40+ years and trillions of dollars after Johnson declared war on poverty and here we are wondering how to enslave more generations in poverty with even more expensive schemes.
Declaring a "war on poverty" is dumb because you can't actually defeat poverty. Even if you implemented strict communism and gave everyone the exact same salary of $100k/year you'd still get a few people who were fundamentally unable to control their spending and would end up hungry and "poor".
However, that doesn't mean you can't make progress in reducing the frequency and severity of poverty. You can reduce the number of poor people and their kids who don't have enough food to eat, who lack reasonable accommodations, who don't have access to health care, who are at the mercy of abusive managers since they're scared of losing their job. A UBI is one of the tools that can help with a lot of those problems.
That is a complete nonsese. Let's say everyone will get $1000 UBI. Does this mean, that they will earn $1000 more of value? NO. It will inflate global prices about $1000 so prices will be (TODAY_PRICES + $1000), so they will gain no value at all. No one.
That's not how economics works. A UBI is re-distributive, if Sue has $10K, and Frank and George only have $1K then sellers have a lot of incentive to create things for Sue and not much to make things for Frank and George.
But if Sue now only has $8K and Frank and George have $2K sellers are going to shift some effort away from making things for Sue and put more effort into making things for George and Frank.
How this translates into prices is fuzzy and very circumstantial. Housing generally gets cheaper, Sue can probably buy most of the same super-expensive properties as before, because even though she's $2K poorer so are the other rich people she's bidding against. Though some houses and luxury apartments are turned into higher density property that the slightly wealthier Frank and George can now afford.
Sue's designer brands mostly stay around but get cheaper, luxury goods consumed by Frank and George probably get more expensive. Ordinary goods like groceries probably stay the same though Frank and George might shift to more expensive brands. Overall the effect is probably more economic activity since poor people tend to spend whatever money you give them, weirdly enough it could even boost employment since extra workers will be needed to capture that economic activity.
If this translates to economic growth you might see some inflation but probably not much since more goods are being produced. Even if you do something dumb like just print $1000k instead of taxing so Sue has $11k instead of $8k it probably doesn't inflate much, certainly not $1k per person. Again, rich people like Sue don't actually spend their money so it doesn't affect prices that much when they get more money.
if we don't have a strong, coordinated response to a large scale outbreak yeah, it'll happen again. We haven't magically evolved somehow. We're still vulnerable to the same crap we always were.
This is kind of a sticking point for me. I know lots of folks who, because something bad hasn't happened recently or to them or their immediate family, they think it's a non issue. Like those folks who were vehemently opposed to background checks for guns until they were shot at or folks in favor of single payer healthcare because they lost their jobs after a stroke. People's inability or unwillingness to extrapolate never ceases to amaze and infuriate me...
Though I think we're much better able to have a strong, coordinated response now than 100 years ago.
1) Our ability to treat sick people is a lot better. 2) Wide scale distribution of surgical masks is way more feasible now than 100 years ago. 3) Lots of people can work remotely if need be. 4) Hygiene is way better. 5) Schools could even be closed if need be, with remote learning options used as much as possible.
Sure these are progressively more drastic actions, but if we're hitting even a 1% fatality rate I suspect most go into effect.
He will still be running the company and he may yet take it private. This is a victory for Musk. The SEC backed down from insisting on removing his as CEO.
Removing him as CEO was the remedy if he went to trial.
But compared to reports of the settlement he turned down a couple days ago this new deal seem to ban him from chairman for an extra year and adds a new independent committee that can regulate his communications.
If true turning down the first deal was a pretty significant misstep by Musk.
He said he "would much prefer a feature that can automatically dial a user-determined contact."
This is also a bit problematic. What if that contact doesn't answer the phone, or it goes to voicemail, what's the service to do then? What if a stranger picks up the phone, or it's an old number, etc, etc.
There's probably a few people who would do well with that feature but I'm guessing most user-determined contacts wouldn't respond appropriately if a call ever came in. And I suspect that first responders are fairly lenient when they come in and see signs of illegal activity (I'm sure there's exceptions), though I suspect a drug trafficker would get reported.
The auto-opt in is definitely a concern, as is the concern about false positives. I could certainly see the occasional elderly person taking more than a minute to figure out the alarm sound, or if they dropped the watch on the floor taking more than a minute to retrieve it.
The new CoC is so broad with its definition of what is abusive that it's suddenly turned normal conversation on the mailing list into a minefield:
"It's crazy to use a signed int for measuring the size of a buffer here."
"'Crazy' is a derogatory comment; you can't refuse my code on that basis."
"Jesus! Right. I'm sorry."
"I'm an atheist and object to your proselytizing at me."
etc.
It's a classic example of more detailed text making it harder to be reasonable instead of easier, or if you prefer making it easier to be unreasonable. For the person who wants to be disruptive, it gives far too many things they can point to while at the same time making it harder for the rest of the group to exclude that disruptive person because "I'm just enforcing the CoC you all agreed to"
That strikes me as a bit of a contrived example. Some people will nitpick, and I'm sure someone will complain about "crazy" once in a while but it will hardly be a regular thing.
I also think it's a bad idea when reviewing code to use phrases like: "It's crazy to use a signed int for measuring the size of a buffer here."
Because you're saying it's bad but you're not saying WHY it's bad.
"It's definitely possible for the buffer to exceed 2^15, this should be an unsigned int"
or
"We use unsigned ints for buffer size everywhere else, using signed here would just be confusing"
Sure it's just an example you made up, but it's a real issue. When you reject something you need to give a reason, if you say it's because it's "crazy" or "stupid" you're not really explaining anything but it feels like a justification and people tend to leave it at that. If you're not allowed to be obnoxious you suddenly realize you need to justify your position, sometimes this educates the contributor, but some times you realize you can't justify your position because you were wrong.
