I believe you're wrong here.
If you modify a hardlinked file, the FS will create new inodes under the hood, leaving existing ones intact. So it's like CoW. At least on ext4.
// Didn't double-check, but I've held this belief for over decade now, would be surprised to be proven wrong
No this is completely incorrect. The filesystem doesn’t break a link just if you open it. Your editor or higher level utility is free to do so (by unlinking and copying the data into a new file/inode), but this is not how the filesystem works.
Enshitification doesn’t end. It collapses under its own weight as people get tired and instead stop using things or switch to some newer radically different paradigm.
> switch to some newer radically different paradigm.
What if there won’t be a critical mass of fediverse users for it to matter enough and centralised social media platforms are all that we’ll ever get?
Asking because things don’t always magically get better, for example phones are still mostly using locked down Android that bends to corporate whims and the alternative phone options are quite limited (how many Linux phones have failed to get mass market adoption?).
Ofc not all is grim, like Framework is doing some good work on repairable hardware in general and also in regards to software there are quite a few FOSS projects that respect the user etc., like Mastodon also exists and is actually decent to use.
I just think it’s important to acknowledge that the network effects of some of these established players are quite major.
> What if there won’t be a critical mass of fediverse users for it to matter enough and centralised social media platforms are all that we’ll ever get?
I know this might not be a popular view but I'd be fairly content with a fediverse that never scales to the size of platforms like reddit, a lot of the reasons I use the fediverse is because it resembles older forums or even reddit before it was enormous.
With every year passed the bar for a successful Linux phone got higher. Potential users expect more & more apps for internet-related services to run while the companies tear down their APIs making more 3rd-party apps impossible.
Facebook Messenger didn't have an XMPP API because Zuck was a nice guy back then.
The fact that you use fediverse and framework as some catchall for future innovation tells me you are really missing my point.
I am talking more about on the level of things like the migration of time spent watching television to time spent on Facebook on a pc to time spent swiping TikTok on an iPhone. None of these are inherently good or bad, but many of them exhausted their ability to grow and attract costumers and as a result doubled down on extracting value from an existing base - that’s what enshitification is or so I thought.
After I implement some feature, I often ask AI to write an ADR.
The code is there, I just mention a few alternatives considered if not obvious from the conversation.
Always I ask the LLM to drop the prose and reduce the content by 60%. And it does.
Then I go, and edit manually, and often trim it almost twice on top of that.
LLMs are professional bullshitters. Like real organic bullshitters they will mask the lack of real understanding with prose decorations.
Take you and me as an example.
When we work, we might start with A, suddenly think of C, briefly jump to D, then B, revise the premise of A, and finally reach a conclusion.
Humans think by constantly shifting between association, working memory, emotion, and social judgment. However, when we write, we organize these scattered results into a coherent structure. In other words, our writing is not a raw dump of human thought, but rather a normalized output of human thought arranged in a logical sequence. I believe that in this specific process, LLMs actually have an advantage over humans.
Because it operates by continuously appending tokens conditioned on the sequence generated so far:
What was just said -> The most natural logical next step -> The most natural logical next step after that.
In short, when it comes to unfolding an already structured logic in a sequential order, I think LLMs are superior to humans. Of course, due to this very nature, they tend to obsess over local context...
You might disagree with me. But if what you say is entirely true, then are the claims that current LLMs are eliminating practice problems for PhD-level mathematicians just a scam?
Honestly, it's a workflow issue, so there is no single right answer.
I agree that an ADR should be concise, for example. However, if your user memory or custom instructions are already set to prefer conciseness, the information density will naturally be high. In my opinion, the fact that an AI adds rhetorical flourishes and unnecessary elaboration alongside essential information is fundamentally a configuration issue.
Furthermore, I suspect what you are referring to is its tendency to output overly accommodating explanations or mechanically neutral phrasing. However, I believe this changes completely if you provide sufficient source material. I think AI is capable of highly complex logical development. I felt this, for instance, when looking at Terence Tao's conversation logs with AI.
