• 3 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 6th, 2023

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  • When you implement the functionality of a piece of hardware in software, the software is said to “emulate” the hardware. The emulators you are used to are emulators, not because they are emulating a console (ex. N64), but because they’re emulating the hardware that was used to build that console (ex. a MIPS processor). That said, oftentimes console emulators need to account for specific quirks/bugs that were introduced specifically because of choices the console designers made. Ex. maybe the specific processor and memory they used for the N64 have a weird interaction that game devs at the time abused, and if your emulation doesn’t ensure that quirk works the same way, then some games won’t run.

    At the risk of adding unnecessary detail, a VM might use emulation or it might not. The QEMU package is often used for virtualization, but despite its name (Quick Emulator) if the system you’re virtualizing matches the architecture of the system you’re running on, no emulation is needed.

    \1a) In this case, it is risc-v hardware running software (built for risc-v) that emulates x86_64 hardware so that it can run an x86_64 binary.

    \1b) A compatibility layer is less well defined, but in general refers to: whatever environment is needed to get a binary running that was originally built for a different environment. This usually includes a set of libraries that the binary is going to assume are loaded, as well as accounting for any other possible unique attributes in the structure of the executable. But if the binary, the compatibility layer, and the CPU are all x86_64, then there’s no emulation involved.

    \2) to get a binary built for x86_64 windows running on risc-v Linux, you will need both emulation and a compatibility layer. In theory those two don’t need to be developed in tandem, or even know about each other at runtime, but i expect that there may be performance optimizations possible if they are aware if each other.

    I mentioned QEMU because my first thought when reading this was, isn’t this a prime usecase for QEMU?


  • How can you say USA didn’t survive, just because they had a bad period?

    I’ve stated pretty clearly at least 3 times now that in that specific scenario, I would consider the re-established democracy to be the same country.

    You are arguing arbitrary points that have no impact on my original claim.

    The inverse. You keep noting that the EU would allow a peaceful secession, but the US would not, and I’m saying that’s irrelevant now and it was also irrelevant during the civil war.

    the president has the executive power, and can choose to ignore the checks and balances

    Again, the inverse is true. Executive Decisions are simply a notice of intent, they are not law. Only the legislative branch can create laws. But the situation we find ourselves in is both Congress and scotus respecting the Executive Decisions as law. That was never supposed to happen. Now the state judges are trying to act as the last line of defense. This is not besides the point, this is literally what the entire thread, and my original comment is about.


  • I hope we can agree that “different” and “not surviving” is not the same thing!

    Hah, it’s now a discussion of literal existentialism. No, I would say one could reasonably believe that “different” and “not surviving” are symonomous. The form that something existed in did not survive, and now only the new, different form exists. Ship of Theseus. If you replace every part of the old country one-by-one, once every part is replaced is it the same country or a different one? In this case, I think it’s not useful to try to claim it’s the same country.

    No it’s not, according to the rules of the federation, no state is allowed to secede according to the constitution!!

    Again, that’s not what justified the civil war. Again, I agree that a peaceful democratic secession should be allowed, but again that’s neither here nor there. Because here is a federal government ignoring the states’ checks/balances, and there is a crime against humanity that was justified in being stopped by the other states, not a federal government acting outside of the states’ checks/balances.

    You seem to be arguing from a personal opinion of what USA should be

    I am arguing based on the founding doctrine of the US and the concept of Federalism.

    it always was a risk by the way the federation clearly always can trump the states

    The assumption you’re making is that the federal govt was designed to have autonomy of its own separate from the states. But the federal govt was intended to only be a democratic-republically determined representation of the states’ intentions. Trump has the same misunderstanding, which is why he’s using the “activist judges” rhetoric. But by design of the US constitution, the states are intended to have checks on the power of the federal govt. Regardless of how any 2A nut interprets the 2nd Amendment, that is the actual intended purpose: to prevent a federally organized military from staging a coup. The federation was always intended to be a way for the states to hold the power to regulate themselves.

    The EU is fine for now, but I could easily see them going down a road to toward the same mistakes the US made. Especially if, in response to the failure of the US, they end up organizing a centralized EU-controlled military, and then all it takes is a bit of FUD to put a demagogue into power and wield that military to oppress.


  • way more similar to Germany which also became authoritarian and abandoned German democratic values under Hitler.

    …what’s relevant is if the federation will survive if it does USA is technically intact, even if it breaks every traditional value of USA.

    This feels like we’re having a semantic argument. I would say, if Hitler still held power to this day, the country that Germany is would be different from the one it was. And if someone had stated in the 1930s that we were watching the death of our country, even in retrospect, i would agree with that statement. After all, he took total control and threw out the existing form of government. If you’re saying that it’s still the same country just became the new regime continued to use the same name for the same plot of land, I would not be convinced. Completely new form of government -> completely new country.

    this is the foundation of USA, and was the cause for the civil war. The power of the federal government precede the states.

    This is known as the “war of northern aggression” argument in the US south. The argument that the civil war had “nothing to do with slavery” and was “about states rights”. But I hope we all agree that that’s a BS argument. They wanted to continue enslaving humans in what was objectively a crime against humanity, and the other states who chose to wield the federal government’s resources to demand a stop to it were justified in doing so, both ethically and in service of the founding delcaration of the US: a nation where “all men are created equal”. But the federal government would not have been able to do that without support from the northern states. Conversely, today we find ourselves fast approaching a situation where the federal government will have total control over the states, regardless of what they or their “activist judges” want.