Plus, once you call something stupid or crazy it's hard to back down if you made a mistake.
As I said on a previous thread, the problems of society are real and need fixed, but they need to be fixed lower down the stack. Once you start writing software that goes into aircraft or cars, meritocracy is the only option.
But that's it, when you're forced to be respectful you suddenly have to judge on the work rather than acquiescing to whomever is pushing their point more aggressively. It helps create a meritocracy.
Nice ad hom. Now try actually contributing to the conversation.
It's actually pretty relevant. One critical question is whether the CoC is an issue for a significant portion of developers or just a few misogynist's on the Internet.
From the article: Furthermore, Corbet argued, “no actual developer has gone anywhere near this—all of the people talking about rescission on the list are from outside the kernel development community.”
ESR is controversial though he's made legitimate contributions to the Linux eco-system, but MikeeUSA and unconditionedwitness just seem to be a couple really sketchy individuals. Not exactly indications that droves regular devs are bothered by the CoC.
I'll start.
Whether developers can or cannot legally rescind their code the new CoC is absolutely guaranteed to drive away people who believe their contributions are more important than their genitals. For that reason alone this is not going to turn out well.
I'll finish.
Ignoring your bizarre "genitals" comment the whole rescinding code debate is irrelevant.
A: The CoC has me so outraged I'm rescinding my code from the Kernel! B: Find, oh, BTW, I'm applying a patch based on A's GPL'd code from yesterday.
I don't see how you could possibly pull code that was legally contributed right out of the ecosystem. I mean that was the entire point of the GPL in the first place other people can use the code as long as it stays GPL'd.
If this was allowed then what's to stop Linus from saying "I just changed my mind, my code is no longer GPL'd, anyone running Linux needs to pay me $1,000,000!!"
I believe the SEC will also need to prove that Musk *intended* to manipulate the stock price with his dumb tweet. (There's no law against just being dumb.) I don't think Musk actually was trying to manipulate the stock, and how they're going to make they're argument I'm not sure.
He's been waging a war against the shorts for ages, I think it's a pretty easy leap to make. As for proving it, I don't think there's quite enough public evidence, but with legal proceedings come a lot of ways of extracting the truth. Even something as simple asking a question can be enough since trying to lie your way out can cause way more trouble.
This may not be the slam-dunk that some people expect.
Furthermore, the SEC action may cause far more upheaval in Tesla's stock price and more harm to investors than the incident they are suing over. Is that really sensible? But you know, they want to make an example... They've said as much. This is about regulatory muscle-flexing and generating headlines.
Part of the SEC's job is to make sure CEOs behave responsibly wrt their companies, making an example of someone publicly screwing with the stock price is kind of their job.
Personally, I found the insight into how the Hillary Campaign took over the DNC and rigged the primaries, but that's just me. If you find it chaotic to have a fair and balanced voting system that actually allows US Citizens to have a say in the affairs of their country over that of globalist corporations, then maybe you are the problem. Maybe it is your morals that need a check.
Which just goes to show that leaks don't equal insight.
What the leaks showed was that: a) Lots of people in the DNC were huge fans of Clinton and skeptical of Sanders. There was certainly a lot of networking on her part, but the DNC was still independent. b) The overwhelming majority of people in the DNC tried to run the primary in a fair manner (despite their personal preference). c) In a handful of instances some people did tip the scales to Clinton. d) There was a lot of pressure for other prospective candidates to clear the deck for Clinton, some from the DNC, some from the candidates not wanting to run a losing campaign, some because Clinton did have a history of shutting out people who didn't back her.
There was a lot of problematic stuff in the emails but nothing particularly specific to Clinton. There's also a worthwhile debate over how inappropriate some of it really was. Insiders do have a lot of knowledge about candidates and issues unavailable to the general public. Ideally you want a system that takes advantage of that. Managing endorsements and encouraging the right people to run is one of the less objectionable ways to do that.
The US government got Assange to play fast and loose with a couple sexual liaisons, then convinced the women to file complaints?
For what it's worth, I think I remember hearing that it went something like this (not sure though, could be wrong):
Assange pretended to put on a condom to get one woman to agree to sex with him, and after having protected sex with another woman (who presumably insisted on checking that he had put on a condom), initiated further unprotected sex while she was asleep. Neither woman initially intended to take any action, but after talking to each other, became concerned that he could be a potential source of infection, and contacted the police to ask if Assange could be compelled to be tested for STIs.
The police took testimony, then indicated that they would be pressing rape charges, against the women's wishes. This is unusual, police usually only press rape charges if a woman agrees to testify for this purpose. However, a senior officer was on leave, and a less experienced officer was handling the case. The women withdrew their testimony, the senior officer returned from leave, and the case was dropped. Assange asked if he could leave the country, was told this was fine, and he left.
The case was then reopened without explanation. (This is the suspicious part.)
Again, not sure this is right, but if it is right, I don't have a problem with Assange being called a rapist, but the handling of the case still seems suspicious.
My reading is that when the encounter happened the women understood something wrong had happened but weren't sure exactly how to feel about it. Sometimes it takes a while to process what happened and figure out both if you've been seriously wronged and if other people will take is seriously.
This first manifested with the STD fears, very legitimate, but also a concrete way to demonstrate they'd been harmed. And note they actually got a hold of Assange before going to the cops, so the trip to the cops wasn't just about STDs, it was to tell an authority figure what happened.
