The key takeaway is not that they jailed him now. They should've and probably could have jailed him long ago.
My understanding is that he, a convicted pedophile and all around sociopath, seemingly totally bent on pursuing wildly antisocial endeavours, was protected up until now. He strategically contacted the FBI which was able to lean on the Icelandic law enforcement through a diplomatic route to grant him unofficial immunity, as long as he served the purpose of going after Assange.
Now that he admitted his testimony was based on lies, he is no longer useful and Iceland's law enforcement is finally free to do its job. He was jailed now because he betrayed his loyalty of his handlers. I wonder why he decided to break that, it seems like such a complete blunder. Perhaps he realised his testimony wouldn't hold up in court. Really wish the interview mentioned in the article would be translated to English but I can't find it.
Yes, you can choose to be an asshole, regardless of your intelligence, and others can choose to reciprocate in kind. Worst case you're lynched and gain some sort of martyrdom people might or might not care about. Best case you drive everyone away and end up abandoned and ignored, left to your own bitterness.
Or you could try communicating your genius idea, improving people's lives in the process, if its a worthy one. But that only makes sense if it was about the idea in the first place. If it was about proving everyone else wrong you might want to reconsider your motivations.
I'm pretty ignorant about knots, but is there any specific reason the hangman's knot isn't listed? Perhaps I'm just unable to find it?
In case its not included at all - I realize the knot has macabre associations, but a site aiming to be an encyclopedia of knots should in my opinion include every knot there is, good or bad alike.
There is some discussion on the noose knot page that indicates the hangman's knot is deliberately not included in the encyclopedia. The site doesn't give a reason for not including it.
I agree it should be included in an encyclopedia of knots. Any knot can be dangerous if you put it around your neck.
While I'm certain AA might not work for everyone, in cases where there's some sort of emotional trauma or personality disorder involved, it's probably the way to go.
The religious aspects some people get so self-righteous about I think aren't really as much about religion or god, as they are about the feeling of belonging to something greater and faith in intrinsic good of the world. I assume this is not something everyone lacks, but for those who do, this seemingly religious language is one way to communicate it. Also when people propose ibogaine or LSD, I'd guess the aim of those therapies is a very similar form of healing and effective in similar cases as AA would be, but requiring less commitment from the patient. If you are a psychologically healthy individual and don't perceive the world around you as hostile, then this kind of healing isn't necessary and other options might be far more suitable (or you'll most likely just stop drinking by yourself).
I also think it's a shame people are forced to go to these meetings by the judical system, because I think the system was never intended as such and it probably completely defeats its purpose.
Most people seem to read this as a proof that markets are inherently flawed and as lending support to their ideological distrust of market economies. I think that if the authors thesis holds true and p indeed != np, this kind of conclusion could spell an even bigger problem for those who advocate to agument or replace market economies with another, typically more centralized, form of economic calculation. Allende's cybersyn famously used linear programming (P) in order to centrally 'simulate' and improve upon more regular market mechanics. If the authors thesis holds I think it's actually an argument in favor of the economic calculation problem talking point of Hayek and the like: efficient calculation of economic distribution problems is impossible and flawed dynamics of the market are probably close to the best approximation we can afford.
When I tried to read about Allende's cybersyn all I could find are a few retro-futuristic furniture, but no meat whatsoever about the kind of software that was behind. It looked like pure PR to me. Do you have good sources about it? It has always intrigued me.
Personally I think it is very unlikely that the markets are close to the best approximation we can afford. The current market-making agents use limited intelligence on limited data. It is an efficient system in the sense that it beats randomness and it beats a central (human) intelligence with (allegedly) superior access to information.
The project was very short-lived, but (IIRC) the primary designer was Stafford Beer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stafford_Beer) who based the work on his so-called Viable System Model (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viable_system_model). For the fundamental theories of the time you'd want to read Beer's works as well as those of his contemporaries, who espoused competing theories and methodologies. (I say "at the time" but the state of the art never really changed. Project Cybersyn is a fascinating chapter in the long-history of AI, and if there's any dominate thread to AI it's one of diminishing expectations and migration to ever more circumscribed problem domains.)
As I mention in my Amazon review the author, Eden Medina, seems to have compiled a ridiculous amount of material but only a fraction of it bleeds through into her book. The book is fascinating but if you're interested in the theory and history more generally then the book's bibliography is priceless.
It's been awhile since I read the book but here's one lasting impression: one of the biggest problems with Project Cybersyn was communication between producers and consumers. Much of the budget and time was actually spent on telecommunications infrastructure and then figuring out how to get people to use it properly. Which hints at one of the most important functions of a market: price signaling. Regardless of whether a market is efficient, given the dynamic nature of a complex economy any system you setup that tries to centralize price signaling (capturing pricing information is a prerequisite for processing it and generating optimal allocations) seems like it'd very quickly become antiquated and a hindrance. Markets may be inefficient but at scale not only are they remarkably powerful distributed computation engines, they co-evolve with the economy. But that doesn't mean there isn't room for applying these techniques in sub-domains (e.g. trading engines, city governance, etc), improving overall efficiency.
I'm interested in this. So far, the best resources I found are:
- "Red Plenty" by Francis Spufford, a mix of fiction and non-fiction about planning experience in the USSR. It includes a rich bibliography and references to papers published over the past 70 years around this issue.
Check out "Towards a New Socialism", by the aforementioned Cockshott and Cotrell. Cockshott himself is a computer scientist and proposes planning the economy based on solving a linear system of labour inputs.
As someone who has been learning React for the last couple of days, I found the tutorial quite adequate. My approach to learning was first going through the tutorial, then I began working on a real project, revisiting the tutorial code every time I needed to refresh my memory about some concept. I do agree it could've been more comprehensive and dealt with some real world scenarios like inputs, data-binding and whatnot, but generally speaking it was a nice showcase of what React can do.
My understanding is that he, a convicted pedophile and all around sociopath, seemingly totally bent on pursuing wildly antisocial endeavours, was protected up until now. He strategically contacted the FBI which was able to lean on the Icelandic law enforcement through a diplomatic route to grant him unofficial immunity, as long as he served the purpose of going after Assange.
Now that he admitted his testimony was based on lies, he is no longer useful and Iceland's law enforcement is finally free to do its job. He was jailed now because he betrayed his loyalty of his handlers. I wonder why he decided to break that, it seems like such a complete blunder. Perhaps he realised his testimony wouldn't hold up in court. Really wish the interview mentioned in the article would be translated to English but I can't find it.