Would it really take 5 years to develop rare compress and decompression that seems an extreme overestimate in time. I don't know of the compressor decompression but that seems really high
Well, it is every version of RAR. Documenting the quirks of rar 1.4, 1.5, 2.0, 2.9, 3.0, 4.0, 5.0 and 7.0, multiple compression strategies, PPMd, RARVM, compression levels, encryption, multi volume support, a huge test corpus, round trips for compatibility... The spec docs are linked.
5 week is a decompressor for 1 version. If this supports multiple versions of RAR, then writing decompressors alone for all of them is probably a year effort of work.
I think labeling this an abstract problem because all the existing implementations as having concrete but different problems is a little bit of a Motte and Bailey fallacy.
The surveillance of the future will be powered by the things we produce today. If the accepted algorithms leave cookies those cookies will be used tracked and monitized. The bad argument is the forced verification to do things on the internet. Making that start at the hardware is a lock in thats not okay. Business will always own the services and making standards that trade our practical liberty for the sake of security is a very compromised position in my opinion.
And it does start with the age verification, followed by id checks, etc. Its compromising precisely because no lines are drawn and no rights to privacy are codified in law. Without guiderails the worse path will likely be taken for maximum profit
As someone who plays the violin very poorly I don't think this sounds like violin at all. It is very folksy synthetic sounding. They are clearly plucking but it sounds similar to if you were bowing its really strange. I definitely could replicate that quality of model but I think I have heard much better models elsewhere
I was rude here I meant to say I couldn't produce that model. I see the other comments but just vibes here. It sounds strange, I read some of the comments and the article again and I just think what makes the violin juicy is the dynamic instability of everything. The best violinist in the world would struggle to play a song the same exact way every single time. Not that they would be making mistakes but the slightest varriation of bow pressure or starting position echos through a piece. Perhaps the simulation of just one pluck is why it feels so synthetic
It was a finite element simulation of a CT-scanned violin, but as they note,
“If there’s anything that’s sounding mechanical to it, it’s because we’re using the exact same time function, or standard way of plucking, for each note,” says Makris, who is himself a lute player. “A musician will adapt the way they’re plucking, to put a little more feeling on certain notes than others. But there could be subtleties which we could incorporate and refine.”
In addition, the resonant characteristics of the bow also contributes significantly to the sound, as it feeds directly back to the stick-slip contact that is more akin to a mode-locked laser’s nonlinear dynamics. The violin body’s resonant characteristics in comparison is more like a passive filter.
I feel like this trivializises all software development. It happens but 99% of development is done to follow the spec or law in this case. The failures or bugs are usually not intentional. You basically saying if 1 car in the fleet breaks the law shut them down? If thats a strawman im sorry but even in software algorithm have unintentional bugs and make mistakes. The same is true for human drivers but we dont revoke their licenses when they break the law we have a proportional penalty for break. If driverless cars are speeding its a slap on the wrist. If they are driving the wrong way down the freeway the penalty would be revoking licenses
I feel like your unintentional thresholds are just what ticketing is but in more complex way. Also your points about being easier on AV companies tickets are very aggressive against repeat offenders. It works mechanically the same as setting threshold x# of tickets.
Ticketing gets weird because it varries by state I cannot speak to Califorina because I don't live there but in the northeast many states have points and if you get 10 points you lose your license. Not every ticket gives points i.e parking tickets. But speeding X miles over is 4 points. Drunk driving is 10 points generally speaking. Their are others like drag racing on public roads etc. But Those systems would be very harsh on a self-driving vechicals which all have the same "driver". You might need to be more permissive on the number of points because the "driver" is clocking 1000x-10000x what an ordinary driver does but tickets solves all the practical problems your bring up. The only grounds to debate feel like the number of points or threshold which besides stating I don't feel like you stake a position on where the threshold is (doing sound seems really hard without data on how often violations can be). Intentionality is also ignored because it doesn't matter in driving since you could always say you didn't know X law i.e unintentional but its not an excuse because you are opt in to using public roads you have to know the laws.
