The Road to Scala 3 - <AUTHOR> https://www.scala-lang.org/2019/12/18/road-to-scala-3.html <comment><USER2> I love scala, and am very much looking forward to scala 3.

For all the complaints about the language that always pop up in these threads: yes, the language lets you shoot yourself in the foot (with great power comes people who don't apply it responsibly), but it's precisely that power that makes it so useful and exceptional when judiciously applied.

I like to say that scala is as if java and ruby had a love child and it all worked out. Unfortunately, that does mean that java people will feel it's too fast & loose, and the ruby people will feel stymied by its static typing. But I just love that where other statically typed languages generally say "no", scala says "well, I trust you know what you're doing...".

The only substantive tool complaint I have these days isn't with compiler speed - it chugs through the codebase plenty fast - but with tool startup time. Hopefully the more recent java versions and maybe some native packaging will eventually help with that.

<comment><USER3> I appreciate you taking the courage to share your honest thoughts despite how they may conflict with the views of others here. My heart goes out to the people I overhear at work, the ones who are struggling the most, lamenting and complaining that tool X (In this case scala) is "so" embarrassingly awful and, with the implication that it's to blame for their poor performance. That sentiment resembles some of the comments that I've written here and my heart really bleeds for them, because I know these people at work and I know that they're struggling and I also know that they're good, smart people, who have just fell into a trap of justification.

For what it's worth, in my own journey learning Scala, I simply didn't have the luxury to blame, and I just forced myself to try and figure out how other people, like the finagle team for example, could be so productive with such an obviously newfangled invention, until I realized… I was wrong.

Scala is actually a wonderful language! People move companies to continue working in Scala! In fact the ideas and lessons that I've learned from rethinking how I used to do things are so unfathomably valuable to me that I don't think I will ever look at code the same way again.

And before you downvote me please don't mistake my words for criticism. I truly empathize with how some of the people here may feel and I'm very happy to go into specifics if anyone requests that. I don't write on HN a lot because a lot of times I think there is just this therapy - or a version of therapy - that amounts to people reinforcing their need to blame things in order to continue excusing the poor performance, and I don't want to get caught up in it or be made to feel bad for encouraging others to reconsider their virtues.

And by the way we all, at times, have poor performance. (Anyway, I dictated this into my phone, so also excuse any weird words or punctuation. I love you all. Some typos were subsequently edited)

<comment><USER4> Not every language has to be for every person. It's perfectly fine that people enjoy Scala. I think a lot of the negativity about Scala is because lots of companies went in hard on Scala less because of the merits of Scala, and more because Java had such a long period of stagnation.

<comment><USER3> This is very true

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The way I look at modern Scala is a mix of Python and Java.

Do it badly, and you end up with the unmaintainability of Python and the clunkiness of Java. Awful.

Do it well, and you end up with the convenience and interactivity of Python and the typesafety, performance, and toolability of Java.

This lets you implement your code quickly the first time, and have it run blazing fast on a hot JVM, with the compiler having your back as you grow your codebase in size and complexity. Sure beats trying to prototype in Java, or porting half your Python prototype to C when you realize it's too slow.

Scala has a bad reputation, well-earned due to an early culture of crazy experiments, crazy operators, and crazy tools. But those days are behind us.

You can no longer get stuff into the standard library "just because", and a lot of the early experiments in that category (xml, parallel collections, parser combinators) has been consciously moved out.

Operator-heavy tools like SBT have largely replaced the crazy operators, while operator-heavy libraries like Dispatch have been largely replaced by less- operator-heavy equivalents.

SBT used to be awful, but it's improved a lot. And you don't need to use it: I haven't touched an SBT build in years by now, in both OSS and proprietary contexts.

There remains a lot of different ways to write Scala, more than most languages, but you don't need to write Haskell-in-Scala unless you really want to.

I'm personally very happy with my Python-like language with Python-like libraries, with static typing for maintainability, orders of magnitude better runtime performance, excellent parallelism and concurrency, one of the best compile-to-JS experiences in the world, and the best tooling (IDEs, profilers, monitoring, etc.) on the market.

As someone who maintains optimized programming language interpreters, distributed backend clusters, three-tier web apps, command-line tools, and many other things on a daily basis, I appreciate being able to do all this in one language rather than juggling 5 different languages (and 5 different sets of libraries, and 5 different sets of tools, ...) to satisfy each use case.

Scala may be diverse and fragmented, but it's not as diverse or fragmented as the polyglot Python/Ruby/C/Go/Javascript codebase it would likely take to replace Scala for my daily work

<comment><USER6> That's about my experience. The language is maturing very well and the library ecosystem is just amazing. (Looking at you, lihaoyi!).

I really appreciate that I can walk the full gradient from immutable- functional to impure-imperative with one language, depending on the context and the requirements. It takes some discipline for a team (code reviews, regular feedback, discussion on approaches) but I'd say that's true for any language to some degree.

Then there is the ecosystem that's getting better and better with every year, with more and more libraries building on and onto each other.

SBT has been a sore point in the past, that has been ameliorated quite a bit in the past three years. SBT 1.3.x together with GraalVM native is a game changer! And then there are lots of other build tools that less ambitious and more approachable than SBT, if SBT simply isn't your cuppa.

Scala.js is also quite amazing. Scala is definitively underrated in that area. Being able to stay in one tool for a full stack application and being able to shift code seamlessly up and down the stack, depending on the current requirements has been an eye opener for me.

Biggest Scala pros \- Terse expressive syntax with a strong type system \- Welcoming community and creators \- Amazing libraries and rich ecosystem \- World-class tooling!

I the future I hope that Odersky and the core team will continue to identify "implicits" use cases and provide dedicated syntax for them, just like they did with extension methods in Scala 3.

<comment><USER7> Scala 3 has been around for seven years on Github [https://github.com/lampepfl/dotty/commit/2308509d2651ee78e11...](https://github.com/lampepfl/dotty/commit/2308509d2651ee78e1122b5d61b798c984c96c4d)

Scala.js and Scala Native will support Scala 3 eventually.

SBT isn't nearly as bad as it used to be. It's an open question how much more it will "improve".

<comment><USER6> > Scala.js and Scala Native will support Scala 3 eventually.

I'm looking forward to it! Now that the Dotty experiments come to an end and development of the Scala language shifts away from Scala 2.x to Scala 3 I think this becomes feasible!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I often see comparisons to Go, Kotlin, Rust, etc, and I agree that it's unlikely for Scala to have a second renaissance and have an steep upward trajectory like those languages, but is that really a death of a language? I'm actually fine with Scala narrowing its scope and focus at being really good at just a couple of things. Such as embracing its FP-side more so than its OO- side. Not to say there is no value in its OO-side (I still see some value there mostly pertaining to modules). But I just mean that not every language needs to aim to be a top 5 language. FP and advanced type systems still seems to alienate a significant percentage of programmers for various reasons. That's fine. It's not like that sentiment is going to change overnight.

