Gardening Start-Up in China Chances Upon U.S. Marijuana Market - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/11/25/gardening-start-up-in-china-chances-upon-u-s-marijuana-market/ <comment><USER2> Oddly the NYT article doesn't link to the product itself: [http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/LED-grow-lights- Plan...](http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/LED-grow-lights-Plant-care- Home-automation-systems-Electronic-automation- supplies/1938054_32536786657.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> In the article it mentions that staff members were concerned about morality of helping to marijuana growers, and the boss actually spend effort to alleviate that.

I wonder if this hints a subtle rise of personal responsibility when conducting businesses among China's professionals and business people. It would be great if more people are more conscious of impacts of their actions and emphasis more on doing good for society over profit.</comment>


Nokia N9 and an incomplete list of browser features - <AUTHOR> http://karlwestin.posterous.com/nokia-n9-and-its-browser

<comment><USER2> It sounds like they're basically just basing it on the same Webkit fork as Apple and Chrome with a few features disabled...

<comment><USER3> Or rather with less features disabled.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure whether even Safari and Mobile Safari comes from the same branch of webkit. Chrome and the Android browser definitely don't ... When I spoke to Apple Engineers about how WebGL is available in iAds ("running html5 in a normal webkit view") they mentioned that "webGL is in mobile webkit, but not in mobile safari". This thing, suggesting there's a "mobile webkit", when PPK has shown that feature-wise, there isn't, made me wonder how the webkit tree really looks...

<comment><USER3> Well, Apple's repos and bugtrackers are internal so we may never know. However the differences between them can indicate separate repos or at least far away branches. N9's browser is built from WebKit2, so it may be also more prone to crashes due to Chrome-like process separation, a feature Lion and iOS 5 will also have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm especially happy of multi-touch and proper contentEditable support. MeeGo Forums have more discussion on the browser</comment>


Ask HN: What languages/technologies do you plan to learn in 2017? - <AUTHOR> I'm interested to hear about what languages or other technology folks are planning to learn and use this year - whether it is strictly for a hobby or for production use. <comment><USER2> Variation of this from earlier:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13310699](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13310699)

Related discussions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13281980](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13281980)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13291593](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13291593)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13310159](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13310159)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13255841](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13255841)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13239209](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13239209)

</comment><comment><USER3> Elixir with Phoenix. I've already started and I really like it. I'm currently writing a Mix task to get my first "real" application with Elixir. I'm also working on a production site using Elixir and Phoenix as a contractor and will most likely take it over permanently once it is finished.

<comment><USER4> I've been Learning Elixir and Phoenix as well. I'm planning to start building an app starting next week.

<comment><USER5> We (team of 2) are learning Elixir/Phoenix and building an app[1] as we learn.

It has been a rewarding experience.

[1] [https://www.metriculator.com](https://www.metriculator.com)

<comment><USER6> I really like your landing page. Is that a theme you're using? Or custom?

<comment><USER5> Thanks. It is custom designed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Probably TensorFlow the hype is too strong. This book looks solid [https://www.amazon.com/Hands-Machine-Learning-Scikit- Learn-T...](https://www.amazon.com/Hands-Machine-Learning-Scikit-Learn- TensorFlow/dp/1491962291/ref=as_li_ss_tl?sa-no- redirect=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=adamnemecek03-20&linkId=7f4c458f671281c0dfa72e7d4579ffab)

<comment><USER8> I'm reading an early release of this book in O'Reilly Safari and confirm that it's worth reading.

However, if you don't get used to deep learning previously it might be worth to combine it with something more foundational about deep learning. I like the lectures by Nando de Freitas ([https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/people/nando.defreitas/machinelearni...](https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/people/nando.defreitas/machinelearning/)) and a book by Ian Godfellow ([http://www.deeplearningbook.org/](http://www.deeplearningbook.org/)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Dartlang, to find out if it's a workable alternative to Javascript/ECMA.

The project I'm currently developing uses AngularJS (v1), and D3. From quick initial research, it should be possible to use Dartlang, AngularDart, and D3.js to replace them.

The motivator is the direction Javascript/ECMA is heading. Rapid uncontrolled proliferation of tooling, standards, etc, with no positive end in sight. (in biological systems, isn't that called cancer? :>)

</comment><comment><USER10> I recently transitioned from a front-end position to a back-end position, so I'm currently learning Java as well as a bunch of architectural and devopsy topics for work.

On the side, I want to get better at shipping, so I have a goal to ship an actual product this year. What I'm working on at the moment is written in Node (which I already knew fairly well) on Lambda + SNS + DynamoDB + ElasticSearch (which I did not know).

</comment><comment><USER11> I've been using Scala professionally for the last few years and really love it. I've also been doing a lot of JS work professionally, so I think I'm going to really dig into Scala.js.

</comment><comment><USER12> QT and C++, it's far too long on my list. It feels quite limited to me, to just be able to spit out web applications, many ideas I got would be better as a GUI application.

<comment><USER13> I'm trying to go in the other direction, but I feel like the toolchains for web applications are so much worse. I haven't found my magical stack in the web world yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Technologies aren't the end all of programming; there are other more fundamental skills you should learn, like learning how to work towards goals: [https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/12/20/the-best- technology/](https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/12/20/the-best-technology/)

</comment><comment><USER15> Languages Rust Ocaml Matlab/Numpy/? Some form of numerical programming environment anyway Haskell (maybe if I have time towards the end of year) ARM/Risc-V assembler (as a target, see below)

More general. I want to finally make a read thru SICP without getting sidetracked halfway. Then move to writing some toy compilers.

Have a few ideas for home embedded computing projects.

I want to work on some DSP projects too.

</comment><comment><USER16> I am going to be learning some new JavaScript tools. Specifically, I want to learn more about ES6 features, React, and Vue. I am doing the 1PPM challenge, with my January project being a Vue app. Documenting my adventures on my site, releasing my results as open source. [https://roth.fyi/](https://roth.fyi/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> OP here, for myself, I've done a lot of reading up about Elixir and more recently about Clojure. I plan to dig in to both of them this year and build a non-trivial side project. If all goes well I might have the opportunity for production use at my work.

I'm also hoping to find some time to play around with software defined radio.

</comment><comment><USER17> Rust. I played with it a bit last year, but I want to take a deep dive into it. It seems extremely fascinating.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm currently a .NET developer using C#/ASP.NET MVC. This year I plan to play around with these things => ReactJS, Xamarin, AWS, Docker, (and hopefully swift)

</comment><comment><USER19> Clojurescript and generally clojure.

</comment><comment><USER20> Will be picking up 1) rust and 2) one machine learning language, For machine learning still contemplating between h20 and tensorflow. Any suggestions?

</comment><comment><USER21> C. Can't avoid it anymore. Many tools I use recommend jumping into C (via FFI) when you need speed. Smalltalk, Lua, Scheme... even Erlang.

</comment><comment><USER22> Perl6, it finally has a production release and some useful libraries to build real tools.

Very interested to see if it was worth the wait.

</comment><comment><USER23> Communication and marketing

</comment><comment><USER24> python , ruby , angularjs .</comment>


'iPad mini' Apple plans 12 configurations in two colors - <AUTHOR> http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/10/16/ipad-mini-skus-reveal-apple-will-release-12-models-in-two-colors <comment><USER2> 12? Is that really necessary? So much for Apple's simplicity.</comment>


Dart in 2016: Fastest growing language at Google, 2nd fastest in TIOBE - <AUTHOR> http://news.dartlang.org/2017/01/dart-in-2016-fastest-growing.html <comment><USER2> You don't always have to jump to the hype train! Yes, you don't hear much about Dart here on HN, but the project is far from dead. The most important thing is that Dart works, it's stable and production ready and it's being used in production not only by Google but also by other companies.

Dart is a very refreshing change for front-end development. No fatigue! Great tooling, nice language without surprises and optional static typing.

On the backend you get probably the fastests dynamic language out there, maybe competing only with LuaGIT.

The new Flutter for high performance mobile app development looks seriously awesome. I specially love the instant live reloading.

Dart's package ecosystem (pub.dartlang.org) seems healthy with constant updates and new packages.

I have no idea how TIOBE works, but I find weird that people accuse Google of manipulating it to promote Dart. I believe it's the opposite, Google has done very little to promote Dart, and that's why you don't hear about it very often. I believe the project deserves more promotion because it's seriously good. Give it a try one of these days!

EDIT: I do _not_ work for Google

<comment><USER3> For me the project died when Google decided it wasn't worth it to support it any longer in Chrome and Angular team decided to use TypeScript instead.

Regarding Flutter, I watched the conference where it was presented and none of the devices I own was able to launch the application.

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.flutter.gal...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.flutter.gallery)

Unless Google does actually use the language to the point a few well known companies think it is valuable to use in their own products and talk about it, e.g. "X rewrote Z in Dart", I don't see much of a future to the language.

<comment><USER4> I feel your sentiment. But I always thought getting browsers to adopt Dart was a crazy and impossible idea. I was actually glad when I heard they had abandoned that plan.

Flutter confuses me. Its annoying you have to use their DSL for layouts rather than HTML and what about native widgets, like WebViews or VideoPlayers?

With them drastically speeding up the Dart2JS compiler and implementing a strong typed mode, I am quite pleased with Dart's direction.

