Back when I was working in the book publishing industry (writing and typesetting computer books using Quark XPress [1] on the old MacOS [version 7, 8 and 9 IIRC], before Adobe's InDesign [2] ruled the earth), TIFF was all the rage. Probably still is.
I think the reason TIFF was so prevalent was it already had support for CMYK color space (even though many books were printed in black and white) and for lossless compression (as TFA mentions).
It was a "one size fits all" format and so our 100 or 250 MB (!) Zip drives [3] exchanged between authors/publisher/typesetters often contained TIFF files.
> For as long as I have published my books, one of my overarching goals was to give credit to those who actually invented the hardware and software that we use.
TFA says "bought put options". One option (either PUT or CALL) is typically 100x the shares (but mini lots of 10x exists or at least did exist at some point).
So he bought (he's long on the PUTs) 10 000 PUTs on NVDA and 50 000 PUTs on PLTR. I don't know at which expiration dates nor at which strikes.
A PUT option can be either a bet (like in TFA) that an underlying shall go down below a certain price before a certain date of it can be an hedge when you own the stock, believe it could go up some more, but also want to be protected should it crash. Now of course hedging has a cost and it's not cheap: an option is an insurance. Even the terminology is the same: the buyer pays a premium and the seller (i.e. the one selling the insurance) collects that premium.
Now if you want to learn about full-on degenerate gambling, these last years there's been an explosion in "0DTE": options with zero day to expiration. Because they're 0DTE, there's very little "extrinsic" value in these. So it's a "cheap" way to get basically 100x leverage (either short or long).
Here's a small documentary of 5 minutes about 0DTEs:
I vouched for your post because the information is correct as far as I can discern. Perhaps others felt that you didn't warn strongly enough against engaging in such "full-on degenerate gambling"?
But the risk profile of options depends on more than date to expiration. Of course the strike prices matter, as well as the rest of your portfolio. The real "degenerate gamblers" are taking that leverage without compensating for it. But for example, holding something with 100x effective leverage can be balanced out by only putting 1% of your portfolio there and keeping the rest in cash. (This will generally be inefficient and there's a high chance you won't do as well as just holding the underlying.)
> Every time I watch old films with children in them I always think about how they’ve been dead, hopefully of old age, for a long time already.
I've got movies (black & white, no audio) recorded on a "Pathe-Baby" camera [1] from my grand-mother and her sister, my great-aunt, in the early 1920s, where they're both little girls playing.
I knew them both very well, they lived through WWII in Europe and they both died old. My great-aunt lived until her 100th year.
Very few things are as moving as this little, short Pathe Baby vids I've got of them.
A few years ago we asked a little local shop to convert these to digital format and these files are precious treasure in the family.
> - and what a fantastic new path for pathogen transmission.
on the bright side and if history is of any help, as long as future-to-be-debarred "experts" aren't doing gain-of-function research on bat viruses while lying about it, we don't have much to fear.
Official US Congress report, mandated under Biden and whose results came under Biden, says the virus has "characteristic not found in nature" and that a lab-leak is the most likely source:
And Peter Daszak has been debarred, defunded and prevented from ever receiving funding from the US again.
I'm more worried about humans lying and humans siding with lying humans to then lie some more, worldwide, to the public --for years before the truth finally came up to light-- much more than I'm about rats attacking bats.
> mandated under Biden and whose results came under Biden
You missed the part where the original mandate was along party lines with Democrats supporting it and Republicans not, to investigate how the Trump administration handled the pandemic response. Republicans took control of the House and then redefined the agenda to be their own partisan viewpoint, to confirm what they already believed about gain-of-function and lab leak theories. They produced a nice Big Beautiful Report with a debatable connection to facts, which is not surprising in the least.
> before the truth finally came up to light
If you are looking to politicians for the truth...
First before venting I'll say this: thanks to stuff like hypervisors, VMs, non-systemd distros, minimal immutable Linux distro like Talos (made to run Kubernetes with a minimum number of executable) and OCI containers where, by definition, PID 1 is not systemd, there's thankfully a real way out of systemd, even on a Linux stack.
And I think more people should look into being, once again, 100% systemd-free.
> Can anyone tell why systemd developers run fast and loose with what they believe and bully everyone with a stick made out of their ideas?
Because the goal is to take control of Linux. That's why systemd is PID1. That's why Poettering works for Microsoft.
The real question is: why was that ultra-convoluted xz backdoor attempt only working on Linux systems that did have systemd? People shall try to wag the dog saying "but it's because this and that made is so that xz was loaded by OpenSSH, it's got nothing to do with systemd". It's got everything to do with systemd.
