How does it have enough Delta-V to get into that distant of an orbit? Is it able to maneuver to different orbits and inclination? Is it able to return to earth? Or, is it more of a satellite than a “plane”? This is my first time learning about this space plane, so apologies if my questions are naive.
This flight was launched with a Falcon Heavy, that is why it has more energy to reach high orbit than the previous launches with an Atlas V booster.
When you are in a highly eccentric orbit (meaning the point in the orbit farthest from Earth (apogee) is much higher than the lowest point (perigee)) like this one there are several maneuvers you can do to significantly change your orbit with relatively little energy. The article describes some of the things they are testing.
A small breaking burn at apogee will lower the perigee into the upper atmosphere and they can then do aerobreaking (use atmospheric drag to lose energy) to slow down enough to land.
Thanks for the great response! It's been a while since I played KSP, and I completely forgot about the apoapsis maneuvers :-)
As an aside, it's sad about KSP2. We need a good, open-source space simulator in the spirit of KSP, which has incredible enthusiasm in the modding community.
It has been to space several times, and there are photos and videos of it returning, shuttle-style on a runway.
By carefully timing boosting burns at different points in the orbit, you can change the orbit to become highly inclined - go prograde at the periapsis, and your raise the apogee.
From the image, I guess they are in a Molniar orbit [1].
I’ve recently started using Google Workspace to organize documents and do collaborative work. I still haven’t figured out much for organizing tasks beyond using Google Sheets tables feature. Is there a better way to organize (sometimes recurring) tasks with checklists, similar to what this article describes but using Google Workspace?
Thanks! I had also come across that one, but I was referring specifically to the base editor itself. I know it might be hard to explain... sorry for not being able to provide more details!
Thanks for the reply! I remember Claude's Artifacts, but that wasn't the one I had in mind. It was a project for an editor, very similar to Canvas, possibly available on GitHub. It stood out for its minimalistic approach and the way it handled text formatting. Do you (or anyone else) recall what it might be?
As an expat in the EU, I have a surreal sense of being a bystander at an ongoing emergency scene. I don’t want to be yet another gawker as this situation is unfolding but am struggling to come up with actions that are within my power to take as a form of protest, resistance, or solidarity.
What are some practical actions that we can take to resist these sweeping changes?
I have a suggestion - at least one of several, which is to understand why we got here. The fact that this is escalating since cable TV, Murdoch, and the internet is not a coincidences.
Democracies globally are facing a similar problem, which is an abuse of a core democractic principle: Free speech.
Free speech is often valued in and of itself. However, free speech in itself is only a tool that serves a greater purpose, which is to enable the search for truth. Free speech is the goal of exchanging ideas between peoples, to foster competition in thought so that collectively we can understand our shared reality.
If such a market place were to become inefficient, or if such a market place were to resolve itself to serve the most attention grabbing takes, we would see much of what the media carries.
THIS ISNT the problem you face! This is the problem we discuss!
The problem is when someone combines the media with a political party. The media itself has no recourse but to play the game of advertizing to survive.
But once it is in service of an entity, then you can create your own justifications for war, and then declare victory yourselves.
This makes the most mercenary of politics the most succesful. It is the natural recourse of people who want to win at all costs. It is far more efficient than doing economic research to understand the pros and cons of a decision.
We can solve the problems we all mutuall face. There is more to life than our polarization.
However, if we are pulled between two magnets, and our goal is to not be pulled apart - then the magnets need to be addresed.
I like how you analyzed that, one addition: I also think some form of the anthropic principle is at play.
The societies that exist have something that allows them to continue to exist. Free speech can allow a society to seek truth and being aligned with reality can be important in the survival of a society. But so can cohesion while being "wrong".
There's a lot of information floating around and there's a lot of play between truth seeking free speech and cohesion signaling going on. Esp. as noise has been added to all signals including the scientific channels both via corporations and via well meaning ideologues.
I'm sure this is naive but I assume most of us would just love to be able to filter the signal from the noise in places that are relevant to us and be able to ensure low malfeasance in the places that aren't.
Read a commentary on the Abram's dissent, where Holmes made the first step toward articulating a "marketplace of ideas".
Holmes was suprisingly nihilistic, and I feel his formation of the search and competition for truth held now idealized beliefs of human behavior.
He accepted that people woudl be driven by their passions and biases, including things like a desire to create cohesion. That this was also something traded as a value and motivating force.
> The problem is when someone combines the media with a political party.
I generally agree, but I also think this was a natural and probably unavoidable result of having many different sources of “news”.
