Logic has been used to prove lots of things, like bees not being able to fly.
Only because the logic has been based on erroneous assumptions. The thing about this particular argument is that it contains very few assumptions. Which ones would you challenge?
Proof is what counts.
No theory can be proven. Only disproven.
A theory that is not possible to be tested is worse than useless - it's a diversion, a waste of time.
It's not entirely certain that this theory cannot be tested. It's not obvious that it can, but that doesn't mean it cannot. Also, humans engage in lots of diversions, and waste a lot of time. I'll bet you do, too. Why is this diversion bad, and yours good?
BTW - it's not possible
That's an extraordinary claim, as claims of impossibility almost always are.
There is absolutely no evidence, and it is the person who makes the extraordinary claim who has the burden of proof.
There's actually substantial evidence of the possibility of simulations. There's also clear evidence that intelligence can exist, and no evidence to support the notion that it cannot be simulated as well. What evidence exists in this argument is entirely on my side.
In any case, I have claimed only that it is possible, which isn't an extraordinary claim at all, in fact a rather mild one. You have claimed that it is impossible which is an extraordinary claim, placing the burden of proof on you, by your own words.
What you have is an unsupported belief - same as any other religious belief.
I never said I believed it to be the case, only that it is possible, and logical.
I think this is largely due to the recent "Ad Apocalypse" where a large number of channels lost they're ad's and funding.
China Uncensored is one example, video's being taken down because some random word that's a part of a video game title is another, then there's all the dmca take downs that are very hard to appeal against.
You seem to be talking about two different things as though they're one.
DMCA takedowns apply to material that is alleged to infringe someone's copyrights. When an online provider receives a takedown, they are legally obliged to take the content down. DMCA takedowns aren't at all hard to "appeal against"; you just file a counter-notice and the material goes back up. Then, if you actually infringed their copyrights, the owner of the material sues you. They can do this because in the counter-notice you have to tell them who you are.
This story is about hate speech and violence. Unless it's graphic violence (e.g. a beheading), YouTube does not take the material down. They just don't advertise on it. It sounds like in some particular cases they're also going to try to steer people towards anti-radicalization videos.
The right to free speech also means the right to be offended and that's the problem, a lot of it is subjective.
You can post offensive stuff on YouTube all you like. Not only does YouTube not censor you (barring nudity, violence, etc.), but they'll deliver your message to anyone in the world, for free! You won't get paid for posting your offensive content, but that has nothing to do with freedom of speech.
Except your theory that we're just a simulation has zero science behind it
It's just logic. The argument goes like this: There appears to be no reason that a universe could not be simulated to an arbitrary level of detail. In an infinite universe, everything than can be done will be done, so a universe will eventually be simulated. Moreover, we have already created numerous incredibly crude simulators, and we're clearly going to make better ones, so eventually we will simulate a universe.
Next, observe that precisely the same logic applies inside a simulated universe. So any simulated universe, if run for long enough, will likely simulate one or more universes. Repeat ad infinitum.
Therefore, it is probable that there exist a large number of simulated universes, and one real one. What is the probability that we live in the real one, and not one of the simulations? Absent any way to distinguish, the probability is high that we live in one of the simulations.
It's actually a religious belief, because we have to accept it on faith
The same argument applies to the belief that we live in a real, non-simulated universe.
But, actually, I don't think anyone rational seriously argues that we do live in a simulation. Given the argument's postulates, it's a logical conclusion, but we haven't actually proven the core postulate -- that a universe could be simulated -- is true. On the other hand, we know of absolutely no reason why it shouldn't be possible.
So... it seems possible, perhaps even likely. But it seems equally unlikely that we can ever know for certain.
I find it utterly strange that the same profiles that a moderator would use in their official duties would be somehow linked to their own Facebook profile. That seems to me like a huge security oversight.
