Yes, I am completely with you. I always hated these arbitrary algorithm tasks that have nothing to do with the actual job. With the experience of hosting multiple job interviews I prefer to do a task that is close to the job, but keep it open enough for the applicant to do it their way. And making sure to the applicant that asking questions is desired. If they go in a wrong direction without asking questions, it's a good sign. If they ask good questions it's a strong plus point. Also I can see if they can apply learned knowledge quickly.

Why should I do algorithm or math related tasks as a frontend developer for example. Soft skills are way more important than preparing for potential interview questions.

Yeah, Europe is different here, as we have social security from the state. In Germany you get continued pay by your health insurance (a certain percentage of your usual salary). It's far easier to do things like this when the state helps you with this.

It's not the same as tuples and records. You can do the following with them:

  const first = #{a: 'b', c: 'd'};
  const second = #{a: 'b', c: 'd'};
  first === second // true

So no more deep comparing of objects if they have the same properties.

Fascinating. I would have guessed that identity checks are still possible with ===, and == would use a structural comparison.

I suppose V8 for example could easily optimize records and tuples which are structurally equal into the same memory, then separate them into distinct memory blocks when they differ. This way an equality check could have the speed of an identity check if the two are known to be structurally equal.

I could be talking out of my ass here – maybe this isn't a performance concern at all and has been addressed far better already, and this is nonsense. But I do wonder how you'd quickly check for equality of, say, a large state tree to discover changes. On one hand that could be addressed by architecture. On the other, it is nice sometimes to simply know if two variables reference the same memory.

Yes. This fixes only immutability. For the value semantics (=== comaprison of content) pls check sibling comment thread.

Not really. It can still be a walled garden if there is an opt out option, so you can still be able to be inside it but with the option to go out of it and be able to sideload/use different app stores. Also the Apple app store will definitely still be the main source as people usually don't switch that easily for almost no benefit. No one will force you use a different app store as well.

You can still choose not to use it. iMessage is super popular, am I forced to buy an iPhone?

Depending on your definition of 'super popular', both Android and iOS are super popular. Yet I don't need both of them do I?

Using different browsers and setting them as default is already possible in iOS. They are just forced to use WebKit as the rendering engine instead of Blink or Gecko.

> Using different browsers and setting them as default is already possible in iOS. They are just forced to use WebKit as the rendering engine instead of Blink or Gecko.

That's like saying gay people can legally marry in Saudi Arabia, they just have to marry people of the opposite sex.

True. But this "friendly stance" might change if browsers choose to use their own rendering engine now that the EU allows them to.

This hasn't happened on Android so your claim is pretty outlandish.

Emojis are just Unicode characters, why would it be so hard?

There's lots of non-standard emojis used by various messaging apps.

That's just emoji. Think about Apple's animoji

Don't know if it will be bad. Apple still can make this securely. It doesn't mean that the system needs to be completely open, just that apps need to be able to access hardware features. NFC for example can be asked upon like GPS on the OS level. Doesn't mean that the apps need to access NFC on the direct hardware level. And I don't want to have Android, but I would like for Apple to open up things like the forced browser engine stuff. With this Apple is blocking so much innovation for the web because they are not implementing so many things.

One thing I hope for is that API access comes with the following agreement:

1) Use of APIs means an App must be listed on the App Store or be used the regular way. You want location data? Sure but in exchange, I want to see an App Store listing along with the Data Privacy Report. You want access to NFC but you’re a bank? Sure but your cards must also be available to be added directly without an app. You’re free to create another version of your app and list that on another App Store , but I want a version that adheres to the App Store rules.

I don't think so. The EU market is pretty huge and financially strong. Maybe they will only allow sideloading and payment freedom for the EU with special iOS builds.

This would be very consistent with their prior actions. Apple's "opening move" with prior rulings and laws on in-app payment processing has been to require separate binaries locked to specific jurisdictions. The company genuinely believes that competition is consumer-hostile at best and outright dangerous at worst.

