I'm thankful that Java hasn't become a mess like C++.
The virtual machine and stdlib continue to see innovation, while the ease of implementing JVM languages like Scala and Kotlin mean that Java can let these new languages innovate, and pick the best features when they're proven (with improved performance normally too).
You can see this with Lambdas, and now with Records and pattern matching
I was served terminal advertisements on a recent Javascript project because its auto-reload dev-dependency pulled in a compromised package. So in retaliation I made my own implementation in Java, with 0 dependencies and low memory usage, using NIO Buffers and FileChannels.
PS: Shameless plug, I'm graduating college late December, and am looking for a job!
It's interesting at least to consider just how much performance is degraded by these hardware bugs for certain workloads. While Octane is 1.40x, the average is 1.12x. And this is the i9 9900k, which has partial hardware mitigations, so speedup is better for older chips.
But mitigations=on doesn't even give full protection from ZombieLoad attacks.. if you want full coverage you need to disable hyper-threading, which kills performance. This caused a big debate among linux devs, but keep-HT won out.
So, disabling mitigations is not a good idea for work or critical workloads. But the chance someone compromises the average computer with one of these hardware bugs is probably the same probability that two equal UUIDs are ever generated.
PC overclockers move mountains trying to eek out half-percentage perf gains. Why not flip a flag for 12%?
The argument that classics are "unfit for the 21st century" because ancient Greeks and Romans were "white men" and "slave owning patriarchs" holds zero water.
First, the premise is false. Greeks and Romans were not at all "white" by modern standards. Not only was skin color not a social construct at the time, but most Mediterranean peoples had darker, bronzed tones. And yes, slavery & patriarchy have existed in every single society since the dawn of time, until very recently. Just because the affordable care act didn't exist in 1991 doesn't mean I will refuse to use Linux because it was created in a time without basic healthcare rights.
The real reason for the decline of classical studies (and more generally history) is because corporations are offering graduates with STEM degrees higher salaries.
I don't think this is a good trend either. I've personally gained more from self-studying the classics than anything from my CS degree.
>> First, the premise is false. Greeks and Romans were not at all "white" by modern standards. Not only was skin color not a social construct at the time, but most Mediterranean peoples had darker, bronzed tones.
More to the point, whatever colour the ancients were, their slaves were very often the same colour as them, having been taken from neighbouring cities during war operations, or even being citizens of the same city who had lost their freedom because of debt, etc.
Obviously, slaves were also often from other places and ethnicities, but my point is that slavery in the ancient world was not the same as slavery in say, American plantations before the civil war. You just can't project 20th and 21st century issues like race onto ancient peoples and hope to make sense of their world.
Er. I hope I don't have to add any disclaimers about abhoring and condemning slavery in every shape or form, and so on?
> Greeks and Romans were not at all "white" by modern standards. Not only was skin color not a social construct at the time, but most Mediterranean peoples had darker, bronzed tones.
By modern physiological standards, the ancient Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Carthaginians, Persians, Hebrews, Babylonians, etc., were all white. They're still white now. This is why the formal term used in the US is "Caucasian", named after the Georgians and Armenians who a (European) anthropologist felt were the epitome of white beauty.
(Fun fact: the Romans would insult someone who they felt was lacking in the basics of humanity by saying that that person had been born not of a human mother, but directly from the Caucasus mountains. "Caucasian" probably wouldn't have caught on with them.)
There is another modern standard, which people don't like to talk about explicitly, reasoning as follows:
1. Whites are on top of the world.
2. Arabs don't look like they're on top of the world.
3. Arabs must not be white.
But this system of labeling people "white" isn't useful for much. This is how you get people who are upset that a group consisting of 40% East Asians is "lily-white".
For me, the most off-puting thing about classics is almost the religious veneration with witch some people treat it. It must be talked about as bestest thing by saint perfect person uncriticisable. It is boring, but also does not check out. Often it says something boring and simple, but is still somehow celebrated as words of wisdom. Bad parts are euphemized away with flowery language. Like with slavery (you mentioned it), it is not just that it existed in around independently, it is that the very old ancient text we are talking about is written with purpose to convince contemporaries to be harder on slaves. Same with patriarchy or Sparta militarism or whatever.
I did enjoyed new Odyssey translation lately, but for the love of god cant comprehend all the basic of civilization, immortal wisdom and other similar commentary around it. Why cant I say that parts of it are boring that flowery text of some translations kills even interesting parts? Why do I have to pretend that sirens or meduza part were fun? (They are not, through they are short so no big deal.)
As big as those texts had influence, some of that influence was negative, but that somehow is still presented as good thing, just because old. A bit exaggerated comparison is that if some writing of Gobbels or Hitler remained, people thousands years after might celebrate it as great old writing, chalk militarism and racism and sexism on "culture around". But that is not how it was, those guys texts were dominant because they were active in creating that culture and had awful lot victims.
It is not that I would have moral issue with the above or did not wanted to study it for the above reason. But the way it is mandatory celebrated (at least in teaching I obtained) did not squared to me, did not made sense.
The Turkish man you replied to wanted to correct an inaccurate stereotype about Turkish culture. Your comment perpetuates the stereotype that Americans are uneducated on global affairs. This may be true for some, but saying that all Americans should be treated like "puppies" because they "don't know any better" is a huge insult.
