> Someone please build an RDF triple store on top of XTDB to get the immutability and easy time travel.
What do the current XTDB across-time queries lack in this regard? I am under the impression that XTDB already supports what you're asking for, from the release notes:
> Full, across-time queries: using SQL:2011's bitemporal primitives and/or 'XTQL' to answer "what did we know, and when?".
> No history/audit tables, triggers required: use it as a regular update-in-place database (you're free to UPDATE and DELETE normally again!), safe in the knowledge that your history is there when you need it.
> Zero-cost, full database snapshots: immediately go back to any point in time without needing to schedule or store periodic snapshots/copies.
These things should become plausible once the engine supports recursive CTEs and incremental view maintenance. In the meantime you could exploit Arrow interop with other engines (while keeping XTDB as the source of truth) - people have been building in this direction, e.g. using Polars in "Chrontext: Portable SPARQL queries over contextualised time series data in industrial settings" [0]
I've been using Borg for a while, I've been thinking about looking at the backup utility space again to see what is out there. What backup utilities do you all use and recommend?
I spent too long looking into this and settled on restic. I'm satisfied with the performance for our large repo and datasets, though we'll probably supplement it with filesystem-based backups at some point.
Borg has the issue that it is in limbo, i.e. all the new features (including object storage support) are in Borg2, but there's no clear date when that will be stable. I also did not like that it was written in Python, because backups are not always IO blocked (we have some very large directories, etc.).
I really liked borgmatic on Borg, but we found resticprofile which is pretty much the same thing (it is underdiscussed). After some testing I think it is important to set GOGC and read-concurrency parameters, as a tip. All the GUIs are very ugly, but we're fine a CLI.
If rustic matures enough and is worth a switch we might consider it.
Kopia is surprisingly good. I use it with a b2 backend, had percentage based restore verification for regulatory items and is super fast. Only downside is lack of enterprise features/centralized management.
I still use borg for local backups but use restic for all my offsite backups. Off-hand I don’t think redtic lacks any feature borg has (although there’s probably at least one) after they added compression a few years ago.
Punishing honest students by ensuring that they will fail unless they cheat is an absurd solution. In school I went to great lengths to do my work well and on my own. It was disheartening to see other students openly cheat and do well, but at least I knew that I was performing well on my own merits.
Under your system, I would have been actively punished for not cheating. What's the point of developing a cure that's worse than the disease?
It isn't a punishment if the AI is doing the work. The goal is to make students utilize the skills they will need now that AI can supplement their abilities.
But are AIs now _required_? If you're tailoring the class to allow growth potential for students using AI, what happens to the students who cannot use it (for whatever reason)?
It's a bit similar to making a class harder because some students are getting extra help via private tutoring.
> How can you organize stuff in obsidian? You have folders and search and that's it.
You can use folders, tags, properties, links between notes (exporable through the links panel per file or the graph view), and there are extensions that let you add more advanced functionality. In the end, any system will require you to come up with your own system of organization.
> if you use Obsidian you will probably have more than one vault.
Why would anyone ever want to use more than one vault? I just use different folders. The only reason I can think of would be if you are using Obsidian for work where you aren't allowed to use unapproved services.
I use Obsidian as a distant secondary notetaking app.
I use one vault per video game. I don’t need to clutter up a vault just so I can link from a page on Art combos in Xenoblade games to a page detailing all the random things I need to pick up around Hyrule to upgrade this or that piece of armor.
> The solution proposed is let the rich get richer, let’s just ask them to be fair...
This is not accurate.
Leo XIII explicitly calls for state action to protect the rights and interests of the working man. Leo says that the public authority—i.e. the state—has a duty to "prevent [the violation of rights] and to punish injury" (Rerum novarum 37). He proceeds to make note that the poor—unlike the rich, who have means of shielding themselves due to their wealth—depend upon the state to a higher degree and therefore should be "specially cared for and protected by the government".