I do still fear for its future. It would be really to sad to see Dart die. The last web app I made, I was able to make the entire thing in under 90kbs, including HTML, CSS, SVGs, and JS. Dart allows me to write desktop like applications for the web with any extra overhead.

<comment><USER5> > But I always thought getting browsers to adopt Dart was a crazy and > impossible idea.

I don't know — browsers are _already_ planning to adopt a non-JavaScript language (WebAssembly); it's entirely possible that maybe, _just_ maybe they might start to support more than just the late-90s mistake which is JavaScript.

<comment><USER3> As someone that enjoys more developing native apps than web ones, I imagine Web Assembly will eventually be the revenge of plugins.

How long it will take for Canvas/WebGL + WebAssembly frameworks to appear?

<comment><USER4> Eventually someones going to create a XML based layout language to use to construct views in the Canvas, we could even call it HTML ;)

I'm not a web developer either and I look forward to WASM and its potential. But I really like HTML, I've used lots of layout languages before and I think HTML is the best I've used. The only thing I find HTML to be obtuse about is complex animations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looking at HN's Who is hiring job posts there is zero interest in it. Typescript , Elm on the other hand are going up. [http://www.ryan- williams.net/hacker-news-hiring-trends/2017/...](http://www.ryan- williams.net/hacker-news-hiring- trends/2017/january.html?compare1=Dart&compare2=Elm&compare3=ClojureScript&compare4=TypeScript)

Yeah, you can say HN is startup echo chamber etc.. Well StackOverflow's job board has more mature companies and again zero interest in Dart. Here is the latest scraped data. [https://github.com/aparij/soCareers- Data/blob/master/result/...](https://github.com/aparij/soCareers- Data/blob/master/result/tags/tags-jobs2016-12-31.json)

<comment><USER7> Thanks for those two links. Great stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Dev lead here for a tiny startup. I selected Dart for front and back end, sharing code between them. It has been a great experience and I don't have many complaints. One of the designer's goals was familiarity. I believe they definitely nailed that goal. We've had experienced devs contributing to the codebase in 3 days without ever seeing a line of Dart code before. And they absolutely love working with Dart. Here's some nice features to those who aren't familiar with the language:

\- Class-based, object-oriented

\- Static typing

\- Generics

\- Async/await that makes your asynchronous code look like synchronous code - (avoids callback hell)

\- Generators

\- Future-based, non-blocking APIs

\- Positional, named, optional parameters with default values

\- Arrow syntax for brevity

\- Type inference

\- Packages facilitate modularity

\- Named constructors

\- Functional programming features (map, fold, reduce, where, take, forEach, etc...)

\- Cascade operator

\- String interpolation

\- Implicit interfaces

\- Mixins (Code re-use without complex inheritance hiearchies)

\- Reflection

\- Streams

\- Operator overloading

\- Metadata annotations

\- Concurrency through Isolates

\- SIMD

\- Call into JavaScript code and vice/versa

\- Generate nice documentation with /// dart comments

\- Built-in testing facilites - pub run test

\- Open source

\- Open standard

<comment><USER9> How many of these aren't available in ES2015 or TypeScript?

<comment><USER10> I have been exposed to TS a bit, so this list may not be exhaustive, but to name a few that I use on a regular basis:

\- Consistent async API (incl. Future, Streams, async* for Streams, async/await support everywhere). async.js is nowhere near to this.

\- Type inference and analyzer toolchain that works and don't need to fall back on grep. The moment you start using anything like lodash or similar you will lose your ability to explore the code reliably.

\- Isolates and Zones as higher-level constructs for dealing with complex concurrency and parallelism constructs. Nothing comparable in the JS world.

\- Cascade operator.

\- 1 != "1" (have been burnt by JS several times, and TypeScript won't provide a break from it)

I hope to use soon:

\- SIMD

<comment><USER11> > \- Consistent async API (incl. Future, Streams, async* for Streams, > async/await support everywhere). async.js is nowhere near to this.

There now are Promises and Promise-based async/await keywords. Sure, there are some legacy APIs, but this is no longer as true as it used to be.

> \- Type inference and analyzer toolchain that works and don't need to fall > back on grep. The moment you start using anything like lodash or similar you > will lose your ability to explore the code reliably.

TypeScript has introduced mapped and lookup types in its latest version, that solves this problem.

<comment><USER10> We have a disagreement on the definition of "solves the problem". Having tried to refactor a codebase with heavy lodash use, that battle seems to be lost.

Also, take a look at the async* construct here: [https://www.dartlang.org/articles/language/beyond- async](https://www.dartlang.org/articles/language/beyond-async)

Nothing similar is in TypeScript, and this is roughly a two-years old feature in Dart, not a fancy-new hype. I have used it couple of times, it is useful, and again: consistent across the board.

Of course if you are happy with the limited promise support in TypeScript, go ahead with it. However saying that they are on-par is far from the truth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> And yet, I very very rarely hear anyone talking about it? I assume it's pushed heavily internally at Google, but anecdotally it seems nigh-unused outside of Google.

Am I totally off?

<comment><USER13> Yeah, this is my impression too. This is the first mention of it I think I've heard in the last year, and I'm in the web development scene. Meanwhile I seemingly can't get away from rust mentions, which seems to have people really excited.

<comment><USER10> Apparently there is at least one reddit moderator that doesn't like Dart and actively bans users when they try to post legitimate articles in webdev forums:

[https://plus.google.com/+MontyRasmussen/posts/UWyjF5S14Uo](https://plus.google.com/+MontyRasmussen/posts/UWyjF5S14Uo)

I'm not saying that this is general to moderators, but some people try to deny it exists or is relevant (probably because they have invested in other toolchains), and if your filter-bubble is controlled by them, you will miss out.

<comment><USER14> Equally possible: the user was posting so many dart articles it was crowding out higher quality non dart stuff from the 'new' queue.

Assuming the moderation action was due to "not liking dart" when we've nothing except the complaining of the newly-banned to substantiate it doesn't strike me as particularly fair.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If somebody has an interest on what's new with Dart, I'd suggest to peek into the Dart Developer Summit 2016 videos. Previous HN link and discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12838749](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12838749)

TL;DR: great developer tooling, hyper-focus on web and mobile.

</comment><comment><USER15> We are writing spa frontend for email marketing service in dart. No angular, react, just lots of plain dart. Strong analyzer mode is used and dartium is always in checked mode. Dart shined most when we created drag and drop html editor. We like using it anl if anyone wants to know why we used dart ask for details. Check our app at listshine.com

<comment><USER4> Yea I found just using plane Dart to work really well. I preferred it over Angular. I had an entire functioning web app in about 80kbs, including all images, html, css, and JS. That was a while back, I'm sure its only gotten better.

<comment><USER15> What i personally liked is that we write once and in 99.9% cases generated js is compatible with all browsers. Also type checking and strong analyzer mode helped catch ton of bugs. Im sure if you bet your next project on this tech you wont be sorry. Fast code and fast development with webdev batteries included.

<comment><USER4> Yea actually I forgot about how slow it was to compile to JS. They are saying it should around 100MS now to do a dev compile. So its feasible to use other browsers actively during development. That is probably the biggest thing for me they announced at the Dart Con.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm more than a little skeptical of a rating scheme that puts JavaScript use at 2.85% and Assembly Language at 2.7%. Clearly JS programmers outnumber assembly programmers 1000 to 1.

[http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/](http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/)

</comment><comment><USER17> Dart's fascinating. It feels high level and object-oriented like Python, and can be used both web server- and client-side. Check it out!

</comment><comment><USER18> So AdWords is implemented on Dart. Well, that certainly moved my understanding of the positioning of the language from the large zoo of obscure experimentations to the rare class of industrial and production ready in a single bang.

In the classification of computer languages, this is like a new nova burst in the night sky.

</comment><comment><USER19> Okay so a naive and stupid question, why do I use Dart? what does it replace? does it have any frameworks other than angular? can I use it with Vue.JS (since I have spent considerable time learning Vue)

I tried reading their website multiple times, each of the time I was left confused as to where the language fit

<comment><USER20> I think the original idea of dart was to replace JavaScript, back when the language looked stale and had no future. Now that the JS community/committee have sorted themselves out and we have ES6 etc, there's not much need for dart now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Don't want to be the jerk here. The problem with languages is that it's not enough to be just great, feature-rich or thought-trough. At some point they must create their own ecosystem, the bigger the better. The more open, the better.

I see other languages which could create bigger ecosystems in less time and as a result attract more influential contributors than Dart did.

Just based on its specs, Dart is a wonderful language but again, this is just one part of the story.

</comment><comment><USER22> Dart is also the 41st largest language on GitHub, growing slower than the average. [http://githut.info/](http://githut.info/)

<comment><USER23> Looks like that data hasn't been updated in over 2 years

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Soundtrap used dart to build the first webaudio/webmidi DAW in the browser pretty impressive haven't seen anyone build anything that complex without dart.

</comment><comment><USER25> Year after year, I've never found the TIOBE index to reflect what I personally experienced in reality. By _far_.

But I'm not in the US. Can somebody comment about their perception on this index?

