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> "Any time you beat a computer at a game it let you win." Are we there yet? If not, how long?

I don't want to beat a computer, I want to beat another person.


People really struggle to keep their heads straight when all of the primary actors are horrible people.

Claude Code web won't let me use my gitea instance.

What do you mean? like it doesn't doesn't know how to perform a actions on it like it does with the gh cli? fwiw in a different comment i cited gh cli X claude code as one of the reasons I still github.

Claude Code in the CLI works fine. I mean if you want to use the Claude Code web interface (https://claude.ai/code), the literal first step is connect to github.

You can do that locally too!


> UAE announced this week they might start selling oil in yuan

That is just UAE pressure to make sure they get their dollar swap deal: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/trump-says-currenc...


Indeed it’s leverage but at same time they only need the swap because all is not well in petrodollar land.


I don't think there is any evidence that they actually need the dollar swap line - the dirham-dollar peg isn't at any risk and they have plenty of money for fiscal flexibility going into the foreseeable future. If you take financial reasons off of the table then it is clear it is just a political play for a bigger seat at the table with the US.

The Saudis did it to Biden in 2023, the UAE sees the opportunity to do it to Trump now.


They need the dollars because they're an import-oriented economy, almost all of which are conducted in dollars (nobody wants their dirhams because oil is priced in dollars anyways). Dollars are also useful for their sovereign funds to invest into the US, either in the stock market, or in private equity.

What happened this week - they announced they might start selling in yuan, they left the OPEC, and they started a new wealth fund to invest exclusively in China. That gives them an alternative for the dollar-peg since China is their biggest import partner anyways, while also giving their surplus yuan an alternative channel of investment into China.

Still they need the dollar-swap for the essentials - food from India and Pakistan, neither of which will accept their dirhams unless they get exclusive deals (which are not allowed in OPEC). It helps for them that India and Pakistan need lots of oil, and that a dollar peg benefits the UAE more than it does either nation. If the EU plays a greater role in trade, particularly in defence and maritime manufacturing, they will stockpile euros too, to the detriment of the dollar.

Still, they also bought some prime DC acreage to expand their US diplomatic corps, and will likely keep the Washington connection, so long as AI is perceived as useful. Right now, that's the only major export benefit the US provides the Gulf countries. This is them just hedging their bets.


At last report (Feb 2026) the UAE had ~$250b in foreign currency reserves. They have plenty of non-AED currency.

The Yuan is the current bogeyman the Gulf States use when they want attention from the US (not that they’re not diversifying, just that it isn’t a structural shift in a meaningful way). The UAE is making this play right now to make sure they are part of the conversation in deciding how things with Iran end and making sure their influence is sustained after the current administration.

The wealth fund is a way to deploy whatever yuan they receive while gaining political favor with China as well.


They may think it's leverage until they are glassed by the empire for not toeing the line


Earlier this year I built a new desktop and installed my normal Linux distro and the screen wouldn’t work after login. I worked on it for a day, still couldn’t get any desktop except a terminal.Tried a different distro, it booted but no matter what resolution or refresh rate, the display showed severe artifacts when scrolling. Tried to fix it for a few days, gave up.

I am not a Linux novice, I have been using every major OS for decades at this point, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t install Windows, decrapify it, and everything just worked. You can say I should have done more research on hardware compatibility or whatever, but I didn’t have to for Windows.

And I like how you complain most devs never give Linux a fair shot on decent hardware right after describing that you MacOS experience is a hackintosh. That makes a lot of sense.


> And I like how you complain most devs never give Linux a fair shot on decent hardware right after describing that you MacOS experience is a hackintosh.

I'm not saying that I was expecting to run a Hackintosh and suddenly get the advantages of Apple hardware. I am doing a pure software-to-software comparison.

There was no application in the MacOS desktop that made me feel like I was missing out on something. Of all the tools that I am used to use - emacs + developer tools, email clients, messaging clients, media players, media managers, browsers, the occasional office productivity - none of the MacOS counterparts had any significant advantage over what I have in a Linux desktop.


> I am doing a pure software-to-software comparison.

I would argue this is impossible at this point. Most of the benefits of the entire Apple ecosystem are about integration - Macbook Pros are the fastest machines with the best battery life because of the great hardware but also the software integration.

> There was no application in the MacOS desktop that made me feel like I was missing out on something. Of all the tools that I am used to use - emacs + developer tools, email clients, messaging clients, media players, media managers, browsers, the occasional office productivity - none of the MacOS counterparts had any significant advantage over what I have in a Linux desktop.