The question is, how far will Apple go to keep Americans from turning on "EU mode"? Will it just be the usual country toggle? Will sideloaded apps be geofenced to the EU with Location Services? Or will they start adding bootloader fuses for each jurisdiction so that you can't install the "EU sideloading firmware" on US-purchased iPads? Or all of the above? I hope the EU is ready to litigate whatever hoops Apple makes people jump through - because Apple loves inventing new hoops.

depends on the company really. some might think a bit more about offering their products to eu countries considering (some of) these rules. which imo are quite serious, and some even ridiculous.

Considering how far backwards companies bend over to make business in China and some Arabic countries I don't expect a single company with some profitable business in the EU to leave that market.

for sure. but a newly established company with strong revenues in a part of the world where there are no rules? difficult to answer.

So what? Nobody is obliged to serve any market, or a markets obliges to open for individual companies. If company A won't, companies B and C propably will.

If by market leader you mean creating monopolies, or oligopolies, there are rules againstt that in place. So there seems to be some concensus of seeing those outcomes as non desireable. And those rules cover consumer protection and choice, Microsoft has some experience with that when it comes to Internet Explorer.

Being a monopoly is not against the law. Abusing your monopoly is.

Which ones do you find ridiculous? They frankly diverge from the current status quo but to me they all go in the right direction.

i foresee a fiasco in general, but a few stand out:

> Share data and metrics with developers and competitors, including marketing and advertising performance data.

with competitors? :))

> Allow developers to integrate their apps and digital services directly with those belonging to a gatekeeper. This includes making messaging, voice-calling, and video-calling services interoperable with third-party services upon request.

could have been solved easily if they proposed a working group to come up with the next video and messaging standard. right now i foresee the discussions we had back in mid 00s: we use our own video encoder. they use h263. and those other guys use vp9. good luck to the team writing a transcoder that works real time :))

> The Digital Services Act (DSA), which requires platforms to do more to police the internet for illegal content, has also been approved.

“think of the children” legislation.

I don’t see why you are surprised by the sharing with competitors and the obligation of interoperability. That’s in line with what’s imposed on dominant player in an unbalanced market. Basically Europe is saying to gatekeepers that they can keep their platform but it will come with a lot of caveat from now on.

Asking for data sharing without specifying exactly which data is included and exactly which data is exempt is ridiculous. The standard for laws need to be far higher. Which metrics? Which data? If the lawmakers mean all data they are going to discover very quickly a lot of that data is subject to privacy standards. You can't for example share the data you use to train a personal assistant without sharing queries people have made of that assistant.

That's pretty much the point of the regulation. If you're okay with being preyed upon by billion-dollar companies, stay in the US. If you'd like to be protected as a customer, come to the EU.

Besides, the DMA has specific exemptions for small companies. Once a company reaches the "gatekeeper" level, they will have had all the necessary time to figure out how to comply with the law.

Oh please. Are any of these billion-dollar companies going to deliberately issue malware that allows them to record my passwords and empty my bank account? Side-loading will be a huge gift for scammers.

No, it's good news! No more forced crappy webkit browser engine in iOS. The other things can be added in a secure fashion as well. Sideloading doesn't need to be wild west. macOS also makes it possible with certificates etc. Messanger interop is also nice, when done right: basically would need a shared standard like the web that is done by a messaging consortium like the W3.

> No more forced crappy webkit browser engine in iOS.

you know this just means more chrome right?

> Messanger interop is also nice, when done right: basically would need a shared standard like the web that is done by a messaging consortium like the W3.

we went thru this before. didn’t work then, won’t work now.

This actually opens a race to be the best mobile browser, which might well see new entrants. As people increasingly use their mobiles as primary devices, they are more likely to move to a new browser on mobile platforms and then adapt their desktops to that choice, rather than the other way around as they did in the past. Current mobile browsers have historical baggage that a new entrant would not need to carry.

> This actually opens a race to be the best mobile browser, which might well see new entrants.

Hahhahahhahahahaha. We will end up with chrome. And developers targeting chrome and safari users being left out because “works best in chrome for my text based website that doesn’t do anything safari can’t do”.

Sounds like Apple needs to work harder to make Safari into a better mobile browser, if you're so sure that Chrome would win.

There’s other browsers on android. No one uses them.

Safari is great. It works. No issues. But developers will do what they did to ie. develop for chrome and shove a banner up blocking safari.

