DradisPing
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User ID: 1102
DradisPing
5d ago
The problem goes back to Griggs vs Duke Power and related employment law cases.
Universities are the only ones who can do respected credentialization because any system will inevitably have a racially disparate result and universities are the only institution that judges respect too much to destroy for producing a "racist" result.
Any other system you try to set up is living on borrowed time until the judiciary decides to whack it.
DradisPing
5d ago
You can practice by working on some github issues on some repo like this random one: https://github.com/themotte/rDrama/issues
https://codecrafters.io/ is a bit pricey but fun. You should be able to burn through the "build your own http server" in python one pretty quickly.
I like to manage all of my language versions with asdf since it's one tool for versioning python/go/javascript/elixir/whatever.
Burning through a bunch of leetcode easy problems is a good way to get comfortable with a new language. Or if you've done a bunch of problems already try to translate those into python.
DradisPing
5d ago
From about 2015 until Merkel's retirement people were regularly calling Poland WN or worse. I'm not exactly sure when it stopped, but from the Trump impeachment to covid it wasn't a priority and after the Ukraine invasion internationalist types weren't badmouthing it anymore.
DradisPing
4d ago
Can you post an update if it picks up? I couldn't get through it and gave up on the series. It'd be good to know if it's worth the slog.
DradisPing
4d ago
Allow me to bring down the intellectual quality with the various sci fi audio book series I've listened to recently. Light spoilers ahead, but I tried not to include anything too major.
The Murderbot Diaries.
The protagonist is a Sentry Bot. Made out of cloned tissue and cybernetics, he's born into servitude as corporate property rented out for security on planetary survey missions. He has recently managed to hack his governor module and has freed himself from control. With his newfound freedom he quietly does his job but spends all of his free time binge watching serials.
A mission goes awry and adventure ensues. 7 books, I listened to them all. Some fun characters. The later books seem a bit padded, there was an arc over the last few books so the endings of each weren't as satisfying. I probably just needed a break from the series.
Bobiverse
In 2016 a Silicon Valley CEO of a mid-sized company signs up to have his head frozen in case of death. He dies. The cryogenic company promised to use his funds to build him a new body, but that didn't work out so well. In 2133 his mind is brought back online as a digital replicant because his personality is seen as a good match for becoming a von Neumann probe.
4 books, I made it through them all. Some very imaginative world building and explorative sci fi. There's some Reddit tier atheism stuff at the beginning but it quickly moves on to more interesting things.
Expeditionary Force
In 2030 bipedal hamster-like aliens launch a surprise assault on Earth. The protagonist, Joe, helps defend a small town at the initial invasion site. Later, some lizard-like aliens recruit them to launch a counterattack. Joe ends up as part of an occupying force on one of the hamster worlds. Joe is a blue collar grunt, and bit boring. The early parts drag. He later discovers an ancient alien AI housed in something similar to a talking beer can. Things pick up after that.
I listened to 3 books of 16. It initially had promise but the alien world building was a bit weak. Skippy's origin is the most interesting plot thread but apparently there's not much progress on that until book 9. It had its moments but I gave up on it.
Starship's Mage
This one was interesting because I didn't think I'd like it. It's essentially hard sci-fi with magic.
A brutal eugenics program on Mars led to the creation of Magi. They are the key to FTL travel and the galaxy opened up to colonization. Some alien ruins have been discovered, but no sign of living aliens. The Mage King controls FTL and thus all trade and travel between worlds.
I really enjoyed the first few books. I made it through 7 of 14. The sci-fi magic just being magic meant that everything not involving a wizard is easy to understand. There are Newtonian space battles similar to the Expanse.
For me, it peaked at book 4, Alien Arcana. The first 4 books had more investigation and mystery. After that the series shifted more to fleet space battles and interstellar politics with anti-mage separatists. The author doesn't have the grasp he needs on things like large scale military production and what the military advisors would be saying for those plotlines to work well.
DradisPing
4d ago
One of WoW's features was that it was a place to hang out online. You could gather friends and have an epic adventure together going through a rich open world. But it moved away from that. They couldn't solve the latency issues from having too many people in big outdoor battles. They couldn't solve the zone resource scaling issues where zones are either empty or too crowded.
Instead they decided that the open world wasn't important and switched to building mechanically complex battles in instances.
Now you can gather all of your friends in discord voice chat without having to play the same game. There's less need of a hang out game with a bunch of stuff to do in it.
Perhaps the future of MMOs is for small groups of people to use AI tools to develop elaborate Minecraft mods & worlds that other players can enjoy.
DradisPing
4d ago
Is Expeditionary Force Craig Alanson?
Yes, Craig Alanson. The first book is Columbus Day.
DradisPing
2d ago
It's not Christianity in general. The key people are New England Puritans. Their followers and institutions (eg Harvard, Yale) became dominant in the US, then after WW2 became highly influential in Europe.
I think the way the press reported him was never really accurate. His hero was always Octavian and has been sporting a roman haircut for like 15 years now. He was known to take new hires on long hikes and was always somewhat outdoorsy.
He's the sort of guy who would decide that learning some hand to hand combat training is important.
But if you're a white guy doing a VC funded bay area tech company there are certain cultural expectations you need to conform to.
After 2016 he was personally blamed for Trumps election by many. In 2020 he spent 400 million of his own money in a scheme to oppose Trump that put him in some significant personal legal jeopardy.
It didn't get him back in good graces so I think his attitude now is "I don't need those people anyways".
It's common for famous people in California to play down personality traits that don't conform to the ruling consensus. A good example is someone like Stephen Spielberg who's definitely a loyal democrat, but he's a former eagle scout who loves guns. People tend to assume he was a pot smoking theatre kid when he was young.
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