jernfrost

The point is that Python presents a very complex environment where you have to deal with different languages and technologies.

For package developers it is a lot eaiser to use Julia.

Saying one should focus more on Python and we would not have these problems is missing the point. Enormous resources by countless companies has been poured in to solve the performance problems of Python.

It is almost impossible to do due to the language design of Python. You cannot fix it without breaking the language.

Julia in contrast required minimum effort and resources to get fast. It is almost a toy project compare to Python. It is all down to clever language design which allowed them to use a rather dumb and simple compiler while letting LLVM do most of the heavy lifting.

Every advance of Python is going to require 10x the effort of advancing Julia. It will just be a question of time before Julia catches up. Python has a huge lead so that will still probably take years but it will happen.

He mentioned implementors of frameworks specifically, not users of frameworks which you seem to talk about. Julia is superior to R and Python as a language for package development. This is illustrated by the fact that almost all big popular Python libraries are made in complicated C++. In Julia all the popular packages are native Julia, because it is a high performance language. It means it is much easier to get package contributors and feedback and help from package users. This is why Julia is moving forward so much faster than Python despite having much smaller mindshare.

I would solve it with a combination of public funded research and prizes awarded to those solving important medical needs.

I think patents should be replaced with prizes. People can propose problems which needs solving and then private individuals and/or government can pledge money to donate to whoever finds a solution to the problem first. However the winner doesn't own the idea. It must be made public.

Holy crap!!! 1/3rd that is insane. What is that not a bigger topic? I guess that explains that the first time ever I met anybody who had been in prison was when I moved to the US (I had enough after a year and went back. Got too much police state vibes).

Don't get me wrong. There are LOTS of things I love about the US. The country fascinates me immensely. There are many things Americans can be proud of. I just wish there was more acceptance towards the idea that the US is in fact quite flawed and not miles ahead of everybody else in freedom as they like to portray it.

It almost feels a bit insulting when you interact with Americans and they just assume you live in a dictatorship, because hey only Americans have freedom. That mindset can't be by an accident. It must be from the constant harping on in school and in public about how amazing and free the US is.

With all due respect that is hogwash. The war of independence was not quite the glorious thing Americans like to paint it as. 1) The southern states only joined after they learned that the British were freeing slaves. Now the British may not have had ulterior motives, but then don't pretend all Americans did either.

2) The Royal Proclamation of 1763, which forbid european american settlers from expanding into native American territory, was a major contribution to resentment towards British rule. Not exactly a very honorable thing.

3) As for slavery. The Convict lease system existed until past the 1900s or so. This was an enormous system. Over 70% of the income of the state of Albama was from convict lease system. This was just black slavery under a new name. Not only that but it was significantly more brutal than the old slavery.

4) My wife's side of the family is from Hawaii so I've been there many times. I know all to well about the extent of involuntary servitude placed upon immigrants there. People were beaten lynched, racist laws preventing e.g. Chinese from doing anything but farm work. The whole island was illegally invaded by the US. Hawaii was recognized as a sovereign nation by all of Europe at the time.

Ok, I am not trying to say the US was the worst ever, one always ends up getting those accusations. I merely asking to stop this incessant American tendency to glorify themselves as so much better than everybody else.

Painting the English as some sort of evil tyrants might make sense in India. But in America people tended to enjoy a lot more freedom and lower taxes than anywhere else. Britain had never promised representation to colonial subjects. The US followed the exact same practice in their own colonies. Did not see the Philippines get any representation in the US. Puerto Rico still doesn't.

I've always found hypocrisy to be an American specialty like no other. Who else exerts so much time talking passionately about freedom while at the same time locking up more people than anybody else on the planet and invading more countries than anybody else on the planet.

The Chinese and Russians e.g. seem a bit more honest about the machinations.

Any Julia programmers who have tried Crystal? I've never quite seen the point with Crystal when you got something like Julia. Although I guess there is a value in familiarity.

I was a big fan of Ruby back in the day, but I just feel that our understanding of what makes good language design has evolved since then. The heavy OOP focus in Ruby seems very 90s in retrospect.

I don't think it makes sense to restrict dispatch on single objects. Real world problems often don't fit that paradigm.

I think this is why social democracy works so well for reducing poverty. When I compare poverty relief programs in the US with how it works in Scandinavian countries (I live in Norway) I notice a very big difference in how it is delivered.

The US uses a large patchwork of a multitude of smaller means tested programs. You frequently read about how people are telling each other about what programs one can apply to and how. In short becoming poor in the US means navigating a maze of small programs and understanding and having the energy to apply to all of these.

