The Trump Economy -- 'deregulation without growth'

I work at an unreasonably large hedge fund. When discussing the trading/gambling implications of the upcoming Donald Trump 2024-2028 American presidential term, I heard the phrase ‘deregulation without growth.’ I think that is an accurate description of the economic consequences of Trump’s previous term and what is like to come in 2025, but incomplete. It is more like “cruel without meaning.” TLDR: When someone at a hedge fund says that they expect “deregulation without growth” it basically means “no market fundamentals will change; there will be no major changes to productive capacity, but we will be able to siphon off more money from productive means than we did last year....

5 min

Using All of my Compute Is So Satisfying

Most people have very little control over all of the power of the computers in their hands every day. But being able to fully control this power for my uses is extremely satisfying. I feel like I control some of the means of production. Even most junior/mid-level engineers cannot control their computer like this. Not to be mean, but those are some skill issues. Those who run Windows have no hope of ever fully controlling their own machine....

1 min

Why I like Iyashikei Anime

I have a “type” of anime that I like. Broadly, I especially enjoy iyashikei (癒し系) anime and especially leaning into yuri (百合). Or rather, I believe that Iyashikei most accurately describes the kind of anime that I most enjoy and watch most frequently. Roughly speaking, I would define Iyashikei/my type of anime as that which does not have a “plot”, specific antagonist, interposonal conflict, or adversity-driven character development, instead relying on atmosphere, “vibes,” and representations of peace....

4 min

Why I Prefer ZFS Mirror Vdevs to RAIDZ-n

For my personal homelab/home server, I prefer to use ZFS Zpools each with a single mirror Vdev. Currently I use 1 zpool with 1 3-way mirror vdev, but when my media (mainly movies and TV shows) grows beyond 500Gb, I will likely make a separate media zpool with a 2-way mirror vdev. This approach probably doesn’t work when a single zpool or vdev exceeds 10-20Tb, but no normal human being really needs that much data – anyone who claims they do is likely a data hoarder and is bad at organizing....

4 min

Why I, a socialist, work at a hedge fund

Recently I started working at a hedge fund . I will omit the precise one to avoid doxing myself and needing to have prefaces like “this reflects my views and not those of my employer…..” I will just say that it is one of the hedge funds listed in Wikipedia’s non-exhaustive list of notable hedge funds as of April 2024 . Capitalism forces us to behave most unlike our true selves in order to survive....

10 min

You should regularly shut down/reboot your laptop/desktop/server

Modern sleep/suspend/hibernate is a real testament to engineering. It is incredibly cool that we can put computers in states that use as much power in a full day as a lightbulb uses in 5 minutes. My laptop and workstation have had uptimes of weeks. My server has had an uptime of a couple of months. Servers at work have years of ongoing uptime! But even though we can get away with never shutting down laptops, desktops, and servers, I claim that it is a very good idea to shut down (or atleast reboot) all computers atleast once per week....

3 min