At that point I don't think they intended to press charges.... but they did intend to tell law enforcement what happened realizing that law enforcement might talk them into laying charges. So while they didn't go to the cops with the intent of press charges I do think they went to the cops with the intent of being convinced to lay charges (or some sort of other official action against Assange).
Now the first prosecutor subsequently said it wasn't rape but at this point the women had enough time to decide it was rape, so they got a lawyer and that lawyer got the investigation re-opened. The senior prosecutor took another look, decided it was rape, and went after Assange.
So I don't really find the re-opening suspicious, it's just one of these situations that falls between rape and really sketchy behaviour and it took a while for people to decide it was rape.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing - parametrize the costs of change. It's actually a pretty big blind spot that they missed this, but it's understandable. They tried to fix their issues in one giant step, which naturally flopped.
Instead, tune that algorithm to make very small, yearly changes that move things in the desired direction. Essentially, they need to factor in the human / political element of this, which states that people resist change of all sorts. So the challenge then is to find a path which minimizes the pain of this transition for the most people. So it's a ten year plan instead of getting fixed in one shot.
The basically used an incomplete objective function. I'm not sure the small yearly changes would help since instead of one big headache you're creating a moderate headache each year. Plus, your problem between the current state and the optimal state probably isn't convex, ie there may not be a series of incremental steps that don't incur some major costs along the way.
I think the better strategy is to look for situations when the routes and/or schedules need to change anyway and take the best smallest modification.
Both men have greatly inconvenienced the US government shortly before these allegations came to light, however...
And what?
The US government got a 16 year old to join sugardaddy.com and manipulated Wilson into messaging and arranging an encounter with her?
The US government got Assange to play fast and loose with a couple sexual liaisons, then convinced the women to file complaints?
Here's another theory, people with huge egos who play loose with the law in one area tend to do the same in other areas as well.
It's also true that making yourself notorious might cause people to walk by your closets to see if any skeletons are peaking out. We don't know the details of the case against Wilson to know if that was the situation here but it's certainly possible Wilson was only caught because he was already under scrutiny.
Slashdot economics experts: China has been bullying other countries economically for decades and unfairly favoring its own companies. We have to do something about it before its too late. The longer we wait the more painful it will be.
After Trump........ Slashdot economics experts: WAAA Trump did something China didn't like and they gave me a booboo. Waaa we must never offend china to keep cheap chinese goods forever!
China has also been giving other countries cheap good for decades, it wasn't necessarily a bad thing for those countries. It's made the US and other countries very rich in terms of material goods and freed up labour to do more productive things. It's not all great of course, not all of those jobs could be replaced and at some point China starts taking jobs you'd really prefer to keep and exerting influence in ways you don't like.
But lets accept the premise that you do need to start pushing back against China, it's fairly reasonable. There's a difference between doing X effectively and doing X like a counterproductive moron.
What's one way to counter China? How about big trade deals with other nations, like the Trans Pacific Partnership... oops... Trump backed out of that.
What about rallying your allies to excerpt pressure against China, like Obama did to make the Iran deal. Oops again. Trump has made it toxic for US allies to cooperate.
Maybe you can come to an agreement with China's leaders where there ease up on their more controversial practices? Well there's another oops. Trump style of shaming the other country makes them willing to absorb a lot of pain before they give in on any policy.
Fine if you want a more confrontational approach with China, you have possibly the most ill-equipped President in your history trying to execute it.
Not the whole city of ~80k people, just 1/394th of the city. 0,3km^2. Just a big pedestrian mall, really.
Why is this news?
If you look around with Google Street View at what I assume is the proper location you can see a few delivery and other construction vehicles, but otherwise it's a lot of foot traffic.
The one thing I'm curious about is residents, if the city centre is all tourist and business than you can make do with foot traffic. But do residents with cars need to park outside the boundaries?
I'm avoiding cryptocurrency because I don't understand anything more than the basics but the guy in the baseball cap comes across like a spoiled brat, constantly name-dropping economists, brags about how many economics books he's read, and argues based on anecdotes and emotions instead of logic.
One of the people arguing for Bitcoin was again one of the big names in the community, and he was generally nutty and incoherent. I don't know if he was always that unhinged or if he'd been living inside the bubble for too long, but it was clear that at the highest levels the Bitcoin community isn't able to filter the crazy out. And when a community can't get the crazy out at the top level then the foundations are probably not that stable either.
Why do people act like a project would be forced to take in substandard code just because the maintainers aren't allowed to be assholes? Constructive criticism and mentoring can be used just as well in place of being a dickish aspie.
One person with high standards is another person's "dickish aspie."
I think being a dick makes it easier in some ways to keep high standards since it's easy to call out BS, but I've also seen projects fail because a senior person was being a dick and no one was willing to withstand the abuse of critiquing their decisions.
One person's constructive criticism is another's micro-aggression, sexism, racism, or whatever negative-label du jour used as a club. Projects aren't forced to take in substandard code but some projects have experienced severe losses by trying your approach and giving an inch. Take firefox as an example.
People start suspecting the *isms when the criticism is centred on the person and not the work because it makes people wonder whether the criticism is motivated by the work or by a bias against the person. And frankly, when you start criticizing the person you personalize the conflict and make it much more difficult to come to a clean resolution.
Treat the other person with respect and you can still take a firm line on code quality without being a dick.
The real news here isn't that Linus decided to get some therapy.
The real news is that Linux, the project, adopted the "Contributor's Covenant" code of conduct and thereby acknowledged SJW ideological supremacy.
Yes! How terrible that a project adopt a code of conduct where people are asked to be courteous and treat others with respect!
