Evangelist of lean software and devisor of 9 programming languages and an OS was 89 //

In his work, the languages and tools he created, in his eloquent plea for smaller, more efficient software – even in the projects from which he quit – his influence on the computer industry has been almost beyond measure. The modern software industry has signally failed to learn from him. Although he has left us, his work still has much more to teach.

I wish I had learned the things I have been learning in prison about talking through problems, and believing I can talk through problems and doing it, before I had married or joined the LKML. I hope that day when they teach these things in Elementary School comes.

I thank Richard Stallman for his inspiration, software, and great sacrifices,

It has been an honor to be of even passing value to the users of Linux. I wish all of you well.

Experiencing the sequence of events in a car programmed for automated emergency stopping.

Before I went to India for a six-month internship, I remember reading articles about poverty, trafficking, pollution, and the treatment of Dalit. I was participating in a program about international development, yet much of what I focused on were problems rather than the beauty, ingenuity, creativity, and generosity of the people who were teaching me. //

But if I could go back, here’s what I would say…

... you neither know much about the people whom these issues impact, nor do you have meaningful relationships with actual, real life people there. Don’t go with a pointing finger and answers; please go with curiosity and a desire to see the image of God in those you seek to love. //

But it’s not a country made up of the sum of its problems. It’s a country made up of people who are curious and quirky and kind and broken and shy and outgoing and proud and hilarious. And I’m a guest here. //

There are shadows of the kingdom of God here which are more visible to me the longer I’m here, even in this place where 99% don’t identify as His followers and haven’t received new life in Jesus. Parts of the culture that I originally viewed as wrong, broken, and even damaging, I’ve come to see as the opposite. (The “It’s not wrong, it’s just different” axiom from mission training comes to mind here.)

johnwalker

If you enjoy classic movies and find yourself bored with the endless series of sequels and reboots from present-day Hollywood, each striving to be more woke, transgressive, and aligned with the momentary obsessions of the “creative class”, the good news is that we’re living in a golden age when hundreds of film classics which not long ago you may have been lucky to see screened once in a decade or two at an art house or on late night television, interrupted by bottom-feeder advertisements, are now just sitting there on YouTube and other streaming services, completely free, waiting for you to enjoy them.

This post collects, in the comments, films you may want to check out. For each, I provide a YouTube player to watch the film and commentary from Wikipedia and the Internet Movie Database (IMDB). With the exception of a few films which are included because they’re “so awful they’re good”, most of these films are rated 7/10 or better for quality on IMDB.

The movies are listed in no particular order.

Don’t forget the popcorn!

About 1,700 people in Arizona voted in 2018 with a federal-only ballot. Two years later, the number grew to 11,600 individuals. //

President Joe Biden claimed victory in Arizona by just 10,457 votes, or about 0.3 percent. //

Twenty years ago, Arizona voters approved Proposition 200, also known as the “Arizona Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act.” At its core, the election integrity initiative required proof of U.S. citizenship to vote and photo identification at polling places. Prop 200 has come under constant assault from leftists fighting against the Arizona Constitution’s key qualification to vote in elections: U.S. citizenship.

The challenge went all the way to U.S. Supreme Court, where in 2013 the justices ruled 7-2 that states could not add documentary proof of citizenship requirements to federal election registration forms. States must “accept and use” the standardized federal voter registration form for national elections under the 1993 National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). The NVRA form, developed by the federal Election Assistance Commission, does not require proof of citizenship. It only asks that an applicant “aver, under penalty of perjury, that he is a citizen.”

Heritage Foundation and Heritage Action for America President Dr. Kevin Roberts was invited to the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) annual conference in Davos, Switzerland, to appear on a panel about “What to Expect from a Possible Republican Administration” on Thursday.

In an op-ed penned ahead of the conference, Roberts wrote that he accepted the invitation to deliver the global elites a message. “Davos must accept the moral virtues, practical benefits, and natural rights of nations, families, and individuals to govern themselves,” Roberts wrote, or “‘We, the People’” will “take matters into our own hands.”

