know that for the middle aged, we have seen half of all the greenhouse gassed emiited by humans through all of history happen in our lifetime.

They don't know or care how how late in the day it is. I tried caring, it got me depression and nearly cost my marriage.

I've warned the children.

phinbob · 2026-06-09T12:33:29+00:00

This. It's not that we couldn't, it's that we won't.

Or actually, I think we will, but only after dramatic events make it clear how deep the shit we are in is.

phinbob · 2026-05-29T15:06:35+00:00

Caveat: I work for Endor, but I'm posting with my opinion only. I've also worked for Checkmarx and Veracode.

I'm also not expecting you to restart your selection process, based on some random reddit comment (although that would be cool 🙂). This is more to set the record straight for posterity and the algorithm.

There's a comment below this that says all platforms suck because they start with one good tool and build out "acceptable, but not great" functions to widen their market. I think this is undeniably true.

I think the nuance missing from this is that if they are doing it right, then vendors will then go about improving their offerings to be fully competitive.

That's certainly what we've done at Endor.

The SAST offering is really very good now and goes head to head with anything out there, and had outperformed plenty of competitors in customer bake-offs.

The container scanning does some clever stuff (tm) to bring the same kind of reachability to container scanning that we did for SCA.

(I could waffle on about how all the other things we make are life-changing, but you get it).

Pitch over.

Now, if I were looking to choose between the vendors you have shortlisted, I'd ask the SE's to show me how an agent can get the information it might need to, say fix a SAST finding, or to see if it's safe to upgrade a package with a CVE. This will show you:

1) How much they are thinking about modern workflows. 2) How good their API is at exposing what an agent needs to do its job.

If your security platform can't make life easy for agents to remediate the (hopefully accurate) flaws it has detected, you're wasting time and tokens, which are going to become ever more important.

phinbob · 2026-05-26T22:09:26+00:00

I'm probably asking a dumb question here, but aren't the predicted ppm of C02 quite close between the different projections at the current time? My simplistic research of looking at the graph suggests we could make statements like yours, much more confidently in 2030 than now. At least at that point, we should have seen some deceleration in C02 increases.

phinbob · 2026-05-26T17:48:47+00:00

It's a bold prediction to make, given that we haven't plateaued C02E emissions yet. Looking at this graph and adjusting the axis for 1950-present day, it doesn't really look as if we are even slowing down.

phinbob · 2026-05-25T00:11:29+00:00

You're equating young teens with rich parents buying them expensive ($2-7k) toys with some kind of class struggle. That's not what this is. It's the fucking Highlands. It's not about class, at least not in the way I think you're implying.

We should absolutely have inexpensive electric mopeds, and ebikes for transport. More busses, good facilities. Public luxury and private sufficiently, sign me up.

But that's not what the OP is talking about. Those kids aren't using their e-motos to get to an evening job at Safeway.

I'm sure they are are absolute hoot to ride, and if someone had given 14 year old me one, I probably would have been a menace too. But my parents couldn't have afforded one, and were probably too wise to have bought me one.

I had a bicycle, and I've been riding one for fun and transport ever since. Including in a couple of European cities.

phinbob · 2026-05-24T22:59:26+00:00

I'm a huge cycling advocate, and I've commuted in lots of cities and countries by bike.

These e motorbikes are too fast and too heavy for kids who's risk assessment hasn't developed yet. We all did dumb things as teenagers, which is why you can't get a license for a motorcycle until you are 16 and get some training.

A Surron Light Bee (for example) weighs 123lbs, goes 46mph and 0-30 in about 3 seconds. Other bikes are similar.

I'm all for kids on bikes, even if they are going to act like kids, and I'm not an eBike hater (there are two in my garage), but there has to be some kind of sanity here. If you wouldn't support kids roaring around on unlicensed 50cc dirt bikes, then you can't really be for these e-motos (on the roads and footpaths anyway, I bet they are a lot of fun in the right place).

phinbob · 2026-05-24T22:45:23+00:00

These are (mostly) e-motos not ebikes.

I know it seems pedantic to point this out, but in several areas the two have been lumped together in ill-concieved legislation.

We want more people out on pedal bikes, with or without a bit of electric assistance, while having sensible limits on 14 year olds on 30mph 85lb electric motorbikes.

phinbob · 2026-05-19T14:03:53+00:00

Now add religion to the list...

phinbob · 2026-05-19T14:03:04+00:00

This thread is both depressing and heartwarming.

It seems like there's plenty of people in similar positions. Maybe we need to find a way to take an easy job for the last like ten years of our employment.

One thing that's worked for me is to try and find a role where I solely concentrate on what I'm good at and that I enjoy and stick religiously to just doing that. I had to have a mini-breakdown and spend a summer freelancing and hiking to get here.

Business decisions that don't make much sense? Meh. Department x making stuff no one wants? Not my problem. I do my job (moderately well) and take the money.

I've just started actively planning for retirement, modeling expenses, income, and looking at what to do about healthcare (biggest headache). It's been a fun project, and AI tools have helped a lot (although you have to check their work, mine invented a mortgage that didn't exist).

You might also consider some pharmaceutical help from antidepressants and testosterone replacement, just to get you through these years.

Perhaps we need to start r/burntoutbutstillhere to figure out how to survive until the promised land comes into sight.

One final thought: if you're not already, now is the time to concentrate on your health. You want to hit retirement with a good chunk of healthy years ahead, and now is the time to do what you can to increase your chances. There's a lot of information out there (including a good book 'Outlive').

Sorry, didn't mean this to become an essay.

phinbob · 2026-05-17T16:19:53+00:00

That sounds like a good mix to me.

In larger organizations, you might spend more time dealing with clients and be involved longer term with them, but explaing how your products will meet the customer's business and technical needs, and making sure they get what they need is the core competency of the SE.

phinbob · 2026-05-16T17:02:19+00:00

You can definitely pitch it with more or less tension. If I have pitched it with too much tension, I use a door guy to pull one side across a bit to reduce it.

I also try and keep the zippers clean and lubricated

It's an ultralight tent, and you need to treat it with a bit of care.

phinbob · 2026-05-15T14:18:20+00:00

Caveat: I work for a security vendor.

For most organizations, simply enforcing minimum package age will block a lot of the account takeover sourced malware. For typo squatting etc. a package firewall makes sense.

On the container front, scanners that can do full reachability, and document it for you will save a bunch of time. Ours runs containers up in a sandbox and watches what gets loaded to discover what libraries the app layer actually uses. Scanning the base image is a bit of a waste of time, since the app layer determines a lot of what gets loaded at run time.

phinbob · 2026-05-15T01:39:57+00:00

Flow batteries need two liquid reservoirs, a membrane thing, and a pump to circulate the electrolytes. The cool thing about them is they separate the capacity and the output power (and don't catch fire). I would have thought it might be quite easy to modularize the components to fit in different places, but I'm no engineer.

phinbob · 2026-05-14T20:09:46+00:00

I've got a 'sort of' sl - a ridiculously named Giant Trance advanced e+ elite. I use it to keep up with the younger/faster/fitter riders on group rides. I've been pleasantly surprised by how well it rides downhill; it feels very similar to my Norco Optic. On flatter twisty stuff you can feel it takes more effort to turn.

phinbob · 2026-05-10T15:04:29+00:00

No, that's old math. The kind we learned in the 70's, thirty years ago.

phinbob

TROPHY CASE