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I reckon each of these has at least 3/5 of the complaints the OP has about Linux, because they're all still Unix clones.

> Package managers and compiling-from-source instead of distributing runnable applications directly.

Docker tries to partially address this, right?

> Dependence on CLI, and steep learning curve.

I think this is partially eased by LLMs.


But you can see the theme here: Adding more layers of complexity to patch things. LLMs do seem to do a better job than searching forum posts! I would argue that Docker's point is to patch compatibility barriers in Linux.

They shouldn't have to. OS interfaces including commandline ones should be user oriented not bogged down by Unix dogma that was created wwhencomputerss used physical text terminals as their primary I/O device. It's not the 60s anymore and modern PC, servers, and embedded devices aren't ancient mainframes with physical terminal hardware where making everything appear to be a file and using convoluted scripting interfaces like the Unix shell made at least some sense.

> Docker tries to partially address this, right?

Docker is a good way of turning a 2kb shell script into a 400mb container. It's not a solution.

Flatpak would be a better example.


Cool paper!

[EDIT: The following is my own clumsy mistake] Minor note: The definition of "mean width" of a polyhedron P in the paper is not translation invariant, and that's confusing. In other words, the mean width of a polyhedron P can differ from that of P+x := {p+x | p ∈ P} where x is some vector. Is that intended? It doesn't agree with how the word "width" is normally used. I would call it a "mean furthest projection". Or maybe "mean peak projection" or "mean shadow"?


I assume you're talking about this?

"Half the mean width of a polyhedron P is equal to the expected value of

  max θ^T x
  subject to x ∈ P,
where θ ∈ S^(d−1) is uniformly random distributed with respect to the Haar measure on the unit sphere."

The expression max θ^T x is not translation-invariant: if you replace x with x + ∆x, you get (max θ^T x) + θ^T ∆x. But the expectation of θ^T ∆x is 0 so the expectation of the maximum is translation-invariant again.


I think you're right. Yes, I think it is translation invariant. Ouch, apologies.

It's hard to make Python run fast when it pervasively uses duck typing. It makes types only resolvable at runtime. JIT is the only thing that can work here at the moment, but I think that needs to make very similar assumptions to a branch predictor, plus it needs to identify lexical regions (is that what they're called?). People here have criticised PyPy, but I've forgotten why.

Instead of writing 2+2, you're suggesting writing 2.plus(2) or plus(2,2).

Off-topic, but: "Geezer" means "elderly man" in AmE, while it just means "guy" in BrE. It used to be more common to hear it in the UK.

“Ice cream freezer” being the cockney version

I think the family tree model of linguistic history is not very useful for English. Saying English is Germanic to the exclusion of everything else is not very useful.

The family tree model seems to assume that every language has only 1 direct ancestor. It seems to have been inspired by phylogenetic trees in biology. In phylogenetics, single-parent trees work fine because distantly related species can't breed with one other. By contrast, different languages borrow features from one another all the time. It could perhaps be useful for some languages, but not for English. I reckon.


It always seems like whenever something close to this happens, people's lives carry on, don't get easier, and they keep finding new things to complain about.

I think even conjugating it. The formula for rotation via quats is v->qvq^{-1} = qvq^*/|q|^2.


No, your claim about matrix multiplication is false. Google's new algorithm can be applied recursively to 4x4 block matrices (over the field of complex numbers). This results in an asymptotically faster algorithm for nxn matrix multiplication than Strassen's. Earlier results on 4x4 matrices by Winograd and others did not extend to block matrices..

Google's result has more recently been generalised: https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.13242


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