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Slack + Slack Helper is 200MB and 0.1% CPU on my machine. Not too bad.


200MB for an IRC like app: "not too bad"? You must be 10 years old!


> IRC like

It's the "like" that is the significant detail here.

> You must be 10 years old!

I disagree with your assessment therefore I'm stupid? immature? I hope this was an unusually abusive moment for you, and you don't generally treat folks this way.


Yeah, calling someone a child is pretty immature. So lets focus on hard numbers, no?

I'm currently on IRC using HexChat. I'm in 6 different IRC rooms, with 2 being 500+ users and lively discussion. I'm using 27.8MB ram and since execution 2 seconds of CPU time total. It doesn't do inline images or frillies like what Slack does, but that's what links are for.

Electron-ized IRC is a magnitude more CPU and ram than a native application. This is a waste of my resources and time, so that a developer can be significantly lazy in doing some 'app'.

Of course, the upside is that using electron allows targeting linux/windows/mac. That's not trivial either, however, the resource costs of running X chrome backends is not negligible. With much of the heavier processing I do (RF hacking), this would never work with any sort of acceptable timings or throughput.


> the upside is that using electron allows targeting linux/windows/mac

The more significant upside is that you can add features to an electron app 10x faster than to a C app, and non-technical users care about features (inline images and frillies, etc) more than they care about RAM efficiency


My intention was not calling you a "boy", but more an assumption, that you may not have been around when IRC was used instead of Slack & Co. Because then you'd not be so easy going about wasting so much memory (RAM, storage) for an app, that, basically, allows you to chat.


If you don't believe in God, why speak so spitefully about him?


Because of the damage the concept has done?


Please keep religious flamewar far away from this site.


I have kids and down-voted your comment. Simply because a person has (or might have) the capacity for working overtime doesn't mean this should be a requirement. We're employees, not slaves.


Thats not what I meant - the OP stated "I dont have kids and I want to be able to work overtime and focus on a project" -- so, my comment was "well if you dont have kids, you should be better able to work overtime and focus on a project"


That’s really interesting. Reading the OP's post:

> I <...> would like to be able to not be stressed and work overtime and solve hard technical problems and move towards a more rewarding job

I cannot tell whether he is saying he would like to be able to work overtime, or whether he doesn't want to <be stressed and> work overtime. I would assume, "work overtime" has a tighter coupling with the preceding "not" than with the preceding "would like to", but can't tell for sure.


Agree with you mostly, though on occasion it's nice to know if my taxes are increasing or decreasing soon, and where most people in my country stand on "Merry Christmas" vs "season's greetings" (whatever that means).


> Have fewer children...think of yourself as committed to this cause...People will even try to discourage you...Stop looking at them or listening to them.

This sounds a lot like a cult religion to me.


There's no way we're going to make a meaningful positive impact on the climate without doing things that make people uncomfortable. The sooner we start, the less dramatic that discomfort will be


Well, think of any kind of mass change that you believe is beneficial to humanity and I bet you'd have a similar set of points that seem cultish.


Don't worry, it's not going to spread.


I was an operator on a weapon system within the last decade that did not use encryption. I was horrified, naturally, but the explanations were:

1. Well, this is rapid deployment, we can't have everything.

2. The enemy here is fairly low-tech. Shouldn't be a problem.

Needless to say, I'm not surprised by this report.


> The enemy here is fairly low-tech. Shouldn't be a problem.

Would be perfectly acceptable if your hardware was only used for 2-3 years against only low tech enemies that don't have access to electricity during that whole time.


I think this can be a downfall of the US military if they ever get into a conflict with a capable enemy. They are so used to use super complex and expensive weapons against enemies who can't really put up a resistance. I wonder what would happen to the B-2 bomber or aircraft carriers if they had to fight China. My guess is these weapons would be eliminated very quickly.


> They are so used to use super complex and expensive weapons against enemies who can't really put up a resistance.

Tell that to Vietnam and Afghanistan. Historically the US does well against standing armies (Iraq for example), but absolutely terribly against low-tech enemies who don't engage in a way that allows these super high tech weapons to be used effectively.

Reminds me of this: http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_arith.htm

  A scrimmage in a Border Station-
  A canter down some dark defile
  Two thousand pounds of education
  Drops to a ten-rupee jezail[1].
  The Crammer's boast, the Squadron's pride,
  Shot like a rabbit in a ride!
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jezail


I meant it in a sense of an enemy that can take on the high tech weapons. Since the Korea war nobody challenged the high tech equipment in meaningful way.


I have to quibble with that a bit. The US regularly overflew the USSR and China through at least the mid 70s, meaning our best aircraft were in a very real sense fighting their best air defense systems 20 years+ after the Korean war ended.

There have almost certainly been satellite, submarine and other engagements too, they just aren't generally publicized by either side until 30-40+ years later.


True. However, I think in a real shooting war those aircraft could be attacked by a huge number of low tech weapons and get overwhelmed. From what I know about warfare often large numbers will eventually overwhelm every kind of defense. For example could an aircraft carrier handle 10000 incoming drones? I hope we'll never find out...


10,000 drones? How big a drone are we talking? They would have to be big enough to carry a weapon big enough to penetrate at least 1/2" steel (at the thinnest, only accessible from the side). If out to sea, a small EMP could drop them all.

Battles won by numerical superiority are usually won by defenders. If it's an invader, it's almost certainly early in the game. Even at the end of WW2, Germany wasn't invaded so much as it lost in France and Russia. The Allied rush to Berlin was an early aftermath. By the time supply chains necessary to conduct a protracted war have been committed, the true cost starts making invaders progressively less interested.