Scala missed its opportunity with Android. I think you just have to concede that to Kotlin at this point and just focus on moving in a direction that is not occupied. Which is why I mention FP with a strong focus on types. There's not much competition there besides Haskell. And since Haskell for the JVM will likely never be a thing (a few have tried, but none have gained traction), Scala is still there. And with the direction Scala 3 is going and all the improvements it brings, it's actually looking quite positive. At least in my eyes.

And besides, I don't think Scala has to be a "worse Haskell" in everything that it does. I think ZIO is a good example of a great Scala library that actually resulted in something really special by embracing what Scala can do: [https://zio.dev](https://zio.dev)

<comment><USER9> What is the story with Scala on Android? Years ago I thought it was a matter of using too much memory. There's not much talk about it but it does seem to be possible:

[https://scala-android.org/](https://scala-android.org/)

Will Scala 3 help?

<comment><USER10> As the person who was involved in Scala on Android (and particular in creating the website), I'll chime in with this:

What sunk Scala on Android was largely the completely lack of interest from the core team.

Everything that Scala on Android achieved was pretty much _despite_ the actions of Scala's upper echelon.

\- It's hard to get a good message out, when core members spread FUD by bringing up problems that were solved year ago (like the big std lib issue).

\- The core team's perception of Scala was always inward – new platforms existed such that Scala developers could run their code in more places, not because it could attract new developers from these existing ecosystems to Scala.

(Scala.js partially overcame this by herculean efforts of individual members of the Scala.js community that got the word out to the JavaScript world about Scala.js.)

\- Core Scala pulled the plug from Android support in the backend. So Scala on Android was pretty much left to die on an outdated Scala version.

\- Something like TASTY (an interchange format that can be recompiled on the fly to target new backends), which could have dealt with the problem above – was promised for years, but still hasn't shipped.

\- The core team was against even acknowledging the existence of Scala on Android on the website – good luck in convincing that Scala on Android works, if the official website/documentation doesn't mention it with a single word.

\- Core Scala treated the main contributor with so much public disrespect, that I'm still surprised he didn't outright quit back then. It takes balls to publicly blame the main contributor of Scala-on-Android for not working on the project full-time, but also conveniently managing not to tell him this crucial "requirement" for half a decade. And with "full-time" I mean "unpaid full- time".

It's a sad story, because Scala-on-Android shipped with some amazing features like hot-code-replacement years before Google managed to ship it. The typed resources stuff was also pretty impressive.

<comment><USER10> So, no, Scala 3 won't help. Most people who cared left years ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> When I gave up on Scala in 2016, I did so because its future looked fragmented and uncertain. Fast forward more than three years, and the first release of Scala 3 won't be out until another year from now. Compare this with the pace of development of Go or Rust: those languages are driven by a vision, and have a dedicated team behind them. Scala is declining because no one could figure out for the longest time what was next and how to work on it.

It's too bad, as Scala did the most of any language to bring me into the fold of statically typed programming. I miss it sometimes, but then I remember all the times Scala wasted my time, and get back to writing Go like a happy little camper.

<comment><USER12> > Scala is declining And the proof of this is... Where?

<comment><USER11> I won't even mention the anecdata from my own workplace. I'll only say that within my extended network people are frantically rewriting Scala bits in other languages. Those who are stuck with it (because of, say, extensive prior investment into Spark) are scrambling to come up with alternate solutions.

Put your ear to the ground, and you too will hear it.

<comment><USER13> There is an ongoing work on creating Spark alternative in Rust[1][2]. Hopefully, that could help.

[1] [https://github.com/rajasekarv/native_spark](https://github.com/rajasekarv/native_spark)

[2] [https://medium.com/@rajasekar3eg/fastspark-a-new-fast- native...](https://medium.com/@rajasekar3eg/fastspark-a-new-fast-native- implementation-of-spark-from-scratch-368373a29a5c)

<comment><USER14> Will take years to get there, if they even get there at all. This is a single- man side project now. Also benchmarking something that has 1/100 of the original functionality and is not production ready is very unfair. It is much easier to get a specialized use case faster than a general purpose system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I see a lot of people complaining about Scala. I looked into it 9 years ago but it didn't seem to be gaining traction so I stopped playing with it:

[https://github.com/melling/scala](https://github.com/melling/scala)

Recently, however, I've noticed that Scala does to be be quite alive (3.0, ScalaDays, Cats, Shapeless, Scala.js) so I'm taking another crack at it.

I've done a lot in Swift and it's my current favorite language, but it's not widely supported.

When I look at Scala (especially 3.x), I feel like it's like a Swift++. Go is a great language but I want to move up a level of abstraction.

By the way, Scala 3 is now feature complete:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/edcenz/dotty_s...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/edcenz/dotty_scala_3_feature_complete/)

<comment><USER15> Swift seems to have taken a number of its early ideas from Scala, particularly around some of its functional concepts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I switched to clojure for a new job from doing scala for 5 years. I just feel a weight has been lifted off of my head. Weight of syntax, slow compilation, weight of implicits ( some of them are so bad even editors like idea couldn't figure out what is going on). And most importantly the weight of the constant feeling of not being able to fully understand the meaning of endless math terms thrown at me casually like monads, freemonads, applicatives , categories, Kleisli ect.

I spent so much time learning what all these math concepts apply in programming but now I don't remember what any of these mean anymore and I am still shipping production applications ( in clojure). Sigh, what a waste of my life doing scala :( .

<comment><USER17> This touches on a difference between the Go and Scala communities and courses from my very brief experience learning scala for work the past couple months.

The older I get the more I want things that are explicit and easy to understand. Tons of sites and videos and blogs exist that break down the features of Go without a ton of math lingo. I never see Scala materials free of that. Even when I agree that I need to understand the terms of art I haven't been in a math class in 16 years and it's slow going. With Go I was productive in two days and proficient in less than two weeks. Yes I still shoot myself in the foot with channels and race conditions when I'm rushing but at least it's a super fast compile cycle to iterate and my IDE doesn't require over 2gb ram like scala / idea does.

<comment><USER18> Yup being easy to understand without lacking functionality is definitely superior to supporting every insane programming concept. It builds stronger communities and better software

<comment><USER19> Big ol' "Citation Needed" on this one.

The flip-side here is that a language that doesn't support basic programming language theory concepts dooms its users to repeat the mistakes of those who discovered them.