I am not trying to be dismissive but I am really unsure what other system and thresholds you are describing while you are being compared to an extremely concrete and effective systems (effective at punishing drivers :) from actually dangerous behavior). Usually the only hard part is observing offense but I think that makes ticketing acceptable because generally speaking the penalty for getting a ticket is very harsh on low income earners (increases compliance)
We can both build Nuclear that is safe and also build it faster. Its a matter of political will and reasonable regulation. Nations looking on the 100 year horizon would build nuclear and they would be newer and safer nuclear as time goes on. The next generation of reactors are safer and promise to be cheaper to build but the last of the GEN4 nuclear still are safe especially when we actually pay to have nuclear regulator inspectors. The things we are willing to be cheaper on are always the inspectors but never the permitting its so backwards.
I don’t see why you would look at nuclear at all on a 100 year horizon. At that timescales you gotta look at the fundamentals:
1. We’ve got a free fusion reactor in the sky and collecting and storing that energy is fundamentally cheap. Especially in a long term perspective when the materials needed to store the energy will be mostly recycled and practically free.
2. We’ve got a free fission reactor under our feet. Drilling deep enough expensive now but there’s no reason it needs to be. Se Quaise for progress in that area.
3. In a 50 year timeframe we don’t have any spare capacity to add more global warming from the thermal forcing of thermal power plants. Yeah you heard me right, thermal power plants contribute directly to global warming, and the effect is surprisingly significant. The good news is the effect disappears rapidly when you shut them down, unlike greenhouse gases. And we should certainly never shut down any nuclear power plants until we’ve eliminated greenhouse gas emissions. But at the same time, while we have an insane amount of greenhouse gases lingering in the atmosphere we can’t afford adding global warming from thousands of new nuclear reactors… like some nuclear proponents would have us do.
A 100 years from now, if we’ve brought greenhouse gases down again, that’s when we can start considering adding significantly more nuclear power. Though I doubt there will be any interest. Makes sense for space travel though.
I’m pro nuclear despite all that. But more from an R&D perspective.
1 - fusion reactor in the sky is not that easy to capture 24/7 due to nights/winter. BESS can partially alleviate the problem, not solve it.
2 - geothermal has an inconvenient property to lower output over time.
3 - nuclear requires far less grid investments, far less mining/materials
4 - If we are serious about nuclear we should investigate up to smallest detail how hitachi deployed first ABWR for such a short time/low cost and do that in series, en masse. I can bet in 20y Germany will still have far worse emissions than France
I missed this, the point was more long term view. If you want a robust power network that doesn't kill the planet you really need to consider a timescale where climate changes effects are observable I'd argue that is a 100 years. We are debately between 100-200 years into the industrial revolution and climate changes worse impacts at still 20-50 years off (Not a lot of time to reinvent the economy just to be clear). But in that conception of time 100 year time frame seems very reasonable.
If you just look 10 years ahead you'd probably conclude solar, wind and maybe hydro is enough because short term thinking will always undersell the climate risk in my opinion. My justification for this thought is look at climate deniers arguments its always about magnitude and speed now because its the last effective argument.
Nuclear cost recovery and profit function for proven GEN4 is also on the 20-30 year timescale (depending on how much cost overruns they've faced it could be 50 years for bad cases) not the 5-10 year timescale. Making them unattractive financially speaking. Despite the fact that after that time which most US reactors are they are extremely profitable for the operator because the fuel -> power out is incrediblely in their favor. Ultimately, it takes longer term risk evaluation to show their benefits but they are undeniable and will be involved in solving the climate crisis.
I feel like you haven't read enough HN reply but I've said the exact thing about Apple OS they can have it and have HW but they should be seperate companies and the OS regulated like the monopoly service it is.
OSs are few in number and are special pieces of software supported by extreme network effects and locking in effects. Its virtually impossible to abandon mainstream OSs even in the desktop world which is much more permissive their are basically 2 OSs. You can count Linux as a third but its not a serious market share competitor yet! EU and France might change that.
But essentially total OS control allows a type of anti competitive behavior that is unavoidable. You either need 10s of options which are different in the services which isn't viable because modern OSs are some of the most complex pieces of software in existence. Your only other option is to regulate them like the power company because its not practical to build your own grid to have fair pricing and access
"I feel like you haven't read enough HN reply but I've said the exact thing about Apple OS they can have it and have HW but they should seperate[sic] companies and the OS regulated like the monopoly service it is."
