I think others have addressed the differences between Python's class system and CLOS, both of which are very flexible, as I understand.
However, as far as optimization, the point is that Python's class system is implicated in almost every line of code. Most operators are actually invocations of corresponding "dunder" methods on their operands, which can be potentially changed, and whose invocation is actually surprisingly complicated and difficult to optimize.
Common Lisp, of course, does not have operators in the same sense, just functions. However, the analogous functions, like +, *, aref, etc. are not generic functions in the sense of CLOS. They only take built-in data types as arguments and cannot be overloaded. This lack of extensibility makes it easier for the compiler to know what actual code is being invoked and to optimize their use. Arguably, this makes Common Lisp seem like a less flexible language, and in some ways its design does pay more attention to optimization than its reputation would have you believe. On the other hand, the lisp syntax means that there's no such thing as a finite set of operators that you'd want to overload. If you want a different type of multiplication, you can just use a different function.
Why is this ironic? I'm struggling to find a reasonable interpretation for this claim other than "The NY Times has been wrong about issues of spying and propaganda before, therefore it's not worth my time to consider the claims in this article, and I dismiss it completely." Which is a reasonable thing to believe. A little harsh in my opinion, but reasonable can disagree. However, it's definitely not ironic.
Even if you believe that the NY Times is nothing more than an appendage of the US security establishment, then it's completely straightforward that the establishment would be trying to counteract the propaganda. It's certainly not ironic for the CIA to try to identify and stop foreign spies even as it itself uses spies, or that the military builds armor even as it also uses guns, is it?
If you believe that the NY Times has an institutional position that propaganda is always and forever a legitimate tool of the government, then there's no contradiction if they also call out propaganda for the purpose of neutralizing it.
If you believe that the NY Times is more or less a legitimate news organization that maybe has made mistakes in the past, then I think the article is newsworthy and relevant.
I keep seeing discussion of Russian involvement in other countries' politics dismissed as ironic, which seems to just be a rhetorical trick to make it sound like there's a more sophisticated argument than just "I don't believe that source".
I did not dismiss the notion that Russia produces propaganda; Russia produces propaganda.
Generally, I expect that those alleging wrong doing are not engaging in the same; and so it appears ironic when an exposed agent of state propaganda alleges that a state is engaging in propaganda. It's a, "well yes, and you would know" sort of humour.
Let those without sin cast the first stones, and all that.
The root of the disagreement seems to be that you read the article as condemnation and I read it as a news story. In any case, I stand by my reading that this a piece of news and any heavy moralizing is a gloss you've imposed.
> so it appears ironic when an exposed agent of state propaganda alleges that a state is engaging in propaganda. It's a, "well yes, and you would know" sort of humour.
I'd say it's more of a "rain on your wedding day" sort of irony.
If the article were planted by the CIA, that would be ironic. If the article were planted by the FSB, that would be even more ironic. But "NY Times reports on foreign propaganda" is not ironic.
I am attempting to argue for shades of grey; the American and Russian media narratives evoke a polarized situation.
In that manner of thinking, I think it's fair to question the messenger who brings accusations of wrongdoing during a politically sensitive time. That is to say, this reporting came at a serendipitously good time for certain politicians.
That everyone does it doesn't mean that everyone does it to the same extent, or with the same impact, or that doing it is at all justifiable.
This was not relevant to my point. 4 comments (in 2 places) without touching my point... :-( You are not serious, bye.
You argue also in the other comments that there are small differences between USA and Russia -- my repeated point is that the whole Western democratic world don't agree with your assessments here.
(In Sweden, a good part of the ex communists do agree with you -- at most 5-10% of the population-- but those guys have never supported a democracy in military conflict with a non democracy...)
I responded to that several times. It does not matter who agrees with whom about their allegations of another's wrong doing when that is not questioned.
"Russia makes Propaganda."
"That's ironic for them to say, as you're complicit in making American Propaganda."
"These countries agree that Russia makes propaganda."
"Russia makes propaganda. So does America."
And so on.
Hell, America makes propaganda wholesale with its military advisors program and huge logistic and financial support of Hollywood.
You started by agreeing that there were different levels of gray, now you really argue the same position as Putin's propaganda -- there is no real difference between the democracies and the dictators.
Without doing any real discussion of all the liberty indexes and freedom of press etc...
I'm not claiming that there's no real difference; I'm claiming that it doesn't matter who agrees that Russia engages in propaganda. That doesn't change that America does as well.
Is Russia or America worse? I don't care which is worse, that doesn't matter. They both do wrong things.