I also would personally disagree that any statically types language without generic types and without non-nullability (e.g. `Option`/`Maybe` and `Result`/`Either`) is severely lacking in the ability to express programs that are easy to understand.

<comment><USER18> proof is in the pudding on that one, sorry don't think there are academics studying this but it's an obvious outcome from the war that was Go/Scala/Node. Go is eating Scalas lunch because its easy to understand and communities are stronger than individuals. Sure Scala has more 'features' but Rob Pike would say every feature has a cost and you need to weigh that, didn't see that ever happen in Scala. Go is taking the time to get each piece right and I'm glad for it.

<comment><USER19> Another commenter points out that Go has Google backing it, which is a significant confounding factor in terms of figuring out how good it is on its own merits.

I'll add to this and say that Go is a language that is very well-suited for Google's issues. Namely, take a bunch of engineers with a particular area of familiarity (e.g. familiarity with C and/or Java) and throw them at code, scaling up by number-of-engineers where necessary.

My issue with pointing to this and calling it "practical" and "easy to understand" is twofold:

(1) Go implicitly makes its ease of understanding dependent on an having existing background knowledge of concepts that the HN crowd is likely to have, themselves, which biases people but isn't particularly easy to learn on its own merits (versus, say, Python)

(2) Most companies cannot afford to solve engineering problems by throwing more bodies at it, but with Go your option is either that or leveraging external code generation

As far as "taking the time to get each piece right", this stuff isn't cutting edge technology development! Go isn't doing dependent typing or borrow checking or scoped effects!

Everything that people lambast the language over not having is old hat, it's like defending a car manufacturer who chose to use carburetors over fuel injection by saying that they're trying to figure out how to do it right.

<comment><USER18> Sorry those just aren't legitimate analogies. As I mention before every feature has a cost, Go is highly concerned with how those costs impact the community. In doing so they have created a language thats highly maintainable and efficient. Even at small companies there is turnover and you being 'really smart' with some abstraction has an impact, I've seen this plenty first hand.

<comment><USER19> Counterpoint, regarding community: the Rust programming language has a much more vocal, cohesive, and engaged community than Go does in my experience, even though it has a fraction of the corporate backing.

Counterpoint, regarding "reducing the cost of features": Go is spreading a simplified understanding of what garbage collection performance means to a generation of programmers by providing almost no configuration over their GC settings. I've had people say that Go's GC is obviously the best, without any point of reference with which to compare it.

What Go has done here is pick a reasonable set of trade-offs to make in their garbage collector, hard-code most of these settings into the runtime system, and package that into the philosophy of "configuration is bad".

<comment><USER18> Rust has a pretty great community, and I don't think you need corporate backing for a community. I'm just stressing it's one of the most (if not the most) important aspects of a language.

I will say Rust it isn't nearly as easy to enter as Go, that should be somewhat expected by their desired feature set. Likewise, they aren't as concerned with the cost of features as Go is.

I would somewhat agree with the GC stuff, I think having a couple more levers there with sensible defaults is probably ideal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is fantastic. Scala 3 is a huge improvement, doing away with main of the pain points of Scala 2 and making using Scala effectively much more straightforward. I'm looking forward to getting to work with Dotty / Scala 3.

<comment><USER21> I'm looking forward to reading new books on Dotty from underscore then :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> To all those saying Scala is dying:

Personally I am making top money on Scala gigs, and I don't see that changing anytime soon. The people I meet on these gigs share my opinion. Most people wouldn't take a Java job even if it paid more, same for Go or Node ( both of which I have used in production in the last month, and wouldn't take over Scala, with the exception of serverless)

Teams in Media, Government and Finance are leveraging Scala to do things that take Google and Netflix twice as many devs because they use less expressive languages.

Yes, Go is great because you can scale a team from 1 to 10 to 100 with little effort. With Scala you get the same stuff done with 20 people.

The people that hate Scala are either Java devs that didn't get it because they wanted to write inheritance based OOP code and would still be bad devs in any other lang, or are hiring managers that struggled to get the right people.

This is actually an advantage when you have the right hiring process as you end up with better developers - they don't need to know Scala, but need to be open minded to new ideas and motivated to learn.

With all that said, the church of FP and the hascalator community is a problem for Scala. Overly dogmatic & academic functional programming styles don't have a place in production systems.

Leverage the type system, immutability and the Future/Option monads and you eliminate huge swathes of bugs. If you are looking to write "Java on steroids" or would rather be writing Haskell then you are probably contributing to Scala's perceived problems.

If you are a startup or small business then Scala isn't a good fit - you're probably better off starting with JS or Python and moving to Scala when you have more users and need to deliver something solid. FAANG don't need to use Scala because they can throw money & devs at problems and therefore favour languages that fit that modus operandi.

For all the companies in between, Scala is great fit because when you get the right people you can outmanoeuvre any competition.

One of the earlier comments described Scala as a love child between Java and Ruby that turned out great. Despite not having used Ruby in anger I agree with the sentiment as I believe the best way to write Scala is as a statically typed Ruby for the jvm. It's supposed to be simple and elegant, and the best Scala devs realise this. To re-iterate my earlier statement, if you are trying to write something "oop" or "pure fp" then you are getting it wrong.

<comment><USER23> FWIW, I'm in a FAANG and finding Scala devs is even a problem within my own org and team. We've resorted to teaching largely Java devs Scala on the job with mixed results. A former senior manager who made the decision supposedly viewed going all in on Scala as a mistake in large part due to the huge time loss in ramping people up & problems hiring.

I like what I've used of the language at work, although I tend to write a lot of JavaScript on a day to day basis, but to say the right hiring process makes Scala an advantage is not quite right in my own experience.

<comment><USER22> Hiring Java devs is the problem. It's a lowest common denominator language.

Try looking for Ruby or JS devs. It's a lot easier to teach someone from a dynamic background how to leverage a type system than it is to teach an imperative developer to write side effect free code. State is a crutch.

<comment><USER23> They just happen to be people who has done Java - we hire the best devs we can, regardless of language experience (my own team has interviewed/hired people who have done primarily Python, Ruby, JavaScript, Clojure, and/or Java). A couple turned out pretty well, but several turned out to be much more junior than we expected. I should add that I have no love for Java myself, I rather not be writing Java at all if I can help it.

If there is one thing this profession has taught me about hiring, it is that it is very difficult to predict who the top performers will be. Blanket assumptions will often prove to be not true when searching for the cream of the crop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The more I read about Scala it makes me wonder why (1) I am not using it (or my team) (2) Java teams across the world are not at least seriously considering changing to Scala. It seems likes it's miles ahead of both Java and even Kotlin.