In a social democratic system most of these small means tested programs are replaced by large non-means tested programs. They aren't really programs but rather universal rights for everyone. There is much less to navigate.

1) Everybody gets heavily subsidized child care. There is nothing to apply for. Which reduces the economic burden of having children.

2) Health care while pregnant or anything related to children is completely free. For grownups you only pay small fees for doctors visits. You can't get into financial ruin over cancer treatment e.g.

3) Once you pay above a certain level for medication you don't pay anymore. There is a cost roof to the patient. Which prevents financial ruin due to medication. There is nothing to apply for or be eligible for. It just kicks in automatically.

4) If you are unemployed and struggle with getting a job, you get government aid to retrain or get new skills. It is not means tested.

5) Education is free and you get very favorable loans and stipends, everybody get the same regardless of income. It is only the conditions of the study which affects it. E.g. if you live away from home you get more than if you live at home. If you chose to study abroad you get more e.g. to cover tuition. E.g. I studied in the US and the Norwegian government payed most of the tuition. It means even if you are poor getting a decent education is not a major obstacle. You don't have to hunt for scholarships and spend weeks filling them out.

6) Sick pay and unemployment benefits are quite generous so you don't go to economic ruin because you get sick or unemployed for a while.

Of course some people do fall between the cracks in social democracy as well. But it takes a lot more effort to end up in poverty. More things need to go wrong. Typically the ones who end up on the street are drug addicts and alcoholics. But even most of them are offered accommodations.

However I still think universal basic income is worth exploring. Our system is by no means perfect. A significant problem is that because the welfare services are so generous, they are expensive and there is a lot of worry about abuse, especially from foreigners who have a more cynical view towards welfare programs because they have grown up in states where the common man in screwed over in every possible way. Exploiting the system then does not seem unfair. This lead to more monitoring and a harder push towards means testing and requiring certain actions by the recipient. They are very pushy on unemployed people e.g. They have to demonstrate that they are actively seeking work. If you are sick for longer periods you need meetings with a medical professional and the employer to come up with possible arrangements that could allow you to function at work.

This study accounts for that in all the experiments described. They send financial problems at random to people. That means the genes of the individuals will be random.

The sugar farmers in India also present a good random experiment because they are not picking people based on whether they are rich or poor already, but based on how things turn out from one rather random event: the harvest.

Saying categorically: "Any social study that doesn't control for genes is a worthless study. Do a twin study or don't even bother."

Just shows ignorance on the matter. 1) Genetics wont affect a lot of studies. 2) Twin studies are not the gold standard you seem believe it is. Adopted children in twin studies are usually not adopted into a random environment, since the requirements are high. When the environment is stable and has little variation, then most of the variation you measure will be heritable, thus falsely setting heritability very high.

How is it dystopian to tell parents that if you give your kids candy it makes the job for other parents much harder, since now their kids will fuzz about getting candy too?

It is just about people agreeing to common sensible rules for the benefit of everybody. It is about showing consideration for other people.

The lunch boxes isn't really caused by our affluence however, rather it is caused by our traditional poverty. Most other European countries serve school lunches. The French have amazing school lunches. When on vacation in France we passed schools in town and every school had their menu posted at the entrance. They had fricken 3 course meals on every dam school! And it was pretty fancy stuff.

Norwegian food culture is in fact rather primitive. The only reason we are somewhat healthy is because we don't eat that much sweets and fried stuff, and we tend to eat primarily whole grain.

> Here in the US, we have too many children living in poverty, often with single parents and broken families, who would never bring their own lunchbox in the first place. School lunch is a necessity, otherwise a lot of kids would go hungry and not be able to learn anything.

I get that, but they might already struggle given what I've seen American school lunches look like. Also one need to teach parents how to cook healthy food. It doesn't help that they get something healthy in school if they just eat junk at home.

> Norway also doesn't have a huge domestic agriculture sector with outsized political power, and school lunch is a really nice subsidy for them as well.

Hahaha, then you don't know Norwegian politics ;-P We have a whole political party just for farmers. Farmers get more subsidies than anywhere else in the world I think here. They got very strong influence. This is tied to our history and identity. Farmers manage to project this idea they they are the sole of the nation and that food from any other country is scary and dangerous.

I would claim the issue in the US isn't your agricultural sector but the political clout of the food processors. Fast food chains, grocery store chains and makers of food products don't have that much influence in Norwegian politics. But they seem to have a lot of influence in American politics. Anyone with money seems to have.