Prior to the internet, pretty much all news in the US came from ~5 TV networks and 1 or 2 newspapers (per city). It wasn’t practical for any of those sources to align exclusively with either political party because then they would be alienating ~half of their potential customers.
Today, there are far, far more sources to choose from. People self select those sources that they agree with. In the “old days” the news was more middle of the road politically, but that’s largely gone now. This is a major source of polarization IMO.
Well, if you think so, then dont get me wrong about this - do something about it! Read up, diagnose, deconstruct, break this theory.
Unless you know someone else is going to be doing this, or you know this doesnt interest you - then see how far this makes sense to you.
I did my soul searching the day Trump won. I had a 0% chance for that occurence, and my prediction was wrong.
I relooked at everything I believed, because I had made a high confidence prediction on how the world worked, and I had made the wrong call. If this was a massive stock play, I would have been broke.
My revised position made me stop asking why Harris lost, but instead focused on how Trump ran in 2016 in the first place.
I felt it forced me to take my thinking seriously, and my assumptions seriously. Perhaps it matters and will help you too.
> However, if we are pulled between two magnets, and our goal is to not be pulled apart - then the magnets need to be addresed.
Who exactly holds the magnets here? Is it even knowable or is it even necessary to know to address the problem? I agree regarding media but how do you get your information at national scale then? The world seems way more complex than what it once was, the interdependence feels more like grappling moves as we approach a malthusian crunch.
One of my other conclusions is that, with gen AI, the old assumptions of truth are gone.
Instead we're at the dawn of something like the fiat money revolution, in analogy terms. Like the value of a idea isnt about how its based on fact, but on the relation between the person sharing it, and the person paying attention to it.
The problem is, in America, both magnets pull to the right. We have a far right republican party and a center right democratic party. There is no leftwing party to provide balance. There’s not a single democrat who would be considered a leftist outside America.
One magnet is the media, the other magnet is an orwellian party/media firm.
Also - this used to be hacker news. As in who gives a shit about what is, its about what needs to change.
Think of it this way - this is just a puzzle that needs to be cracked. Take it as a job application problem, and see how it can be dissected over the weekend.
Come up with some theories, then go see if you can disprove them.
Fixing anything, comes from defining the right problem anyway.
The parent was asking about political parties. In Vietnam, the leftist party runs the country. If "in charge of a politically stable, economically growing country for decades" doesn't meet the definitions of "successful or meaningful" in the context of a political party you're going to have to be more specific.
People who express this sentiment seem to consider "the world" to be composed of North America and Europe. Why do you ignore the conservatives of Africa, the Middle East, India, and Asia in your assessment of what "average" is?
Public trust in the media is at an all time low along with other institutions. People are turning to social media because the press is unreliable. Reform that institution and fix many of our problems.
Maybe AI agents will be able to help identity bad reporting in the press and hold them more accountable. A sort of epistemic anti-virus.
There are a lot of arsonists complaining about fires on this particular point. The mainstream press is mostly decent.
American right-wing propaganda personalities and media outlets drive the negative sentiment to a large degree. They radicalize their audiences against traditional media institutions, and they do it very, very well. Sometimes there are kernels of truth to their criticisms. Mostly they are wildly exaggerated, or even totally fabricated. It sucks we can't have nice things, but it is what it is. Free speech is free speech.
But it won't really get better unless all that propaganda is successfully countered, even if you magically figured out how to build a perfect mainstream media.
Where things get really dangerous is when demagogues come along and join in, like Trump.
On the list of things to look for to tell if you're dealing with a rising authoritarian movement, near the top are sustained attacks on the press. Enemy of the people, Trump calls them. Zuckerberg gets threatened with life in prison. He encourages supporters to menace and attack reporters at rallies. The list goes on.
These all become the pretext for drastic anti-constitutional attacks on the free press, and we're seeing that take shape already in Trump 2.0.
We really have no way of knowing that. It's not like there is any organization that analyzes and critiques the mainstream press in any regular fashion. For instance, the press clearly knew that Biden had major cognitive impairments but they misreported it to the public. There was no accountability at all when the truth was discovered. Same with the story of Trump colluding with Russia, or the many, many different racial hate crime hoaxes. There is ZERO accountability for misleading the public.
I'm skeptical of all the talk about "authoritarianism." All those ideas seem be based on shoddy social science theorizing after WW2 - e.g. "The Authoritarian Personality." I don't think you can accurately predict the rise of a totalitarian leader based on what happened in Germany.
the press brought this up! Dont mistake the no true scotsman fallacy here.
It was openly discussed that Biden was not looking sharp (even though Trump couldn't hold a debate with a mirror).
