Month: July 2017

Urban Revitalization Factors

the system compared 1.6M pairs of photos taken 7 years apart to test several hypotheses about the causes of urban revitalization. Density of highly educated residents, proximity to central business districts and other physically attractive neighborhoods, and the initial safety score assigned by the system all correlate strongly with improvements in physical condition. Raw income levels, housing prices or neighborhoods’ ethnic makeup do not to predict change.

Undefined Behavior

Recently we’ve heard a few people imply that problems stemming from undefined behaviors (UB) in C and C++ are largely solved due to ubiquitous availability of dynamic checking tools such as ASan, UBSan, MSan, and TSan. We are here to state the obvious — that, despite the many excellent advances in tooling over the last few years, UB-related problems are far from solved — and to look at the current situation in detail.

Catholic sues Catholicism, loses

Patrick Flynn, a Catholic, sued his children’s Catholic school when they demanded his children get vaccinated to attend; Flynn objected on religious grounds, and sued. The diocese defended on religious grounds, claiming vaccines promote the common good and are theologically required. Neither the trial nor the appellate court wanted in on any of it (declaring it a theological matter rather than a legal one), leaving the ruling that private schools in Florida can deny religious vaccine exemptions (which public schools cannot).

AI taxation

if most countries will not be able to tax ultra-profitable AI companies to subsidize their workers, what options will they have? I foresee only one: Unless they wish to plunge their people into poverty, they will be forced to negotiate with whichever country supplies most of their AI software — China or the United States — to essentially become that country’s economic dependent, taking in welfare subsidies in exchange for letting the “parent” nation’s AI companies continue to profit from the dependent country’s users. Such economic arrangements would reshape today’s geopolitical alliances.