Furthermore, Leo states that the working man has, "has interests in which he should be protected by the State," namely their spiritual and physical well-being (Rerum novarum 40). In the following sections he argues for restrictions to be put in place to ensure that workers have appropriate time for rest in accordance with their work.
Suffice it to say, Pope Leo XIII absolutely does not envision a world where the wealthy are merely "just ask" for fairness. He certainly places limitations on proper government action in his refutation of socialism, but it is completely wrong to portray this as a rejection of state protection of workers in its entirety (this becomes much more obvious when reading his work in line with prior teachings pertaining to state action).
Having re-read Rerum Novarum within the last week, what you are saying is reductive to the point of not accurately portraying the contents of the encyclical. I would encourage you and others to (re)read the encyclical with an eye towards getting a more full and accurate understanding.
It is at best reading a humanistic call, no spiritual content at all. I wonder how the reference to Nature works as an argument for the law of the strongest essentially but not e.g. for homosexuality. Why is the argument that we have to be better than our nature not applicable in the context of economics? These are the things that would give depth to a position. I am as reductionist as he himself when he argues with the straw man of “socialists are coming to take your houses”. We all see in the Western world who came for our houses after all. I would dedicate more time to a position that is substantial even if not agreeable. Full disclosure, I am a believer, one though who has also seen socialist economic structures applied in practice in monasteries. This is not a spiritual position I am reading, it is a second class political manifesto with Latin dressage for impressionability.
> Why is the argument that we have to be better than our nature not applicable in the context of economics?
This is an extremely common theme across the Catholic Church, though?? It’s one of the primary reasons the church is against Socialism - it reduces people to their economic status and strips them of their inherent human dignity through that process. Agree with it or not, it’s absolutely ignorant to imply the Church doesn’t apply its moral teachings to economic scenarios.
This is because dignity is somehow naturally aligned with property, indirectly power? I give an example where it does apply moral teachings to economic scenarios myself, e.g. monastic life. If you mean that the natural property argument is to be considered a moral teaching then I don’t see how morals and not mere power dynamics are required for this model. Can you give an example so that I can assess if my implied ignorance refers to other scenarios?
I would argue that any economic system concerns itself with human as an economic agent, capitalism and socialism alike. Is church against capitalism too? If yes, that’s not what this circular reads like.
The claim was that the Church holds much property of value, which is true although what price do you put on the Vatican?
Catholic Chuch property holdings in Australia come to approx $30 billion (AU) and includes many rentals.
Globally there are at least 5,000 properties recently listed in a partial Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See report on real estate holdings (see Reuters and other outlets for that report).
"Trillions" in the GP comment is hypothetical value .. again, how can the many cathedrals be realistically valued .. they are more or less 'priceless' artifacts of cultural heritage .. although the fire at Notre Dame certainly gave us a ballpark on how much rennovations can cost and what will be put up in donations towards that work.
You’re absolutely right that I misread his comment, thanks
Still, my larger point is that while they all follow the pope, they also are all individual groups with their own finances, problems, and goals. The idea that the pope might sell one church to support another, for instance, is not how it could work in reality.
How it has worked, until recently at least, is opaquely with little real oversight into various national chapters or into the more octopus like tendrils of the central body.
It's been only a decade since any real effort has been applied to financial transperancy in the Catholic Church affairs:
Whatever that was or may still be under a new Pope was likely disrupted by the court room adventures of Cardinal George Pell.
> The idea that the pope might sell one church to support another
My read, admittedly a skim some years back, of Catholic Church real estate reports is that church property ownerships are a small part of a larger, much larger, real estate portfolio that includes mueseums, schools, apratment complexes, large historic multi-million dollar houses with spectacular views in Sydney, commercial office complexes for rent, etc.
I’m not here to argue if you agree with their assessment of socialism, I’m pointing out that it was ignorant and incorrect to say that they don’t put emphasis on the idea that you must apply your better nature to economics. There is absolutely no reason to believe this - it comes across as a weird lie because it’s so obviously incorrect.