I'll bet they were linked to their corporate profile, which likely also doubles as the employee directory entry. As such, it probably didn't have truly personal details, like home address or personal phone number, which would only be in HR systems and wouldn't be exposed to other employees. But it would have their complete name, and office location (city), and other tidbits that might be usable to identify them IRL.
Yes, but the problem would be that in a pure popular vote that recount would be done at the State level IN EVERY STATE.
Generally, no, it would only be done in the states where there was some suspicion that it was necessary. And in any case, if it did have to be done in every state, so what? It's not like the recounts would be performed serially.
With the 0.5% difference in popular vote in 2000, according to several State legislature laws, that would have triggered a mandatory recount.
Nah, only a 0.5% difference in the state's popular vote would trigger a recount. The state laws don't take account of the votes of other states.
To make it more painful in many cases recounts have to be done by hand and potentially verified by a ballot worker and a rep from each interested party.
Which would be done independently in each state. In parallel.
As for the voter fraud, I should have been more general and include all voter suppression/allowances, once again using Florida as an example of how one area could screw everyone.
That's far *worse* with the EC, because the errors in a huge swing state like Florida are dramatically magnified by the EC bloc voting. With a national popular vote, 100K ballots one way or the other wouldn't matter at all except in an extremely close race -- and then it arguably doesn't matter that much anyway because the will of the people isn't clear to begin with. Random events like weather are as likely to swing it as fraud of that sort.
Note that I'm not saying fraud should be ignored. It should be identified and fixed as a matter of good democratic hygiene. But it's next to impossible to have fraud on a scale that would actually thwart the clear will of the people in a national election, EC or no EC (though EC does minimize the effect of fraud in small states and magnify it in large states, while without the EC the effect would be consistent nationwide).
Meh, fraud done on a large enough scale to influence the national election would be blindingly obvious.
Wrong attitude, fraud done on a small enough scale that nobody cares about it, is dangerously corrupting.
That we just had an election where a mere 70,000 votes could swing is it what is corrupting about the Electoral college.
If fraud on a very small scale will swing the election, then the fraud is irrelevant, because the people are so evenly divided that any random event, like weather, can swing the election. To actually undermine the democratic process, you have to have fraud on a scale that allows going against the will of the people even when it is clear.
Earth has been hit by extinction level events many times in its history and every single time its still had infinitely more life than Mars has ever had.
Sure, life has always survived. Large organisms, not so much.
Every single second on Mars is a more hostile environment than Earth has ever been since life evolved. That's not a back up plan.
Nonsense. Oh, you're right that Mars is a more hostile environment than Earth, but that doesn't mean living there is impossible with the right technology. And if we can develop the technology to live reasonably well on Mars, then it is a disaster recovery plan, because it's far away from Earth.
That's a cult suicide pact.
Huh? How do you figure? The decision of some people to go to Mars won't in any way endanger the people who stay on Earth.
And there really is absolutely no reason why we should not be able to live perfectly well on Mars. There's nothing we need that isn't present on Mars. Oh, the things we need mostly aren't available in the right configurations, but that's where technology comes in. For that matter, unaided humans can't live in most places on this planet.
Arguably humans without appropriate knowledge can't survive anywhere on Earth. Humanity appears to have evolved in the Great Rift Valley. If you were dropped there with no technology (clothing is technology), and no knowledge of local plants, animals, etc., no notion of where to get food/water, you wouldn't last more than a few days. Granted that your life in similar conditions on Mars would be low single-digit minutes, but the point is that all human survival is knowledge-dependent. More knowledge is required to survive in primeval Iceland than primeval Tanzania, but even Tanzania requires significant knowledge. Even more is required to live in Antarctica, and more yet on Mars... and even more in space, which is a placed we've had some people living continuously for decades.
It's a continuum, and there's no reason to think that Mars is on the other side of some boundary of survivability. The surface of the sun probably is. Inside the jet of a quasar almost certainly is. But not Mars.
The Electoral College may not boost the power of the VOTERS in the small states, but it does boost the power of the states.
