>How "ugly" a trivial "Hello, World!" does not really matter much and isn't a good indication of anything about the language's ability to handle more than "Hello, World!"
Sure, but for beginner programmers who don't have the discipline down yet, it's unnecessarily hard. I bought a Java programming book as a kid and got stuck because of a typo that produced an error message I couldn't understand. This was the time before StackOverflow and Reddit. In retrospect, this delayed my programming journey by at least a year.
Longer Hello Worlds make frustration and getting stuck like this more likely.
This is the result of differing storage implementations in the app between platforms and has nothing to do with the platform itself. Painless cross-platform migration is possible but simply wasn’t factored into the original design. IIRC WhatsApp also has this problem.
Huh? American and European CEOs voluntarily move manufacturing to China, now everything gets made in China. And that's somehow China discriminating western countries?
I believe the reference here is that there are fairly protective trade policies in China, and they are similarly mercurial about what passes. See cases of IP theft, if you’re partial to IP as a concept (I’m not). They’re certainly not a laissez-faire paradise. Granted, merely terking our jerbs isn’t a good argument for slapping massive tariffs on them.
There’s probably a different thread on this but, TACO and the damage of having your own courts nullify the tariffs are a huge strategic L for the orange man.
You'd think, by this point, they'd realize if you don't want your IP stolen, don't send it to China. At least make them work for it, like everyone else.
It’s hard right? If you want market access, you fork over the designs so they can verify it’s not American spyware, then boom it’s stolen (message to be read by an AI made to sound exactly like a certain USA president)
What does this has to do with the topic of trying to be clever with the border police with some tricks to conceal information? (as opposed to not having it in the first place)
It has to do with your argument of "if you don't like it, don't go there". Also, you specifically asked "who came for you" so it's direct answer to your question.
Well, considering that the US considers some political beliefs and journalism crimes, "don't go there with incriminating devices" implies restrictions on free speech and journalistic freedom. Also, privacy is not only for hiding crimes. Equating privacy with criminality is a great way to get undermine people's rights further. It's perfectly ok to think that some random TSA agent shouldn't be seeing my family photos etc. when I have done nothing wrong.
If you believe these rights are not important, that's your own opinion. But I think it's perfectly valid to criticize attacks on human rights.
Exactly. If I plan to visit a country where green shirts are illegal, I'm not going to pack my green shirts into a secret hidden luggage compartment, smug in the knowledge that I'm so clever. I'm going to either not visit or not bring my green shirts.
Same for this. Whether we like it or not, some stuff on your phone are now considered contraband at the US border. Either don't bring them or don't visit.
I'm pretty sure he'd have fell in line to the fascist insanity just like all other billionaires. He lived at the time of the height of neoliberal ideology, when most people believed in the conjured public images that the tech bro CEOs gave out in PR. Behind the scenes, things were quite different. Jobs has been reported to be petty, insulting and belittling of his employees
Probably. Given the known history of Apple it's just as likely that they'd have been successful if Jobs got hit by a bus after the Apple II shipped. His legacy of irrational and unexplained digression is pretty suitably punctuated by his own unwillingness to part with his pancreas.
A timeline where Woz led product design at Apple under a less recalcitrant leader might be one where Apple Computers is still relevant for making computers. The pivot to a lifestyle brand hasn't proven to be the strongest option, in the long term.
He didn't get hit by a bus, though. He led the company for decades.
Surely you've heard how opinionated and domineering Jobs was? Every strategic decision and major product decision was either from him or went through him.
Most of the world doesn't put fluoride in tap water. I appreciate that you've been raised to believe it's a "no-brainer and only idiots would oppose it", but there are actual tangible downsides to doing it and now that fluoride toothpaste is widespread there might not even be any upside to fluoride in water anymore.
You don’t need it in the water when you can get it from many other sources. I find it strange that there would be additives to something basic like water. And as I recall there are studies that show too much can be bad too. It’s hard to know your dosage if random things incorporate it as an additive unexpectedly.
If 'hippies' here refers to the original hippies back in the 1960s, they ran the whole range from far pipebombs-in-the-name-of-communism left, to centrist.
Papen wasn’t even remotely left wing or even “moderate”. Hindenburg also hated democracy and wanted to destroy it.