Farmers in Norway don't have influence due to money but more from an emotional stand point. They appeal to basic emotions. We are a country which has historically suffered a lot of food shortages and so there is an ingrained belief that we need to be self sufficient. There is also an element of xenophobia. That foreign food is full of anti-biotics, hormons, e-coli, salmonella etc. Which is partially true but not as dangerous as people make it.

I've lost weight many times without any exercise. The formula was pretty simple for me:

1) Eat on regular intervals. Don't starve yourself, but don't overeat. Typically you stop while you are a tiny bit hungry. The body is a bit slow on registering that you've had enough.

2) Cut out all sugary stuff, chocolate, ice cream, candy.

If you live in the US, it might be harder. My experience from living in the US was that it was hard to stay healthy there because 1) Almost all food contains some sugar 2) Served portions are usually way too large. And you buy things in too large quantities.

This means you might have to focus on cooking food from scratch at home to avoid the added sugar, and getting too large portions.

Don't cook larger portions to have left overs for later. You'll just eat more.

But if you are like me and can't be bothered to make food yourself, then buy EXPENSIVE food. This sounds silly but the thing is that when you buy cheap food, it doesn't taste well unless it is unhealthy.

Healthy food that tastes good is often expensive food. If you go to nice restaurants you tend to get smaller and healthier portions.

I waste a lot of money on food this way but it is just a trade off I've made. I rather waste money than get more unhealthy.

That is just sad. I think it is for good reason here in Norway that companies can not contribute to school funding. They try to keep private money out of schools, so that you don't end up with A and B schools because some parents are richer than others.

I think the corporate sponsorship you talk about here also means that the pressure to fund schools properly through taxes are taken away. It gets too easy to avoid taxes by getting others to pay.

Why isn't there more political engagement to change that? Like pass laws to limit corporate influence?

We don't actually have school lunches. The only thing they got usually is that kids can eat vegetables for free. But that is really just for snacking, you need to bring your own lunch box. That is why there isn't that much nutritional standards for our schools, it is more about guides for parents.

Not only do we get the cookbook for parents, but we are also offered free lectures about nutrition and healthy eating for children. That is an offer all first time parents get. So you can go in the evening and listen to a nutritional expert talk about what sort of food is good for children.

I remember the nutritional expert that held a lecture for me was really cool. She said, that to her, there was no bad food. Instead it was about how much you ate of different kinds of foods. She wanted to emphasize the the problem for most people is that they eat the wrong quantities of different types of foods.

E.g. she mentioned how we eat too much red meat, but that we should not cut it out entirely because it contains many useful things such as iron. Eat red meat once or twice a week I think she said.

Seriously? That is just sad. I suspect the issue in the US is that there isn't much common ground politically.

In Norway none of this is very controversial, and fast food companies have little political influence. Money in Norwegian politics is quite restricted. Not sure how it is now, but usually you could not pay for political TV ads.

If you wanted to get on TV you would have to join a political TV debate of which there are usually a lot of.

You can look at my earlier answer to similar question. Nobody gets punished for not following the rules. We are not a police state. Parents participate in setting up the rules and conventions.

If you dump chocolate in your kids food box every day then the employees will simply talk to you about why it is a bad idea. They are not going to stop you or take away the chocolate.

This is also about consideration towards other parents and children. If one child has lots of candy in their food box you make the other kids envious and they start complaining to their parents about why they don't get candy. That is why it is good to have common guidelines on what kind of food parents should put in the lunch box of their kids.

Here is a link to the current version: http://www.kagge.no/index.cfm?tmpl=butikk&a=product_inline&b...

The description is in Norwegian but I can give a quick summary: It gives recipes for breakfast, lunch boxes, food for hiking trips (hiking is very common in Norway), dinner, supper and snacks. The recipes are simple and tasty. There are discussion of what is healthy and what one should eat.

It has different authors. One of the co-authors is Rune Blomhoff who is nutritional science professor at university of Oslo and one of the leading researchers in the world on anti-oxydants.

In our book there are discussion for each dish what part of the food making the kids can participate in. It is to encourage children to learn about food themselves and get used to making healthy food themselves.

Okay I realize I need to clarify some differences in American and Norwegian society. In America ban and rules often involve punishment or fines. In Scandinavia we have lots of rules and bans which carry no sort of punishment. This is one of them. No parent is getting a money fine, going to prison or get their kid kicked out of school because they bundle sweets in their lunch box.

So I think you are overreacting a tad here ;-) Also keep in mind this isn't exclusively a government thing. We have meeting were parents were the pre-school comes with suggestions and parents come with suggestions as well and people agree together on common rules.

"And talk about taking the fun out of any celebrations."

