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I have no skin in the game and rarely code in C++. My answer is: no.


Somewhat relevant, I use this little script to open front page of NYTimes daily morning on my macbook:

d=$(date +%d)

m=$(date +%m)

y=$(date +%Y)

wget -q https://static01.nyt.com/images/$y/$m/$d/nytfrontpage/scan.p... && open ./scan.pdf


I made an RSS feed of these front-page images a while ago if anyone wants to use them:

https://nytonline.net/rss



That's neat! I turned it into a one liner `rm todays_nyt.pdf; wget -q "https://static01.nyt.com/images/$(date +%Y/%m/%d)/nytfrontpage/scan.pdf" -O todays_nyt.pdf && open todays_nyt.pdf `


dmy=$(date +%d/%m/%Y)


"Very few things are an immediate success". Wise words.


This may be a good starting point: https://linuxupskillchallenge.org/


Thank you for your thoughtful suggestions. They are actionable and practical. Much appreciated.


More towards ML-powered products and services.


You might want to learn to find your way around

https://scikit-learn.org/stable/

the algorithms it uses are not the most fashionable but the stuff in

https://scikit-learn.org/stable/model_selection.html

and

https://scikit-learn.org/stable/modules/preprocessing.html

make the difference between successful and unsuccessful projects. Huggingface has nice (in a certain sense) tools for training and doing inference on small LLMs but is a train wreck when it comes to model selection and preprocessing. (To be fair a few years back I tried developing a general purpose trainer that worked for bigger models that scikit-learn would handle but did the model selection and preprocessing well and didn't like the answer I got)


I personally think planting more trees and coloring more surfaces white may be easier and cheaper.


Nope, Bill Gates believes we should bury trees instead.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/15/1065016/a-stealt...

Trees are naturally efficient at sucking down vast amounts of carbon dioxide from the air, but they release the carbon again when they die and rot on the ground. Sequestering trees underground could prevent this. If biomass burial works as well as hoped, it may provide a relatively cheap and easy way to pull down some share of the billions of tons of greenhouse gas that studies find may need to be removed to keep global temperatures in check in the coming decades.


This is a truly great idea. Putting great gobs of biomass and safely sequestering it underground is revolutionary. We'll need to put it deep enough that it won't decompose and we'll also meed to find a way to pressurize it to maximize the volume and prevent moisture intrusion. We probably want to put it near desserts where the naturally arid conditions will hasten the process of compaction. Perhaps we can get the Arab Countries on board?


You have to plant them first in order to have any to bury unless you are proposing further accelerating deforestation.


Planting more trees is not compatible with installing solar panels.


Both are totally fine, you'll be hard-pressed to find areas with canopy cover percentages that inhibit solar installations.


What? Why not? Is there a shortage of space where we can't reasonably grow trees but can install solar panels?


Relevant, I run a workshop for negative results: https://error-workshop.org/


Could you elaborate. What law is broken if one do not donate used clothing in MA?


https://www.mass.gov/guides/clothing-and-textile-recovery#:~....

You don’t have to donate, you can also recycle.


For individuals though, it pretty much means you're supposed to take them down the street to a "donation" dumpster rather than toss them in the trash. Almost certainly, no one is going to come to your house and arrest you/fine you because they found an old t-shirt in your trash but they maybe could.


> Textiles means clothing, footwear, bedding, towels, curtains, fabric, and similar products, except for textiles that are contaminated with mold, bodily fluids, insects, oil, or hazardous substances.

Apparently it's also legal to jizz on your used clothing and then toss them in the garbage. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I don't make the rules!


It doesn't look like they specify the type of oil so you can just dab some vegetable oil from your kitchen on it.

There, I just saved you a lot of wanking! That should only be done for the joy of it, not to circumvent some state law.


It's good to have options.


Strictly speaking sweat is a bodily fluid, which I guess means that you should always throw them out.


Or you could wash them before donating them?


