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Cake day: July 16th, 2023

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  • First, I love this.

    To be fair to the original poster though, he did not do the “GNU / Linux” thing. His point seems to be that “Linux” is not enough information to know much about the graphics stack and that seems fair since there is Wayland / Xorg and an array of DE, WM, and toolkit options.

    Have you tried Chimera Linux? It does not even use GCC. It is even less “GNU” than Alpine but no less “Linux” and I do not mean just the kernel.






  • “reactionary”. Self-aware much?

    I do not know either of you.

    That said, on the one hand we have a guy that trivial research reveals has been dramatically transparent about his own life, struggles, and frailty in a really humble and disarming way. He shares his talent freely not only with code but mentorship and teaching. He has created a thriving and closer-knit community working together to do interesting and valuable things ( OS and browser ). His somewhat famous tagline is “well, hello friends”. He has also showcased both his wife and other females on his channel. Unless I misunderstand the term “incel”, you are demonstrably and factually wrong on that front at least. The biggest complaint I could find about him elsewhere is that his is “too neutral”. Perhaps that is at play here.

    On the other hand, we have somebody directly peddling destruction, slander, and hate ( you ). And why? As far as I can tell, the only contribution the SerenityOS founder has made to this “discussion” is the sentence “This project is not an appropriate arena to advertise your personal politics.”. Is that really it? Overreaction?

    That sentence spawned all of this? I must have misunderstood which of you we were labelling as “reactionary”.

    Regardless of if the project should have accepted the commit or not ( a valid debate ), I cannot possibly side with this reaction. It is awful.

    Downvotes welcome. I would rather be ethical than popular.




  • I would say that you make a decent argument that the ALU has the strongest claim to the “bitness” of a CPU. In that way, we are already beyond 64 bit.

    For me though, what really defines a CPU is the software that runs natively. The Zen4 runs software written for the AMD64 family of processors. That is, it runs 64 bit software. This software will not run on the “32 bit” x86 processors that came before it ( like the K5, K6, and original Athlon ). If AMD released the AMD128 instruction set, it would not run on the Zen4 even though it may technically be enough hardware to do so.

    The Motorola 68000 only had a 16 but ALU but was able to run the same 32 bit software that ran in later Motorola processors that were truly 32 bit. Software written for the 68000 was essentially still native on processors sold as late as 2014 ( 35 years after the 68000 was released ). This was not some kid of compatibility mode, these processors were still using the same 32 bit ISA.

    The Linux kernel that runs on the Zen4 will also run on 64 bit machines made 20 years ago as they also support the amd64 / x86-64 ISA.

    Where the article is correct is that there does not seem to be much push to move on from 64 bit software. The Zen4 supports instructions to perform higher-bit operations but they are optional. Most applications do not rely on them, including the operating system. For the most part, the Zen4 runs the same software as the Opteron ( released in 2003 ). The same pre-compiled Linux distro will run on both.


  • It is just as easy to point to the ideas of the extreme members of the “new atheist” movement as evidence that they are a dangerous cult.

    Using the Southern Baptist Church as your example of religion is not a very good argument. Implying that atheists are somehow more rational as a group is not really a great argument either.

    By the way, I am an atheist. I do no consider my beliefs to be unassailable scientific conclusions though. I recognize that many of my beliefs and preferences lack the robust rational foundation I would like them to. I doubt I am the pinnacle of morality or ethics ( more than doubt - but I am not looking to trash my own reputation here ).

    Voting against your own interests or scapegoating others for what you see as damage against yourself or even just plain old hate do not require religion. Humans have lots of ways at arriving at those and being manipulated into them.





  • In my view, there are two components to “religion”.

    1 - it typically starts with an attempt to explain why and how things are

    2 - it becomes a human administration - this becomes more about politics than “religion”

    Most of the problems with religion stem from the second part. I see the politics as the far bigger problem there. So people that want to create political movements around “science” are absolutely no better in my view.

    If you read the question being asked in this thread critically, do you find it a scientific question? A political one?


  • I am not even remotely religious. But I take science pretty seriously.

    Please tell me, scientifically, why you are so sure that people of faith are wrong?

    There is some decent science that prayer does not work. I am not aware of anything offers anything at all testable concerning God.

    And if we are simply pushing our preferences on others, I think a more important question is what makes people that claim to be evidence driven to adopt such strong opinions on things ( without evidence ) that they feel comfortable publicly slamming the preferences and values of others ( again with no evidence at all ).

    As a science fan, you can say that absence of evidence means you do not have to believe. Correct. You cannot say that an absence of evidence proves your guess correct such that you can treat people who believe otherwise as stupid. Incorrect.

    And “they have to show me the evidence” is a moronic stance. As a fan of the scientific method, evidence is YOUR burden of proof. For people that adhere to a religion, their standard is FAITH. So, they are holding up their end and you are dropping the ball. So what gives you the right to be the abuser?

    So, I guess my answer to “why do people believe in religion would be”, “well, people still have faith and tradition and science has not produced any evidence that credibly calls that into question”.

    Why are people not arriving at this conclusion on their own in 2024? Why have we failed so badly to explain the scientific method that people can still make wild pronouncements like this one.

    I don’t like religion because it makes people easy to manipulate. People that treat science like a religion exhibit the same problems. I am not a fan of that.