Was this under a different HN account
I went through all replies by xphos and found nothing that discussed removing IOs and running some other OS on an iPhone
What I want is for Apple to sell hardware that has no OS installed. This is actually how I prefer to buy computers today, with no OS. I just want the Apple hardware, not the Apple software
The AirPort Extreme was the closest I have seen to this wish for Apple hardware without Apple software coming true. It included Apple software, but it could be operated using a NetBSD 6.x kernel
Ironically, I think regulation is what keeps them in power. They are major companies that comply with government regulations. Why would the government regulate to allow people to have devices that forgo government regulations?
If you want a successful mainstream operating system. It needs to work within the rules of society. It needs to comply with regulations. It needs to cooperate with mobile device manufacturers and network operators.
These small grassroots operating systems fail because, to do all those things, you need to be pragmatic.
The next major operating system will be backed by a business or government.
> If you want a successful mainstream operating system. It needs to work within the rules of society. It needs to comply with regulations. It needs to cooperate with mobile device manufacturers and network operators.
Which can be done with a small team by building on top of AOSP, like GrapheneOS does. How is that not pragmatic?
I would group GrapheneOS with Android. If you handed a layperson a GrapheneOS phone and asked them what OS was on the phone, they would probably say Android.
But considering it as a separate OS, I wouldn’t consider it mainstream. It’s not on any device by default. And it has an estimated 250k users out of ~3.9 billion Android users, or 0.0064%. It might seem mainstream for the tech community, but it goes to show how small the tech community is.
It might be mainstream once Motorola, a corporation, starts releasing phones preinstalled with it.
> If you handed a layperson a GrapheneOS phone and asked them what OS was on the phone, they would probably say Android.
Agreed, that's exactly it! The pain points of GrapheneOS/LineageOS are due to the fact that device manufacturers don't allow proper support (typically the bootloader story) and that big companies like bank choose (more and more) to ban whatever is not signed by Google (through Play Integrity). I argue that those things should be regulated.
> And it has an estimated 250k users out of ~3.9 billion Android users
I think it's more than 250k, but let's go with that. There are Android manufacturers that are in the same order of magnitude. What would you say if your bank banned your Fairphone (that runs Stock Android signed by Google) just because it is a Fairphone, and "a few hundred thousands of users is marginal"? I think even the regulators would directly understand how that is a problem. Microsoft Office shouldn't be allowed to just ban Framework computers running Windows just because they don't think Framework is big enough, right?
It's not "Google vs alternative Androids": there are many Android flavours, from Samsung to Sony through Xiaomi and Fairphone. We don't tell Fairphone that they have to be mainstream before they get the right to sell Android phones.
The very reason alternative Androids are (slightly) harder to use is that they are not mainstream, so banks ban them for no reason because they can, and Google is happy to do nothing about it because those are competitors.
> What would you say if your bank banned your Fairphone (that runs Stock Android signed by Google) just because it is a Fairphone, and "a few hundred thousands of users is marginal"? I think even the regulators would directly understand how that is a problem.
We're talking about different operating systems on devices, not the same operating system on different devices. Also, it's not the same as modifying the stock OS that does work with a non-stock OS that doesn't.
The hardware analogy would be closer to having a computer, replacing the GPU, then getting angry that there isn't a driver for the GPU that supports that operating system.
> Microsoft Office shouldn't be allowed to just ban Framework computers running Windows just because they don't think Framework is big enough, right?
Apple doesn't allow their operating systems to run on non-Apple devices. Likewise, Microsoft does have the right to restrict what systems Windows can run on. Any software provider has the right to limit their software's usage.
Conversely, device manufacturers have the right to restrict what operating systems can run on them. E.g. the majority of devices other than desktops and laptops.
Whether or not you should be able to run any software on any hardware is another debate. Even if you support that stance, there is a hard limit to user freedom via government regulations on hardware/software such as any RF transmitting device and cryptographic devices.
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Google Android and iOS are regulated by governments.
With the upcoming age verification requirements made by governments (let’s not debate that here), only the corporate entities that governments can regulate will be allowed.
We can regulate to allow alternative Android OSes, but the alternatives will be ones that follow government regulations.
> Also, it's not the same as modifying the stock OS that does work with a non-stock OS that doesn't.
Again, the non-stock OS works, except for the parts that cannot work because they are being actively blocked. It's not that they are not ready: they are ready, but the mainstream players are blocking them.
