I also think it’s unfair to look at just food prices. Housing and healthcare have bloomed massively.

Like, there exist problems that have a lower bound of n time where algorithms can get arbitrarily close to O(n) complexity but there is no program that actually reaches it (there is one that runs in time O(n^{1.1}), one that runs in O(n^{1.01}), etc).

But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t hard walls, it just means there are hard walls where every program’s runtime is > that wall, rather than >= that wall. But maybe I’m misunderstanding, or there are some corollaries I’m missing?

As an aside, as someone who studied more on the pure math side, Blums speed up theorem is rather intuitive. It looks like there might be a relatively elegant proof using topology. Blums speed up theorem is basically just a statement that the set of programs that implement a particular computable function doesn’t satisfy the greatest lower bound property. This is also the case for, for example, the set of rational numbers: there exist subsets of the rational numbers with a lower bound but not a greatest lower bound (like the set of all positive rational numbers q where q^2 >= 2). I’m hand waving, but I think in that same vein you can show that the set of programs under the topology of ordering by runtime is completely disconnected.

And yeah, maybe the defending countries leader isn’t willing to end it all, and maybe try collaboration or partisan resistance. But if you were the attacking country, would you be willing to make that bet? Or would you hesitate?

The DPRKs primary goal is preservation of the Kim regime above all else. That’s why the DPRK over the last 70+ years has focused on Juche, a principle of self-reliance. The vast majority of their weapon systems are of indigenous designs and manufacture. And why they have developed and deployed an independent nuclear deterrent.

But I think the most important thing to keep in mind is that a bug isn’t necessarily less serious or less important than a vulnerability. A serious bug should be patched just as urgently as a serious vulnerability.

So, when you get arrested, you are required to be arraigned by a judge, and that judge has to find probable cause for arrest. That requires the prosecution to present evidence to the judge that a crime was committed and you probably did it. It’s a very low standard of proof, but it does have to happen. And then you are required to get bail, outside of very extreme cases. It depends on the jurisdiction, but all of that has to happen relatively quickly after arrest, like 24-72 hours. If she didn’t get bail until 13 days after the arrest, that’s a pretty cut and dry civil rights violation. If they didn’t get a probable cause determination in that time period, that’s a civil rights violation (unless they got an arrest warrant prior, which they might have in this case).

If she did get bail within a couple days, but it was just so much she couldn’t afford it, then it gets murkier. Because at that point thats not the police or the prosecutor, that’s the judge. Similarly, if the prosecutor presented the evidence they had to a judge for a probable cause determination (or the arrest warrant) and the judge granted it, that’s on the judge. You would have to show the prosecutor and/or police lied or presented inaccurate information in court. If not… at that point you have two independent branches of government screwing up.

Was she just given an extremely high bond she couldn’t afford? Not that that’s much better than no bond at all, but I’d really like to understand the details here.

Now it feels like companies are treating these breakouts like a chance for PR. I don’t think that will change until their swarm gets corrupted by some random black hat to do en-masse spear phishing or something

The department of defense is not equivalent to the pre-1947 War Department. The War Department was in charge of just the army. There was a separate Department of the Navy. There was no over-arching department for all of the US military.

Post WW2 the US military was restructured to organize all of the branches (including the newly-formed Department of the Air Force) under a united civilian leadership. This was done in the National Security Act of 1947. The new structure was initially called the National Military Establishment and then renamed to the Department of Defense.

So the department of war name going away wasn’t a PR thing. It was because of military parochialism. If they had called this unified structure the Department of War it would have seemed like the Army was now taking over the other branches! And I promise you today’s Admirals understand that history, even if the secretary of defense doesn’t.

The victims can sue the city/state. They might already be doing so in parallel. And honestly that’s the only way to be made whole: these city officials don’t have the tens of millions that would be required to compensate victims. This is more about holding government officials individually accountable.

I have a pet theory about political ads that I would love to find data to be able to confirm/deny. My theory is that those political ads don’t actually convince anyone about who to vote for, and aren’t intended to. Instead, it’s about convincing the people who already support you and your party to show up and vote. If that’s true, then the root cause of all of this money being injected into politics is really a symptom of low voter turnout. And so anything we can do to improve voter turnout will lessen the influence of money in politics.

My justification for this theory is that I see all of these political ads and really don’t find them convincing or liable to change my vote. I actually find attack ads often have the opposite effect on me, where I am immediately skeptical of whatever claim they advance and feel sure there’s important context they are leaving out. Of course I know I’m not the average voter, and other people may see it differently, but I’d love to see some data on this.