Discovered this when :PluginUpdate failed in my vim. It's still in Google index so must have happened very recently. Can't find any post discussing/announcing what happened.
P.S. Hopefully the username is not available for someone malicious to squat...
You're over generalizing. Not all enthusiasts value the same point. For some including myself, it's not about acceleration or speed. Automatic (DCT and the new ZF8) has long surpassed manual transmission in almost all aspects of performance. It's similar to how some people like manual espresso machines, film cameras, etc. It's a hobby and you enjoy the process. See how the newest Koenigsegg goes great length to make this weird automatic manual.
Isn't that worse, a big brother in the middle watching everything and even doing TLS termination? Unless it's running on a Tor-like distributed system?
Well, I'm not saying your entire post is nonsense, but rather your choice of examples and citations. And here again, the example that you used to refuse believe Mao contributed to the famine or cultural revolution has nothing to do with this discussion. And in your original post, those random success "secrets" you cited really don't help your argument.
Wow! I knew the Ke Jie vs AlphaGo would come one day, and probably the human team vs AlphaGo, but didn't expect the "Pair Go" (human + AlphaGo vs another human + AlphaGo). Interesting to see.
Animal welfare aside, I find people in North America really in favour of chicken breast, much more than other parts, say chicken thigh. Yet I myself think chicken thigh tastes much better, especially with the skin (yet again it is usually skinless in supermarkets here, unfortunately). Is it because of nutrition (percentage of fat/protein etc.)? On top of that, chicken feet are considered unacceptable by many...
As a fellow Chinese who's been living in the West for a few years, I feel obligated to speak out against this:
Although I hold strong dissent against Chinese government in many aspects (in particular censorship, e.g. GFW), although I agree the traditional norm of Chinese culture and society does not commend rebellions, your argument is a slippery slope at its best. Essentially, you are exaggerating from both ends: a. going from political suppression and a humble (or even submissive, if you wish) culture to suppression on technical innovation; b. reading too much from the so-called SV culture and success stories, so much so to draw a strong equivalence between innovation and (social) disruption.
For (a), as many peer comments have already stated, there are many counterexamples. Japan has a much more submissive culture and Russia has similarly, if not more, suppressive political atmosphere. Innovations still happen in both places. And I also suggest you to read more history to see how many innovations were achieved in unwelcoming environment. Yes, these are obstacles and might affect the scale and success of innovations, but obstacles exist everywhere (if there were no opposition, rebellions even wouldn't be called "rebellions" in SV), and small (in the sense of domain, e.g. purely technical) innovations are still innovations, which leads to the second point--
For (b), "disruption" is really a buzz word loved by VC, and there is a trend of extending such buzz word to contexts we would not use this word originally, for example an invention in a particular domain is now a "disruption" in that domain, which makes a ripple sound like a tide. Fundamental, social disruptions can be significantly harder in China, but that does not prevent other innovations, or if you prefer, "disruptions", from happening.
In a nutshell, you are stretching these two ends to force them to meet:
the negative effect of political/cultural suppression --> impossible to innovate <-- the "disruptions" of innovations
And finally, pardon my language, your examples and references are utter nonsense. I know where you are trying to go from them, but they do not prove your point by any means.
Unfortunately this is not the fact. While some ISPs are experimenting with IPv6, the vast majority are not on that train. Indeed, IPv4 address space has practically run out in China already, but many ISPs are taking the nasty NAT-like approaches, Carrier-grade NAT [1] for example. And it is particularly common in mobile. So far, IPv6 is only (relatively) well accepted among universities (CERNET [2]).
I believe it'd be more appropriate for Linode to say that, which has long had good reputation in terms of the variety of regions, the quality of network, etc., and which used to be on the more expensive end. DO, on the other hand, actually debuted with the low prices, if anyone remembers.
My largest concern about using Python as the first teaching language for serious programmers (or you can say those who intend to pursue a CS degree) is that it's too "magical". The dynamic type system, the flexible Pythonic tricks, "hidden" (at least not explicit and obvious) details about the memory model, etc.
As a programmer, I like many of these characteristics. However, when I was helping the lower-year students with programming, I found many starting with Python faced tremendous difficulties in understanding pointers, references, and types later on. Some of them even resisted learning these concepts and further resisted using C/C++/Java, claiming that it's world of Node.js/Python/Ruby.
I'm not sure if it's just that I'm getting old (not really...).
In China, Pascal is a very popular language for high school beginners of Olympiad in Informatics (see http://www.ioinformatics.org/ for the international competition). And it's probably the most used language in the provincial level competition, National Olympiad in Informatics in Province. Yet those who reach the national level will likely switch to C++ for many reasons (STL, performance, etc.).
I myself started programming in this way. And even now I'm glad that Pascal was my first language. It's an excellent educational language, which was its original purpose. It doesn't have "absurd" syntax; keywords are long but straightforward; and its type system is static and strong, which I believe is something that a serious programmer has to master.
By the way, although probably not as powerful as Delphi (especially in terms of widgets), Lazarus will give you a taste of the Rapid Application Development, which Delphi was famous for.