> The hardware analogy would be closer to having a computer, replacing the GPU, then getting angry that there isn't a driver for the GPU that supports that operating system.
I disagree. It would be like having a computer, replacing the GPU with another GPU that is 100% compatible, but that doesn't run because the OS checks it and says "it would work, but it is not a GPU I like, so I will block it".
> Conversely, device manufacturers have the right to restrict what operating systems can run on them. E.g. the majority of devices other than desktops and laptops.
My point is that they shouldn't. I am saying that it would be better for society if we regulated that.
> We can regulate to allow alternative Android OSes, but the alternatives will be ones that follow government regulations.
> My point is that they shouldn't. I am saying that it would be better for society if we regulated that.
Playing devil's advocate here. Why should software developers be allowed to restrict where/how their software is used, while hardware developers can't restrict where/how their hardware is used?
Yeah it's a good question, and in the end it's arbitrary. I would say:
1. Because e-waste.
2. Because if I buy shoes, I own the shoes. If I buy an electronic device, I own the electronic device. It should not be legal to add a mechanism in my shoes that allows the manufacturer to make them stop working as shoes whenever they want.
Hardware manufacturers don't open source their firmwares because they see it as a competitive advantage (why not, sometimes). But they should allow someone else to write their own firmware. That is, they should provide minimum support for that. Right now it's not that they don't provide minimum support: they actively work on making it technically impossible to do. And the law, through the DMCA and the likes, makes it illegal to reverse engineer.
China dervies a ton of authority and Legitmacy from the PLA (peoples liberation army) and Russia is run by from Inteligence service members of the KGB low level ones to be sure but I don't see how China and Russia are counter examples. The US isn't their yet we will see if the backslide happens in the next two years but I think its of a different qualia than we see in the "typical" Authorithian State.
Ironically I was watching Nuremberg last not and is is schocking how close some of the leaders of this country are to characters like Hermann Göring, or Hitler himself in talking points. They are certainly populists but the language they used is MGGA (make german great again) so to speak. And factually that were not particular that good at it either most of Germans recovery is really due to the liberal government that pass laws that built the Autobahn were laws not by the Nazi party. They certain jumped on them and accelerate them but effective governence is not really for the populist
In fact, the current administration, not headed by someone from the military (and VP has military credibility but not leadership) is not at all aligned to the military except in that their base appreciates the imprimatur of honorable military service. In fact, Trump 1 was in many ways a huge refutation to Trump of the idea that the military guys were leaders he could count on. Their brain-trust positions had more left-alignment than he maybe imagined. His administration, in 2025, fired high-ranking officers in a way that suggested he entered with the reverse conclusion: not military leaders as high-competence straight-shooters, but as all being suspect for having risen unstoppably in a system pervaded by partisan platitudes and shibboleths. Fortunately, the administration didn't take the Soviet approach of purging all those under suspicion.
They just finally had to fire their SecNav because reality butted heads with their ideological conclusion was that business experience was more conducive to military success. Unfortunately for their very-much-not-military-led plan, SecNav probably needs a bit more user experience from time in Navy leadership to successfully work within that labrythine bureaucracy.
I disagree any of the bloat you are talking about exists because puffying paper numbers is basically required to justify your work. Its because they were distrusted extensively so they have to ritually say their work is useful. Also I think its very challenging because most extra committees and stuff exist because people complained about how streamlined science use to be. Those committees exist because science got wrongfully accused of wasting money in the 80/90s with the golden fleece awards among other things, where republican's claimed someone's basic science research was a total waste of government money. Ironically many of the things that won a golden fleece ended up saving the country billions if not trillions of dollars overtime.
I think the major struggle with basic research is there is no way to conduct it in which results are guarenteed. If you could do that you wouldn't need basic research. But there are a ton of questions whose outcomes are not really valuable at all but you simply don't know. On net science dispite those many useless questions answered still is extremely net posititve because some of those apparently meaningless questions ended up being the right question to drive research to useful good answers.
I think that is the Nixon effect followed up my the messaged opinion of the Regan administration that the government shouldn't be trusted despite doing 1000s of things that should earn a little bit of trust.
I don't know to much about photonics but if they ever figure out the boolean algebra and register storage it would be really cool. You have 1 photo cpu core but just use different wavelengths for different threads running in the core. I am sure its way more complex than that but articles like this make you dream about how much we don't know
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