<comment><USER25> > Java teams across the world are not at least seriously considering changing > to Scala.

I've used Scala before. It has challenges that would make it a non-starter for many teams. It has some cool features, but those (IMO) don't outweigh the negatives that come with the language: it's overly complex (different people have very different styles for writing the language), the compiler is slow, it generates more garbage than Java, lots of implicit behavior, the standard library is not up to par, among others. Java is improving significantly in the coming few releases: pattern matching, records, switch expressions, etc. will bring to programmers the bulk of what Scala has to offer without the added weight. Kotlin is a much better contender for most teams anyway, and even that will be a challenge IMO.

<comment><USER26> If I read it correctly, you said "Scala standard library is not up to par", "Java is improving significantly in the coming few releases: pattern matching, records, switch expressions". I see the other way around: Java 14 records, pattern matching and switch expressions are like a joke compared to Scala case class and pattern matching. For example, does Java 14 Stream have any method equivalent to `collect` in Scala, which is a combination of filter and map?

<comment><USER25> > Java 14 records, pattern matching and switch expressions are like a joke > compared to Scala case class and pattern matching.

What does Scala's pattern matching do that Java's (upcoming) doesn't?

> For example, does Java 14 Stream have any method equivalent to `collect` in > Scala, which is a combination of filter and map?

Not that I'm aware, but then again, I don't see the large advantage compared to making two separate map + filter calls. Streams in Java are lazy, whereas calling `map` or `filter` on a concrete collection in Scala is eager, creating temporary intermediate collections only to discard them in the case of chaining calls.

<comment><USER26> An example of Scala's pattern matching:

        case class Person(name: String, age: Int)

        // a collection of 3 people
        val c1 = Vector(Person("A", 5), Person("B", 6), Person("C", 4))

        // now I want a collection of people who have age > 4 and then their ages are doubled
        val c2 = c1 collect { case Person(name, age) if age > 4 => Person(name, age*2) }

How do you write it in Java 14? Want something lazy like Java streams? It's LazyList in Scala 2.13 and Stream in Scala < 2.13.

<comment><USER27> In Kotlin

        data class Person (val name: String, val age: Int)
        val c1 = listOf(Person("A", 5), Person("B", 6), Person("C", 4))
        val c2 = c1.filter{ it.age > 4 }.map{ it.copy(age = it.age*2) }

<comment><USER26> Kotlin and Java don't have a powerful pattern matching like Scala. Maybe that's why they don't have `collect` for filter + map. However I'm learning kotlin now because my employer doesn't allow me to use Scala

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I love Scala, it has a nicely advance static type system, supports functional programming and has even macros, although they are a bit messy. Something I miss in go and python. Go's type system is way to simple and python is dynamic, which I think is unnecessary these days. Static type systems can be as expressive as dynamic ones. It has interesting libraries, like cats, shapeless, breeze. And it is popular in the big data field.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, the thing with macros is that they were never officially supported. They were always kind of a hack.

Scala 3 finally has an answer for that[1].

Besides that; yeah, Scala is amazing. I really see it shine for scientific computing when it moves beyond Python.

[1] [https://dotty.epfl.ch/docs/reference/metaprogramming/macros....](https://dotty.epfl.ch/docs/reference/metaprogramming/macros.html)

<comment><USER28> It looks much cleaner and pleasant to use. Perhaps time to play around a little bit with dotty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I was initially skeptical of Scala when I landed my first Scala gig a few years ago, but now I'm really glad I picked it. Simple things like pattern matching and immutability are amazing, and Implicits + Macros enables some awesome libraries like Shapeless[1], Chimney[2] which solves real business problems in a succinct and type-safe way.

Very excited about what's coming in Scala 3

* Lots of improvements to make the language simpler and easier to work with * Integrating some tried-and-true patterns from the current Scala ecosystem directly into the language * First-class tooling to solve some long-standing issues in the ecosystem (binary compatibility)

The team behind Scala 3 has done a tremendous job. Along with the whole movement of better tooling that's happening in the Scala ecosystem right now, I think the language will have a fun and productive future!

[1]: [https://github.com/milessabin/shapeless](https://github.com/milessabin/shapeless) [2]: [https://scalalandio.github.io/chimney/](https://scalalandio.github.io/chimney/)

<comment><USER7> Macros and their migration path to Scala 3 have been discussed at the Scala Center, EPFL [https://scala.epfl.ch/minutes/2018/12/05/december-5-2018.htm...](https://scala.epfl.ch/minutes/2018/12/05/december-5-2018.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The problem of Scala is that it is outclassed by Rust and Kotlin at its two niches of, respectively, "best designed programming language" and "better Java on the JVM".

Scala can't beat Rust because you can't have safe concurrency (and also single-threaded mutation control) without linear types, and you can't have linear types on the JVM; furthermore, a GC and VM-based language is inferior to a native non-GC one providing the same guarantees.

Scala can't beat Kotlin because Kotlin is designed to be just a better Java and Scala also tries to do other things that reduce Java compatibility; pivoting would result in being behind Kotlin with no hope of catching up.

Furthermore, its core features are cute but fundamentally broken: class inheritance is an anti-pattern and functional features need either purity like Haskell or mutability control like Rust to work safely and efficiently; on top of that, the language is also complicated and hard to learn.

<comment><USER31> > you can't have linear types on the JVM

Why can't you have linear types on the JVM?

<comment><USER32> I don't get it either - its a compiler construct, not a runtime check (remember Rust's "zero overhead" motto).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I really love Scala, but I worry about its future given Google putting its weight behind Kotlin, and the two offering a lot of the same features and philosophy.

Does anyone know if the Scala maintainers have addressed this directly?

<comment><USER13> Kotlin wins also because it has a stable and usable Native flavor. Scala Native is a third-party project and seems dead, while Kotlin Native is the core part of the Kotlin language and being developed at a fast pace.

<comment><USER34> I don't think this is relevant since both languages compile to JVM bytecode and Graal can compile that to native.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The problem with scala is that the docs were too late to come.

Those who put them out are geniuses (props Cats ppl, ZIO too) - but it seems it is now too late. You know there's irony that alot of the earlier docs were based on haskell books, too.

Its not the math. Look at haskell's freenode presense vs scala's. Scala's a 6th of haskell. What haskell had over scala is docs and community.

Scala was just too late, and my coworkers are all whispering Kotlin. It's a real shame.

Irony edit: i actually maintain a scala codebase at work, one of two under thirty other devs who do, and me and one of the major players in the team were talking about this only two days ago. Sort of a sad kind of funny.

