Since they give out two awards each year, I wonder what the other 18 guys did. Off the top of my head only Alan Kay comes to mind as being more deserving.

Well, Kiczales, des Rivieres, and Bobrow come to mind. It's not that well known, but the meta-object protocol and multiple dispatch are so much more powerfull than C++ OO that it is actually not funny.

Another title suggestion: Having a Twitter account does nothing but make an organization look unprofessional.

Have you been hiding under a rock? Nowadays, to look really professional you need a string of icons for different social media. Twitter, Facebook, and a bunch of others.

That it is utterly ridiculous - granted. That it looks unprofessional - unfortunately not to most people.

but I have seen it used in the real world to protect those dissenting against their government.

That's good news, and I'm happy to be wrong on this count. I worry, though, that TOR usage tells the SA secret service who is a dissenter.

here are plenty of innocent and justified uses for systems like tor, but for the average person associates tor with drugs by mail, child porn and murder for hire thanks to the media.

Truth be told, it's not the media. We live in a world that is far freer than many would like to acknowledge, and for most purposes tor is a hassle or pointless. The end result is that tor is mostly only used when there is a very good reason for it, and since we live in fairly free society, that reason tends to be stuff that gives tor a bad reputation.

There is also this paradoxon that, if we lived in a society where tor would make a difference, tor would most likely not exist or be useless. This is the situation in Saudi Arabia and other similar places. This is so because the real weakness of tor is that, since it is not possible to hide the exit or entry nodes themselves, the network is easy to shut down or to filter out.

Thanks, man, that sounds awesome!

It's a bit processed (with echos and stuff) but that's quite fine by me.

[...] Cortex-M3 ? Device drivers for basics, register access? Because, it would be awesome to have all these theoretical safety guarantees and stuff, while programming hardware.

Ada has that (google for "arm-none-eabi ada") and much, much more. Plus, it is a mature language with a fat piece of industry behind it.

This Rust language is yet another flashy thing that will not get anywhere.

Haven't you just disproved your own point?

No, of course not.

that if the vast majority of victims of Islam are innocent victims then the problem isn't actually with Islam but simply violent thugs?

Your sentence is gliberish, and doesn't say what you meant. But whatever.

Just like smoking causes cancer, which isn't anything the smokers actually want, Islam causes violence and grief without its adepts really wanting it. Of course everyone involved would be better off without it. Of course the humans that fall for Islam are victims. The problem is how to free them of that.

And just like admitting that you have a problem is the first step out of alcoholism or drug addiction, so it is the first step out of barbarism.

Islam is a problem. Look at the world today. Where is a free, prosperous Islamic state? Where? They are all host of no end of calamities and disgusting cruelty. Why?

You Will Know Them by Their Fruits.

As long as the top level politicians are disciples of the cult of Politically Correctness the real problem, the problem with the Islamic barbarism will still remain.

That is true. Admitting that there is a problem with islam would be a very big step towards improvement. But since this is categorically denied, it is not possible to find a solution.

BTW, the vast majority of the victims of radical islam are themselves muslims. Maybe it is time for muslims to stand up and say, no, peeps, contrary to what political correctness suggest, we actually do have a problem in our religion, and here in the west it is actually possible to do something about it.

The point, rather obviously, is not to exterminate muslims, but to make the fringes of islam less barbaric.

This could be true if you purchased a car just to be an Uber "taxi". If you already owned a car though, and want to make a few extra bucks a few nights a week, then you may be able to come ahead.

You might, getting a ridiculously low wage out of it - but only if you are lucky. Which means that you are still a sucker, gambling stupidly like that.

If you don't follow the law you will get in trouble.

The fun thing here is that it is not Uber that got in trouble, but their drivers. Which aren't their employees, btw. Uber just looses a bit of revenues. The drivers, though, which own the cars, now have real problems.

That's the real innovative thing in Uber. They have found a way of shielding themselves from any problems. It really is genius, albeit evil genius.

Surge pricing has an interesting dark side that I see nobody talk about: cars are often too cheap for the service to be sustainable, in the sense that the money does not even cover the running costs of the cars when considering wear and loss of value on purchase price. Since noticing this implies a complex calculation as well as the mental makeup to take such calculations seriously, most drivers just don't notice. They are literally loosing money. Uber, however, always makes money.

It really is genius.

Well, you both have made a rather compelling case against bitcoin: it's too complicated. Not even you guys seem to dig it.

The problem I see here is a symptom of Europe run by people who are from another era, at least in terms of thinking. The reaction by the papers is a natural one, but it is more of a knee jerk reaction that trying to understand the technology and how it works.

The people who "run Europe" may be from a different era, but it is a bit too much to simply assume that they are stupid.

The problem they are trying to address with laws like this is the destruction of the press by the internet. I know, technology and business models and yadda yadda, but if we lose the press we lose institutionalized independent journalism with the budget to do actual investigative reporting, which is crucial in a free society. Bloggers won't do as a substitute, nor the pay-nothing-for-content model of the huffington post.

So google shut down its Spanish news page. Frankly, I think this is a good thing and an opportunity for the Spanish press to reinvent some of its business models. I hope they succeed.

I like to read, and unfortunately the signal-to-noise ratio in science fiction and fantasy is poor, so it's hard to find good reads.

There is a yearly "the year's best science fiction" collection of stories and short novels (edited by Gardner Dozois), and there are a couple of decent journals (like Asimov's). If you buy these, you will read sample stories of good writers that also publish books. That way you will find enough good SF to read for the rest of your life.

Where are my modpoints when I need them.

Thanks AC for that very insightful comment. It's all good but I like especially the end:

I'm sure that Senator Wyden, who's been one of the leaders in the charge to stop this bullshit, appreciates your thoughtful and nuanced views of this complex matter.

*outch!*

Well, the fact of the matter is that Google isn't forcing anyone to do anything.

As an experiment: try to get by without using google. The argument is that by being so successful and ubiquitous, people are forced to use it, giving google powers that society might not want to give them for very specific reasons. If it's "their fault" or not is completely besides the point.

If Google was a German company we wouldn't be talking about this.

Because if Google was a German company, it would have never been allowed to become the privacy busting, surveillance octopus from hell it is now.