iRobot’s largest creditor isn’t its Chinese supplier. It’s the US government, in the form of unpaid tariffs, some $3.5 million. Arguably it was Trump’s stupid tariffs that drove the company out of business. Rather than bringing manufacturing to the US, it allowed the Chinese to acquire an American company, leaving production right where it is.
Readit Newsjklowden commented on Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges news.bloomberglaw.com/ban... · Posted by u/nreece
jklowden commented on Waiting for SQL:202y: Group by All peter.eisentraut.org/blog... · Posted by u/ingve
jklowden commented on Quantifying pass-by-value overhead owen.cafe/posts/struct-si... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti
There is no pass-by-value overhead. There are only implementation decisions.
Pass by value describes the semantics of a function call, not implementation. Passing a const reference in C++ is pass-by-value. If the user opts to pass "a copy" instead, nothing requires the compiler to actually copy the data. The compiler is required only to supply the actual parameter as if it was copied.
jklowden commented on QUIC and the end of TCP sockets codemia.io/blog/path/QUIC... · Posted by u/charles_irl
Note well: the claims about TCP come with some evidence, in the form of a graph. The claims for QUIC do not.
Many of the claims are dubious. TCP has "no notion of multiple steams"? What are two sockets, then? What is poll(2)? The onus is on QUIC to explain why it’s better for the application to multiplex the socket than for the kernel to multiplex the device. AFAICT that question is assumed away in a deluge of words.
If the author thinks it’s the "end of TCP sockets", show us the research, the published papers and meticulous detail. Then tell me again why I should eschew the services of TCP and absorb its complexity into my application.
jklowden commented on Why America still needs public schools theconversation.com/why-a... · Posted by u/PaulHoule
>for inculcating the United States’ fundamental values of
If I am honest, I do not have the same values as those who favor public education. Not only do our values have very little overlap, the values that are extolled by them are quite offensive and disgusting to me. Given that these values are now those of the public education system, I should be desperately worried about my own children and the children of people I care about. However, since the late 1990s a curious thing has happened, and none of those children are in danger. My children do not attend public school and yet aren't being hunted down for truancy as I would have been as a child.
We've already eliminated the danger of public education. This might be confusing to you, because some children still attend. Others are aware, you'll see it expressed in every reddit thread... someone will call for the end of homeschooling on the grounds that they're unable to indoctrinate every child, though they describe if much more charitably than that. None of those children will grow up caring about public education, none of them will ever vote in ways favorable to public education their entire lives. The shift has already begun, and in the coming years it will become ever more obvious.
There was never any danger of public education, so eliminating that danger was quite easy. What we are undermining, though, is the benefit of public education. Witness the last election, where tens of millions were indifferent to democratic governance if it meant cheap gasoline and eggs.
And, yes, the assault on democracy is real. On January 20, Trump signed an order in support of free speech. Within a week he barred the AP over the Gulf of America. Within a month he illegally disbanded USAID. Within 3 months he began suing law firms and defunding university research. Today colleges are receiving letters demanding curriculum in exchange for funding. And we have four years more, at least, to endure.
jklowden commented on Why America still needs public schools theconversation.com/why-a... · Posted by u/PaulHoule
I agree, and given the current education metrics of America, I don't think a federalized education department has done much good. There's too much language and cultural differences in America to have one-size-fits-all from the federal government.
Perhaps I'm wearing rose tinted glasses, but I think schools should be governed on a state or local level. That way you can better match the needs of the students, all of the students, in that area.
90% of funding for K-12 public schools comes from state and local taxes. That’s hardly a one-size-fits-all national system.
Would you tell me though, please, what language and cultural differences should inflect science or math or literature or history? Are you suggesting evolution not be taught where there are parents who object, or that the civil war be taught differently in the former confederacy, so as not to hurt anyone’s feelings? Those things are happening, of course. I’m just innocent of any defense for them.
jklowden commented on Why America still needs public schools theconversation.com/why-a... · Posted by u/PaulHoule
To be fair, I don’t think anyone’s trying to eliminate public education. That’s a very unfair characterization.
They are just trying to cut down large education bureaucracies that don’t appear to be benefiting the students.
Generally very large or very small public school systems in America really underperform for the students. It’s not clear that the Federal resources in the Dept of Education are directly benefiting the students.
They are trying to give more control over education to parents and local communities especially those in underperforming areas.
To be fair, the characterization is entirely accurate. Anyone who speaks of "government schools" advocates their demise. They want an entirely privatized system funded at taxpayer expense: a voucher for every child to be spent as each parent decides. If that means every public school closes, well, voila: the magic of the market.
Whoever "they" are in your assertion, they are not cutting down bureaucracy or promoting local control. The federal government has not issued new regulations to cap administrative overhead, for example. It simply abandoned its civil rights enforcement and slashed funding.
Agreed, public schools in America do a poor job. Something like 1/3 of graduating seniors are ready for college work, according to the "national report card". But that’s by design: elected school boards and administration determine salaries and standards. No principal wants to explain poor grades to a disappointed parent; no teacher wants to combat a parent’s prejudice by teaching real history or biology. So, the curriculum is mediocre and grades are high.
The situation isn’t much better at private schools by the way. Grade inflation is everywhere. Harvard just has the luxury of picking its students.
No Child Left Behind and civil-rights enforcement by the department of education did narrow the achievement gap, which has now begun to widen again. So it is clear the department directly benefits student. The complaint is not that; it is that it benefits the "wrong" students, if you get my drift.
jklowden commented on Red Hat Technical Writing Style Guide stylepedia.net/style/... · Posted by u/jumpocelot
Maybe that's a good recipe for reliable technical documents, but arguably not great ones. Some of my favourites writers - Donald Knuth, Leo Brodie, Marshall Kirk McKusick, Harley Hahn, Jeff Duntemann, Beej, Nils Holm, surely missing more - write with a lot of flair and personality. I mean, it certainly doesn't feel cold and lacking in emotion. Oh, Dennis Yurichev too.
Brian Kernighan cannot be topped. He is easy to read, succinct, clear, and sometimes funny.
Why do I remember that every C64 BASIC keyword was a 2-byte integer? A typing shortcut was to enter the first letter, followed by a "shifted" high-bit character. Every keyword was represented that way.
Variables were also 2-bytes, but ASCII. The user could enter a longer name, but only the first two characters were significant.
Operating systems have gotten a whole lot more reliable since Windows 95. The way I remember it, Windows 98 would regularly corrupt itself and need to be manually reinstalled. I'd done it so many times that I could pretty much recite the license key from memory. Modern Linux is rock solid. Even Windows 10 is very stable. They might be 'bloated', but modern OS's are way, way more stable.
Operating systems were always more reliable than Windows95 from the day it was introduced. Protected memory and process privilege were not exactly unknown when DEC was selling VMS. Or for that matter when Microsoft was selling Windows NT. That the FAA cheaped out then, choosing an inferior system with no technical merit, is prelude to the current problem.