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pdonis

Re:How Do You Take a Picture of a Black Hole? on Friday October 30, 2026 @11:29PM (#50312954)
Sorry, I meant to say 3-ball bounded by a 2-sphere in Euclidean space. The edit window of my GP post is still open so I've fixed it.
Re:How Do You Take a Picture of a Black Hole? on Friday October 30, 2026 @09:57PM (#50312524)
> the mass density inside the event horizon

Is not a well-defined number. The number you are calculating assumes that the horizon is an ordinary 2-sphere enclosing an ordinary 3-ball [edited, see grandchild post] in Euclidean space, and divides the hole's mass by the calculated volume of that 3-ball. But the spacetime of a black hole doesn't work that way. The "space" inside the hole's horizon is not like any kind of ordinary space that your intuitions will work for.

Also, the interior of the hole is vacuum, so its mass is not something that's distributed throughout any kind of volume; it's just a geometric property of the spacetime.

Re:This I Believe on Friday October 23, 2026 @04:13PM (#50214669)
I haven't hand-waved anything away. I said there are cases where the people who do have skin in the game can't work things out among themselves. What you're describing is one case of that--those people can't even come to agreement about whether something needs to be done or not.

I did qualify my statement with the caveat that whether people looking in from the outside, who don't have skin in the game, think there's a problem that the people who do have skin in the game can't resolve among themselves, doesn't always match whether there actually is such a problem (a caveat which I could argue that you have hand-waved away). But I am not saying that all cases are like that.

What I am saying is that, even in the cases that aren't like that, the cases where the people who do have skin in the game really can't resolve a problem by working among themselves, that does not mean that reformers coming in from outside can do any better. I think such outside interventions, through human history, have a very poor track record of working. A quick summary of my point about conservatives and reformers would then be that conservatives recognize this unpleasant truth of human history, whereas reformers don't acknowledge it and are way, way too eager to make such interventions, and end up making things even worse.

Re:This I Believe on Friday October 23, 2026 @03:06PM (#50213886)
> they are wielded by busy-bodies who poke their nose at where it doesn’t belong

I never said that about conservatives; indeed, I said the opposite.

"Reformers", yes--but I don't think the label is one I just made up. I think what I said is true of most people that call themselves "reformers".

> Whereas for me the words describe what people are trying to do in practice, regardless of political labels.

Since this is exactly how I was defining the labels--by what the people do, not what political party they claim to belong to or support--I am confused about why you think you are doing something different.

Re:This I Believe on Friday October 23, 2026 @01:47PM (#50212782)
> You seem to be implying that no reformers have skin in the game though.

I'm only describing that case (for both reformers and conservatives), yes. Historically, that seems to be the most relevant case, at least if we want to talk in terms of size of human impact.

To put it another way: if the problem (if there is one--see further comments below) can be solved by the people who do have skin in the game working things out among themselves, the labels "reformer" and "conservative" don't even come into play. You just have people who have to find some way of working together, doing it. So the only cases where those labels even arise are the cases where the people who do have skin in the game can't work things out among themselves--or at least that the people looking in from the outside, who don't have skin in the game themselves, think so.

The term "reformer", historically, does have another meaning: people who have some grand idea for how society should be organized, observing that it currently is not organized that way, and treating that as a Problem even if others don't agree that it is. A "conservative" seeing that would just say, look, you can't just impose your own idea of how society should be on everyone else. But historically, "reformers" in such cases have always framed things in terms of there being a Problem that isn't just "society isn't the way I think it should be"--the workers are oppressed, or the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer, or whatever, and using that as an excuse to implement their ideas for the ideal society. Which has never worked out well.

Re:This I Believe on Friday October 23, 2026 @01:18PM (#50212372)
Now we're just quibbling over labeling. By "conservative" I mean the kind of conservative that the GP of my original post in this subthread said Heinlein was. If you want to use "conservative" to mean something else, well, then we're just talking past each other.
Re:This I Believe on Friday October 23, 2026 @01:16PM (#50212338)
I'm "excluding" both the reformer and the conservative from "people who have skin in the game". The difference is that the reformer wants to interfere with the people who do have skin in the game working out their own solution to the problem, but the conservative does not.
Re:This I Believe on Friday October 23, 2026 @11:05AM (#50210296)
> The conservative says “let’s wait and see”

No, the conservative says, even if there are problems, that doesn't mean everything is a problem, nor does it mean that you, looking in from the outside, can dictate a solution.

> the reformer says “we must change this now”.

No matter how much has to be burned down to do it. This mentality killed well north of 100 million people in the 20th century.

Conservatism is humility. Progressivism is hubris.

Re:This I Believe on Friday October 23, 2026 @11:04AM (#50210267)
You're misstating the alternatives. Most "obvious" problems do get worked out without intervention from outside parties who have no skin in the game. Some don't--but even in those cases, "change" driven by outside third parties who have no skin in the game almost never actually solves the problem. To paraphrase the programmer's saying about regular expressions, some people, whenever they see a problem, think, I know! We'll put a reform in place to fix it. Now they have two problems.
> every year "physical media & a Jellyfin install" is going to be more sensible.

