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Understanding the Nix Ecosystem: Tools, Features, and Approaches

The Nix ecosystem encompasses a variety of tools, features, and methodologies that have evolved over time. Understanding how these components relate can clarify their purpose and usage. They can generally be categorized as:

• Core Nix Commands/Tools: Fundamental utilities included with the Nix package manager.
• Nix Features/Systems: Specific functionalities or structured ways of using Nix (e.g., Flakes).
• Ecosystem Tools/Applications: Separate projects built using Nix for specific management tasks.
• Management Approaches/Paradigms: Different ways to utilize Nix (e.g., imperative vs. declarative).

Here's a breakdown of key components:

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The Burning Hours

In amber light, the ritual begins,
Between two fingers, balanced destiny.
A flick of flame, the gentle hiss and draw—
The first deep breath of contradictions.

Four hundred thousand souls ascend each year
As gray ghosts rising from the pyre of choice.
Atlanta vanished, ashes in the wind,

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LOOK THEM IN THE EYES

While you're lighting up that cigarette, 480,000 families are planning funerals this year alone. Families who would give anything for just one more day with their loved one.

You think your smoking only affects you? That's what the 16 million Americans with smoking-related diseases thought too. Now they can't walk their children to school or dance at their daughter's wedding because they can barely breathe without an oxygen tank.

Every time you choose to smoke, you're essentially telling your family: "I don't care enough about you to stick around." Is that the message you want to send to your children? Your spouse? Your parents who raised you?

That $600 billion smoking costs our nation each year? That's money taken from schools, hospitals, and communities—money that could have saved lives instead of catering to your addiction.

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The Murdoch Reversal

BREAKING NEWS: Murdoch Announces $5 Billion "Truth & Democracy Initiative"

In a stunning reversal that has shocked media observers worldwide, Rupert Murdoch has announced a new $5 billion endowment to launch what he's calling the "Truth & Democracy Initiative" (TDI). The 93-year-old media mogul, reportedly following a secret series of conversations with Bill Gates, made the announcement from his deathbed at his Manhattan penthouse.

"For too long, I've profited from division," Murdoch allegedly stated in a press release. "It's time to rebuild what I helped destroy."

The initiative will include:

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Here is a list of some of my top specific interests relating to deliberation, sense-making, and rationality:

• Deliberative Democracy Tools - Systems for structured citizen participation, including participatory budgeting platforms and stakeholder engagement tools

• Argument Mapping & Visualization - Platforms for making reasoning explicit and visually representing dialectical structures

• Deep Thinking Environments - Slow media and platforms designed for thoughtful engagement rather than rapid interaction

• Belief Tracking Systems - Tools for attestation, commitment to positions, and tracking belief revision over time

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Public Consensus

What is required for people to reach consensus in public?

To be specific, I'm talking about written statements in public that individuals will attest to.

It seems necessary that participants are sufficiently:

1. grounded in shared reality; a common foundation
2. motivated; inclined to participate

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ChatGPT o1 wrong on thread pools 2024-12-21

Here is an edited transcript.

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User

Claim: thread pools are ONLY needed when one creates a variable number of threads but wants to cap the maximum number. Agree or disagree or clarify. Explain.

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v0.15.0 - 2024-10-28

Summary

This release brings major performance improvements to tensor operations, particularly in matrix multiplication and convolution, along with experimental ROCm/HIP and SPIR-V support enabled by CubeCL runtimes. It also introduces foundational features for multi-backend compatibility and adds new quantization operations.

Support for ONNX models has been expanded, with additional operators and bug fixes for better operator coverage.

As with previous releases, this version includes various bug fixes, further performance optimizations, new tensor operations, and enhanced documentation.

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Discussion Anti-Pattern: Ideological commentary about linked news stories

So many discussion forums are broken in so many ways.

Antipattern Pattern

1. Someone posts a link to a news story.
2. Subsequent comments pick a side and argues in favor of it.

Below, I will explain why this is an anti-pattern.

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MEMORANDUM

TO: Head of AI Safety, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

SUBJECT: Synthesizing Expert Knowledge on AI Safety Risks

Problem Statement

How can NIST best synthesize a diversity of expert knowledge on AI safety?