<comment><USER36> The problem with scala is that academic goals sometimes don't align too well with "industry needs".

<comment><USER37> That's a complete myth, really. The Scala ecosystem has its fair share of problems, but Odersky and his lab's involvement and stewardship have never been one of them.

<comment><USER36> Just an example: Why wasn't it a priority to make scala run well on dalvik? The place is taken by kotlin and is one of its strongest selling points.

<comment><USER10> Core team didn't care about Android. Simple as that. :-)

<comment><USER36> That was pretty much my point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> For anyone curious about Scala 3 and its new significant indentation syntax, I wrote a small Scala 3 project which also uses Graal native-image.

[https://github.com/olofwalker/ting](https://github.com/olofwalker/ting)

</comment><comment><USER39> Can we talk about this amazing gradual migration plan with code that can coexist at the bytecode level across a major version change?

This is a real feat of engineering, and likely to make migration actually happen and be fast and easy.

Compared to other 2 to 3 version changes, this is amazing.

</comment><comment><USER40> The complaints I see about Scala mostly seem to centre on whether _other_ people are adopting Scala. "Google's backing Kotlin", "Rust and Go have more trajectory", "FP programmers in Scala write too complicated code that puts off the OO developers", "FP programmers I know are moving to another language", and of course the sad twitter-wars that seem to break out within the Scala programming community that put people off.

Personally, I've found Scala to be by far the best language I've ever worked with. The complaints on the complexity of the library are ones they are (at least partially) trying to address in Scala 2.13. Dotty, though not revolutionary, looks like a nice set of improvements too.

It's not a "pure FP language" (though some might like it to be), but is a multi-paradigm language on the JVM. It has a lot in it, but moves relatively slowly. To me, those are its advantages, and for someone like me they are fantastic. I am in academia, which means that a lot of my software is written by me for courses and so I get to work on it in patches about twice per year. In Java-land, that'd mean major language versions are now faster than I get to revisit my projects. In Scala, I've had projects progress from 2.10 to 2.13 (and soon 3) with maybe two days' effort updating them so they feel fresh with the language, even though the language still feels more advanced than Java, Kotlin, and most of the "faster" competitors.

Scala.js works astonishingly well (I wrote my own react-like framework in about 1,000-lines of code, so I no longer need to fuss about whether React's just updated so everyone should be using function hooks now either). Graal looks like it's going to come along and solve the issues with native deployment soon too.

In short, while most of the complaints I hear are about Scala as a community, it seems one of its strengths is how it is _robust_ to the winds and storms that blow through programming communities.

</comment><comment><USER41> Having recently jumped into a Scala team from a mainly OOP background, I'm starting to see the light with the language. Using the type system to handle code you would otherwise have to write defensively. Letting the compiler take more of the strain of the second order functional concerns of the program and leaving what's left to be an accurate description of your problem domain is a refreshing perspective on coding. Your code looks a lot more like the problem you are trying to solve rather than 75% if(x==null) and 25% business logic. That said, the learning curve is steep and the quasi-hidden nature of implicits never sits well with me. It seems like a way of adding semi-defined behavior to your code and is one of those language features that should be treated with care.

</comment><comment><USER42> Scala is an amazing programming language without rivals when it comes to flexibility. Having said that, while I feel enormous respect for people who pushed functional programming in scala to the limit and almost mainstream, I think blindly porting 99% of Haskell to scala is largely responsible for scalas's observed complexity.

</comment><comment><USER43> I'm sorry to be this negative, but I sincerely believe Scala to be the worst seriously used programming language of modern times. It should just end.

<comment><USER24> Why? This seems to be an uncommon opinion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Scala is dead for anything that isn't academic. They didn't listen to their customers and ultimately burnt them. Every company I know that was using Scala is running pretty much running any other direction now. It was an interesting experiment I guess.</comment>


Cardiovascular MRI in Patients Recently Recovered from Covid-19 - <AUTHOR> https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamacardiology/fullarticle/2768916 <comment><USER2> I've never understood why the long term effects of Covid-19 have seemingly been ignored by the people who say this isn't a big deal, deaths aren't significant, and it mostly effects old people.

Normal flu can cause long term cardiovascular effects in some people and Swine flu even more so. Given the severity of the effects of Covid-19 on peoples lungs, serious long term seems likely.

<comment><USER3> > _I've never understood why the long term effects of Covid-19 have seemingly > been ignored by the people who say this isn't a big deal, deaths aren't > significant, and it mostly effects old people._

It's because most people who claim this know that they're being disingenuous. Minimization is a common manipulation technique.

<comment><USER4> Am I being overly charitable if I'd say it's typical for a homo sapiens examples to deny/minimize/buy into conspiracy theories to save themselves from getting mentally overloaded

<comment><USER5> > Am I being overly charitable

No, you're being reasonable in your assessment. It's an entirely common reason for why it happens. People rationalize away things that make them feel uncomfortable, scared, or things they simply don't want to deal with (if they confront it, it forces a change in their life, or a difficult choice and similar).

There's a finite load that people can handle at one time, whether that's trying to quit smoking or dealing with problems with their children or work, etc.

Ignorance plays an important role, no question, however it's related to the unwillingness to confront an issue first and foremost. An unwillingness to confront a thing (eg ignorance about SARS-CoV-2) is a consequence rather than cause; that unwillingness is often caused by the existing mental tax, life stress, the person is under (and all people have varying capacities for absorbing that, some people can't absorb much). This is another reason why childhood education is so critical, it can be very difficult to find the time to properly educate yourself later in life, as life's burdens attempt to swallow you; and your brain is more often going to spongehappy (knowledge nom nom nom), versus a more resistent adult brain that recognizes the effort and untangling required in dealing with/reconciling internal knowledge conflicts once incorrect information is in place. Teaching children _how to think_ is hugely important, versus the person attempting to remake their brain processes later in life (such as during a global pandemic, as they're losing their job), when it's guaranteed to be a huge struggle with existing cruft/debt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Lurking on medical twitter I've also seen that pulmonary fibrosis might be another surprisingly common post covid19 ailment:

[https://twitter.com/leticiakawano/status/1279960010504749061...](https://twitter.com/leticiakawano/status/1279960010504749061?s=21)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulmonary_fibrosis](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulmonary_fibrosis)

<comment><USER7> From the wiki link "The scarring is permanent once it has developed", that is scary

<comment><USER8> Even more frightening is the statement, "life expectancy is generally less than five years."

