-15 karma · joined April 1, 2017
I'm guessing you're probably more of the religious fundamentalist of the secular humanist faith, because you're certainly more concerned with worldview than data or fact.
But authoritarians will authoritarian i suppose.
If your offended by that, what about professors or HS teachers who teach certain sections of the textbook because it's going to be on the exam.
One can self-study the SAT prep book or self-study their biology book and in both cases can potentially be more knowledgeable than those who attended a formal university class or prep workshop. Most students aren't driven to do that though.
This goes to the fundamental problem, that our university system at present is really just a credentialing and signaling system.
Even at a 2 - 4% mortality rate, the sheer panic over this is nonsense
The front cover of the “C Programming Language” book as I recall it from memory
Why on earth would someone would pick C to start a new project in 2020? Surely there is a newer language with more shiny features that’s better right? Well I can’t speak for other people but I’ll tell you my reasons.
First of all let me preface this by saying that of course this is a biased opinion and the language I pick for something depends on the context it’s going to be used in. For example; I doubt I’ll ever be reaching for C when writing a web service simply because the ecosystem around that domain isn’t great and I’m not itching to write my http framework at this time.
But for games, more specifically cross-platform games C is a clear winner for me because it provides me with exactly the things I’m looking for which is reliability, simplicity and performance.
Reliability
This is the most important and only real non-negotiable requirement for me; the reliability and portability of the toolchain and the access it provides to system and device interfaces.
Languages, especially dynamic ones and their runtime environments come and go like fashion. When your target platform suddenly gets deprecated from the runtime you’re relying on, well then you’re just fucked and out of luck.
I’ve been in this situation before with multiple languages and I don’t intent to repeat history here so I need something stable, something will have a reliable toolchain available on all the platforms I could ever possibly want in perpetuity without having to worry about compiler bugs as I’m more than proficient in the art of introducing my own bugs.
The ecosystem around C provides all of this. Even for the most obscure platform you can imagine there will be solid stable toolchain with a good set of native libraries that provide access to system and device interfaces for said platform.
Performance
While I will happily write software in slower languages without that much complaint, performance is fairly high up on the list when it comes to writing games.
Avoiding cache misses is key to that, so having any kind of dynamic language with an interpreter is hopeless. Even in the best case scenario that the platform of choice provides you with one of the magical JIT compilers available today, they’re still magical black boxes which makes it difficult to reason about performance characteristics object boxing/unboxing and cache locality.
Same goes for stop the world garbage collection, again there are some fairly impressive implementations out there; Go’s garbage collector comes to mind but it’s still a garbage collector and it will still lead to frame drops. If you have to use object pools to tip-toe around garbage collector killing the frame-rate then what’s the point of having one in the first place.
Even for a low fidelity game filled with chunky pixelated goodness having more cycles gives you a lot of room to experiment and still have plenty of room to add copious amounts of extra juice.
But It’s not just about running fast, battery life matters as-well. Fewer cycles means less battery consumption which is a major win if you ask me. As long as I can help it, I’ll do my best to avoid draining a user’s battery in five minutes.
Lastly, when it comes to the web and mobile the executable size also has to be considered. While it’s not a deal breaker it’s a nice bonus that if you work on it a little bit C executables built with WebAssembly essentially have zero bytes of overhead by default. It might seem like a minor thing but it’s the difference between loading instantly and taking 3–5 minutes to load on a connection.
Simplicity
While it’s not a critical requirement, a nice thing about C is that it is an extremely simple language which is a nice welcome break from working in monolithic languages that get jam packed with new features every time someone on the design team or committee learns about a new feature in another language causing a paradigm shift until the next iteration which causes another paradigm shift leaving the whole ecosystem in a bit of a tangled mess.
When I’m saying C simple I don’t necessarily mean easy. If you don’t know what you’re doing C will absolutely blow up in your face and make you spend the day trying to figure out what you did wrong. But again it’s a simple language so it’s really not too hard learning how to write well-behaved programs. Secure programs is a different matter but well-behaved programs are easy-enough.
Now there’s definitively features that would be nice to have in C; I wouldn’t hate having quality of life things like arrays that don’t decay to naked pointers, modules or deferred statements for example but not having them aren’t total deal breakers.
At the end of the day I prefer having a limited surface area in the language than having a language that gets in the way bringing absurd amounts of complexity and bad abstractions to the problem.
This applies to any language in theory but certain languages encourage you a-lot more to be “clever” more than others. I prefer to be pragmatic because if one is trying to be clever when writing a program, then good luck because one needs to be twice as clever debugging and maintaining it in the long run.
>
Most of the actions taken are those most likely not affecting those in the target older or immuno-compromised demographic likely to have the serious consequences.
https://omny.fm/shows/inside-the-huddle/03-dr-laura-power-on...
The reality is you're exactly right.. His administration is essentially a policy clone of JFK or bill Clinton even... Ironically, he's pulled most of the Republicans that far left with him.
The democrats are essentially progressive socialists, they've been there since the Bush era. True conservatives (smaller more limited govt, less spending, less foreign intervention) are tragically homeless. But most of the time feel compelled to vote with big red, because the other side, as the Bernie bro said on camera, are looking to put anyone not part of their camp into reeducation and labor training. And they all are ok with it, they just get angry at Bernie for saying it out loud.
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/02/wh...
And there are demands now for increasing general surveillance to provide for better CDC responses. It's just disgusting.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/02/24/nurses-carry-sur...