There were barely any liberals left in the Reichstag when it voted for the enabling act (progressive liberalism as we’d understand it hardly existed in Germany back then anyway). Closest would be the moderate-conservative Catholic “Center” party who usually were historically part of the Socialist-Liberal coalition.
Anyway you cut it far-right parties had the majority of seats in 1933. Of course everyone else could have actually tried doing something instead fighting with each other or just tagging along with the nazis “since it can’t be that bad”.
I'm pretty sure he'd have fell in line to the fascist insanity just like all other billionaires.
That's a take that seems based on some kind of ideology more than thinking about the actual person. The actual person was a man with a massive ego, and pretensions of being an artist and intellectual. It's a real stretch to envision Jobs being deferential to Musk or Trump, both of whom, without a doubt, still fantasize about being Steve Jobs.
Musk is easily on the level of Jobs and arguably beyond him, not just financially, but on the scale of what they've done for Humanity as a whole.
SpaceX and Starlink just by themselves are enough to catapult him beyond Jobs, but you add on Tesla, which pretty much single-handedly pushed electric cars into mainstream culture, and he's easily there.
This isn't even really a subjective perspective, you could objectively argue it.
The personal computer revolution (kicked off in 1977 by the Apple II), and the smart phone era (kicked off in 2007 by iPhone), have done at least as much for humanity.
> The personal computer revolution (kicked off in 1977 by the Apple II),
This is an oversimplification. Apple II was a huge part of it, but didn't kick it off. The real revolution was the IBM PC in 1981. It definitely did not kick it off single-handedly though, since you had the TRS-80, Commodore PET, and Altair 8800 before, or alongside the Apple II. You could argue the IBM 5100 I guess, but it was too expensive for most people.
And like I said above, the iPhone did not "kick off" the smartphone era. It was transformative, sure, but didn't kick it off.
IBM Simon, BlackBerry, Palm Treo, Symbian Phones, Windows Mobile, all came before it, and everyone could clearly see where the entire market was headed even in the early 2000s.
Most of the prevailing narratives about pivotal moments in technology leave out nuance. Still, to say the Apple II and iPhone kicked off new eras is closer to the truth than to credit those eras to the Altair and BlackBerry.
If a person is nitpicky, they could use the same kind of objections to minimize Musk's accomplishments - and the accomplishments of many, many others (Edison, Marconi, Watson & Crick, etc)
Musk has massive ego too, and he's drinking the fascist kool aid, perhaps even more than Trump himself. Massive ego is more susceptible to fascist thinking, not less.
I'm not even a Jobs fanboy but let's give him the benefit of the doubt. He at least believed in things, which is more than I can say for the tech giants that are bending the knee right now.
His own health choices are a private matter as far as I'm concerned. He held off too long on modern medicine and paid the price for it. Bringing it up here is irrelevant and distracting.
Are you suggesting Apple was not innovative, or that he did not have a role in Apple's innovation?
We can pretend all day that the Apple II, the Mac, iMac, macbook, iPod, iPhone, and iPad would have been exactly the same without Jobs. But in the reality we currently inhabit, he was the person overseeing them all.
> "A pure function which transforms the entire input into the entire output" is obviously the simplest possible architecture for many programs, but people hesitate to use that architecture because of performance concerns. In practice, the baseline performance is often faster than they expect, and it can be made much, much faster using strategies like memoisation and fine-grained reactivity.
But before React came along, you just couldn't do this without major UX breaking bugs, because of how the DOM worked.
Say you have a form that you want to change depending on the state of the app. If the user is typing in a form field while an update to the app state comes, and a pure function that transforms (app state -> DOM/HTML output) resets the form (meaning removing the old out of state DOM and replacing it with the new DOM), the user loses focus on the form. So you have to add some kind of logic where the app remembers what form input the user was focused on, where in the field the focus was, etc. The more complex your app is, the more complex the DOM reset logic became, and you cannot abstract your way out of it with pure functions, because the DOM that relies on mutation slowly creeps into your pure functions anyway.
React changed this, because it gives you a pure function interface, but resets the DOM using mutation functions i.e. native DOM methods, surgically. This is achieved with the VDOM (Virtual DOM), by diffing VDOM states and then reflecting that to the actual DOM. This means when the DOM resets, there's no problem with elements getting removed and added back in, and the focus states etc. don't get thrown away with the DOM. Before React, nothing like this existed.