Biden Stepped down, mid cycle - this was something unthinkable to election strategists and pundits.
It remains one of the most amazing things I've seen, because I understand what it takes to do that, and what many others did in a similar position.
If you want to talk about how perceptions are made - consider that less is made of Biden's actions here, and more is made of the fact that he ran at all.
Did you know that the Russia case resulted in 8 guilty please and 1 conviction? Trump didn't get touched because they knew of the Russian interference, but didnt expect it to harm them.
A sitting president cant be indicted on federal crimes, so the obstruction of justice case was dropped.
This is unfortunate, since it gives ammunition to everyone, at which point it just becomes a team sport.
However, having seen authoritarian states, this is 100% from that play book. And yes, it feels insane and high strung to write that, but what can one do?
It looks like a wolf, it bites like a wolf, but maybe its just a massive dog.
> We really have no way of knowing that. It's not like there is any organization that analyzes and critiques the mainstream press in any regular fashion
The "mainstream press" is actually hundreds or thousands of individual institutions, some big, small, and each have their own flaws, strengths, biases, audiences, cultures and incentives. They compete with and often criticize/check one another. It's not even all that unusual for an editorial columnists to lambast their own publications.
I don't want to idealize it too much, but feedback loops for self-correction are baked into the pie, and they do actually work from time to time.
There's a completely different physics in the right-wing media world though, best illustrated by the aftermath of the 2020 election. Fox had to pivot hard to election denialism because they were getting killed in the ratings by upstarts like Newsmax and OANN who went all in on the election lies. The right-wing media feedback loops don't self-correct, they incentivize extremism, grievance and conspiracy theory.
> For instance, the press clearly knew that Biden had major cognitive impairments but they misreported it to the public. There was no accountability at all when the truth was discovered.
This is mostly right-wing media fiction. Stories and commentary on Biden's age were quite frequent in my experience.
(There's basically a whole genre of faux right-wing media criticism in the style of: "The mainstream media won't talk about X...", even while headlines about X all over the place in on "mainstream" media outlets)
> Same with the story of Trump colluding with Russia
It's not quite that simple. That's not a single story, it's was an ongoing series of stories and investigations that developed over time.
There was plenty of measured, careful reporting around all of that stuff. There was plenty of irresponsible reporting too. There was also plenty of self-flagellation afterwards over a lot of it.
(The Trump campaign, along with folks in it's orbit, did collude with Russia. People went to jail. Paul Manafort literally met a Russian spy on a park bench, kind of like you see in the spy movies, to covertly hand over proprietary voter data. Roger Stone was coordinating with Russian hackers and wikileaks to leak hacked DNC data, etc.)
> I'm skeptical of all the talk about "authoritarianism."
If you can't recognize it as a sign of authoritarianism when a sitting president nearly murdered an entire building full of cops, legislators, staff and his own vice president in a mad, desperate bid to nullify an election and seize power, I'm not sure what can break through.
But we are backsliding, there's no doubt about that. How far we fallback will depend on how effectively we oppose... well.. the current ruling party as it currently exists.
Hope the US gets bad enough that people in the EU notice and decide they don't want to go down the same route?
Honestly though, I'm in the same situation and I don't know.
I did just start paid subscriptions to several media outlets that have been doing good reporting on the situation (Guardian, Verge). I unsubscribed to the Washington Post after they pulled their Harris endorsement (which was appalling), but their coverage since feels relatively thorough and they are well placed to report on all this so far, so I resubscribed. I already support PBS. I'll probably donate to Pro Publica next.
I expect media outlets will be under rapidly increasing pressure, so supporting them financially feels important and positive.
I've also have a standing donation to the NAACP legal defense fund from his first administration that I've just kept running.
The parties turn on people who show up to do the work. There is a remarkable amount people can achieve if they show up as people who are willing to learn, do the work, and have their own eyes and ears open.
Genuinely curious if you think a WaPo endorsement could have swayed the election, and if not, why it mattered at all.
From my perspective, Trump voters distrust and dislike the old media so much, a newspaper telling them they shouldn't vote for Trump would only strengthen their resolve.
Not the poster, but I don't think a newspaper pulling an endorsement out of fear of reprisal is a great sign of a free press (or, to the poster's point, a press you care to pay for.)
Yup, this. I think it had zero impact on the election, but it was an absurd and gutless decision.
I'd rather not pay for that sort of thinking. However, I'd rather have the WaPo in its current form as opposed to severely diminished (or none at all).
