mariodiana

If you find a really good tutorial by programmers who are both excellent teachers and experienced in that particular field, it beats JIT learning on a personal project in one important respect. You get exposure to the One True Way of doing things.

What do I mean? Years ago, I learned to program iOS from the Big Nerd Ranch book. The most important thing I got out of that was learning enough about the Cocoa-Touch framework that I didn't try to fight the framework. You don't get that from JIT learning. How could you?

That said, at the end of the book the authors urged the reader to go and write programs — that that was the only way to learn, after mastering the fundamentals.

A beginner should place his or trust in an expert. The reason is that the big mistake beginners make, not knowing the fundamentals, is convincing themselves way too early that they have now grasped the fundamentals.

I don't think the author and I are at odds. I agree a person can get too comfortable with MOOCs, YouTube courses, etc. But at the start, there is no substitute. And the start lasts longer than you may think.

I remember the days of Joel Spolsky, Elliot Rusty Harold, Bruce Eckel, et al. Who are today's luminaries?

I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing. Here's what I'm talking about.

My hypothetical expert, talking about non-pharmaceutical interventions to mitigate the spread of the pandemic, for example, would say something like the following.

"Leaving aside all other concerns and taking into account available research, our conjecture is that social distancing and mask wearing should significantly impact the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus."

Intelligent people, and for the sake of argument I'll include politicians, would then hear the following.

"There is no conclusive scientific proof regarding NPI's. However, given the uncertainty of the situation and the educated guesses of scientists, based on what they have conclusive evidence for, regarding disease spread and the nature of this coronavirus, we have to consider the use of NPI's. The use of NPI's then needs to be informed by other considerations: namely, economic impact, and broader social impact, both of which will depend on the extent of NPI's."

What I saw, instead, was "science" and "scientists" being conflated by one side, and the conjecture of scientists, based on incomplete information -- but incomplete information being evaluated by experienced practitioners -- being dismissed as entirely worthless by the other. Both sides did this by prioritizing either "lives" over "jobs" and vice-versa; in other words, by capitalizing on the legitimate fears of the populace.

The media, too, rather than examining and explaining the pronouncement of experts, and elucidating the moral issues, picked sides. And to top it off, the two sides each got their backs up over extreme, inflexible positions: either, "masks everywhere" and "damn your pocketbook," or "masks don't work" and "anyway, it's just the flu."

If you ask me, neither side has any claim to superiority.

So, let me reiterate my point. Experts make pronouncements with various levels of confidence and without commenting outside of their area of expertise; but their area of expertise is often just a small part of the larger problem. Trade-offs have to be considered. But we are not doing that. Our politicians (and media) pick sides, regarding the trade-offs, and then avoid acknowledging the legitimacy of the concerns they're willing to trade off.

Expertise is not being applied correctly. That's my point.

Is expertise being rejected per se? My problem with experts is that their advice often seems to take into consideration only a very circumscribed set of concerns, and that their tacit assumptions -- normative assumptions, particularly -- are rarely questioned sufficiently, if at all.

Let me share a quip, one that pertains to one specific type of expert: namely, lawyers. "Legal training sharpens the mind by narrowing it."

Experts give advice, which by all means should be considered. Read that last clause carefully. I argue that we have a kind of cult of expertise where careful consideration of expert advice within the context of larger concerns -- the full picture -- is too often given short shrift.

Programming is like sex: make a mistake, and you just may end up supporting it for the next 18 years.

I haven't been paying attention to the engineering particulars; I just know that the two laptops and the Mac mini released have no user upgradable RAM. Are you saying there is something about these "M" chips that suggests there will be no upgradable RAM?

I'm missing something.

What's the betting line on memory in the 27-inch model no longer being upgradeable by the user?

So, he's basically renting himself out as a less affectionate, zero maintenance support dog. Brilliant!

Parler was not a "hate site." It's a social media platform that chose to take a reactive rather than proactive approach to policing illegal behavior, and experienced the growing pains of an up-and-comer advertising itself as a Twitter alternative that then had to deal with a flood of Twitter refugees during a political crisis.

The overwhelming vast majority of the people on Parler were simply normal people tired of what they perceived as a double standard in Twitter's treatment of conservatives as opposed to liberals, and wished to support a competitor.

This is the same Amazon AWS that has our CIA as one of its biggest customers?

My understanding is that Parler's terms of service already included a prohibition against illegal activities. The question then becomes, does an up-an-comer social media service dedicated to encouraging free speech have the resources to handle a sudden flood of Twitter refugees? I'm perfectly willing to believe the answer is no.

I saw a representative of Parler being interviewed. She said that they rely on users reporting violations. Perhaps that doesn't scale. But it's unreasonable to think that the problem could be addressed, given 24 hours to do so.

If anything, malicious actors on Parler are second-rate amateurs. Whoever thinks organizing an uprising on a public platform that requires two-factor authentication (via ones cellphone) to join is doing the work of the police and prosecutors for them. If the tech giants and government were really so worried about this, Parler has just created for them the greatest honeypot for simpleminded, would-be insurrectionists ever. And they do have the resources to capitalize on it.

When we're talking tech giants, like Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, and so forth, it strains credulity to think that there isn't some connection between what they do and currying political favor. Politicians are holding a big hammer over the heads of these giants, in terms of laws, regulations, and even tax and trade policy. On paper, they are private enterprises making decisions that are within their right, as opposed to governments censoring speech and prohibiting association. The reality is almost certainly more complicated, and involves nuanced levels of political pull, "understandings," and backroom deals.