Roberts certainly delivered that message. When asked about who will likely join a new Trump administration, Roberts said it will be those who wish to destroy “the grasp that political elites and unelected technocrats have over the average person.”

“The agenda that every single member of the administration needs to have is to compile a list of everything that’s ever been proposed at the World Economic Forum, and object to all of them wholesale,” he added. //

The Heritage Foundation president aptly pointed out that the WEF elites, “the media, the academy, government agencies, international organizations, corporations, and the arts,” don’t actually care about preserving “democracy.” They fear Trump because a Trump presidency poses an existential threat to their power — and Roberts did nothing to alleviate that fear. //

Roberts also condemned elites for scaring people into believing “so-called climate change” is an “existential” threat to humanity and pointed out that Davos’ “solutions” to the supposed climate crisis are killing people. “More than a billion people in the world have been lifted out of poverty in the last 35 years because of fossil fuels,” Roberts explained. Yet climate alarmists are shutting down energy production to replace it with insufficient green energy.

“China,” Roberts added, is “the No. 1 adversary not just to the United States, but to free people on planet Earth. Not only do we at Davos not say that, we give the Chinese Communist Party a platform.” //

“I think President Trump, if in fact he wins a second term, is going to be inspired by the wise words of Javier Milei, who said that he was in power not to guide sheep, but to awaken lions,” concluded the president of Heritage. “That’s what the average American and the average free person on planet Earth wants out of leaders.”

What do you do when you decide the Soviet Union and Red China aren’t communist enough and “real communism hasn’t ever been tried”? Well, you give it a try!

Estimates of the number of Albanians murdered by the communist dictatorship range from 5,000 to 25,000, including 1,200 killed while trying to escape the slave state. Albania, with abundant hydroelectric power resources and petroleum, was the poorest country in Europe with GDP per capita around US$ 750 in the 1980s.

johnwalker 5d

nagle:
Norway is far enough along in this area that actuals are available.

Norway is, of course, an outlier both in its electrical generation and consumption per capita.

Around 95% of electricity generation in Norway is from hydroelectric power, and it is the largest producer of hydroelectric power in Europe. This is the result of a policy which has been in effect since 1892, and 90% of generation capacity is publicly owned.

Norway’s per capita electricity consumption is 24,182 kWh/year, ranking second in the world after Iceland (51,304 kWh/year). This is more than twice the U.S. at 11,267 kWh/year.

With abundant hydropower, electricity is the most common source for home heating and hot water, which has contributed to developing a grid which can support electric vehicle charging.

This isn’t to discount the value of the experience in Norway, where around 80% of new vehicle sales are electric, but their circumstances are unusually favourable to electric vehicles compared to countries without abundant base load hydroelectric power.

Mettelus > johnwalker 5d
From Euronews.com:

The number of fully electric cars in Norway exceeded 3 million in 2022, and the share of EVs among the total number of cars rose to 76 per 10,000 in 2021, up from only 2 per 10,000 in 2013.

Although new purchases are 80%, the total percentage of EVs is still very small. Successfully charging less than a percent of the vehicles is not a good indication of how it will go when 80% of the vehicles need to be charged. One car out of 100 can be charged at the bookstore.

Also, just a side note. In the McKinsey report they use EBITA and as Charlie Munger advised: Whenever you see EBITA, substitute BS. //

civilwestman 3d
I must wonder as to two practicalities in a place like Norway. According to a brief search, EV batteries lose 12 - 30 % of their range in cold weather - before the heater is turned on. Then, it drops around another 40%. I guess Norwegians just like the “cool” experience of gliding around in green vehicles. Are mink blankets an OEM option I wonder, like the Tsarist Russian troikas?

johnwalker

nagle:
Two islands with four chargers each can charge eight cars. Charging stations may be able to replace gas stations on the same real estate.

