optforfon

This is very hearsay-ish, but I have a friend of a friend who had to work with the CryEngine (I think it was for one of those Sonic games) and it was described as so incredibly buggy and you have to debug it constantly.

Maybe this is their attempt to have the community fix it for them =)

b/c you're kinda missing the point of the firewall

First all 99% of the Chinese internet content is hosted domestically - so unless a Chinese person is fluent in english it's harder to access foreign information, and they have their own cat videos anyways

The goal really is to have no institutions that rival the government for organizing people and disseminating information. You can always get around the firewall, and news sites are actually accessible - even sometimes facebook will work from China. The system isn't perfect, but the authorities are happy if at the end of the day people don't have twitter/facebook/G+ accounts, they don't visit foreign sites regularly b/c they've been made unreliable, and they end up in domestic forums where things can be monitored and contained.

When authorities see the Arab Spring Twitter revolution they're probably thinking "yeaaahhh... that's exactly what we want to avoid. No foreign social media please"

"You can just write the tests for a class or a piece of functionality at the bottom of it's source file - or even header file!"

Woah.. this makes it so easy I might even use it. I'm really not a fan of TDD b/c it explodes the number of things you have to maintain - but the way this is rolled in with the documentation makes it quite appealing. Thank you so much for you work. If I start to use this regularly, I'll make sure to donate

That part didn't make sense to me. Why does it stay more radioactive for a period of time after the accident? The pieces are separated - shouldn't it return to it's previous state? .I can understand it heating up (though can't you just cool it down mechanically?) but that's not really the same

Cool, but I'm having trouble imagining how I'd use it in my workflow.. Is there a demo or something?

I've only used interpreters in MATLAB/R where you have to write one-liners to massage data into the format you need - which seems pretty orthogonal to the way you work in C++

Last time I tried Eclipse (2-3 months ago) it wasn't usable on high DPI screens. Have they fixed tat?

Are the two are mutually exclusive? I'd argue both are true to a degree - though "conditioned response" evokes the kind of simplistic "mindless puppet" view of the Chinese perspective I'm trying to avoid. It has its own self contained logic that should be appreciated regardless if it's something from their culture and traditions, or something instilled subversively by the government. All I've tried to do is illustrate that logic as best as I understand it - without passing judgments or condoning it

Hey, sorry, I think a lot of people got the impression I was condoning their censorship. I didn't really mean to do that.

It's more that in the west we just see it as this horrible evil thing and it seems completely bizarre that anyone would be okay with it. I guess we just assume they must put up with it when in fact they have their own rational for supporting it (which ultimately is flawed, but it's still very interesting)

Have you traveled to Taiwan? I went there a few weeks ago and I found it a fascinating place. While it's definitely got it's own identity it also is definitely very "Chinese". Like more "Chinese" than probably some provinces in the mainland. And on the mainland they get TV shows and stuff from Taiwan and people know where Taipei and Kunming are on a map. People look forward to visiting Kenting some day. Families are split between mainland and Taiwan etc. So I can sorta see why they look at it all and think it's all part of the same country. (kinda how we think Canadians are basically Americans) And you're right, they definitely have no idea about how it'd actually work haha and they definitely have a complete disregard for what the Taiwanese want (needs of the many > needs of the few I guess??). One thing I heard is them wanting to have a Hong Kong type of deal with Taiwan ... to which I said: "yeah right, over all their collective dead bodies"

I think you've completely missed the point. I wasn't talking about politics at all, nor was I condoning censorship and saying it's some moral good.

I'm just illustrating its perceived benefits. While we as a country have a national freak-out and foam at the mouth because we saw a nipple during the super bowl - some people might see that are media manipulation of mass psychology

When it comes to politics they're obviously using it for their own benefit, keeping their people in the dark and trying to rob the country as much as possible without being too obnoxious about it. These things are completely obvious to any outside observer and it's not interesting to just repeat them ad nauseum. I find it much more interesting to think that the censorship lets them say... contain hysteria about terrorism after the attacks in Xinjiang, or stop the whole place from turning into a crazy anti Japanese riot when some PM decides to go visit Yasukuni.