Do you have some basis for this belief? It’s so out of left field and counter to everything I’ve ever seen in the Church that I’m not sure where it could’ve originated from. It’s like saying the Church supports abortion or something.
Where is it left field I struggle to see, in the context of the document we discuss this is. E.g I read paragraph 5 and I would struggle to say whether this is written by a Pope or a cheap Adam Smith knock off. Adam Smith had more moral sensitivity than this.
“5. It is surely undeniable that, when a man engages in remunerative labor, the impelling reason and motive of his work is to obtain property, and thereafter to hold it as his very own. If one man hires out to another his strength or skill, he does so for the purpose of receiving in return what is necessary for the satisfaction of his needs; he therefore expressly intends to acquire a right full and real, not only to the remuneration, but also to the disposal of such remuneration, just as he pleases. Thus, if he lives sparingly, saves money, and, for greater security, invests his savings in land, the land, in such case, is only his wages under another form; and, consequently, a working man's little estate thus purchased should be as completely at his full disposal as are the wages he receives for his labor. But it is precisely in such power of disposal that ownership obtains, whether the property consist of land or chattels.
8. The fact that God has given the earth for the use and enjoyment of the whole human race can in no way be a bar to the owning of private property. For God has granted the earth to mankind in general, not in the sense that all without distinction can deal with it as they like, but rather that no part of it was assigned to any one in particular, and that the limits of private possession have been left to be fixed by man's own industry, and by the laws of individual races. Moreover, the earth, even though apportioned among private owners, ceases not thereby to minister to the needs of all, inasmuch as there is not one who does not sustain life from what the land produces. Those who do not possess the soil contribute their labor; hence, it may truly be said that all human subsistence is derived either from labor on one's own land, or from some toil, some calling, which is paid for either in the produce of the land itself, or in that which is exchanged for what the land brings forth.
”
I think you confuse my critique of a document as criticism of a body of Church that is expressed in much more than a papal opinion.
Interesting Fact: There are about as many—if not more—Catholics in the United States (~45-72 million [0]) than there are people in Italy (~60 million [1]). American Catholic theologians, priests, and bishops have a larger impact than many seem to realize.
I'm generally sympathetic with the idea that it is ideal to have an Italian pope—I recall hearing that Pope Benedict XVI thought having a close connection to the diocese of Rome was important—but I also don't mind having popes from different parts of the world so as to better represent the catholicity (universality) of the Church.
I also think an American pope might have a fuller understanding of the global impact of American media and political power. I felt that Francis often did a poor job of navigating the media landscape—oftentimes being represented as saying things which he did not really say or intend, so perhaps an American pope will be better in that regard.
Literacy is a great gift which shouldn't be squandered: much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more. To try to make knowledge of ones spiritual heritage out to be "fetishization" is inappropriate in my estimation. This reminds me of a story told by Dr. Scott Hahn, a Catholic biblical scholar, about an experience he once had (closely paraphrased):
Questioner: "Why do we need to know all of this [bible study, theology, etc]? I can just think of the medieval peasant who is illiterate and thus disqualified from any and everything that you're talking about."
Dr. Hahn: "I think the best response to your question would actually come from the medieval peasant himself, because if you could imagine him standing here next to me he would look at you and say, 'You're using me as an excuse? You have books, you have literacy, you have access to these resources, and you're using me as an excuse to not take advantage of them?'"
> The worst library is still better than the best corporate bookstore.
We are talking about book stores, meaning there is a desire to own the book being read. You don't get to own the books in a library. As someone who heavily annotates my books—except fiction—I will need to own a physical copy (or a digital edition). I haven't been to a book store in a while, but I recall the last two times being quite disappointing. Meanwhile, on Amazon, or other online providers, I can find what I need more often than not.
The trouble is although you get billed for the book, the library does not replace it. I've had things on hold get cancelled with a note about "no longer available".