<comment><USER9> Not to downplay lung scarring from covid, but the "life expectancy less than five years" in this article refers to idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis which is a completely different disease. We don't yet have the data to say what long term outcomes are after severe cases of covid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > our findings reveal that significant cardiac involvement occurs > independently of the severity of original presentation and persists beyond > the period of acute presentation, with no significant trend toward reduction > of imaging or serological findings during the recovery period. Our findings > may provide an indication of potentially considerable burden of inflammatory > disease in large and growing parts of the population and urgently require > confirmation in a larger cohort.

This is unexpected. A chronic inflammatory disease seems to persist well beyond recovery from SARS-CoV-2 infection.

</comment><comment><USER11> I have a really hard time reading through something like this and pulling out pertinent information. This seems to be the quick and dirty summary in something close to layman's terms:

 _A total of 78 patients who recovered from COVID-19 infection (78%) had cardiovascular involvement ... The most prevalent abnormality was myocardial inflammation ... detected in 60 patients recently recovered from COVID-19 (60%), followed by regional scar and pericardial enhancement._

If anyone can else can give us a better breakdown that is succinct and doesn't require a medical degree to follow the jargon, please do. (I have had a class in medical terminology and I read medical records for five years as part of my job. But I was processing accident claims, not sickness claims, so I almost never read medical records saying anything about the heart.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is a simplified discussion: [https://www.statnews.com/2020/07/27/covid19-concerns- about-l...](https://www.statnews.com/2020/07/27/covid19-concerns-about- lasting-heart-damage/)

<comment><USER6> I've just passed this to friends and family. Thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> >CMR revealed cardiac involvement in 78 patients (78%) and ongoing myocardial inflammation in 60 patients (60%), independent of preexisting conditions, severity and overall course of the acute illness, and time from the original diagnosis.

If damage to people's hearts proves long term or if even mild COVID cases predispose people to heart problems later on, the knock on effects for countries that chose to let the pandemic run rampant are going to be horrendous.

</comment><comment><USER12> Err, before everyone gets too excited, it would be nice to know what the equivalent study done on comparable influenza patients would look like. If it looks similar, then we probably don't have much to worry about, if the covid picture is more severe or more frequent, then we _might_ have cause to worry

<comment><USER13> This virus has nothing in common with the flu, except being a respiratory virus. I don't mean this in terms of survival rates, although it's transparently obvious that diminishing the danger is the purpose of this talking point.

But even ignoring that, there is just no reason why COVID should be compared with the flu and not, say, Hepatitis A (B or C), Ebola, HPV. Route of infection (here: respiratory) correlates welll with the effectiveness of various countermeasures. Symptoms are still somewhat similar but less so, with COVID causing rare symptoms like anosmia but relatively little fever and almost no rhinitis. It's completely useless for pharmaceutical treatments as well as for predicting severity, which for respiratory (and every other class) ranges from benign to certain death.</comment></comment>


The 10,000 Hour Rule for deliberate practice is wrong - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/09/malcolm_gladwell_s_10_000_hour_rule_for_deliberate_practice_is_wrong_genes.single.html <comment><USER2> Oh my goodness this is the worst kind of bikeshedding imaginable. Mostly people who know of the 10,000 hours rule don't embody it as being the cold, hard, dry truth, everything is very complicated when you get really down and dirty. But for most practical purposes, you bet that deliberate practice over 10,000 hours, instantaneous feedback, and expert instruction will bring you to superb mastery for most skillsets. Of course, this is not the whole story, genes undeniably matter -- but the reason we should ignore that is we cannot control our genes. 10,000 hours rule is about us becoming really good at something, it's pointless in this context to be nitpicky about the details that don't help us. Please don't waste time muddying up 10,000 hour rule -- a lot of people are starting to believe in it, that's so great, I want it to remain this way.

Just one more thing: for the article to open up with something about chess masters (Magnus), and then not mention Judit Polgar [1]([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judit_Polg%C3%A1r](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judit_Polg%C3%A1r)) -- _the_ strongest female chess player by a large margin, who is kind of a product of the 10,000 hour rule (see wiki), is very strange. I want to disregard the article almost entirely just because of this.

[1]: _Polgár was born on 23 July 1976 in Budapest, to a Hungarian Jewish family. Polgár and her two older sisters, Grandmaster Susan and International Master Sofia, were part of an educational experiment carried out by their father László Polgár, in an attempt to prove that children could make exceptional achievements if trained in a specialist subject from a very early age. "Geniuses are made, not born", was László's thesis. He and his wife Klára educated their three daughters at home, with chess as the specialist subject. She is the first, and to date, only woman to have surpassed the 2700 Elo rating barrier, reaching a career peak rating of 2735 and peak world ranking of #8, both achieved in 2005. She has been the #1 rated woman in the world since 1989 (when she was 12 years old)._

<comment><USER3> Your comment exasperates and frustrates me in much the same way as the original article does for you.

The article is full of evidence for why the 10,000 hour "rule" isn't really true at all. But you say you want people to believe it anyway. To me, there are few things more grating than pop science that isn't true, but gets repeated because it sounds good.

And the "10,000 hour rule" is worse than just a trivial factoid. It is a recipe for disappointment. If you tell someone that, despite their initial lack of talent, they can be "superb" at anything they want, and 10,000 hours later they are still mediocre at best, don't you think it would be frustrating to have wasted that much time?

I want people to dream, but also to know themselves and to be able to perceive the difference between what comes easily and what doesn't. Achieving mastery of something is a deeply satisfying experience; a person's best shot at that is becoming acquainted for their real talents.

Judit Polgar is not "a product of the 10,000 hour rule." While it's true that she devoted an extreme amount of dedicated practice, she also showed extreme talents from a very early age. When she was five she defeated a family friend at chess without looking at the board. I doubt she had practiced 10,000 hours by then, or that most five year olds with a comparable level of instruction could have done that. Actually I would seriously wager that even with 10,000 hours of practice I would not be capable of doing what she did at 5.

<comment><USER4> >And the "10,000 hour rule" is worse than just a trivial factoid. It is a recipe for disappointment. If you tell someone that, despite their initial lack of talent, they can be "superb" at anything they want, and 10,000 hours later they are still mediocre at best, don't you think it would be frustrating to have wasted that much time?

Are there any real-world examples that we can point at of people who actually did spend 10,000 hours at something and did _not_ become superb at it?

In Malcolm Gladwell's book, he tried to find piano players who had spent 10,000 hours practicing and then given up (having never made it to the professional scene) but he couldn't find any.

<comment><USER3> > Are there any real-world examples that we can point at of people who > actually did spend 10,000 hours at something and did not become superb at > it?

This is confirmation bias. If people plateau in their skill at 1k hours and then stop such serious pursuit, the burden of proof is on you to say that their gains would have resumed as they approached 10k hours.