The problem described by antris is that, if a developer were to naively tear down and rebuild the entire DOM tree on each state change, the browser would discard some important state which belongs to the old DOM nodes. This state includes the text selection, keyboard focus, mouse capture, scroll position, and the progress of CSS transitions and animations.
React solves this problem by building a virtual DOM, and then conservatively updating the actual DOM (sometimes just mutating individual HTML attributes!) so that this state is preserved.
Seriously asking: did those three go around to existing events and hijack them? e.g. Did they jump on stage and grab the microphones, or did they block traffic so nobody could get through? Or did they threaten people with violence for passing through having contrary opinions?
My understanding after reading "King" by Jonathan Eig (a fantastic biography btw, highly recommend to everyone) is that they didn't do that kind of stuff. They marched alongside traffic and were so non-violent that they allowed themselves to be hit with dogs and high-pressure water hoses without responding.
Rosa Parks especially was not like most "activists" today. She clamly and peacefully kept her seat on the bus. Maybe the former Google employee activists who refused to leave the conference room would be similar here, though there are of course differences.
I consider myself an activist, and I believe strongly that people need to help raise awareness because there is far too much ignorance and apathy out there, but I agree with GP and siblings that many of the activists today are harming their own cause by being obnoxious. Raising awareness in an empathetic way is the right way to do it, not trying to bully people into agreeing.
Rosa Parks “got in the way” by not leaving a seat she wasn’t legally allowed to sit in. She disrupted the flow of the white passengers. Today people would say “why doesn’t she protest elsewhere? She’s just getting in the way of bus riders who are trying to get to work.”
Sit ins were lead by MLK. People would go into restaurants, order food, and refuse to leave until they were served, despite being told they had to leave because of (legal) race laws. Today they’d be told they should protest elsewhere, that there is a time and a place, and they are hurting their cause by creating a disturbance.
Thoreau explicitly states you have a moral obligation to oppose unjust laws, etc. and resist governments, etc.
Empathetic awareness raising is one way and often not sufficient.
Read kings Letter from a Birmingham Jail.
1) determine if an injustice is actually being committed
2) attempt to talk with those committing the injustice to resolve it
3) prepare spiritually for non-violent resistance to evil
4) engage in non-violent resistance, protest only after all other means are exhausted, be prepared to be beaten and do not fight back, and 4 is only a means to get back to 2 — to open negotiations and discussions to restore justice.
The greatest “harm” to a cause is often passive silence.
Sitting by and critiquing activists is often a pastime of folks who stand to benefit from the preservation of the status quo and who have no real desire for immediate change.
Here is King reading his Letter from Birmingham Jail.
Thank you for the thoughtful response. You've given me much to think about!
I still intuitively see a difference between staying in the seat you paid for and got to first, and using a restaurant/diner the way it was intended, and people blocking traffic (which often includes hitting/attacking cars that try to get by). To be more equivalent though, I think Rosa Parks would have had to block the white passengers from getting on the bus, or the sit-in would block everybody from entering/patronizing the establishment. Had they done that, I think things would have turned out very differently because (rightly or wrongly) they cease to be sympathetic and reasonable figures in many people's eyes.
Other than that, I'm in full agreement with what you said. Also thank you for the Letter from Birmingham Jail read in his own words. So good :-)
> Rosa Parks “got in the way"..." "...She’s just getting in the way of bus riders who are trying to get to work
You had to quote "got in the way" so even you realize what a bad rebuttal it is. And sitting in a seat designed to be sat in is not getting in the way, not even a little bit. (Standing in the middle of traffic is actually what most people consider 'getting in the way')
> Sit ins were lead by MLK. People would go into restaurants, order food, and refuse to leave until they were served
So people went to an establishment that expected, and was designed, to serve patrons. And they "got in the way" by sitting at a table? Your words lose meaning when they're disingenuous.
> Sitting by and critiquing activists is often a pastime of folks who stand to benefit from the preservation of the status quo and who have no real desire for immediate change.
You ruined whatever tenuous point you were trying to make with this line. Blocking traffic for hours and hours because "my protest is more important than ANYTHING ELSE" is such an entitled, arrogant way to think.
They would actually take up all the seats and yes, they would prevent the “people” ie the white folks who the seats were designed for, from using the infrastructure for what it was intended - to serve white folks.
