Keep in mind this book is really long - I believe it’s something to do with authors being paid by the page in the US? But anyways, it’s very detailed but that may not be a bad thing. I don’t have any other suggestions.

Good on you for stepping up! Hope it encourages others to volunteer for the communities they care about :)

But in any forseeable timeline

500 years was just a number I threw out there as “clearly beyond any forseeable time”. It could be 200 years, 1000 years, maybe never. Point is just that it’s completely wrong to think that we just need to land on the moon or on Mars and then we’re an “interplanetary species” and if Earth goes, we have a backup plan.

A moon base could not be truly self sustaining for a long, long time, if ever. Probably never, definitely not within say 500 years.

So if Earth goes, the moon base is definitely gone too. There is no saving humanity without saving Earth.

Like Spain? Sorry I’m out of the loop, what is Spain like in this context?

It’s actually easy if you think about it.

Rich people love comparing their wealth to others, so they can feel better about themselves. So we know quite precisely how much each billionaire is worth, cause they really like measuring those dicks.

Anyways, we can use this against them. You just tax the wealth. Not the income. Not the surplus or the profit. You tax the wealth.

For instance, during the Danish election, there were some parties who proposed the idea of a wealth tax such that all wealth above, say 30 million DKK would be taxed by 0.5% to 1% (depends what party you ask) every year. Someone worth 100 million Danish kroner would therefore need to pay 70*0.01 million or 700.000 kroner in taxes every year.

You could do more than 1% and 30 million for billionaires if you ask me.

game systems don’t need memory safety

I see what you’re saying but I don’t know if I agree on this point. Games are buggy messes before undergoing a long and arduous quality assurance process. While Rust’s iteration speed is maybe not great, I don’t think it’s really significantly worse than C++ iteration time, especially not with efforts like subsecond, that bevy uses for instance. And Rust is much more ergonomic and convenient to write than C++. It is in some ways a higher level language than C++ while managing to still allow for very fine optimisations, which are sometimes required in games. I think this would translate to productivity improvements too, although I don’t really have any data to back that up obviously.

I personally think the momentum is mostly what C++ has that Rust is lacking - i.e. a large body of game developers who are already well-versed in C++ and a large and established body of game engines and frameworks for every kind of game. Games are often pressed for financing, so venturing into the territory of new engines and new languages is not something most game devs can afford or want to spend their money on.

Do you mean Rust is unsuited for games, or that Rust simply don’t (yet) have the established engines/frameworks/libraries for it? I think Rust could be really great for video game development, but it’s true that the ecosystem is not quite there yet - though it’s getting better.

Nice

Anarchy is a political structure where there’s basically no one in charge, right?

That’s a very literal interpretation of the word. As I understand it, anarchy is more like a class of ideas, rather than any concrete idea. Two people who both call themselves anarchists can have very, very different ideas about how society should run.

So the answer is: it depends what kind of anarchy you’re talking about. Your question is asking how a broad category would work but it’s so broad that I don’t think you can give a concrete answer. You’ll need to be more specific.

I generally agree, but I kind of wonder whether something like an advanced LLM has a place as a component of an artificial “brain”. We have a language-focused area in our brain, but we have lots of other components of the brain that does all kinds of other things too. Perhaps we’re “just” missing those other things.

I think you’re conflating intelligence and consciousness. Pain and suffering requires consciousness but intelligence does not imply pain or suffering or happiness. LLMs are already “intelligent” to a certain degree in some aspects, though not generally intelligent like humans. But there is no reason to believe that you couldn’t have a generally intelligent artificial agent that lacks consciousness and thus can feel no pain or suffering.

That’s true, but that doesn’t contradict the above comment. Unless you believe in something like a spirit or soul, you must concede that human intelligence ultimately arises from physical matter (whatever your model of physics is). From what we know of science right now, there are no direct reasons for thinking that true intelligence or even consciousness is limited to biological organisms based on carbon and could not arise in silicon.

Interesting - I think this minimal solution I actually wouldn’t mind, but I’d be concerned about introducing syntax for callers. Keeping it as a private construct in libraries seems fine though.

Diesel is an ORM

This is kind of stretch to say though - it is not an ORM if you compare it to something like ActiveRecord. Diesel is just a DSL for writing SQL queries that are verified by the compiler.

sqlx requires a modern macro system

I wouldn’t say it requires using macros. You could definitely imagine verifying queries in the same way in languages without macros. But yea, this is one of the strengths of Rust I suppose.

Your last paragraph can be fixed even without an ORM though. Rust has libraries like diesel and sqlx that verify the sql in various ways.

Short answer: No.

Long answer: Noooooooooooooooooooooo

iff [sic]

In case you are unaware, “iff” is short for “if and only if”, i.e. bidirectional implication. It’s not a typo.

Why is that one about the WarEra user green?

Okay haha, I did not know that. I wonder if that works where I am (Denmark). Not sure if we have regulation when it comes to this stuff.