A more interesting concern is the major powers using proxies to demonstrate their new tech. If Russia sold Syria 10,000 drones, that might get interesting.


> Even at the end of WW2, Germany wasn't invaded so much as it lost in France and Russia

Sorry, no. Germany was very quickly overrun in 1945.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1945-05-01GerWW2Batt... https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1945-05-15GerWW2Batt...


What they possibly meant was: the war was already lost when they got invaded at all.


That certainly was true. The war was already lost when they were still deeply into Russia. the last 2 years of WW2 were just trying to fight off the inevitable.


> Since the Korea war nobody challenged the high tech equipment in meaningful way

Le Duan tried to in Vietnam, the Easter Offensive. Despite fighting to a strategic draw, he under-estimated the effectiveness of US airpower and lost 100,000 men on the field.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Offensive#Aftermath


Thankfully the answer is "If we are fighting another nuclear power such that they are trying to shootdown a Bomber that didn't invade their airspace or sink an aircraft carrier something has already gone horribly wrong." Pax Atomica is in effect and there is a very reason why all of the wars were proxy wars. Everybody knows that it can only end in everyone losing.


Let's hope it stays that way but I am not too optimistic.


I think partisans are the only ones who would dare and the only way that would be remotely deniable for intelligence agencies is if they don't have major unexplained resources - including training. Which I suppose is where cyber attacks could be useful in the sense of "remote chance of working without being utterly atomic suicidal" - if sensors go down long enough for low budget explosive attacks or their own weapons decide they must sink is their own ship. The later /really/ shouldn't happen if people are doing their jobs given the sheer number of at all given the munitions handling and design sins that would require to be possible makes juggling loaded guns look like the peak of caution.


Sounds like classic underestimation of your opposition.


Yup. The enemy may be poorest of poor, but in this day and age, their entire population probably has smartphones (or at least dumbphones), and there's plenty of smart people with nothing better to do than to play with computers.

There aren't many low-tech places left on this planet, where it comes to computing.


The catch is that on DOD systems, encryption is very difficult to add. That is, to be certified by the NSA and compatible with the military key infrastructure. So its better to avoid mentioning it unless its forced on you. Better is a relative term here. I mean, in terms of cost and effort to add. Not security.


So since it's hard to get the rubber stamp you just do include encryption, that seems worse.


You're waiving encrypted channels around as if it were de facto mandatory. Without knowing the ConOps of the system, how could you possibly conclude that confidentiality was an imperative? Effective acquisition of weapon systems is about balancing budget, schedule, performance, and risk--a lot easier said that done.


Yeah, they should rename it "Sans Scientifica".


I found the name "Sans Forgetica" well-chosen though. I'll remember that name for quite some time...


How about litteræ pinguis serpentis?


Been a long time since my Latin days and there's so much nominative/genitive overlap in those words I can't figure it out. "Writings of a fat snake" or something, I don't know. Help? :-)


It's "snake oil font". littera is a letter, and I hope that the plural form means "font" or "script". But litteræ definitely means "science" as well, so that's OK.

Tufts University has Lewis & Short online: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/resolveform?redirect=tru...


I would have used oleum instead of pinguis, which is more like "grease", I believe:

https://books.google.it/books?id=pdFLAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA85&lpg=PA...


Good question. Is oleum used for liquid fat, no matter the source, or is it confined to plant-based oils? pinguis has definite animalistic qualities. You'd think it was oleum nucis indicæ [1], not pinguis nucis indicæ, except when used in a metaphorical manner.

Paging Reginald Foster, Father Reginald please!

[1] nux indica is the coconut


Pinguis isn't even a noun, is it? I think it's an adjective.


Pinguis can be a name alright besides an adjective, but it is more "fat":

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=pinguis&la=la&ca...

I provided the link to google books to the Liber fundamentorum pharmacologia only to show that oleum serpentis was actually an ancient remedy, of course the Latin of a book translated from medieval Persian might be not exactly Cicero, still it should be much better than any translation I can do.

But most probably oleum was a synonym of olive or however vegetable oil in ancient Rome, and it is entirely possible that the actual Persian medicine was the extract of some plant and only called serpentis.

On the other hand, besides the name, we don't actually know if snake oil is actually made of snake oil or snake fat or something else.


The link only shows pinguis as an adjective or adverb. I don't see any reference to it being a noun on that page.


>Subst.: pingue , is, n., fat, grease, Plin. 11, 37, 85, § 212; Verg. G. 3, 124: “taurorum, leonum ac pantherarum pinguia,” Plin. 28, 9, 38, § 144: “comedite pinguia,” Vulg. 2 Esd. 8, 10.—

"Comedite pinguia" may be not "classic" latin, still it is known enough:

https://books.google.it/books?id=VOmwZ1AwFsMC&printsec=front...


Pinguis definitely has solid fat connotations for me.


Same paragraph, they state:

> We’ve found no evidence to support claims of malicious chips or hardware modifications.

That's about as good a denial as you'll get from somebody with a lawyer.


“We’ve found no evidence” ⇒ Somebody else found the evidence.

This is fun.


You can read any sentence to mean anything else if you want, but all you'll get is a degree in literature.


Agreed. Also lying to your shareholders is illegal, providing additional incentive not to write the press release.


On the other hand, with this splashed across the front page of most news sites, they couldn't really stay silent.


> our cities are unlivable

false by definition


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