It is far more likely that Bezos and Zuckerberg support Trump than fear being shot. Zuckerberg particularly, what makes you think this was a 180? The man has been doing machismo stuff like throwing spears at goats and challenging people to boxing matches for years. And have you seen the way Facebook is moderated, even years ago relative to the way Twitter was moderated under their old owners? Supporting Trump is in-character for Zuckerberg, even more so than Bezos.
I must say though, this "billionaires as terrified victims" narrative is hilarious. I hope the Democratic party rescues these poor billionaires from the man they're publicly supporting!
You're hysterical. Trump hasn't suspended habeas corpus, nor can he, nor has he even said he would. He claimed about ten thousand times, probably literally as many times as that, that he would put Hillary Clinton in prison. Has he? Has he even tried? Anybody who takes his bullshit at face value is a moron.
This country is filled with tens of millions of people openly defying Trump. None of them have been illegally arrested for it, none of them have been assassinated for it. Reddit's executive team isn't on the run from Trumpian death squads trying to murder them for defying Trump. There is no credible threat to people for defying Trump, least of all to people with the extreme resources available to Zuckerberg and Bezos.
We’re, what, two weeks in? If the most powerful person in the country threatens jail time, says his enemies are the enemies of the country, absolves the crimes of those who attacked the capital and assaulted police officers, etc etc I sure as hell will take those the threats he makes seriously.
Publicly, openly musing about imprisoning his enemies gives Bezos, Zuckerberg, et. al. fairly reasonable cause to believe that playing nice with Trump is necessary to avoid the full weight of the regulatory apparatus now under his control being directed at their companies.
(I don't think they'll be successful in appeasing him, but they're visibly trying.)
Should ownership of newspapers be limited to mere millionaires? Or do you mean that private ownership of newspapers should be abolished?
This country was built on privately owned newspapers wielded as weapons by their owners; I'm sure you've heard of Benjamin Franklin. The First Ammendment protects this more than anything else for this reason.
Hope the US gets bad enough that people in the EU notice and decide they don't want to go down the same route?
Yeah, same. Since the Brexit a lot of populist parties in the EU don't want to leave the EU anymore (only reform it). Let's hope that this is another warning that the destructive populist path doesn't lead anywhere good.
(And I hope that the UK will join the EU again, they are close friends.)
I did just start paid subscriptions to several media outlets that have been doing good reporting on the situation (Guardian, Verge).
Yeah, independent, non-clickbait news is very important in these times. We recently renewed our newspaper subscription for three years.
When you are in the EU (or really anywhere non-US anyway), it's probably a good moment to start moving your data out of the US and away from US companies. So far Trump has done exactly what he promised, so a large trade war or, even worse, a war over Greenland is possible. Since pretty much anything is fair game now, blackmailing the EU using its dependency on US tech companies is not far-fetched anymore.
Get your data out and reduce your dependency on US tech.
> (And I hope that the UK will join the EU again, they are close friends.)
As a Brit, so do I. However, despite all of the evidence showing it will be massively beneficial, we won't. Not fully, imho, for a good while. Best I'm hoping for is closer ties in a customs union, but that requires compromise I don't think will happen.
The best thing I can think of is to make the EU a strong, powerful, wealthy democracy that can defend itself from invasion and try to encourage other democracies around the world.
Which means we have a lot of work ahead, to put it mildly.
The EU suddenly feels flimsy and badly defended. I hope that negative motivation puts the fear into people and motivates action faster than this reality can be exploited by bad actors, who seem to be ready and waiting.
Agreed, but I don't think I'd say sudden. Some have been pointing out that weak militaries and pacifism were a luxury afforded only through naivete and wishful thinking. Hell, Ireland's whole defense strategy is "but everyone likes us!" and "well I'm sure Britain will help in a pinch".
I was always receptive to those arguments, but I think even the people making them only felt them conceptually. The thick layer of civilization and “end of history” vibes just felt impenetrable. Then around brexit times it started to feel a little shaky, and more so with the Ukraine war.
I think Trump decisively stripped the last of the illusions away, most people feel the vulnerability in their bones now.
For that to work, the individual governments need to give more of their responsibilities up to the EU level, which is unfortunately somewhat unpopular.
It may be unpopular but Volt is increasing its presence on all levels from local councils to European Parliament, so there’s a desire among some voters for more EU federalism. In Germany they may come close to the results of FDP on the upcoming elections.
Fortunately in my country of Austria the liberal party (NEOS from the EU Renew Europe faction) already supports a "United States of Europe", but it "only" has around ~10% at the moment (though it is growing).