You can't have fun if there aren't sweets? That is sad? In a school there are lots of kids. If you celebrate with sweets for every single birthday through the year, and then in addition have your celebrations at home with sweets that ends up being a LOT of sugar.

I think you are trivializing the problem with sugar. Kids don't NEED processed sugar. There are lots of other things they can enjoy such as fruits, smoothies, yogurts and other good food.

A lot of that comes down to much stronger belief in government regulation and initiative. In the US it seems there is an outrage every time somebody suggests some kind of regulation to promote health and welfare.

I suspect that outrage is partly manufactured by the sugar and junk food industry though.

Copenhagen is also very active in getting people to bike in town instead of driving.

I hear you. When we took our baby to the US on vacation I found it really hard to find appropriate food. American baby food had added salt and sugar which is illegal to add to baby food in Norway. We have the opposite "problem". There is no way to find baby food jars with salt or added sugar. That can't be sold in the store.

I don't get why America is so against regulation like this to promote the welfare of the most previous thing in people's lives. Do corporate interests really have that much power?

It isn't super detailed as far as I remember. It is more about the really obvious stuff like eating less processed and whole foods. So e.g. they will make whole grain bread, cut raw vegtables, maybe make vegtable soup, avoid stuff with lots of added sugar.

As far as I know the debate about health eating has centered around how much carbo hydrates we should eat and the role of fat. But I think eating less processed food, more whole grain and less sugar has always been accepted wisdom about healthy eating.

We Norwegians probably eat a bit much bread and potatoes and should probably eat more vegtables and alternatives such as beans, lentils etc. However I think we've been fairly good at avoiding too much sweets in the diet.

I'll check with my wife later what the title was and if they got it online.

They don't celebrate by eating anything. They do activities instead. The focus is on the child who get a crown and gets to sit in this silly little royal chair or something. Not sure exactly how it works, but the kids are apparently very proud of it. I've only seen the pictures from when my son has had the crown

You need to tackle this stuff early on. Here in Norway sweets are banned from pre-school and school in lunch boxes, including for birth days. There are no pre-school or school celebrations involving sweets.

The kids get involved early in learning about healthy food making and we get a cook book about what sort of food one should make for children when they start school.

This is something so serious for people's future and life that I don't think one can focus enough on it.

That is one of the reasons I decided to leave the US after I moved there. I found it WAY to hard to live healthy there. Sugar is added to so much stuff in America. Not only that but it is usually added in much larger quantities than I am used to at home.

I also think there is too much exposure to sweet foods in the US. You are offered sweets things so often. It is just part of the culture it seems.

It is 15 years now since I lived in the US and I steel struggle with a sugar addiction from just living one year in the US. I never had any particular desire to eat sweet things before I moved to the US.

A bit similar situation in Norway. In fact I was not quite sure what our money looks like at the moment because some of our bills changed. I just had some bills as an emergency stash for a long time, that I had to check if was still valid money.

We've even started paying street sellers and beggars electronically now. Because even they realize that almost nobody is carrying cash anymore.

I thought it was abundantly clear that I know that. In context it should have been clear that I was referring to the psychological aspects of it. To the person starting a company, it will not "feel" very different from borrowing money from someone.

What you are talking about are the concrete technical differences. We have no disagreement on those.

From the perspective of a person starting a company, he has to decide how to obtain money for building the company. He can borrow or he can issue stocks. Both methods give him money. The difference is in how the risk is spread and how the benefits are spread.

The person starting a stock company can't pay profits to himself without also doing so in equal measure to other stock owners. With the bank he only has to pay the interest on the loan.

I think the US has ended up with right wing populism like Trumpism because there is no social democratic alternative available in the US. We've gone through all the same de-industrialization in my native Norway as the US has. I come from a blue collar industrial town in Norway which used to produce paper, glass, ships, raincoats/workwear, pots, pans, insulation etc. It felt like every few years as I grew up another venerable old factory closed down for good.

Except people in my town never went through the kind of hardship I see the American working class go through because we had already built up extensive institutions to deal with it. We spend something like 10x as much per capita on job retraining for unemployed people. If they can't get new industry going and retraining people for those industries, they use other means like moving government functions to the towns that have been hardest hit. Keeping unemployment low is a very high priority in Norway, in no small part due to the labour party (social democrats) having "work for everybody" as their slogan since the 30s.

I got an American wife, and I really cheered for Bernie Sanders. I had so hoped he could have brought many of the things we have been able to enjoy for decades here in Norway to Americans. Unfortunately he lost, but I think there was movement in the electorate and openness to new ideas like I've never seen before. I had never thought you could get that many votes in the US saying anything positive about socialism.