pushtheenvelope

Devbox aims to solve this very problem: https://www.jetify.com/devbox

blackr, if you'd allow a small plug: we develop https://jetpack.io/devbox for this very scenario.

Devbox will give you the same project environment (packages, env-vars) on your work and home laptop. It leverages nix, and uses your native file-system avoiding the overhead and complexity of using Docker.

yikes! thanks for pointing that out. The blog's renderer is confused too and renders the `#cowsay -- flakes are neat` as a comment.

To explain what's happening:

- The example above is running `nix run <flake output attribute> -- <arguments to pass to the flake output's binary>`.

- The `<flake output attribute>` here is `.#cowsay`, which is to be read as: `<flake reference>#<attribute path>`. The # is a separator here.

- The `<flake reference>` being `.` implies its a local flake at the current directory. The `<attribute path>` in this case is the output from the flake i.e. the `cowsay` program.

further fun to be found at: https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/command-ref/new-cli/nix....

As a meta-comment, yeah, this is kinda non-trivial for most of us. This is why we build devbox which provides a more familiar UX like `devbox add cowsay && devbox run -- cowsay "flakes are neat"`

idk, someone (moderator?) changed it back ...

I love the analogy!

I think this is a great strength of flakes. Packaging an application can sometimes have nuances that external folks may not be fully aware of and so having the packaging instructions (i.e. flake.nix) defined in the core repository can narrow that knowledge gap.

ah, yeah, we have a cheeky workaround for this in Devbox ;-)

https://github.com/jetpack-io/devbox/blob/main/internal/impl...

s/adopt/introduce

done :)

Oh, it isn't intended to be provocative.

The title is simply literally the question that I was thinking about a few months ago when working on Devbox, and wrote a version of this post internally to answer the question for myself!

would you mind elaborating on the difference?

+1 in exact same situation

There is a very good presentation on the Case for Electronic Cash by Jerry Brito of the Coin Center non-profit. I highly recommend people watch it to understand why cash is important to preserve an open, liberal society.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmXDJpYF46E&fbclid=IwAR3tBKD...

seems like many self-driving car startups follow this model?

Why is it not sustainable that household wealth is > 500% of GDP?

In the parlance of company finances, GDP is like revenue and wealth is the valuation representing the present value of all future profits. So, it seems fine to me that the present value of future profits of the US is 5x the current revenue.

I'm seeking to understand where this analogy may break down. Thanks :)

that's a cynical view. Capitalism is the freedom to buy and sell from whoever you choose. If what you choose to sell is something so unique, you'll escape competition.

sure! lets do this exercise.

1. I did a google search of "site:news.ycombinator.com Foxconn in Wisconsin", and opened the top 3 links.

2. first link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19037625. The top comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19038615) seems to be about cronyism and corruption in the terms offered to Foxconn by the Wisconsis government? I could be a bit off, i haven't followed that story closely. But, and this is important, its not about generalized corruption, its about corruption on this Foxconn deal!

3. second link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18328772. here the top comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18329445) is directly quoting the article about Foxconn getting exemptions from the environmental laws in Wisconsin. This is directly relevant to the article posted, again not about generic environmental concerns.

4. third link https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19630358. This one doesn't have much commentary, but here we see irrelevant comments which are not directly tied to the article, which are much in the vein of the original comment above.

Does that help clarify my position, and why comments of this nature are not helpful? Its totally fine to bring up environmental/social/political concerns, if they are relevant. They are not in this case.

I felt it was patronizing because the original article is about manufacturing progress in a country that has been notoriously behind the curve on manufacturing. Making iphones is not what one normally associates as a dirty or polluting industrial effort.

Instead of directly discussing the merit (or not) of this move by Apple, you chose to bring up an unrelated topic of general environmental problems in India.

Lets imagine the article was about Apple opening a new manufacturing facility in Texas. Would you have brought up other social/political/environmental challenges that Texas faces (oh i don't know, like racial equity, or floods)? My guess is that would be unlikely, since its kinda off-topic and would be clear you are trying to express some other gratuitous concern you may have about that region.

fair point - not sure why you are being downvoted.

Lets say SF to Chicago, then? Its about 2000 miles.

I was trying to illustrate a more general point that speed isn't necessarily the best or most optimal criteria even for long distances. My choice of example could have been better.

