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Comment Re: strncpy never made sense (Score 3, Insightful) 35

strncpy() was not intended for null-terminated strings at all. It should have been named copy_null_padded_buffer(). Then its operation would have made sense to almost anyone. People wouldn't have minded the longer name much either, because hardly anybody uses null-padded buffers in modern software.

Note that a null-padded buffer that is completely full doesn't have any nulls in it at all. That's why strncpy() doesn't necessarily add a null termination. It also fills the entire destination buffer with nulls after the end of a short copy, which can be very inefficient when used with null-terminated strings.

TL;DR: don't use strncpy(). It doesn't do what anybody thinks it does.

Comment Re:3D printing whole rockets was such a dumb idea. (Score 1) 47

Oh god. If I spent enough time digging through my ancient Slashdot posts, somewhere back there there are posts of me going, "While I loved the strategy behind Falcon 9, I'm really not keen on this plan to make Starship out of huge carbon fibre tanks, that sounds like a really failure-prone solution..." I'm glad they only spent like a year on that idea before deciding it was dumb; somewhere back there there's also a bunch of posts of me cheering their switch to steel ;) . SpaceX still keep having random COPV problems (most of which they don't even make themselves). Not too encouraging for the notion of the cold gas thruster add-on to the Roadster, where the plan is to replace the back seat with COPVs, so you have a COPV right behind your head.

Electron has been getting by on CF, and honestly I'm impressed, but they've also been only working with very small launch vehicles thusfar. We'll see how neutron goes...

Comment Re:taxing unrealized gains is problematic (Score 1) 286

(2) Both the more modest and the wealthy are subject to this.

Yes, but for a wealthy person, this is a much tinier fraction of their wealth.

the homeowner gets to choose to use the standard or the itemized, whichever is the larger deduction.

The fact remains for someone under the threshold of the standard deduction, the property tax is something they have to pay that they cannot deduct, but a landlord could.

No, it is a business expense that gets deducted from business income. Renting is a business activity.

As I said, it's deductable without regard to the standard deduction. You can take the standard deduction *and* the property tax deduction but only if you are a landlord. I don't know how you decided to say "No you can't deduct that, it gets deducted"

We do. Homes are taxed. Stock valuations are not. Wealthy or common.

A common person is somewhat potentially in posession of hundreds of thousands in house value. They are relatively less likely to have that much in stock except maybe their 401k, which is totally different.

The interest on those loads is taxed. The spending of the loan amout is taxed via sales tax.

Yes, there's sales tax. Ordinary income gets taxed that way on top of income tax. The leveraging unrealized gains as a loan is the most famous loophole, re-upping through re-borrowing at payoff and juggling that until death where there's a much more favorable estate tax.

Comment 3D printing whole rockets was such a dumb idea. (Score 1) 47

Don't get me wrong, there's a lot to say about printing small rocket parts, such as for the engines. But they were printing basically sheet metal cylinders, which is such an immensely slow and inefficient way to go about it, and it left them with parts that were heavier and less aerodynamic (rougher surface). Crazy that idea ever got any funding.

Comment Re:Anyway SpaceX is a huge scam so I suspect (Score 4, Insightful) 47

"SapceX has got to be a huge scam too" - SpaceX launches the vast majority of the world's commercial cargo to orbit. The Falcon 9 FT has the highest success rate of any rocket with a statistically significant number of launches under its belt, and is dirt cheap. SpaceX's core operations are roughly breakeven, but that's including subsidizing the development of Starship. Starlink is a money printer.

There are lots of things sketchy about the SpaceX IPO, to say the least, but SpaceX, as a company, has been extremely successful with rocketry.

Comment Re:taxing unrealized gains is problematic (Score 2) 286

The counterpoint is that the valuation seems to be a fiction when it could represent a liability, and a real thing when they want to, say, take out a loan against it.

It's awfully convenient that it is selectively fictional.

Note that for more humble "wealth", folks are taxed. If you own the house you live in, even if you are not using it as a financial instrument but just a place to live, you get taxed on the unrealized "value" of the house. I don't get to say the market value of my house is a fiction since I'm not selling it.

So we have a double standard, rich people wealth is selectively fictional with respect to tax burden, common person wealth is very much considered real for taxation purposes.

Even wilder, if you live in your house, your property tax is subject to the standard deduction, which means folks generally don't get a deduction for it. If you own a house that you rent out to someone else, the property tax you pay is not subject to the deductible, and you can deduct it. The tax system rewards landlords more than homeowners.

It seems that either you assess a property tax on net worth analogous to what is imposed on common folk or at *least* tax loans against such assets that have nothing to do with paying for that asset.

Comment Re: Inner monologue (Score 1) 71

The funny thing was that I knew him for like six months online before I realized he was fully paralyzed. He's been covered in the Finnish press a number of times. Amazing guy. Up until recently he was living in a house he built himself before ALS struck, but the medical service decided he was too far away and he had to move closer. You lose a lot of control over your life with ALS.

He wrote a book about nuclear safety engineering recently, which is a fascinating read, and which I strongly recommend.

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