Efficiency is the removal of redundancy.
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Efficiency is the removal of redundancy. Redundancy is a necessary element of resilient systems. The unbounded search for efficiency has one result: brittleness.
@ekuber
Examining the structures of dependencies which create democracies and autocratic regimes, produces a similar mapping to resiliency and brittleness, using a core analogical model of "binding energies". https://johntinker.substack.com/p/democracy-fascism-and-binding-energies -
@c_merriweather "limitations are good for innovation" is a good one that covers art and engineering
@c_merriweather @ekuber I keep telling my peers and students, that good engineering starts with well defined constraints.
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@swallez so many small things that add no cost but have a material impact. I always think of the legislation forcing plastic bottle caps to remain attached by default. Such a small thing, such a large impact on both loose trash and recyclability. There are so many small changes we can do that no one would bat an eye at that would improve all our lives. So many others that people would have kneejerk reactions towards that would be beneficial to all.
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Efficiency is the removal of redundancy. Redundancy is a necessary element of resilient systems. The unbounded search for efficiency has one result: brittleness.
@ekuber
Agreed. Years ago, a group of us visited the NUMMI car factory, joint venture of GM and Toyota. They started with talk about place & methods, emphasizing importance of Just in Time logistics… and were quite embarrassed when, during our visit, the production line stopped because some truck coming from L.A. got delayed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUMMI
The brittleness of hyper-efficient systems leading to societal collapse was one of the themes of A Deepness in the Sky: -
One thing I keep seeing is the same lessons being learned across different disciplines: pilots and doctors learning about the importance of checklists, road and industrial machine engineers learning about safe by default design, industrial and software UX designers learning about how to best make machines and humans talk to each other. We need more cross pollination. Across industries. Across borders. Across people. That's how we build a better future. And for that we need to listen.
@ekuber
Aim for the best, expect the worst and plan for it. Its a generic concept that works in all areas.
Its also an understanding that optimism and pessimism are false constructs when practical realism enters the chat. -
@swallez so many small things that add no cost but have a material impact. I always think of the legislation forcing plastic bottle caps to remain attached by default. Such a small thing, such a large impact on both loose trash and recyclability. There are so many small changes we can do that no one would bat an eye at that would improve all our lives. So many others that people would have kneejerk reactions towards that would be beneficial to all.
@ekuber True! And for me, for things other than food, this also starts with questioning myself "do I really need it?". Not always easy as a geek that loves home automation, but even there I try to stay frugal. I also repair a lot of things. We changed our dishwasher recently after 35 years and many repairs, basically my entire adult life 😅
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@sandorspruit @ekuber we do that as well, we have a subscription with a very local farmer who prepares a box of vegetables and fruits every week. They don't produce everything, but everything is seasonal and organic. And every week is a surprise: "what are we going to eat this week?" 😛
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One thing I keep seeing is the same lessons being learned across different disciplines: pilots and doctors learning about the importance of checklists, road and industrial machine engineers learning about safe by default design, industrial and software UX designers learning about how to best make machines and humans talk to each other. We need more cross pollination. Across industries. Across borders. Across people. That's how we build a better future. And for that we need to listen.
@ekuber
It reminds me of people trying to figure out gravity before it was common knowledge. They ascribed the fact that stuff falls down to god or any other outlandish idea.The same happens if you ask a liberally educated person to explain cooperation.
They use individualism, idealism, utopianism, reinvent the wheel.
We have tools for this for over 100 years. It is called planned economy, socialism and materialism. Its dead easy but the knowledge has been forcefully replaced.
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@jrdepriest @ekuber is each step going to continue being redundant? Because if each step is as efficient as possible, that's a single point of failure at each step and future steps won't solve that
If you have error checking and loops or retries, it might. If future steps verify what comes out of previous steps, it might.
My point is that you can have a redundant overall process with efficiency in the individual pieces and that just focusing on overall efficiency in general doesn't make sense.
But that assumes you get to design the whole system and understand all the inputs, outputs, and failure modes. And whatever passes for a threat model, fault tolerance, and risk appetite. Or possibly regulatory requirements or contractual obligations. Or how much time you have to build it.
Anybody who says "we only focus on efficiency" is vastly oversimplifying.
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Efficiency is the removal of redundancy. Redundancy is a necessary element of resilient systems. The unbounded search for efficiency has one result: brittleness.
@ekuber This reminds me of an argument I had with management of the network operations center where I worked. I made a beautiful point about "pickle factory staffing" versus "firehouse staffing" but it took them months to see my point.
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@ekuber
It's a cross-and multi-disciplinary group looking at how high-reliability organizations can, do, and should work, how systems fall, and how the human parts of those systems help them not fail completely.
https://www.resilience-engineering-association.org/Good starting places in the literature are Dekker's "A Field Guide to 'Human Error'", the Woods paper "The Theory of Graceful Extensibility: Basic Rules that Govern Adaptive Systems", and (from a different end of the community) Leveson's Engineering a Safer World.