It actually doesn't. If you compute the vote power indices at the level of the EC votes, the small states still have less power than they should. Bloc voting awards disproportionately greater power to larger blocs.
As far as I am aware each state decides independently how their EC members are determined.
Correct.
On just a pure size issue, a potential recount of 250 million votes would mean election results probably wouldn't be finalized until after inauguration day.
Recounts would still be done at the state level, if needed.
It also opens the floodgates for real voter fraud.
Meh, fraud done on a large enough scale to influence the national election would be blindingly obvious.
AFAIK, policy has not changed and phone number isn't required for new accounts, though I couldn't guarantee it. Another option for bypassing the nag is just to stay logged in all the time. You may also consider adding 2FA; there is a logical security reason why that might suppress the nag. I don't know if it does, though.
Not a change, get rid of the Electoral college and a few big cities run the nation.
Actually, no. Getting rid of the EC would increase the voice that small states have.
Part of the EC theory was that it would boost the voice of small states, but modern mathematical analysis, using tools like the Banzhaf Power Index prove that the actual effect is the opposite. The reason is because EC votes are allocated as a bloc (by all but a few states), and bloc voting significantly increases the power of the bloc.
Mathematical analyses aside, this effect is quite visible in practice. Notice also how every election ultimately gets decided by a handful of populous swing states. Notice also how little time the candidates spend in small states during the general election, because they know that the EC makes them almost irrelevant to the overall decision.
Yes, I know that you think the outcome of the 2016 election would have been worse without the EC, but you could just as easily end up with the opposite situation, in which the voters in the big swing states -- which are swing states precisely because they could fall either way; no red sinecures there -- decide to go for the Democrat. Right now we're in a particular situation where the EC allocations favor the Republicans, but that will not last.
If we wanted to use the EC to actually boost the vote of small states, what we need to do is to get all states to switch to a proportional allocation system, where each state allocates its electoral votes proportionally to the popular vote in that state. This would actually increase the power of small states.
However, it seems unlikely that we'll muster the political will for that sort of change. It's far more likely that the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact will attract enough support to simply make the EC irrelevant (signatories to the compact commit to give all of their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, regardless of the votes in their states, once there are enough signatories to give the compact > 270 votes). This will be a win for small states' influence, though not as big a win as proportional allocation.
the EC does not prevent a populist from winning in is current shape, it makes it easier by shrinking the amount of the popular vote one needs to secure to win the nomination.
I largely agree with your comment and reasoning, but the above is false. The EC has nothing to do with securing the nomination. Party nominations are done through party-specific processes which admittedly include delegate systems that look sort of EC-ish, except that those delegates actually do exercise free will in casting their ballots, so function more like the EC was intended to function. But changing or abolishing the EC would have no effect on the nomination processes.
Personally, as a resident of a small state, I'd like it if the EC were retained but EC votes were allocated proportionally to the per-state popular vote. One of the theories behind the construction of the EC was that it would give slightly more weight to the opinions of the voters in low-population states. In practice, the method of allocating all of a state's votes as a bloc causes the system to do exactly the opposite, which is why it's always a handful of large "swing" states that decide the election. Proportional allocation would give the small states a larger voice, and motivate candidates to actually campaign in them.
Failing that, simply going to a pure popular vote would also improve the small states' voice, just not as much. But it's clear that the EC, in its current form and application, is bad for everyone.
Oh, I forgot to mention that "lose your password" doesn't necessarily mean "forget your password". It also happens that someone guesses your password, gets into your account, and changes it to lock you out. Having a recovery phone number allows you to retake control, change the password and lock them out.
Do you have 2FA enabled? It wouldn't surprise me if enabling that stopped the nags, since it reduces the probability of account lockout, particularly if you log in frequently (and therefore are unlikely to forget your password).
If you want to not hand over your phone number to Google, then GMail is...
(The damn thing keeps bugging me to add one.)
But you don't actually have to, right?
