bmh_ca's comments

I had a few moments to work on tko (knockout 4) this morning and I just have to say how happy I am with the ko methodology. Not to knock (pardon the put) any of the more recent forays into js/web-ux , but holy smokes I’m satisfied with ko and excited about its future.

Thanks for posting. The claim is not especially bold or novel, unless I misunderstand. Math can be seen as a source of absolute truth. It’s long been noted that this butts up against the monopoly that religion often claims over truth.

> It is backed by the obligation to pay your taxes in that currency.

If it's a reserve currency, as the U.S. is, it is also backed by the demand of other states to hold U.S. dollars to stabilize their non-reserve currency.

Indeed, some argue that a reserve currency is not subject to ordinary balance of payments criteria. This is sometimes called exorbitant privilege.[1]

All to say, the U.S. currency is not just backed by assets of the nation, but by demand that other states have for local-currency stability.

Somewhat aside, some argue that this creates a perverted incentive to destabilize the world because unstable states and regions have a higher demand for a reserve currency.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorbitant_privilege

> If I visit g00gle.com and sign-in using the Web Authentication API, my browser is going to use my credentials for g00gle.com, not for google.com; unlike me, it _can't_ be fooled by similar-looking characters.

In the age of punycodes this has become particularly important because the human eye cannot visually distinguish between ASCII and punycode lookalikes - many are visually indistinguishable in many fonts.

On #3 and #4 I had what I believed to be some reasonable conceptions to formulate parameters for a discussion, here: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/71522

Basically I suggest dividing the questions into categories of:

1. Timeless: Questions with a timeless best answer, which is unlikely to be improved or updated in the future;

2. Revolving: Questions with a "best answer" today but in the future there will be a "better answer"; and

3. Wiki: Questions that are constantly being improved and updated.

Among a few other notions.

Insofar as it was a problem of interest when I wrote it in 2010, it's only become a more prominent issue since.

> It started 24 years ago with the Clinton administration granting China "most favored nation" status.[0] A controversial move at the time, and one that broke a one of Clinton's campaign promises.

I think there is more information than in the article on most favoured nation status that might give useful context. The article discusses a relatively narrow set of tariffs on certain items produced in China, largely tied to human rights violations in China; MFN predates this by quite some time.

Most favoured nation (MFN) and its counterpart national treatment (NT) are cornerstones of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)[0], which was a product of the World War 2 era treaties designed in large part to prevent the sort of interstate acrimony that could lead to World War 3.

The GATT mandates that signatories — including the USA — adhere to MFN and NT, which respectively oblige states to not apply tariffs to one country and not another, and to not favour domestic industry over foreign by way of subsidy or tariff or other market-distorting unfairness by the state. When a state violates MFN or NT, any harmed state has standing to apply a sort of reciprocal treatment, namely they have the colour of right to apply market distorting tariffs and subsidies of their own.

A recent example is the USA application of a tariff on imported steel from Europe, which entitles the European Union to apply a reciprocal tariffs on imports from the USA, such as bourbon.

The GATT evolved into the World Trade Organization (WTO), which routinely determines the merits and quantum of damages associated with often complex accusations of violations of MFN and NT.

The origin China-USA MFN and NT goes back in principle at least to the GATT, which in turn is based on the failures of the inter-war period that lead to WW2.

Which is all to say, it's not accurate to state that the Clinton administration granted MFN status to China (broadly speaking, anyway), and I'm not certain that in the broader context of the complex history of trade relations that any start of the trade disputes we see today can be so precisely pinpointed.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Agreement_on_Tariffs_a...

Is that not the Nissan Leaf?

I'm one of the knockout core developers. Just a heads up, knockout 3.5 just went into beta, and 4.0 is in alpha.

I spoke the other day with another core developer, Ryan Niemeyer, and he noted that ko is still a good fit for quick and lightweight dynamics, but with good conventions a solid foundation for really complex Web apps. It's still very solid, and the API largely unchanged since IE6 was around.

Tko, the monorepo for ko 4+, will hopefully make it easier to build frameworks out of the knockout code, so things like routers can be easier to tack on (if we don't build one in).

Incidentally I've just set up a patreon for tko/ko 4 in particular at patreon.com/brianmhunt- it'd be great to be able to have more time to hack at it.

This is a great read. The principles are also applicable to other problems such as evaluating a constant time comparison function, symmetrical cypher, or hash.

The devils advocate is literally a Catholic position occupied by a person arguing against conferring sainthood.

The interesting bit is that historically the strength of sainthood has been tied to the conviction of the advocate for the devil, not the quality of the advocate for the saint.

Teaching became more open to women as men were killed in war.

The rich, who benefit from tax breaks, spend copiously on issues that influence the poorest’ votes. Abortion, religion, military, immigration, homophobia. Emotional issues that influence deeply those who lack critical thinking skills. And so the poor vote against their own interest, consistently. It’s classic neuropsychology.

Make them judges. Almost all judges become less conservative and more liberal over time on the bench.

SIGINT resources are under-allocated for domestic defence of civilian assets.

FWIW, my personal anecdote: I chose Google App Engine for a large enterprise application almost a decade ago and it's been absolutely, undeniably one of the best choices we made.

The application is locked into Google, but that hasn't proven a problem yet and can be designed around if need be.

A positive result would require Toyota to advertise on Facebook, yes? This may not be the case.

A better question may be car-related ads.

Nailed it.

Justice is an outcome.

Law is a process.

I love how you've capitalized "Human", as if to say there were some other race competing to complete the Hyperloop. :)

> Do you really think the tools you use like your web browser, mail client etc, have less vulnerabilities on OpenBSD than on any other BSD or linux distribution, please...

Yes. OpenBSD employs several mechanisms that improve the security of every application e.g. W^X and stack protector.

See: https://www.openbsd.org/security.html