I observe as a musician that most people plateau at some point.

<comment><USER4> > This is confirmation bias. If people plateau in their skill at 1k hours and > then stop such serious pursuit, the burden of proof is on you to say that > their gains would have resumed as they approached 10k hours.

Surely, though, out of all the people who reached 1k hours and thought about quitting, there would be _some_ who decided to plod through and keep practicing?

These people, as few in number as they might be, would eventually hit 10,000 hours of practice.

Why hasn't anyone found them and interviewed them?

In any pursuit, people will plateau all the time. It's the nature of practice. You have to push through the plateau in order to get to the next level. Some people decide that it's not worth it, so they stop. Are you saying that _every single one of these people_ wasn't genetically talented enough to continue?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is also the problem that not all 10,000 hour blocks of time are equal, because there are efficient ways to practice and there are inefficient ways.

Everyone (non-piano-players too) should read C. Chang's book "Fundamentals of Piano Practice".

[http://www.pianofundamentals.com/book](http://www.pianofundamentals.com/book)

There is a free PDF here:

[http://www.pianopractice.org/](http://www.pianopractice.org/)

It is quite fascinating reading. One of the main points is that to practice effectively, do not waste your time playing pieces over and over again. A 50 bar piece might contain only one bar that gives you trouble. If you play the piece over and over again, you will only encounter that bar 1 in 50 times. If you just play that bar, you will be practicing the difficult part nearly 50X faster.

You can use a metronome to identify "stress points". These show up when you gradually increase tempo. Perhaps at 80 beats per minute, you can get through the piece, but around 95 b.p.m. there are places where you start to fumble. Those are the stress points to focus on.

Another fascinating observation or insight of the author is about speed. You can play a run of several notes infinitely fast with ease: namely, just strike them at the same time as a chord. There, infinitely fast! So it's actually the in-between speeds that are troublesome; it's not true that difficulty strictly increases with speed.

In fact, insanely fast phrases are actually played as chords, with staggered timing. The hand comes down to play all the notes, but they are offset so they start at different times.

He regards this backwards: start at infinite speed (playing the chord) and then it's just a matter of slowing it down from there: stagger the notes so they sound individually.

Pure genius!

</comment><comment><USER6> I really wish people in general, and journalists specifically, had an appreciation for the difference between what is necessary and what is sufficient.

The 10k hour rule says that 10k is necessary. The article says the rule is wrong because clearly 10k is not sufficient. What a waste of time and words.

<comment><USER7> Err... no? "chess players differed greatly in the amount of deliberate practice they needed to reach a given skill level in chess. For example, the number of hours of deliberate practice to first reach "master" status (a very high level of skill) ranged from 728 hours to 16,120 hours." The article implies at several points that the rule is neither necessary nor sufficient.

<comment><USER6> The article argues only against sufficiency. Only if you believe that the 10k hour rule is without exception -- that it's not a broad statement about what is necessary for mastery in a broad range of fields across a broad range of talent but instead a precise, ironclad threshold with no other determining factors -- does the article imply anything about the necessity of a certain number of hours.

Any one datum is questionable: How were the 728 hours tracked? Were some forms of practice excluded? Is the _master_ designation in chess equivalent to the elite mastery the 10k rule describes? Is this measurement for an extreme talent outlier?

Neither the insufficiency argument nor the existence of outliers argument have merit against the 10k hour rule, properly understood. One number cannot possibly cover the range of fields, the range of talent, and the range of practice measurements (hour tracking, practice quality). Might this single number still be a broadly useful heuristic? I'm not sure, but this article tilts at windmills unhelpfully.

<comment><USER7> There is little point in an argument for or against a supposed 10k rule. The point is about the balance between genetics and practice, and the article makes a cogent argument that the "10k camp" has overstated its case for 'practice' and understated the role of genes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> >Pretending we have the same abilities perpetuates the myth that people can help themselves if they just try hard enough.

This seems like an absurd conclusion. It is so generic. This issue with abilities only really makes sense when you have a specific goal that requires a specific ability or set of abilities to achieve. Generically concluding that people cannot help themselves by trying harder is crazy. Sure, there are specific cases but this conclusion is generic and therefore incorrect.

It seems that either I or the author really misunderstand this 10,000 rule. My understanding was always that I cannot truly master something without 10,000 hours of practice. This is very, VERY different than saying I can master anything with 10,000 hours. I believe my understanding is the popular take?

I always think of Harrison Bergeron when I read things like this.

</comment><comment><USER9> Hyperbolic submission title, as the article never references the 10,000 hour rule.

As for the "rule" itself, the 10,000 hour statement is not about perfection or being the best. It is an estimation of the effort required to master a trade or discipline.

<comment><USER10> The author does reference the 10,000 hour rule here...

> These findings filtered their way into pop culture. They were the > inspiration for what Malcolm Gladwell termed the "10,000 Hour Rule" in his > book Outliers, which in turn was the inspiration for the song "Ten Thousand > Hours" by the hip-hop duo Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, the opening track on > their Grammy-award winning album The Heist.

<comment><USER11> also, from the url: malcolm_gladwell_s_10_000_hour_rule_for_deliberate_practice_is_wrong_genes

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am trying to wrap my head round this debate.

I think that underneath it we all hope that there is one thing everyone can be truly world class at. And we hope we will find that thing for us. And that it will be cool.

And yet with 7 billion of us, we shall have to niche down _a lot_ to get good. To be in the top 1000 globally, we will have to choose between 7 million skill sets. And with only 27,000 of job types in Soc2010 ( for example " 9244 Warden, patrol, crossing, school") I think we are going to have some problems.

Look at athletics. Here genetics plays an enormous part (Usain Bolt was born to excel at sport) but deliberate practise also makes him fast. Yet there are millions of people each year who complete intensive running regiemes, either for formal marathons or just as "jogging".

These people achieve "mastery" of running - improved aerobic fitness, stretched and improved muscles, an understanding of race conditions, of weather and environment, awareness of traffic, a better understanding of their own body as well. I have experienced all these things as runner and cyclist.

I am not "world class". But I am easily beyond merely competent in cycling.

And so I think we are setting the wrong goals. 10,000 hours of deliberate practise sounds too pat too simplistic, but the idea that you can be world class in anything without years of practise is almost oxymoronic.

So is "world class" what we mean by "mastery of a skill"? Perhaps we would be better off with "beyond competent". The multiplication of genes and practise is a powerful formula - but to be the very best is a near psychotic desire. To be in the peloton is a good aim - but I simply think completing the course without shame is a skill we can all learn with practise and one to be proud of.

