You should be able to vouch that comment (click on it to do so, it'll be in the post-action links at top of comment).
You can also email a vouch to HN's mods at [email protected]. They can remove flags directly, though the email lag response seems to be increasing (give it 24--48 hours), which makes direct vouches all the more valuable.
...imagine fixing a bug, but 2 years later, the distribution isn’t shipping your update...
This grossly misstates the concept of a stable distribution (e.g., Debian stable, with which I'm most familiar).
Debian stable isn't "stable" in that packages don't change, to the point that updates aren't applied at all, it's stable in that functionality and interfaces are stable. The user experience (modulo bugs and security fixes) does not change.
Stable does receive updates that address bugs and security issues. What Stable does not do is radically revise programs, applications, and libraries.
Though it's more nuanced than that even: stable provides several options for tracking rapidly-evolving software, the most notorious and significant of which are Web browsers with the major contenders updating quite frequently (quarterly or monthly, for example, for Google Chrome "stable" and "dev" respectively). That's expanded further with Flatpack, k8s, and other options, in recent years.
The catch is that updates require package maintainers to work on integrating and backporting fixes to code. More prominent and widely-used packages do this. The issue of old bugs being reported to upstream ... is a breakage of the system in several ways: distro's bug-tracking systems (BTSes) should catch (and be used by) their users, upstream BTSes arguably should reject tickets opened on older (and backported) versions. The solutions are neither purely technical nor social, which makes solutions challenging. But in reality we should admit that:
- Upstream developers don't like dealing with the noise of stale bugs.
- Users are going to rant to upstream regardless of distro-level alternatives.
- Upstreams' BTSes should anticipate this and automate redirection of bugs to the appropriate channel with as little dev intervention as possible. Preferably none.
- Distros should increase awareness and availability of their own BTS systems to address bugs specific to the context of that distro.
- Distro maintainers should be diligent about being aware of and backporting fixes and only fixes.
- Distros should increase awareness and availability of alternatives for running newer versions of software which aren't in the distro's own stable repos.
Widespread distance technological education is a tough nut regardless, there will be failings. The key is that to the extent possible those shouldn't fall on upstream devs. Though part of that responsibility, and awareness of the overall problem, does fall on those upstream devs.
And just to provide some references so you don't have to take my word for it, from the Debian FAQ:
"2.2. Are there package upgrades in "stable"?"
Generally speaking, no new functionality is added to the stable release. Once a Debian version is released and tagged "stable" most packages will only get security updates.... there are some cases in which packages will be updated in stable ... When an urgent update is required to ensure the software continues working. The package is a data package and the data must be updated in a timely manner. The package needs to be current to useful to end user (e.g. some security software, such as anti-malware products)....
And:
Users that wish to run updated versions of the software in stable have the option to use "backports". Backports are recompiled packages from testing (mostly) and unstable (in a few cases only, e.g. security updates), so they will run without new libraries (wherever it is possible) on a stable Debian distribution.
Debian is strict in interpreting security updates:
Security updates serve one purpose: to supply a fix for a security vulnerability. They are not a method for sneaking additional changes into the stable release without going through normal point release procedure.
Your first comment says "Stable does receive updates that address bugs and security issues."
But your quote about stable says "most packages will only get security updates".
So assuming their bug fix isn't security-relevant, it sounds like their original complaint is valid? I don't see how it's "grossly misstating" how stable works.
Backports are useful but the default is that the user is on the buggy stable version.
Island birds may become flightless, which lifts constraint on maximum mass.
Though that occurs in other contexts as well: Antarctica (hardly small) with penguins, Africa (dittos) and ostriches, Australia (again) with emus, and South America (again) with the rhea.
There are also flightless island birds, such as the Guam Rail, Henderson crake, Inaccessible Island rail, and across multiple islands, the cassowary.
My comment was mostly based off DNA left by interbreeding between Neanderthal and Sapiens. Modern humans do carry a small but significant share of DNA inherited from our Neanderthal ancestors [1]. My point was that Genes left by these ancestors were heavily filtered by natural selection for brain-related regions.
