Running the game on NixOS and hasn’t crashed once, it’s never been this smooth. Been waiting 10 years for the project to be in this buggy version of an alpha.

I know, but to me this meme doesn’t make sense to me unless I assume the person reading the math Expression is interpreting its real world application.

25 / 5 = 5 and nobodies head exploded. That’s just evaluating a math Expression. .25 / .5 = .5 is the same. It’s not a “my brain can’t comprehend how to evaluate expressions” as the meme suggests.

However, if someone who doesnt do much algebra thought to themselves “I need half of a quarter”, then I could understand why their brain might “hurt” as the meme suggests, for a similar reason why adding 20 degree Celsius water to 20 degree Celsius water doesn’t make 40 degree Celsius wate

I’m probably reading into it too much, but the meme just doesn’t feel like a “mind fuck that keeps me up at night”. I’m looking for reasons to try and explain it, but it’s just a math expression at the end of the day

The math looks perfectly fine. But when people phrase “half of a quarter” I think they have (1/2)*(1/4) in mind, instead of 0.25/0.5

I want to see this post that got removed now

There are plenty of natural particles colliders, such as black holes or very dense stars, that are way more powerful than our engineered particle colliders, which (observationally) don’t create black holes around them

It’s a common tactic of narcissists to elicit empathy

Software engineering is usually distinct from programming in that it isn’t about the logic behind programming, but about the project management that all software projects typically have in common.

Besides agile methodology, a lot of software engineering involves creating reproducible environments. While NixOS doesn’t provide anything that much different from tools like Ansible,

NixOS follows a functional/declarative design paradigm, functional/declarative design paradigms communicate similar logic for solving the same problem. It’s a restrictive paradigm. Consider how javascript is not restrictive, as in, you can code with any design paradigm in javascript, and how it’s ugly for that.

I also think functional paradigms mirror the natural language closer than imperative paradigms. That’s subjective, but I would still argue Math is a logical language that is a subset of the natural language, and since functions in programming represent a process of doing something, functions make for natural verbs. Meaning, understanding the naming convention for the functions, is a natural naming convention for when I communicate with other software engineers, even when I’m not asking about making configurable/reproducible systems in NixOS

Or when I look at how to config things like firewall, ssh, vpn servers, user group permissions… it’s a minimalist description that I could communicate to other people configuring even on a debian server

So, it’s hard because it’s restrictive, but if you’re willing to put up with a learning curve, you get a language agnostic framework for describing computing environments, more or less. Then there’s more advanced stuff with nix flakes, which still doesn’t make sense to me functionally/linguistically, but I’m starting to see the value in parallel package management and the precision in reproducibility they provide by requiring sha256 git commits

Yea it’s definitely a jungle haha, it also seems they’re changing things up a bit with where the most recent docs might be hosted

https://search.nixos.org/

so, if you searched for vscode in that link, then click the “NixOS Configuration” button, you can see

  environment.systemPackages = [
    pkgs.vscode
  ];

or if you’re using the with convention to factor out the pkgs object/contextual keyword(not sure if that’s the right name)

  environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
    vscode
  ];

for zsh, just having this in your configuration.nix should work https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Command_Shell

programs.zsh.enable = true;
users.defaultUserShell = pkgs.zsh;

Again, these values should be inserted after the function definition of your configuration.nix

{ config, pkgs, ...}:
{
   # Things get inserted here typically
   imports = [ ./hardware-configuration.nix];
   environment.systemPackages = [pkgs.vscode];
}

for example.

Something I’ve noticed from developing on nix, When the headaches of nix appear, the solution might be harder, but I usually end up with a better solution than what I was going for before. Some examples:

• My resume is compiled in Latex. I tried the pdflatex package in nix but it gave rendering issues. Then the nix community recommended tectonic and i’m getting better compilation times, logging, clean up…

• PIP is a garbage package manager, and it’s garbageness sometimes makes native python development a headache in nixos. However, using poetry2nix, not only could I define development environments, it was also ready for packaging on PIP

Sometimes you might want to separate some parts of your configuration away from your global system config at /etc/nixos/configuration.nix. That’s nix-shell, nix-develop, nix-build, and flakes are for. I’m not a pro at flakes yet, but I think I got the gist, here’s an example of when I wish I could have used a flake:

I use discord but discord itself is garbage. Vesktop is a better 3rd party client for discord. Unfortunately, I had to remove it from my configuration.nix the last few weeks because one of its dependencies wasn’t packaged right, causing my entire system to not build. If I had used a flake, I could have isolated that dependency from the rest of my build, while still tracking its integration with my system. I believe this could have allowed me to update the rest of my system, while still defining the errenous app as part of my system. Flakes are supposed to be more reproducible as well, since they require sha256 git commits, whereas other package managers only ask for a subjective version number