<comment><USER26> Mostly meaningless garbage. The top of the list kind of follows my general awareness of language popularity, but it goes off the rails pretty quickly. Python above VB and JasvaScript seems off in particular. Below that it just gets wacky, Dart above Objective-C for instance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> However, Dart didn't make the list for PYPL [http://pypl.github.io/PYPL.html](http://pypl.github.io/PYPL.html)

or the RedMonk ranking, although this is 6 months ago. [http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2016/07/20/language- rankings-6-16...](http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2016/07/20/language- rankings-6-16/)

</comment><comment><USER24> If you want to see an amazing demo of what can be done with Dart, look at soundtrap.com, a full DAW running on webaudio/webmidi built with Dart.

</comment><comment><USER27> Dart is also a first class language in Google's new OS codenamed Fuchsia.

<comment><USER28> I haven't heard about it since the repos went public, do you have any more info?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> OK, so I started dabbling with Dart and wanted I've been wanting to do this for 3 years. Please bear in mind, I want to use Dart because coding in JS directly is not something I thoroughly enjoyed the last time I built a 'real' Web App. This is not a critique of Dart, it's just my recent experience ... if any of the points I make here make no sense, please correct me (I really don't want to use JS anymore!)

So I start by installing the Dart SDK on my Windows PC. First surprise, I noticed they no longer package the Dart-IDE when you install Dart SDK, a minor disappointment. But I get it, the Dart team explains they want to focus on core tools and let you use any editor (Web Storm is suggested but costs $$$, and remember I'm only scouting at this point). So decided to use the plugin for Dart in Sublime Text 3. Not perfect, but it works fairly well.

Other surprise, Polymer seems to be fading away. What Widget framework shall I choose? I chose React for it's one way binding which seems to make sense to a web n00b like me, since it will simplify the flow of data. The Dart team pushes Angular really hard, but I still install the Dart-react modules. Adding dependencies to a Dart project is fairly straight forward so far.

Using Dart-React does not bring the happy unicorns knocking at my door. Dart React does not (yet?) process JSX, which is a pretty big feature I intended to use with Dart. JSX allows you to define your components and reuse them. Oh well, no JSX, but I'll just have to resort to coding React components in Dart (which turns out to be a bit of a mess ...)

Now my shiney new Dart app needs to display some huge lists of Data in tables/grids. I could build my own, but surely some smart dev has done this before me! Found Slick Grid, but it's for JS (the Dart port is not as performant). Dart tools mentions that there is a JS Interop 'shortcut': If a JS component has been annotated (Typescript) you can use the annotated files to generate Dart Modules!

So I run the tool on the annotated Slick Grid typescript files. Success! It does generate the Dart libs! Ouuups, my boiler plate Dart project does not compile anymore since adding the Slick grid modules. Dig some more, fix the compilation issues (some obscure option was missing when converting from TS to Dart).

We're back on track, my project compiles but... no grid ever show up. Looks like it's time to test the debugging features for Dart. I get Dart to generate .map files for my project. This basically allows you to debug Dart code in browser (FF for me), and the debugging begins. I can spot exactly on which line of my Dart code the grid is supposed to be instantiated, but this requires me to move through the Dart to JS interop code and try to understand why there is a JS exception thrown somewhere.

So, maybe for some Dart gurus out there this is simple and run of the mill stuff. I would like to hear from you. So far I still don't have any data grids to show my huge data set ... and am still wondering if I'm going to install Typescript which seems more tightly coupled (in a good way) to JS.

Calling all Dart gurus, give me your thoughts on this, I want to use Dart and have it succeed.

Dart Noob

<comment><USER15> what we do at listshine is run code on dartium in checked mode. when it works 100% then we build js version in staging and after that is confirmed to work then we do production build. debugging dart code is faster and better in dartium

<comment><USER29> OK, but what if I am using JS interop code? Dartium still won't help me, because I still need to go through the layer which allows to 'glue' my Dart code to the JS code.

<comment><USER15> That is true but part that is in dart will be easier to debug

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Don't use Dart for web applications. It is horrible. Hard to integrate with js libraries, lacking features from js, big fat runtime and buggy. It may be good language as replacement for server side javascript, but definitely not for web apps using dart2js.

<comment><USER31> > lacking features from js

What features do you find lacking?

<comment><USER30> Not language features, but it lacks some HTML DOM objects. Eg. thead, tfoot constructors, style.setProperty don't work for css variables, etc. Small things, but extremely irritating because it defeats whole purpose of having sane wrapper around DOM API when it needs to be workarounded sometimes anyway.

I recently tried to access window content opened by window.open and it was absolute nightmare. It cannot be done purely from Dart and requires JS interop, but what's worse passing browser objects between dart and js is buggy. I haven't found a solution that works both on dart2js and dartium, when it works on dartium it is broken on dart2js and vice versa. And debugging dart2js-generated code is almost impossible, just obfuscated mess.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> How is fastest growing defined?

By percentage? That is easy for niche languages with small markets. By lines of code? That is impressive.

<comment><USER33> [https://xkcd.com/1102/](https://xkcd.com/1102/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Indeed.com has 0 Dart jobs by title and TIOBE is a joke. Given that Google uses about 4 languages routinely (Go, Java, Python & Dart) this is nothing more than internal back-patting with no relevance outside the Googleplex.

<comment><USER35> I don't want to dog on anyone's language, but any list that purports that Typescript is significantly less popular than Scheme, Haskell, Alice, Lisp, COBOL, Ada, Logo, and a few dozen other languages you probably haven't ever heard of, is a complete waste of time.

I don't even use Typescript and even I know that especially with Angular 2 Typescript is gaining a lot of popularity and it was already doing well before they picked it too. I mean it isn't even on their list in the top 100. How is that possible?

It says that VB.net is more popular than Javascript too. Like that is even possible.

<comment><USER36> > I mean it isn't even on their list in the top 100. How is that possible?

I'm guessing that most people would google "angular ..." instead of "typescript ...", that's why it doesn't show up in tiobe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> If you join my religion, it will be the fastest growing with at least 100% per day!

</comment><comment><USER38> [https://xkcd.com/1102/](https://xkcd.com/1102/)

</comment><comment><USER39> It doesn't show how much Rust inproved in usage compared to last year.

<comment><USER39> Why the downvote? Rust is on 41th place on the linked TIOBE index and I would expect it to be growing faster than Dart from the HN articles that were popular last year. Dart was compared to last year on the index, but Rust wasn't, so I don't think saying that Dart was the second fastest growing language is fair.

<comment><USER40> It did say that, "Rust kept its top 50 position (from 47 to 41)."

But also, Rust and Dart are very different languages, so bringing Rust up here feels very offtopic.

<comment><USER39> Thanks, I didn't see it..I thought it's interesting because every few days there's a new library ported to Rust shown on HN, which gave the impression to me that it's the fastest growing language.

<comment><USER41> Rust people are very good at marketing and community building and you have experienced it yourself. Which is a great thing, it would be sad for such a promising language to fail because "people just didn't get it".

<comment><USER36> > Rust people are very good at marketing and community building and you have > experienced it yourself.

This is why languages succeed and fail, not technical merits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> The absolute LAST thing the world needed in 2016 was another programming language. Google did with Dart precisely what Microsoft tried to do when they (MSFT) created a proprietary JavaScript back in 1997(ish). Big tech companies just have a lot of hubris and want to "own" everything they touch. Any large software company, given enough time and success, will eventually create it's own programming language. It's just in their nature. It's the natural progression of market domination.

They COULD contribute their efforts to improving EXISTING languages (like MSFT finally did to their credit with TypeScript, building on non-Proprietary JS, which is great) but there is a seemingly irresistible allure to the thought of owning the design and molding a language to perfectly fit your own company's desires. You never have to deal with standards, when you're just making it up as you go along. PLUS the massive benefit of the anti-competitive foot-hold (monopolistic foot-hold) that having its own language gives to a company, is just too tempting. They cannot resist.

However most developers are sick of the lanuage-Thrash. 99% of it is not innovative in the slightest, but just somebody reinventing and resolving problems that have already been invented and solved countless times before. I really really hope dart dies (and GO can also go). In my opinion there are three languages that need to still exist: Java, JavaScript/TypesScript, and C++. Those fill EVERY need, and if the innovators would ADD TO THOSE rather than starting from scratch and pushing the reset button the software world would be a MUCH better place, and so would overall software quality.

<comment><USER43> You are aware that Dart was not released in 2016, yes? The first public release was in 2011.

Feel free to stick only to your company's Recommended Best Practices Industry Standard Languages and Libraries. But, there are lots of languages out there, and many of us have good reasons for using them. Deal with it.

<comment><USER42> Well if you jump from language to language, you'll never build a strong resume. Keep that in mind. I'm nearly 50yrs old now and have stayed on course with either C++ or Java, and never needed or wanted any of the "Flavor of the Week" crap the script kiddies love piddling in. Personally I think not being able to stick to something is a form of A.D.D. but that's just me. Deal with that. And no I didn't give a shit about nor claim I knew when Dart was invented.</comment></comment></comment>


Hours - <AUTHOR> https://cutebouncingbunnies.wordpress.com/2020/03/30/hours/ <comment><USER2> At time of writing, both root comments are looking for an automated solution, a bot.

Having done something like this a lot, it does not work for me to have a bot. The predictability and lack of social accountability (one should be honest) causes it to fail.

It also lacks a huge benefit:

It turns out that doing something "with" someone, despite a lack of collaboration, has significant social value. Even more so if you do it in the same room or at worst the same video conference.

