cronjobber

That would be an almost benign problem to have.

The real real big problem is that AI will learn to exploit all our flaws and biases.

AI will evolve to be supernaturally intelligent and supernaturally psychopathic at the same time.

It is likely that they didn't catch the linked problem, and I didn't intend to suggest so. What the linked article shows is that the Red Cross isn't beyond the suspicion that something they did wasn't that clealy above board that an algorithm couldn't possibly have been triggered.

Personally, I tend to slot Inferno closer to Java than to Plan9, even though I'm clear about the lineage. In that sense, the line of "real" operating systems ended at Plan9.

On the other hand, it isn't entirely impossible that Paypal algorithms saw something about the Red Cross that looked like fraud.

http://www.npr.org/2014/10/29/359365276/on-superstorm-sandy-...

Sounds right. Additionally, they didn't even reimplement what they had, the article gives the impression that they basically gave up on trying to reinvent relational query optimization ("We heavily modified pyDatalog to query Redis as its knowledge base") and focused on just solving the problem at hand.

You also wrote

> They can do whatever they want to do, including organize, work to rule, walk out, or go on strike.

Observationally, they don't organize or go on strike. Maybe some "work to rule", get PIP'd and walked out. Maybe some actually walk out on their own.

In the long run, the "People who care deeply about these issues" get boiled off.

In fact, they probably are largely boiled off by now. Probable, because that's consistent with observable Google behavior.

I see no actual reason beyond "be nice to everybody" to assume a random Googler "cares deeply".

The Left is not monolithic, it is better understood as a coalition of separate forces with different interests united against a common, feared enemy.

What you perceive as "manical stupidity" is fear. Fear of a common enemy is one of the few things that can glue together a diverse coalition.

Hacker News is implemented in a dialect of Lisp designed by a guy who wrote multiple books on Lisp. Seems even lispers don't learn:

> The assignment operator is =. I was dubious about this, but decided to try it and see if I got used to it. It turns out to work well, even in prefix. Stripes stand out, which is why they get used on warning signs and poisonous animals.

http://www.paulgraham.com/arcll1.html

Now eagerly awaiting:

"Humans Once Actually Thought They Stopped Evolving (2216)"

Nope, "undefined" leaves the compiler perfectly free to just Do The Right Thing.

> the bureaucratic mindset holds that the rules are always, by definition, correct

It has long been known that you can get better optimization if you disregard correctness ;)

C compiler writers know that the assumption "pointer is not null because it was dereferenced" doesn't hold in general. C compiler writers know that they're performing incorrect optimizations.

The bureaucracy now doesn't tell them that the transformation is correct. It tells them it is fine to be incorrect because UB.

The bureaucracy gives them a "license to kill" for the greater good.

(What is the greater good, you ask? Can't answer that; ask a bureaucrat.)

Something like Baker's Cheney on the MTA without actually collecting garbage. The "cheat" is that unbounded stack size implies unbounded pointer sizes, which means no finite alphabet, but "C without pointers" isn't C, and "finite stack/tape" isn't PDA/TM, so I think the "cheat" is fair :-)

Outside of heroic whole program compilation efforts like Stalin (telling hero worship there), Lisp can't optimize programs written in the functional style subset to the degree actual functional languages do.

Maybe we can call Lisp a slow-functional language.

> C only has one stack

Sure

> so it's a PDA.

Wrong

Let's assume that after years of drastically reduced immigration, America's tech dominance remains unchallenged. Would that make you happy or sad?

The context was: "FOO can be generic and applied to different types of objects." That only works if everybody uses the same symbol FOO. Library:FOO is a different symbol and won't be combined automatically, so you must package-qualify.

(Regarding local aliases, I was talking about local package name aliases, which could make it somewhat less awkward.)

That could work within a single, well coordinated project. Beyond that, the Common Lisp package system doesn't cooperate the way you'd like it to, so you're back at

    (libraryA:bar (libraryB:foo object))

Since the package system is not hierarchical and doesn't allow local aliases, if you're unlucky you get fully qualified Java-convention package names and end up writing:

    (com.myfavoritecorp.dept1a.project7.subprojectX:bar
       (com.biggercorp.dept32.project2.subprojectE:foo
          object)

Simple member access like

    object.foo.bar

is apt to read more like this:

    (class2-bar-of (class1-foo-of object))

Yes, it's funny how the wage slaves cheer along with their billionaire idols. Mixture of the lottery player's hope of also winning the jackpot, and fear of losing the job they realistically must expect to be chained to instead (at least until they hit 39, that is.)

> "virtue signaling" ... basically means "you are being insincere"

Superficially true, but the virtues people are basically forced to signal in order not to be economically ruined are, as they say, socially constructed.

Actual fracturing wouldn't necessarily be in his interest, but I guess we can assume that's not the goal anyway. The goal would have to be silencing the social media presence of the right, a return to the status quo ante of public discourse.

Sure, glad you asked. Salaries will rise by exactly 13.6% within the first year.

Because Dunbar's number

Stunt, then, as AirBNB isn't providing any free housing. You're just going to browbeat people who offered "housing to displaced neighbors and relief workers" to underwrite "your" provision of housing to people who are neither neighbors nor relief workers.

So AirBNB isn't providing any free housing. Seems you'll try to browbeat/hoodwinkle people who volunteered to offer "housing to displaced neighbors and relief workers" into providing free housing to people who are neither neighbors nor relief workers.

> "Seriuous question, ...jerk"

That, and the black and gray "striping" of whole threads that is now as predictable as it is annoying, is why I have started flagging. Never felt like flagging articles before.

I could by an argument it may cause the Apple ecosystem to have mostly "ports" and few original/exclusive apps.

Would that turn into a downward spiral? Don't know.

> why use a Chrome clone when you can use Chrome

If every browser looked exactly like Chrome, I'd still choose the one that contained the least amount of Google.

> Update: Jan. 26, 2017

> An earlier version of this story did not address the possibility that two-factor authentication could impede unauthorized access to Trump’s Twitter account.

> Update 2: Jan. 26, 2017

> As of 1:02 PM today, the email required to reset Trump’s Twitter account was changed to what appears to be a White House address.