While the CC appears on the surface to be a call of civility, it's actually the tip of a very long and exsanguatory anti-meritocracy spear, one that ultimately seeks to elevate high-verbal-IQ non-technical politics-playing San-Francisco-residing cliques of social justice advocates into positions of recognition and authority in the free software world and beyond.
We are all in awe of your high-verbal-IQ demonstrating your totally coherent and rational analysis!
This is a very curious move from Linus. He's previously been so adamantly anti-tone-policing, anti-SJW, and pro-meritocracy that I can't help but wonder if he is in fact being blackmailed or coerced in some fashion. Back in 2015, ESR reported that the tech-SJW community was attempting to frame Linux in some fashion. My personal hunch is that Linus got complacent about operational security and eventually got caught in an SJW trap.
So totally coherent and rational and not at all devolving into conspiracy theories.
Of course it won't work, since blackmailers are never contented. But in the heat of the moment, it doesn't feel that way.
This is a very sad day.
Oops, we've apparently decided it's not a theory and a fact! Linus has been captured by the SJWs!! Someone rally an army of obnoxious politically incorrect men to save him!!!
They're obviously lying. Politicians are gonna love the proliferation of deepfakes. That way, the next time they say something stupid in an interview, they can say the clip is a deepfake. They're just starting to blame them as an upcoming problem now so they can start using it as an excuse ASAP.
It also means there will be countless fake videos of them doing and saying all sorts of horrible things. Do you really want the internet to be filled with videos of yourself raping children while yelling the N word?
good fucking god. you stupid fucking pc idiots are ruining the world for the majority.
So what's next.... No more/sbin/kill for processes?
Ya know, any app that has "client" in the name probably refers to prostitution... Thats got to go too.
Oh My God!/usr/bin/touch promotes sexual assult. That's got to go too.
totem is going to offend Native Americans....
mount is sexist also....
reject.. That's going to hurt someones feelings, GONE. Fuck it, lets just burn all the computers and go back to using bows and arrows, and hunting in the woods.....
Hmm, I need a method that's going to delete all objects of a given class in an application.
I'm guessing you'd be fine if I call the method "holocaust()"? What about "application.finalSolution()" and it implements the holocaust functionality.
I suspect a lot of people here would find that naming offensive or at least problematic, but I'm not sure that's it's functionally different from the master/slave terminology.
This trend of seeking offense where none is intended is incredibly toxic to humanity. In the English language many words have different meanings based on their context. It's plainly obvious that no allusion to human slavery is meant in the context of software or hardware module relationships.
Let's be blunt about what has happened: people have been abusively harmed by others lying to them and telling them that context is meaningless. They have been given invented forms of discomfort in order to make them slaves to unpleasant emotional responses that have no underlying basis in reality. That's the irony here. The people complaining about the terminology are behaving in a herd manner, controlled by powermongers who benefit from it. Power flows from irrational group cohesion, and the cheapest and easiest form irrational group cohesion is hatred of the other. There are many ways to define the "other" and you can see it everywhere in politics: race, nationality, language, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and (seriously, humanity actually went here) word choice. Both conservatives and progressives exploit these shamelessly. Stop playing their games.
Let's be blunt.
There are people who have a reason to be particularly sore about slavery. And having the term casually thrown around is insensitive to the intense meaning it has for them. Disingenuously claiming the word in a technical setting has none of the original context, even though it was obviously chosen because of the allusion to historical human slavery (by people who didn't mind the term because they didn't have slave ancestors), doesn't fix the problem.
In other words, stop being a snowflake who freaks out every time someone makes an accommodation that costs you virtually nothing. All I ever hear from the "anti-SJW" crowd is scorn for the idea of micro-aggressions, and then they have these massive freak outs about things that don't affect them in the slightest.
But I give more weight to the offence felt by the descendants of slaves (who still deal with racism and slavery apologists) than the offence felt by people asked to use a different set of technical terms.
While I can see why this would be the case, you also need to give consideration to the implication of allowing the terms to change. Whatever takes their place will have the same meaning and will, in short order, become offensive to the same group, in a never-ending cycle.
That's a reasonable argument applied to a completely inapplicable situation.
You're thinking of cases like retarded -> mentally disabled. In each case it started a way to describe a medical condition, and then people started using it as an insult because it implied people suffered from the medical condition, and then because it was being used as an insult it now became derogatory for people with the medical condition and they started looking for a new medical term.
But that scenario has nothing to do with this.
Modern slave owners aren't going to start calling their slaves followers, and civil war movies aren't going to start talking about freeing the replicas, your objection just doesn't make sense.
Everyone knows that it won't stop there. A few years later there will be more "offensive" words that need to be changed. Personally, I won't stop being offended until we're all coding in machine code and then I'll fight for machine rights because who are we to tell them their language?
I personally don't see the need.
But I give more weight to the offence felt by the descendants of slaves (who still deal with racism and slavery apologists) than the offence felt by people asked to use a different set of technical terms.
they're still used to buy drugs, which keeps the value up. Also money laundering. Now, if the gov't cracks down on the laundering plus legalizes drugs...
The risk for cryptos isn't the government cutting down on laundering and/or drug legalization.
It's the handful of legit merchants going away.
Once the only uses of bitcoin are speculation and illegal activity governments start looking at shutting down the exchanges.
When the exchanges go away even the criminals stop using it because they can't turn their bitcoin into fiat currency.
Slashdot Mirror
40+ years and trillions of dollars after Johnson declared war on poverty and here we are wondering how to enslave more generations in poverty with even more expensive schemes.
