zombieprocesses

> From my perspective, Google's goals are aligned with improving the world by offering information services.

Ah yes. From "Don't be evil" to "Improve the world"? Who asked google to "improve" anything?

> To me, Facebook has no such world-improving aspirations.

Which is why they are being attacked. They are neutral.

> Plus, I keep seeing studies of how increased Facebook usage correlates negatively with peoples' moods

The same applies to google. The more you use youtube/google/google news/etc, the more depress you are. This also translates to news media itself.

> so Zuckerberg's evident goal of "get everyone on Earth on Facebook" feels gross.

Google is even worse. Censorship + agenda peddling + discrimination + google has far stronger monopoly on people's attention and far more information.

No offense, but I wouldn't work for either google or facebook. Both are terrible for society and freedom and mental health.

> Is it really such a big deal to rewrite your function to use a loop? (After all TRE only addresses recursion that can easily be replaced by a loop. :-)

Sure. Recursion is iteration. But the beauty of recursion is that it lends itself to mathematical/algorithmic/etc thinking and is far more elegant and readable in many situations. Try writing something basic as fib as a recursive function and then in a loop. One is elegant and the other is kludgy.

Lots of things aren't a "big deal" but it's nice to have. It's why we have so much syntactic sugar in languages and it's also why so much of functional concepts are moving to OO space.

> Should I blame my Computer Science education for not teaching it to me?

Which computer science curriculum doesn't require a course in theory of programming languages where functional programming concepts and history ( most likely lisp or scheme ) are taught? But if you weren't taught that, then yes, you should blame your CS department.

Can we please keep the reddit style hysterics on reddit? I pretty much left reddit to escape the fake political nonsense. And with all due respect, you are doing exactly what you claim cambridge analytica did. You are pushing extreme fear and agenda. But for what end?

> As I browse, my interests are accumulated into basic interest groups, demographic data, and maybe recently visited websites that use tracking.

You are forgetting installing cookies and fingerprinting ( amongst others ) to track across platforms. You are forgetting using that data to target customers with tailored fearmongering news articles to better clickbait.

> Through that, Republican campaigns also access my grandmother's account, with all of her photos, likes, and comments. They use that data to learn her deepest fears.

I hate to break this to you but everyone does this. Obama did this. The democrats did. Hillary's campaign did this.

I love how you excuse news websites when they cause hysteria and panic over nonsense like campus rape crisis and pay gap in male and female sports. Not to mention the hysteria over cambridge analytica. Seems like the news has done far more harm to you than facebook did to your grandmother, assuming your story is legit and not made up.

I recommend you go watch the 13th on netflix to see how news and media can be dangerous. The problem now is that news has access to tons of data about us ( just like facebook ). The biggest difference is that facebook was pretty much "neutral" whereas the news/media are highly biased. Facebook allowed both trump and hillary political ads.

"this is Hollywood helping to make this bill happen in the first place as part of its ongoing effort to remake the internet away from being a communications medium for everyone, and into a broadcast/gatekeeper dominated medium where it gets to act as the gatekeeper."

Agreed. People have been saying this for years.

It isn't just hollywood. The news media, the political elites, NGOs, etc are supporting this for the same reason. It's also the reason for the attacks against social media and the push against net neutrality.

Instead of the internet/social media/search engines/etc being a medium where people proactively communicate and look for things that interest them. These corporatists and politicians want the internet to be a medium of broadcast where they choose what you see and how you communicate.

It's been a going on for years. Look at how google now filters search and how youtube pushes their content. Look at all the content being removed from reddit. And soon ISPs will start throttling content they disagree with.

The people with money and power want this so it'll continue to happen. And they aren't doing it all at once. They are doing it in stages. Each iteration, there is more censorship. Us mere mortals can't do anything about it. Sadly, it's happening all over the world now. Europe, Russia, China, etc are all turning the internet from a medium of open and free communication to a broadcasting platform.

The media pile on against facebook is reaching absurd proportions. And it's getting harder to distinguish between news and advocacy or journalism and propaganda.

When a journalist is leading a #deletefacebook movement and when news is pushing alternative products over facebook does it cross a line from news/journalism/reporting to advocacy/advertisement/pay for play/etc?