And the other question is: how many backdoors are operational, today, on systems that have systemd?
Systemd is Microsoft-level bloat, running as PID 1, spreading its tentacles everywhere in Linux distros, definitely on purpose.
Poettering is moreover an insufferable bully, as can be seen once again.
From TFA:
> So what do you recommend how to go on from here? Change Debian policy (as asked in #1111839), revert the change in systemd, find a Debian wide solution or let every package maintainer implement their own solution?
I suggest Debian just drops systemd once and for all. Debian can still be made systemd-free but it's a hassle. Just make Debian systemd free once again.
Meanwhile you'll find me running systemd-less distros on VMs and running containers giving the PID 1 finger to systemd.
I can't wait to switch my Proxmox to FreeBSD's bhyve hypervisor (need to find the time to do it).
But most of all: I cannot wait for the day a systemd-less hypervisor Linux like Proxmox comes out.
It's coming and people who write stuff like: "Don't use Docker, use systemd this and systemd that" are misguided.
systemd is to me the antithesis of what Linux stands for.
I hope Debian gets pissed enough at some point to fully drop systemd.
P.S: one of my machine runs this: https://www.devuan.org/ and honestly it's totally fine. So yup: power to all those running systemd-less distros, BSDs, etc.
That's not the issue. The issue is that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of french politicians who should be in jail.
I don't disagree with him going to jail: but it's one heck of a corrupt country where they all have their hands in the cookie jar.
Most french politicians who served at the EU, for example, have friends and family as "employees" on their payroll (well, on the EU citizens' payroll). Same at non-EU level: it's called "emplois fictifs" in french ("fictional jobs"). Soooo many stories about politicians at so many local, regional, national and supra-national levels engaging in "emplois fictifs".
So many mayors in France have dirty money on their hands. Where for example they block construction permits then, once joyfully greased with cash, allow the construction permits.
But Sarkozy was right-wing and the EU, and France in particular, is ultra left-wing. So it's good to put a right-wing president in jail.
Once again: I've got nothing against him going to jail. But we're talking about a country were judges are openly leftists. They're not impartial.
It's all rotten and disgusting.
And why do you think all the leftist french mainstream media root for right-wing Sarkozy? Because these media are at the hand of corrupt politicians who think a politician going to jail is a dangerous precedent. They're nearly all corrupt, so they're shitting their pants to see that even a president is sent to jail.
But yup: one politician in jail. Great. Only 9999 more to go. And corrupt judges.
corrupt politicians who think a politician going to jail is a dangerous precedent
There is a reason why administrations don't go after obvious, in-your-face crimes committed by previous administrations/politicians. They all hate each other, but they are also terrified that if they prosecute previous administrations (for legitimate crimes), they'll be the target when someone else is in power (even if they themselves didn't commit any crimes).
I suppose it might be easier to prevent misbehavior by highest officials of the land by having stricter scrutiny, laws etc than prosecuting them after the fact, but who watches the watchdogs? Who watches the judiciary? As an ordinary citizen, it is exhausting to just even follow the news.
And if it is this bad in democracies, imagine how it is like in countries like Russia.
> even if they themselves didn't commit any crimes
Does that still even exist? The problem I see in politics is that everyone has their hand in the cookie jar to some degree.
You don't get into politics unless you already have your hand in there, or are given the option to prove yourself where moving up the ranks involves helping someone getting their hand in there, with the unspoken assumption that they'll return the favor. And of course once you're in and have your hand in there, why rock the boat and waste all that effort?
I don't know. I suppose there is behavior that is illegal and behavior that is unethical. I guess there aren't that many politicians that are ethical, but there may be some (hopefully?) who don't do downright illegal things? Maybe, I dunno.
The fact that collectively we all have such low expectations and such low opinions about our politicians/government says a lot about the sorry state of affairs :(
This is very common in big governments particularly in France: bureaucrats introduce problems, you will then have to beg them and generally provide favors of some kind for its removal. I saw it in universities and organizations.
France is ultra left-wing ?
Wow, the Overton window must have shifted to the right even more than I thought.
You sound like you actually don’t know much about France. For instance your accusations about left wing media rooting for Sarkozy has no foundation. The judges being biased toward left is groundless as well. Many left wing politicians have been condemned by French justice.
There may be some truth to it but to me gambling issues definitely do exists independently of the ability for someone to escape or not its class.