But the new government of pro-russian neonazis (FPÖ) and conservatives (ÖVP) will probably be very anti-EU.
It's 2025. You can drive across most European countries in a day (a long day, in some cases, but still).
If Europe wants to stick to the borders a bunch of kings and princes hashed out in blood a hundred+ years ago it can, for the moment, but if we do, there's a decent chance it will just be crushed by the next global superpower (US, China, or weirdly enough maybe Russia considering how much influence they have over many US politicians now).
I love Europe. I was proud to become an EU citizen and my favourite scarf is an EU flag. I think it's an amazing place full of amazing countries and people. And it still can be! But for it to continue to exist, we MUST work together. Militarily, economically, and even practically (why is it so hard to book train tickets across 3 countries again?)
I know it stings, but the reality is the wolves are at the gates. Democracy has its back against the wall and we need a force that can fight back. Or government of the people, by the people, for the people, will soon perish from the Earth.
> If Europe wants to stick to the borders a bunch of kings and princes hashed out in blood a hundred+ years ago it can
If the EU wants to stick to a technocratic structure pushing unpopular laws over the democratic institutions won in blood, it'll be probably be democratically a hard sell to give it more powers.
I agree that Europe should have more unification and coordinated action. But I don't love the EU. I quite liked social democracy, but then it was outlawed by the EU.
It was nice to have public control over the infrastructure, possibility to have industry for public benefit, possibility to nationalize out of control private sectors, possibility to retain assets and capital domestically, to control fiscal and monetary policy etc.
Unpopular because it is undemocratic. The EU is a bureaucracy that works against democracy. Its goal is to steal more and more power from national governments that are run by elected representatives towards a bureaucracy that decides their next actions in Davos.
The European Parliament is directly elected by the citizens of the European Union. The European Council consists of government leaders of the EU countries, which are also chosen in most countries based on the results of elections. The only exception is the European Commission, which is chosen by indirect democracy (nominated by member countries, approved by the parliament, and they can dissolve the EC).
Why is the EC a problem? In many democracies the executive branch is instated and kept in check by a parliament. The EC are not always my picks and there is definitely a lot of politics involved, but I think it's an asset that people with some level of expertise are selected and that the executive branch is somewhat protected against making very short-term decisions because they have to think about their next election.
People should stop bashing the EU. Like any democracy it has its issues, but it is hugely successful in avoiding war between countries that have been in war for centuries, plus the EU actually has a spine and has generally (with exceptions) protected people's privacy, protected people against large companies, etc.
The primary weakness of the EU is that it cannot do enough yet (but every crisis makes leaders realize that working together at the EU-level is more successful than trying to operate as a single country).
I've heard this often and I don't understand it at all.
Every government in the world has a permanent set of employees which enact policy and turn political intentions into legislation. Usually these are split into departments, each headed by temporary political appointee.
So exactly like the European Commission, then. Why is it only "undemocratic" when the European Union does it?
Are you suggesting that all 32000 people working for it should be elected? I'm quite certain there is no government in the world which does that and it seems quite impractical.
Or should every political appointment be directly elected, instead of appointed by a head of state? You could do that, but I am not aware of any major government which does so, so if that's the sole reason to call it "undemocratic" then it's a double standard.
The EC desires to get more and more power over EU countries' policy, with the excuse of "doing its job". In a normal country, the executive branch is also elected by the population. In the EU, they get there by appointment, so they are an extra step removed from democracy. It is just the opposite of what you want to do to improve democracy. Instead of more opportunities for people to control government, you're creating an extra level of indirection that makes control even harder.
Democratic and EU unfortunately doesn't mesh that well.
In the current form federal EU would be someting like having an unelected powerful executive branch, and a semi-elected weak legistlative branch. Furthermore the populace has very little idea about what is happening in the EU and who to hold accountable, partly because the media doesn't cover it, and partly because the processes are extremely convoluted and quite opaque.
Such "democratic centralism" bureaucracy probably would have benefits like more stability for long term strategy, swift execution of policies and coordinated action, but it's also very prone to corruption and elite capture.
Yes, a more accurate characterization would be someting like partially elected legislative branch.
The parliament is directly elected, but it doesn't have full legislative powers. It can't propose new laws and the Council of the EU has veto over the parliament. Dissolving the EC also needs a supermajority.
The structure is at least way less directly democratic than any EU country.
People in the EU need to pay attention and think hard before voting for similar candidates and parties.
This is a global phenomenon. It’s part grassroots, driven by discontent with sclerotic establishment parties that are not solving problems, but also being driven by propaganda from authoritarian countries like Russia and China. The latter is opportunistic.
