Pretty cool, I found this explains the math behind it

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffon's_needle_problem

I don’t know if this is possible or even advisable, but theoretically maybe the NIC could be hardware passed through to a linux VM, and then configure the host to use the guest VM as a gateway? It’d be kind of a nuts solution but it’d get points for creativity. Guest VM takes hardware control of the NIC and the host connects to the VM like it’s a separate device on the same network.

Something like the question posed here

You’d have to solve a few separate problems that might not be worth it, unfortunately I don’t have these answers:

1. Hardware passthrough to the guest (does it require any special drivers on windows/is this idea already dead in the water?)
2. How to configure VM networking properly so that the host can use the connection (is it enough to configure the connection as bridged?)
3. Performance

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Libertarian counterpoint: If businesses are governments, and government is just a business, then a government is basically a monopoly which is too big to fail. So a small government with each function operated by the market allows each function to fail independently or be voted out with your wallet.

So these are the counterpoints:

1. “Modular” government is less prone to complete failure than a single monopoly government
2. Small government is more democratic because of how you use your wallet to vote for all the different social functions

Counter-counterpoints:

1. Capital tends toward monopoly. (Read Marx and Lenin.) Small independent companies fulfilling various social functions will eventually combine, and now you’ve got a few big private companies offering government packages bundled together. Now you’re in the same position you were trying to avoid with “big government”, except without any democratic input at all.
2. You’ll have shitty access or no access to functions which don’t generate profit. Could maybe go off about ableism here.
3. Voting with your wallet means people without money don’t get a vote, and people with money get several votes. This is anti democratic.

What do you mean? It’s 12:30 in Moscow

Only a few countries haven’t signed the treaty banning cropduster munitions

Disregarding that his premise is false, I mean it used to be more popular (or maybe it’s just my own stereotyping) to get married at age like 20 after knowing the person for only a year or two. Then they stay married for the rest of their lives, for better or worse, and when they’re 65 they’re sharing boomer memes on Facebook about hating their wife. Why is that preferred?

Regardless, Soviet sweets like syrniki are delicious. Smetana gets translated as sour cream but to me it’s not the same as sour cream you find e.g. in the US. More neutral and fatty tasting by comparison.

Unfortunately I suspect the name Beryl will quickly become outdated

There’s a free pdf on the publisher website if you don’t need a physical copy:

https://www.iskrabooks.org/stalin-history-and-critique

May she recover quickly and good that you were there to help :rat-salute:

I hope this happens, but something tells me that even if the war in Ukraine ends, the Finnish government might continue their anti Russia policies for a while. I agree it sounds like an awesome trip if you can make it!

I’ve done the Helsinki to St. Petersburg trip several times since the war started so I could PM you with all those details if you want. The short answer is you have basically two options to get to Russia:

First option: Flight through a third country.

This basically means Helsinki-Istanbul and then Istanbul-Moscow or St. Petersburg. The best tickets are pretty expensive (over 1k eur/person), but you can find a bit cheaper if you can deal with a longer layover. A less common route is through Serbia (Belgrade), but I think the flights are less frequent and have longer layovers.

About the 404 pages, a lot of flight aggregator websites aren’t showing tickets to Russia anymore. You can search the Turkish Airlines website directly for Helsinki-St. Petersburg or Moscow. Or through Serbia it’s probably AirBaltic and then transfer to Aeroflot.

If you can read Russian or can handle page translation, aviasales.ru shows flight options. Here’s Helsinki-Moscow and here’s Helsinki-St. Petersburg.

Moscow likely has high speed rail connections to like Kazan, but probably standard rail the whole way across Siberia. I haven’t researched the cross-country train options, so I don’t know how fast it is.

Second option: Ferry to Tallinn + bus to St. Petersburg through the Narva-Ivangorod border point.

This is the cheapest and sometimes the fastest way to get to St. Petersburg. Unfortunately this border point is under reconstruction, so it’s pedestrian only (no vehicles). This means the bus stops at Narva, everyone gets out and takes their luggage, and crosses the border by foot. Lately the lines have been very long, but it varies (expect at least 2 hours, probably longer). Bring water, snacks, and a hat.

We can cross our fingers and hope the Finnish-Russian border is reopened before your trip, then you could easily take a bus from Helsinki. (Same kind of companies operate, for example LuxExpress or SovAvto.)

Getting a visa

Of course, to enter Russia you also need a Russian visa. There used to be a third party visa center operating in Helsinki (Jätkäsaari), but they have been temporarily closed since January 2024. Now you need to submit your visa application through the consulate. However, the visa center’s website has some useful information to help you apply. If you decide to go down this path, I can give you tips from when I was doing my application.

Anyway it’s a bit complicated, but if you have time to plan and this is going to be a month or longer vacation, this is how you could cross the border.

My coworker: Those protestors don’t even know what it is they’re protesting, they just want to be anti-something

Veljeni Kristuksessa, they aren’t running for US president, they surely know where they are and what for

“because I smell something burning”

The thing which drives me up the wall about FPTP and “lesser evil” moralizing is that, given the FPTP voting system, the onus is on the party to put forward a candidate who can win a majority. Don’t blame the voters for the party’s failure. The democrats are putting up a shit candidate, so if they lose, it’s their fault. Not the people. A real tail-wagging-the-dog situation.

If you believe in democracy, then you must believe that power comes from the people, not that power whips the people into line.

He’s in pretty bad health is he not? Is this just letting him free due to illness?

That’s been on my mind too lately, history is filled with intense events that were the entire world for the people experiencing it. Current events are just history being made, but rather than being locked into a track as when we read history, we can directly affect the course. Though, history is also full of completely forgotten stories of people like us and not like us, fighting for things which are motivated by things almost completely irrelevant now. And they would go on being forgotten events and people of the past, except that we can retrospectively analyze them as tools for our present. Interesting to think about when it comes to the legacy we’re collectively leaving to the world’s children.

also it’s kinda wild realizing how old people are still pretty young in a cosmic sense, we’re all just someone else’s kids that inherited the fucked up world handed down to us. Like how stories get passed down through generations, except only the ones told by the oppressing classes are remembered.

The link to last week’s post in the description is outdated, here’s the last week post

https://hexbear.net/post/2783436

ngrok is free for development if you only need to serve HTTP, haven’t used it personally but I think it basically acts like a reverse proxy