Unless you just, you know, don't watch. Which is what I do. I ask myself, is it even worth all this hassle to watch this stuff? Is it that good? And for me, the answer is, no, it isn't. I can find better things to do with my time. So I do.

> The interests of the shareholders diverge quite strongly from the interests of electrical utility customers.

Unless the customers are the shareholders, as in a co-op. The article's data seems to show that co-ops provide the cheapest electricity, which makes sense because the owners are the same people as the users, so the incentives are aligned.

In the article, the associations that appear to be causing the most problems, at least in Florida, are condominium associations. So it might be worth reconsidering whether filling a "need" for such governance ends up being more trouble than it's worth--at least if it goes beyond just maintaining the common elements (which it seems like condo associations in Florida do).
> Management is governance.

Only in a very minimal sense. A management that is only empowered to maintain common areas of a community can't "govern" the community members except in the very narrow sense of enforcing whatever rules the community wants to have for the use of common areas. Which is just an aspect of the fact that the community as a whole owns the common areas and the owner makes the rules.

Such a management can't mess with community members about how often they cut their lawns, or what color they paint their house, etc. But that sort of micromanagement is what "governance" by HOAs ends up being when it goes beyond basic management of common areas.

> Jefferson, who would agree with you

No, he wouldn't, because he used "self-governance" to mean the thing that contradicts what it says on its face.

> It's not an oxymoron - it just comes with caveats.

The kind of "democratic" governance we actually have certainly comes with caveats, yes--caveats that have basically never been really dealt with. Jefferson's ideal of a "well-informed people" has never been achieved.

Jefferson did claim to believe that the US Federal government should be as minimal as possible--until he became President and found that it's actually kind of nice to be able to use that power to do things you feel like doing, whether they actually meet that minimal government ideal or not.

But in any case, none of that justifies describing the governance we actually have as "self-governance".

Interesting. I wonder how common this is (as I said, I've never seen it, and I've owned homes in 3 different HOA communities in two different states).
You need an organization to manage the common elements, yes. But the only "governance" that's required for that is...to manage the common elements. Which isn't really "governance", it's just management, and oversight of whoever is doing the managing. There's no need at all for the rest of the intrusive rules and regulations that HOAs impose in the name of "governance".
> From their perspective, they get to found little vassal townships where they can say “it’s your problem” to little people problems like “there’s too many potholes in the road” and “that sewer lift station is making weird smells.”

Roads and sewer are two things I've never seen an HOA have jurisdiction over; in every HOA community I've lived in, the municipality still owned the roads and the water and sewer infrastructure. The HOA was only responsible for things like mowing the grass in common areas and maintaining play equipment there.

> The only way you get in that situation is by not paying your dues.

No, it isn't. You can also get in that situation by having the HOA cite you for a violation of its rules and regulations and you not fixing the violation.

An HOA acting in good faith will not do this unless it's actually necessary. But an HOA run by busybodies can cite you for things that aren't actually violations (and often what is or is not a violation can be subjective, because the language in the rules and regulations is often vague or ambiguous), but which you still have to take the time and energy to respond to--or else they can say you didn't fix the violation and put a lien on your house.

And if you do respond, now you're embroiled in an argument about whether what they cited you for actually is a violation or isn't, and you're arguing with bad faith actors who are not going to be reasonable. And who might put a lien on your house anyway--even though they're actually not supposed to do that if you're following the process established by the HOA (and often by state law) for disputes--and now you're faced with having to hire a lawyer and convince a judge that the lien should be dismissed.

If you want a simple one-sentence description, I would HOAs are an example of the old saying about a beautiful theory being spoiled by an ugly fact.
> if a bunch of like-minded people get on the board, they can bring sanity back.

This sounds good, but I don't think it generally works. The problem is that the petty minded people are also the ones who don't have anything else to do with their time, so they can expend all their effort on being petty. Whereas the normal people have other things to do with their lives, and simply don't have the time to deal with all the pettiness, and if they end up on the board, they now don't have a choice: their lives are basically hostage to the petty people who keep taking up their time with bogus issues that can't just be ignored because the structure of the HOA requires some kind of response.

I'm not sure how much "genuine domain expertise" is actually embodied in most laws or regulations at any level of government. When I look at the US Code (or the Code of Federal Regulations), or state laws, or city or county municipal codes, I see some things that make sense, sure, but also a huge bunch of rules that are just arbitrary, and are only there because some special interest got a law or regulation written to benefit them at the expense of everyone else.

The one advantage of higher levels of government over HOAs is that they are generally impersonal. The faceless bureacrats that are processing your forms generally don't have any personal animus against you. They don't have to live next door to you and they don't have to care what your personal oddities are. They're just executing a bureaucratic process. Whereas with an HOA, every little petty personal grievance gets magnified, and so-called "governance" turns into endless feuding.