That being said, loking it up again now, it seems that more recent publications draw more nuanced conclusions [2]. So maybe my knowledge is out of date, and it's time to pick up the books again :)
It's pretty well understood (and was at the time) that the project was aimed at collecting voice sample data for further voice-recognition and AI work:
"Google Shuts Down GOOG-411" (October 9, 2010)
The service has helped Google build a large database of voice samples and improved the voice recognition technology. Here's what Google's Marissa Mayer said about GOOG-411:
"The speech recognition experts that we have say: If you want us to build a really robust speech model, we need a lot of phonemes, which is a syllable as spoken by a particular voice with a particular intonation. So we need a lot of people talking, saying things so that we can ultimately train off of that. ... So 1-800-GOOG-411 is about that: Getting a bunch of different speech samples so that when you call up or we're trying to get the voice out of video, we can do it with high accuracy."
""The 411 Parable": Make sure you are playing the same game." (2011)
But just when the "head-to-head" competition was rolling Google announced GOOG-411 was no more... they'd captured all the human speech they needed to train their algorithms and were on to bigger and better things... Huh, voice recognition... algorithms?
i worked at a well known bookstore and the owner invited him to a reading, but he turned down with a hand written letter basically saying: "your bookstore seems nice but i never leave my farm and don't want to for a reading"
Ironically, much if not most food we eat is dependent on fossil-fuel energy, largely through nitrogen fertiliser (natural-gas based), but also pesticides, mechanised agriculture, and the distribution network's transport, cold-chain, and retail elements.
That's not a defence of fossil fuels so much as noting that Berry's arguments here sits a little loosely with reality.
His lifestyle - activism included - is a fantasy of pastoral individualism which is only possible because science and technology keep the lights on for everyone around him.
He still doesn't use a computer, and his wife still uses a typewriter to transcribe his rustic hand-hewn longhand.
But after that the words are typed into a computer by another assistant.
Would a return to small-scale farms and communities be a good thing? Of course. But he's blaming "lazy city folks" when the real culprits are corporate raiders and would-be plantation owners.
I'm addressing his argument rather than his lifestyle.
More to the point, Berry's lifestyle is in large part an argument. I'd agree it's not scalable (which was a large part of what I'd critiqued him for earlier), but it does reflect an ethos, one whose principle goal is explicitly not "scale".
The dubious position that being forced to participate in society invalidates his activism is addressed in response to reader letters, and so are consumers who consider themselves blameless cogs of the capitalist machine. Have you seen the web comic that goes something like:
Is much as I appreciate Berry's work and writing, I'd actually look to that list as a foundation of counterarguments, and possibly, alternate rationales.
Many (though not all) innovations benefit by scale. This would include freshwater viaducts, transportation canals, sewerage systems, and mechanised agriculture (even at modest levels).
Many technologies are less expensive at scale. Berry's beloved typewriter is more expensive than a quill pen, as one of his respondents notes. Computers rather famously have fallen tremendously in price:performance (though we've also bumped up the minimum acceptable performance level).
Some technologies are truly transformational. Going back before computers, and in the realm of information storage, retrieval and distribution, I could point to the lowly index card, reversable bindings (which made subscription updates to information possible, as with encyclopedias, business directories, manuals, specifications, and the like), and the printing press and moveable type themselves. Computers fit into this continuum, to which we could add telecommunications (signal flares, optical and electrical telegraphs, the telephone, broadcast and cable radio and television, packet-switched communications, as well as automated data systems, databases, revision control systems, and wikis).
Reparability is fine, and I'm strongly opposed to unnecessary additional barriers to repair (as the Right to Repair folks are correctly fighting). But again there are cases where the complexity and maintenance costs are offset by the increased capabilities. It's ironic to note that the computers of 1985 which Berry writes of are extremely repairable by contemporary standards (presuming you can find, or fabricate, replacement parts).
I could go on.
Mind that I'm sympathetic to Berry's points, and I'd be inclined to make similar arguments against much current technology. As Douglas Adams said:
Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.
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