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Let's do a little experiment:

>"As we've seen around the world in recent years, social media can be a major forum for terrorist sentiment and activity. This will be a vital tool to screen out terrorists, public safety threats, and other dangerous individuals from gaining immigration benefits and setting foot on US soil."

Now, we do some very simple replacement:

>"As we've seen around the world in recent years, social media can be a major forum for communist sentiment and activity. This will be a vital tool to screen out communists, public safety threats, and other dangerous individuals from gaining immigration benefits and setting foot on US soil."

If it's good enough for McCarthy, it's good enough for me.


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Where are these communists you speak of? Are you talking about the state government of Kerala?


China is the first one that comes to mind, especially considering they're currently putting millions of Muslims into reeducation camps


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This comment breaks the site guidelines. Would you mind reading them and sticking to them when commenting here?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


China is a communist country and has increasingly been committing human rights' violations in their attempt to become the supreme world superpower. This is publicly known


I am not from India, but you do understand that the party that has majority control over India, the BJP, is a blatantly Hindu Nationalist party? I would argue this makes them even more entrenched in nationalist politics than here in the US. Look at the hundreds of killings and mutilations over cows that the government of India seriously turns a blind eye to.


>Mr. Dawson unspooled a series of far-fetched hypotheses. Among them: that iPhones secretly record their owners’ every utterance

Yeah, but that's true.


Even if not true, very far from "far fetched".

Totally plausible, and in some cases (certain malicious apps etc, on Android or jailbroken iPhone) totally true.


>Here in Montreal you can get a ticket for leaving your car door unlocked.

Here in the US you get robbed when you leave your car door unlocked. Kind of a punitive measure in its own way.


In some parts of the US, you get your window broken when you leave your car locked. Unlocked, your stuff just gets ruffled because you know not to keep anything worth money in the vehicle.


People just break your windows anyways because they don’t expect the door to be unlocked. Have heard this anecdote from friends twice. Also the people breaking into cars aren’t typically the most sober or mindful of detail. I had my car broken into a little while ago and they stole a bag of tools on the seat but ignored a like new MacBook Pro on the floor of the car. The point is that you can’t win and should enjoy losing.


It's true - when I used to park on the street in SF, I left my doors unlocked after multiple break-ins through the windows. I had nothing of value in the car (not even a car stereo, it was stolen and I never replaced it), but apparently they didn't believe me and wanted to break in and check the glove compartment and center console to be sure.


Surveys are also a voluntary release of private information? What's your angle, NYT? HMMMMM.

I have to wonder if the US government is starting to look at China's technocracy as an example.


Good point, but it's still pretty stupid/hilarious.


Aw, it was the 18th century: they lost kids all the time.


Redundant Array of Inexpensive Descendants


Redundant Array of Inexpensive Descendants

Here's my evolutionary "Just So Story" for why human kids like to wander away and put things into their mouths. Basically, they acted as food tasters for the group. Makes sense, since the group has invested in them the least, they know nothing important, and in a state of nature, they're likely to die anyways.


Having a kid back then was a huge investment, no? The mother is weaker for half a year, eats more and could die in childbirth


Having a kid back then was a huge investment, no?

Yes, but the same investment was made in every other member of the group as well. However, everyone who made it well past childhood had a lot more knowledge, food, and material invested in them.


While I chuckle reading your explanation I think you forgot to consider how much nursing is deeply ingrained in our nature by us being mammals.

> in a state of nature, they're likely to die anyways.

So while this part, where they would die if left alone, is certainly right, it would make the whole concept of us humans not laying eggs, putting some semen and mud on them and disappear into the wilderness an evolutional waste of time.

Plus, I have some acquaintances whom I suspect would very much prefer to go about their business that exact same way. So it's not a demand side problem either.


So while this part, where they would die if left alone, is certainly right

Where did I say that the babies would be left alone and abandoned? Apparently you are unaware that in human communities with low technology, infant mortality can be pretty high alarmingly. You're also apparently stating that parents looking after children is not a "state of nature." (Or you're ascribing that to me, which, given you're alone in this, indicates you need to work on reading comprehension.)


> make the whole concept of us humans not laying eggs, putting some semen and mud on them and disappear into the wilderness an evolutional waste of time.

> putting some semen and mud on them and disappear into the wilderness

what?


I suspect eating insects also provided meaningful additional nutrition for toddlers.


Not to mention developing the immune system.

They always go for the dirtiest thing in the room. Acquire and share.


Indeed! Insects actually provide a non-negligible food source for many people today. Example : Chapulines


More evidence the behavior is adaptive!


that would select against the kids most enthusiastic about putting unsafe food in their mouth


It would, however, select for the most attentive mothers. However, a kid discovering a heretofore unknown poisonous plant would be a benefit. So too, would a kid discovering a heretofore unknown edible thing.


We have a pretty good understanding of why kids put stuff in their mouths and it’s more about exploration and their mouths being more centre of their sensory experience at younger ages. But the following link explains it better than I could:

http://drgailgross.com/parenting-families/why-does-my-8-mont...

Anecdotally, my daughter didn’t have this behaviour. Even at a very young age she’d only ever put food stuff in her mouth. However I’ve seen so many other kids, children of friends and relatives, put random objects in their mouths to know that my daughter is the exception to the rule.


That explanation is a bit circular along the lines that kids like putting things in their mouths because they like putting things in their mouths. As to why we've evolved that way it's probably to build the immune system. It needs exposure to stuff in the environment to figure what to react to. The increase in asthma and allergies in the modern world is probably because kids don't get enough dirt exposure and then the immune system overacts later.


