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Comment Re:And replace them with what? (Score 1) 27

For one, get away from C-based syntax, at least the ugly parts. Second, don't overload "+" for both concatenation and math (Js); that was bigly stupid. Third, give us optional named parameters. Anonymous objects are not a good substitute. Fourth, clean up name-space management instead of using a hacked-on "fix".

Example function declaration:

func myFunc(aa, bb:int, cc:num.required, dd:required, ee:int=7) {...}

This example is "semi-typed" as "aa" doesn't require a type (is not validated). "dd" doesn't require a type but can't be white-space-only or null. "ee" is initialized with "7" if not passed in a call or is blank/null.

I've yet to find a newer language that has all the features listed.

Comment Re:The return of the Luddites (Score 1) 57

nature already prevents that. We don't have it now, and we will never have it. It's just not possible.

Nature hasn't solved the problem of directly transferring learned info in one brain to other brains, each cycle has to reinvent the learning process almost from scratch*. But e-brains can be readily cloned, giving it an edge over nature (as known).

Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of Trump clones. It would be an entropy accelerant bigger than any the world has ever seen, as we are used to dealing with a just handful of evil dictators and demagogues at a time. And the DonBots could be made smarter than the current Don so that they wouldn't get distracted by dumb shit like ballrooms.

* Instincts are transferred, but they don't seem powerful enough to solve the issue. Maybe in a billion years or so nature might invent a way to directly transfer learned knowledge to offspring, but we don't really know. Given enough time and environments, I bet natural selection could solve it, but whether it can evolve in say 50 million years or take many billions is unknown. Re-learning is a resource drain on an organism such that there is a survival advantage of evolving knowledge transfer.

Comment Cocktails? (Score 1) 38

Bacteria have to evolve fairly elaborate strategies around many of the antibiotics (AB). For example, a process that took a bacterium 2 steps may require 5 as a work-around to a given AB: a "long-cut". It seems to me a cocktail of multiple AB's would slow down the offensive work done by bacteria by forcing them to expand lots of energy to work around multiple AB's. It wouldn't just be one long-cut the bacterium has to take, but several: tax them from multiple angles like what red states accuse blue states of*. This would give the body's own immune system an edge over them, as the bacterium would be sluggish.

* The real story is more nuanced.

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