I consider using AI to be like pouring water into a tank. If you build the "tank" using academic paper data or strict constraints as your input, it fills that tank with water of much higher purity than most humans could. In fact, it produces drafts of higher purity than if I were to write them myself.
The reason I think this is simple. If standard AI outputs were inherently illogical, there would be no way to explain why it is showing such outstanding results in mathematics, the most logical of all disciplines.
Based on AI papers, my understanding is that the model maps to the word with the highest probability in the semantic space for the next token. Because it selects the semantic word with the highest probability, it completes the sentence based on the statistical likelihood in its dataset following that specific context. Naturally, if you use semantically deep words in your prompt, the output becomes equally deep. Humans are fundamentally inconsistent in maintaining this balance across different domains, but AI operates with perfect homogeneity.
An LLM's core mechanism is predicting the probability distribution of the next token conditioned on the current context, combined with techniques like sampling. However, when you use formal terminology commonly found in academic papers or words with deep semantic weight, the subsequent sentences and structural techniques actually unfold in a highly rigorous and logical manner.
In fact, if we define being "logical" as "faithfully adhering to a procedural development without logical leaps," then I believe LLMs are more logical than humans.
Humans can write at length about subjects they know well, but they falter in areas they do not. AI, on the other hand, can write about other fields with the exact same depth as my own area of expertise, to the point where it eventually generates code that even I cannot understand.
Conversely, if AI is truly nothing more than a "bullshitter," are its recent achievements in mathematics simply a scam? I don't believe that's the case at all.
Ultimately, it is true that our experience varies depending on our workflow and our own expertise. However, I have already seen too much proof to simply dismiss it as bullshit.
In 2014-15 they started shelling civilians in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, then used that as a pretext to increase their military presence by pretending it's all local militias fighting back the shelling the ruskies themselves started.
The pretext was fully fabricated, the militias theatre was fully fabricated. Nothing made sense. To anyone with a pinch if intellect the truth was obvious...
Yet, the legend of Ukrainians murdering other Ukrainians for using russian language has rooted so much, even now some ppl believe that bs.
In case of Bulgaria, ruskies could attack, then attack again pretending russian-speaking population needs protection in the light of the first attack.
And right-wing nutheads in EU gonna believe that, and blame NATO for offensive expansion
You are right that the Russians have been frequently somewhat mistreated in the former Soviet Republics where they have become minorities.
However, this is an extraordinarily hypocritical claim, because this has followed a time when for various durations, between a half of century and two centuries the Russians have mistreated the minorities of those places in a much more ferocious way, inclusively by robbing them, murdering them or sending them to forced labor in Siberia.
In Ukraine, there are many places with Russian colonists who have been installed after WWII in the houses that before the war belonged to various other nationalities, which were then killed or dispersed to Siberia by the Russians.
Yes, Russians have been mistreated after the separation of the Soviet Republics, but this is much, much less than what their fathers have done around WWII and before it, and many of them have still inherited what their fathers have stolen from the other nationalities.
Had the Russians treated better the others when they had the power, they would have not been so hated, so they would have been much more likely to be treated correctly.
When a toddler does something inappropriate, "but he did it to me" is not an excuse. If both kids did something bad, I want both to apologize, and both to move on. It's also not a contest for who did something worse. I want Ukraine to apologize to Poland. I want Poland to apologize to Ukraine. I want both nations to move on.
Two wrongs don't make a right.
Indeed, that's doubly the case when it's nations -- a civilian hit in a retaliatory strike often has nothing to do with an atrocity. I don't know where you are, but I'll pretend the US. If someone whose father died in Guantanamo, or whose child was killed in an airstrike in Afghanistan, killed your mother, would they be "right"? Would it be hypocritical of you to complain?
Or if you want to punish a dictator, does it make sense to starve the people in his nation -- most of whom probably want him out even more?
I am perfectly aware of all of Russia's wrongs. You missed most of the big ones, from holodomor, to about a half-millennium of other torment of people in Ukraine.
You try to do right for your own soul. Apologizing doesn't weaken you.
And you don't punish children for the sins of their fathers.