For this reason I moved from the many tools that exist to do this with strangers to arranging an hour with a friend. This works exceptionally well and has strengthened my friendships despite us living in different cities (I am in a small* town); likely because it keeps us present, real, and approachable in each others minds.

*small by southern English standards; huge by the standards of the northern county I grew up in.

<comment><USER3> There was a marketing move a couple of years ago to try to make fishermen a little more relatable to the public in Japan. As part of that they introduced a wakeup service. The idea was that a fisherman would phone you from their cell phone out on the boat to wake you up. They had to give up the idea because it went viral and there was no way that the fishermen could handle the volume. But I think part of the appeal was that the fishermen would be taking time out of their job to wake you up. They would chat with you and ask you what you were going to do for the day, etc. So it made that same kind of social contract where you wouldn't dare go back to bed as it would waste the fisherman's time -- even though nobody would know.

<comment><USER4> That's genius. Where can I find out more about this campaign?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When I was training for a triathlon many years ago, my friend who was also training would text me and we would agree to meet at the gym for a morning swim a few times a month. At 5:30AM, of course! Every time the alarm went off, I cursed and cursed and made it out the door to drive to the gym, just in time. Neither of us never missed a swim date, and it was because we would never be able to live it down if either of us failed to fulfill the commitment.

It is one thing to go to the gym at 5:30AM. It is quite a different thing if your friend is expecting you to be there and they also got up early.

<comment><USER6> This is so effective.

I am not the type to spring up to rush to the gym at 6AM, but if I told a friend I will be there at 6AM, I will never miss it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's a website for this called Focusmate, which seems to have been around for at least two years going by past HN discussions: [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=1&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=1&prefix=true&query=focusmate&sort=byDate&type=all)

I have not used it myself (and am not affiliated in any way); my only knowledge of it comes from reading a review/experience [1], and a more recent mention in a newsletter I follow ([https://www.hillaryrettig.com/2020/03/30/focusmate-a- product...](https://www.hillaryrettig.com/2020/03/30/focusmate-a-productivity- app-that-really-works/)).

[1]: "I Let A Stranger Watch Me Work For A Day — And I've Never Been More Productive" ([https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/focusmate-review- product...](https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/focusmate-review-productivity- work-hack)), HN discussion along expected lines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19591227](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19591227)

</comment><comment><USER8> The author of this post is Anne Ogborn, one of the most experienced Prolog programmers in the community. She happens to be hosting a beginners & advanced Prolog course[0] that's starting in a couple days (I've enrolled myself). I see 70 others in the slack channel so far. Highly recommend.

[0] [https://twitter.com/AnnieTheObscure/status/12476035165514670...](https://twitter.com/AnnieTheObscure/status/1247603516551467009)

</comment><comment><USER9> One of the things that I like to do, is stop for a few days, from time to time, and write a article about my personal process, projects, whatever.

I find that it helps me to write better code, think about my designs, and make sure that I know my stuff.

I don't care too much whether or not people actually read my stuff, but I always make an effort like I'm writing for a major publication.

I will also write "lessons"; regardless of whether or not there are "students." I was taught that the best way to learn, is to teach.

[https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/](https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/)

<comment><USER10> I find teaching is much less effective without someone there to learn. Part of the benefit is getting asked about things you didn't realize were important or things that are welded into your mental models. It helps me step back at least.

Writing things down and explaining them is always good practice. It's harder to gloss over mistakes or bad assumptions when you switch modes from "thing I'm working on" to "thing in explaining".

<comment><USER9> You are correct. I have found that people don't seem to like reading, these days. They prefer videos. The problem is, is that videos take a lot longer to do (effectively) than writing, and I have a face that was made for radio (and a voice that was made for silent films).

Also, I have been writing (and reading voraciously) pretty much my entire life (since I was a kid), so that's the medium I use.

<comment><USER11> Don't worry, we readers still exist. I avoid information presented in videos as much as I can in favor of written information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I love how the first thing us social rejects here do is get an idea in our heads to make an artificial intelligence or a bot to replace the human interaction part.

</comment><comment><USER13> The author is talking about accountability, which the folks at Beeminder have been blogging[0] and implementing[1] for a long time. Their premise is to "tread the yellow line" and you won't have to suffer the consequences, which is paying money each time you fail.

I used their app while preparing for an exam and I regret not using it earlier. I was initially put off by the fact that I will have to fork over money to a random company, but in reality, you don't have to pay if you never fall from the "yellow line". Additionally, they give multiple reminders so that money isn't snatched away from you, and their customer support helped me refund money for one time when I didn't log something that I did do.

This is an example of my logging the amount of hours studied [2]

[0] [https://blog.beeminder.com/](https://blog.beeminder.com/)

[1] [https://www.beeminder.com/](https://www.beeminder.com/)

[2] [https://www.beeminder.com/llllll/fg](https://www.beeminder.com/llllll/fg)

</comment><comment><USER14> A lot of people here find it hard to admit that humans aren't purely rational self-directed creatures and that social pressure works, even when you've set it up yourself.

<comment><USER15> Why are social pressures not rational and self-directed?

If it's possible to say "humans are rational self-directed creatures, so social pressure works" then you really haven't learned anything about human rationality by observing their response to social pressure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder if the author really finds having a partner to be necessary. It sounds like this could be substituted with keeping a journal, recording what happens every hour. You'd get the bonus of having a written record of your day.

<comment><USER17> It's a psychological trick because you promised this to someone else (as opposed to your future self).

Seems like a good one though obviously not every psychological trick works on everyone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wasn't brave enough to jump on with a stranger after checking out Focusmate. There are heaps of videos such as this: [https://youtu.be/cPTRA1gIWak](https://youtu.be/cPTRA1gIWak) on YouTube. I found this really handy and got a productive session out of it. Would be even better with live stream.

</comment><comment><USER19> Oxbridge has a "Tutorial/Supervisions system" where you and 2-3 other students meet with a faculty member every week, and you receive direct feedback and critiques on written assignments (typically essays).

I've never participated in these systems, but what's struck me about them is that you have to come prepared not only with a finished essay, but you have to explain and defend them like you would a thesis. In high frequency.

Hours reminded me of this, but on a much more informal level. In both, you have to come prepared (at least, in the Hours system it's to your benefit).

</comment><comment><USER20> I really like the concept but I wonder if doing it with someone external to the company is a good idea for those of us with NDAs, confidentiality clauses and so on. Especially if it is done using a communication channel that hasn't been approved by the company.

I suppose you can keep the details vague enough if necessary, but if I was a spy, this is definitely something I would try to do with my target.

</comment><comment><USER21> If I knew how to write bots this would be a fun side project: Create a virtual partner.

The domain seems narrow enough that it would be feasible to put together something effective enough to achieve the desired effect - focus.

I'm a hobbyist developer so am probably underestimating the effort.

<comment><USER22> The power of this technique is that there's a real person on the other side.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Similar product [https://www.focusmate.com](https://www.focusmate.com)

</comment><comment><USER24> I like this. As a founder I'm constantly multi-tasking. Getting "maker" time is virtually impossible. Having accountability in 1 hour increments is good. The key is the overhead of setting this up and communicating should be minimal compared to the task at hand, else it won't be efficient

</comment><comment><USER25> There should be an IRC channel for this.</comment>


When her best friend died, she rebuilt him using artificial intelligence - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/a/luka-artificial-intelligence-memorial-roman-mazurenko-bot <comment><USER2> Why are people acting like a simple chatbot is somehow a recreation of a person?

It isn't a person, it's a chatbot.

There is even a company saying that they will try to revive people with a combination of chatlogs and brain scans or something.

Chatlogs aren't going to bridge the gap between what you can get with brain scans and what you need to do a full emulation.

Even if humanity does succeed in doing complete mind simulations, humanity will not have thereby solved death. It will have, at best, delayed it for a very very long time.

And then what? ;)

<comment><USER3> Isn't this Ray Kurzweill's brain uploading? You make a computer that can accurately simulate a person and then, according to Kurzweil, the person is no longer dead and completely equivalent to the previously alive human being.

I don't buy it of course, but isn't that the theory?

<comment><USER4> In fairness to Kurzweil, he isn't talking about a simple chatbot. That's a pretty big difference.

But beyond that, there's an argument that there's no clear distinction between a simulation of a person and the person.

If you want to get into this, start out by telling me the difference between A) a new sorting algorithm you wrote vs B) a simulation of the new sorting algorithm. In particular, why B isn't also running the same algorithm.

If that's not an objection, there's the question about "completely equivalent to the previously alive human being" \- pragmatically, it seems impossible to me to fully recreate a 'completely equivalent' human from their writing/output; but, if you're willing to accept a 'so similar you cant tell', the idea is no longer as clearly ridiculous as it first seemed to me:

How big is the space of potential human minds?

Lets say you've an incredibly powerful intelligence: its got someone's DNA and their writings/output. And lets say it has a lot of data on humans, and has deduced a pretty good model of how their minds form, given their DNA and experiences. How much can it now deduce about how a deceased person's DNA was expressed, and the person they became, given their experiences? How small is the space of minds it could narrow in to, from that data? Can it find a small enough space that another human can't tell the difference?

How hard is it to model a human mind? I can make pretty good predictions about what people I know well will say in response to many situations.

But I don't know; I don't think we know enough about minds to say one way or the other.

