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Couldn't at least part of the reviewing be done by foreign experts?

Having said that, this smells witch-hunty to me. The US can boast decades of excellence in medical and biological sciences, which in turn generates a massive windfall. Completely upending the architecture behind this dominance on the suspicion that a few hundred million bucks are less-than-optimally spent is a hell of a gambit, and even ignores all the higher-order effects that even that "spare change" bring about.


> Cannot read it through SSH. Need something else than your terminal.

Well, for reading you can always use pandoc with stdout output and pipe it to a pager. There are also fancier options like https://github.com/Orange-OpenSource/pandoc-terminal-writer (disclaimer: I contributed a small PR a long time ago)


> They either degrade

Much more slowly and gracefully than any digital medium we have concocted so far (save for core rope memory, maybe).

> even if preserved can become unreadable (e.g. Linear B) without a surviving linguistic community [...] translations produced with century-scale gaps often lose subtext

This pertains to the message and not the support; also, I'll take missing subtext over missing text any day of the week, thank you very much.


You cannot really evaluate/rank the Bible with the same criteria you apply to works created by a single author with clear intent in a limited timespan.

Having said that, ecclesiastes and Song of Songs alone make it top-ten worthy.


> it only found 1GB of savings on a 8.1GB folder.

You "only" found that 12% of the space you are using is wasted? Am I reading this right?


I have a 512GB drive in my MacBook Air M3 with 225GB free. Saving 1GB is 0.5% of my total free space, and it is definitely "below my line." It is a neat tool still in concept.

When I ran it on my home folder with 165GB of data it only found 1.3GB of savings. This isn't that significant to me and it isn't really worth paying for.

BTW I highly recommend the free "disk-inventory-x" utility for MacOS space management.


Your original comment did not mention that your home folder was 165 GB, which is extremely relevant here

The relevant number (missing from above) is the total amount of space on that storage device. If it saves 1GB on a 8TB drive, it's not a big win.

It should be proportional to the total used space, not the space available. The previous commenter said it was a 1 GB savings from ~8 GB of used space; that's equally significant whether it happens on a 10 GB drive or a 10 TB one.

He picked node_modules because it's highly likely to encounter redundant files there.

If you read the rest of the comment he only saved another 30% running his entire user home directory through it.

So this is not a linear trend based on space used.


He "only" saved 30%? That's amazing. I really doubt most people are going to get anywhere near that.

When I run it on my home folder (Roughly 500GB of data) I find 124 MB of duplicated files.

At this stage I'd like it to tell me what those files are - The dupes are probably dumb ones that I can simply go delete by hand, but I can understand why he'd want people to pay up first, as by simply telling me what the dupes are he's proved the app's value :-)


> He "only" saved 30%? That's amazing. I really doubt most people are going to get anywhere near that.

You misunderstood my comment. I ran it on my home folder which contains 165GB of data and it found 1.3GB is savings. That isn't significant for me to care about because I currently have 225GB free of my 512GB drive.

BTW I highly recommend the free "disk-inventory-x" utility for MacOS space management.


Everyone misunderstood your comment for a reason.

You wrote: but it only found 1GB of savings on a 8.1GB folder.

It’s quite a saving and that’s what everyone understood from your comment.


I think this is somewhat funny.

His comment is pretty understandable if you've done frontend work in javascript.

Node_modules is so ripe for duplicate content that some tools explicitly call out that they're disk efficient (It's literally in the tagline for PNPM "Fast, disk space efficient package manager": https://github.com/pnpm/pnpm)

So he got ok results (~13% savings) on possibly the best target content available in a user's home directory.

Then he got results so bad it's utterly not worth doing on the rest (0.10% - not 10%, literally 1/10 of a single percent).

---

Deduplication isn't super simple, isn't always obviously better, and can require other system resources in unexpected ways (ex - lots of CPU and RAM). It's a cool tech to fiddle with on a NAS, and I'm generally a fan of modern CoW filesystems (incl APFS).

But I want to be really clear - this is people picking spare change out of the couch style savings. Penny wise, pound foolish. The only people who are likely to actually save anything buying this app probably already know it, and have a large set of real options available. Everyone else is falling into the "download more ram" trap.