    Now I agree that a peaceful, democratic secession of a state should not necessarily be precluded by the US federal government, but 1) I understand why that’s not how it currently works, and 2) that’s not the situation we find ourselves in.


  • And IMO if one of those students can get Roblox working on Linux, they have solved a harder problem than any homework they would be given 😆.

    I’m curious how ootb mint works out for this usecase. Any chance we could get a 6mo update later? I’m particularly curious how well it holds up against non-admin users who may constantly be trying to get root-level access. There’s almost certainly going to be one student who figures out a local privilege escalation.


  • The entire concept of the US is heavily tied to its founding ideals of federalism, separation of powers, and rejection of a totalitarian monarchy. It’s why we have the name United States, and not a singular State of America. Versus something like Hungary which, from what I can find, is named for the native peoples of the area, didn’t have a written constitution for most of that time, and has gone through a handful of constitutions in recent history. It’s not an apt comparison.

    Will the land of mass still exist there? Will there still be people there with some form of government? Yeah, obviously, we don’t disagree.

    But would every single US citizen agree that, if we are no longer a democratic republic as determined by the founding constitution, then we are no longer the same country? Yes. There’s just not a world where US citizens say “yeah this is the opposite of what the founders were going for, but it’s still the same country”. The name United States wouldn’t even make sense anymore, because the states would no longer have autonomy.

    If Trump established a dictatorship that wields the US military to oppress the will of the states, then for that duration it is no longer the United States, it’s whatever Trump calls it (he would probably call it the US, but it would be as accurate as North Korea calling itself a Democratic People’s Republic). If the states later overthrow that dictatorship and reinstate a form of rule that is based in the founding ideals, then the US would be refounded, and I could be convinced THAT is the same country re-established. But if the democracy is never re-established, and we stay under a form of totalitarian rule, then the US ceases to exist.



  • I don’t see it explained what he means by “US won’t survive Trump’s next 100 days”?

    The Trump administration has made a series of Executive Orders. State judges have deemed several of them unconstitutional and issued an injunction, legally pausing them until SCOTUS can rule them. In response, Trump has complained to SCOTUS that no single “activist judge” should be able to impede him like this. They will hear that case soon, and one of two things will happen:

    1. SCOTUS rules in favor of the Executive branch, and judges can no longer block federal behavior, meaning the only way for unconstitutional actions taken by the federal govt to be heard by a court is for the affected individual to file a lawsuit in federal court.

    2. SCOTUS rules in favor of the states, BUT trump legitimately believes he is allowed to commit crimes as president, so he’ll just continue ignoring everyone.

    I think what he really means is that democracy in USA won’t survive.

    That’s the same thing. No democratic republic, no constitution, no USA. Trump might continue using the name, he might even come up with a new constitution and say that it’s the same one with a few improvements, but the US as we knew it would be dead and gone.




  • IMO bazzite is too focused on gaming for people to be daily driving it for everything, but hey whatever works. Just hope they’re not upset when something breaks and the response from bazzite is “well yeah, that’s not something we bother testing for”.

    (I have bazzite on a HTPC in my living room, and I think it’s perfectly suited for that usecase)

    IMO Mint, Fedora, or OpenSUSE is going to offer the more stable, user-friendly experience long term. Install Lutris through the distro’s package manager, launch it, install bnet through lutris, launch it, install wow through bnet, launch it, Thrall’s your uncle 😉.

    Edit: to answer your other question, yes Lutris runs as an app similar to how battle.net or steam works on windows. It’s just that instead of having a storefront and downloading data directly from a central “lutris” server, it’s basically a bunch of community-written scripts to automate the installation and configuration of games from all sorts of places. So when you tell lutris to install bnet, it’s running a script that goes and downloads it from blizzard, then locally creates a wine environment, launches the installer in that environment, you install it like on windows, and then it creates a lutris launcher entry for the bnet executable so that when you click play on it in lutris, it will automatically launch it in a wine environment each time.

    And it should all work in KDE plasma, gnome, cinnamon, or whatever window manager you’re using (the window manager on msft windows is called dwm and it’s responsible for the same job).



  • Just so you know, this is called Moral Nihilism, and it seems to me about as useful as a physicist saying, “none of our models are 100% accurate, therefore they are all completely useless”.

    Like, yeah we agree that ethics is a construct we’ve invented, and no ethical system is perfect, and none of them ever will be. But that doesn’t translate to them all being useless. I know we’re living in a stressful time, and I understand the feeling of wanting to just flip the table and give up, but please recognize that as a purely emotional response, not a rational one.


  • Package managers tend to assume they are the only ones touching files in /usr/share. You will find if you try to change any files there, the next update may delete or download a new version of the file, stomping your changes. Instead your local changes should go in /usr/local (if you want something system-wide) or ~/.local (if it only applies to a specific user).

    Ex. If you made a custom .desktop file to show up in your app launcher, or a custom .xsession file to show up in a login manager.


  • As a technical user, I think of WSL as almost exclusively for technical users. It’s not really intended to enable normal users to run Linux programs, and more as an excuse to convince companies to keep developing on Windows. If the devs say “we need to write backend code for Linux servers, so we need our dev machines to run Linux” then management sets them up with linux, while the rest of the company uses windows. But if MSFT says “hey look, you can develop code for Linux in windows, and you can even deploy it in windows on our azure servers” then management says “great, everyone can use windows” and keeps buying those licences.