pointernil

"As they say, hate the game, not the player."

Why?

Change the quite strong word "hate" to something less extreme and polarizing and then let's discus why it is OK, acceptable and not out right destructive to setup and use and actually benefit from those tax avoidance schemes?

Blame the game? The corporation?

Well, how about the small (or not soo small in case of CFOs) particles making up a corporation, the CFOs and their teams actually seeking and personally benefiting from those actions.

How comes these people are not to blame? Rules of Law ARE NOT the final instance of morality or of constructive social conduct... or are they? Only for the "rational agents", i guess.

The game is to blame, the gov/civil-organizations on almost all sides are to blame, the corporations are to blame, the individuals driving this are to blame, too.

ps: how "rational" is it for a corporation to avoid its share pay back to the society? It due time to close these morality-loopholes. Actually that's the only way, i think, to tackle these problems: a change in socially acceptable behavior because there is no way we can close all loopholes in all the laws. Those people (yes, people and not abstract 'corporations') in the end "should not want to" circumvent the tax-obligations.

I'd like to add a perspective to the posts questioning the "power law" and it's consequences in this area.

"Gesinnungs Ethik" VS "Verantwortungs-Ethik" (very roughly 'unquestioned attitude' vs 'accountability' Ethics)

for me this blog-post is a fine example of technocratic "Gesinnungs Ethik": the power law is a law of nature, the popular get (easier) more popular, the rich get (easier) richer... that's by law of nature, you can, actually you _have_ to submit to it otherwise your efforts are wasted. That's the way it is. (Other examples are: the market, the rational agent, management principles etc)

Sure, there are processes in nature following the power laws where it is really futile for us humans to intervene or ignore it.

AND

there are other areas where this presented futility most probably is NOT true.

That's where "Verantwortungs-Ethik" comes into play, yes an "antagonist" to the other one: do we want accept the consequences of following/applying this law? Is this driving the development of an area into the right direction? If you are accountable for the large scale consequences f.e., would you follow this law? It's a less passive, "well, that's the way things are", attitude and a more conscious and active attitude, where putting out a lot of posts just in case and for the sake of the one lucky viral attention-grab in a "big data experiment" manner is not ignoring the overall effect on the whole, where there is accountability for collateral damage.

It does not make sense to apply "Verantwortungs-Ethik" to gravity laws. ;) In most social contexts, and in contexts we ourselves construct, we are free to do so. And I think, we should more intensively.

Is there any information on the guaranties Moxie Marlinspike/Whisper Systems provide on the Apps downloaded from the App-Store? I get that their source is open and reviewed and trusted but what is this worth when there is no way to tell if users are actually using their version/builds when installed from App-Stores. Same holds true for the necessary servers they maintain.

Don't get this wrong please: this is still probably THE best solution right now, which simply as well has its security limitations, right?

Is there any work ongoing on a kind of "verification process" for Apps like these? How can an end-user tell if the binaries running on their device are untempered with?

/sorry for hijacking ;)

Same here. A strange mixture of "Man in the Highcastle" cross "Better of Ted" vibe /scnr

Am I the only one having "issues" with Enterprises deciding to turn on usage of MY resources for their benefit by default? aka opt-out vs opt-in? I mean how much bandwidth and connected costs ms things to save themselves by this feature?

Hyperbole: what's next? Making my machine crack some crypto in a swarm? mining coins?

Wow, chillax boy!

You did overlook the ";)", right? I did not intend to pluck that string of yours. Sorry about that.

That's really fascinating and interesting and educating.

Now every other http server implementation should need to explain every byte it is larger and every ms it is slower it terms of "why?" and "what for?" and "who gains from this?" ;)

I don't know, for longer already I don't buy this tales about "it needs to be this large because..." ... mostly legacy, abstractions and ease of code maintenance etc. This took us all into the world in which the very smallest app on the phone reacting to a click with a "beep" takes how much memory? And the software development craft accepts unbelievable inefficiencies. Memory, Cpu manufactures for long time added to this fires by essentially mis-nurturing devs by optimizing in the background and by creating an environment of limitless virtual resources. I like how "battery-life" enforces, brings back some old ideas on efficiency and software craftsmanship.

