I'm not sure you can call what is in Central America actual functioning capitalism. A random individual in that area can't easily raise capital and start a business. They are subject to extreme levels of crime and cronyism. A lot of Central America is more like a set of fiefdoms with a king rather than what would reasonably be called some kind of western capitalism.
Consider your favourite successful startup and move it to Central America. Now consider what additional factors it needs to take in to simply operate. Take security as an example: Private guards acting with high aggression (machine guns) are a basic requirement in some areas. Compare that to New York (Hand gun).
I don't agree with "unusable" but "academic" probably has some justification.
The fact that it has a "let" keyword does make it "academic" to me. I'm fairly sure we can now have compilers that don't need such hints to be explicitly provided. Rust enjoys its let keyword so much they have a "If let" syntax.
Languages that use random punctuation without providing real benefit could also use a cleanup. Lua with ~= is a good example: Tilde in mathematics means "approximate". In C != means "not equal". So lua's designers can be accused of either never seeing C or deliberately choosing something different. Given that Lua is implemented in C they can't easily claim ignorance.
Archaic and awkward ways of expressing code shouldn't be propagated into new languages unless here is a clear benefit. Have a look at Erlang. Excellent overall but has lots of old warts from yesteryear you wouldn't want in a modern language. Eg look at its string syntax / naming rules. Now compare it to Elixir. Modern. Same VM.
Moving with the times is useful. Future languages shouldn't be adding debris everywhere just to be different.
I've worked in such places. Kissing on cheek etc is also a thing. It will be interesting to see where that leads in the long tail of the #metoo change. I've already seen a lot of people who I've known to overly hug and show affection at work stop doing so. At one workplace HR got all "scorched earth" policy and made it very clear it wasn't acceptable at all. Apparently the concern was women initiating contact then feeling uncomfortable later and complaining about the person they hugged. Two instances at that site alone. I wonder how frequent it is since I'd never heard of it as a thing before.
Names have the power to guide perception about what they identify.
"Quantum teleportation" is as easily misused as that of "dark matter".
Is it actually matter? If the answer isn't a definite yes then the term doesn't help long term but maybe it's good enough for now. "Dark energy" is another term. Is it accurate? Maybe. It alse works for plenty of people for now.
Both terms assist as long as they help discussion but the lay person easily gets confused and experts can get mislead as well. If you think of it as matter then you design experiments in particular ways. You think about it in those terms. You don't think of it in other ways to the same extent.
"The primary evidence for dark matter is that calculations show that many galaxies would fly apart instead of rotating". Not exactly a ringing endorsement of matter as real. But as long as it helps the overall investigation then it's ok for now. Calculations can accurately describe reality and guide decisions so why not.
"Quantum teleportation" as a term is easily derailed no matter how helpful it describes a portion of reality. Maybe it simply needs a few more words nearby to put the brakes on people's imagination.
I've been assigned tasks and simply essentially ignored them after any of my initial questions were ignored by those who assigned the task. Reasons include: task not assigned by my supervisor. No funding. No resources in general. No consultation. Person who assigned tasks has no authority to do so. These are similar and all have happened to me more than once.
I get why the status update lying part offends but I'd also say the project manager who tolerates this isn't really project managing. Setting traps isn't the height of high performance I'd be aiming for.
But let's say you assigned a task and know the magic key is required. And the magic key is never accessed or acquired. You as project manager have failed. Did you reveal this dependency as a requirement? Are you sure that dependency is real? And why did you wait so long?
I've got a project in my history where I was expected to use a corporate credit card to purchase server time on AWS but didn't. When asked why I said I'd found better internal resources that worked at higher performance for the time needed. Imagine my surprise when I got criticised by immediate manegemenr for not spending 30k but praised by upper management for saving 30k and delivering ahead of schedule.
The real reason was that someone had 30k they wanted burnt before financial end of year but didn't state this as a goal. The project instead simply optimised for real cost and schedule instead, offending the management that wanted the money burnt.
By the way, the canaries in the coal mines usually died. I feel that tech in general should remember details like this and not create delicate metaphors for real events that had gruesome realities. Something is only a canary when the messenger died during delivery of that message. Just my $0.02 worth.