<comment><USER3> The problem with the analogy to a sorting algorithm is that a sorting algorithm is obviously computable. What if there's something like protein folding that has O(2^n) complexity involved in being a person that the body does trillions of times a second but is impossible for any size computer to do for large N?

<comment><USER4> That seems a very specific/narrow point, not a general objection.

But anyway: I guess its possible human biological hardware does something difficult to simulate on a computer (at least one similar to our current architectures.)

Given a super advanced intelligence, though, I doubt adding hardware that does protein folding (or the protein folding analogue operation) fast - in biology if necessary - is going to be a major obstacle.

And that's if it can't come up with an algorithm that does an equivalent operation, that runs well on whatever hardware it already has.

<comment><USER3> If we could compute everything in a living system in polynomial time or better then we could design drugs inside of a computer and that technology would be worth billions!

Seriously, until we are doing drug design with computers, we don't really understand biological systems well enough to simulate them inside a computer. Drugs interact with folded up proteins all the time so this requires simulation of protein folding and this algorithm is exponential time complexity, so basically not computable for anything but extremely trivial problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "An uncomfortable truth suggested by the Roman bot is that many of our flesh- and-blood relationships now exist primarily as exchanges of texts, which are becoming increasingly easy to mimic"

This. I was reflecting with a friend today how with modern social networks there is this strange feeling of being connected yet somehow disconnected. I think the above paragraph captures this same essence.

We discussed that maybe digital technology is akin to medicine, it's all about the dosage. Chat to the bot a little, maybe be healing, chat all the time and maybe it's really not going to be good for you.

How do we navigate these tools that can connect us with the world and yet often leave us feeling so alone at the same time?

<comment><USER6> I think our psyche is extremely delicate, and pretending we can mentally manage and sort the influx of constant information is fooling ourselves. Fooling ourselves because by virtue of exposing yourself to so much information daily, you're altering the way you think and rewiring your mind.

I'd like to think that I'm above being influenced by subliminal propaganda in media (especially television), but I'm not. I've caught myself a few times where I held a strong opinion about something I knew nothing about and I was able to trace it back to what originally influenced me. When pressed on certain opinions I couldn't say anything concrete.

Life has been a lot better when I deleted all social media accounts (900+ 'friends' on FB). Really only about 20 of those connections I keep in touch with, and I've made it a point that texting is only for details not chatting. Since talking on the phone and making efforts to see people in real life I've been a lot happier. My world feels less overloaded, there are no strings connecting my life to social media and the control is back in my hands. I can feel how I want to feel about things without carefully summing up and absorbing how others feel about my experiences. Social media and texting and all that shit is just another and even more shaved off abstraction of human interaction (boiling down interaction to just characters on a screen). I draw the line at the human voice, nothing below that save for carefully thought out and written letters is 'human' enough for me to really derive any lasting pleasure from.

It's depressing for a very long time after deleting social media accounts, it feels like your entire social rug has been suddenly swiped right out from underneath you. I didn't back any of it up or save any of it. And you know what? I don't remember _any_ of it. I don't remember the conversations because there were 100's a day. I don't remember any of the comments or banter left on photos, or the photos themselves. It all blends into one. All of it was meaningless, I didn't grow closer to any of those people. I discovered more about them, sure.

Omitting (or at least trying my hardest to) popular media and social media has been mentally freeing. I get to ask people 'Oh yeah? Why don't you tell me about it?' when they say 'Hey have you heard of <current event>?'

I have no idea what's going on anywhere and I love it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Caprica, the prequel to Battlestar Galactica, uses this idea as a major plot element.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caprica_(TV_series)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caprica_\(TV_series\))

</comment><comment><USER8> This has been one of the reasons life logging has been interesting to me.

It might be a while before we can "upload" your brain, but we can build a predictive model of your behavior and leave an interactive "autobiography" much sooner.

<comment><USER9> The British sci-fi sitcom Red Dwarf had a character that was just such an interactive recreation.

<comment><USER10> Philip K Dick, in the 1950s and 60s, wrote about simulations of famous people (like Einstein or Lincoln), of ordinary people's deceased relatives, and of other humans that were used for pleasure or entertainment. He also wrote of living people, famous or not, who turned out to be simulations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Black Mirror episode in 2013 had the same plot.

<comment><USER12> Such an incredible show, new episodes later this month on Netflix, can't wait.

<comment><USER13> Thanks for this. I loved this show and had no idea. Can't wait either!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I can definitely sympathize here. There are so many people that I wish I could have one last conversation with and this would maybe help.. I, personally, would _really_ not want to be reanimated and potentially misrepresented by Markov chains and some early deep learning system.

</comment><comment><USER15> The Max Headroom series 2 episode "Deities" was about a Vu Age church that sold A.I. recreations of loved ones as salvation.

<comment><USER16> This is well worth a watch. Prescient.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> An interesting article, although I disagree with use of the term "artificial intelligence" to describe what was created.

In some ways, I can sympathize with Ms. Kuyda. Both my father and grandmother died in 2013, and even though they are gone, I still get birthday alerts for them on my phone. I don't have the heart to remove them.

</comment><comment><USER18> I really want to know the model behind this chatbot

<comment><USER19> I bet whole source code of that engine can be found in Basic Usage section of [https://github.com/jsvine/markovify](https://github.com/jsvine/markovify)

<comment><USER18> I wasn't able to find proof? are you sure?

<comment><USER19> That's just a guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I find this unseemly.

Grief is a vital part of the healing process. This strikes me as a part of a goal to avoid/numb it.

<comment><USER21> This is exactly the opposite. What happens today that there is no ritual, nothing that allows us to remember and to face it. We try to avoid our feelings by trying to shove them as deep as possible as fast as possible. It doesn't help. We all need a ritual that would work in the digital age to process - this is like sitting shiva.

<comment><USER20> I disagree with your statement to my core. I think we're going to have to accept philosophical differences on this one.

Sorry for your loss.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Wasn't this the core of Stanislav Lem's Solaris?

Albeit reconstructing the personality of a loved one from someone else's memories.

</comment><comment><USER23> It ultimately boils down if you accept John Searle's Chinese room argument or not. (BTW his claim is not that conscious machines are not possible - we are such machines, but they cannot be implemented as digital symbol manipulators; we first need to figure out what exactly makes the biological machines conscious).</comment>


The 12.9-inch iPad Pro took me by surprise and replaced my laptop - <AUTHOR> https://paulstamatiou.com/made-on-an-ipad-pro/ <comment><USER3> Well, I hoped for an actual review. What I got was "The iPad Pro is always ready to go ... which is, like, totally amazing! Yeaas!" The most pro points he makes are based on features which are actually a normality. The whole thing is emotionally laden and he sounds like a typical fanboy.

After reading this dripping wet review, I am now absolutely convinced that an iPad will _never ever_ replace a computer. Because it is _not_ a computer, but rather a consumer device, like a television set. People who think that an iPad replaced their actual computer laptop didn't know and still don't know at all what their laptop actually _can_ do: being programmable.

<comment><USER4> Or most people don't require more than what an iPad can provide. It's a mass market device and that's fine. As you say, one would already know if they need a laptop over an iPad.

<comment><USER3> Exactly the point why I've been asking myself: why oh why does Apple say "That huge thing, like, totally replaces the laptop!" Apple clearly has some outlandish understanding of what a computer is, no surprise. But let's stay honest, and don't put up sales pitches based on flat out lies.

<comment><USER5> It's a mixture of clever marketing and wishful thinking (the "tablet era" hasn't arrived after all, everybody is using notebooks for work).

However, as others said, some people actually use iPads only. A good example is my mother. She was using it for a few months, but then the memory got filled up with photos and she asked for advice. I told her to back up the device using a computer. "I don't have one", she said. Then the battery started to degenerate and so on. It's clear to me you can use these tablets as simplified notebooks/PCs, but sooner rather than later you reach their limits, and at that point thing can get costly. I can get a 2TB HDD for my Mac Pro for 50€, good luck with that kind of storage on any kind of iPad.

<comment><USER3> You see, your mom doesn't compile software with basic toolchains that have existed since the beginning of the computer era. I'm OK with the fact that your mom, or anybody else's mom, or spouse, or sister uses an iPad now, instead of a fully featured computer. It's totally fine. They get everything they've ever needed, and more. But let's make it perfectly clear that an iPad cannot ever replace a laptop as a _computer_. Since most people don't see the difference, we need to point out that there this crucial fact.

I've been trying to switch (I also own an ipad pro) and it just doens't work. Either you need a second computer nearby, or a solid internet connection and a server with the toolchains of your choice. Microsofts's Surface _actually_ replaces a laptop without the need to point that out, where the iPad is _falsely_ advertised as a replacement. Sorry, I cannot accept false advertising, nor is _clever marketing_ an excuse. They need to point out _facts_ instead of wishful thinking. I am using Apple products for specific purposes, but also other products of other vendors. Because _all_ of them suck in very specific ways. Let's not pretend that Apple somehow is superior in marketing that it tries to sell a consumer product as a universal computer. Nope, Nuh-uh. Not buying it.

<comment><USER5> I agree with your sentiment but ultimately what I or you think is insignificant, what matters is that people buy the iPad Pro, try to switch as advertised, discover the shortcomings of the device and switch back. If it happened to my mother, it will definitely happen to other users who need much more than Facetime/Safari/Photos/Skype/Netflix.

