mathemagics

No, it’s the whole argument. You could imagine a probabilistic gate splitter that outputs two bits. Such that bits AB are either 01 or 10 with a probability distribution. That is you don’t know which of the two states you’re in, but you do know that bit A is always opposite of bit B. You can then take the bits as far apart as you want. And then measuring bit A will tell you the state of bit B. Nothing collapsed across interstellar space. Bit A and B were always in a certain state. We just don’t know which until we take a measurement. And since they’re correlated, we only need to measure one of them.

Eh, that's still just correlation across a state vector. Honestly, quantum entanglement is proof that the many worlds / simultaneous superposition interpretation of quantum mechanics is bollocks.

Really all QM says is that there's some probability distribution of an outcome, and you don't know what outcome occurred until you take a measurement.

For example, you could imagine a world simulator that uses probabilistic logic gates. Where with some probability a bit could be 0 or 1. Now you could say that the bit is in some superposition or is 0 in world A and 1 in world B, blah blah.

But that's dumb. Really, the bit is 0 or 1 with some probability of the universe simulator. And you don't know which, until you observe its value.

No, what I'm saying is that a VPN application does not need access to my Documents folder, and if it tries to access it, then I'd like to know about it.

Nor do I entrust it with all my network traffic. As to whether it warrants completely removing the app or not, it's up to the user to decide, isn't it?

Had the same concern, but the dialog tells you how to change it. Not only that, it'll take you directly to the correct location in system preferences, where all the apps & their permission status are listed.

Apple provides APIs for saving app settings in the app's sandbox. They require no additional permissions.

You're probably right that it's not nefarious in this app's case, but rather just developer ignorance. But even so, this is the right path to nudge developers towards better security practices.

Also, the permissions are contextual. I didn't see this dialog until I launched the app. Similarly, the first time an app wants to show a notification, the system prompts you to allow / deny it. I'm sure Apple can polish this more over time. But I will take this over the "nearly full-system access by default" paradigms that dominate desktop OS's.

Agree that it is overall an improved experience. After upgrading, I discovered that a VPN app wanted access to my Documents folder. No reason it would need that, so I simply denied it. Lo and behold, the app continues to work just fine as expected. IMO, this alone is a big reason to upgrade to Catalina.

Agreed. If you're the author and Alice and Bob are the imaginary characters in your example, then you get to decide their gender.

Same as an author who is writing a novel, is free to invent characters and assign gender, sexual orientation, and any other character traits they want.

It's your story, they are your characters. You decide if it's a he, she, xe, or whatever.

Got any studies to back that up?

Seems to be high enough to feel the effect. Never experienced this by just standing next to someone sipping coffee.

I'm also not forced to consume caffeine merely by standing next to you.

Thanks, that was an interesting read. Too bad my parent comment was shadow banned. I think discussing the merits (or lack thereof) of philosophy applied to the sciences would have been far more interesting than what this post's article had to offer.

Sure, if they emit an addictive airborne substance. Thanks for clarifying.

E-cigs should be banned. Same as cigarettes of any kind. In fact, any airborne addictive substance should be blanked banned.

I used to rent an apartment that had a shared ventilation system. It was a no-smoking building. My neighbors decided to ignore this. The smell would get so bad it would make your head spin. The building management did nothing, because it was hard to prove which neighbor was the culprit. I ultimately had to break the lease & move out.

I don't care if you drink yourself under the table, snort meth on the regular, or whatever other self-destructive habit you choose for yourself. It's your right to be an idiot. But your rights stop the moment they infringe on my right to not part take in your self-destructive habits.

No, we don't need smoking rooms. No, it's not sufficient to ban smoking in public places. None of that has prevented me from coming in contact with nicotine or weed. Just ban it outright. It's really that simple.

Nicotine patches, weed cookies, etc. on the other hand? Those are fine. Go nuts. As long as you leave me out of it.

The more I read articles like this, the more I am convinced that philosophy, when it turns its eye towards mathematics and the sciences, is complete and utter nonsense, and a total waste of everyone's time.

Philosophical ramblings on scientific notions are akin to how GPT-2 models string together sensible sounding passages, but which upon closer inspection are actually devoid of any useful insight or meaning. Of course, in the act of stringing together esoteric words to make ourselves sound smart, by the rules of brownian motion, once in a blue moon, these ramblings accidentally cross over into formal logic proofs. That is, to put it plainly: we've blindly, or perhaps drunkenly, stumbled our way into the domain of mathematics and the sciences -- behold: Gödel's incompleteness theorems. The shining beacon in a sea of utter and complete nonsense.