Another 30% more than the 1GB saved in node modules, for 1.3GB total. Not 30% of total disk space.

For reference, from the comment they’re talking about:

> I then tried again including my user home folder (731K files, 127K folders, 2755 eligible files) to hopefully catch more savings and I only ended up at 1.3GB of savings (300MB more than just what was in the NodeJS folders.)


If it saved 8.1GB, by your measure it'd also not be a big win?

This is basically only a win on macOS, and only because Apple charges through the nose for disk space.

Ex - On my non-apple machines, 8GB is trivial. I load them up with the astoundingly cheap NVMe drives in the multiple terabyte range (2TB for ~$100, 4TB for ~$250) and I have a cheap NAS.

So that "big win" is roughly 40 cents of hardware costs on the direct laptop hardware. Hardly worth the time and effort involved, even if the risk is zero (and I don't trust it to be zero).

If it's just "storage" and I don't need it fast (the perfect case for this type of optimization) I throw it on my NAS where it's cheaper still... Ex - it's not 40 cents saved, it's ~10.

---

At least for me, 8GB is no longer much of a win. It's a rounding error on the last LLM model I downloaded.

And I'd suggest that basically anyone who has the ability to not buy extortionately priced drives soldered onto a mainboard is not really winning much here either.

I picked up a quarter off the ground on my walk last night. That's a bigger win.


If Apple charges extortionately through the nose for storage hardware, that just makes this tool more valuable.

> This is basically only a win on macOS, and only because Apple charges through the nose for disk space

You do realize that this software is only available on macOS, and only works because of Apple's APFS filesystem? You're essentially complaining that medicine is only a win for people who are sick.


> and only works because of Apple's APFS filesystem

There are lots of other file systems that support this kind of deduplication...

Like ZFS that the author of the software explicitly mentions in his write up https://www.truenas.com/docs/references/zfsdeduplication/

Or Btrfs ex: https://kb.synology.com/en-id/DSM/help/DSM/StorageManager/vo...

Or hell, even NTFS: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/dat...

This is NOT a novel or new feature in filesystems... Basically any CoW file system will do it, and lots of other filesystems have hacks built on top to support this kinds of feature.

---

My point is that "people are only sick" because the company is pricing storage outrageously. Not that Apple is the only offender in this space - but man are they the most egregious.


Absolutely, 100% backwards. The tool cannot save space from disk space that is not scanned. Your "not a big win" comment assumes that there is no space left to be reclaimed on the rest of the disk. Or that the disk is not empty, or that the rest of the disk can't be reclaimed at an even higher rate.

You do have power onto your own feed (well, limited power). I snooze suggestions every month and follow basically zero content creators: I'd say 90% of my followees are people I've met irl. If I want to doomscroll and feel awful, the Explore/Reels tabs are more than enough.

> Countless other tools and workflows and experiences have been built on that free assumption of availability

Cannot help but notice that, had Microsoft offered such a sweet deal, this place would've been ablaze with cries of "Embrace, extend, extinguish" and suchlike. (This still regularly happens, e.g., when new Github features are announced). Perhaps even justifiably so, but the community has failed to apply that kind of critical thinking to any other company involved in open source. If your workflow is not agnostic wrt where you pull images from, it is kind of silly to blame it on Docker Inc.

Having said that, it is definitely a problem for many. I work at a technical university and I am sure colleges/research institutes will hit the limit repeatedly and easily.


Too right. Now I'm starting to wonder how long my gmail account will remain free, and for that matter how long my HN account will remain free.

The data mining is probably too profitable to ever lose customers over required paid gmail accounts.

Well, neither of them store and serve multi-gigabyte files, so probably longer than docker hub?

Not a new concept. If you aren't paying you are the product. Increasingly capitalism demands the product also pay. Buckle up, late stage capitalism continues.

Sometimes you're the product, other times you're the raw material ready to be crushed up into a fine powder and mixed with 20 additives known only by numbers, and thoroughly homogenized to make the product.