As an American myself, I would consider it fair to say that Americans are relatively uneducated on global affairs. Do you have some data suggesting otherwise?
Also, I think you've confused a general with a universal. I don't think he was saying that "all Americans" don't know better, just that when confronted with dumb statements it's better to presume ignorance than malice.
As an example, National Geographic did a survey in 2002, and young Americans came in second to last:
"About 11 percent of young citizens of the U.S. couldn't even locate the U.S. on a map. The Pacific Ocean's location was a mystery to 29 percent; Japan, to 58 percent; France, to 65 percent; and the United Kingdom, to 69 percent."
On the one hand, I find this a bit appalling. On the other, I can't totally blame people; America is big enough and far enough from everything else that relatively few Americans ever leave the country, and those who do mostly stay on the continent. So I don't see a "assume ignorance, not malice" posture as an insult; it's mostly what I do myself.
Although he may have simple meant "presume ignorance, not malice," the wording used was very derogatory.
I do not doubt that Americans on average are less educated on international affairs than other Western countries. But arguing that a factually incorrect comment about Turkish headwear on HN (by a user of unknown nationality) is a result of broader "American ignorance" is meaningless.
Furthermore, I believe m00dy's response was accurate and fair. If he viewed every incorrect comment about Turkish culture as written by an American "puppy," I doubt he would have commented, and no one would have learned anything.
>About 11 percent of young citizens of the U.S. couldn't even locate the U.S. on a map.
This seems particularly bizarre, because even if someone hasn't learned world geography, surely they've seen a map of the US in various contexts, and can recognise its shape?
That would be fun to research, but my guess: if you showed them the shape of various countries, more people could pick out the right shape. But that shape cuts off Canada and Mexico in ways that are essentially arbitrary, so if they're keying on those edges, or on the grid-of-states shapes, they could still struggle with a satellite photo.
My guess is that this number would be significantly better today because people interact a lot more with world maps when they accidentally zoom out on, e.g., Google Maps pages.
Definition of anthropomorphism (noun): "the attribution of human characteristics or behavior to a god, animal, or object.
"
A common example of anthropomorphism is in voles (and other rodents). [1,2] Very long ago, scientists noticed that bank vole pups frequently cry when their mother leaves the nest. The scientists assumed that the pups were afraid, and missed their parent. Eventually, it was discovered that the absence of their mother drops the temperature of the underground nest, and that the pups cries are actually a mechanism to generate heat. When scientists took their mother away, but increased the heat of their den to normal levels, the pups did not cry. The animals were not communicating or displaying anything resembling "human" emotion, but were innately responding to environmental stress.
No matter how much we want to believe that animals are sentient, have emotions, and communicate to each other via language, science indicates that's just not the case. In fact, there have been numerous studies that indicate anthropomorphism is a byproduct of our complex social structure.
Nice job bringing racism into a discussion about dolphin vocalizations, by the way.
> No matter how much we want to believe that animals are sentient, have emotions, and communicate to each other via language, science indicates that's just not the case.
That's an overstatement. All you can really conclude is that science cannot say whether or not any non-humans are sentient.
Surely sentience is a philosophical concept, I am sceptical that science can be applied as directly as you suggest.
I agree that human characteristics are sometimes falsely assigned to animals. But that doesn't mean that human characteristics can only ever exist in humans. If a crow exhibits theory of mind, it just suggests that humans are not as unusual as previously thought. It does not mean that we are assigning the full philosophical implications of human sentience to that animal. In fact science could not possibly do that and still be science.
How do we know that human infants don't respond that same way, for the same reason? Perhaps the voles reaction to heat signals a more sophisticated understanding in comparison to the child who cries regardless of temperature.
> How do we know that human infants don't respond that same way, for the same reason?
Infants are known to lack forward-planning, object permanence, and many many other indications of reasoning. I don't think it'd be wrong to say that they behave quite like little finite state machines.
This study doesn't even make sense. How does crying generate heat? It takes an awful lot of physical movement to generate any measurable about of heat. There's no way they generated enough sonic energy to make a measurable change in temperature.
This is not evidence that the crying act was just to generate heat. Not that it's evidence that they missed their mom, but it's neither evidence for the heat theory.
You can comfort a crying child with a blanket; maybe all human distress is just a need for a blankie?
Very few countries, communities, or individuals are willing to accept a fate of involuntary, slow recession.
As suggested by previous commentators, social policies could possibly play a larger role in the long term Japanese recovery than fiscal stimulus. Opening the country to immigration may help rejuvenate the workforce, but would require significant upheavals of xenophobic Japanese culture. The government could use economic measures to encourage childbirth, but at a population density of 869 people per square mile, one must wonder how many more citizens the island can accommodate.
The rational assumption that Japan should "bite the bullet ... [and] balance the budget" is not what the country will do, as the circumstances of its plight encourage irrationality.
The virtual machine and stdlib continue to see innovation, while the ease of implementing JVM languages like Scala and Kotlin mean that Java can let these new languages innovate, and pick the best features when they're proven (with improved performance normally too).
You can see this with Lambdas, and now with Records and pattern matching