> So a hypothetical photon from the big bang (era?) gets observed now means the big bang is happening now?
Yes. More specifically, the big bang would be happening now, at the location from where we perceive that photon. Hey, this stuff is not intuitive.
However the early universe absorbed all the big bang photons. The furthest back we can observe photons from is the CMB. And yes, the phase change is happening now, there... Complicated by the Hubble expansion of course.
> A dinosaur decays to bones and now gets observed means the dinosaur died just now - not that it died millions of years ago?
No, that is incorrect. But you already knew that. Analogies don't work for light and for time and for relativity - it is too different from our everyday experiences for analogies to hold.
> Fast forward to 2006. I was shocked to learn that the binary search program that Bentley proved correct and subsequently tested in Chapter 5 of Programming Pearls contains a bug. ... Lest you think I'm picking on Bentley, let me tell you how I discovered the bug: The version of binary search that I wrote for the JDK contained the same bug. It was reported to Sun recently when it broke someone's program, after lying in wait for nine years or so.
IIRC it was overflow when you do (a + b) / 2 for the midpoint. It took so long to find because you need a >billion item array to overflow the 32-bit integer, and that much RAM wasn't common until the 00s.
TCO is surprisingly commonly supported in the real world. TCO is supported in C++ compilers, JavaScript in Safari, Scala, Clojure in a way, etc.!
For instance:
"All current mainstream [C++] compilers perform tail call optimisation fairly well (and have done for more than a decade), even for mutually recursive calls" [1].
"As of July 22, 2023 Safari is the only browser that supports tail call optimization" of JavaScript [2].
"Since Clojure uses the Java calling conventions, it cannot, and does not, make the same tail call optimization guarantees. Instead, it provides the recur special operator, which does constant-space recursive looping" [3].
"The Scala compiler will automatically optimize any truly tail-recursive method. If you annotate a method that you believe is tail-recursive with the @tailrec annotation, then the compiler will warn you if the method is actually not tail-recursive" [4].
Like many countries, China has an unemployment problem especially with new grads.
> demanding jobs and long hours in the private sector, where 12-hour days and weekend shifts are common
But well, there’s the problem right there, right? If they restrict max working hours to like European standards, they’d immediately reduce unemployment to near zero.
Plus the extra time off produces greater domestic demand too.
This solution is too obvious. So why don’t they do it?
What’s more funny to me is the set up to that quote:
> Bill Gates had somehow manifested, alone, surrounded by ten Apple employees. … Steve started yelling at Bill, asking him why he violated their agreement.
And what’s more interesting is the conclusion:
> Apple filed a monumental copyright lawsuit against Microsoft in 1988, but they eventually lost on a technicality (the judge ruled that Apple inadvertently gave Microsoft a perpetual license to the Mac user interface in November 1985).
Microsoft didn’t steal Apple’s GUI … Apple gave it to them.
Microsoft claimed that its software’s use of various visualizations related to window state was covered by the 1985 agreement, and Apple claimed that this was not true; those window states were produced by Macintosh while Microsoft’s software was being rendered in the Mac environment.
> In his March 20, 1989 Order, Judge Schwarzer declined to consider whether the visual displays in issue were generated by the Microsoft application programs or by the Macintosh system software. The point arose in connection with Microsoft's argument that the 1985 Agreement licensed to Microsoft all visual displays that could possibly be called up by running the five Microsoft application programs on the Macintosh system software then or in the future. 709 F. Supp. at 929. Judge Schwarzer concluded that Microsoft's contention would "defy common sense." Id.
Two spoiled rich kids arguing over who's morality is the least worst.
That this moment is held up as some great exchange in business is annoying. That our regulatory agencies are perennially sleep at the switch and allow this nonsense to keep happening is extremely frustrating.
Let me guess, when confronted with uncomfortable information that requires you to think longer than you are used to, you devolve to false dichotomies into defend your ego?
Just to see if I understand what you’re saying…
So a hypothetical photon from the big bang (era?) gets observed now means the big bang is happening now?
A dinosaur decays to bones and now gets observed means the dinosaur died just now - not that it died millions of years ago?
(Dinosaur = photon from a star or something. Decay = red shift. Or a real dinosaur— guess it’s the same now.)
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