> After moving to the University of Delaware, Farber helped conceive and organize the National Science Foundation’s Computer Science Network (CSNet), which made then-experimental networking technology available to academic computer scientists and was instrumental in spreading the technology globally, to both industry and academia. Farber also helped plan and develop NSFNET and National Research & Education Network (NREN), efforts that led to the development of the current commercial Internet. Along with Bob Kahn, he conceived the pioneering Gigabit Testbed activity of the NSF.
''In 2018, at the age of 83, Dave moved to Japan to become Distinguished
Professor at Keio University and Co-Director of the Keio Cyber Civilization
Research Center (CCRC). He loved teaching, and taught his final class on
January 22, 2026.
At CCRC, one of his most enjoyable activities was co-hosting the IP-Asia
online gathering, which has met every Monday for more than five years and
has addressed many aspects of the impact of technology on civilization.''
> 2008 was caused, in part, by the governments deciding many "banks" were "too big to fail".
Perhaps worth noting that Ben Bernanke, who was the chair of the Fed at the time, was/is one of the most top experts on Great Depression (it's the work he later won the Nobel Prize for). So as bad as the GFC was, Bernanke thought it could get really bad and pushed for measures that he probably thought would prevent another 1930s scenario.
So, the NPE isn't a real Nobel Prize :) but if the only allowable decisions are to concentrate wealth at the top, then we're just delaying and amplifying the collapse.
> Yes, and the made up words of kilo and kibi were given specific definitions by the people who made them up
Kilo was generally understood to mean one thousand long before it was adopted by a standards committee. I know the French love to try and prescribe the use of language, but in most of the world words just mean what people generally understand them to mean; and that meaning can change.
> Yes, and the made up words of kilo and kibi were given specific definitions by the people who made them up
Good for them. People make up their own definitions for words all the time. Some of those people even try to get others to adopt their definition. Very few are ever successful. Because language is about communicating shared meaning. And there is a great deal of cultural inertia behind the kilo = 2^10 definition in computer science and adjacent fields.
Inability to communicate isn't what we observe because as I already stated, meaning is shared. Dictionaries are one way shared meaning can be developed, as are textbooks, software source codes, circuits, documentation, and any other artifact which links the observable with language. All of that being collectively labeled culture. The mass of which I analogized with inertia so as to avoid oversimplifications like yours.
My point is that one person's definition does not a culture, make. And that adoption of new word definitions is inherently a group cultural activity which requires time, effort, and the willingness of the group to participate. People must be convinced the change is an improvement on some axis. Dictation of a definition from on high is as likely to result in the word meaning the exact opposite in popular usage as not. Your comment seems to miss any understanding or acknowledgement that a language is a living thing, owned by the people who speak it, and useful for speaking about the things which matter most to them. That credible dictionaries generally don't accept words or definitions until widespread use can be demonstrated.
It seems like some of us really want human language to work like rule-based computer languages. Or think they already do. But all human languages come free with a human in the loop, not a rules engine.
I don't think that the xkcd is relevant here, because I'm arguing that both parties know what the other is talking about. I haven't implicitly changed the definition because most people assume that kilobyte is 1024 bytes. Yeah, sure, it's "wrong" in some sense, but language is about communicating ideas between two people; if the communication is successful than the word is "correct".
I used to volunteer for a local non-profit a few years ago.
From time to time, I would reflect on the fact that Microsoft and other commercial suppliers were getting paid for providing services to us, but I was expected to work for free.
For the same logic they are tax-exempt. There is a general consensus that their goal is the greater good (like developing sudo and such) and not the usual capitalistic good of generating more money.
Then again, you usual Friday outing of FANG engineers may have more money than some nonprofits too.
> We study the impacts of New York City’s Central Business District (CBD) Tolling Program, the first cordon-based congestion pricing scheme in the United States. Using a generalized synthetic controls design, we find that the policy increased speeds on CBD roads by 11%, with little-to-no effect on air quality, transactions at shops and restaurants, or overall foot traffic in the CBD. Speeds also increased on roads outside the CBD that are commonly traversed by drivers headed to/from the CBD. These spillovers lead to faster trips throughout the metro area, including for many unpriced trips. We develop a simple model to bound the driver welfare effects, and estimate gains of at least $14.3 million/week (before any revenue recycling). These gains are largely driven by diffuse time savings for the many unpriced trips outside the CBD, highlighting the importance of accounting for network-wide spillovers. Finally, we show how characteristics of local travel patterns and road networks can inform the potential impacts of introducing cordon-based congestion pricing in other cities.
> To understand why congestion pricing’s total time savings mostly accrued to those traveling outside Manhattan, consider that most drivers heading into the island traverse roadways outside the congestion relief zone as they approach it from Long Island, New Jersey or wherever they began their journey. By shrinking the number of peak-time cars flowing into the toll zone, congestion pricing reduces traffic on outlying roadways, where remaining drivers — including those who never had Manhattan on their itinerary — can now go faster.
[…]
> Better yet, the coauthors wrote that they found “no evidence of offsetting slowdowns on different road types … suggesting that the policy reduced overall traffic volumes rather than simply displaced congestion.” That conclusion refutes critics’ predictions[1] that congestion pricing would shift drivers toward suburban roadways that would slow to a crawl.
* https://www.internethalloffame.org/inductee/dave-farber/
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