This isn't really comparing OSes is it? You're comparing software that runs on the OS. Every tool I have on my linux machines I have an equivalent tool for on Mac, or I use the same tool, but the Macbook with MacOS is a workhorse that I can trust to "just work."

I don't think desktop Linux is bad, not by any means, and there are reasons I still go to it first on my personal machines until something forces me to make a different decision, but I also get tired of Linux users telling all of us that our experiences are old and all of these issues are fixed when they're just not, even if that isn't Linux' or the distro's fault.


If you are willing to give the advantage to MacOS due to the integration with the hardware, then you should only judge Linux when provided on hardware from Linux-centric vendors like system76, Tuxedo, Starlite and Framework.


I understand the point you are trying to make, but I disagree with it. MacOS doesn’t claim to work on other hardware, Linux does.

If System76 said PopOS only works on their hardware, it would be fair to only evaluate it on their hardware. When SteamOS only claimed to work on Steam Decks, the only good evaluation way to evaluate it was on Steam Decks.


> MacOS doesn’t claim to work on other hardware, Linux does.

Who exactly is "Linux", and what specifically is the claim? It looks to me like you don't want to lose the argument on these grounds, but maybe you could still have a nice laptop with Linux on it that just works.


> Who exactly is "Linux", and what specifically is the claim?

Linux distributions have a set of claims for what hardware they work with, usually as minimum system requirements. Since they are the minimum system requirements the expectation should, within reason, exist that the OS will work if you meet or exceed those requirements.

I say "within reason" because no OS can promise that, minimum is not a forward looking statement and the newest hardware is often the hardest to support.

> It looks to me like you don't want to lose the argument on these grounds

Agreed, because I didn't make any claims that this direction of argument negates. Linux has a harder task supporting a broader array of hardware, that doesn't mean that every argument should compare it to MacOS only on golden/chosen hardware.

If you build a distribution that only claims it works on specific hardware, like SteamOS did, then I agree that's a valid comparison.

> but maybe you could still have a nice laptop with Linux on it that just works.

I'm sure I could, I never claimed you couldn't.


> MacOS doesn’t claim to work on other hardware, Linux does.

It's the inverse. You claim that Apple "just works" for you and that Linux doesn't. I am saying that if you want to lend credibility to your argument, you need to use hardware that has a certifying vendor behind it.


> MacOS doesn’t claim to work on other hardware, Linux does.

"Linux" isn't even an operating system. There is no entity in the world who claims "bring any Linux distro at all to any random assortment of hardware you happen to already own, it'll be great and we'll commercially support it!".


I didn’t make a single one of these claims.


I have installed different Linux distros in 4-5 devices in the last year, including a laptop with an Nvidia GPU and a random NUC off Aliexpress. In all cases everything worked out of the box after a fresh installation--and as far as I remember the situation was the same ~10 years ago, when I first started using it. There are hiccups here and there, but nothing I cannot live with. I do tech support for my girlfriend'd mac, and there are just as many small issues there.

All this wall of texts to say that, respectfully, when you write >Earlier this year I built a new desktop and installed my normal Linux distro and the screen wouldn’t work after login the issue might simply be that you are doing something very wrong and/or not following the proper instructions for whatever distro you are using.


I can only speak from personal experience.

But I've had multiple Lenovo laptops not work with Ubuntun or nixOS in multiple situations.

Any new yoga variants just always had trouble.

E.g. my yoga slim 7i had a keyboard issue in Ubuntu such that for the first minute, I can't use my keyboard. Had to change boot configbto use "dumb keyboard" or something

The yoga also had speaker issues in nixos as the drivers haven't been mainlined yet. It was onenof those 6 speaker (2 tweeter) setups. I had to download a random driver and chuck it in my nix config to get the subwoofers working.

I gave up after mic issues in multiple zoom calls or gmeet calls.

You can say it's all skills issue, but Mac worked first try.


Laptops notoriously have rare hardware with poor or non-existent drivers. For laptops, you do need to do research with Linux to make sure things outside of the CPU/GPU work.

And, of course macs work first try. Apple makes both the hardware and software, if it didn't work it would be extremely impressive. The fact it's working is expected, not exceptional or noteworthy.


> I have installed different Linux distros in 4-5 devices in the last year, including a laptop with an Nvidia GPU and a random NUC off Aliexpress. In all cases everything worked out of the box after a fresh installation

How interesting! This mirrors my experience with some of my devices, and not with some of my others.