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Efficiency is the removal of redundancy. Redundancy is a necessary element of resilient systems. The unbounded search for efficiency has one result: brittleness.
@ekuber and boy has private equity prospered by gutting all the redundancy they can find while leaving the rest of us to deal with the inevitable system failures.
capitalism sure is efficient when we let capitalistic vultures define efficiency
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I'm all for global chains of distribution: specialization is real and you won't ever grow bananas in Alaska (even if Iceland showed it is technically possible last century), manufacture a computer chip in Paris or produce wine in Greenland, but we as consumers have to accept and understand that having pineapple out of season anywhere in the planet is not reasonable at the prices we're used to paying. In some French super markets I've seen signs on the produce next to the price with the country of origin and helpful information of when the growing season is. I found that as an excellent nudge for the almost entirely fictional homo economicus. I'd like us to surface that information to everyone for everything. Maybe that way people would understand just how connected we are.
@ekuber i think it's an EU regulation that you have to indicate the origin of fruits and vegetables. This is certainly the case in Italy too, they generally indicate regional production too. And it does impact sales somewhat, but people buy out of season fruit from abroad just the same, cause it's a cultural issue.
Gli ultimi otto messaggi ricevuti dalla Federazione
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Chi sono i veri architetti dell’intelligenza artificiale
Per vedere altri post come questo, segui la comunità @informatica
Dalla copertina del Time alla cena di Taipei: i veri architetti dell’AI sono nella filiera industriale che rende possibile l’intelligenza artificiale globale.startmag.it/innovazione/chi-so…
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@andrea_ferrero
Voyager IINon per dettagli tecnici (che non conosco, oltre a ciò che è generalmente noto), bensì per l'aspetto romantico e pionieristico e per il fatto che è ancora attiva.
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"I risultati sono sotto gli occhi di tutti, perché se ci fosse la presenza di un movimento realmente antagonista al capitalismo in ogni sua forma - istituzionale o religiosa che sia - per queste posizioni di merda non ci sarebbe spazio e i lavoratori salariati lotterebbero tutti insieme, al di là di ogni tentativo di dividerli, per la loro classe di appartenenza...non per patrie da superare o abbattere, e tantomeno per preti, rabbini o mullah."
articolo completo qui: https://www.leftcom.org/it/articles/2026-01-14/campisti-crisi-imperialismo-lotta-di-classe-iran-l-altro-volto-del-problema
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Signal è ancora uno dei metodi migliori per inviare messaggi in modo sicuro. Ecco tutto ciò che devi sapere su come funziona e su come proteggerti durante il suo utilizzo.
Why Signal Is Still Our Favorite Secure Messaging App (And Why No Messaging App Is Perfectly Secure) | Reviews by Wirecutter
https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/signal-secure-messaging-app/
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"Non stai dalla parte di Putin? Sei filo occidentale. Non stai da quella di Zelensky? Sei filo russo. Non stai coi Mullah o con Hamas? Sei sionista. Ti fa schifo Netanyahu? Sei coi terroristi islamici. Si può continuare per ore. E in questo tragico Risiko la vittima è la classe proletaria, al netto di coloro che le ordinano da quale parte stare. Ma loro continuano a non capire o a fare finta di non capire che fanno solamente il gioco di un padrone piuttosto che dell'altro e che l'unica via di uscita è rifiutare questo modo di pensare e di gettarlo nella spazzatura della storia in quanto prodotto della rinuncia alla lotta di classe e prodotto della penetrazione del nazionalismo all'interno del movimento operaio con la stessa entità corrosiva di un tumore."
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"Campisti
Dicono che è un termine inflazionato e di moda e lo rifiutano, ma rientrano in pieno in questa definizione. Si parla di loro già da un po', fin dagli inizi della guerra in Ucraina. [...] ragionano riducendo il tutto a una questione di buoni contro cattivi e in ultima analisi fanno semplicemente il tifo per coloro i quali vorrebbero si sostituissero agli attuali signori della Terra. Per loro la lotta di classe è acqua passata, parlano per nazioni o per aree geopolitiche, termine che adorano particolarmente. Alcuni di loro, i più folli, danno a queste aree nomi ben precisi, come Eurasia. Probabilmente credono di giocare a Risiko e non capiscono che questo tifo per uno o per l'altro schieramento della borghesia a livello mondiale è un po' come tifare per quale becchino ti seppellirà."
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Travaglio sul Nove: “Fermo preventivo? Lo facevano ai tempi del fascismo” https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2026/02/08/travaglio-sul-nove-fermo-preventivo-lo-facevano-ai-tempi-del-fascismo/8283953/
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Analisi militare della grave situazione in Ucraina. Kiev senza riscaldamento è alle prese con un freddo terribile. Per la prima volta dal 2022 si parla di evacuazione di massa. Le centrali danneggiate, che in precedenza venivano riparate, adesso hanno subito danni irreparabili. E l'energia viene meno proprio nella città teoricamente più protetta militarmente: Kiev.