<comment><USER6> Sure, but there are less of those cases than the other way around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This article is incredibly light on actual details.

JS development, as long as you aren't using webpack or some other nodejs-based toolchain, is awesome on an iPad Pro. Many developer-oriented apps ship with WebDAV servers which can serve JS scripts. And thanks to the iOS 11 Files app, you can even test sites that involve the HTML5 File API.

For example, doing some work on a VBA-related tool on a plane was surprisingly productive: [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dc9JZBMUwAAg2BY.jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dc9JZBMUwAAg2BY.jpg)

More than anything else, I felt more productive on the iPad than on my MBP because the constraints ensured there was no visible chat application or time wasting website screen.

P.S.: the VSCode sidebar never really made sense until I saw it executed in the Kodex app: [https://kodex.space/](https://kodex.space/) \-- the ability to jump down to a particular place in the file with a single touch is mindblowing and immediately boosted productivity when dealing with huge scripts.

<comment><USER8> Can you elaborate on this workflow? Got me interested. What editor is that? Can iOS Host a server (localhost)?

<comment><USER9> I wrote my personal website on an iPad Pro. Worked well.

I work on it while commuting on the Tube, where an iPad is less ostentatious than a laptop. It's built with Jekyll, so I pull the latest changes before leaving the house and then push once arriving at work. Netlify runs the build and the changes go live.

I use Working Copy for Git plus the built-in editor is okay, IA Writer for Markdown, Autodesk Graphic for vectors and Affinity Photo for images.

It's actually possible to run a full Django dev environment, including localhost in Safari, using Pythonista and StaSH (shell for Pythonista). It's genuinely amazing what it can do.

<comment><USER10> So you used a physical keyboard or just tapped on the tablet screen keyboard?

<comment><USER9> Both. For a long time I used the on-screen keyboard, but recently got a cheap keyboard case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I went on vacation recently and decided to just take an iPad and my camera. I got one of the new regular iPads and I had a Lightning -to-SD dongle. When I finished a day of shooting I plugged everything in and had the same issues Paul did. I couldn't even view the photos because they had to be imported to Photos on the iPad and I definitely didn't have space to do that.

I'm frustrated at how hard it is to do something simple like take pictures off my Canon 6D and make them go straight to the cloud. We live in adapter and dongle hell.

<comment><USER12> How about android tablets? I haven't used one lately but I believe you can do all fancy stuff there.

<comment><USER13> On my Android tablet I run Debian in chroot. Full LAMP, i3wm, choice of terminal emulators, Vim, git, real Firefox, real Chromium.

I use a Bluetooth keyboard with a trackpoint built in (alternatives with trackpads are available for people who prefer those). Or a Bluetooth mouse of course. I recently bought a Thinkpad Bluetooth keyboard so interface-wise, once I start X I'm basically on a Thinkpad.

In the winter when I have to get by on small amounts of electricity (all solar powered here) I use my tablet almost exclusively and earn money with it.

I use a bendy arm with a clamp to hold the tablet at a good ergonomic height and closer to my face. In a pinch when power is really low I actually do the same with my Android phone with all the same software, which works surprisingly well at 1920x1080. It ends up filling a similar proportion of my view to a 15" laptop (at the laptop's normal working distance) - although then it's only a few inches away from my eyes when using the phone (shortest focusing distance I can do) so wouldn't be healthy long term.

I can plug in my DSLR via a USBOTG dongle and grab photos from it. Or use a MicroSD in the camera via a full-size adaptor, then slot the MicroSD directly into the tablet. Then I can edit directly from RAW in Snapseed.

The biggest shortcoming is that I can't use Photoshop as I have an ARM processor. The armhf Debian distribution and packages are amazing and almost everything is there. WINE works but it would need some x86 binaries to run Photoshop, that just don't exist because it's ARM.

Artflow in Android is great, as is Snapseed and PhotoEditor (for resizing and basic image adjustments, including batch mode etc). I can run GIMP and Inkflow in Debian but after 20 years using Photoshop they don't come close for me. So when I really have to use Photoshop I have to save up some juice and fire up the laptop.

This is all on a 5-year old Sony Xperia Tablet Z. It was good for its time but nowadays there are faster machines with more RAM available. I'm looking forward to when I can justify an upgrade (this is a great tablet in many ways, I have lots of things I need to spend money on and I have been adjusting my work/life balance a lot in recent years so don't earn much).

I'm no Google fanboy, for me Apple/Google are just different flavours of very horrible. The difference with Android gear is that the potential is there to use it the way I want - it's possible (and not even that hard). I can root, I can use a pointing device, as opposed to Apple's approach.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I know a lot of people have mentioned that they have transitioned to using the iPad and even making it their main computer but having owned and daily use an iPad Pro (the 10.5 inch), I don't see it anything other than a media consumption device (which I love using it for).

I occasionally used it to carry with me at work, when I got it new last year, to try and make it my "laptop" replacement. I used everything, SSH to log into my Mac back home, I was on irc, browsing the web, writing emails on it, even used Pixelmator and iMovie to edit images and movies for real work things, which my colleagues were impressed by.

It was difficult, however, and I felt like I was constantly fighting with the iPad.

For example, Spotlight just isn't as fast on the iPad like it is on the mac. Try it out. Type command + Space, then type "me" and hit Enter. If you thought you'd get Messages, you will only be right half the time. Enough to make it frustrating. On the Mac, I can fluidly bring up Spotlight, hit a few characters and launch that app. On the iPad, sometimes, it'll miss typing the first character as spotlight animates, and even if it caught the first typed character, it takes painfully long to update results. So by the time you type "me" and hit return, the results haven't updated to show Messages.app yet, and Messages won't be launched.

There's no Xcode on it yet, so I can't code on it properly. There's no terminal, Files.app feels like a poor man's Finder, there's no indication of focus and when you have two apps side by side, there's no way (that I know of) to switch between them using the keyboard. So you have to tap.

So I gave up. I'm sure my experience, needs and workflows are different and maybe the iPad-as-a-laptop is not for me, but I am a bit skeptical now whenever someone tells me they use their iPad as their only computer. At least, not this version. iOS on the iPad at its current form just isn't convenient to use as the only computer.

<comment><USER15> > _I am a bit skeptical now whenever someone tells me they use their iPad as > their only computer_

The people I've read who have successfully gone iPad-only seems to fall into two categories: Authors/bloggers who could just as well be served by a 1980's word processor, and those who use it as a very expensive dumb terminal in either SSH or the web browser.

<comment><USER16> > those who use it as a very expensive dumb terminal in either SSH or the web > browser.

This is me, 100%.

I use Blink to MOSH into a remote server for all of my personal dev work. It's great. Between MOSH (instead of plain SSH) and LTE, I really feel like the expense is justified.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm sorry, but what exactly did Paul make on his iPad Pro?

This article is more like an advertisement.

<comment><USER18> perhaps the website and post was made on the iPad? /shrug

<comment><USER19> The post was, certainly, as the author alludes to it three fourths of the way through.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I purchased a Surface Pro last week, which is my first Windows device in more than a decade. Couldn't have been happier.

Though I enjoy using macOS for software development and other tasks much more than Windows, I don't think I can say the same for iOS. For the same price and form factor you get a full operating system as opposed to the iOS walled garden (which I fully appreciate on my iPhone X).

Since the Surface Pro is actually a full computer with a Core i5 processor, it can run any application -- including Ubuntu over Microsoft Hyper V, Docker, Photoshop, and even Steam. Plus the keyboard cover has a trackpad.

<comment><USER21> I recently bought a Surface Pro as well. While it still isn't my day to day computer (Mac or Linux for development) I do take my Surface on vacations for Steam games and access to my music library.

Recently I bought a display port to hdmi adapter for my Surface, and an HDMI cable and now I have a portable gaming/media center pc I can set up in hotel rooms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The biggest problem with the iPad is iOS developer attrition - so many promising apps stagnate due to invisibility and developers running out of funding. Steve Jobs wanted to avoid another Adobe ISV competitor to Apple and he succeeded. But he also starved the iPad of software that could take advantage of the fantastic hardware. Things may improve when iOS developers can sell apps that also run on macOS.

If Apple wants to keep iOS app development limited to small development shops and cheap apps, then they need to improve inter-app workfllow/composition, which is currently gated on a very small whitelist of functions. Only the audio community has successfully pulled off inter-app interop on iOS, thanks to Audiobus & friends. Would be nice to have similar multi-app pipelines for text, images & video.

iPad Pro 12" can replace several devices, but not a laptop.

HARDWARE

      - 4:3 (!) HiDPI screen
      - loud/clear speakers
      - Logitech Create backlit keyboard & case
      - iXPand drive (USB+Lightning)
      - "Camera adapter" for USB nic/kb/mic
      - headphone jack
      - good battery life
      - TouchID for banking apps

SOFTWARE

      - very fast Safari w/ Firefox Focus adblock
      - Transmit: web upload / email attachments
      - <USER2>
      - Wire: usable E2E chat/audio app
      - Bria: VOIP softphone
      - GoToMeeting/WebEx conferencing
      - Video streaming + GoGo airline videos
      - CornerTube: PIP video overlay
      - Microsoft RDP to desktop/laptop/VM
      - Native VPN client
      - Codebook for passwords

OFFLINE APPS (iCloud not needed)

      - GoodReader: in-app "filesystem"
      - Omnifocus (WebDav)
      - 2Do (CalDav)
      - Notebooks (markdown, WebDav)
      - Notability (audio synced to text/ink)
      - DevonThink (web clips, offline search, WebDav)
      - LumaFusion: multitrack video editor
      - TwistedWave: mulitrack audio editor
      - VoiceDream: offline web/pdf/epub to audio
      - Marvin: epub reader

</comment><comment><USER23> Counterpoint: I tried using an iPad and an external keyboard for web (Django) development. It sucked.