These tech giants have made themselves into a lattice on which modern society attaches itself, and their pervasiveness will only continue to grow in 21st century America. We risk them being in bed with government. And when nominally private, major industry is aligned with government to effect political ends, there's a word for that, and we've seen that before.

> The Turkish bath orgies would have never happened […]

Are you sure? There's a line of thinking that I'll paraphrase here. I'm a heterosexual man. Do you know what keeps me from enjoying more casual sex with varied partners? Women. If women were more like men, I'd be meeting them in Turkish baths.

I want to raise the possibility that what curtailed Turkish baths was not the decriminalization of homosexuality but the advent of AIDS itself. That put the kibosh on the Studio 54, Days of Disco party. What we saw was the Sexual Revolution's "free love" ethic brought to life by men unrestrained by the reservations of women. AIDS put the damper on that.

I say the above without moral judgment. I'm just saying.

Ouch! And just in time for New Year's resolutions. Thanks!

I am not spreading "misinformation." That term is the new slander. I am referring to initial infections, not pretending that tourism has been going full swing since March. You cannot compare New Zealand to New York City. I don't even think you can compare Seoul — and I accounted for the difference in interventions, regarding Seoul. But you conveniently leave that out.

As for your "everyone likes to quote," I in fact said: "you'll note that death estimates in the United States were from 200 thousand (if we followed their recommendations) to 2.2 million (if we did nothing)." Are you pretending now that I am misrepresenting the paper? You are simply repeating what I've written, and pretending to be contributing something new to the conversation.

In the United States, our death count is skewed by a handful of cities, some of which represent some of the top destinations in the world. New York City gets 65 million visitors a year. Los Angeles get something like 50 million. All of South Korea — never mind Seoul — gets just under 18 million. And let's not even talk about New Zealand. Other than the hobbits, who's going there.

In the United States our numbers are skewed by places like NYC and LA. The rest of the country is doing much, much better, overall. Moreover, we're a free country. Yes, I realize that, on paper, South Korea, Thailand, New Zealand are also. But the kind of contact tracing and other measures that has gone on in some of these countries is simply unacceptable here, and rightly so.

I stand by what I've said. We are destroying this country in an effort to "save lives." Your suggestion is what? More destruction?

If you read the original paper from the Imperial College, you'll note that death estimates in the United States were from 200 thousand (if we followed their recommendations) to 2.2 million (if we did nothing). Remember, these were estimates. But you will see that we are close to the low end in actual numbers. So, when you say that the idea of death being inevitable is simply wrong, what exactly are you basing that on? Can you answer that? Where do you come up with your assertion?

The experiment here is in self-selection, because only a very few, peculiar individuals will see that page and think, "Sign me up!"

Way back when all this started and the paper came out from the Imperial College, counseling social distancing and other non-pharmaceutical interventions, the idea was to make a priority of not overwhelming the hospitals. The thinking was that there was no reasonable way of stopping this, so the goal was to ensure as best as possible that no one died because they couldn't receive the supportive care they needed: meaning, because there was no ICU bed available for them.

The lockdown mechanism was meant to be periodic and short-lived. We lockdown if we see hospitals are going to be overrun. Then, we open back up again. We don't sacrifice our economy — and our sanity — by keeping things shutdown long-term. We swallow hard and realize that people are going to die. We protect the vulnerable by encouraging them to take extra precautions.

But what have we done instead? According to the article, we failed to take into account both the very real phenomenon of lockdown fatigue, and the phenomenon of simply kicking the can down the road: namely, avoiding more cases in the summer (via lockdowns) to then have them pile up in the winter.

So, here we are in L.A. and elsewhere. Now, despite the draconian lockdowns and damage to the economy and people's sanity and general well-being, the hospitals are overwhelmed. Ambulances are circling, looking for an empty bed, while their patient-passengers gasp for air.

The moral here is that politicians (and much of the populace) panicked and turned into obsessive-compulsives, convinced that if they only did that "one more thing," they could make everything right. And now we see how ridiculous that turned out to be.

I'm not justifying unethical or immoral means, but was the perception of being in a mortal struggle against Communists incorrect?

Slack has a feature to turn off notifications outside of working hours (or whatever hours you choose). That's what I use.

This is the brother of a former housemate of mine, from almost 20 years ago. I emailed him back then to tell him I saw the site and thought it was cool. He told me I should check out his other site: humancock.com.

When I clicked that, the page loaded and read something like, "Shame on you!"

Wise guy, that guy ;-)

For years, on the infrequent occasions when the subject of "The Crucible" would come up I would tell people, "But there were no witches in Salem."

That's the difference.

Undoubtedly, McCarthy was an odious individual in many ways. That has nothing to do with there being communists in Hollywood, the State Department, and wherever else.

Stay tuned. History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

A brief write-up and a link to the TED talk may be found here:

https://ideas.ted.com/dont-have-10000-hours-to-learn-somethi...

One has the money, the other wants the money. That's all the connection politicians ever need.

What's the details with the problem with the T2 chip? Do you have a link? Thanks!

Came here to say that. Thank goodness for YouTube! There are no records to spin backwards anymore to get the latest marching orders from Satan.

Yes. Deli counter people are notorious for interrupting you while you have your nose buried in your phone. And then you have to actually talk to them. It's a big deal.

Gold has value on its own, apart from its function as money.

You should look up "worthless." Even kindling counts as value. Try burning Bitcoin.

I would hesitate to call it "money" as well, as apart from its use in place of money, it has no value. Even paper currency is, at bottom, worth the paper it's printed on.