Americans voted for this and I find it very hard to believe they didn't know what they were voting for. So that's on them.
Personally, I am working on replacing any American made products or services I use myself or through my job. Both as an act of protest and in preparation for the upcoming economic war they plan to wage.
If you're in Germany or know some Germans, talk as much as you can about how this is what Musk wants to do via the AfD to us here. The election is a little over two weeks away. Right now, the CDU/CSU ("normal" conservatives) look to be getting the largest number of votes, but nowhere near enough to govern on their own. They've been a little too flirty with the AfD (currently in second place), and the worst thing that could happen is that they forget what they learned in school about what happened to the centrist and conservative parties in the early 1930s, and take the AfD as their coalition partner instead of trying to work something out with the SPD and Greens.
There's a reason that Germany's current main center-right parties were both born after the war.
Germany can be saved only by a major political reset. The mainstream parties are so flawed that it may be easier to replace them, than to fix.
Greens just went through a stupid political scandal in Berlin where the leftist radical wing tried to frame a realo candidate for sexual harassment.
SPD goes to this election with the worst chancellor in history. CDU lost its mind and voted together with AFD. FDP is serving a few special interests groups. Die Linke are borderline irrelevant.
We are in a strange situation where we have strong presence on populist left and right, but no decent political force in the center to contain them.
> Germany can be saved only by a major political reset. The mainstream parties are so flawed that it may be easier to replace them, than to fix.
Ironically enough, this very much sounds like the "let's re-write and everything will be better" fallacy encountered in software engineering.
That aside, what you are wishing for is a war and/or revolution where the pillars of society have been shattered to pieces, the old incumbents removed/killed/retired, and where a new political landscape is built upon the ruins and ashes of what has been.
Germany can be saved only by a major political reset. The mainstream parties are so flawed that it may be easier to replace them, than to fix.
Be careful what you wish for. If AfD would grab the power (unlikely at this point), it'll weaken Germany nationally and internationally like the US is being weakened now.
At this point the biggest weakening factor is our political mainstream. In 100 years, if nothing changes, Germany will be Argentina of today. I’m not afraid of AfD, they lack practically everything to become new NSDAP. I’m afraid that whatever next coalition is, they will miss every opportunity to make a difference.
Yes, he sold out after he left office and was criticized for it heavily. Earlier he stood up to the US criticizing the second Iraq war.
(Most of Europe, including Britain, got gas via Nordstream and its distribution network. France and The Netherlands also owned part of it but are never criticized.)
>Yes, he sold out after he left office and was criticized for it heavily.
No I'm fairly certain he sold out in office and then reaped the rewards upon leaving.
>Earlier he stood up to the US criticizing the second Iraq war.
Which is ultimately good but largely unrelated.
>Most of Europe, including Britain, got gas via Nordstream and its distribution network.
Most of Europe is easily divided and Russia made it worthwhile for those involved.
At the end of the day tho I believe from Russia's end it was about taking away bargaining power and influence from various eastern european countries. A pricing map for their gas showed it's wielded as a political pressuring tool. There was no capacity limit to existing pipelines nevertheless when european countries got cold feet Russia was happy to turn down the tap and blame it on north stream's shutdown despite every other avenue being wide open.
>France and The Netherlands also owned part of it but are never criticized.)
Their companies being involved should be duly criticized perhaps. But let's be honest. A head of state so blatantly doing something like that is an easy thing to notice and target. Especially when related policy decisions went well beyond north stream.
I deleted my Twitter account after a period of ghost-quitting that platform. However, this action doesn't seem all that significant, so I'm hopeful I can use my energy more effectively.
Meanwhile, increasing my focus on my immediate community and sharing my creativity are fulfilling activities within my power.
Is anyone here using Zig for audio plugin development? It seems like a good candidate as an alternative to C++ but lacks the ecosystem (like JUCE). Are there any ongoing efforts to bring DSP/audio plugin development to Zig?
I'm using D for audio plugins and we do use CTFE extensively (named comptime in Zig). Zig might be a bit more fit maybe because of the easier C and C++ interop and targetting, but I'm not sure about the COM and OOP story.
I honestly quit recommending Gimp due to its name. Name changes are challenging of course, but not impossible. I understand the developers have a lot on their plates with the 3.0 transition and keeping up with GTK, but I really hope they can make a bit of time to prioritize a more community-friendly name for the project.
Names matter a ton. I would never recommend a product called "Gimp" in a professional environment. The fact that the GIMP team has heard this feedback for multiple decades and ignored it says a lot - both about their ability to take community feedback and about how much they care about ever being a professional tool.