Declaring a "war on poverty" is dumb because you can't actually defeat poverty. Even if you implemented strict communism and gave everyone the exact same salary of $100k/year you'd still get a few people who were fundamentally unable to control their spending and would end up hungry and "poor".
However, that doesn't mean you can't make progress in reducing the frequency and severity of poverty. You can reduce the number of poor people and their kids who don't have enough food to eat, who lack reasonable accommodations, who don't have access to health care, who are at the mercy of abusive managers since they're scared of losing their job. A UBI is one of the tools that can help with a lot of those problems.
That is a complete nonsese. Let's say everyone will get $1000 UBI. Does this mean, that they will earn $1000 more of value? NO. It will inflate global prices about $1000 so prices will be (TODAY_PRICES + $1000), so they will gain no value at all. No one.
That's not how economics works. A UBI is re-distributive, if Sue has $10K, and Frank and George only have $1K then sellers have a lot of incentive to create things for Sue and not much to make things for Frank and George.
But if Sue now only has $8K and Frank and George have $2K sellers are going to shift some effort away from making things for Sue and put more effort into making things for George and Frank.
How this translates into prices is fuzzy and very circumstantial. Housing generally gets cheaper, Sue can probably buy most of the same super-expensive properties as before, because even though she's $2K poorer so are the other rich people she's bidding against. Though some houses and luxury apartments are turned into higher density property that the slightly wealthier Frank and George can now afford.
Sue's designer brands mostly stay around but get cheaper, luxury goods consumed by Frank and George probably get more expensive. Ordinary goods like groceries probably stay the same though Frank and George might shift to more expensive brands. Overall the effect is probably more economic activity since poor people tend to spend whatever money you give them, weirdly enough it could even boost employment since extra workers will be needed to capture that economic activity.
If this translates to economic growth you might see some inflation but probably not much since more goods are being produced. Even if you do something dumb like just print $1000k instead of taxing so Sue has $11k instead of $8k it probably doesn't inflate much, certainly not $1k per person. Again, rich people like Sue don't actually spend their money so it doesn't affect prices that much when they get more money.
if we don't have a strong, coordinated response to a large scale outbreak yeah, it'll happen again. We haven't magically evolved somehow. We're still vulnerable to the same crap we always were.
This is kind of a sticking point for me. I know lots of folks who, because something bad hasn't happened recently or to them or their immediate family, they think it's a non issue. Like those folks who were vehemently opposed to background checks for guns until they were shot at or folks in favor of single payer healthcare because they lost their jobs after a stroke. People's inability or unwillingness to extrapolate never ceases to amaze and infuriate me...
Though I think we're much better able to have a strong, coordinated response now than 100 years ago.
1) Our ability to treat sick people is a lot better.
2) Wide scale distribution of surgical masks is way more feasible now than 100 years ago.
3) Lots of people can work remotely if need be.
4) Hygiene is way better.
5) Schools could even be closed if need be, with remote learning options used as much as possible.
Sure these are progressively more drastic actions, but if we're hitting even a 1% fatality rate I suspect most go into effect.
The reports were that the original agreement also included the two independent directors.
The two independent directors on the board, yes. But not the new committee of independent directors with the power to oversee his communications.
He will still be running the company and he may yet take it private. This is a victory for Musk. The SEC backed down from insisting on removing his as CEO.
Removing him as CEO was the remedy if he went to trial.
But compared to reports of the settlement he turned down a couple days ago this new deal seem to ban him from chairman for an extra year and adds a new independent committee that can regulate his communications.
If true turning down the first deal was a pretty significant misstep by Musk.
He said he "would much prefer a feature that can automatically dial a user-determined contact."
This is also a bit problematic. What if that contact doesn't answer the phone, or it goes to voicemail, what's the service to do then? What if a stranger picks up the phone, or it's an old number, etc, etc.
There's probably a few people who would do well with that feature but I'm guessing most user-determined contacts wouldn't respond appropriately if a call ever came in. And I suspect that first responders are fairly lenient when they come in and see signs of illegal activity (I'm sure there's exceptions), though I suspect a drug trafficker would get reported.
The auto-opt in is definitely a concern, as is the concern about false positives. I could certainly see the occasional elderly person taking more than a minute to figure out the alarm sound, or if they dropped the watch on the floor taking more than a minute to retrieve it.
The new CoC is so broad with its definition of what is abusive that it's suddenly turned normal conversation on the mailing list into a minefield:
"It's crazy to use a signed int for measuring the size of a buffer here."
"'Crazy' is a derogatory comment; you can't refuse my code on that basis."
"Jesus! Right. I'm sorry."
"I'm an atheist and object to your proselytizing at me."
etc.
It's a classic example of more detailed text making it harder to be reasonable instead of easier, or if you prefer making it easier to be unreasonable. For the person who wants to be disruptive, it gives far too many things they can point to while at the same time making it harder for the rest of the group to exclude that disruptive person because "I'm just enforcing the CoC you all agreed to"
That strikes me as a bit of a contrived example. Some people will nitpick, and I'm sure someone will complain about "crazy" once in a while but it will hardly be a regular thing.
I also think it's a bad idea when reviewing code to use phrases like:
"It's crazy to use a signed int for measuring the size of a buffer here."
Because you're saying it's bad but you're not saying WHY it's bad.
"It's definitely possible for the buffer to exceed 2^15, this should be an unsigned int"
or
"We use unsigned ints for buffer size everywhere else, using signed here would just be confusing"
Sure it's just an example you made up, but it's a real issue. When you reject something you need to give a reason, if you say it's because it's "crazy" or "stupid" you're not really explaining anything but it feels like a justification and people tend to leave it at that. If you're not allowed to be obnoxious you suddenly realize you need to justify your position, sometimes this educates the contributor, but some times you realize you can't justify your position because you were wrong.
