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Cake day: July 27th, 2023

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  • Kessler syndrome isn’t really that much of a risk specifically with Starlink (for now at least), as SpaceX seems to be doing things right despite Musk. They’re in such low orbits that even with a catastrophic loss of control, they’ll deorbit very quickly. The real risk comes as more companies and countries try to get a piece of the megaconstellation pie. Starlink in its own seems to be fairly safe and sustainable on its own, but that may quickly change when communication for collision avoidance maneuvers needs to be international.

    Despite Musk’s well-earned reputation for being a shithead, SpaceX has this far been doing the right thing far more often than most other space companies, and while it’s certainly possible that will change, the Starlink constellation will entirely disappear very quickly without constant replenishment, so it’s not as if we’d have no chance to act if they begin to show signs of concerning behavior. What’s far more worrying to me in terms of Kessler syndrome is the recent escalation around space warfare, as tensions between Russia, China, and the US continue to boil and nobody seems willing to really commit to making space a neutral zone. Even with space historically being an area of strong international cooperation despite politics (just look at the ISS), that unfortunately seems to be rapidly changing.


  • Well they said .NET Framework, and I also wouldn’t be surprised if they more or less wrapped that up - .NET Framework specifically means the old implementation of the CLR, and it’s been pretty much superseded by an implementation just called .NET, formerly known as .NET Core (definitely not confusing at all, thanks Microsoft). .NET Framework was only written for Windows, hence the need for Mono/Xamarin on other platforms. In contrast, .NET is cross-platform by default.









  • This is a use-after-free, which should be impossible in safe Rust due to the borrow checker. The only way for this to happen would be incorrect unsafe code (still possible, but dramatically reduced code surface to worry about) or a compiler bug. To allocate heap space in safe Rust, you have to use types provided by the language like Box, Rc, Vec, etc. To free that space (in Rust terminology, dropping it by using drop() or letting it go out of scope) you must be the owner of it and there may be current borrows (i.e. no references may exist). Once the variable is droped, the variable is dead so accessing it is a compiler error, and the compiler/std handles freeing the memory.

    There’s some extra semantics to some of that but that’s pretty much it. These kind of memory bugs are basically Rust’s raison d’etre - it’s been carefully designed to make most memory bugs impossible without using unsafe. If you’d like more information I’d be happy to provide!





    1. This is the first administration in decades to take antitrust and consumer protections seriously
    2. The DoJ Antitrust Division has been very busy this term. See the assistant AG’s Wikipedia for some details
    3. Taylor Swift

    If you haven’t been keeping up with US antitrust litigation this year this would seem a little out of the blue, but the DoJ and FTC have been, at least comparatively, knocking it out of the park under Biden.

    For more information, the term for the more corporation-friendly philosophy that’s been dominant since roughly sometime in the 90s is the “Chicago School of economics”. The Chicago School’s ideas on antitrust are pretty ridiculous:

    • If a merger won’t result in immediate price increases or output decreases, it is generally considered acceptable. There is little concern for long-term effects.
    • There is consideration for the intent of a merger. Lack of evidence of an intent to monopolize is given serious consideration in determining whether antitrust law applies.
    • The argument that mergers result in increased efficiency through scale is generally given more weight than concerns about market consolidation.
    • There is a general assumption that, if a company does become monopolistic, the market will self-correct. The idea is that new entrants to a market segment or other competitive forces will act as a natural corrective agent.

    The Biden administration marks the beginning of a move away from the Chicago School. In particular, as far as I’m aware, Lina Khan (chair of the FTC) and Jonathan Kanter (head of the DoJ Antitrust Division) are very bullish on antitrust enforcement. One recent example of the progress was the ban on non-competes by the FTC, which indirectly acts as an antitrust measure.

    Edit: You can see from my outline of Chicago School antitrust philosophy that it’s inherently contradictory. There’s an emphasis on allowing mergers, but there’s also a belief that market entrants will stop monopolies. We’ve repeatedly seen over the past couple decades that, when a company tries to enter a monopolized market segment, the monopoly will merge with the entrant at any cost. It would be funny if it hadn’t caused serious harm. See: grocery prices (especially in Canada with their duopoly).



  • He was in his apartment. There was a call to the police about an argument in the building. The officer went to an apartment that is said the be the wrong one, banged on the door and shouted to open up. Fortston answered the door with a piston in his hand, pointing at the floor. The officer shot him.

    According to the media, Forston was on the phone with his girlfriend for a while by the time the police were called. It seems to me that, as far as the officer was aware, the only “crime” that occured was “an argument”, and it sounds like the officer also had the wrong apartment. Unless I can view the bodycam footage it’s hard to be certain but this definitely sounds like he was killed because he was black and had a gun.