spaced_out

When Twitter's defense against the government's request is because of the ideal of free speech, not the First Amendment but the ideal that it is based on that predates the First Amendment, then it is worth pointing out the double standard in Twitter's own behavior not upholding that ideal.

There's no double standard though. This is like saying: "how can a newspaper say they're in favor of free speech if they're not willing to publish any story that's submitted to them?"

Twitter can support free speech by advocating for their right to control their platform, and for other people to have the right to create their own platforms and put content on it. The government using strong-arm tactics to unmask critics is a threat to free speech through any medium.

That's not going to happen as long as there are at least 40 Republicans in the senate. They used a filibuster to block a moderate Supreme Court nominee, you think they'll even consider allowing an internet reform bill to come to a vote?

I don't think it's as likely as you assume. Let's say you ask the computer to implement your adder, and you feed it the results of a few dozen, or a few hundred uint32 a + uint32 b = uint32 c operations. By coincidence, however, in all of those operations, every time bit a[14] is zero, bit c[26] also happens to be zero. The computer may produce an implementation which assumes this is always the case. The computer may also reason it does not need to look at some of the input bits, if say, for all of the tests, bit b[2] == bit b[16].

It may seem that a solution with assumptions like those are more complex than a simple addition operation, and thus the computer will find the addition solution first, but "simple" is a matter of perspective. Addition requires a logic cascade through the entire number, since the carries of the lower bits must be passed to the upper bits, which requires a critical path equal to the entire length of the inputs/outputs. In searching for an implementation which satisfies the few dozen/hundred test cases you feed it, making assumptions like those in the first paragraph can drastically shorten the critical path, and require far less logic since it's ignoring much of the input. Thus algorithmically, the addition operation may be seen as more complex.

The only solution is to be more self-disciplined, and there is no magic trick for that. Discipline takes time and effort to develop, and you'll be disappointed with yourself plenty of times along the way. The only secret is to keep trying.

To brag slightly, but maybe add some perspective, for many years I wanted to learn to speak Spanish. Now, I'm at the point where I can read the news in Spanish with hardly any difficulty, have read a few high-school level books, and can hold conversations, even on engineering topics, without too many mistakes.

For years it was just something I kind of wanted and put off, but at some point I wanted it bad enough, that I committed, and followed through, with spending a few hours every day studying. Sure, sometimes things just came up and I missed a day or so, other times I fell into my old patterns of playing video games after work and was disappointed in myself, but everyone gets disappointed in themselves sometimes (otherwise you must have no shame whatsoever). The important thing is to just try again tomorrow.

Anyways, I didn't really mean for this to sound braggy, but I did want to answer your post. Things like working from home and organizing and/or coming up with a scheduling system helps some people, it may even help you, but you won't develop more discipline overnight. In my opinion, the only secret to becoming more productive with your time is not never give up trying to be more productive with your time.

You are aware that de Vere died in 1604, and Shakespeare published 13 plays between then and his death in 1616? Among those 13 are some of his best works, like King Lear and Macbeth, so it's not like he was running out of 'A' material in those years either.

Maybe the plays and sonnets read like late Tudor court poetry because they are late Tudor court poetry?

I imagine you as some sort of cartoonish stereotype of a British noble, twirling your moustache as you say: "Because surely, a mere commoner could never have written such great works!"

The fact is that Shakespeare worked at the Globe Theater as a playwright when these plays were produced, and received much critical acclaim for his writing. No one disputed that during his lifetime. Furthermore, his father was an alderman, the rough equivalent of a town councilman in Stratford, so although Shakespeare was not a noble, he did come from an educated family.

Of course, hundreds of years later, people can make up all sorts of stories to explain why someone would pour hours of work into writing poetry in iambic pentameter, see them praised, give credit to a random bum, and continue to do this for decades (even from beyond the grave, apparently). There is, however, not a shred of evidence to back any of this. The fact that the writer of those plays was clearly very talented is not evidence against them being written by William Shakespeare. The fact that "to [your] ear" they sound like something de Vere wrote is not evidence of anything either.

Shakespeare conspiracies are literally Ancient Aliens level history. "There are some details we don't know about history, so therefore aliens!" is replaced with: "there are some details of Shakespeare's life we don't know, so therefore it must have been some sort of crazy conspiracy!"

He's saying that what techies consider to be "problems within their domain" is worth some introspection.

But couldn't that lead to exactly the sort of arrogance that Maciej argues against? That engineers think their ability to solve tech-related problems means they are specially equipped to solve more complex problems in society?

For example, if some sociology major who had no programming experience tried to advise me on a challenge I have with some software I'm working on, based on something they read in Wired, I'm probably just going to roll my eyes. Frankly, it's pretty unlikely that someone who no background in the field I've dedicated my professional life to studying, can provide useful advice.

Likewise, do you think an engineer can provide useful advice on how to deal with poverty to a sociologist, one who has spent their career studying this issue? Do you really think the secret to improving society is to have a bunch of techies telling sociologists and economists how they think things should be run?

Maybe the right thing for techies is to pay their taxes, and participate in local elections as informed voters. Other than that, maybe we should stick to tech, and leave running society to the professionals.

As a child, I heard all kinds of horrific stories Tibetan monks and their rebellious army inflicted on the Chinese soldiers and civilians alike. For that reason, many Han Chinese families kept firearms at home in that area, a rare thing in China.

I'm guessing they didn't tell you about the horrific treatment many Tibetans suffered in the years after the PRC invasion. During the Cultural Revolution, the conservative estimates put the number of extra-judicial executions in Tibet at around 22,000.

Plus, over 6,000 monasteries, the vast majority that have ever existed, were ransacked during that time, which was only a few decades ago. It's rather one-sided to call the Tibetan religious leaders "brutal", and not acknowledge that they have been the recipients of far more brutality in the last few decades.

The title is somewhat sensationalist, but there have been articles coming out for months, including from more respected papers like WSJ and NYT, claiming they have info from sources inside the company that there are discussions about selling their core businesses assets.

These were of course unsubstantiated, but now Yahoo reports another bad quarter, a bunch of layoffs, and also says this:

The Board also believes that exploring additional strategic alternatives, in parallel to the execution of the management plan, is in the best interest of our shareholders. Separating our Alibaba stake from our operating business continues to be a primary focus, and our most direct path to value maximization. In addition to continuing work on the reverse spin, which we've discussed previously, we will engage on qualified strategic proposals."

That does seem like a dodgy way of asking for offers.

That isn't something that can be argued against with facts.

Yes it can. In the context of a law class, there's tons of laws which clearly state that rape is a crime, so it clearly does matter. That's just as factually incorrect as saying "Fraud does not matter because suckers aren't important." You can't just say: "_______ isn't important." in a law class.

If I were a history professor and someone tried to bring up Holocaust denial in my class, I'd first explain why it's absurd to try and argue that all that evidence is somehow fake, which then shows that anyone who tries to defend this position either:

1. Has legitimately no idea what they're talking about.

2. Has willfully taken up the agenda of bending the truth to support Nazi-ism.

I wouldn't shout them down though. That's counter-productive.