Plus, once you call something stupid or crazy it's hard to back down if you made a mistake.
As I said on a previous thread, the problems of society are real and need fixed, but they need to be fixed lower down the stack. Once you start writing software that goes into aircraft or cars, meritocracy is the only option.
But that's it, when you're forced to be respectful you suddenly have to judge on the work rather than acquiescing to whomever is pushing their point more aggressively. It helps create a meritocracy.
Nice ad hom. Now try actually contributing to the conversation.
It's actually pretty relevant. One critical question is whether the CoC is an issue for a significant portion of developers or just a few misogynist's on the Internet.
From the article:
Furthermore, Corbet argued, “no actual developer has gone anywhere near this—all of the people talking about rescission on the list are from outside the kernel development community.”
ESR is controversial though he's made legitimate contributions to the Linux eco-system, but MikeeUSA and unconditionedwitness just seem to be a couple really sketchy individuals. Not exactly indications that droves regular devs are bothered by the CoC.
I'll start.
Whether developers can or cannot legally rescind their code the new CoC is absolutely guaranteed to drive away people who believe their contributions are more important than their genitals. For that reason alone this is not going to turn out well.
I'll finish.
Ignoring your bizarre "genitals" comment the whole rescinding code debate is irrelevant.
A: The CoC has me so outraged I'm rescinding my code from the Kernel!
B: Find, oh, BTW, I'm applying a patch based on A's GPL'd code from yesterday.
I don't see how you could possibly pull code that was legally contributed right out of the ecosystem. I mean that was the entire point of the GPL in the first place other people can use the code as long as it stays GPL'd.
If this was allowed then what's to stop Linus from saying "I just changed my mind, my code is no longer GPL'd, anyone running Linux needs to pay me $1,000,000!!"
It's just not how the GPL works.
Forgot to add...
I believe the SEC will also need to prove that Musk *intended* to manipulate the stock price with his dumb tweet. (There's no law against just being dumb.) I don't think Musk actually was trying to manipulate the stock, and how they're going to make they're argument I'm not sure.
He's been waging a war against the shorts for ages, I think it's a pretty easy leap to make. As for proving it, I don't think there's quite enough public evidence, but with legal proceedings come a lot of ways of extracting the truth. Even something as simple asking a question can be enough since trying to lie your way out can cause way more trouble.
This may not be the slam-dunk that some people expect.
Furthermore, the SEC action may cause far more upheaval in Tesla's stock price and more harm to investors than the incident they are suing over. Is that really sensible? But you know, they want to make an example... They've said as much. This is about regulatory muscle-flexing and generating headlines.
Part of the SEC's job is to make sure CEOs behave responsibly wrt their companies, making an example of someone publicly screwing with the stock price is kind of their job.
Personally, I found the insight into how the Hillary Campaign took over the DNC and rigged the primaries, but that's just me. If you find it chaotic to have a fair and balanced voting system that actually allows US Citizens to have a say in the affairs of their country over that of globalist corporations, then maybe you are the problem. Maybe it is your morals that need a check.
Which just goes to show that leaks don't equal insight.
What the leaks showed was that:
a) Lots of people in the DNC were huge fans of Clinton and skeptical of Sanders. There was certainly a lot of networking on her part, but the DNC was still independent.
b) The overwhelming majority of people in the DNC tried to run the primary in a fair manner (despite their personal preference).
c) In a handful of instances some people did tip the scales to Clinton.
d) There was a lot of pressure for other prospective candidates to clear the deck for Clinton, some from the DNC, some from the candidates not wanting to run a losing campaign, some because Clinton did have a history of shutting out people who didn't back her.
There was a lot of problematic stuff in the emails but nothing particularly specific to Clinton. There's also a worthwhile debate over how inappropriate some of it really was. Insiders do have a lot of knowledge about candidates and issues unavailable to the general public. Ideally you want a system that takes advantage of that. Managing endorsements and encouraging the right people to run is one of the less objectionable ways to do that.
For what it's worth, I think I remember hearing that it went something like this (not sure though, could be wrong):
Assange pretended to put on a condom to get one woman to agree to sex with him, and after having protected sex with another woman (who presumably insisted on checking that he had put on a condom), initiated further unprotected sex while she was asleep. Neither woman initially intended to take any action, but after talking to each other, became concerned that he could be a potential source of infection, and contacted the police to ask if Assange could be compelled to be tested for STIs.
The police took testimony, then indicated that they would be pressing rape charges, against the women's wishes. This is unusual, police usually only press rape charges if a woman agrees to testify for this purpose. However, a senior officer was on leave, and a less experienced officer was handling the case. The women withdrew their testimony, the senior officer returned from leave, and the case was dropped. Assange asked if he could leave the country, was told this was fine, and he left.
The case was then reopened without explanation. (This is the suspicious part.)
Again, not sure this is right, but if it is right, I don't have a problem with Assange being called a rapist, but the handling of the case still seems suspicious.
Actually I think there's some important differences if this recap is accurate.
My reading is that when the encounter happened the women understood something wrong had happened but weren't sure exactly how to feel about it. Sometimes it takes a while to process what happened and figure out both if you've been seriously wronged and if other people will take is seriously.
This first manifested with the STD fears, very legitimate, but also a concrete way to demonstrate they'd been harmed. And note they actually got a hold of Assange before going to the cops, so the trip to the cops wasn't just about STDs, it was to tell an authority figure what happened.