There’s a lot to learn with nix but even if I don’t stick with it long term I feel like It’s making me a smarter software engineer since a declarative/functional paradigm tends to match the natural language more. It also is the most restrictive design paradigm, which means it’s brief but so simple it can be hard to understand as a consequence. Since it’s so restrictive, it’s also a subset of all other paradigms. You declare what you want, ideally, you don’t have to set anything up. I never had an easier time getting cuda drivers for ML Training setup than on NixOS because of this

Something I enjoyed doing, was setting up my user profile to let me ssh in only with whitelisted ssh keys, as well as setting up a systemd script to handle some start up routines on my OS. I think that can be a gentle introduction to how you can configure other parts of your operating system. I’m going to try and set up a CI/CD/CT pipeline with it next I believe

Edit: The next thing I need to do as well, is consolidate my user configs with the home manager functionality. I use a KVantum Theme engine on top of plasma, and while those apps are installed in my system, the configuration of which theme to automatically load should be integrated with the text config aspects of nixos. Currently, I “Imperatively” configured those by “Opening the app and clicking”, which will get erased/not be reproducible if I ever rebuild my nixos on a new computer

Another funny thing with functional programming… sometimes the fix is as simple as

sound.enable = true;

Even though I had pipewire enabled as a service and everything, that one line needed to be there haha

I’ve been using Wayland on plasma 5 for a year or so now, and it looks like the recent Nvidia driver has merged, so it should be getting even better any minute now.

I’ve used it for streaming on Linux with pipewire, overall no complaints.

Had me in the first half ngl

I’m using NixOS partly as a dev machine, but mostly for consumer OS stuff like gaming, YouTube, social media…

What are you trying to use it for? From the consumer perspective, I feel like modifying configuration.nix would be the majority of what I need. It’s like ninite if you’ve used that to setup a Windows machine, but it can be preloaded on your OS and you can configure everything, not just which programs are installed

If you’re trying to setup dev environments, I think what gets weird is how many ways there are to do similar things, like nix develop, nix build, nix shell…

Thank you 🥹

I block individuals. I think it can be good to expose myself to the eastern narrative a little since I’m only experiencing a western narrative. As well as eastern shitpost’s since I subscribe to 4chan

I’m anti authoritarian, but I meant centralized vs decentralized economic planning. I agree though, communism is state capitalism

China closed the gap for sure, but they haven’t caught up yet. Their demographic issues and deflation over the next decade is likely to hinder their progress in closing that gap

Not that I oppose other economic systems from prospering, just I don’t think it’s accurate to say they’ve caught up. For example, they still can’t manufacture chips at as small a scale as US companies can. That’s a very significant manufacturing component to be dependent on

Do you have any link supporting your assertion that BlackRock is only interested in Bitcoin because of stable coins. I genuinely would like to read the source

Is that for the spot ETFs, or their tokenized fund? Do you have a link for how spot ETFs are covered by stable coins?

How is it insecure? Schnorr signatures and the txID system literally make it quantum resistant. Even if you cracked a transaction’s key, you’d only have access to already spent funds. Like a receipt instead of a debit card, with no certainty who has the money until they spend it.

Oh, and in terms of computational waste, the fiat backed inflation based currency system we have now, has incentivized a world of endless growth which isn’t sustainable. Switching to an asset with finite supply like Bitcoin would remove those incentives. There’s other costs to using deflationary assets, but if you actually value the environment, switching to Bitcoin would economically inventivize a world where people are encouraged to save more instead of spend more

The recent crash was less volatile than previous crashes, and lasted half as long. There were also more factors than just the stable coin crash, there was also the FTX scandal, and silicon valley bank collapse which had ripple effects in the economy.

Still though, the resulting crash was half as long and not as severe as previous crashes.

I’m not saying you’re wrong about stable coins, but saying the entire crypto economy depends on that, while BlackRock has pushed the SEC to allow for Spot ETFs, is an exaggeration.

I’m not even going to say this is a morally good thing. I hate BlackRock because they are the mainstream/institution. But that level of support shouldnt be taken lightly

This is an emotionally charged post, yet everyone you disagree with is secretly trying to influence everyone else? How the fuck are you going to compare people who like a type of software to literal Nazis? Anyone who relies on emotional arguments like that is clearly not a rationalist.

How do you achieve communism without authoritarianism? This sub says they like decentralization, but if you decentralize based on computers, how do you stop adversaries from performing a Sybil attack? How do we establish command and control for a decentralized network, without letting authoritarians seize that command and control? How do you establish a decentralized identity system, without also establishing a decentralized system for data management and governance?

Now, should a Blockchain be that? Maybe not, I’m not trying sell whatever to you. I get being annoyed by all the advertisers, but to go an extra step to say that the principles of cypherpunk is something to compare to Nazis, is just proof you care more about emotional arguments and setting narrative.