Perhaps you're of the wrong political, religious or cultural persuasion and a bureaucrat determines that you aren't selected for treatment.
Ultimately, the people get what they deserve i suppose.
This highlights the foolishness of "net neutrality", which is really just code for "my team should regulate the internet".
- the IRS didn't target conservative groups specifically, they just chose to stand down the audits on billionaires and add extra auditing of groups with particular keywords in their name, keywords such as; tea, party, people, patriot, country, or 9/12 to name a few. These tax exempt or applied for exempt status groups were likely funneling money and investigation was needed. Results inconclusive.
- Affordable care act mandated that you could keep your doctor. And you could. You just might not have been able to keep or afford to keep your health care plan. So it's really the fault of the people who didn't keep or couldn't afford to keep their plan, giving the ACA a bad rep.
And my personal favorite, - Hillary may Have ordered action taken on contractors and other actors when she released sensitive documents about certain employees from her private server.
I normally attribute such things to malice, but I've learned to never underestimate the gullibility of people who listen to MSNBC, CNN and occasionally FOX.
That being said, i think it's a great thing and i totally disagree with states mandating facial ID databases that the feds have access to. The database they should possibly get access to is for passports imo.
This can mean The difference between multiple cities being ravaged by a disease instead of smaller groups of infected individuals.
versions after 0.102.3 were just terrible and i reverted immediately. Of course a lot of folks don't seem to mind the modern view but I find itv extremely unusable.
Supposedly a clone called GDroid shows ratings and such as well.
EconTalk: Keith Smith on Free Market Health Care https://www.econtalk.org/keith-smith-on-free-market-health-c...
I think that change was made a couple of years ago. I have ran plex on my freenas server for years and had an older version of it. When i upgraded my freenas to use iocage instead of jails recently, i was forced to update plex, and had no clue about this change. I was shocked to say the least and it is absolutely annoying compared how it was. Emby went closed source around the time as well.
I guess as they say, everyone's gotta eat, and filet and caviar are the menu items.
Unfortunately, i think few espouse such beliefs or ideas.
Further, it's far easier and more seductive to ensure that opinions one doesn't like can be censored or shamed into silence rather than win with better ideas.
I'm guessing he said very little when Maxine Waters, among several other politicians made several direct and open statements such as, "you confront them restaurants, gas stations, shopping places, and even their homes".
Further, there is a huge push by news agencies to inhibit the flow and regain control of information. The recent Gayle King interview with Mark Zuckerburg is a great example of this. She was absolutely beside herself that Zuck wouldn't censor certain ads (unlike some other platforms), implying several times that people were just too stupid to evaluate and assess for themselves.. It was pretty ironic to hear Zuck say several times that people should be able to make up their own minds to a journo. But that's where we're at.
I think Trump is garbage, but the truth is that anyone spouting such nonsense as above about Trump really care little about truth, they are about agenda, which is fine if they were just honest about it. They associate Trump with this pie in the sky extreme view of some nefarious journalism censorship happenings. Yeh no.. They Got their credentials revoked, a privilege... Try that shit in a country with an actual dictator and you end up diced in pieces and taken out the back and put in a dumpster or they put you in jail and they let you out in 20 years or so.
Further, I'm not sure any intellectually serious person has taken ANY U.S. news based outlet serious for 5 or 10 years now.
Thankfully the legislature in California was forced to step in to protect the people of California. Almost no Californians are capable of understanding how uber and Lyft are taking advantage of them, essentially stealing their money.
Further, a large population in California are ESL or primary language is some other than English. These individuals don't have the capacity to understand the full ramifications of using such services. Stepping in to protect these minority groups was a no brainer.
Thankfully, our state legislature has a complete and full understanding of the citizens of California. It's highly unlikely that even if they mount some type initiative, it will fail or the state can use some alternative tactic to keep the people safe.
In the United States, they still have some semblance of a first amendment. Drawing these parallels, is why it is apropos.
If you don't have the money to buy a big mac, you either eat a cheeseburger on the dollar menu or go home and cook a burger yourself.
If you don't have the money for the software library, you either choose a lesser library, or go write your own.
A larger problem however is many are considering the internet a fundamental human right, which it isn't. Might be nice to have, but a fundamental right it is not.
A similar analogy is that I may not want to read my credit card bill, that doesn't eliminate the responsibility I have to pay it. Or, I may not want to read my visa card notice they send informing of a change in the APR or other conditions for service. however, my continued use of the card is the standard way one accepts new or changed TOS.
Maintaining ignorance doesn't excuse the actions.
The market the fitbit crowd occupies isn't the same as individuals who have a serious interest in fitness or interest in long term reliability of their product. They're interested in the social aspects.
People seriously into fitness are probably looking into the higher end devices such as from Garmin or Suunto for example. These devices tend to be more durable with less social interactions, especially since most are in the fitbit or apple gated community.
As far as your second concern, unless these devices are falling within warranty, it's unlikely that any class action would hold any ground, seeing as they probably had a 1 year warranty right and sounds as if they made it an extra year.
It seems as if you're in an in-between group. Consumers, by and large don't want the complexity of these devices today.
20 years ago it was removable batteries and microSD cards. People overwhelmingly voted with their pocketbooks to get rid of those for a more limited but more fashionable phone, which like your watch has a wear out date. It's unfortunately easier to replace an entire device now every few years than it is to support devices that are a year or two old.