"Late stage capitalism" doesn't exist. There are only consumers that exercise their rights as consumers (as in decades past) and those that don't (as now). If you don't do anything about companies treating you badly, then don't get surprised when they do.

Its so easy and yet…you can’t be bothered to maintain the registry and ecosystem. I have an idea, why not pay someone to do it?

I can't seem to parse this reply. I never said any of it was easy. Quite the opposite, in fact. The community was all too happy to embrace an ecosystem provided by a for-profit company just precisely because it made things easy (and the company was not Microsoft).

And I am not saying Docker is wrong to try and monetize. People have built entire business models on top of way more mundane things than the Docker Hub.


It bears repeating that Nvidia is not strictly speaking a SW company. It is a semiconductors company. That 30k employees figure includes all Nvidia employees, not all of which are in software.

I am rather skeptical of AI in this context. Until you have verifiably correct AI assistants, you still need a highly skilled human in the loop to catch subtle errors in the proofs or the whole result is moot anyway.

And there _are_ tools out there capable of verifying C code, but for a greenfield project implementation/verification in a higher-level, formal language + verified compilation might make more sense.


I beg you, please stop applying rule-of-law mindset against might-makes-right adversaries. It creates blind spots giving the illusion that the attack surface is way smaller than it actually is.

Muskolites are taking on the SSN system without any Congressional oversight as we speak. The President is attacking ius soli which is a Constitutional right. If they decide that sending their sleuths to Cambridge MA to physically destroy this data is in their best interest, they will do so and handle the courts later. Just stop pretending they will play by the book.


How do you recommend engaging with the situation then? Throw out the book too?


Take these new attack vectors into account in your threat analyses. In this specific case, perhaps start by shipping copies to non-US jurisdictions.


> Take these new attack vectors into account in your threat analyses.

Exactly. And while it might not be possible to protect against all the new vectors day one, no one should be surprised.


read curtis yarvin, find the weaknesses in his arguments, and use those weaknesses against their ideology.

for start, he thinks FDR was a dictator but the only reason FDR had such power was because the support of labor and some parts of capital. he would know that if he was a historian instead of LARPing as one.

so organizing and supporting the labor movement would be a good place to start, since a organized labor could become a powerful poltical force. otherwise everybody is fragmented on both sides which further enables their ideology.

a recent blog of his gave me this idea: https://graymirror.substack.com/p/the-pleasure-of-error

he legit thinks trump is about to be FDR 2.0 but his mistake is ignorance about how the power worked during that time. you can even use his "differential" idea in that essay against him. the differential now is labor against wealth. always has been, especially when FDR wielded all the power yarvin thinks was a dictatorship since a lot of that power was given to him by the support of the massive labor movement at the time.

more practically, this blog has some good insight into the "what do i dooooo?????" question https://wagingnonviolence.org/2024/11/10-things-to-do-if-tru...


On the technological side torrents, IPFS, and the like, urging international collaborators to make copies of everything public. On the political side mass protests, strikes, whistleblowing, general unrest that goes beyond mere social media activism.


Not OP but torrent would be my go to for a short term solution.


Torrent would do it but 16TB is still not that cheap to just have running in your house nas (otherwise I would).


Torrent would definitely be a great approach, 16TB is a commitment, but there's no problem with partial seeding also. I would choose selective chunks which consist of completed files.


European chiming in here. We need to backup, hash, and distribute this data. I bought four 12 TB HDDs (second hand enterprise) for about 360 EUR from USA (included tax & S&H). I could buy more, but I am feeling financially insecure now, and not buying anything from the USA anymore. I do have 3x 4 TB drives spare though. Might use these instead of going to some great parties.


You can download and share only selected parts of a torrent. With enough people you're going to get full coverage anyway.


Assuming that people randomly select the portions.


how do you coordinate who downloads which part?


Torrents track availability of pieces, you can seed ones with least availability if you want that.


Potential attack vector: seed excessive copied of a portion from many sock-puppets. Wait for non-sock-puppet seeds to dwindle. All the existing copies are now under your control.


Of course this is more of a job for responsible universities/libraries/research centres around the world, rather than single individuals. I would be surprised if Harvard didn't already go through their contact list to ensure as many copies are being made as possible.