FWIW, the reason it wants a phone number is for a recovery method in case you lose your password. That may not be a concern for you, but it happens to huge numbers of users and when it happens it generates significant costs for Google, since other last-ditch account recovery methods all involve an employee's time.
That said, yes, if you don't want to provide a phone number, then GMail is annoying. That issue never occurred to me, because I don't have a problem providing my phone number, so I haven't seen the nags.
There contexts other than editors. Terminal windows, printers, etc. Adjusting tab sizes everywhere that may be relevant, across multiple systems, is just silly.
LOL @ NSA. It's not quite as bad as all that. My biggest concern is all of the unreported or belatedly reported breaches. Supporting encryption and having a good Privacy Policy are important as well.
Nice to know that you're sane:-)
Seriously, so many of these conversations end up dominated by people who are worried about government data dragnets which (though wrong, and which should be shut down via the democratic processes) really have no relevance to them.
Based on the stated requirements, I think Gmail really is an excellent choice for you. No one is as aggressive as Google about pushing encryption everywhere, and Google's privacy policy is pretty reasonable. Yes, they'll advertise to you. Big whoop.
I would second what someone else said, though: To keep your options open, register a domain for yourself (not free, but pretty cheap). From a security perspective, the best way to handle it is then to pay Google $50 per year (oops, not free) to host your domain mail directly. Second best is to set up a forward (many domain registrars offer this service) to Gmail... and make sure that the forwarding system supports SSMTP, to keep your email encrypted in transit. Having your own domain means that when you decide you need to move again, you can without having to go through the pain of giving everyone a new email address.
Full disclosure: I work for Google. I think I'm able to offer a pretty unbiased analysis, though, and I try to do exactly that.
However, I've since moved on to another approach to code formatting: I do not format code. I write a configuration file for a code formatter (I'm really liking clang-format lately), and I check it in with the code, and I add a commit hook that runs all code through the formatter, with the specified config, and rejects the commit if the output of the code does not match the input.
Use whatever tool you want to edit, but you have to run the formatter before you can commit. If you're an intelligent developer, then, what you'll do is bind the formatter to a hotkey in your editor/IDE and never worry about formatting at all. I almost never hit the return key while typing code, and don't bother much with spaces or at all with tabs. I type stream-of-consciousness, format-free code, then hit the formatter hotkey.
Thanks for agreeing with "Intelligent devs use IDEs that handle all this formatting nonsense for them" because my IDEs incorporate exactly this solution and it is done automatically without even thinking about it.
Your IDE alone cannot incorporate that solution, unless you can force everyone to use the same IDE and you can enforce everyone's IDE to be configured identically. To make it work you really need a standalone tool that you can integrate with source control.
And unless you force everyone to use the same IDE, you still need the spaces-only LCD approach to indentation. Otherwise all of the old problems come back, it's just that you've managed to isolate them to a per-developer basis, because the shared code is consistent.
And if you think you can force everyone to use the same IDE, then I see you're a novice programmer.
It is advertiser-supported email, but I never use a web browser for my gmail account.
I don't have any problem with the advertiser-supported email model, or with Google (I work for Google), but it's worth pointing out that these things you put together in one sentence are not related. Not using a web browser doesn't prevent gmail from analyzing your emails to identify your interests. It does prevent gmail from showing you ads in the webmail UI (aside: using Inbox does, too, since for whatever reason there are no ads in that Gmail UI), but if Google can correlate your email and other traffic (note that I have no idea to what degree this is done), then it can still use information learned from your emails to show you relevant ads when you surf other sites.
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Logic has been used to prove lots of things, like bees not being able to fly.
Only because the logic has been based on erroneous assumptions. The thing about this particular argument is that it contains very few assumptions. Which ones would you challenge?
Proof is what counts.
No theory can be proven. Only disproven.
A theory that is not possible to be tested is worse than useless - it's a diversion, a waste of time.