I'd be shocked if most people make a specific effort to wash clothes before donating them.


I can't imagine ever donating dirty clothes. What a strange thing to do.



If you are curious, like me, as to what 'mitumba' means, it is simply a local word for used clothing. I thought it had some deeper cultural meaning.


Donating used clothing contributes to the used clothing problem. Story at 10.


There's not even a story. As income levels rise people will start buying/using less and less used clothes out of necessity.


Well that's the story. Already the value of secondhand clothes in Africa has gone way down as people have access to the internet and can see they are not the latest fashion.

Clothes that won't be worn should be recycled in the country of origin, not sent to Africa to be dumped in landfill.


How are the donated clothes getting there if there's no real demand? Are there clueless importers and NGOs with money to burn? :o


I think they can sell enough to make it worthwhile, and disposing of the rest is extremely cheap because of the lack environmental regulations etc.


but that means people are buying it. it's arguably good that they have this option.

and if there is a problem with waste, then that should be addressed, not the import.


> If used clothing is the problem, why not prohibit it altogether? The answer is that countries tried. In 2016, a group of East African countries joined forces to ban imports of secondhand clothing. In retaliation, the Trump administration threatened to remove the countries from the program that is at the core of U.S.-Africa trade policy if they followed through. No surprise that a lobby group representing used clothing sorters backed the move. The only country that stood firm was Rwanda and, to this day, its duty-free apparel benefits under AGOA remain suspended.


there's no point in banning it. clothing is extremely well suited for a market-based solution.

if there are problems with waste and recycling then that's an argument for taxing it and using that revenue to fund waste management.


The trash is being foisted upon them in exchange for other economic considerations. The demand is artificial.

Did you read the article?


No I haven't read it as I don't have a WaPo subscription anymore.

So someone is sending free textile shipments to Africa?

How is the demand "artificial", is someone masquerading as buyers?

So is it about environmental issues, is it about protectionism, both?


I don’t have a subscription either yet I managed to read it directly via the posted link. Please do so as well before asking more questions, unless of course, you’re just grinding an axe and the details would get in the way.

> So someone is sending free textile shipments to Africa?

Trash clothes are bundled with good clothes because proper disposal would be more costly.

> How is the demand "artificial", is someone masquerading as buyers?

There are no ultimate buyers for the trash clothes. They are imported only because they are bundled into good clothes. The importer has no export-side employee vetting the shipment. And the importer has no homeland authority with the power to ensure that the importer doesn’t eventually offload the disposal costs onto the environment and future generations. The exporter knows this and happily takes advantage (along with a little help from government power and threats to revoke “free-market” incentives, ironically).

> So is it about environmental issues, is it about protectionism, both?

It’s about protectionism and environmentalism as a reaction to the use of power in service of greed to offload home-grown externalities onto desperate third-world countries. Or, if you choose not to read the article, it’s just about environmentalism and protectionism and their evil anti-market ways. Your choice.


I'm asking because even after reading the piece[0] it's not clear.

There's no data on how "often" the clothes are soiled garbage, how does this whole value chain work, who is paying for what, and so on. But of course there's a call for AI investment to sort the threads/fibers. WTF.

Nominally the text beings by talking about this trade agreement (AGOA) which is set to expire in 2025, and then just completely nosedives into bullshit.

The only datapoint is that there was an attempt to ban import - which presumably was a violation of the agreement anyway - then the fascist monkey administration started throwing shit.

Protectionism for protectionism's sake is bad. I recommend this recently released interview with Anne Krueger, who did the study on rent-seeking in 1974 (which demonstrated how the whole import licensing was nothing more than very expensive legalized smuggling).

Yet the world is also getting more complex, and externalities are important. Like waste, dumping, or market-distorting subsidies (as on Chinese EVs). Hence tariffs on imports have their place.

[0] https://archive.is/ten3W

[1] https://www.mercatus.org/ideasofindia/anne-krueger-reflects-...


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