I agree with the idea that sin taxation is stupid in the sense that there's a moral component involved. The tax in this case is essentially an indulgence. That said, I see a benefit in taxing soda and cigarettes in particular because they impose a substantial externalized cost on society that isn't reflected in their price. With smoking its lost productivity for smoking, sickness, secondhand smoke, etc. With soda its increased diabetes, weight, secondary issues (joints, etc.).
I do love me some regular Dr. Pepper, but it's so bad for me I rarely drink it any more. (Admission: I still drink diet soda. I had to acquire the taste.)
This is a vacuous statement. Science is an inductive exercise and suffers from the problem of induction. It's difficult to make the case that real truth can come from it at all. In lieu of this, peer review is a very good heuristic for sifting out bunk science.
This was my first reaction. Why does a contract language need to be Turing Complete? Trustless contracts + Turing tarpits seems like a big turn off to me.
The Reader Monad lets you abstract away local state. You're on the right track with partial functions, but using a monad is cleaner (at least in Haskell...and I'd guess anywhere else). Essentially using the monad instead will let you remove all of the redundant function application you'd have to do otherwise. If you've managed to abstract this step away into a library, take a look at your abstraction. It's probably equivalent to Reader.
GoF didn't try to anthropomorphize, but they ended up doing it anyway. The things they sought to name where simply tools for humans. It's the programmers equivalent of a book about hammers and screwdrivers. It's valuable for learning how to use tools to drive fasteners, but without the existence of such things the information becomes about as actionable as any other anthropological piece.
I think that's the trouble with so-called "fiscal conservativism." It holds that government should only be spending money on "the important stuff." What comprises the important stuff is anybody's guess.
How pervasive is the campus-wide safe space thing, anyway? I was under the impression that it is largely a media-created, headline-grabbing thing. Naturally, you can find youtube videos of people being ridiculous at universities, but you can find a youtube video of anything these days.
I'm not sure the term "fiscally liberal" describes a consistent set of beliefs as they're held by a group of people in the United States. For that matter neither does "fiscally conservative."
Routing remains an issue when you scale up to that many IP cores. It's one of those aspects of FPGA design that doesn't really have an analog in software.
Many mainstream languages like Python don't even have a syntactic notion of types. The best you could really do is say that Idris would get you some typing reification that you might do in those languages at no cost, but it would seriously sell short the power of dependent types like you see in Idris.
Really the value for the customers comes from being able to hail a cab from your phone (because we're talking Uber, here). I don't think there's really any major value intrinsic to the "sharing economy" that trickles out to the end user. Uber could just as easily be a big company with a fleet of cars, or a service that lets nice taxis connect with fares. It would probably all the same to customers.
Who makes and maintains the technology, though? You're talking about replacing employers with some kind of system, but that system has to be created and maintained by somebody. It carries their values forward to how transactions occur. I don't see how employer-regulation is wholly different from regulating a system for managing these types of transactions. It just needs tweaking.
It seems to me that the prize model really could work in areas where there's a lot of value snagged up in existing knowledge we already have and the prize-givers want to shake out that value in the form of good applications. I think this works for DARPA because DARPA these days seems to want deliverables that are in this vein. The prize model can also work well in a situation where the prize-giver wants the results to enter the public domain or be cheaply available to the public.
I don't think this could work to fund blue sky research, though. It's asking for too much risk to be assumed by a researcher who probably doesn't have the resources to justify these kinds of attempts.
What about the cognitive load of chasing down things like null reference errors, which in some strongly typed languages don't even exist? And no, they're not always fairly obvious to find, especially when you're fixing somebody else's code.
No. I'm talking about the Google user sign in features for Chrome and Android. Microsoft is adding a twist to its version, but in my mind they're pretty much the same.
Ecuador sheltering Assange is more about Ecuador having a stronger bargaining chip with the US in future deals than anything else. Ecuador isn't some bastion of liberty. Far from it, actually. They're doing it to make a statement to the US and internally to themselves. I'd be willing to guess that Ecuador would turn Assange over to the US in a hot minute if the getting was good for them. I think the reality of this situation is that the US doesn't really want Assange all that much. He's a non-player wrt Wikileaks any more and people are already forgetting who he is.
They could theoretically leave, but if they have serious unresolved disputes with their host country, it could very well prevent them from leaving by using force. What then?
Good catch! I haven't been back recently and hadn't checked the news. I'm still waiting for the state legislators to prohibit city regulation of ride sharing services. This may roll back the requirements at the city level. See: http://goo.gl/7MIZFP
Glad to hear they could reach a deal in Portland. The terms your describing is, I think, essentially the terms KC is asking for now. Uber is holding out that the Missouri legislature will override the city ordinance with regards to ride sharing. A likely proposition as Missouri's legislators are so readily influenced by those with money and love overriding home rule in the major cities.
I think I agree with you, but I'm hesitant to to slight somebody for how they making an honest living. All "jobs" aren't created equal, especially of many jobs are contracted or low paying without benefits. It's unfortunate that this kind of (presumably it's political in origin) rhetoric has colored our reality as it has.
Also, here's a video of Kansas City's mayor, Sly James, speaking about the frustration of these negotations from his side of things prior to the vote. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHjJUJW0Jt4
Uber has been having similar regulatory fights in Kansas City, which recently passed ordinances that Uber claimed would make it prohibitive to do business there (http://goo.gl/cXlhzb). Uber made claims that "thousands of jobs" would be lost in the move, despite the fact that its competitors (Lyft, etc.) would abide by the new rules and continue to operate. It seems a little silly to talk about the jobs of your contractors as being "lost" when they can walk over to your competitor and work almost seamlessly.
Uber pulling out of Kansas makes half of the KC metro area impossible to work in. I'm curious if this will have a major impact on Uber's future in the entire city.