Nope - I don’t think there is, but the parent (to my original comment) seemed to be suggesting so

Your comment is rather patronising.

Every year that goes by where India doesn't raise its standard of living, results in millions of stunted childhoods and lives. India needs all the manufacturing growth it can get.

The equivalent to your comment would be Indians on this forum leaving gratuitious remarks about the West ruining the planet with its excessively polluting ways. Just because you cannot see it around you, doesn't mean its not happening.

counter-intuitively, bullet trains offer a great alternative that airlines cannot: travelling from SF to NY in about 10-12 hours. 8 hours to sleep on a flat bed, and an hour or two for dinner and breakfast on either end.

This would be far superior to the 5-hour red eye flights.

thank you thank you! wow, this brings back some childhood memories

i too love my SE.

I used to have a 7, but was always too awkwardly big to hold or to put in my pocket. SE is the perfect size. It also has the benefit of helping me manage screen time -- i don't really wanna get sucked into long content on this screen-size, and can save it to consume later on the laptop (or never, which is most often just fine).

And I can assure you that however in the world you set up something backed by a fiat, its controlling government can step in and seize your collateral if and when it pleases and then you're screwed.

hmm -- the collateral in this case is ether. So, unless you feel the US govt can step in and seize all ether in the world, this statement seems unlikely to be true.

the bitcoin viewpoint is that being backed by energy consumption is a Good Thing. Its harder to manipulate than Proof-Of-Stake or other alternative consensus protocols.

At a larger societal level, we should definitely be worried about tackling emissions for climate change. For this, very few people are advocating getting rid of energy consumption in our societies. Yes, in the short term, people recommend being mindful of the emissions impact of your lifestyle (e.g. a flight has a large carbon footprint) but in the longer scheme of humanity's development we'll always have greater and increasing energy needs.

With that in mind, a lot of focus has been on using non-emissions producing energy (solar, wind, nuclear, etc.) to mitigate climate change. Seen in this context, bitcoin is agnostic to the source of the energy, and its Proof-Of-Work protocol is fine.

this looks super neat!

I've been wanting to make a graphql server framework that can run on lambdas, and will perhaps look into integrating with faast.

ooh that's a good question. I'd think of that on two levels:

1. a meta-level: all designs of systems have tradeoffs. There is no perfect system. So, by decentralizing we may have to tradeoff the ability to halt trading, in exchange for getting more openness, transparency and neutrality of the marketplace or its operators.

2. specific design: i think there may be ways of achieving this even in a decentralized fashion.

Many use-cases of smart-contracts (i.e. a program run in a blockchain transaction) have envisioned the need for having an "oracle" or external data source. For example, flight-delay insurance contracts (e.g. on etherisc.com) that payout in case of a flight delay would need to get information from some flight-info APIs. To serve this need, there are projects for building decentralized-oracles (e.g. https://chain.link).

Similarly, one can imagine the SEC creates an oracle through a system like ChainLink. This oracle has an api that indicates whether some asset's trading status is ON or OFF. Smart-contracts running the marketplace/exchange on the blockchain have code that reaches out to the SEC oracle before proceeding with a transaction to exchange or sell some asset (i'm describing this synchronously, but it could be done asynchronously).

Your question is very valid and good.

i think having it be decentralized is a good way to build trust and transparency. It also protects one against the marketplace-operator acting against the interests of or favoring any one party.

Consider how Amazon now exploits its marketplace for its own benefit by analyzing which products are doing well and making their own versions of these products. So, there is potential for the marketplace-operator to become non-neutral.

I'm not sure how the NYSE started, but i suspect there are financial regulations governing its operations. These regulations take time to get established, and so in new fields having a decentralized marketplace that can guarantee neutrality (collectively) of the operators feels worthwhile.

Does that make sense? i'm kinda on the fence myself, and trying to present the argument in-favor.

can you please share the name of this marketplace?

It’s not about the raw time wasted, but more about the interruption. When people are concentrating on some creative task, having this one-minute gap between “hello” and actual-question can really break one’s “flow”.

Much better for the question to be directly asked, so that the person can respond asynchronously when at a convenient stopping point.

Also note that asking directly doesn’t preclude being polite with “hello - mind if I ask you a question? <insert question>. Thanks in advance!”

this has been changed for facebook to use app-specific IDs for many years now