If I'd try to describe/categorize it, I'd call it a local, ?most often? single-user, scriptable and plugginable wiki-software.
I use it for taking notes, keeping a journal, TODO-list, and to bookmark/annotate stuff. Basically my own personal "knowledge base".
Technology-wise it saves notes as markdown, optionally with a yaml-style frontmatter, built on/with javascript, and exposes a bunch of APIs making it very extensible.
A strength/weakness with it is that it exposes the end-user to all this power, and does not enforce much in the way of ways of working, so you get to define for yourself how you go about using it.
I have mostly settled on workflows that works for me, but it also seems, if I am being completely honest, like there is always some little tweaking/refactoring going on.
At various places of employment, /some/ meetings have absolutely been just so. Nothing of day-to-day value was ever communicated in those meetings, and nothing of value was lost when I stopped attending them.
Sprint Demos could also fall into this category if you squint, but at least there is a good chance you pick up something useful
I think they mean "finite number of rows", which would be "finite number of distinct inputs" or "finite number of outputs". The context is the challenge of writing down an infinite table.
There's probably a recursive/inductive equivalent notation but maybe it's hard to render clearly as a table.
I just re-read the entire reasoning, and I got it all wrong I think.
N%2 will only ever yield one of two inputs.
In short, I shouldn't try to brain before the morning coffee ;D
Apologies for not using a better source than wikipedia, but I could believe that the anecdotal woman was not such an outlier, when you take into account that whole "one child policy" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy
That only started in 1979, with limited enforcement throughout, and gp’s talking about families with only one child for generations (probably >=3 in the context but at least 2) circa 2000 which is only one generation removed, so that’s only a small factor. Especially considering China’s population doubled from 1949 to 1979.
I also discussed the indirect/cultural factor where one should learn about this. There are two complementary factors here: if the young woman was rural there was practically no way she never encountered a family with multiple children; if she was urban it was more likely she was educated and thus should at least learn about it from school and/or through literature.
I am not yet done thinking on this area, so my thoughts here are incomplete, but thay said:
Would this not also open the door for any snakeoil salesman to prey on what might be medically "hopeless" cases?
If I am ever diagnosed with something currently uncurable, but there are experimental stuff in the works, of course I'd like a shot at those experimental drugs, but I hope that me/my family would also not squander whatever assets we have on snakeoil, in which case I'd rather my surviving family was not impoverished in the fight.
I assume that, at least partially, this is why regulations in this area were put in place to begin with.
> Would this not also open the door for any snakeoil salesman to prey on what might be medically "hopeless" cases?
If you're diagnosed with something uncurable, then by definition you have a doctor or a medical team that has performed the diagnosis and is overseeing your treatment. There is, invariably, some form of treatment; in extremis, even "here, I've booked you into a hospice where they're going to load you up on opiates" is a form of treatment.
Any experimental drugs you're administered would go through your doctor or medical team. If those drugs are transparently snake oil, they should usually be very strongly advised against. If they have a halfway plausible mechanism, doc will probably say, "go ahead, roll the dice."
In any case, the snake oil salesmen aren't preying on sick people alone -- it's the sick person, plus the professionals who are in his corner, plus family and friends, etc. I don't think it would necessarily be trivial to make lots of money peddling something known to have no efficacy.
On a much more general philosophical note, there was much debate in Ancient China between Legalists, who viewed humanity as inherently evil, and Confucianists, who viewed humanity as inherently good. Where you come down in this debate seems to depends on that view. If you believe that men are inherently evil wreckers, you need stringent and indeed draconian regulations to keep them in place. If you believe that men are good, and that lives saved are on balance the greater aim, you should argue against draconian regulations and limitations on treatments.
The obvious case is that some are evil and some are good. And that's enough for the evil people to find the good people. (This is how Internet-connected computers secure works / fails.)