Then you can stop and think "Oh okay.. I can see how they can end up thinking it's a good thing..." B/c at face-value it makes no sense for them to put with it

I think they'd characterize click-bait sensationalism as effectively lying and their censorship as a means to dampen it

I'm not condoning their censorship. Yeah, obviously it leads to the government twisting the truth to toot it's own horn. On the political side of things its terrible

EDIT: Just to clarify, there is definitely brainwashing in terms of government agendas and things of that sorta. It's terrible. I'm illustrating what is locally perceived as the positive aspect of censorship outside of politics

Well people for the most part are pretty a-political. When you don't have 24/7 coverage of clowns running for president people don't really have it at the front of their minds. And while in the west we have very little agency when it comes to political affairs, here of course it's basically non existent. So people while there are strange/strong opinions on Russia, Taiwan, the US, islands in the Pacific, no one is foaming at the mouth - and in terms of priorities it's all somewhere slightly below the latest NBA results.

With regards to censorship I think it's an interesting perspective - that's all. I try not to judge it too much. I prefer the chaos of the western media where you can find nuggets of gold in the piles of clickbait trash. I'd love for them to get there in the long term ofcourse, but I guess i can see how horrifying it must seem to them to have that in a very rumor prone under-educated society of over a billion people. I'm very hopeful for the coming generation. They seem incredibly educated (they learn calculus in middle school!!) and openminded. But looking from here at places like Pakistan and Egypt where rumors and completely fantastical ideas about the US, government conspiracies etc. etc. are the norm - that seems a lot more frightening. I mean even Americans are prone to some fantastical thinking (I remember asking at a hostel "who believes 9/11 was a conspiracy?" - I think 6 out of 7 people did . The one guy who didn't was part Israeli. here is a depressing read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polls_about_9/11_consp...)

Barring the dis-functionality angle, the psychology/sociology of it is interesting. It's sorta like cocacola ads, (no one thinking it really affects them) no one really think they consume "trashy" media, but we acknowledge that as a society we are consuming a ton of it. So if you were to not have black and white view on civil liberties (I mean it's already an autocratic government, why not make the most of it haha ) at first blush it seems kinda reasonable to say "hey, why don't we just cut out this crap and only show the BBC, PBS and some quality historical documentaries? That way people will stop wasting their time having aneurysms over total garbage" (if you think about the collect man hours spent watching something like Pawn Stars it's pretty depressing)

To be clear the censorship hasn't gone as far as cutting out crappy TV shows or anything like that (though the new anti-video game stuff seems to suggest they're moving in that direction). But stamping out rumors and media sensationalism is definitely going on (along with completely legitimate news that people should be aware of that paints the wrong people in a bad light).

And yeah, there are totally skewed perceptions of the west here - for sure. And they have their own garbage feed by the government. It's shocking at times. A good friend was telling me that China should make a stronger case internationally for "retaking" Siberia. I'm kinda trying to do my part in bridging the divide and bring maybe a window into the way people are thinking (or not thinking!) about these things here. It's not just a bunch of brainwashed commies that have no idea what's going on in the outside world - it's more nuanced than that and has it's own self consistent logic to it. It might not be the ideal, it may be worse than our system, but it is what it is and it doesn't hurt to appreciate it

Thanks! Didn't know that

Just to give you a bit of local perspective: talking to the locals here in China (and actually a Chinese Malaysian guy I met too .. so it's not just confined to the people agrarian paradise), they ofcourse know that this is happening, but they don't envy our free for all either.

The article says "a massive effort to distract its citizens from bad news and sensitive political debates" but of course that's just one angle. The local perspective is seeing it mostly as an effort by the government to try to moderate sensationalism, things getting spun out of proportion and down right fabrications (ie. US-TV news, Buzzfeed et al)

They see our CNN having some 24hr coverage of a kitten stuck in a tree - which they will not stop till either half the nation is foaming at the mouth with rage at the government's incompetence or it just becomes too absurd to keep up - and they are understandably horrified

Doe anyone know why Google decided on a jury trial? It seems they are technically in the right, but explaining it to an educated judge in a bench trial would be a lot easier than a random sample of non-programmers.

woah.. didn't know about that. It's a monster list of exposed internal variables? Talk about inaccessible...

Anyone want to place bets on how long till Firefox copies them?

Same thing with Firefox. It's really frustrating. The options are incredibly sparse. I feel like there is a complete lack of creativity on the part of browser developers are to features that it'd be nice to have

I feel like this is a bit heretical, but I feel like fonts in practice are something that you just kinda get used to after a day of use.

The only time you're really aware of them is when you look at two fonts side by side. So the trick for me has been to use the same font everywhere in my system. For me that's been Noto/Noto-Mono. They're trying to eventually cover all of Unicode and I personally (after a bit of adjustment) really like the long and skinny. It also has really nice Asian characters natively so it doesn't ever look goofy

I honestly would have much preferred they had a keyword so that it kinda matched the rest of the language. It feels a bit tacked on and hard to parse.