I hope one day we get to the bottom of what this is really about. Because it isn't about privacy or data protection. And the scale and scope of the facebook campaign is rather unsettling also. Maybe real journalists are out there and hopefully we can get some answers.

I'm talking about serious systematic migrations, not upgrades. In these instances, it is impossible to avoid downtime ( whether it be a few seconds, minutes or even hours ). It's one of the reasons why SLAs do not offer 100% uptimes.

> China is just as likely to get stuck in a middle income trap

Japan wasn't a middle income country. They didn't get stuck in the middle income trap. In the next sentence you say that china is like japan right before they crashed and here you claim china is going to get stuck in the middle income trap. Those are contradictory assertions.

> They look a lot more like Japan economically right before Japan hit stagnation, than anything else.

How? Japan's urbanization rate in 1980s was over 90%. Japan's GDP was near parity with the US with half the population. China is at 50% urbanization. Their GDP is near parity with the US with 4X the US population. China today and Japan in the 80s are nothing alike. Not even close.

> Historical question: name all the economically very successful dictatorships of the last 200 years.

Every european country ( colonial power ). Saudi arabia, UAE, kuwait, etc. South korea, Taiwan, Chile, etc.

Also, you conveniently ignore the fact that there are far more economically poor democracies in the world.

Manufacturing is on the rise in america once again.

500 is low compared to the overall brazilian population, but it is significant when you consider it is the wealthy brazilians ( a small portion of the brazilian population ) who are doing this. It's the wealthy elite who drive society so it is an interesting take on the elite's mindset and can shed a light on parts of brazilian society/character/ethos/etc.

In the hispanic and the greater spanish colonial world - "white is right" is a core ethic. It's how the spaniards ( with low numbers ) managed to rule so much of the native americans, asians, africans, etc for hundreds of years. It's interesting to know this also played a role in portuguese colonial world as well.

Vi is like C, it just ain't going away because it dominates a niche that it is perfectly suited for. I think emacs will decline as other graphical/simple text editors and IDEs keep making inroads.

It isn't just china. You can be fired for offending european sensibilities. You can be fired for offending saudis/muslims/etc. Of course we already have examples of tech workers being fired for conservative opinions. But the most egregious example is israel, where it is illegal for an american citizen to boycott israel.

What foundational principle? White supremacy? Genocide and theft of land?

It's nice to know that we are just as brainwashed as the chinese.

> Having no-down-time when doing migrations is not an easy topic.

Depending on the nature of the migration and the type of data and the type of service and how coupled everything is, it's impossible. Especially when you are dealing with financial data and transactions that you can't afford to screw up even a single one.

> I usually vote for having some planned non-working-hours downtime.

Yep. No other way around it. You tell your clients weeks/months ahead of the planned downtime. They'll understand and migrate in the middle of the night over a holiday weekend.

But this is in regards to major structural migrations, not simple schema updates or changes.

Considering Britain is banning journalists like Lauren Southern and convicting people for making jokes on youtube ( count dankula ), I most certainly believe it.

Not only that, Britain is the most surveilled society on earth.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk/6108496.stm

That's from 2006. Britain has at least a decade head start. But china is working very hard to catch up on their surveillance.

But I guess it's evil when they do it, but it's "civilized" when britain does it?

> So if one finally manages to get a safer C variant that finally wins the hearts of UNIX kernels and embedded devs

A safer variant wouldn't be C. What makes C great for OS development is that it is just a step above assembly and you as a developer are given tremendous amount of power to do good and evil. C#/Java are programming languages with training wheels and it's great for application development. But for low level coding required for OS, network stacks, databases, etc, you really have to take the training wheels off.

I suppose you can try and make the C type system more stringent, but then it wouldn't be C. And considering they are aiming for backwards compatibility with existing C and its immense code infrastructure, they will have to keep the "flaws" in c for all.

Time would be better spent making the libraries/kernel/etc sturdier but if they can pull it off and win the hearts and minds of OS developers, then so be it.

Also, people have been trying to sideline C for decades. Each attempt has only reinforced C's standing and reminded us why C is so essential for OS development. Anyone remember the ill-fated attempt by Sun with their JVM centered JavaOS?

> Some countries are a lot closer to 1984 than others.

Yes. Britain is far ahead of everyone at this moment. I'm sure china and the rest are desperate to catch up.