Current standards for electric vehicle charging stations have the following maximum power delivery:

• SAE J1772 DC Level 2 — 400 kW
• IEC 61851-1 — 80 kW
• Tesla NACS — 250 kW

(Again, these are maxima under the standards: many installed charging stations are lower power. A typical Tesla V2 Supercharger provides 120 kW.)

Plans for future higher power charging standards include the Megawatt Charging System 1 (MCS) with a rating of 3.75 megawatts (3000 amperes at 1250 volt DC).

Let’s compare this to a gasoline pump. A typical filling station pump in the developed world delivers around 50 litres per minute (38 l/min in Safetyland), and gasoline has an energy content of around 7500 kcal/litre depending on its formulation (around 5000 kcal/litre for pure ethanol and 8600 for #2 diesel). Plugging these into Units Calculator, we get:

(50 litres/minute) * (7500 kcal / litre) = 26.15 megawatt

so even the proposed MCS (which is primarily intended for large commercial vehicles and buses) delivers only around 1/7 the power of a gasoline pump.

Now, even getting installation of five megawatt electrical service is a pretty big thing in most places (that is the consumption of a very large office building), so it looks like building out an infrastructure which will allow electrical vehicle charging times competitive with gasoline filling will require very substantial upgrades to the power grid and local distribution facilities.

nagle

There’s a lot to be said for lithium-iron-phosphate batteries. They don’t have a thermal runaway problem and will survive the “nail test”. Energy density per unit weight is lower, though. Energy density per unit volume is about the same, but the batteries are heavier.

Lower-end electric cars, such as the Tesla low-end models and most of BYD’s output, have already gone to lithium-iron phosphate. Probably a good idea.

Wednesday’s arguments were all about whether the Supreme Court should do away with the unworkable Chevron deference. //

Another common theme pushed, especially by Kagan, concerned the question of “who decides?” If there is an ambiguity, Kagan posed several times, do we want the agency or the courts to make the policy decision?

The correct answer, however, is neither: Congress should make policy decisions and draft statutes that provide clarity on the law. When Congress delegates authority to administrative agencies, such authority should similarly be clear.

Chevron deference has allowed Congress for far too long to avoid making tough calls, and while some of the justices seemed fine with that approach, it is inconsistent with our constitutional structure. //

Businesses need certainty, the solicitor general argued, and overturning Chevron would destroy the predictability of the law.

On the contrary, the fishing businesses’ attorneys stressed, what creates uncertainty is Chevron deference, which allows for each new administration to reverse prior regulations. Several justices seemed to share that viewpoint as well. Further, as several of the justices noted, the unworkability of a legal rule can justify its reversal, notwithstanding stare decisis — and several of the exchanges on Wednesday showed Chevron deference, in its current iteration, is unworkable. //

Right there could be the reason two undecided justices join to form a majority to overturn Chevron — it is just not workable because the lower courts won’t do the work required.

The story of the Comanches and the Red River War, whose 150th anniversary we mark this year, shows the absurdity of the ‘noble savage’ narrative. //

The Comanche were just as much imperialists as the Europeans ever were. Though Europeans could certainly be violently cruel, their culture at least censured violence against civilians — indeed, when stories of federal troops massacring defenseless Indians traveled east, the American people were horrified. The same cannot be said of the Comanche, whose brutality was an indelible component of their cultural identity.

It’s true as much today as it was 150 years ago that the West can learn from indigenous peoples such as the Comanche, who were not only tremendous horsemen and students of the natural world, but incredibly resourceful in finding a use for practically every part of the buffalo, which, with the horse, served as the cornerstone of their society. But that doesn’t mean we should embrace a simplistic, starry-eyed conception of native peoples, or a benighted, self-hating understanding of our own civilization.

