I agree with the "not necessarily" part, but one thing that concerns me is in seeing large, critical institutions, like large hospitals and universities, outsourcing critical infrastructure off-premises.
If you look at operational costs per se, and licensing fees in a scenario like that, you're missing a huge proportion of the most threatening costs. Consider hospitals, for example, and recent problems with ransoming electronic health system data.
What concerns me with SaaS is that the biggest costs are very catastrophic or serious risks (like lock-in dependencies, or hacking due to monocultures--by the way, is that a formal, modeled concept in computer security, like it is in agriculture? The vulnerability of a market to "infection" due to monocultures?) that are maybe high probability over a very long-term period, but very low over a short-term period, and hidden.
"as long as there are good competitors around"--that's the key, and not something I necessarily trust to be the case. Net neutrality, for example, would be a non-issue if there were good competition, but there's not.
As someone who used Python and R, and also Julia, my take on Julia has changed over time.
My overall assessment is that yes, it's definitely worth getting your feet wet with. It has all the advantages of R or Python (for numerics, a point I will return to), but with much, much better performance. I feel like the syntax is also cleaner than either, although it has more of an advantage over R than Python in that area (I like Python's syntax more than R's).
I had an experience of some prototype R code running for about a day without finishing. The same code in Julia finished in about 5 minutes. It was kind of the final straw that convinced me to gradually move.
Since that time, though, there's one issue that's kind of nagged me, and has only grown over time, which is that Julia is kind of a niche language, like R. It's a big niche, and it might not matter, but over time I've come to appreciate the fact that Python is more general purpose. I am also watching as things like Kotlin, Scala, and Nim gain in popularity and in resources. I suspect that Julia will expand over time, but those others have a head start in some ways (even if they are behind in other ways).
Like some others, I also had some experience of head-scratching changes that occurred with new API-breaking releases. They were subtle changes that were difficult to catch because they weren't deprecations or things that caused errors, but changes in how valid syntax is interpreted. I don't see that as a long-term problem, but it gave me pause.
I guess the TLDR is: if you're interested, I recommend you dip your toes in it, if that works for you, but with some caution. I see it more as a replacement for R long-term than Python, and I see serious competitors rising in popularity.
FWIW, I'm not sure why infidelity is so stigmatized. With all the things going on in the world that seems so minor in the grand scheme of things. Also, presumably the secretary is an adult, so they're two consenting adults (yes, I understand the power differential issue but there's also the risk of being accused of sexual harassment, which I'd argue is more damaging nowadays). Relationships are so complicated I've learned not to pass judgment on anything.
I'm definitely not saying infidelity is good, only that I think it's treated way out of proportion.
To be honest, I think it sounds more shitty to unilaterally declare respect or lack thereof for a colleague based on their private life rather than their professional performance.
Take credit for work that's not yours, and leave with millions in severance after they've fucked up the company? Totally fine. Sleep with your secretary? Unforgivable (and the CEO's fault).
My comments about infidelity should be read from the POV of a young programmer, that knew nothing about entrepreneurship, starting or running companies, who looked up to C-level management, who's entire network was filled with people in blue collar, low paying jobs.
And who was stunned to realize: (1) they are ordinary people, (2) aren't supermen in any way, (3) that many of them valued themselves, money and power more than anything in life, and/or seemed to have no ethics whatsoever.
I've published in mathematical/statistical areas as well as applied ones, and my sense is that interpersonal difficulties are more acute, but also more transparent, in math and statistics, for lack of a better way of putting it. My sense is that people tend to hold views more absolutely, because they see their positions as more logic-based, and so have a more difficult time recognizing unrealistic assumptions they're making, or outright errors in their derivations or thinking. An applied researcher can shrug and dismiss something as sampling error, or ambiguity in a study design, but in math, it's harder to invoke such excuses or pressure relief valves. A threat, of whatever real or misperceived magnitude, seems to take on greater significance in math and statistics.
There's kind of "converse" problems too, that I think is the focus of the linked article, in that there's an epidemic of hype in academics, math, and the sciences. So it's not just that people of high ability are being missed, but some individuals of high ability are being over-hyped to an extreme. The signal to noise ratio is very poor due to multiple types of errors.
... this is like walking through a minefield, but here it goes.
A lot of the illnesses they're talking about in the article, like IBS, lower back pain, and CFS have a strong psychosomatic component to it for a lot of people. They essentially say this in the article--something like "this won't work for malaria, but it will work for pain."
This can be a really controversial position, and it gets really twisted by a lot of people. No I'm not advocating mind-body dualism. What I'm saying is that there's top-down influences on physical symptom perception and that probably influences bottom-up processes, leading to some sort of vicious circle.
I think a lot of these psychosomatic conditions are really explained by the same processes involved in the nocebo effect. There have been studies to support this, showing that psychosomatic patients report more nocebo effects in control conditions than other patients and controls.
The idea you're discussing--reassurance effects--is interesting and actually really understudied I think. However, I think there's an equally plausible hypothesis, that you're kind of fighting negative psychosomatic effects with positive psychosomatic effects in certain situations.
I don't think that's all of the placebo effect, but I do think there's some broader causal system involved that encompasses placebo effects, nocebo effects, and psychosomatic illnesses and effects, including more psychosomatic psychiatric conditions (e.g., conversion disorder, psychogenic seizures, etc.), as well as psychological effects on disease process (e.g., stress effects on inflammation).
I kind of wish this area of research didn't get so bogged down with political infighting, which invariably happens. Patients start insisting that we're being dismissive by discussing psychosomatic processes, some researchers will spuriously start criticizing other researchers for advocating Cartesian dualism, as political smear tactic, when the real issues pertain to emergent processes and top-down mutual influences. It's a very interesting area of research with lots of potential, but tends to get oversimplified really quickly to score political points.
Legislators who stand up to nonsense like this need to be supported for protecting children against an overreaching state.
The law is absurd in what it targets, but even if children were actually guilty of a crime (as opposed to just engaging in sexual behavior), they should be allowed to mature.
This is just another example of the GOP outlawing sex. Society won't accept their archaic social morals, so they shove it down our throats under other guises.
I had a similar reaction. The headlines might as well been "extremely skilled climber makes wildly risky bet and lives to tell the tale."
Sure he's skilled; sure he is strategic. What I want to know is could he do this over and over again without dying? My guess is not. His odds would probably be higher than most others' but still risky.
But in the end, if it's what he wants to do, so be it. To me it's interesting but not something I'd like to do, regardless of the risk. Spending my time climbing rock walls is just not appealing to me, even if it's out in the wilderness, which I love.
If you look at operational costs per se, and licensing fees in a scenario like that, you're missing a huge proportion of the most threatening costs. Consider hospitals, for example, and recent problems with ransoming electronic health system data.
What concerns me with SaaS is that the biggest costs are very catastrophic or serious risks (like lock-in dependencies, or hacking due to monocultures--by the way, is that a formal, modeled concept in computer security, like it is in agriculture? The vulnerability of a market to "infection" due to monocultures?) that are maybe high probability over a very long-term period, but very low over a short-term period, and hidden.