> That explanation is a bit circular along the lines that kids like putting things in their mouths because they like putting things in their mouths.

That's not what the article says at all. It says most of the babies sensory experiences are oral because they lack mobility to explore things with other tactile senses. Granted the article doesn't example this specifically but a lot of sensory input will be suckling (dummies, mother's nipple / bottle's teat, their own digits, etc).

By the time they're a bit more mobile and can open their hand to grasp objects (remember the ability for a baby to even open their hand takes a few weeks to learn) happens, they've often already gotten into the habit of exploring the world via their mouths.

It doesn't say it in that article I linked to, but I do vaguely recall reading elsewhere that because babies develop tactile senses on their hands later than the senses in their mouth, babies will often have more nerve endings in their mouth. However I cannot find a source for that so this might be a detail I'm miss-remembering.


We have a pretty good understanding of why kids put stuff in their mouths and it’s more about exploration and their mouths being more centre of their sensory experience at younger ages.

Cool. So long as you're not conflating evolutionary pressures with internal mental states, drives, and desires. Doing so would mean you're dipping into Lamarckianism.


I don't understand why you posted that because thus far you're the only person who's suggested it's an evolutionary trait.


>Even at a very young age she’d only ever put food stuff in her mouth.

Apparently, I was that was as a baby as well. I handled everything, but only food went into my mouth.


But kids don't like bitter things (like cabbage), to stop them eating potentially poisonous things, that's what I understood anyway.

Plus try and get a 2 year old to try new things.

Is this something you've observed on teething children? They tend to chew things to ease the pain.


Damn fine hypothesis. Juvenile mortality is naturally really high from the get-go [not just for humans, but practically all life forms] -- why not have them engage in the most high-risk experiments? I think that's brilliant.


The point of "I, Robot" was to show how these laws can lead to dangerous results if followed to the letter, and their inherent contradictions. I agree with the author: applying the Three Laws to actual AI research and engineering is dangerous. Thankfully, I haven't seen too many people in AI research that actually advocate for their use.


I have never done anything in Rust. Are there any benefits? Any drawbacks?


If you don't mind a bit of a re-education, Rust allows you to write programs that are as fast as those written in C or C++ and you'll be more confident that they don't have strange memory bugs. (Reason: the ownership model of Rust prevents a lot of bugs that are found in C or C++, but this model also rejects many correct programs, so you need to re-learn how to write some programs.)


One thing people (like me ) often say is that it forces you to “learn to write better.”

One way you can think of it is this:

- Rust rejects some programs that are truly wrong (`“2” + 3` style)

- Rust rejects some programs that really are just fine. They are actively improving this with stuff like “Non-lexical lifetimes.”

- Rust rejects some programs that are fine _how they are now_, but which are hard to keep fine when you change them. This is part of why linked lists are hard to write in Rust :-)


I admit that I'm very unexcited about non-lexical lifetimes—the cost-to-benefit ratio seems worse than the current model. The current lifetime system is simple to understand: a value is live until its owning variable goes out of scope. It can be a bit restrictive sometimes (though it seems that after a while you learn how to work around those issues easily enough), but it's easy to keep in your head and reason about code. With non-lexical lifetimes, I think that we'll have a harder time understanding lifetimes, it'll be more difficult to teach them and to debug them.


My understanding is that the semantics are exactly the same, but it’s just possible for the checker to match your intent more tightly.

For example, in lexical lifetimes, this fails:

    let x = &mut foo;
    
    if x.bar() {
        baz()
    } else {
        foo.consume() // takes foo by value
    }
It will complain that you’ve used `foo` while it is borrowed by `x`, even though a human can easily tell that `x` is already irrelevant by that point. NLL would accept this (I believe).


If you don't mind going through a 40-page free e-book from O'Reilly, I can strongly recommend this: https://www.oreilly.com/programming/free/why-rust.csp (Direct link: https://www.oreilly.com/programming/free/files/why-rust.pdf)

It explains the concepts and strengths of Rust in a very easy-to-understand way. (Jim Blandy is also the Author of the O'Reilly Rust book.)


It is a great language. You will fight with the compiler, it will do its best to tell you whats wrong, and finally when it fully compiles with no errors, you pretty much never have to worry about the program in runtime.


I read this nearly four years ago, and it convinced me (based on a lot of experience with bugs in concurrent code) to dedicate a significant portion of my spare time learning and using Rust: https://blog.rust-lang.org/2015/04/10/Fearless-Concurrency.h...


Here's a great talk (from Strange Loop conf 2017) by David Sullins about Rust concurrency:

https://youtu.be/oIikwmeGVYY


One cool thing is that you can use it almost anywhere -- an OS kernel all the way up to a game compiled to WebAssembly to run in the browser.


Yes


How? It's still censorship.


This must be a facetious comment. You don't see how it being only banned in Saudi Arabia is not as bad as Saudi Arabia complaining and having it taken down worldwide?

Plus, Saudia Arabia is not known as a bastion of personal liberty. But that's besides the point; they are completely entitled to perform censorship within their own borders. It's simply your opinion (which I happen to agree with, but it is not a fact nonetheless) that it's bad for them to have censored it within their own country.


I think it’s problematic. The fact it’s only censored inside Saudi Arabia means it doesn’t impact me directly. That being said, as the saudis continue investing in the west, in social media, in other Silicon Valley start ups, I don’t want there to be any chance these traditions (which I consider oppression) could seep up into my or my children’s way of life.


Eieus regio cuius religio has been replaced with individual liberty. Westphalia was a mistake.


Yes, it is censorship that respects local traditions.


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