Obviously, whether this was true or not is a whole discussion, but the attitude did lead to a lot more cheating (due to desperation) than I'd imagine past generations had.

A midterm being worth 25-33% of a grade, plus some classes only being offered in fall or spring semesters meant a bad test could roughly cost you tens of thousands of dollars, since the next time you could retake the class would be in a year, and it often was a prerequisite for another class. It just leads to an environment that encourages desperate "survival" behavior.

> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.

because... they don't have as many examples, documentation, textbooks, or public example projects to base generation off of, perhaps. There may be a future where documentation/servers are more formally integrated with LLMs/AI systems in a way that makes up for the relative lack of literature by plugging into a source of information that can be used to generate code/projects.

Luckily, it should be coming with the regular $20 Pro subscription in the near future, so it should be easier to demo and get a feel for it without having to jump in all the way.

Where basketball misses there is that the "get the ball in the hoop" portion of that is _really_ boring now. I'd wager that people don't want to be concerned with some 3rd man setting a screen on the other side of the court allowing some 2nd man to set up behind a pick from a 4th man to get passed the ball from the 1st man to shoot a three... and then clank it off the rim. Then, rinse and repeat on both ends. The end result is that the "get the ball in the hoop" part just feels like a back-and-forth 3-point shootaround, even though the actual sequence is far more complex.

Should you care about what your own government does with your data? Absolutely, 100%, no doubt, big ticket issue, fly the banners as visibly as possible. But more than an adversary? Not even close.

If you've had better luck, let me know (actually).

As for "being China", every country has protections on what goes in or out of the country including media. A lot of countries won't let you own a newspaper or news broadcast channel, so this is the next extension of that sort of idea.

It's the same idea as not allowing a company from the USSR to run a news channel during the Cold War, although obviously the lines are fuzzier and still being discovered with apps and algorithms.

It's not (just) that it poses an economic threat to one of the biggest US companies (which as you said, I'm sure plays a big part in why it's suddenly relevant), but that it allows a government-influenced foreign media channel to influence policy indirectly by means of mass dissemination.

As for why now and not before, it's because of how apparent the possible effects are now that there's a very direct and widely spread channel that can pump OUT information, which is vastly more effective and obvious than passive surveillance through cameras or other hardware. (Also cybersecurity people have been calling out this sort of stuff for hardware since time immemorial)

Vast difference from the typical notion of book burnings and such.

"Objective" media exists (NPR, PBS(?), CSPAN) but just isn't as popular because biased media attracts more attention through confirmation bias and flashiness.

If you're another country consuming Meta, etc. then you should probably be wary about dependence on a foreign platform's influence. The biggest difference however is how close the platform is to the government. In the US, it's getting closer, but still has some separation; in China it's rather close to one-and-the-same due to the pressure that the govt can exert on companies to do their bidding.

There's at least a theory that people believe will work that hasn't been correctly implemented yet, but whether or not it's feasible to implement at all, I'm not holding my breath.

Especially earlier on, web components were implemented without incorporating some of the major feedback from developers. What resulted was a low-level tool with some really awkward warts and APIs that was more-or-less unusable. (hence, one of the reasons why when web components discussions come up, lit is always mentioned since it needs that extra layer to paper over some of the warts)

TL;DR: it replaces some of the bad parts of Angular/React/etc. with its own set of bad parts that become more obvious only once you get deeper in.

There's a perfectly fine topic for debate here, but you'd do much better to word it in a less inflammatory way.

The internet has a lot of material, but kids also learn a lot from being around their peers. Lots of families have both parents that work and can't watch their kids at home, or take them to extracurricular activities. Also, depending on what area you're in, many teachers that I know have Master's degrees and do in fact know what they're doing, but are hamstrung in other ways.

I'm not sure how dangerous "de-extinguishing" a species would be, but we've had numerous faux paus with destabilizing ecosystems by introducing non-native species (i.e. lionfish, as an invasive species). These cause extensive environmental damage and can be irreversible if not contained in time. The worst thing that could happen is losing control over the population of de-extinct species and damaging an ecosystem(s).

That all being said, I'd be stumped if we somehow lost sight of a woolly mammoth... and I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to see one myself, so...

There's nothing to suggest that these things are bad for your health (as far as I'm aware) and there's a hypothesis (not a theory) that these might've contributed to gut microbiomes in the past. But, rather than conclusive proof, it might just be something low-stakes that people can try until more hard research or data is found that has a more conclusive direction, even if it disproves previous hypotheses.

Until then, we're left making best-guess efforts with no conclusive proof. But, suggesting that these have no benefit is also incorrect until we have conclusive data to suggest otherwise. Hence, the point of the article: figuring out stuff about the microbiome is hard.

I think your opinion on OSS/large codebases makes sense, but I don't think it's an either/or situation: reading should _support_ actual coding, similar to how studying a grammar textbook for a foreign language is there to support actually speaking/listening/communicating in that language.

But, even then, other resources are better IMO. (Metz, Ousterhout, Kay, PragProg, language-specific design patterns books, etc.)

The experience of doing things wrong is valuable, but I think you also don't want to get quagmired there. It just depends on how voraciously/quickly you read and seek out better patterns.

(Also, elephant in the room, Uncle Bob has been very vocal and opinionated on the internet about various things and it hasn't endeared many to him because of it)

I wouldn't call "low-skilled" workers _unproductive_ per se, and personally think they're incredibly valuable, but economically, the cost/difficulty of replacing a "low-skilled" worker is relatively low: it's a lot easier to find a replacement farmhand than it is a replacement farmer that manages the farm itself.

Trades in general are fraught with physical perils for the unaware.