3d3mon

Null references do make reading code more complex for the user since every function call must be prefaced with a null check. If I make a function call in every line of my code adding all the null checks would easily double my line count, burying my code in Java-like verbosity (ok not that much but you get the idea). I suppose a good IDE could help with this if option types remain unavailable.

Another common complaint with null references is that there is no compile-time type safety that you get with option types. The go team could mitigate this by having the compiler check for possible null references that may not have been caught and emit warnings or refuse to compile.

Both of your examples are new to me as well, however I can make sense of topics discussed. Just to use your example, the first equation for B-splines defines it as a function from a tuple of ordered reals to real vector of dimension d. The real difficulty with math is not so much the symbols as they give a precise but very legalistic way of defining things but the underlying concept or intuition that it represents, the deep semantics if you will. The best analogy is law. The way a lawyer or judge defines things will be different from the way a lay person would due to the difference in precision. The descriptions will be technically correct but will make you second guess on what it really means. I wouldn't go so far as to say it sucks but math is definitely scientific legalese.

Rather than saying what is descriptively and historically accurate, I believe Thiel and Kasparov are merely issuing a challenge, if stated in a somewhat hyperbolic way, to today's innovators/entrepreneurs. If read in this light, they are cheerleaders not historians.

I imagine voting out Biden/Hatch means the next set of pols will just take the campaign contributions instead. What can be done structurally to prevent this cycle from repeating?

I think strict regulation is the way to go. Banking in a modern economy is really a utility like gas, electric, and water.

Another solution that is more long term oriented and market based: create rival capital-formation pools outside of Wall and Broad, say in the Midwest, South, and West Coast. That way if one pool blows up, we can let them fail and it won't take out the whole economy. It also removes single points of failure from the system. I think the crowdsourcing bill floating in Congress is a great start as it decentralizes capital-raising.

Then here's something different for you from the LAT: a guy with an MBA, a law degree, has Wall St experience, six figures in debt and hasn't found a job in years.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fi-america-...

Some seem rather obvious:

"The technology behind one patent allows a site to offer suggestions to consumers for items related to what they're currently viewing, or related to online activities of others in the case of social networking sites.

A second, among other things, allow readers of a news story to quickly locate stories related to a particular subject. Two others enable ads, stock quotes, news updates or video images to flash on a computer screen, peripherally to a user's main activity."

If you try your hand at this "armchair budget analyst" game, you'll learn that its easier practically and politically (yes, politically) to just raise the money, especially in a state like CA:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-statebudget-fl,0,95571....

To be fair, the CA real estate boom/bust really did a number on the state's coffers. To ignore the impact of the "great recession" is to not see the problem accurately. The govt relied on increasing property tax revenue that disappeared as quickly as the monopoly money used to pay for it (aka subprime loans) and on state income taxes and sales taxes from workers who quickly lost their real estate bubble jobs. If those workers still had their jobs and homeowners still had their homes, we'd find something else to complain about. Moral of the story is be careful when playing with credit.

Just as easy for Windows. Use clojurebox. Double click the .exe file.

http://clojure.bighugh.com/

> Trade policies and externalities have absolutely nothing to do with that.

You're right on that since we're clearly talking past each other :-) Yes, businesses become commodities over time. We agree here. However this is orthogonal to innovation and job creation. If an old mature industry is on its last throes, then by all means, farm that out. Those jobs are gone. But that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about new industries that if they can stay put for even say 5-10 years could provide immense benefits to the innovating nation. It keeps the middle class healthy and prevents the have/have-not scenario that you mentioned as troublesome. I share those same concerns. It also creates an in-house knowledge base for future innovation and an investing base for venture capital formation (think Paypal/Google mafia). It also has the effect of incenting the country to implement pro-innovation policies to continually lay those golden eggs. A virtuous cycle if I ever saw one.

Now enter the bureaucrats in Beijing who have created their own "incentives". The main one being cost which they obtain by mortgaging their labor/environment and toying with the exchange rate. These aren't truly economic advantages but are really artificial rules put in place by a planning committee for national interest. Government intervention if you will. Entrepreneurs and startups who must factor in cost to any decision are thus improperly incented to quickly offshore. Thus we have the familiar story of "we innovate and they get the jobs" This is why Grove said creating more startups won't do anything to help US unemployment since they do their scaling elsewhere. The proper course of action is for China to due away with their policies but we can't make them. This is game theory folks. The unfortunate reality is that the rules of engagement are written by bureaucrats and Grove is saying if China is playing that game we must too.

> Grove is basically saying we need to start more companies that "scale up" to require factories where people sit doing stuff like what's seen in that video. He's wrong.

You have to give Grove more credit than that. Obviously, he does not want to create clock-punching jobs just for the sake of having clock-punching jobs. Grove is known to run a tight ship. His example of the alternative energy space is a perfect one demonstrating the inability of even new industries invented in the US to remain here. All the "scaling" happens in China, leaving little secondary benefits to the innovating nation. Why can't your oscilloscope be made here? Sure, they have the know-how, but so do we. They have assembly lines, so can we. In theory there shouldn't be a problem. But in the real world, we know the playing field isn't level. Like how China allows externalities to develop by quashing labor/worker conditions and the environment to create the perfect arbitrage situation for offshoring US entrepreneurs. Can't forget their dollar/yuan "managed" exchange rate. Again, they are subsidizing the offshoring startup. China has clearly stacked the deck hence the inevitability of your oscilloscope being made overseas. This is by design and its all policy-driven. Should the US sit idly by as a de facto trade war is staring at them in the face? Or should they follow through with the offshore tariff that Andy suggested? Controversial, no doubt, but one must do whatever it takes to win a war.

CB, you make good business argument for the current microeconomic behavior of firms but you must put on a political-economic hat and think decades down the road to really get at his thinking (and he's as sharp as they come). I believe Andy is being long term greedy. He's fighting the next war.