Something like:

lambda(arguments):capture list {...}

Just seems way more clear. Looks more like a function or a class (and a lambda is sort of an in-between kind of thing anyway)

Yeah, but wouldn't you agree that each time the government does overstep it's authority there is a backlash and they stop? Society seems to keep the government in check. Things like the MLK scenario are a lot less likely now-a-days. If you're say prodrug legalization, it's very very unlikely you'll be blackmailed for your extramarital affairs by a government official (in fact that seems kinda absurd). Yes bad things happen on a small scale, I wouldn't deny that, but I just don't see it as something slipperyslopping anywhere. There isn't a direct mechanism keeping the government in check other than education (and the values that it fosters) along with citizen outrage. Government's fear of it's citizens seems to have worked everywhere in the 1st world.

Sorry if I wasn't clear enough. What I'm illustrating is that parallel construction doesn't allow the government to use it's full force to make an investigation. They can't "accidentally" search your computer or "accidentally" track you phone or "accidentally" monitor you traffic. That's fundamentally different from a police van "happening" to be at the bank that's about to be robbed or something b/c that could have happened anyway. Do you see the distinction?

I don't use google either! But I've gotta say, every year it gets more and more frustrating as people ask me to use their google spreadsheets and chat with them on google hangouts etc. etc.

Google might not have an account of mine, but I'm 100% sure they know who I am, what I'm interested in and what I'd be interested in in the future! Thanks to cookies, their ads and snippets of JavaScript on every webpage, my friends uploading contacts lists with my name in them etc. etc. they must have a profile built for me.

With the current state of things it actually doesn't really bother me (other than it's monopolistic market distorting effects, but whatever), but you brought up the possibility of them falling part! A very interesting scenario. Google is playing nice and placating people while they make boatloads of cash. When Firefox and IE natively implement adblock or some technounicorn clobbers them they'll get a lot less nice! And we checked enough End User Agreements to let them

With the government we have some recourse

Google wants to manipulate you into buying things and hading them over more information. If you know even a little about marketing/sales you know how powerful these forces are especially when targeted at a whole nation. On an individual level we never feel like the CocaCola ad makes us buy more coke, but it does.

"your life will be made a living hell until you are rendered neutral" ... sorry, but that just doesn't match up with reality. Maybe your fantasy of the future?

I think in some part it's actually a part of a bigger American cultural trope. We also have this unique obsessions with zombies and pandemics etc. etc. Kinda thinking I'm special, the rest of the riff raff die and I'm left alone to "make it" from a feral rock bottom.

My guess is it's American individualism and it's unique inflated sense of self worth (not to knock it =] it's got its plus sides!) + fascination with the biblical apocalypse. I'm not as familiar as I should be with the faiths of the founders of the colonies, maybe it's something that traces back to then?

Typically you should pass raw pointers (constness depends on your use case...). I can't really think of a scenario where the method/function needs to be coupled with the pointer type.

finally a voice a reason!

I actually think the tech world's outrage is the equivalent of survivalist doomsday paranoia. In their minds once the evil government people have our data it's just a slippery slope to fascism. (the survivalist at least have their guns! so they can go shoot cops that day)

Of course grounding yourself in reality you should realize that a 1984-dystopia-scifi government is effectively impossible in an advanced educated society. While people are mildly annoyed by databases (and that's why nothing gets done to stop them) - people have always been outraged when the government abuses those databases. Societies that are way further along in terms of mass surveillance (ex: Singapore) aren't on the verge of dystopia.

Google has vastly more information on everyone in America. Orders of magnitude. (and by extension maybe foreign intelligence agencies) The government is just playing catch-up! I rather our slightly dysfunctional government have more information about me than an ad company that's the play toy of tech-utopian billionaires

"No business owned by a foreign entity is allowed to thrive."

what....? Apple is thriving in China. Everyone and their mom has taken out loans to buy an IPhone. I'm not even exaggerating.

Foreign cars outsell the locals brands by a large margin

Oh that explains it... I've been drifting to lobste.rs a lot more lately anyway.. too bad I don't have an invite =(

Totally wouldn't dispute their support of Wahhabism, but can you elaborate on how Wahhabism helps them retain power? I've never really got that argument b/c it doesn't seem like there are moderate subversive elements. The subversive element seem to be all from the more extreme end.