It's not entirely certain that this theory cannot be tested. It's not obvious that it can, but that doesn't mean it cannot. Also, humans engage in lots of diversions, and waste a lot of time. I'll bet you do, too. Why is this diversion bad, and yours good?
BTW - it's not possible
That's an extraordinary claim, as claims of impossibility almost always are.
There is absolutely no evidence, and it is the person who makes the extraordinary claim who has the burden of proof.
There's actually substantial evidence of the possibility of simulations. There's also clear evidence that intelligence can exist, and no evidence to support the notion that it cannot be simulated as well. What evidence exists in this argument is entirely on my side.
In any case, I have claimed only that it is possible, which isn't an extraordinary claim at all, in fact a rather mild one. You have claimed that it is impossible which is an extraordinary claim, placing the burden of proof on you, by your own words.
What you have is an unsupported belief - same as any other religious belief.
I never said I believed it to be the case, only that it is possible, and logical.
I think this is largely due to the recent "Ad Apocalypse" where a large number of channels lost they're ad's and funding.
China Uncensored is one example, video's being taken down because some random word that's a part of a video game title is another, then there's all the dmca take downs that are very hard to appeal against.
You seem to be talking about two different things as though they're one.
DMCA takedowns apply to material that is alleged to infringe someone's copyrights. When an online provider receives a takedown, they are legally obliged to take the content down. DMCA takedowns aren't at all hard to "appeal against"; you just file a counter-notice and the material goes back up. Then, if you actually infringed their copyrights, the owner of the material sues you. They can do this because in the counter-notice you have to tell them who you are.
This story is about hate speech and violence. Unless it's graphic violence (e.g. a beheading), YouTube does not take the material down. They just don't advertise on it. It sounds like in some particular cases they're also going to try to steer people towards anti-radicalization videos.
The right to free speech also means the right to be offended and that's the problem, a lot of it is subjective.
You can post offensive stuff on YouTube all you like. Not only does YouTube not censor you (barring nudity, violence, etc.), but they'll deliver your message to anyone in the world, for free! You won't get paid for posting your offensive content, but that has nothing to do with freedom of speech.
Except your theory that we're just a simulation has zero science behind it
It's just logic. The argument goes like this: There appears to be no reason that a universe could not be simulated to an arbitrary level of detail. In an infinite universe, everything than can be done will be done, so a universe will eventually be simulated. Moreover, we have already created numerous incredibly crude simulators, and we're clearly going to make better ones, so eventually we will simulate a universe.
Next, observe that precisely the same logic applies inside a simulated universe. So any simulated universe, if run for long enough, will likely simulate one or more universes. Repeat ad infinitum.
Therefore, it is probable that there exist a large number of simulated universes, and one real one. What is the probability that we live in the real one, and not one of the simulations? Absent any way to distinguish, the probability is high that we live in one of the simulations.
It's actually a religious belief, because we have to accept it on faith
The same argument applies to the belief that we live in a real, non-simulated universe.
But, actually, I don't think anyone rational seriously argues that we do live in a simulation. Given the argument's postulates, it's a logical conclusion, but we haven't actually proven the core postulate -- that a universe could be simulated -- is true. On the other hand, we know of absolutely no reason why it shouldn't be possible.
So... it seems possible, perhaps even likely. But it seems equally unlikely that we can ever know for certain.
I find it utterly strange that the same profiles that a moderator would use in their official duties would be somehow linked to their own Facebook profile. That seems to me like a huge security oversight.
I'll bet they were linked to their corporate profile, which likely also doubles as the employee directory entry. As such, it probably didn't have truly personal details, like home address or personal phone number, which would only be in HR systems and wouldn't be exposed to other employees. But it would have their complete name, and office location (city), and other tidbits that might be usable to identify them IRL.
Yes, but the problem would be that in a pure popular vote that recount would be done at the State level IN EVERY STATE.
Generally, no, it would only be done in the states where there was some suspicion that it was necessary. And in any case, if it did have to be done in every state, so what? It's not like the recounts would be performed serially.