There are two tools: BoringThing and Ninja Sex Death Cult. They both accomplish the same task, but I can recommend one to friends and family without immediately having to explain the name. So I'll use and recommend BoringThing.
This is very much the same notion that comes up whenever CockroachDB is mentioned. IIRC at one point they had a "white-label" project generator where you could come up with your own name and branding, and it would bake it into the checked out sources. It might make sense to create one for the photo editor as well.
Edit: Ninja Sex Death Cult is a pretty good band name though!
Why would the name ‘CockroachDB’ be an issue? Cockroaches are just insects, but the word ‘gimp’ is actually a slur in some cultures (Cambridge dictionary labels the first definitions from both the US and UK as “informal offensive”).
So I think it is worth changing the name in this case. Actually being a slur is a problem, in stark contrast to another recent example, where as far as I can see the reasons around changing Git’s ‘master’ branch name are totally artificial - the word ‘master’ is of course not a slur, and despite claims that it necessarily invokes the idea of slavery, it clearly has a multitude of uses that have nothing to do with slavery, such as ‘master recording’ or ‘masters degree’ so the idea that the word by itself is ‘not inclusive’ is quite baseless in my opinion.
So being a slur is a real problem in a way that being the name of a slightly unpleasant insect (like CockroachDB) or hypothetically (but not really) invoking the idea of slavery really shouldn’t be.
I tried for a long time to not be bothered and chuckle at the naming mistake. However, it is a bit fatiguing to repeatedly explain to people that the project name isn’t intended to be offensive when they interpret the name in any of the common meanings.
In particular, I’m not going to introduce the Gimp to my ten-year-old son who is interested in art and gamedev, simply because I feel like the meanings/slang are a bit age-inappropriate to discuss and I don’t want him to inadvertently offend anyone.
I agree fully, but there’s more than that. It’s just bad marketing! Like, don’t conjure this image into people’s heads when thinking about your product! It seems like they care more about making some juvenile point about how offensive words shouldn’t be a problem rather than the popularity of their thing.
Just find some name that conjures some pretty image like ”GNU Constellation” or whatever and be done with it.
It's not misinterpreted. Misinterpretation is an accident that happens when a good faith message can be reasonably interpreted in multiple ways, and the listener's choice is not the speaker's choice. A good faith message is one where the speaker deliberately removes all likely ambiguity they can foresee.
When a bad faith message is "misinterpreted", it's because the speaker was not interested in communicating successfully in the first place.
There exist two things:
1. A name which amuses the developers by honoring an uninteresting bit of historical trivia.
2. A name which contributes to the project's health and success by attracting new users.
One of these things must be selected as more important than the other.
As far as whether GIMP, in and of itself, succeeds or fails, pretty much no one cares. If GIMP vanished, and the practical value lost to the world was big enough, some new project would spring up to take its place. Maybe Krita would expand its scope. The Blender team sure has bank to play with. Whatever.
But what lots of people do care about is the success of open source in general. When software is expensive and closed, fewer people get to use it, and the fewest of them are screwed if what they need is too niche. When software is free and open, more people get to use it, niches become less niche, and niches that remain niche can be filled by anyone with enough DIY motivation. And because all of the benefits of open source rely on a large user community, attracting users is very important, both to individual projects and the whole community.
And right now, the solution the open source community has to offer the world is an embarrassment. This is bad. The GIMP project is selfishly pissing in the water supply the entire open source community is trying to build. No one is going to take that trivially.
>I recommend not being so bothered about trivialities like names being misinterpreted.
I'd recommend looking up "gimp" in an image search, and not dismissing valid concerns as trivialities.
On the note of misinterpretation, I'd recommend looking the word "gimp" in a dictionary[1], which offers this:
gimp(n.): 1. offensive : a disabled person
The "explanation" that GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Package works if you're an edgy 13-year-old. Beyond that, any sane person would question the wisdom of using that particular acronym (and why not go for BOOBS or FATCOCK if you really don't care).
DuckDuckGo, the #1 search engine that most people use, sure.
Why don't you get off your kink-shaming horse and use Google, from a private window or friend's machine (because I don't know what's going on with your search history either).
Finally, saying "You got BDSM stuff when you looked for this software package? Oh, you must be one of those people, I get nothing like that" is a sure way to get people to never use the software in question.
That's beside the point that you are not earnest here by using an niche search engine to say what you "got".
Thankfully, I'm working from home. One could literally get fired if this showed up on a monitor in the office. Prison in some countries if kids see that in school too.