Im predicting no more elections for you guys in 4 years. Something makes me think theres gonna be some "reason" to turn them off.


I'm not one of the "guys" as I am from the EU. There is a narrow way through for the US, but treating the incumbent as Just Another Guy is not that.


I am sure there will be elections. Question is how fair they will be. Have a look at Russia's recent presidential election. Putin "winning" it was a given from the start. US voters need to be mindful of all the ways an election can be rigged.


IMO US elections have already been less-than-fully-democratic for a while, what with the voting registration and ID nonsense, as well as obvious gerrymandering and voter intimidation. At the very least, significantly less democratic than a number of other western countries.


Let’s stop applying copium to recent events and making excuses. The American people knew exactly what they were getting and voted for him anyway. He won a majority of the popular vote.

The Senate is 2 Senators per state regardless of the population and isn’t as susceptible to gerrymandering.

That being said, I don’t feel bad for anyone who voted for Trump and is having buyers remorse.

We are already seeing it with Arabs in Minnesota who thought Trump would be better for Arabs in Gaza and are now having regrets seeing how Trump wants to use US troops to “clear out Gaza” and Latin Americans who are appalled that he tried to remove birthright citizenship.

Next up will be all of the “rural American” voters who are going to bare the brunt of inflationary tariffs.


He did not get a majority of the vote. He won with a plurality of 49.8%.


Does that somehow make you feel better about your fellow Americans? Yes I’m a born and bred US citizen.

The crap that Michelle Obama and the rest of the DNC spew about “going high when they go low” and “this is not who we are” is just that.

This has always been who we are.


This is exactly who we are. Andrew Jackson was the most popular president of the 19th century.

When national guard troops shot and killed student at Kent state university protesting Vietnam, 58% of Americans were in support of it.

Yes this is who we are.


And Jim Crow laws…

60% of the people in the south supported them and 60% of people nationwide were opposed to interracial marriages.


No it does not make me feel better. I’m rather disgusted by 70 million of my fellow Americans, including a few family members and newly former friends. However, I think it’s important that we pushback on the idea that the fascists have an overwhelming mandate to do what they are now doing. The truth still matters.


Putin's meddling all over the place including here.

To the extent that he has a role in this (certainly has publically claimed to!), he will in no way seek to make America a powerful allied country to Russia. There's no reason to assume he intends Trump or even Musk to actually be powerful in their own right.

Especially Musk. Musk must be mad to put himself in the position he's in. The only reason Putin would allow Musk to do what he's doing, is because it's patently obvious that Musk is undermining his own potential political base in every way, with every action. A widely hated man who's gone full Bond villain is no threat to Putin, politically. He's setting himself up to be demonized (Musk is) and doesn't even seem to register it.


also, many of musk's actions are illegal. Which means he is now owned by Trump. Play nice or go to jail. For a long time.


Don't worry! There are a lot of fine patriots with firearms that keep them just in case of such a thing!


My current thinking for 2028/29:

- 20% likelihood of no election at all

- 70% "managed democracy" with outcome decided in advance

- 10% normal transfer of power if Trump or his successor loses

I think they're racing against the mid-terms next year. If they can lock it in by then then they're home free.

(disclosure: Brit not USian)


> I think they're racing against the mid-terms next year.

This is the race. Historically the party in power loses the mid-terms, and I think we're already seeing huge portions of the population having buyers remorse. But, Trumps team knows this. I was waiting for them to attack the FEC, and here we are.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/06/us/politics/federal-elect...


[flagged]


So it’s a delusion that the guy who tried to overthrow the vote last time will prevent the next election this time? Tyrants tried multiple times before succeeding in Athens, why not today?


Not to mention specifically saying "you won't have to vote anymore" on multiple occasions.


He didnt try to "overthrow the vote" any more than Clinton did in 2016 or Gore did in 2000.


The people whom Trump rallied and told to march to Capitol Hill went there for the express purpose of preventing the results of the people’s vote via the Electoral College from being accepted. This was proven in many courts of law. Not only did Trump prevent the military from responding to the putsch in his benefit until it was clear the effort had failed, he later issued a full pardon to all those involved in the attack on Congress.