As with many conflicts this one goes back a long way. Ukraine gave up its nukes to Russia in exchange for a non aggression pact that the invasion broke.
Also bad for the world. The lesson, as with Iran and Iraq, is: you’d better have nukes and never give them up. This is the opposite of the lesson we want if we want to contain proliferation.
The global taboo on use remains. If someone breaks that and gets away with it we are into civilization ending danger territory.
Ukraine never had its own independently controlled/operated nukes. The USSR deployed nukes on various territories but all command and control was completely centralized within Russia. Ukraine/Belarus/Kazakhstan returned the Soviet nukes to Russia under the same agreement and received some nonbinding assurances and cash in exchange - it was nothing like a formal pact. Had any of these countries tried to reverse engineer the nukes, they'd likely have been invaded by the US, Russia, and most other major world powers, so it was largely an offer they couldn't refuse.
Russia claims those assurances ended with the US actively advocating on the ground in Ukraine for the overthrow of their government in 2014, as the assurances included not interfering in domestic politics or using economic coercion. But the US also sanctioned and was working to overthrow Belarus as far back as 2006, so those assurances had been pretty much dead for a long time.
Outside of that I completely agree with everything else you said, especially with people not appreciating how far back these conflicts go. The whole Bandera stuff has no real parallel in the West, so I think most people wouldn't really be able to 'get it' even if they had the facts, which they overwhelmingly do not.
This isn't like Russia just shut off the lights. The control systems are designed specifically and solely to make it impossible for a third party to steal/activate the weapons, so I think simply assuming that Ukraine could achieve such is unjustified.
And Ukraine's where they're at today because of bad decisions. Russia's negotiations to end the war started on literally day 2. And they involved absolutely no land concessions or anything like that - the big issue was not joining NATO. Such offer would now be labeled a crushing to defeat for Russia, given how the war is going.
The war began on February 24th. The first face to face meeting was on the 28th. By March they basically had a treaty worked out with nothing but details remaining to sort out. Then Ukraine chose to abruptly end the talks following the intervention of the West, allegedly Boris John in particular.
There's a somewhat reasonable timeline of the talks themselves, til their end here. [1] But the NYTimes is being a bit disingenuous. The early talks called for the recognition of the independence of Donbas, but under Ukraine. The contested regions were to be given a special status, probably akin to something like Chechnya under Russia or perhaps Puerto Rico under the US. So Ukraine would control these regions, but simultaneously they'd have a significant degree of autonomy and independence. In any case, by March even this issue had been withdrawn.
> Then Ukraine chose to abruptly end the talks following the intervention of the West, allegedly Boris John in particular.
Didn't happen. You keep repeating a misquoted soundbite from one of Ukraine's negotiators.
David Arkhamia said that after the Bucha massacre was uncovered, western governments stopped pressuring Ukraine into halting the war at any cost (including surrender). This was Boris Johnson's message too.
Russian propaganda put a spin on it, misrepresenting the "reduction of western pressure on Ukraine to surrender" as "western pressure on Ukraine to fight". This supports the overall propaganda narrative that Ukraine is resisting the Russian invasion only because they are forced to by foreign governments, and not because they want to be free, independent and, not live under the Russian boot.
That's all the substance there is behind this "Boris Johnson forced Ukraine to fight" story.
Even in the present times it's unlikely either of the US or EU would want Ukraine anywhere near nukes, but that was even more true in the 90s. Prior to this war the West itself had been engaged in endless propaganda against Ukraine that was largely identical in message to what Russia used when invading. Here's [1] one article among countless you can find with such, from a USAID connected guy no less.
> As with many conflicts this one goes back a long way. Ukraine gave up its nukes to Russia in exchange for a non aggression pact that the invasion broke.
From the Guardian (12 days ago): "Kyiv’s decision to honour second world war fighters who killed about 100,000 Poles has revived simmering tensions". Bandera was a Nazi collaborator and today's Ukraine politics worships Bandera. Lots of streets are renamed to honor him. Eastern Ukrainians are considered second class - or as some politicians said: "There are 2 million people too many".