Again, sounds like Apple needs to do a better job improving Safari. If developers and consumers choose Chrome, it's up to competitors to find a way to disrupt their lead, not engage in monopolistic practices to stop a monopoly.

There’s nothing to improve.

Developers want push notifications on a web browser for mobile? That’s not an improvement.

Firefox is a better browser than chrome but you can’t move people away from chrome.

So regardless of what you think. Adding other browsers to iOS will only have a negative long term effect.

Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.

It's not a shallow dismissal and your comments only prove you either don't understand the landscape or are choosing to ignore what's staring you in the face.

Try to use any google property on Safari (or non-chrome browser on any platform) and see all the times Google tries to push you to use Chrome and/or sign into your google account. When logged in it puts a banner at the bottom of every google search and when you aren't logged in it shows a modal that takes 1/3rd of the page.

Google reigns supreme on the web from everything from search to email and docs/drive/etc. Their reach is massive. They have in the past and will continue in the future to use that reach to push people to use their browser engine. How does Apple/Safari/Webkit compete with that? It's not that the browser is better but that the sites they visit push them to use a different browser.

Apple can double down on privacy and security and brand Safari as the browser that won't steal your data. Own that space, spread the marketing, they have enough capital to create solutions. You might as well ask how iOS can compete with Android. This continuous insistence that Apple is helpless is completely anachronistic and demeaning to Apple itself.

I do use FF

That's self-defeatist. You mentioned IE downthread; IE is not the dominant browser anymore, and the reason for that is not just that MS stagnated, but that it was challenged vigorously by competitors that exploited new opportunities better. This is one such opportunity.

Chrome was better than IE, but it won out not because of technical capabilities but through Google's constant and ruthless exploitation of its web properties and operating systems. That already happens on iOS, and I'm sure a Google SVP reading this ruling just started a project to intensify it.

And by doing so, they painted a massive target on their back. On the EU list, they come just a step under Apple, don't worry.

Firefox and Opera browsers could run Google apps just fine. Remember the days when Firefox and Opera got a cut down version of gmail, but if you changed the user agent on the browser to chrome it worked just fine.

That’s how chrome became popular.

FF took ages to come to mobile. Opera actually became pretty popular in Asia, precisely because they exploited well the move to mobile, and was screwed only by stupid commercial manoeuvers.

Cannot antitrust against Google solve it?

> you know this just means more chrome right?

In practice, probably, but at least you'll also be allowed to install Firefox.

And things don't last forever. Another browser can always gain the crown from Chrome. Without this legislation, it won't even be possible to do that on Apple devices.

The Ukraine example might be true for a non-european country, but as a European in these times I want to be informed. I want to help refugees and the victims of war (either by donating or giving shelter for some days). If I wouldn't know things from the news, I wouldn't know about these things.

Knowing in what direction world events might change is good to be at least mentally prepared when things turn worse.

It doesn't have to be checking the news 24/7 but checking it once a day for the important parts I think it's important. I would rather say people need to learn how to distance themselves from the news a bit to keep a healthy mental state with all the things happening right now.

I followed that war since it started in 2014 and not by reading the news or, god forbid, the economist.

https://rumble.com/vwzzth-donbass-english-subtitles-2016.-do...

As a fellow European, IMO it’s very important to follow especially what non-Ukraine politicians are doing. That will help a lot in elections in coming decades. Let’s keep them accountable for once.

What do you think the advantages of continuous following are, vs. reading up on their history the day before the next election?

It seems to me that by waiting, you'll have more information on how their policies worked out. JIT judging, if you will.

I doubt there will be a non-biased compilation that doesn't bend narrative here or there.

But it will be interesting to compare my own experience to what people will try to make out of this later on.

Regarding COVID at least in my country it was pure madness. A lot of double standards, different media channels skipping different bits to bend the narrative, people who did little trying to claim credit, discrediting people based on information we have today even if they acted okay-ish given what we knew at the time....

It's very interesting to watch history that I witnessed being written. It will be even more to see how people reflect on this 20 or 50 years later. A lot of food for thoughts if history we know reflects what actually happened in other cases.