thetruthseeker1's comments

When I learnt programming, i was confused by x=x+1;

After I understood what it really meant, I wondered why they didn’t use some other symbol to capture this semantic. Say something like x <- x+1 ; Which implies assignment rather than equality - That way this would be unambiguous and I feel is more clear. I now guess the choice of using ‘=‘ was probably an attempt at making a (compromised) choice given the limited symbols that were available back when High level languages were first written?

I like Tessa. I hope they succeed as a company. That said, their claim that the driver had his hands of the steering wheel for 6 seconds implying that they are absolved of any wrong doing seems hard to buy. They may eventually be absolved of wrong doing legally, however I think that statement is bad from PR point of view in addition to casting a bad light on the autopilot tech (It got confused within 6 seconds of him taking his hands off)!

I am sure that I can find flaws in some of the best identity systems in the world - but I am not sure if just finding faults make a good discussion hence I am not going to do that (in addition to not want being labeled a cynic).

Also when you say the costs are not proportional to the benefits... I don’t know if it needs to be proportional, also is there a well researchered study that talks negatively about the overall value provided - I find that hard to believe ?

Usually legislature is free to spend money on programs as long as it is not against the law or constitution and judiciary can’t interfere on such matters. I don’t know what is in the scope of S.C w.r.t Aadhar - I can see some kind of violation of civil liberties within its scope... but I can’t see how cost benefit analysis is within SC’s scope. So I may not comment on it until it plays out.

What is your solution ? It kind of seems like Aadhar should be better managed... rather than reinvent another identity system, sure I am optimistic that Aadhar will improve (Its a very new system compared to SSN or other identity systems)

Regarding ballooning costs, so many successful programs have had costs that exceeded the plan, so far with Aadhar there has been no evidence that the ballooning costs have been debilitating and on the contrary Aadhar seems to be helping.

I disagree with the assessment. It seems like any form in which the government tries to identify you is being compared to the scary Orwellian dystopia. There is no cost benefit analysis. Sure it could be misused, however it can also be used in a super beneficial way. India is a country where some Indians have never obatained birth certificates, there was no equivalent SSN system, often resources are poorly distributed because there are scams where a person claims to be somebody else or there is no clear identification system, all of this significantly affect the GDP and the rate at which people’s std of life is improved. I think if it gets misused , then the solution to that is regulation and better management, not no collection.

Seems like a classic case of standardizing interpreting email moniker. Need an RFC for this

Your comparison is like comparing apples and oranges. You can’t do child labor because there are laws in the US to prevent that. If you lobby to pass a law that prevents AI for defense purposes then that would be similar. Here the US govt is a client, if not google they will go to some-other company for that tech as long as there is no law that prevents that.

Also, if they don’t go to google, sure they may not see as much of a rapid growth in AI tech, but if you think they will never be able to get anywhere significant, you sir are underestimating others IMO

I also think that disengaging is the wrong approach. Google once disengaged with China because they didn’t agree with China on some freedom of expression laws and all the management now think that it was a bad decision. In similar vein, if you are not part of it, somebody else will shape the outcome of this.. It should be rather you if you really care and could play a role in minimizing the negative impact of such tech

Can somebody elaborate why this link from 2016 is gaining steam here? Is it because Cambridge Analytica misused FB data? May be I am missing something, do we know if facebook was wittingly complicit?

Every company has its ups and downs. Some downs or negative things warrant their demise. I don’t think what FB did here is worth calling burn the witch on them or actively trying to kill them, and I do hope FB are able to learn from this and change for the better.

Now, that said, I do think there is an underlying point others ops have alluded to: The disdain for Trump and everything that could have helped him win ( legitimately or illegitimately ) which I am not sure is the best way to react. I think that approach is not a very rational one. What needs to be done there w.r.t Trump is probably worth a separate discussion, but I disagree with knee jerk reaction here from the whatsapp founder.

I really liked the analogies the author used to demistify git usecases. I also agree that it probably doesn’t make sense to use other version control systems if cost and learning (which can also be modeled as cost for the company) are not factors.

For eg, if there is some quick project you need to do, and people in your team have been using say CVS, and there is not much wiggle room in the deadline, getting your team to use Git may not be the most smartest choice - I think that is what most people mean there when they talk about ‘tiny’ projects.

I will say that even if you are not truly starting from scratch, migrating to git has advantages more often, but I am wary of trivialising the people who think there is a cost associated to ( move to )a distributed system like git.

They say Proof is in the pudding.

I am wary of applauding before seeing how well this is implemented. India is known to come up with lot of big programs that make good rhetoric, but not all of them are implemented with equal amount of vigor or commitment.

I am sure part of the motivation may be to help next election cycle which is coming soon.

I don’t know how much time he spends code reviewing. But if at the end of the day he wants anybody to get the complete context of what the change entails by looking at the PR... I would think the code review process is more elaborate and time consuming than many companies can afford.

One thing I was hoping to get answered is, what is the revenue growth or dip these companies have seen. I think that may give a better context to this story. Job loss headlines alone sounds like doom and gloom, but that may or may not be the case depending on how the money is flowing...

I think the responsible way to handle it is, you inform Apple in a closed way. Once they come up with a fix, if you think they didn’t come up with a fix soon enough, make that information public then on how long it took Apple to turn this around. Disclosing every vulnerability to the internet and setting their ass on fire is not a good way to solve this IMO.

Closed disclosure is responsible disclosure. Moving past the terminology, I am an Apple user as well, I am pretty satisfied with how quickly Apple resolves issues.

Now if every person started disclosing vulnerabilities via twitter without giving the company turn around time to resolve the issue based on their dissatisfaction with Apple based on standards they came up with personally, I don’t think it is nice or fair.

I thought it was a good/enjoyable article and it shed light on many things for me.

Reading some of the comments below, and having known some Chinese people ( I am not east asian) I want to point out that it seems like many people missed the intention/ tone of the author. I think his intention was not to brag as some people have misunderstood, but to provide context to how he got to where he got to.

His communication style is different compared to the western style of communication. There is no single coherent message he is trying to drive purposefully or tacitly, but my guess is he was hoping you learn whatever you can from his experience and his way of thought.

Sure the article title could have had the words ‘random’ and ‘musings’ in the same sentence..... meh!

For people dismissing it as vote bank politics... I want to say policy is more complicated.

If the govt reduces taxes for people in low income range is that vote bank politics?

If government provides free education to the poor is that vote bank politics?

Both the above items are aimed at a certain segment.

If you think the answer to above questions is Yes, then in that case every body has vote bank politics, and discussing whether it’s vote bank politics is of little use (I am not even sure if it is a bad thing).

I think a better question to ask is whether it is good policy. I don’t see any argument indicating it is bad policy. Seems like it is helping a certain section of the society at little cost to the rest.

I wonder if its a person or a corporation/org that bought the painting. Number of people who may buy such a painting is probably only a handful.

Did you read my other comment about why Fibonacci promoted the decimal number system? Because, at least he thought in his qualitative assessment that the Decimal number system was better and he brought in its adoption in the roman world (Feel free to look it up).

All I was trying to say was the article is very superficial and does not capture the "real value" zero eventually provided.