The US (look up Nuland and her quote about 'fuck the EU') fueled with $5B the nationalism in Ukraine. Now imagine, the US would fuel with $50B the nationalism in Belgium and the the flemish would attack wallonie. You know what would happen? France would support the wallonie. Nothing to see here.
EDIT: I won't pretend to know much about the history of the conflict. But the thing that made me lean towards supporting Ukraine was the widespread Russian rhetoric that "Ukraine doesn't exist, the Ukrainian language doesn't exist, they are just Russians". Such imperialistic attitude and the resulting asymmetry is incompatible with any attempt to shame Ukraine at not being perfect in the treatment of Russian minorities in Ukraine. All while ukrainian children are kidnapped and resettled in Russia to become Russians.
> Unless of course you are actually pro-Russian and you're just playing this game at a higher level in which case... congrats because that is effective
I seriously thought this was the case, but looking at the post history, it's probably a question of Hanlon's Razor.
Poster appears to be Ukrainian, and clueless.
Russian trolls feed on these types, unfortunately, and they end up polarized quickly enough.
That's the amplification in these disinformation wars.
I admire anyone who has the energy to fight on the informational front, but I think that's mostly pointless. People who haven't decided on their stance in this war are a minority.
We have IMO, an informational stalemate, with russians having much better positions, unfortunately, thanks to their network of agents covering entire planet, and huge investments over the last two decades (and even before that: the entire Bandera horror-story is their work from soviet times, because Bandera been fighting russian soviet colonizers).
Those a bit smarter have figured that you can not trust a single word coming from russians. Their methods have been studied, described, and presented.
Those who keep repeating russian propaganda, will continue doing so until russia is defeated militarily (and I'm not saying that's gonna happen soon, or even during my lifetime, those folks in EU better prepare).
My advice would be to read a non-Ukranian history book.
What Russia seems to be doing is trying to split Ukraine from the West. It's not true that "russians having much better positions, unfortunately, thanks to their network of agents covering entire planet." They don't have that scale. They do seem effective propaganda in Ukraine and in Poland.
Right now, it seems to be working. Russian propaganda leads to Ukrainians are acting like dicks, and international reactions to Ukrainians. Literally, all they need to do is this:
US split off a year ago. EU is turning away. Polish support went from wholehearted, to holding their noses and helping. That's not a result of false information elsewhere, but within Ukraine. Ukrainians -- including politicians who ought to know better -- walk around talking nonsense which fully supports the Russian propaganda.
Right now, you're helping Russia win.
Proper history: Bandera absolutely fought for Ukrainian freedom and independence. He absolutely committed murders, terrorism, and atrocities to do so. Some of those were targeted at Poland, who now took in over a million of your refugees, and put itself at risk to give massive military support. Volhynia was 100,000 Poles killed -- about 0.5% of the Polish population at the time. Many of those were woman and children, and few had anything to do with destruction of churches or whatnot. You're glorifying him, while asking children of his victims for aid.
(As a footnote: No one cares if this were 10,000 or a million. Telling Poles it's 200,000 and Ukrainians that it's 40,000 is exactly a way of driving a divisive wedge on what's a non-issue at this point; everyone agrees it was a metric fuckload)
People like you are not much different than Southern Americans, who talk about the civil war about state rights, omitting slavery, or Germans who talk about post-WWI reparations, without mentioning the holocaust. Yes, WWI reparations were devastating to Germany. No, that didn't merit genocide.
Right now, the important problem is to get Russia out, get Crimea back, etc. For that, you need allies. Swallow your fucking pride, and learn proper history. Every nation that has had one of these events has to go through it, or else they fracture, like America did racially.
Russia's goals of keeping Ukraine out of the EU and NATO? All they needed to do is rile up a few folks like you with nationalist disinformation. Boom. Ukraine did for Russia what they couldn't accomplish with weapons.
This isn't hard to solve. But it requires swallowing pride, and coming to terms with a rather more complex history than presented in Ukrainian nationalist curricula.
