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rwj

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Except that the plural of anecdotes is definitely not data, because without controlling for confounding variables and sampling biases, you will get garbage.

Except that all the people using left-pad weren't paying for left-pad, and didn't have a contractual relationship with the author. IANAL, but I'm doubtful the courts would find there is enough of a relationship for the author to be liable.

Modern Malaise 4 years ago

There is nothing wrong with some income inequality. Too much inequality is known to be destabilizing (sorry, don't have a reference on hand).

If rule #1 is don't break userspace, we might need a rule #0, which would be don't support insecure behaviour. In the end, people might need to balance competing concerns...

That fact is certainly a stain on history, but sidesteps the observation that European powers were able to militarily overpower so many other regions because they were already richer and technologically advanced compared to other regions.

Backwards compatibility is holding the evolution of C and C++ back. Design improvements can't get approved if they affect ABI. Many of those improvements affect performance. The ecosystem needs a way to move forward without breaking ABI.

I don't mind if it inconvenience the government, but they have severely impacted residential neighbourhoods as well. Others in the movement have blocked commercial traffic across the border, putting people jobs at risk.

Ironically, I think these higher pressure activities will back fire. They could probably find a lot of support for easing restrictions, but destroying people's homes and jobs is not going to make or keep friends.

I agree that this approach is much better for stability. The trade off is that a lot of systems will end up missing their needed security updates. Very few people are consciously balancing their type I and type II errors when considering upgrade strategies.

Perhaps true, but not the main topic of this post. C and C++ are at the foundation of a great deal of software, and that creates a lot of pressure for stability. This is blocking evolution of both languages. Stability is great, but stagnation (sooner or later) will get you.

If you are in this type of business, you probably also get regular audits. Checking that you have access to the relevant standards is something that ends up checked from time to time. Pirated copies will do more harm then good when that time arrives.

This argument is full of equivocation. The consequences of speech are exactly what is being debated. An exchange of ideas, then yes. Censorship by the mob (instead of government), then no.