Compile macros wouldn't be sufficient for Rust's println! because the type signature (even the number of arguments) depends on the format string. The format string has to be constant and has to be interpreted at compile time so that the variables being printed can be type-checked.
I once looked into their financial statements and came to the conclusion that per article published, they had about $2500 in costs and $5000 in revenue, so 50% profit margins. If you look at the price of comparable PLoS journals (i.e. not PLoS ONE), the publication costs are also about $2500, so I think this is in the right ballpark.
This is mostly true, but you're confusing because there are two different levels: corporations are registered and regulated at the state level, of which LLC is one category. The IRS then categorizes registered corporations as either S-corps or C-corps for the purpose of federal taxes. There's not a one-to-one mapping between the two levels, especially since there's 50 different states, but usually LLCs implies S corp.
No, because Google, Microsoft, and Apple could have coordinated on implementing EME even without an official W3C stamp of approval. Or they could have implemented 3 separate APIs for DRM. Netflix and others would be mildly inconvenienced, but that's something they could deal with. As long as content producers insist on DRM, which they do for video, the sub par user experience is going to be with the platforms that don't support Netflix.
Reminder that HTML5 started without an official W3C stamp of approval. (Hell, it started with the W3C membership voting against any further work on HTML, thus the formation of the WHATWG.)
Remember also that a well-known limitation of economic measurements of GDP, productivity, etc. is that it doesn't account for personal work when no money changes hands. For example, a man who works full time and spends 100% of his salary on a nanny gets counted in GDP. But if he quits his job and takes care of the kid and the nanny takes his old job, then GDP and productivity have been reduced. Nothing has been changed about the amount of work done, but you've replaced two people working for money with only one working for money, so the accounting systems show it as less.
If part of the effect of minimum income is for people to spend more time with their kids, then this would show up as less work, in part, because less of the work being done would be for money.
Let me offer up another version of Dr. Coward's story: An employee is hired and does his job brilliantly in some aspects and along some metrics, but his employer has complaints in other areas, which are hard to read since we haven't heard their side. These issues are brought up with the employee in writing multiple times over the course of a year: September 2013, April 2014, and November 2014. Apparently, the employee does not address the issues and instead insists that he's doing a brilliant job and that the employer's criticism is really about him being too awesome. Employer decides that they don't want a rogue employee and fires him in October 2014, effective June 2016. Why such almost 2 years of lead time? Maybe it's contractual, but I'm sure that if they really wanted to, they could fire him at the end of the academic year. I read this as the employer trying to get the employee to take them seriously and still giving him another chance to change. Now, in 2015, the employee obviously still doesn't care what the department thinks.
Not everyone who claims to be a misunderstood and persecuted genius actually is one. There are people who are brilliant in some areas, but unwilling to accommodate being part of a larger group and difficult to work with. In programming terms, imagine an extraordinary programmer who's unwilling to use the organization's standard programming language or version control. I'm not sure that the Berkeley math department is really any different in preferring a pretty good in all areas to someone brilliant in some, but flawed in others, and, most importantly, unwilling to change.
At first, I wondered why he was blowing up the whole issue and whether it would actually help. If part of the issue is in the level of preparation for science classes, then the administration is going to be just as unfavorable as the department. Then I noticed that he's started some kind of teaching-related company. So, the department told him to change or be fired and he decided he'd rather do the latter, but as long as he's going out, he might as well try to get some publicity for his company.
My read: math teaching @Berkeley is in fact horrible and this offended him. He was happy to shame the incumbents and refuse to submit to mediocrity. Naturally he'd prefer to keep his job and reform by example, but his compensation for being fired is that he can righteously expose the corruption on evidence of his firing (and knowing he had this leverage is why he was so uncompromising in pursuing good teaching).
However, as far as optimization, the point is that Python's class system is implicated in almost every line of code. Most operators are actually invocations of corresponding "dunder" methods on their operands, which can be potentially changed, and whose invocation is actually surprisingly complicated and difficult to optimize.
Common Lisp, of course, does not have operators in the same sense, just functions. However, the analogous functions, like +, *, aref, etc. are not generic functions in the sense of CLOS. They only take built-in data types as arguments and cannot be overloaded. This lack of extensibility makes it easier for the compiler to know what actual code is being invoked and to optimize their use. Arguably, this makes Common Lisp seem like a less flexible language, and in some ways its design does pay more attention to optimization than its reputation would have you believe. On the other hand, the lisp syntax means that there's no such thing as a finite set of operators that you'd want to overload. If you want a different type of multiplication, you can just use a different function.