What happened to the 1995 ruling my client won in Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña? //

A new president in 2025 must end DEI and all race-based hiring and decision-making by federal departments and agencies. Meanwhile, Congress must codify the Supreme Court’s ruling in Adarand and compel the federal government to comply with the Constitution’s equal protection guarantee. To paraphrase Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., it is the only way to pay the “promissory note” set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

“No White Saviors” is a far-left group that specializes in tarring white missionaries to Africa as irredeemably racist. The group is shown in the docuseries as developing its audience and donor network after it began to exploit internal strife at Bach’s Ugandan clinic. //

when the clinic suffered a brief closure over a licensing issue, during which time several children died, Bach’s mother pulled together the clinic’s data and reported that of the 940 children treated by Serving His Children over a six-year period, 105 total children did not survive their severe acute malnutrition — a mortality rate of 11 percent. Meanwhile, a study of patients with the same condition at Uganda’s largest children’s hospital revealed the hospital’s mortality rate was 14 percent. Opponents of the Christian mission, however, were more fixated on Bach’s skin color than her efforts to save starving kids. //

Bach also announced the same month that Serving His Children would be dissolved, with services no longer available to sick children desperate for treatment.

No White Saviors no doubt counts Serving His Children as a feather in its cap, a white-run nonprofit demonized as a neocolonialist organization that served no other purpose than to assuage some form of white guilt. But Bach was just a Christian missionary who was answering a spiritual call, even if she made mistakes and couldn’t restore every child she served. At the end of the day, Bach will go on living with her family in Virginia. It will be the sick kids in Uganda who suffer from the woke-led destruction of her mission.

Tucker's report covers a video was released through the efforts of Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY).

He spoke with Revolver News' Darren Beattie about the video. The video shows a man approaching law enforcement parked outside the DNC building at around 1:05 p.m. on Jan. 6. Beattie claims the man is telling them about the pipe bomb that is feet away. Kamala Harris was supposed to be visiting there as well. People walk by including children, but the police make no effort to stop them. An officer approaches where the bomb is and takes a picture of it. The police subsequently call in a "bomb-safe robot" to diffuse it, Beattie says.

So among the questions Beattie raises and the video raises are why do they initially appear lackadaisical and unconcerned? Why wasn't it found before this if Harris was supposed to be there, shouldn't they have done a sweep and wouldn't that have found the bomb if it had been sitting out there for 17 hours from the night before? Why didn't anyone else find it before that? Why didn't Harris milk the fact, as you might normally think she might? And who is the guy who told them this information, right around the time the riot is kicking off at the Capitol?

Journalists such as Ms. Zadrozny need to hype and holler about misinformation for the very reason that it is her job duty. This is not to say it does not exist, but she needs to keep it prominent and in the news for the sake of job security. But this also leads to the paradox of her realm: If misinformation is not only a problem but one growing in stature to the point of threatening democracy, does that not mean she is ineffective at her designated job?

Between Biden's cavalier attitude and the observable results, this is starting to look like a tabletop exercise in how to create regional instability and a global economic downturn.

Perhaps most important is US prestige. American diplomatic, economic, and military influence has kept the peace since 1945. Biden's timidity and the collection of third-string midwits that he's moved into critical positions are shattering that hard-won credibility. //

As if to add insult to injury, the French have started to escort French ships

Ryan Petersen @typesfast
·
The French Navy just posted these photos as they escort French container ships through the Red Sea. Before the American-led order that followed World War 2 this is how trade was done, with each nation protecting its own ships. Is this the future of globalization?
11:48 AM · Jan 16, 2024 //

The chorus of the Marine's Hymn honors America's history of suppressing piracy for the common good. Instead of trying to micromanage possible "escalation" and worrying about making Iran angry, we should be laying down a marker that says interfering with international trade is a terrible evolutionary strategy.

We can't complain about broken supply chains, high prices, inflation, unemployment, and regional instability if we won't take even a baby step toward teaching rogue actors that there are limits on acceptable behavior. Most of all, we can't let ourselves become a laughingstock. Without American power lurking on the horizon, other areas of the world could take a page from the Houthi lesson and interfere with global trade to get attention.

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