With the 0.5% difference in popular vote in 2000, according to several State legislature laws, that would have triggered a mandatory recount.
Nah, only a 0.5% difference in the state's popular vote would trigger a recount. The state laws don't take account of the votes of other states.
To make it more painful in many cases recounts have to be done by hand and potentially verified by a ballot worker and a rep from each interested party.
Which would be done independently in each state. In parallel.
As for the voter fraud, I should have been more general and include all voter suppression/allowances, once again using Florida as an example of how one area could screw everyone.
That's far *worse* with the EC, because the errors in a huge swing state like Florida are dramatically magnified by the EC bloc voting. With a national popular vote, 100K ballots one way or the other wouldn't matter at all except in an extremely close race -- and then it arguably doesn't matter that much anyway because the will of the people isn't clear to begin with. Random events like weather are as likely to swing it as fraud of that sort.
Note that I'm not saying fraud should be ignored. It should be identified and fixed as a matter of good democratic hygiene. But it's next to impossible to have fraud on a scale that would actually thwart the clear will of the people in a national election, EC or no EC (though EC does minimize the effect of fraud in small states and magnify it in large states, while without the EC the effect would be consistent nationwide).
Meh, fraud done on a large enough scale to influence the national election would be blindingly obvious.
Wrong attitude, fraud done on a small enough scale that nobody cares about it, is dangerously corrupting.
That we just had an election where a mere 70,000 votes could swing is it what is corrupting about the Electoral college.
If fraud on a very small scale will swing the election, then the fraud is irrelevant, because the people are so evenly divided that any random event, like weather, can swing the election. To actually undermine the democratic process, you have to have fraud on a scale that allows going against the will of the people even when it is clear.
Earth has been hit by extinction level events many times in its history and every single time its still had infinitely more life than Mars has ever had.
Sure, life has always survived. Large organisms, not so much.
Every single second on Mars is a more hostile environment than Earth has ever been since life evolved. That's not a back up plan.
Nonsense. Oh, you're right that Mars is a more hostile environment than Earth, but that doesn't mean living there is impossible with the right technology. And if we can develop the technology to live reasonably well on Mars, then it is a disaster recovery plan, because it's far away from Earth.
That's a cult suicide pact.
Huh? How do you figure? The decision of some people to go to Mars won't in any way endanger the people who stay on Earth.
And there really is absolutely no reason why we should not be able to live perfectly well on Mars. There's nothing we need that isn't present on Mars. Oh, the things we need mostly aren't available in the right configurations, but that's where technology comes in. For that matter, unaided humans can't live in most places on this planet.
Arguably humans without appropriate knowledge can't survive anywhere on Earth. Humanity appears to have evolved in the Great Rift Valley. If you were dropped there with no technology (clothing is technology), and no knowledge of local plants, animals, etc., no notion of where to get food/water, you wouldn't last more than a few days. Granted that your life in similar conditions on Mars would be low single-digit minutes, but the point is that all human survival is knowledge-dependent. More knowledge is required to survive in primeval Iceland than primeval Tanzania, but even Tanzania requires significant knowledge. Even more is required to live in Antarctica, and more yet on Mars... and even more in space, which is a placed we've had some people living continuously for decades.
It's a continuum, and there's no reason to think that Mars is on the other side of some boundary of survivability. The surface of the sun probably is. Inside the jet of a quasar almost certainly is. But not Mars.
You may also consider adding 2FA; there is a logical security reason why that might suppress the nag. I don't know if it does, though.
Aaand I just read Google's page on that, and learnt that the feature requires a phone number which we're kind of trying to avoid =)
That's only if you use SMS as the 2FA method. Use the Authenticator app instead. Or a security token (e.g. Yubikey nano).
The Electoral College may not boost the power of the VOTERS in the small states, but it does boost the power of the states.
It actually doesn't. If you compute the vote power indices at the level of the EC votes, the small states still have less power than they should. Bloc voting awards disproportionately greater power to larger blocs.