I've bought a lot of books from the thrift store that had library stamps in them.
It's very possible they don't replace them, but many libraries also have legitimate sells to clear books from inventory to make room. Usually over like a week or three day weekend once or twice a year, the last day having bags of books for $5. All of them have stamps/card holders/stickers designating the library. So those don't necessarily mean they were borrowed and never returned.
Depends heavily on your topic: There are many situations where all bookstores, even Amazon, will come up short. Studying history, for instance, it's amazing how often the main branch of my local library has books even third party sellers in Amazon won't offer, or where they'll demand outrageous prices.
Still, for availability, the real winner is the not-necessarily-legal archives where you can find, say, OOP foreign books that I'd have to cross an ocean to find in a library.
I wish there was a way to manually enable more friction for flagging. When I use the site on mobile I find it very easy to accidentally flag when I am trying to hide a post, a setting to enable a confirmation window would be quite useful to help prevent this.
I liked Slashdot's old moderation system, where you had a drop-down, and you at least had to choose from a few preset "reasons" for your moderation action. It's not perfect, but it might at least cause a few people to pause and reflect on why they feel such a strong urge to get rid of that headline.
For HN, you could map the drop-down contents directly to submission guidelines:
Especially when some things feel like they should have a low threshold for flagging (if 2 people agree it's obvious commerical spam, or terrible-quality content, or a duplicate submission from the past 48 hours), while others feel like they should have a higher threshold (e.g. if 5 people agree it's off-topic for HN, or a threshold proportional to upvotes).
I've also sometimes wanted to flag something for moderator attention, without wanting to give it a "strike". Like the discussion is worth keeping, but point to a better source or something. Your categories somehow solves that.
Like others in the thread, the first time I looked at my list of flagged submissions, there were 20+ just random things on there that I had obviously just fat-fingered on mobile.
and what currency that would be! make some successful shit posts and it gives you the privilege of silencing a political opponent in a debate! great fun
For an example implementation, downvoting in stackexchange costs you 1 point and takes 2 from the person being downvoted iirc (an upvote gets you nothing and bestows 10 points). You can only downvote if you've got a few points on the site, many fewer than on HN (the threshold here is 500 iirc). Flagging is always possible but afaik never leads to automatically killing the thing you're flagging, so downvoting is the way to downrank and fade out posts of people you disagree with. If you think this isn't a good system, it might be worth looking at how it works there, what the problems and benefits are and make a suggestion of what would be better
I'm always accidentally hiding things while scrolling, which I only notice when I see something vanish with no obvious way to bring it back. Who knows how many other things I've done by accident that don't have obvious visual cues. Likewise, I'm always fat-fingering downvote when I mean to upvote, but at least nowadays there's an indicator of what you've done and a way to undo your vote (for a long time, there wasn't!).
Back then I decided to never upvote anything, because hitting the wrong arrow was so easy and that I figured no votes was a better contribution to the site than frequently wrong direction votes!
It's fairly rare now that I accidentally click anything other than a (thankfully easy to reverse) up or down arrow, but I still 100% agree that anything like "hide" should be easily reversible.
This and voting up/down are a pain on the mobile UI. It's too easy to downvote instead of upvote, or flag something without even noticing in this case. (I just found two perfectly normal posts I've flagged)
I think the main reason is the Web1.0 design of HN doesn't translate well to small screens.
What do the current XTDB across-time queries lack in this regard? I am under the impression that XTDB already supports what you're asking for, from the release notes:
> Full, across-time queries: using SQL:2011's bitemporal primitives and/or 'XTQL' to answer "what did we know, and when?".
> No history/audit tables, triggers required: use it as a regular update-in-place database (you're free to UPDATE and DELETE normally again!), safe in the knowledge that your history is there when you need it.
> Zero-cost, full database snapshots: immediately go back to any point in time without needing to schedule or store periodic snapshots/copies.
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