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marsovo

This sounds exactly like what people were saying right up to February 2022: it doesn't make sense, Russia won't invade Ukraine, Russia has enough land, it is geopolitical suicide. And yet, here we are!

And does it really seem like the USA is going to come to the rescue if Russia pushes into the Baltics? Heck at this point they may very well use the distraction to invade Greenland.

So what's the deterrent but for Europe to buy its own umbrella?

When it was raining yesterday, and people with weather experience say "it might rain tomorrow", do you insist umbrellas should be left at home because it's just speculation?

Except in this scenario it's still raining as we speak. What data do you have that Russia will stop?

Is there data in 2021 that would have led you to think Russia would attempt an outright invasion of Ukraine?

Is it really so outlandish to think that Russian irredentism[0] will continue?

Food for thought from 2014(!): https://youtu.be/HLAzeHnNgR8

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_irredentism

Re:The polar vortex is hitting the brakes on Sunday March 23, 2025 @11:34AM (#43453610)
Macroeconomics is very different from microeconomics. Your spending is my income and my spending is your income. If the government spends a dollar, where does it go?

Presumably it goes to some sort of goods and services. The employees pay income taxes. The businesses pay corporate taxes. And so on.

Similarly, when a business lays off 10,000 people, it's not their problem anymore. Whereas from a macroeconomic policy perspective, "everybody" is the government's responsibility.

I see what you mean, but ACID is a fairly foundational expectation for SQL transactions (D being the relevant feature here)

That being said, my background is primarily Microsoft SQL more than Postgres. As such I'm occasionally bemused at the sort-of monoculture here around Postgres, where if Postgres doesn't have it, it may as well not exist*.

And so it is in this case (the DELAYED_DURABILITY documentation I linked above). Alas, this doesn't seem to be something I see in standard SQL, so indeed, as you say, it's too bad that the standard doesn't provide for relaxing the rules.

Relatedly, the other interesting thing is the chatter about fsync. I know on Windows that's not the mechanism that's used, and out of curiosity I looked deeper into what MS-SQL does on Linux, and indeed they were able to get significant improvement by leveraging similar mechanisms to ensure the data is hardened to disk without a separate flush (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43443703). They contributed to kernel 4.18 to make it happen.

> The repeated use of a write request followed by a flush request may be detrimental to performance and will increase traffic on the I/O bus.

> Prior to the Linux Kernel 4.18 updates, Linux could use Fua but only for the file system journaling writes and not data writes.

> If your system supports Fua and you have the Linux Kernel 4.18 or newer updates, you can enable SQL Server trace flag -T3979 and use /opt/mssql/bin/mssql-conf set control.alternatewritethrough 0. SQL Server will use Fua write behavior patterns instead of Forced Flush. File systems supporting optimized Fua align SQL Server on Linux with SQL Server on Windows behavior and performance.

*I think performance of CTEs/Views is another topic where I noticed it, where it was just taken as given that they can hurt performance, whereas in T-SQL they are simply equivalent to subqueries

I looked into this some more. There are other ways than explicit fsync. See this blurb on FUA (which basically treats the I/O as write-through)

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/sqlserver/sql-serve...

More from kernel.org: https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/block/writeback_cache...

I'm not sure we're using the same terminology. Committed means the transaction has been hardened to disk. That's the D in ACID.

Otherwise, is the suggestion that there be an artificial delay to allow other transactions to piggyback before returning success on commit 1?

Should that be a default? (That was the context of this thread)

Sure, but now when transaction 1 is "committed", it isn't actually guaranteed to be there in the face of interruption. That's a big change to the default behavior...
Sure, but the comment I responded to was lamenting that the commits are not asynchronous by default. The documentation I linked to was all about the considerations and behavior for asynchronous commits.
How would that work without risking loss of committed transactions?

> Fully durable transaction commits are synchronous and report a commit as successful and return control to the client only after the log records for the transaction are written to disk. Delayed durable transaction commits are asynchronous and report a commit as successful before the log records for the transaction are written to disk. Writing the transaction log entries to disk is required for a transaction to be durable. Delayed durable transactions become durable when the transaction log entries are flushed to disk.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/l...