I can’t remember any Democratic President or candidate thereof in the history of the republic doing anything similar. Can you provide examples?


But he didn't do that. Go and read his actual speech. The words he actually used. He encouraged peaceful protest.

Why were fiery riots presented as "mostly peaceful protests" while someone that encouraged people to peacefully protest is held responsible for that protest turning into a riot?


You’re totally rewriting history here.

Given the distance to the events, you cannot do so in good faith.


You missed a few things.

The whole "alternate electors" thing. That wasn't "just in case the court cases go our way and we turn out to have won the state". No, they were presented as the real electors. How did that happen? It wasn't just a random coincidence that seven different states did that. No, Trump orchestrated that.

There was the pressure campaign on Pence. He was told to approve the alternate electors rather than the real ones. Not just once - he was repeatedly told to do that.

The riot is minor compared to those two items.


[flagged]


What makes you think that you're so special that what happened in Turkey or Hungary (or worse, Belarus) won't happen in the US?


It's easy for people to draw the wrong conclusion when part of the state of play in all this, is a network of foreign-adversary troll farms blanketing the internet and taking pains to seed public opinion with the assumption that all this is a fait accompli.

Every thing that has been attempted and failed or rolled back, so far, has had people out there stating as fact that it's permanent now and will never fail or roll back.

So, rather than take it as read that suspension of elections and total subversion of the process is guaranteed, instead take it as read that there will be people at work (literally) presenting that idea as if it is the only possible outcome, and getting a certain proportion of real people to agree with them. You'll always persuade somebody, no matter how odd your proposition is.

I personally think there'll be elections, that they'll be interfered with but perhaps not enough to truly alter the outcome, and that the real action isn't to do with establishing a functional dictatorship, but rather to do as much harm as possible while possible, so any political reversal will lead to the victors presiding over a gravely wounded country. I think that's a lot more probable than 'there will never be elections and the dictatorship will be all-powerful'. They don't look or act all-powerful, they just are very effective at putting sand in the gears. I think that sabotage is the real purpose here.


Do you seriously not remember Jan 6th, or that he is literally firing everyone in the FBI who investigated the participants - after pardoning them?

What do you think?


> Do you seriously not remember Jan 6th,

I remember Trump telling people at a rally to "march over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.". I remember a minority of the people there rioting and entering the Capitol building. I remember the Biden Department of Justice mistreatment of them and the over prosecutions. And most of all I remember before the than 2024 election, Trump explicitly saying that he would pardon every single one of them on day one.

Having won both the electoral and popular vote, I think it's fair to say the American people are in agreement.

> ... or that he is literally firing everyone in the FBI who investigated the participants - after pardoning them?

Yes and it's good that he's doing it. He ran on a series of explicit promises and one of them was to remove from Washington DC the people on board with the policies of the prior administration. I don't see how anybody that was an active part of the efforts to try to imprison Trump himself or his allies in a direct effort to influence the 2024 election could expect to work for him. That's ridiculous.

I also don't think that society is going to fall apart or that we will somehow not have elections in four years. What I think we'll have is a return to normalcy, a respect for individual rights (including both freedom of speech and the right to bear arms), and a significant paring down of unaccountable bloated government programs.


I watched Jan 6th live. If that capital guard hadn’t shot the woman, we would have been living in a dictatorship already.

This entire post is just the same kind of delusion seeping everywhere in society right now.

I’m not saying there isn’t bloat or plenty of crappy things that need to be addressed.

But this is a deal with the devil, and it will come due. Quickly.

Because like all his ‘helpers’ found out, they’re disposable and he doesn’t give a crap unless they’re useful to him at the moment.


> I watched Jan 6th live. If that capital guard hadn’t shot the woman, we would have been living in a dictatorship already.

Claiming that all of western democracies hangs on the killing of an unarmed woman is one hell of a hot take.


Oh that’s not what I’m claiming at all.