At that point I don't think they intended to press charges.... but they did intend to tell law enforcement what happened realizing that law enforcement might talk them into laying charges. So while they didn't go to the cops with the intent of press charges I do think they went to the cops with the intent of being convinced to lay charges (or some sort of other official action against Assange).
Now the first prosecutor subsequently said it wasn't rape but at this point the women had enough time to decide it was rape, so they got a lawyer and that lawyer got the investigation re-opened. The senior prosecutor took another look, decided it was rape, and went after Assange.
So I don't really find the re-opening suspicious, it's just one of these situations that falls between rape and really sketchy behaviour and it took a while for people to decide it was rape.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing - parametrize the costs of change. It's actually a pretty big blind spot that they missed this, but it's understandable. They tried to fix their issues in one giant step, which naturally flopped.
Instead, tune that algorithm to make very small, yearly changes that move things in the desired direction. Essentially, they need to factor in the human / political element of this, which states that people resist change of all sorts. So the challenge then is to find a path which minimizes the pain of this transition for the most people. So it's a ten year plan instead of getting fixed in one shot.
The basically used an incomplete objective function. I'm not sure the small yearly changes would help since instead of one big headache you're creating a moderate headache each year. Plus, your problem between the current state and the optimal state probably isn't convex, ie there may not be a series of incremental steps that don't incur some major costs along the way.
I think the better strategy is to look for situations when the routes and/or schedules need to change anyway and take the best smallest modification.
What am I missing in this debate about 3D printed guns?
Right now? Not much.
In 10 years... maybe quite a bit.
I think the idea is to try and get the 3d printed gun community under control as much as possible before the tech really matures.
Both men have greatly inconvenienced the US government shortly before these allegations came to light, however...
And what?
The US government got a 16 year old to join sugardaddy.com and manipulated Wilson into messaging and arranging an encounter with her?
The US government got Assange to play fast and loose with a couple sexual liaisons, then convinced the women to file complaints?
Here's another theory, people with huge egos who play loose with the law in one area tend to do the same in other areas as well.
It's also true that making yourself notorious might cause people to walk by your closets to see if any skeletons are peaking out. We don't know the details of the case against Wilson to know if that was the situation here but it's certainly possible Wilson was only caught because he was already under scrutiny.
Slashdot economics experts: China has been bullying other countries economically for decades and unfairly favoring its own companies. We have to do something about it before its too late. The longer we wait the more painful it will be.
After Trump ........
Slashdot economics experts: WAAA Trump did something China didn't like and they gave me a booboo. Waaa we must never offend china to keep cheap chinese goods forever!
China has also been giving other countries cheap good for decades, it wasn't necessarily a bad thing for those countries. It's made the US and other countries very rich in terms of material goods and freed up labour to do more productive things. It's not all great of course, not all of those jobs could be replaced and at some point China starts taking jobs you'd really prefer to keep and exerting influence in ways you don't like.
But lets accept the premise that you do need to start pushing back against China, it's fairly reasonable. There's a difference between doing X effectively and doing X like a counterproductive moron.
What's one way to counter China? How about big trade deals with other nations, like the Trans Pacific Partnership... oops... Trump backed out of that.
What about rallying your allies to excerpt pressure against China, like Obama did to make the Iran deal. Oops again. Trump has made it toxic for US allies to cooperate.
Maybe you can come to an agreement with China's leaders where there ease up on their more controversial practices? Well there's another oops. Trump style of shaming the other country makes them willing to absorb a lot of pain before they give in on any policy.
Fine if you want a more confrontational approach with China, you have possibly the most ill-equipped President in your history trying to execute it.
Not the whole city of ~80k people, just 1/394th of the city. 0,3km^2. Just a big pedestrian mall, really.
Why is this news?
If you look around with Google Street View at what I assume is the proper location you can see a few delivery and other construction vehicles, but otherwise it's a lot of foot traffic.
The one thing I'm curious about is residents, if the city centre is all tourist and business than you can make do with foot traffic. But do residents with cars need to park outside the boundaries?
I'm avoiding cryptocurrency because I don't understand anything more than the basics but the guy in the baseball cap comes across like a spoiled brat, constantly name-dropping economists, brags about how many economics books he's read, and argues based on anecdotes and emotions instead of logic.
I've been skeptical of the long term viability for a while but this debate really sealed the deal for me.
One of the people arguing for Bitcoin was again one of the big names in the community, and he was generally nutty and incoherent. I don't know if he was always that unhinged or if he'd been living inside the bubble for too long, but it was clear that at the highest levels the Bitcoin community isn't able to filter the crazy out. And when a community can't get the crazy out at the top level then the foundations are probably not that stable either.
Why do people act like a project would be forced to take in substandard code just because the maintainers aren't allowed to be assholes? Constructive criticism and mentoring can be used just as well in place of being a dickish aspie.
One person with high standards is another person's "dickish aspie."
I think being a dick makes it easier in some ways to keep high standards since it's easy to call out BS, but I've also seen projects fail because a senior person was being a dick and no one was willing to withstand the abuse of critiquing their decisions.
One person's constructive criticism is another's micro-aggression, sexism, racism, or whatever negative-label du jour used as a club. Projects aren't forced to take in substandard code but some projects have experienced severe losses by trying your approach and giving an inch. Take firefox as an example.
People start suspecting the *isms when the criticism is centred on the person and not the work because it makes people wonder whether the criticism is motivated by the work or by a bias against the person. And frankly, when you start criticizing the person you personalize the conflict and make it much more difficult to come to a clean resolution.
Treat the other person with respect and you can still take a firm line on code quality without being a dick.
The real news here isn't that Linus decided to get some therapy.