Re:NASA Whoosh Rocket on Friday March 21, 2025 @08:37AM (#43434903)
More context on the external tank: https://archive.is/2017.03.30-030831/https://www.nasa.gov/mi...

> The common soda can, a marvel of mass production, is 94% soda and 6% can by mass. Compare that to the external tank for the Space Shuttle at 96% propellant and thus, 4% structure. The external tank, big enough inside to hold a barn dance, contains cryogenic fluids at 20 degrees above absolute zero (0 Kelvin), pressurized to 60 pounds per square inch, (for a tank this size, such pressure represents a huge amount of stored energy) and can withstand 3gs while pumping out propellant at 1.5 metric tons per second. The level of engineering knowledge behind such a device in our time is every bit as amazing and cutting-edge as the construction of the pyramids was for their time.

Re:Hidden Messages in Emojis and Hacking the US Treasury on Monday March 17, 2025 @05:53PM (#43393105)
PHP has grown up but in its wild youth was notorious for such gems as mysql_escape_string vs mysql_real_escape_string, rather than proper parameterization

It's not so much about Turing as it is libraries and patterns

After all, as I understand it this very issue was caused by escaping SQL rather than parameterizing it

Yes, you're right. I wasn't able to double-check as the repo was deleted at the time. That said, AIUI making the tags read-only would still often be vulnerable to semantic-version exploitation.
I don't think that's exactly what happened here: the compromise created new tags but generally the tag consumption relies on semantic versioning

In other words: you specify version 44, the attacker creates 44.1, you're still hosed.

Re:In S3 simplicity is table stakes on Friday March 14, 2025 @10:18PM (#43369348)
Erm, most file systems allow you to change data too, right? Hence S3 is emphatically not a file system.
Re:In S3 simplicity is table stakes on Friday March 14, 2025 @10:15PM (#43369333)
Here's the link to that https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40304666

Moral of the story: the "technical part" of things is not the end of the story

Alternative moral: The 3-2-1 backup rule of thumb is still alive and well (is your cloud account a single point of failure?)

Related: https://www.infoworld.com/article/2179073/murder-in-the-amaz...

Not to mention removal of the alternatives in favor of GPS, e.g. shutting down VOR beacons (see e.g. https://www.flightaware.com/squawks/view/1/24_hours/popular/...)
Can you point us to which part of that can deal with the scenario in question?

> What stops a malicious actor from recording the signals coming off the satellites and replaying them louder with a delay?

Re:Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI on Friday March 07, 2025 @07:24PM (#43296287)
I don't think it's wrong to blame people who make life more difficult for others for their own aggrandizement

The game doesn't exist without players. I could make more money if I worked at Meta or Amazon, but at what cost?

I understand the realities of Game Theory, but then one could argue that being blamed and criticized for one's choices is also part of the game. "Mr Wolfcastle, how do you sleep at night?" "On a big pile of money with many beautiful ladies"

Re:Atlanta Fed predicts -2.8% GDP on Monday March 03, 2025 @04:07PM (#43246713)
It depends on what the broader economy is doing

Is government spending crowding out private investment? (Is the private sector competing with the government for employees?). If so then GDP should increase

Is unemployment high? Then probably it would hurt GDP, but that depends on interest rates. If interest rates are very low, then there's very little cost to having excess employees being paid by the government: indeed presumably you can find something else useful for them to do. If interest rates are high, then the government is paying a heavy rate to subsidize these now-redundant employees. That's stagflation, which is essentially economic hard mode.

For example, what a waste it was during the Great Recession, when interest rates were basically zero, to have people unemployed instead of doing something useful, like maintaining or upgrading infrastructure. Alas!

As I understand it, the trial was about whether or not providing the database schema is a security risk.

> Your request seeks a copy of tables or columns within each table of CANVAS. The dissemination of these pieces of network information could jeopardize the security of the systems of the City of Chicago.

Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43175628

Re:Zelensky leaves White House after angry meeting on Saturday March 01, 2025 @11:58PM (#43227492)
What evidence have you seen that this was somehow instigated by China, and not Russian ethnic nationalism/imperialism for its own sake? Remember that this started well before 2022. This is a recap and prescient analysis from 2014: https://www.fpri.org/article/2014/05/putins-greater-novoross...

And you can see a premature declaration of victory along similar lines from the Russian state media, which was then taken down when Ukraine did not in fact fold in three days: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-60562240. You can see the archive.org capture of the original article linked there if you wish to see the primary source.

Yes, their GDP is weak (nevertheless, Russia persists). No, it doesn't make any sense if you look at it through a normal Western lens, which is why there was widespread disbelief that Russia was to imminently invade Ukraine. But, as the saying goes, "Russia can't be understood by the mind alone"

Re:Zelensky leaves White House after angry meeting on Saturday March 01, 2025 @10:19PM (#43226883)
By that logic, the world should have just given Hitler everything he wanted too, right, because Germany leaving would never happen. The Soviet Union left Afghanistan when the costs got too high. So did the US. Under what basis do you aver that Putin leaving Ukraine can never happen?

There is a legitimate debate as to what cost is worth paying, if any (as well as what cost comes from not doing anything - ask the Baltics), but to present the situation as fait accompli?

Re:GSA Eliminates 18F on Saturday March 01, 2025 @10:06PM (#43226789)
I once thought this was the solution too, then NYC's ranked-choice mayoral race gave it Eric Adams. Now I don't know. Maybe open primaries?
Re:Zelensky leaves White House after angry meeting on Saturday March 01, 2025 @09:25AM (#43219496)
Did Jeff Bezos enter your home and annex your attic?
Re:Zelensky leaves White House after angry meeting on Saturday March 01, 2025 @09:23AM (#43219481)
Not to take away from your accurate point about oil, but I think it's silly to say the "we're still in the cold war" crowd were out of touch in this of all threads.
Re:Zelensky leaves White House after angry meeting on Saturday March 01, 2025 @08:42AM (#43219133)
If someone is winning, it must mean someone else is losing (hence the "deal" sums to zero)

There is no comprehension that an agreement might actually benefit both sides

This is presumably why you hear such things as "Canada is screwing us for 200 billion dollars a year" because we buy things from them

Edit: you can see it in this thread, too. As though helping poor people could have no benefit to the rich

I've seen it with people complaining about paying taxes for public transit, even though they only drive a car. Bonus points if they complain about traffic in the same rant without ever putting 2-and-2 together

So change it afterwards. Good defaults are important. If someone doesn't change it, it's important that they be on the right path instead of...this one.

(See also: opt-in versus opt-out for retirement plans, organ donation...heck, even this from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43144611)

Might be a question of cause and effect. My neurologist theorized my migraines were triggered by microemboli leaking through a PFO (leak between left and right side of the heart: normally the lungs filter this stuff out)

PFO closed, migraines basically gone.

PFO can lead to stroke too for the same reason, and that's when it's usually closed, after a stroke. Not all migraines are caused by PFO. I went on blood thinners first for a year as a test.

Here's the long story version: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40895116

Re:How X-Plane Works on Wednesday February 19, 2025 @09:25AM (#43102460)
FSacademy has lesson packs that I've found pretty good for Microsoft Flight simulator. Though they are not super US-centric.

The built-in lessons are decent for the basics. The older flight simulator lessons with Rod Machado were much, much better. I had picked up FSX on Steam for cheap during some sale, and they are available digitally there. I've still used that for reference, and even though they obviously don't integrate interactively with the new Microsoft Flight simulator, you can still use them as ideas to practice skills.

If you decide to get serious about it, bite the bullet and get rudder pedals. In my opinion adding feet coordination is a much bigger adjustment than yoke versus stick or a fancier stick.

Also VR is truly a game changer. It requires beefy hardware and will ratchet up the cost, but it will seem downright cheap compared to real flight time.

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