> The EU and US

As an american, I'd really appreciate it if you didn't lump us in with the EU. EU is a lot closer to china than you think in terms of political system, censorship and mentality. After all, the EU heavily censors parodies and "hate" speech and is at the forefront of internet censorship.

I'm afraid america stands alone in many respects but we have our own challenges. We are most definitely not perfect.

> China is the living embodiment of what 1984 can look like in 2018.

Or britain - you know the place that 1984 was about. Or germany, spain, canada, russia, saudi arabia, etc.

> I do wonder if an ever increasing crackdown and everything ultimately becomes so unwieldy that the whole country falls apart.

People like gordon chang have been wondering for decades now. Wouldn't hold my breath on it though. China has a few decades more of development and urbanization ahead of it. They'll continue to grow for a few more years.

> I'm not so confident if the code itself will live up to the reputation of the services it provides.

Then don't open source it.

If you are running a business then it should be a financial/business decision. Is there any financial/business reason to open source it?

Weigh the opportunity costs and make the decision.

> You weren't paying attention—except for blasphemy, those things were from across the spectrum:

I didn't say it was only the conservatives/religious. I said it was usually them. Sure, tipper gore was against rap, but it was also the liberals who defended rap music.

> It wasn't a liberal Congress that just passed the bill that has is discussing censorship, so I think again you are falsely attributing something they exists across the political spectrum tomone side, just making the error in the opposite direction.

Once again. I didn't say only liberals are censoring now. I said the liberals are the ones spearheading the push for censorship.

The conservatives/religious have always been for censorship. Now the liberals have joined them. Even more, they are the ones spearheading censorship in much of the internet, etc. I'm sure the conservatives/religious are more than happy to follow along.

Just because I said liberals are bad doesn't mean that I think conservatives are good. Liberals seem to always think that because they live in a black and white world. Liberals and conservatives can both be bad.

Don't forget conjuring up an external enemy to distract the public and get the population riled up.

5. Russia and Hackers and Collusion Oh My!

> Not the fault of the media who would never shut up about Trump.

But look at the ratings and the ad money they are getting? It's the same thing with school shootings. Massive 24/7 coverage turning the shooter into a celebrity. Then they wonder why shootings happen. Oh it couldn't be the media. They can't blame themselves. It must be guns. Another gem is "why is society so divided"? Could it be the media playing population/groups off each other to create drama and make more money? Of course not. They can't blame themselves. So it must be social media and the internet.

> I am fucking sick and fucking tired of people interfering with the free choice of individuals in any effort to "fix" society and "help" people.

What is shocking is that it is the liberals who are now pushing for more censorship, more control and less individual freedom.

Growing up, it was usually the conservatives/religious who wanted rap, violent video games, blasphemy, etc banned and censored. And their argument was to "protect children, women and society". Now, the push for censorship and control is being spearheaded by the liberals. And just like with the conservatives, it is to "protect children, women and society".

What a sorry state of affairs we are in right now. So disappointing.

As soon as I read the title, I knew this would be the case. Have the media started doing more of this clickbait misrepresentation or are we just now more aware of it. It's so frustrating that it's getting harder to trust media or take them seriously. When the history channel did it, it was obnoxious. Pyramids built by "aliens". The media doing it is pathetic and dangerous.

Wish we could go back to the good old boring objective factual news rather than journalists trying to clickbait or push an agenda.

The title is a tad bit misleading. The article itself states that there is no smoking gun but a lot of anecdotal indicates that IBM is targeting older workers. So nothing was confirmed.

But it is an industry-wide open secret that tech firms want to get rid of their older workers and replace them with younger workers or possibly offshore the position. Startup scene is outright hostile towards older tech workers where the vast majority of the work force is in their 20s.

I don't see this getting any better. IBM is a special case because they have been suffering during this tech/economic boom we are in right now. So they have been laying off lots of people while most of the tech world has been hiring. I think many corporations are waiting for a recession to provide them an excuse to "trim" their tech workforce and I suspect most of that "trimming" will be done at the older end.

Because the source for most generic programming assignments are already online?

Why not skew the grading more heavily towards in-class midterms and finals?

Or you could generate indivualized hws for each student, but that may not be feasible in a 500 student intro to cs class.