The term "self-governance" has always seemed to me to be an oxymoron. On its face it means everyone governs themselves, and nobody governs other people. Which if the people are reasonable mature adults, works out fine. But the term is always used to refer to some kind of governing institution, which means some people are given the power to govern other people. That's not "self-governance".
> You can very easily run to be part of your HOA leadership

Yes, and then you find out just how petty petty politics can be.

The inconvenient truth, at least for HOA advocates, is that a community of 20-30 people, or even a hundred or so, does not need to be governed at the level of the community. Most people are reasonable and will respond to reasonable requests from neighbors if there is an issue, without having to drag in a higher authority at all. Those who are not reasonable, are not going to be magically made reasonable by having an HOA--indeed, as you admit, they're precisely the ones who are going to end up running the HOA. On balance, you're better off not having "governance" at all until you get to a larger population, like a town or a city.

The facts don't seem to support your implied claim that being governed by people who do live in your neighborhood is better. At least not in Florida.

My own personal experience from my wife having owned one condo and she and I having owned four houses is not very encouraging for your claim either. Of the four HOAs involved, the two that were run entirely by management companies (i.e., by people with no personal connection to the neighborhood, with little or no activity from the community members on the Board that we could see) were fine, they kept the common areas maintained and basically did nothing else that affected us. The condo association, while it had a management company, also had a Board filled with community members who had nothing better to do than harass everyone else, which they did with an energy that would have been amazing if it had been directed towards something productive. The other HOA had no management company, just the Board of community members, and was very intrusive, and from what we learned from neighbors, had been a mess for the entire history of the community.

So we now live in a neighborhood with no HOA, we only have to deal with the municipality. We like it.

Re:A plea not to use uv-build on Saturday October 17, 2026 @06:59PM (#50135956)
> you own the sdist file, and the archive contents, after downloading it.

If you're forking the project, sure. But I don't think that's what Gentoo is doing.

If you're trying to build what the project owner intended for you to build, I don't see how you can just ignore what the project owner specified. Nor do I see how that is allowed by the Python specs. That's why I asked you for a reference if you think it is in fact allowed by the Python specs.

If your position is that the Python specs don't allow you to just ignore pyproject.toml, but a distro can just ignore what's in the Python specs, I don't agree with the latter either, but it's a different position, and I'm not sure which one you're taking.

Re:A plea not to use uv-build on Saturday October 17, 2026 @06:56PM (#50135938)
> these things are largely trivial in most cases

The point is that that's not your call to make. It's the project owner's call. That's what the build backend specification in pyproject.toml is for. If you're going to just ignore that, what's the point of having it at all?

> in the sdist (using information from pyproject.toml plus the developer's source tree to produce PKG-INFO)

Which is the only place that's relevant for this discussion, since we're talking about Gentoo, which builds everything from source.

> The latter cases mean that the developer is asserting that code needs to run on the end user's machine in order to get correct metadata. This is… usually questionable at best, and IMO impolite without a damned good reason.

I agree with all this, but as above, it's irrelevant to this discussion.

Re:A plea not to use uv-build on Saturday October 17, 2026 @03:03PM (#50134017)
> uv-build is for pure Python projects, which entails that the "build" process is trivial.

The build process is more than just the Python code. There is also project metadata, which might be dynamically generated by the build backend. Indeed that's one of the main features offered by the different build backends, simplifying the project owner's life by removing the need to write a lot of boilerplate metadata that the tool can automatically discover on its own.

Re:A plea not to use uv-build on Saturday October 17, 2026 @12:39PM (#50132587)
> nothing compels you to choose the backend specified in pyproject.toml

This comes as a complete surprise to me. I thought the whole point of specifying the build backend in pyproject.toml was so the project owner can choose which build backend their project gets built with, and have that choice automatically enforced by tools.

Are you saying this kind of thing is allowed by the Python spec? If so, where? Can you give a specific document?

> The author even highlights

What he means is that the project owner doesn't have to, for example, use uv-build as their build backend in pyproject.toml just because they are using uv as their overall project management tool. I do not think he means that he, as a distro packager, is free to just ignore what's in pyproject.toml.

Re:I know why Mathematicians weep on Thursday October 15, 2026 @04:53PM (#50110055)
Losing context is only part of the issue. LLMs don't have the rich connection to the world that humans have. The only connection LLMs have with anything is streams of text. Not only don't they have eyes, ears, smell, taste, touch--they don't have bodies. They don't have to deal with the real, physical world and have it push back on them.

That is so utterly different from what we humans are used to that we can't even comprehend it, and we anthropomorphize LLMs because we can't make any sense of them otherwise. We can't comprehend that these things that emit text that looks like human text don't have all of the other things that lie underneath our words when we humans talk.

Re:A plea not to use uv-build on Wednesday October 14, 2026 @03:14PM (#50093350)
> Nothing in the Python spec forces Gentoo to invalidate the downstream package every time build-system dependencies update

Nothing in the Python spec guarantees that the resulting build artifact will be identical if the build system dependencies update but nothing else in the project does. So what's a "build everything from source" distro to do? If it's possible that updating the build dependency will change the build artifact, doesn't it have to rebuild?

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