As far as I am aware each state decides independently how their EC members are determined.
Correct.
On just a pure size issue, a potential recount of 250 million votes would mean election results probably wouldn't be finalized until after inauguration day.
Recounts would still be done at the state level, if needed.
It also opens the floodgates for real voter fraud.
Meh, fraud done on a large enough scale to influence the national election would be blindingly obvious.
AFAIK, policy has not changed and phone number isn't required for new accounts, though I couldn't guarantee it. Another option for bypassing the nag is just to stay logged in all the time. You may also consider adding 2FA; there is a logical security reason why that might suppress the nag. I don't know if it does, though.
Not a change, get rid of the Electoral college and a few big cities run the nation.
Actually, no. Getting rid of the EC would increase the voice that small states have.
Part of the EC theory was that it would boost the voice of small states, but modern mathematical analysis, using tools like the Banzhaf Power Index prove that the actual effect is the opposite. The reason is because EC votes are allocated as a bloc (by all but a few states), and bloc voting significantly increases the power of the bloc.
Mathematical analyses aside, this effect is quite visible in practice. Notice also how every election ultimately gets decided by a handful of populous swing states. Notice also how little time the candidates spend in small states during the general election, because they know that the EC makes them almost irrelevant to the overall decision.
Yes, I know that you think the outcome of the 2016 election would have been worse without the EC, but you could just as easily end up with the opposite situation, in which the voters in the big swing states -- which are swing states precisely because they could fall either way; no red sinecures there -- decide to go for the Democrat. Right now we're in a particular situation where the EC allocations favor the Republicans, but that will not last.
If we wanted to use the EC to actually boost the vote of small states, what we need to do is to get all states to switch to a proportional allocation system, where each state allocates its electoral votes proportionally to the popular vote in that state. This would actually increase the power of small states.
However, it seems unlikely that we'll muster the political will for that sort of change. It's far more likely that the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact will attract enough support to simply make the EC irrelevant (signatories to the compact commit to give all of their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, regardless of the votes in their states, once there are enough signatories to give the compact > 270 votes). This will be a win for small states' influence, though not as big a win as proportional allocation.
the EC does not prevent a populist from winning in is current shape, it makes it easier by shrinking the amount of the popular vote one needs to secure to win the nomination.
I largely agree with your comment and reasoning, but the above is false. The EC has nothing to do with securing the nomination. Party nominations are done through party-specific processes which admittedly include delegate systems that look sort of EC-ish, except that those delegates actually do exercise free will in casting their ballots, so function more like the EC was intended to function. But changing or abolishing the EC would have no effect on the nomination processes.
Personally, as a resident of a small state, I'd like it if the EC were retained but EC votes were allocated proportionally to the per-state popular vote. One of the theories behind the construction of the EC was that it would give slightly more weight to the opinions of the voters in low-population states. In practice, the method of allocating all of a state's votes as a bloc causes the system to do exactly the opposite, which is why it's always a handful of large "swing" states that decide the election. Proportional allocation would give the small states a larger voice, and motivate candidates to actually campaign in them.
Failing that, simply going to a pure popular vote would also improve the small states' voice, just not as much. But it's clear that the EC, in its current form and application, is bad for everyone.
Oh, I forgot to mention that "lose your password" doesn't necessarily mean "forget your password". It also happens that someone guesses your password, gets into your account, and changes it to lock you out. Having a recovery phone number allows you to retake control, change the password and lock them out.
Do you have 2FA enabled? It wouldn't surprise me if enabling that stopped the nags, since it reduces the probability of account lockout, particularly if you log in frequently (and therefore are unlikely to forget your password).
If you want to not hand over your phone number to Google, then GMail is...
(The damn thing keeps bugging me to add one.)
But you don't actually have to, right?
FWIW, the reason it wants a phone number is for a recovery method in case you lose your password. That may not be a concern for you, but it happens to huge numbers of users and when it happens it generates significant costs for Google, since other last-ditch account recovery methods all involve an employee's time.