In my view, it’s entitled arrogant to assume that your subjective view is reality.
Imagine I come to your home and sleep in your bed.
I’m preventing you from sleeping and I’m trespassing.
You might not understand the actual impact of these laws.
When folks did sit ins they were actively preventing other people from using those services.
And these services were not for black folks.
Again, a white person goes to a diner and can’t eat because it’s filled with black people who refuse to leave until they are served. It’s against the law for them to be there, because they are black.
The spaces were designed for whites, like the drinking fountain that says “white only”.
you only think it's entitled and arrogant because you don't understand that protestors are protesting for people who don't have a voice, who's pleas fall on deaf ears like your own. your conception of protest is something an individual does to advance their own personal cause, so of course you only conceive of it as selfish - because you yourself do it for selfish reasons.
your selective memory of King and Parks is a disservice to their legacies. in "Letter from a Birmingham jail", MLK warns us about the kind of performative activism you espouse: https://www.csuchico.edu/iege/_assets/documents/susi-letter-.... here's where you should pay attention:
> I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, 'I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action'; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a 'more convenient season.'
> Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
I sold my first software internationally at age 10; but I attended my first anti KKK protest on my dad’s shoulders at age 5.
Grateful I had people in my life who exposed me to direct action, freedom of speech and assembly, and I understand that the importance of helping others struggle for freedom.
> you only think it's entitled and arrogant because you don't understand that protestors are protesting for people who don't have a voice, who's pleas fall on deaf ears like your own. your conception of protest is something an individual does to advance their own personal cause, so of course you only conceive of it as selfish - because you yourself do it for selfish reasons.
You really sullied what was otherwise a very powerful comment with this unnecessary and unfair personal attack against GP.
In some ways this is an interesting microcosm of the activism we're discussing, where people take a worthy and often powerful cause, and self-sabotage it by being arrogant, condescending, and rude to the people they are trying to convert.
> you only think it's entitled and arrogant because you don't understand that protestors are protesting for people who don't have a voice, who's pleas fall on deaf ears like your own.
I do understand that, absolutely, and my ears aren’t deaf.
So you’re saying the protesters are justified in belligerent and deviant behavior because their cause is just? According to whom?
The copyright owners are begging for a restructuring. One that would greatly increase their authority on two issues: AI use, and Internet website blocking.
Ask for a restructuring right now, and you’ll bring Japanese-style copyright to America (“fair use” doesn’t exist over there) with European-style judicial site blocking (and mass blocking of suspected piracy outlets).
If you want to see a world without fair use, check out the Japanese Wikipedia pages -- it's noticeably lacking in pictures and images than the English counterpart, likely because the latter was written by those in the U.S. It's especially ironic when there's more photos and images on the English language article for topics about Japan!
> Ask for a restructuring right now, and you’ll bring Japanese-style copyright to America (“fair use” doesn’t exist over there) with European-style judicial site blocking (and mass blocking of suspected piracy outlets).
And with a German-style enforcement procedure (i.e. all copyright infringement is criminal, but personal non-commercial use is civil) and Mexican-style copyright term (120+ years after death).
I’ll bite… let’s start by removing any software patents, they are just stupid. Then, let’s start having a look at over broad patents that don’t help anyone but megacorps to block innovation and competition. Then finally, the whole RD sob story is brought up a lot, which has a point in the original definition, but it’s used by megacorps to justify stupid high prices (see medication industry in the US for example) and block affordable medications that save lives. So I say, screw that, let the actual market speak for itself.
> let’s start by removing any software patents, they are just stupid.
100% agree and I'm primary author on 2 software patents taken out by a former employer. Software is maths. Patenting a software process makes as little sense as allowing patents on any other mathematical function.
I also think business method patents in general are crazy, because pretty much all business processes have some sense of inevitability to them that in my view should fail the "obviousness" test for patentability. It seems the tide has turned against them officially too which I think is positive overall for society.[1]
Sure, but for beginner programmers who don't have the discipline down yet, it's unnecessarily hard. I bought a Java programming book as a kid and got stuck because of a typo that produced an error message I couldn't understand. This was the time before StackOverflow and Reddit. In retrospect, this delayed my programming journey by at least a year.
Longer Hello Worlds make frustration and getting stuck like this more likely.
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