One of my friend has a real gambling issue and yet he was one of the highest paid person I knew. Then at some point he created a company, got funding and had 30+ employees. He was doing very well. But he was a degenerate gambler. On the weekends he'd ask me to accompany him to casinos (real ones) and he'd just burn money (his own money btw, not company money). I've seen him destroy something like $60 K in one bet in some (probably rigged) only crypto casino. His utter disrespect for money shocked me. The crazy thing is that over the years he lost it all (not just those $60K) and to this day he'll post-fact rationalize his actions. He literally burned so much money he could have FIRE'd. Maybe not mega FatFIRE, but still FIRE.
Last time he called me he asked me to lend him... 300 EUR to pay bills. He's a real friend, he could have asked 3 000 EUR, I'd have helped him pay his bills. But it's the amount that saddened me: how can you go from having so much, from earning so much, to asking for 300 EUR? (which he paid me back a few days later). How does that even happen?
Now he's literally a genius so maybe he'll come up with something. But meanwhile I'm worried and there's nothing I can do.
A friend of my great-grandmother (I knew my great-grandmother very well) lost all her family's inherited wealth because she was a degenerate gambler. Not online casinos, obviously.
I've read the book "The Player" by Dostoievsky. Twice, once when I was a teenager then once I don't remember when. To make sure I'd never end up like the people he describes in his book. He was a degenerate gambler and it's basically its most auto-biographic book (FWIW I've read Crime and Punishment too but The Player does it for me).
I'm sure half of the people who are degenerate gamblers do not do it because they have no way to get "rich". No. Half of people who are degenerate gamblers are the self-destructive types who subconsciously want to harm themselves. Who want to feel bad about themselves.
Most people are highly conscious about their losses, not like this degenerate. When the losses stop hurting, that's when the degeneracy begins. I wouldn't actually consider it a sign of high intelligence to be insensitive to the pain of financial loss. Also, one has to follow strict capital limits, and actually develop an edge that sustains and compounds the account.
> ... but the practical difference between an average car and a high-end luxury model is pretty minimal. Until you need to fix the latter.
You're right: broken gearbox on mine was a solid 15 K EUR at least. But... I paid zero.
My solution is simple: I buy a high-end luxury car used (four to five years old) but I then religiously pay every year for the official extended manufacturer warranty.
I pay 1400 EUR per year for that warranty but then any yellow or red light on the dashboard, any issue (sunroof not opening, sound system speaker broken, NAV issue, anything really), I bring it to any official dealership, in any country in the world and they fix it (it's already been at least to dealerships in Belgium (various little issues), France (gearbox but they didn't fix it: they didn't believe me it was broken), Germany (gearbox replaced), Spain (wipers broke down after a 1700 km road trip under heavy rain: like... it was just too much for the motor 15 hours non-stop), Andorra (yellow light, forgot what it was) and Poland (headlight was getting old and cranky, this summer)).
Car is now 12 y/o and 115 000 miles / 190 000 km and I just renewed the warranty for another two years, unlimited mileage.
For that's the thing with high-end luxury cars too: you have fancy stuff like a warranty valid until 15 years old and 350 000 miles / 400 000 km if you want (if I were to bring it in two years in Sep 2027 with 400 000 km and a broken engine, they'd be forced to replace it just like they were forced to replace the gearbox).
And that warranty is valid in any country in the world. And they give you a spare vehicle. And you've got assistance taking care of everything should you be stuck. For 120 EUR / month on a used car to me it's a no-brainer.
And in two years I'll just sell the car for 15 K EUR or something and buy another high-end luxury car, used (four or five years old), again.
I think for people who enjoy high-end cars but don't want to deal with the stress of having an engine or a gearbox breaking, a used high-end luxury car with an extended warranty is a good solution.
Practically I give to you that it's still just metal on four wheels.
The business model of most higher-end makes has evolved: the first customer leases the car for 3-4 years and then returns it to the dealer, who turns around and sells it to a customer with a full warranty for another 3-4 years.
So modern lux cars are actually pretty well-made and pretty reliable these days. The only catch is that they’re designed with the assumption that all maintenance will be done at the dealer and that the driver never sees a bill.
Once you exit that - do maintenance elsewhere or not under warranty, the costs become ridiculous and people start skipping necessary items. So the car breaks down and the repairs are even more ridiculous. So off to the junkyard it goes.
Stay inside the dealer+warranty bubble and you have a pretty good time, although many people will question your sanity buying an expensive extended warranty for a 12-year old car ;)
They've got local sites, per country:
https://yoojo.fr
https://yoojo.be
https://yoojo.lu
And there are electricians and plumbers who can fix (and install) HVAC.