The lack of mouse for text selection is a huge problem, and constantly switching between Safari and your code editor (I used Vim in a remote terminal) is a pain as well.

<comment><USER24> It's probably slightly better (if you can live without vim) with one of the several iOS-native programmer-oriented editors. It will still suck, just a little bit less.

<comment><USER23> > if you can live without vim

I actually didn't choose Vim because I liked it, but because it was the only way to have an editor & fully working Linux environment in the same app where I can switch using a keyboard shortcut (both running in Screen).

Using an app means that I have to switch apps to go between editor and terminal, and also because the editor app would have to "upload" every single change to the server for me to actually be able to run the new code in the terminal.

<comment><USER24> No, the fancier apps have built-in terminals, editing remote files directly over ssh, version control client support, etc.

<comment><USER23> Can you install Python, Django, etc in their built-in terminals?

<comment><USER24> The terminals are for talking to your remote server. There is at least one on- device Python IDE but I don't think it's at all useful for a the kind of work you have in mind.

Anyway, I'm not trying to convince you an iPad is a sane, comfortable way to do the kind of programming where you are regularly doing a backend-to-browser sort of cycle. You can probably make it slightly less barebones 'terminal session to a server running vim'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> OP here (not Paul, the blog author): I am surprised by the amount of attention this has had!

I understand the iPad can be a useful dev environment if one is using one of the Web IDEs, e.g. [https://aws.amazon.com/cloud9/?origin=c9io](https://aws.amazon.com/cloud9/?origin=c9io)

What about an IDE that runs natively on the iPad using asm.js or Web assembly, with remote storage for files, and ssh for running on a remote dev machine? Even better, what about a complete local Linux environment, including gcc, using something like: [https://bellard.org/jslinux/vm.html?cpu=riscv32&url=https://...](https://bellard.org/jslinux/vm.html?cpu=riscv32&url=https://bellard.org/jslinux/buildroot- riscv32.cfg)

Does this exist, or still a pipe dream?

</comment><comment><USER25> No doubt iPad is worth replacing the conventional laptops. I had the bulky old HP Envy laptop and then saw iPad 12.9" in my friend's hands. Casually handled it and loved it so much when there was only reason worth considering is Battery backup but then again my Friend suggested to buy Laptop power banks from this research bloggers website: [https://www.powerbanktalk.com/best- portable-laptop-charger-a...](https://www.powerbanktalk.com/best-portable- laptop-charger-aka-external-battery-power-bank-for-laptop-in-2016/) Bought Anker power bank and This combination are best I have ever used. I can work on the go without worrying about charging and iPad is so flawless.

<comment><USER22> Which power bank and batteries did you choose?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Unless you want to draw with the pencil or use it in a cramped airplane environment, I don't know why someone would get the ipad pro 12.9" over the macbook 12"?

The keyboard + tablet combo is heavier than the macbook 12", the ipad keyboard is gummier and worse, you get hover hand issues when using it in keyboard mode and multitasking / web browsing is slower due to design issues and animation wait times.

If the cpu is slower than the iPad pro, you know that is going to get fixed with the future arm macbook. Same with the current butterfly keyboard issue.

I'm pretty sure we are going to get the 'full screen ipad' soon since the ipad UI is leaving a big blank space in the middle of the status bar currently.

<comment><USER22> iOS security is better than macOS.

<comment><USER26> macOS is getting a new security runtime, which will extend iOS security to all macOS userspace.

<comment><USER22> Thanks for the pointer, is there a better link than [https://www.macrumors.com/2018/06/05/macos-mojave- security-p...](https://www.macrumors.com/2018/06/05/macos-mojave-security- privacy/) ?

<comment><USER26> Yes, the WWDC 2018 session.

"Your Apps and the Future of macOS Security"

[https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2018/702/](https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2018/702/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > If you want to drag something from one full-screen app to another that is > not open, you have to use one finger to drag and hold the object, then with > another finger you need to summon the Dock to find the app you want and > release. Oh and you better hope you had already opened that app earlier to > the exact document/file/place where you want to release, otherwise the app > won't know what to do and you'll have to release the object then try it > again.

You can navigate around while holding those files to exactly where you need to be, then drop them there. No need to release the drag.

</comment><comment><USER15> The title makes you think he replaced his computer usage with the iPad, but further down in the article he reveals that he uses a desktop PC to get real work done due to inflexibility in iOS.

Seems like the iPad is still not a productivity machine.

</comment><comment><USER27> I keep thinking I want to try this way of working, but I just can't into the walled garden of an App Store ecosystem.

Until I can run Homebrew and a proper shell and 'git clone', the iPad is still just a gargantuan iPhone in my book.

<comment><USER19> > git clone

See:

> For example, I can use an app like Working Copy to download and manage a git > repository.

<comment><USER27> > App Store ecosystem

For example, requiring gimmicks like paid 'pro' features for 'free' apps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> is this an ad?

</comment><comment><USER28> Love my iPad Pro. Only wish it had an actual usable IDE for Django web development, including a local Postgres database & H2O web server with uWSGI. If it had that then I could get rid of my MacBook Pro.

BTW get the Logitech keyboard. It's backlit and you can adjust the angle of view. It's great but the only problem is that's its really thick.

Seriously, it's just missing the pro apps. Where are they?

</comment><comment><USER29> You still can't use a real third party browser (i.e. not just reskinned Safari) on the iPad Pro, right? I'd be a lot more tempted if iOS was a little less locked down.

<comment><USER19> If by "real" you mean using something other than WebKit and having access to JIT compilation of JavaScript, then no, at least not on the App Store.

<comment><USER30> 3rd party browsers get JIT JS compilation (and have done since iOS8[1]). You're stuck with WebKit unless you're a proxy browser though.

[1] [https://bgr.com/2014/06/04/ios-8-safari-and-webkit- performan...](https://bgr.com/2014/06/04/ios-8-safari-and-webkit-performance/)

<comment><USER19> Yeah, that's what I said: if you want JIT and want to be on the App Store, you need to use WebKit/JavaScriptCore.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


I'm trying to make it easy for people to generate Linux live and install images. - <AUTHOR>

This is something I've wanted to do for a long time, and I'd really like to be devoting my time to getting it up and running. It's the future, a well-done service like this is something I really think should exist. It would definitely be a benefit to myself, and to a lot of Linux users I know, let alone general computer users.<p>Please check out the indiegogo campaign at http://igg.me/p/212585?a=1092744 -- any feedback would be greatly appreciated! <comment><USER2> I know that SuSE has this product already: <http://susestudio.com/> Perhaps it could be an inspiration.

I've also created a custom Fedora liveCD. If I remember correctly it's a bit text heavy.

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually somehow missed SUSE studio while looking around for similar things. They're pretty sleek, although I think they're targeting a slightly different audience. I'll be playing around with it for inspiration and possible sticking points.

ISO Generation, and particularly livecd generation does tend to be text-heavy. A whole lot of that can be abstracted away and automated though.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Update: I've had a lot of people ask about the difference between what I'm trying to do and existing tools. I've written a bit about it[1], but the thrust of it is that I want to make something that's usable by people who may not have any practical Linux experience, and I'm keeping the focus of the service targeted at single-user day-to-day machines.

[1] : [http://jdodds.github.com/blog/2012/08/27/the-difference- betw...](http://jdodds.github.com/blog/2012/08/27/the-difference-between-my- custom-linux-project-and-existing-tools/)</comment>


Free CSS3 Kindle Book - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/Robin-Nixons-Crash-Course-ebook/dp/B006PIW4IM

<comment><USER2> Both this and the HTML one are free on Amazon.co.uk:

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Robin-Nixons-Crash-Course- ebook/dp/B...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Robin-Nixons-Crash-Course- ebook/dp/B006PIW4IM/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1326198340&sr=1-1)

(That is currently showing as free and my receipts both say free. Aware that others, at least on Amazon.com seem to be seeing issues).

<comment><USER3> Now listed at £7.20 on amazon.co.uk (11th Jan 09:08)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> They cost money

<comment><AUTHOR> What?? <http://screencast.com/t/V715RzLsvC></comment></comment>


Fancy Input - CSS3 text typing effects for input fields - <AUTHOR> http://dropthebit.com/demos/fancy_input/fancyInput.html <comment><USER2> As an interaction designer, I implore you: do NOT screw around with forms. Your conversion rates will fall through the floor. The CSS specification itself says that browsers can ignore styling for forms. This is by design. Overriding it with a bunch of unsupported animated nonsense that requires Javascript and invisible divs and such is a recipe for disaster from a usability and accessibility stand point.

<comment><USER3> If somebody were doing a browser-based game there is absolutely a place for this. Sure, general apps should not do this, but I wouldn't say you should never do this.

That said, the performance on this is too poor to use as is.