> All this wall of texts to say that, respectfully, when you write >Earlier this year I built a new desktop and installed my normal Linux distro and the screen wouldn’t work after login the issue might simply be that you are doing something very wrong and/or not following the proper instructions for whatever distro you are using.

Ahh yes, the complicated instructions of writing the ISO to a thumb drive, running the installer, and trying to login after the installation is complete.

My sin was using a current gen nvidia GPU (a 5080) and a 4K monitor with high refresh rates. This unprecedented combo fails to make the transition from SDDM to Plasma Wayland with the latest (at the time) nvidia drivers baked into the distros I tried. Fortunately, I wasn't alone in this issue based on the forum posts across a couple of distros, so I can be confident that at least some others failed to hold it right as well.


Yes, using an Nvidia GPU is absolutely failing to hold it right. Nvidia has shit support on Linux and they do it intentionally, everybody knows that.

You can blame Linux all you want but there's nothing anybody can do except Nvidia. The whole thing is locked down, no distro or developer on Earth can save Nvidia users.


I can easily tell you a story of the same with the two OSs reversed. It's no longer 2016, pretty much every hardware worth their salt has good, or better Linux support, with the possible exception of some random RGB led not being controllable out of the box (though usually it's not out of the box either on windows). Like outside of desktop, Linux is the most prevalent operating system and it's not even close.


This wasn’t 2016, it was this year, and we are talking about desktop OSes (given the comparison to MacOS). If I wanted to run it as a server without a desktop environment, it would have been fine.

I don’t understand all the folks who crawl out of the woodworks as Acolytes of the Holy Linux Empire every time this topic comes up. Linux is a good desktop OS these days, it is my default, but I don’t have any problems acknowledging its issues and moving to another OS if it can’t meet my needs or if I have hardware/software that it has issues with.


This conversation started because someone said "I wish we could get a LInux system running on an Apple hardware, that would be the best of both worlds", and then the first response is to make a defense of MacOS, implying that MacOS would be the superior choice even if the Linux integration with Apple hardware was leveled.

What I am refuting is basically the idea that MacOS provides a better "experience" than a modern LInux Desktop installed on any reasonably conventional hardware.

I don't refute that are limitations on Linux. I am not saying that it will run everywhere flawlessly. But I am saying that the average college student, the average "web developer" and the average "elderly folk with basic computing needs" can have a good desktop experience without being forced to pay the Apple tax.


Is your underlying assumption that cars should be have the highest priority as a method of transportation, everywhere? Do you live in a rural area or something?

> School zones and other low-speed zones are a complete moneygrubbing racket because we already use schoolbuses which have protections.

What does this even mean? Does every kid ride a bus where you are? Do your school buses have seat belts and crumple zones?


The author seems to not realize the season are about temperature not about sunlight. If you align the season to northern hemisphere temperatures, where the first week of August is usually the hottest, they make sense.



> A season is a division of the year[1] based on changes in weather…


I have no dog in this fight but a friendly reminder that temperature and weather are not synonymous.


> I think this holds for basically all movements in which case, I don't really understand the need to flag that website over any website.

Because it uses the language and thinking patterns of the Rationalists, it serves as a strong indoctrination tool. The site itself isn't bad but, as someone who flirted with those communities as a result of the site, I think the warning is deserved.


If you feel like the warning is deserved, and have personal experience, yeah then fair enough. I personally live in the "periphery" (read: not in Berkley or SF or New York) so I think I may see way less of the good and the bad.


Someone a bit further down the thread took a look, it is definitely malware.

> Download link on https://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html goes to https://pub-45c2577dbd174292a02137c18e7b1b5a.r2.dev/hwmonito... which is obviously unusual.

> This has the description "Установка — HWiNFO Monitor, версия 1.63" in it. Now I'm pretty sure CPUID is based out of France, so the presence of Russian there is not great. The term "HWiNFO" is not right here either, it's a completely different tool.

> The file is built with a customised "wrapped" Innosetup often used by malware, making it difficult to extract. "Real" Hwmonitor just uses regular InnoSetup and can be extracted with simple and common tools.

> Their site has been hacked is the simplest explanation.

And

> Apparently there's several sandbox detection methods in it. If you ran it, assume you are compromised as there's several persistent processes installed. Start reinstalling your windows and remember to use the "log out everywhere" feature on all websites to refresh your login tokens and reset your passwords.


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