> It appears that there's a gap between objects and qualia because only I can see my qualia, while everybody can see a brain or measure electric impulses.

That could be true. Or it could be true that you don't really exist and the subjective experience is an illusion. The subjective self seems to be just another iteration of the unique soul. The soul is what makes you you and the soul is why you experience things.

> Anyway, I like your hypothesis that it could be answered by science.

It's the only way we can settle things one way or the other. We can argue about gods on mount olympus til the cows come home. The only real way to be sure is to actually climb the mountain and see for ourselves.

My inclination at the moment is the mind is fiction. We no more have a "mind"( aka brain's soul ) than plants which move to capture more sunlight have a "mind".

We just have to patiently wait for science to advance to answer the mind/brain questions. In the meantime, it is fun to philosophize about it.

The title is a bit deceiving since it is what might be coming in C# 8.

Here is an interview with the PM of C# language development about what could be coming in C# 8.

https://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/Seth-Juarez/A-Preview-of-C-8...

Not anything earth shattering, but interesting nonetheless.

> Patently false. The public debt in Brazil has been almost entirely internal for the past 10 years. Should I show you a chart to settle it?

Why not show it rather than asking for my permission? But since you asked, please do. And show me the one for argentina while you are at it. Here is brazil's external debt. Increased 250% in 10 years.

https://tradingeconomics.com/brazil/external-debt

> Quite the opposite, actually. They received massive inflows of foreign investment, and very high domestic savings rate.

Foreign investment != external debt. So their high domestic saving rates means they had little need to borrow internationally? That was my point.

> the Asian countries you mentioned have a history of very high savings rate, this generates a stock of capital that the government and companies can borrow at low costs to develop.

But you wrote that it was quite the opposite just a sentence ago? I'm saying that korea, taiwan, japan and china did not depend on foreign borrowing. You conflate foreign investment with borrowing. Then you contradict yourself.

> Poland (and the LatAm countries I mentioned) have very low or negative savings rate, and almost no capital stock, so any increase in borrowing by the government has to be met with foreign capital or it will cause inflation and higher interest rates.

Well then they need to increase their savings rate or limit their borrowing?

> but I find it difficult to imagine how a material thing, the brain with its neurons and electric impulses and neurotransmiters, can be able to generate what philosophers of mind call qualia, which is something apparently non material.

There was a time when people said the same thing about the body. How can a slab of muscle and bones move? What is moving the body? Of course, it has to be a soul. The same thing with the heavens. Look at those magnificent planets and stars. Certainly gods must reside there and are moving them.

> I have an experience. How my brain/hardware causes the experience? Is the experience material? Perhaps. I wonder: how? e.g.: when I see a cup, where in my brain is the subjective experience of the cup? Is it coded as electric impulses? What decodes it and translates the impulses to qualia?

This is basic philosophy questions. It can't be answered by philosophy. It has to be answered by science ( neuroscience ).

Honestly, philosophically pondering about the brain/mind right now is akin to pondering about the gods/planets a few hundred years ago. Or philosophizing about where the soul reside in our body ( pineal gland? heart? liver? )

Now, we see how absurd those assumptions were because we advanced scientifically and we gained knowledge. I'm fairly certain the same will happen with the mind/brain questions.

All I know is that there is no "qualia" without the brain. Applying occam's razor, why do we need the mind? Other than as a crutch for our lack of understanding of the brain?

> Your concept of brain is happening in your mind right now.

No. It's in my brain.

> Can you feel electrical signals in your brain? Or can you feel senses in your conciousness?

When people experience certain kinds of brain injury, they can lose their sense of smell, touch, etc. Some people with brain defects can't feel pain. But after surgery, if successful, these people can feel, sense, smell, touch, etc again.

I know for a certain that I can't feel without my brain. As for the mind? As I said, it's debatable.

Ultimately, we have to wait for brain science for our answer. We could sit here and debate forever, like I did in philosophy class. But that will get us nowhere. It will be like debating whether the soul exists in the liver or the pineal gland 300 years ago.

But I think all signs point to the mind going the way of the soul. At least that's what nascent advances in neuroscience and philosophical consensus is slowly heading towards.

The mind to the body is just like the soul to the body or the gods to the heavens. It's nonsense we invented to explain what we do not understand.

But only scientific advance can put this debate to rest.