<comment><USER4> > That said, the performance on this is too poor to use as is.

Really? I found it to be super responsive (Firefox on Linux).

But yeah, i agree, for things like games this would be really cool.

<comment><USER5> Responsive, but my cpu usage was at 30%

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So many paternalistic comments here telling us to please not use this. As if it was not obvious enough this fancy input is properly useless, and very interesting in its uselessness, as an experiment or an exercice de style.

Usefulness is overrated. Would no human ever had followed the craze of useless endeavors, we would still all be living in caves, and would not even draw with fingers on theirs walls.

</comment><comment><USER7> Please use this _never_ on mobile. The experience is impossible on android, and as seen from the rest of the comments on iOS it's not much better...

On desktop it's super cool though. Kudo's!

<comment><USER8> > Please use this _never_

You could have ended your sentence there.

<comment><USER9> I disagree. This is exactly the kind of thing creates _juiciness_ [1][2] in games. Just don't put it in my tax forms.

[1] <https://emshort.wordpress.com/2008/05/24/make-it-juicy/>

[2] <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy0aCDmgnxg> <\-- I'd recommend anyone who cares about making and/or understanding games to watch this talk.

<comment><USER10> Wow, that talk is fantastic. I think a lot of it applies to regular web interaction design, too, except that there you probably need to be more subtle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Please do not use this.

The whole page flashes and flickers for me on Safari 6.0.2 on Mac OS X 10.8.2.

Input of extended characters also doesn't work. Option-[aeiou] doesn't enter any characters. Holding [aeiou] prints the base character but fails to update once a modifier is selected.

The antialising algorithm alternates between subpixel and greyscale, causing flickering changes to the boldness of the text.

All in all, very very broken.

</comment><comment><USER12> Bug report: I managed to get it into a state where it's impossible to delete the characters behind the cursor. I remember pressing the Euro sign (alt-gr + 4) and accidentally hitting the 'Windows' key. Here's a dump of the DOM state: <http://pastebin.com/ELyMNAKd>

<comment><USER13> Dumb Q: How did you dump the DOM state like that?

<comment><USER14> In chrome you can right-click on any element in the developer tools to select "copy as HTML" which copies the DOM as it currently is to your clipboard

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Cool, but please don't use this. It is essentially unusable on my iPad. Virtual keyboards tend to choke on such fanciness. If you want my input, make it easier, not harder for me.

<comment><USER16> I concur. It explodes on my iPhone and makes the autocorrection unusable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Ugh. When I select text, the selected text does not appear in the same location as the corresponding unselected text, the cursor doesn't line up with the selected text, and the cursor moves to incorrect locations in the text as I move it with shift-arrows.

</comment><comment><USER18> Pretty. But whenever I see something like this on a website, I disable styles. As easy as Ctrl-Alt-Z on my browser.

I do it for blogs that have fancy title css, scripted comments... just about for anything that's unnessesary junk and therefore just a pretty annoyance.

</comment><comment><USER19> It's certainly "fancy", but... as someone who has been forced to go down this road more than a few times for desktop and mobile platforms please do NOT encourage this. The level of manipulation and monitoring of key events necessary to get even close to parity of normal input behavior and accessibility, which this example unfortunately doesn't do very well, is enough to drive one into voluntary retirement.

It's fun to look at and play with, and I know it has some useful applications, but it quickly becomes incredibly fragile and is guaranteed to waste time and effort that can, and should, be spent on other stuff. Unless of course there is nothing left to do and you're just looking for ways to torture some poor soul hopped up on Red Bull or Mountain Dew.

That said, I definitely do encourage anyone interested to explore how this stuff works. My experience has been that design pretty much overlooks input behavior in general, but there are some pretty impressive things that can be done now without painting yourself into a corner and exploring stuff like this is probably one of the fastest ways to figure out where the boundaries are.

</comment><comment><USER20> The number of bug reports in my opinion sums up the problem with doing this thing. Even though these effects can be really neat, there is nothing worse than somebody trying to put in data and have the form not accept thier input for an unknown reason.

That being said, I think these could be really neat in certain places and maybe with a bit more testing this could be super useful.

</comment><comment><USER21> Dead keys seem to confuse it, though. They get added to the value of the input element, but they aren't displayed.

<comment><USER22> What's a dead key?

<comment><USER23> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_key>

slightly more constructive response

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is cool, just don't press tab.

</comment><comment><USER25> Cute, but if I were a user and I saw a form that uses this, I would probably close the tab.

</comment><comment><USER26> Looks great! A few bugs, and probably many usability and compatibility issues, but I can see something like this finding its way into a movie or game website. Too flashy for a regular form input, but in the right context it would feel at home.

</comment><comment><USER27> Clicking the input box when it's typing "type something..." is causing a crash for me. Also, I broke it by hitting home and then spamming the left arrow key. :)

Chrome 27.0.1423.0 dev-m

</comment><comment><USER28> Really nice! Some things are broken on my iPhone, like the spacing when deleting and typing letters when they overflow the input area

<comment><USER29> I think it's beautiful too. Typing funcionality somewhat breaks if I start to use the "del" key to delete some text.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> FYI: Switching to an IME to enter Japanese (or any other language, I imagine) breaks it and doesn't allow typing. Switching back to English doesn't fix it. Putting the cursor at the beginning again allowed me to type English, but I can no longer type at the end.

</comment><comment><USER31> Aside the dizzy collateral effects you get after writing more than 10 words, when you try to write accented words in other languages it stops working.

With measure, and applying it wisely, this can be a good thing. But for long texts, it's a madness.

<comment><USER32> I immediately tried to input Chinese, and it stopped working.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Very cool effects but pretty jittery and laggy when typing fast on chrome 24, too bad.

</comment><comment><USER34> Tried it on Chrome. Non-english characters look awful - fonts are mess, typing effects work randomly. Sometimes all I'm typing is invisible. For me it's unusable.

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm not an advanced user of jQuery, but still feel slightly ashamed for asking:

How can I use effect2 without having to change/toggle the class (i.e. effect2 class onPageLoad)??

<comment><USER35> Tried changing [0] to [1] in this line: $('section :input').val('').fancyInput()[0].focus();

...still not working...

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I like this! It has potential to be used in really nice ways. Once the kinks have been worked out, I would definitely consider using this.

<comment><USER37> What Intel giveth, CSS and javascript taketh away...

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Bug: ctrl-a (or ctrl-anything) results in the non-ctlr key stuck in the text field with no way to delete it

<comment><USER38> Should also say - OSX10.7 + FF19

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> If I select 'textarea' it only wraps by letter not by complete word.

I thought someone might want to know.

</comment><comment><USER40> File this under "One of those things that _can_ be done but never should be."

</comment><comment><USER41> It creates a lot of extra DOM nodes, not that great to be honest for this effect.

</comment><comment><USER42> typing more than 5 letters made be feel i was going to have a seizure.

also, the demo is lacking in basic usuability-- at least have the form reselected automatically when you change between effects.

</comment><comment><USER37> I never had reasons for animosity against CSS, but now I do.

</comment><comment><USER43> Works great on Chrome, causes weird flashes on Safari.

<comment><USER44> * { -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-transform: translate3d(0,0,0); }

Eliminates the flashing completely. It introduces some weird safari behavior so only include it if you know what you're doing.

<comment><USER45> This is a _bad idea_ \- forcing every DOM node to become a hardware accelerated layer is going to introduce a _huge_ amount of memory overhead (webkit _doesn't_ release composited layers when they scroll off screen, in _many_ cases)

A better approach is to apply -webkit-transform: translate3d(0, 0, 0) to _only_ those nodes that will animate.

Your mobile viewers, especially, will be glad that your page doesn't kill the browser (when it goes OOM)

<comment><USER46> * { anything } is usually a bad idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Stops working if you type an accent character ´

</comment><comment><USER48> Gives me a headache.

</comment><comment><USER49> Not working on IE9

</comment><comment><USER23> broke it within 10 seconds</comment>


Ask HN: Cv review service for experienced freelancer? CV tips? - <AUTHOR> 14 years experience in software dev. I have been working freelance most of the time and accumulated a lot of projects.
In the past, I just added each project to my CV, but I get the impression that this is not a good way anymore as it seems I get less often invited to interviews.
I'd like to shorten my cv to one page but not sure how.
Can anyone recommend someone who would review my cv?
Alternatively, do you know examples of CVs that you consider well done?
btw recently moved to the UK
Many thanks <comment><USER2> Please reach out by email in my profile and to see my background. I have a freebie one week email course on resumes and separately a LinkedIn Profiles one that will help with fundamental building blocks.</comment>


Are the smart contracts going to replace lawyers? - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/are-the-smart-contracts-going-to-replace-lawyers-c2d68840cb81 <comment><USER2> No. And that's not just because of Betteridge's Law.

Lawyers do much more than write contracts. (In fact, most contracts are boilerplate cobbled together by juniors).

Lawyers exist to explain to their clients what the law means and what they need to do (or not do) to comply with it - often for very specific situations or in areas where the situation of law is ambiguous. Exactly the things that computers aren't good at.

Oh, and the junior lawyers who write contracts aren't going away either. The other part of their job is typically researching the law and identifying potentially relevant extracts and judicial opinions so that the seniors (doing the advising) can just read the relevant bits instead of spending multiple days in the library (digital or otherwise).</comment>