I’m saying it would have happened 4 years earlier.


i'm curious to hear how the federal government has been infringing on your individual rights? especially your freedom of speech or right to bear arms since those seem like important issues to you


It certainly does not look good for a fair traditional elections. All people in power are currently being replaced with pro-Trump folks.


[flagged]


Didn't his vice president already suggest he should ignore the courts? Or did I imagine that?


There is no need to lie, as this is easily verifiable, eg:

> A federal court on January 31 temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s government-wide pause on federal grant funding. But soon after, the administration argued the president’s directives were still in effect.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/billions-dollars-us-project...


Who has the power to enforce directives?

Will police and military soon go the White House/other places so that federal grant continues, if court asks?

Because if court cannot do that, it is already lost.


Since the military reports to Trump directly, and they have a lot more guns than the police….


Judges are literally saying Trump is ignoring the rule of law.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-judge-accuses-trump-igno...

https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-states-tell-judge-trump-not...

If you're not a bot, please get off the misinformation machine called X.


This is exactly how fascism happens.

https://archive.is/g6ElI


Same hyperboles were said in 2017 and we were fine, and in fact, economy was booming and there was world peace during his first term.


> was world peace during his first term

Cringes hard in the Yemeni civil war. Or the conflict in the Donbass. Or the various insurgencies in the Sahel, or the war in Darfur, or the Syrian civil war.

> Same hyperboles were said in 2017 and we were fine

Were you fine? The Supreme Court was stacked by blatantly political appointees who then declared that the president has immunity for official business, even if it's blatantly illegal. This is a disgusting precedent to set, yet here we are.


>Were you fine? The Supreme Court was stacked by blatantly political appointees

Supreme Court appointments have been political for decades in the US. Sad? Yes. New? No.

>who then declared that the president has immunity for official business

Not a surprising ruling at all, and not a political one. Not a "disgusting" precedent. It is a very narrow ruling and is consistent with how these things have worked for decades. There is an impeachment process, you know that right?



That has nothing at all to do with what is being discussed in this thread. Why are you so eager to change the topic when you lose the argument?


Last time there were adults in the room. Look at the gallery of clowns, rogues and thieves he's surrounded himself with this time.

This is different. This time there's an explicit removal of the people and structures intended to say "no" to executive overreach.

We ignore this at our own peril, as a nation.


Fascist rightoid scum


Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

I appreciate your comments about public transit and Zig compile times, so I don't want to ban you, but if you keep this up we're going to have to. It would be good if you'd stop.

IMO it's good for diversity to have some Marxists in the mix but not if they're posting things like "Lick the boot harder rightoid".

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.


Heard, sorry dang


But perhaps you could deal with the widespread flag brigading of all Trump-critical posts such as the recent one about category theory research defunded? I apologize for my tone but I remain deeply concerned about the current regime, which is supported by many HN-adjacent figures like Paul Graham and Marc Andreessen.


Yes—except that different people have different ideas of what "deal with" means, so it's not possible to satisfy everyone.

I've spent many hours posting about this in the last couple weeks: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... A couple recent explanations are https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43019507 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43032384.

Btw, PG has been vociferously anti-Trump for years and as far as I know he hasn't changed.


Ehh sometimes you have additional results or insightful remarks that simply don't fit into the page limits. You may want to keep those for yourself and use them for a separate publications rather than give them away.


Well, you don't have page limits on arXiv, though.


This is true, but arXiv submissions are often prepared with a target venue in mind that does have page limits.


Also true, but the arxiv version is often (in my experience) containing the entire paper. Indeed, many conferences ask people to submit the full version to arXiv.


Interesting. I know it frequently happens, but I've never seen a conference explicitly make that request.


Here's an example (ICALP):

> Authors are strongly encouraged to also make full versions of their submissions freely accessible in an on-line repository such as ArXiv, HAL, ECCC.

This is from the call for papers a few years ago. The wording has changed in recent CFPs, due to employing (weak) double-blind reviewing.

They still allow uploading to arXiv (with full names and affiliations) despite being anonymous.


Aye, but in this context "full version" usually means "a version with more detailed proofs/results related to the paper's contributions", rather than "a version with additional contributions".


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