The real news is that Linux, the project, adopted the "Contributor's Covenant" code of conduct and thereby acknowledged SJW ideological supremacy.
Yes! How terrible that a project adopt a code of conduct where people are asked to be courteous and treat others with respect!
While the CC appears on the surface to be a call of civility, it's actually the tip of a very long and exsanguatory anti-meritocracy spear, one that ultimately seeks to elevate high-verbal-IQ non-technical politics-playing San-Francisco-residing cliques of social justice advocates into positions of recognition and authority in the free software world and beyond.
We are all in awe of your high-verbal-IQ demonstrating your totally coherent and rational analysis!
This is a very curious move from Linus. He's previously been so adamantly anti-tone-policing, anti-SJW, and pro-meritocracy that I can't help but wonder if he is in fact being blackmailed or coerced in some fashion. Back in 2015, ESR reported that the tech-SJW community was attempting to frame Linux in some fashion. My personal hunch is that Linus got complacent about operational security and eventually got caught in an SJW trap.
So totally coherent and rational and not at all devolving into conspiracy theories.
Of course it won't work, since blackmailers are never contented. But in the heat of the moment, it doesn't feel that way.
This is a very sad day.
Oops, we've apparently decided it's not a theory and a fact! Linus has been captured by the SJWs!! Someone rally an army of obnoxious politically incorrect men to save him!!!
They're obviously lying. Politicians are gonna love the proliferation of deepfakes. That way, the next time they say something stupid in an interview, they can say the clip is a deepfake. They're just starting to blame them as an upcoming problem now so they can start using it as an excuse ASAP.
It also means there will be countless fake videos of them doing and saying all sorts of horrible things. Do you really want the internet to be filled with videos of yourself raping children while yelling the N word?
good fucking god. you stupid fucking pc idiots are ruining the world for the majority.
So what's next.... No more /sbin/kill for processes?
Ya know, any app that has "client" in the name probably refers to prostitution... Thats got to go too.
Oh My God! /usr/bin/touch promotes sexual assult. That's got to go too.
totem is going to offend Native Americans....
mount is sexist also....
reject.. That's going to hurt someones feelings, GONE.
Fuck it, lets just burn all the computers and go back to using bows and arrows, and hunting in the woods.....
Hmm, I need a method that's going to delete all objects of a given class in an application.
I'm guessing you'd be fine if I call the method "holocaust()"? What about "application.finalSolution()" and it implements the holocaust functionality.
I suspect a lot of people here would find that naming offensive or at least problematic, but I'm not sure that's it's functionally different from the master/slave terminology.
This trend of seeking offense where none is intended is incredibly toxic to humanity. In the English language many words have different meanings based on their context. It's plainly obvious that no allusion to human slavery is meant in the context of software or hardware module relationships.
Let's be blunt about what has happened: people have been abusively harmed by others lying to them and telling them that context is meaningless. They have been given invented forms of discomfort in order to make them slaves to unpleasant emotional responses that have no underlying basis in reality. That's the irony here. The people complaining about the terminology are behaving in a herd manner, controlled by powermongers who benefit from it. Power flows from irrational group cohesion, and the cheapest and easiest form irrational group cohesion is hatred of the other. There are many ways to define the "other" and you can see it everywhere in politics: race, nationality, language, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and (seriously, humanity actually went here) word choice. Both conservatives and progressives exploit these shamelessly. Stop playing their games.
Let's be blunt.
There are people who have a reason to be particularly sore about slavery. And having the term casually thrown around is insensitive to the intense meaning it has for them. Disingenuously claiming the word in a technical setting has none of the original context, even though it was obviously chosen because of the allusion to historical human slavery (by people who didn't mind the term because they didn't have slave ancestors), doesn't fix the problem.
In other words, stop being a snowflake who freaks out every time someone makes an accommodation that costs you virtually nothing. All I ever hear from the "anti-SJW" crowd is scorn for the idea of micro-aggressions, and then they have these massive freak outs about things that don't affect them in the slightest.
But I give more weight to the offence felt by the descendants of slaves (who still deal with racism and slavery apologists) than the offence felt by people asked to use a different set of technical terms.
While I can see why this would be the case, you also need to give consideration to the implication of allowing the terms to change. Whatever takes their place will have the same meaning and will, in short order, become offensive to the same group, in a never-ending cycle.
That's a reasonable argument applied to a completely inapplicable situation.
You're thinking of cases like retarded -> mentally disabled. In each case it started a way to describe a medical condition, and then people started using it as an insult because it implied people suffered from the medical condition, and then because it was being used as an insult it now became derogatory for people with the medical condition and they started looking for a new medical term.
But that scenario has nothing to do with this.
Modern slave owners aren't going to start calling their slaves followers, and civil war movies aren't going to start talking about freeing the replicas, your objection just doesn't make sense.
Does PC cultures have to infect everything?
Everyone knows that it won't stop there. A few years later there will be more "offensive" words that need to be changed. Personally, I won't stop being offended until we're all coding in machine code and then I'll fight for machine rights because who are we to tell them their language?
I personally don't see the need.
But I give more weight to the offence felt by the descendants of slaves (who still deal with racism and slavery apologists) than the offence felt by people asked to use a different set of technical terms.
they're still used to buy drugs, which keeps the value up. Also money laundering. Now, if the gov't cracks down on the laundering plus legalizes drugs...
The risk for cryptos isn't the government cutting down on laundering and/or drug legalization.
It's the handful of legit merchants going away.
Once the only uses of bitcoin are speculation and illegal activity governments start looking at shutting down the exchanges.
When the exchanges go away even the criminals stop using it because they can't turn their bitcoin into fiat currency.