Let's explore religion for a moment and why it tends to hate atheism so much.
1. People who believe are threatened by those who do not. It is disconcerting to have belief systems attacked or ripped out from under you. "Those who are not us can't be trusted." Groups tend to passionately hate individuals who don't want to be members.
2. Non-belief has definite consequences in most religions. Conformism is a trait of religious people. Leaving is unacceptable to many. Muslim extremists have definite opinions about apostasy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostasy
3. Santa Claus is a good example. A kid is told about Santa. Presents appear. One day the older brother figures it out. He is told, do you want presents or is Santa not real? I think this is a microcosm of multiple belief systems. Remove the possibility of presents/rewards and multiple religions vanish in a puff of smoke.
4. It's an amazing coincidence that people tend to have the same religion as their parents and community. And this saves them from eternal damnation. What about the people who existed before the religion was created?
5. Religion has no monopoly on morality or virtue. Evidence has shown that religious people are quite capable of breaking rules. Multiple religions cite divorce as "a bad thing" yet plenty of religious people do it. Murder, theft and cursing still exist.
6. Validity of religion in general can be exposed by getting a religious person to explain why they would not convert to another. Their reasons increasingly become more difficult to defend. Remember that it is likely only one belief system is true and all others are false. And your religion was likely chosen before you were born. This is an awkward truth many don't want to discuss.
7. If you've read this far, please know that I'm not atheist.
Definitely seen the divides it's created in the communities. The CoC discussion is likely a positive thing as it is bringing up issues that need light in them. I'd like to see some evidence of the funding limitations, quotas etc.
That said, a lot of the CoC discussion rapidly goes into political discussions about meritocracy / Marxism. As I'm reading "Gulag Archipelago" at the moment, I'm starting to see some parallels in the modern world we as a species should definitely have already learnt from. The number of deaths from Marxism and Nazism is horrific.
I'm not sure an apology for murdering my family would be heard without a lot of anger and resentment. Other concepts such as revenge, retribution and other sentiments would likely also come to into play regardless of sincerity.
You make a good point about the snarky critique though. Having looked through a few of the dead comments on this post, a lot of people are very rigid about sensitivity training. There are a lot of parallels with SJW causes in how this is being approached.
(I am not equating those parallels with the validity of sensitivity training, only the rabid nature of the defence against criticism thereof I have seen).
Apologies are hard for governments and corporations as they can't usually die like a natural citizen so there is no "at least it's in the past" aspect. The "person" who did the atrocity is still at large. They are still in your face. Often still taxing you. This is the sharp edged aspect for most indigenous peoples. The face of the past oppressor is still around, making rules and likely interfering by whatever definition you like to choose.
Racism/slavery is an excellent example as it clearly shows the divide between the pain and the recovery as well as the apology and healing. Given that whites were also trafficked as slaves it's hard to reconcile the diversity training I've been to. Such training was essentially racist against anyone of white skin and asserted sole responsibility. What about the Arabs, Africans, who kept slaves? Africans of all colours hunted and gathered slaves for sale. I heard nothing of this in the history lesson in that training. The British were until recently paying off a massive debt due to a former government paying for the abolishment of slavery [1]. Slavery hasn't even ended. It's still a thing that needs to be fought. At least it's now illegal and socially unacceptable. Governments can actually say the situation has been amended.
Does mean making amends make up for the now-crime-but-previously-non-crime? Does a government making it illegal really help? The straightforward answer is yes, but a substantive lingering anger will still remain. And that is the difficulty. It never ends. So it never heals.
Yes. Depending on how you approach it. Get legal advice. Various courts operating at local level can do surprising things. Like impose small fines or settlements, as well as pass judgements if the company doesn’t turn up.
This sets a bad precedent. I’m not convinced this is good for anyone regardless of how innocuous it seems.
Apple wouldn’t tolerate this if it was done to them. It would be like Disney complaining about copyright infringement while infringing someone else’s copyright...
Consider your favourite successful startup and move it to Central America. Now consider what additional factors it needs to take in to simply operate. Take security as an example: Private guards acting with high aggression (machine guns) are a basic requirement in some areas. Compare that to New York (Hand gun).
It's not a reasonable comparison.