That said, yes, if you don't want to provide a phone number, then GMail is annoying. That issue never occurred to me, because I don't have a problem providing my phone number, so I haven't seen the nags.
TL;DR: In contexts other than editors, you may want a different indent depth anyway.
I don't.
Plus, I make more money than you :P
Fulfilling and disappearing are different things. And, yes, the OT contains prophecies of the last days which weren't part of the old covenant.
There contexts other than editors. Terminal windows, printers, etc. Adjusting tab sizes everywhere that may be relevant, across multiple systems, is just silly.
You must have missed where I pointed out the problem with your solution.
As I said, you're not interested in anything that contradicts your assumptions. Kudos for actually reading to the end, though.
All the best, man. It's a tough road, but it does have its rewards.
LOL @ NSA. It's not quite as bad as all that. My biggest concern is all of the unreported or belatedly reported breaches. Supporting encryption and having a good Privacy Policy are important as well.
Nice to know that you're sane :-)
Seriously, so many of these conversations end up dominated by people who are worried about government data dragnets which (though wrong, and which should be shut down via the democratic processes) really have no relevance to them.
Based on the stated requirements, I think Gmail really is an excellent choice for you. No one is as aggressive as Google about pushing encryption everywhere, and Google's privacy policy is pretty reasonable. Yes, they'll advertise to you. Big whoop.
I would second what someone else said, though: To keep your options open, register a domain for yourself (not free, but pretty cheap). From a security perspective, the best way to handle it is then to pay Google $50 per year (oops, not free) to host your domain mail directly. Second best is to set up a forward (many domain registrars offer this service) to Gmail... and make sure that the forwarding system supports SSMTP, to keep your email encrypted in transit. Having your own domain means that when you decide you need to move again, you can without having to go through the pain of giving everyone a new email address.
Full disclosure: I work for Google. I think I'm able to offer a pretty unbiased analysis, though, and I try to do exactly that.
However, I've since moved on to another approach to code formatting: I do not format code. I write a configuration file for a code formatter (I'm really liking clang-format lately), and I check it in with the code, and I add a commit hook that runs all code through the formatter, with the specified config, and rejects the commit if the output of the code does not match the input.
Use whatever tool you want to edit, but you have to run the formatter before you can commit. If you're an intelligent developer, then, what you'll do is bind the formatter to a hotkey in your editor/IDE and never worry about formatting at all. I almost never hit the return key while typing code, and don't bother much with spaces or at all with tabs. I type stream-of-consciousness, format-free code, then hit the formatter hotkey.
Thanks for agreeing with "Intelligent devs use IDEs that handle all this formatting nonsense for them" because my IDEs incorporate exactly this solution and it is done automatically without even thinking about it.
Your IDE alone cannot incorporate that solution, unless you can force everyone to use the same IDE and you can enforce everyone's IDE to be configured identically. To make it work you really need a standalone tool that you can integrate with source control.
And unless you force everyone to use the same IDE, you still need the spaces-only LCD approach to indentation. Otherwise all of the old problems come back, it's just that you've managed to isolate them to a per-developer basis, because the shared code is consistent.
And if you think you can force everyone to use the same IDE, then I see you're a novice programmer.
Did you intend that to be in reply to a different post? I don't see how it's related to what I said.
It is advertiser-supported email, but I never use a web browser for my gmail account.
I don't have any problem with the advertiser-supported email model, or with Google (I work for Google), but it's worth pointing out that these things you put together in one sentence are not related. Not using a web browser doesn't prevent gmail from analyzing your emails to identify your interests. It does prevent gmail from showing you ads in the webmail UI (aside: using Inbox does, too, since for whatever reason there are no ads in that Gmail UI), but if Google can correlate your email and other traffic (note that I have no idea to what degree this is done), then it can still use information learned from your emails to show you relevant ads when you surf other sites.