Humanity starts to deal with limits of its planet, its own limits and maybe this kind of thinking will bring back some level of limits into the virtual realms as well? I think we would gain from it.

This.

To me this

-) is a sign of an area or areas of still not recognized core problems leading to tackling it from different angles

-) it could be connected to the average age of developers in the field responsible for the choice of their tools. They will settle for something with time ... eventually ;)

-) bears resemblance with an earlier me, eager to find the latest, newest and most importantly most different way to ... well, what actually? Most probably traverse the unknown landscapes of new, landscapes of "my way"

-) is worst than it used to be, as the _really_ old ppl say ;) ... or I changed the sides, moved on on this spectrum of professional attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

... imagine coming back from this to a power-point presentations in your office.

Yea! To get the js-css-trickster-folks on board the first version works 'obviously' by splitting an image into the shadow and non-shadow parts offline. The result gets recombined in the browser by overlaying them and using some fancy blending modes. Some micro-benchmarking should be able to show that the two shadows (jpg compressed 'obviously') plus css and js put together are smaller than a simple jpg compressed version of the input image... Go! Go! Go! Before Hooli steals the idea... ;)

To prevent confusion and to stay consistent with my nick, I suggest: "Piper pied"

First! We need a cool name! ;)

An idea breading for long time already: in image compression, wouldn't a processing pass subtracting such a raw approximation of the image from the actual image allow for better compression? Is this used in any of the actually used image compression formats? If not why not? Why is jpg f.e. using only tiny local windows/blocks for processing?

Way too late to the party, but this cries simply for it:

How would this guys argue against this way of thinking about consciousness:

Michael Graziano, evolution and non-magic description of consciousness

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peHcu8LEgEE

Ah! I guess he simply questions, right out denies materialism. This is borderline religious, right?

Hmm, imagine nature evolving "non-technological" creatures capable of space-flight... but I better leave the reasons for and implications of such developments to ppl. like N. Stephenson ;)

I would like to suggest to anyone actually providing non-corrupt lobbying services to rename their line of work.

Even if legal and ethical definitions of "lobbying" exists, they exist only in the minds of knowledgeable minorities and not in the broad public.

This btw. would as well help to highlight the benefits of serious, legal and non-corrupt services formerly known as "lobbying" ;)

As an European I often wonder, how do people in the US cope with this level of corporate driven politics... I have the impression in Europe this kind of connections do exists but are seen as a serious problem and actively worked against in the legislation and even with this those connection are increasing and "growing" in weight on politics.

I have the impression what Europe is trying to work against is the normal modus operandi in US politics.

Are Europe and the US approaching some kind of middle point in the level of inter-connectivity of corporations and politics: Europe reaching it from the lower levels and the US by reaching it from higher levels?

It is really absurd how since the 60s resp. 70s after the nations coped more or less with the devastation of the 2 World Wars, politics has been reduced essentially to economic interests and agendas AND in the process gave it self up to the economic agents: large corporations which are defining politics. Are economics, money, corporations over-represented in politics?

.) Love it.

.) I can imagine teaching playing piano changed to use something like this simply because it provides such a pleasant and so rewarding experience of accomplishment in contrast to what the "usual" way of learning the instrument tends to be. Who would drop lessons if this was the experience?

.) I see it as a very strong, supportive set of crutches. Currently only guiding the tempo of play but which could easily be extended to support other parts of play: reading notation, mapping to keys on the instrument, left/right hand coordination etc. etc.

.) Over time "the crutches" could become less and less supportive and in the end I could play my beloved "Chopin Nocturne Op.9 No.2" without them and later start even interpreting it...

Several cars on a highway moving in one direction. On a one lane highway several cars can move forward, one after the other concurrently.

