> The common ground is functional-ish and mostly-stateless programming ("const" etc). C# is actually becoming very good at this, and you can always cross into F# if you want.
Newish C# is just functional programming dressed up as Java, and goes far beyond const. C.f. functional-ish C# programs to C programs that use const. Striking difference.
F# is just .NET's version of a straight up a very traditional and canonical functional language. If F# isn't functional then nothing except maybe untyped lambda calculus is functional.
The article's title is correct only in the tautological sense that unpopular things are weird, even in the paradoxical case where those unpopular things are actually fully embraced while remaining unpopular.
Side-note: your observation may be valid for this case, but not in the case of backdoored encryption. Backdoored encryption is exactly a pre-emptive action. Relevant b/c I think the real worry in this case is that the FBI is laying the groundwork for a PR campaign for mandated backdoored encryption.
No. Not unless you are omniscient and all-powerful. And even then, still no, because different people are different and want different things.
No one is claiming that the FBI is without fault or even that its actual goal is serving the people. But there are plenty of people out there who have a sincerely held -- and in a few cases even informed -- belief that the FBI is on the right side of this debate.
So respecting natural rights and popular sovereignty are not the right way to serve people? Your perspective on this was the point of Professor Bloom's book, The Closing of the American Mind.
I don't personally care what ill-informed people who are victims of the American Historical Association think about classical liberalism and human freedom.
The FBI will not exist in the future, solely because it is a threat to human freedom and in a better world, such a powerful authoritarian organization won't be needed.
It's really not. GP (or whatever) was saying that perhaps there's a reasonable difference of opinion. You responded by stating the author was wrong becuase "there [is] one best way to serve the people" and accusing GP of relativism (which is clearly a Bad Thing).
> So respecting natural rights and popular sovereignty are not the right way to serve people?
Natural Rights: There are reasonable conceptions of natural rights which allow for the FBI's interpretation of the All Writs Act. The exact scope and meaning of natural rights has never been and never will be resolved. Anyone proclaiming otherwise is just wrong. Hell, the philosophers who originated this concept had heated disagreements about their meaning. Things have only become more convoluted as we've tried to apply this idea in scaled-up settings.
Popular sovereignty: It's not at all clear to me how what the FBI is doing violates popular soverignty. In fact, it seems to me that they are fully engaged in a PR campaign designed, precisely, to leverage the legitimacy of popular sovereignty...
More generally, "natural rigths + popular sovereignty" is not a deterministic algorithm. It's entirely possible for people to adhere to both of thse philosophies and still vehemently disagree on the best way to govern. I might excuse a philosopher for not being able to foresee this fact 2000 or even 300 years ago. But clinging to the notion that "natural rigths + popular sovereignty" is a panacea to political disfunction after the past 200 years is rather astounding.
I happen to strongly agree with Apple and loathe what the FBI is trying to do. But I also think the argument you're making here is dead wrong. The case against the FBI here is not based upon natural rights. It is either based upon constitutional rights, or it is based upon pure pragmatics. And the final answer will almost certainly the latter.
> Your perspective on this was the point of Professor Bloom's book, The Closing of the American Mind.
1. No, it really isn't...
2. I was educated in exactly the style Bloom suggests. Suffice it to say that actually reading the classics has a way of undermining the authority that staunchy old conservative men try to get out of their particular interpretations and applications of ideas expressed in those books.
2a. Damned marxists bastardized Nietzsche and also rock music is for flooseys. lol
3. If Bloom's opinions were at all sincerely held, he would likely have agreed with the observations about natural rights and popular sovereignty given above.
> I don't personally care what ill-informed people who are victims of the American Historical Association think about classical liberalism and human freedom.
> I can't imagine programming without the knowledge of how things work at assembly level.
The author's point is that recursion is a pervasive concept that is essential to understand even how modern computer hardware works:
> the very concept of a digital computer is grounded in recursive self-reference (the cross-connection of gates to form a latch), which, needless to say, does not involve a stack. Not only do real programmers use recursion, there could not even be programmers were it not for that.
The author is not suggesting that we forget about "what's really going on". He's rightly pointing out that you actually cannot understand what's really going on at all without first understanding recursive self-reference.
Personally, I think that analogy conceals more than it reveals. Recursion in computer software requires nested definitions that eventually reach a simple base case resulting in termination. An sram cell or J/K flip-flop, on the other hand, doesn't involve nesting or reach a simple base case.
In my mind recursion is a snake that has eaten a smaller snake, whereas an sram cell is a snake eating its own tail.
The really unfortunate thing is that sub-sets of these ideas keep getting re-invented (AKA "reinventing the square wheel"), for example exception handlers in place of continuations, iterable objects in place of co-recursive data, etc.