But sure, it's not an issue for you, so what's the problem?
You can be coy all you want, software named BIGFATCOCK isn't going to be used in K12 setting or government/corporate environments in English-speaking countries, and neither is GIMP.
To get things out of the way: BIGFATCOCK does not mean anything offensive in languages other than English, and there's nothing wrong with big, fat cocks.
It's just a bad name for e.g. spreadsheet software, as the established meaning of the name has nothing to do with the functionality of the software.
Same with GIMP. You can stick fingers in your ears and scream "la la la" all day long, and wonder why GIMP isn't picking up steam like Blender did for the next 20 years — your call.
Between blenders and BDSM gear, guess which one is usually OK to discuss at a workplace, and which one creates a potential for a hostile work environment or sexual harassment.
Compare and contrast:
-"Hey Lauren, check out this new blender I got yesterday!"
-"Hey Lauren, check out this new gimp suit I got yesterday!"
Or:
-"Hey Mary, the facilities put a new blender in the kitchen area, I just tried it, and really enjoyed it! Give it a go, I know you're into that kind of stuff."
-"Hey Mary, the facilities put a new gimp suit in the kitchen area, I just tried it, and really enjoyed it! Give it a go, I know you're into that kind of stuff."
>But you know, the real question is : how the hell would you know such slang
You people thinking that kink shaming is a great way to popularize a graphics editor named after the said kink will never cease to amaze me.
The answer is: I googled "gimp", and things other than the graphics editor came up. Curious, huh?
>I do not care
Oh, but you do. If you didn't, you wouldn't be here, typing nonsense.
"I do not care" is wonderful phrase that adds nothing to the discussion 100% of the time, because the set of people interested in what you, personally, do not care about is as empty as the informational content of your comment.
I do not care how you got BDSM in google's front page, while myself, typing "gimp", has: gimp.org, apps.microsoft.com, wikipedia.org etc
I had to go to page 9 (!!) to get something unrelated with the software: "noun verb (used without object) to limp; walk in a halting manner: a sprain that made her gimp for weeks."
>I do not care how you got BDSM in google's front page
Google, helpfully, explained to me:
"People also ask"
"What is a GIMP?"
Meaning of gimp in English
"an unpleasant or stupid person: I can't stand that gimp. US informal offensive. a person with a physical disability, especially one that affects someone's legs.
GIMP | English meaning - Cambridge Dictionary
What does the slang word "gimp" mean?
In any of its meanings, deeply insulting, unpleasant, or otherwise, (a stupid person, a person with a physical disability, a sadomasochistic sexual partner, a trimming, a fishing-line), spelt ...
I understand that slang and curse words may not be as jarring or impactful to non-native speakers. I hear Finnish curse words regularly and they don’t bother so much.
My concern is that non-native speakers still use dictionaries and search engines, so easily learn about the meanings of words.
Additionally, I’ve tried to promote the GIMP in educational environments but the fact remains that teachers and parents are often averse to using the name.
Well, if for any reason you went "hey, what the hell does that mean" and decided to look it up:
- (informal offensive) an unpleasant or stupid person:
- (informal offensive) a person with a physical disability, especially one that affects someone's legs
- (informal) a limp (= a way of walking slowly and with difficulty because of having an injured or painful leg or foot )
- a person who gets sexual pleasure from being hurt or treated badly
And it's not like this is super obscure or anything. The "most influential film of the 90s", Pulp Fiction, literally had a character that was "the gimp". This is pretty mainstream.
This is along the lines of "Hey co-worker, I found the best text editor the other day. It's called pizdă, you should give it a try! Pizdă seems like it would help you!"
>I just did and all the results are related to this software, so what is your point?
My point in this case would be that you're either blind or lying if you don't get any BDSM costume pictures mixed in. Or, at best, that Google gave you personalized search results that aren't what people see when they do the same search.
Try doing it from a private window / a friend's machine.
Also, look up "GIMP suite" (suite is not uncommon to refer to software packages). Have fun.
>I'm just going to leave these here: "Cute girl wearing a Free BSD costume"
Please leave your nonsense elsewhere, and don't pollute this forum with cliches devoid of thought.
If you have a point to make, do so, and figure it out before you say it.
In any case: a "gimp suit" only means one thing, it has always meant that one thing, before GIMP-the-software was a thing.
This doesn't apply to "things you left here", so please put them where they belong.
This is why searches for GIMP will inevitably land on BDSM imagery. A teacher that tells kids to "use gimp" (or, Cthulhu forbid, the GIMP suite) is risking their job no matter how many things you suggestively leave around.