On a two lane highway on each lane several cars can move forward one after the other concurrently AND on the other lane other cars can move in parallel to them.

___

One CPU (core) having one program counter pc executes one instruction after an other and keeps track of the position in the instruction current by increasing the pc. With special code it is possible to make the pc jump to an completely unrelated code block and later make it jump back to the first code block. The core sees and executes one current of instructions but the code-blocks, the intentions of the code-blocks can be quite unrelated. There can be several concurrent code-blocks managed (usually by the OS, Kernel) interlaced into the instruction current the CPU core executes.

If there are several cpu execution cores several instruction currents with their own interlaced code-blocks can be processed in parallel.

___

Hey! At least I tried ;)

Is it just me or does David Krakauer sound A LOT like Joe Armstrong of Erlang fame? ;)

Thanks for this very insightful link. Worth every minute.

I think your statements are a little too general, even though you might have a point here:

What does it tell about the the real life "interoperability" on the .net platform, when every language needs all the features? My guess would be: the technical "possibility" is there yet the eco-system as a whole of day to day developers, technical managers, project life-cycles and real life products with some legacy heavily bends towards single application development language even though developers mostly already use several other languages like for scripting or sql, html, css, javascript etc.

Nice.

At what point would it make more sense to just leave c# as it is and move on to a new "language"?

I like all the changes and more importantly I guess I actually understand the intention and the need for them, at same time I'd like to question how all those actually fit into one language...

I understand MS has a very strong record for support of legacy software, systems etc. So for sure on point would be to still "support" legacy C# code and allow for more modern paradimes in the same language, but given all the other .net languages and the interoperability provided: what is the drive behind pulling it all in into C#?

Sure. I see a problem with this when ppl. who are not scientifically trained use the same metaphor or get this presented by science journalism as it is "pushing" them into wrong 'beliefs' about intentionality of non conscious matter.

Most of the time your kind of descriptions of the "how" are not presented thus ppl. mis-conceptualize.

Sometimes I think it would be best science used its very own language partly like Latin in medicine is used.

That is not the argument people are stating.

First, the problem is how absurdly low the wages have fallen in Germany compared with the 'productivity' gains leading to highly profitable exports.

Second, a problem seams to be as well how Germany was actually ignoring the fact that it is a part of a larger interconnected economy.

Both problems are already discussed at quite global / high levels and are tackled by institutions more proficient with these issues than the "schwäbische-hausfrau" who tends to be quite proud of _efficiency_ and _austerity_ but at same time misses the larger picture of global economics.

I think, it's not a bad idea to let world recover after the financial crises in steps. Now with USA and Germany quite on the track the rest of Europe and the World can be guided out of the trenches... one after the other.

One problem is the communication ofc ;) How to make the "schwäbische-hausfrau" understand all of that plus the fact that 'economic-growth' or rather 'economic-development' (which i find to be the more fitting word) in the magnitudes we were used to in the last 30 years will not come back for a long time...

tldr: Germany is still super. But will need to share its wealth more evenly internally and externally to benefit even more ;)

(edit:typo)

Which loopholes did stay open in this one?

Level Next: make it speak. Chose an appropriate text like some philosophical speech by Bender ;)

Kudos for differentiating between those 3! ;)

I personally don't believe that invention and commercialization as suggested by this equitation (maybe not intentionally) are equally important, beneficial, meaningful.

I'd say: Innovation is the commercialization of an invention; it's just the corporate propaganda and internal incentive structure for people within which projects these process in such a way into the world as to make it believe something has been invented by a corporation for the benefit of the "audience". Which is very far away from the truth, i think.

Yes, so it would need more than re-targeting the eyes, but maybe still less than being able to apply an arbitrary expression... Could be fun for Chat-Masks with Facial-Expressions though. Ready Player One / OASIS here we come ;)

Yes. Thanks for the better description of the issue. Cheers

How about using a stripped down version of such a system to re-target just the eyes of a person in a video chat? Could this be used to solve the "not looking into cam, thus not looking at me" issues in video chats today?