As for J/K flip-flops, they're recursive because their output is their own input. For example, given co-inductive stream of `j` and `k` values (the flip-flop inputs), we can generate a co-inductive stream of outputs `q`:
function flipflop(init_js, init_ks) {
function ff(js, ks, q_old) {
var j = car(js);
var k = car(ks);
var q_new = j * not(q_old) + not(k) * q_old;
return cons(q, ff(cdr(js), cdr(ks), q_new);
}
return ff(init_js, init_ks, 0); // Initiate the co-recursion with 0, arbitrarily
}
Whilst I've used co-recursive data for convenience, the fact that the result `q_new` becomes the argument `q_old` for the next call is unavoidably recursive.
> Do you think with that sort of OPSSEC that they slip up and use a work phone? Doubtful.
After 5 minutes of search I cannot find the story. But there was a super interesting story (in The Atlantic maybe?) about an investigation into an assassination plot where the major break was exactly this slip-up.
What you're saying makes perfect sense, but law is weird. I would probably talk to a lawyer before assuming that something technically obvious is actually interpreted correctly by existing law.
Sure, if we were all flush companies then filing suit over things like this or risking lawsuits when we know we are correct would be perfectly reasonable. But when you don't have the money or time to fight legal battle -- even one you think you should win -- you have to appeal to the court of public opinion instead.
> "Her dramatic eye movements are self-stimulating her brain hemispheres, a technique called bi-lateral stimulation. By panning her eyes back and forth she is unknowingly using this technique to synthesize her brain hemisphere's memory and logic functions connecting complex ideas and accessing enormous amount of information."
That summary seems to be wrong as the technique helps with processing emotional information and not with connecting complex ideas. At least that's what I remember and what the wiki article says as well. It's been a while since I read about it.
I know that it is a well researched and established method for treatment of Parkinsons (short term and midterm results have been empirically solid) and also used to treat PTSD.
The idea is to think of something emotional that you may be struggling with and keep it in your mind while following the images on the screen. Whether or not the eye movement actually triggers the brain to reconfigure itself, or whether it's simply keeping the emotion "in focus" that brings the changes remains TBD, I think.
According to Scientific American, The journal Brain and Cognition found a correlation with moving your eyes from side to side with increased creativity and improved memory. [1]
Am I on the Daily Mail by mistake? Lots of opinions there bereft of supporting observation or the merest smidgeon of reason to go along or not with the opinion ventured.
> If you believe that content creators have a right to earn money there are two ways that can happen: 1) directly - you pay directly for the content that you want to consume or 2) indirectly - you see ads or sell your data in some way.
I don't think this is a truism.
Sites in the style of BBC/CNN/Fox/Yahoo/etc. may have a tough time with their online content if they aren't able to support those properties with ads.
IME most content that's actually worth the time it takes to consume (e.g., well-composed articles and essays written by field experts) is not ad-supported. A lot is behind paywalls, and still more is provided on non-ad-supported websites. For example, distributed freely by fee-supported professional organizations or else by the author him/her-self as a tool for self-promotion/brand building. I don't see any reason why high-quality content can't survive on non-ad revenue, given that there are plenty of counter-examples.
And that's just considering the ad-supported sites that are actually content-driven. A lot of online advertisement is not supporting original content creation at all.
> For example, distributed freely by fee-supported professional organizations or else by the author him/her-self as a tool for self-promotion/brand building
Content made to promote something, isn't that an ads? Sure that could happen but hell nothing stop ads from being more high quality right now. I much prefer to watch content that's primary goal is to entertain, teach, etc... and not to sell you stuff.
> I don't see any reason why high-quality content can't survive on non-ad revenue, given that there are plenty of counter-examples.
Well nothing stop them to exist right now. The reverse is false though, content funded by ads currently only exist based on that good ad targeting.
Personally I seriously hope Google push more Youtube Red and Google Contributor. Ad work for people that can't pay for it (or don't want to), we only need something for people that doesn't want ads but can pay instead.
I can't speak for chemistry or physics, but that must be an incredibly poor mathematics program? I can't remember seeing anything past calc on yahoo answers and those answers were almost always wrong, or correct but with wrong explanations.
No.
> The common ground is functional-ish and mostly-stateless programming ("const" etc). C# is actually becoming very good at this, and you can always cross into F# if you want.
Newish C# is just functional programming dressed up as Java, and goes far beyond const. C.f. functional-ish C# programs to C programs that use const. Striking difference.
F# is just .NET's version of a straight up a very traditional and canonical functional language. If F# isn't functional then nothing except maybe untyped lambda calculus is functional.
The article's title is correct only in the tautological sense that unpopular things are weird, even in the paradoxical case where those unpopular things are actually fully embraced while remaining unpopular.