</comment><comment><USER13> The study with the maternal vs. paternal twins addresses this somewhat, but it still seems there is the unanswered question of whether or not "deliberate practice" means the same thing for everyone.

</comment><comment><USER14> Here is a TEDx talk right about this topic.

[http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/The-First-20-Hours-How-to- Lea...](http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/The-First-20-Hours-How-to-Learn)

In short it says that you just need 20 hours to become "proficient" (not master) at something, anything. It's really worth watching.

<comment><USER15> Thanks for this, I think this a really good antidote for the misconceptions surrounding the 10,000 hour rule. Granted, this is still more 'pop science' than actual science/research. And I think calling him 'proficient' with the Uke, is a stretch, I think 'functional' is a better description.

For most of us, we are balancing jobs and real world responsibilities, and can't afford to put in 40 hours a week for 5 years on the long-shot hopes that we would one day be playing our instrument of choice in front of sell out crowds in Carnegie Hall. Realistically, I could afford maybe 1 hour/day of practice (and even that would be a bit of a stretch, probably closer to 3-4 hours/week) which would mean Carnegie Hall wouldn't happen for another 27 years. I think more than anything, the proliferation of the '10,000 hour rule' was very depressing for me, as a small part of the enjoyment of practicing my various hobbies comes from dreaming about the possibilities, and when you break down the numbers, those dreams become highly improbable (i.e. impossible).

I think a better 'rule' would be as follows, largely from my own anecdotal experience and observations with a number of instruments, sports, programming, and other hobbies:

10's of hours = functional; 100's of hours = proficient; 1000's of hours = professional level; 10000's of hours = world class;

As is noted elsewhere in this thread, these numbers are highly variable and dependent on genetics, previous experience, and practice strategies. But I think this is a better way to frame skill acquisition, its a bit more friendly and realistic. I would like to think that after a couple hundred hours of practicing a new instrument, I would be good enough to jam out in front of a small crowd in a shitty bar. And from my previous experience, that has generally been the case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> A more accurate title: _Genetics could play a part in mastering things..._

</comment><comment><USER17> The numbers behind the 10,000 hour rule are kind of funny. If you worked 2 hours EVERY day on doing something (e.g. practice an instrument) it would take you over 13 1/2 years to meet the 10,000 hour rule. But, the thing is (from someone who plays multiple instruments), if you were to TRULY practice EVERY day for 2 hours at piano you would gain tremendous mastery over the instrument in less than half that time (e.g. 5-6 years). So, in my opinion, 10,000 hours is actually excessive.

</comment><comment><USER18> Duh. Clickbait.</comment>


Apple wants the FBI to reveal how it hacked the San Bernardino killer's iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-apple-next-steps-20160330-story.html <comment><USER2> I really find this whole thing hilarious.

First, it's Apple sticking it to the FBI by making a stand for privacy and receiving public accolades doing so as a champion of privacy. The FBI is the bad guy trying to invade our privacy.

Now, it's the FBI sending a giant "screw you" to Apple by not only letting them know they were able to hack into the phone without Apple's help but at the same time, making a mockery of Apple's entire security claims. And now, Apple is in panic mode, slowly realizing that they went from being the hero of privacy in the modern age to the company that wasn't able to secure its phone from the FBI. From the FBI. Of all things.

No wonder they are freaking out and they want to know how the FBI did it.

Except that if I were them, I certainly wouldn't ask that publicly, I would at least pretend I know how the FBI did it and claim that it's already fixed in the next version of the OS.

Which still means that tens of millions of iPhones are at risk today and will be for months, but at least, you get to pretend that you're ahead of the FBI while right now, it's pretty obvious that Apple has been outsmarted by a government agency.

The bottom line is that in this line of work, it pays to be discreet and humble.

<comment><USER3> This certainly isn't how it looks to me. The FBI comes off looking like complete fools to me. They said that they needed Apple's help to get into this phone, that there was no other way, and that Apple's refusal to help endangered national security, humanity, and the universe. Then they got called in front of Congress and schooled by a Congressman, one of the last places you'd expect to find anyone remotely technically competent, about NAND mirroring. A few weeks later, they call the whole thing off, saying they didn't need Apple's help after all.

They come off looking like complete fools _at best_ , since their huge public spectacle was based on "only Apple can do this," and now that it turns out they could have done it themselves, it just looks like they're incompetent.

Meanwhile Apple comes off as fully committed to their customers' privacy even when it means standing up to the US government. The fact that the FBI was able to get into this phone doesn't really change much; the mere fact that _Apple_ could have gotten into it already means that security was lacking on it, but it seems to me that everybody understood that this was an older model and newer ones are better. Which is funny, because I'm pretty sure both the FBI's proposed attack from Apple and whatever the FBI did themselves would work on the latest hardware too, but just about everyone is convinced that the Secure Enclave would prevent it. And then in September Apple will announce the iPhone 7 with Even Better Security, further demonstrating their commitment in this area.

<comment><USER4> > Meanwhile Apple comes off as fully committed to their customers' privacy > even when it means standing up to the US government.

My conspiracy theory instincts tell me that this is a play to fool us into thinking that Apple is fighting for our privacy, in order to make us trust Apple unconditionally and in the meantime not develop new ways of hiding our communications. In reality I think the government always gets what it wants.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can anyone find any actual citation for Apple wanting "the FBI to reveal" anything? There's quotes from an AVG spokesperson in the article, and the paragraph "Attorneys for Apple are researching legal tactics to compel the government..." but no specific sources.

The author, on Twitter, said that "last week" Apple said they wanted to know what the exploit was, but the announcement about a successful exploit was only two days ago.

<comment><USER6> Good point. The only official statement from Apple that I can find is this one, which doesn't ask the FBI to reveal or do anything:

[http://www.loopinsight.com/2016/03/28/apples-statement-on- go...](http://www.loopinsight.com/2016/03/28/apples-statement-on-government- dismissal-of-iphone-case/)

(I couldn't find this statement on apple.com, but it has been relayed by many news sources so I believe it is indeed official.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Doesn't this create a kind of precident for future requests to unlock iPhones on a newer OS? If the FBI/US Gov go to court saying they require Apples assistance - can't Apple turn around and basically say "this is what you said last time - and you worked it out - so we are sure you'll work it out again without our help"?

<comment><USER8> > for future requests to unlock iPhones on a newer OS

It won't work on newer phones. The whole discussion is possible right now mainly because it's an iPhone 5c without a secure enclave. With (I believe) 6 and up the protection checking lives inside of an equivalent of PC's TPM. You can tell it "here's data and key, decode it" or "validate these bytes", but not "give me the internal key" \- it doesn't support this on hardware level. (apologies to anyone annoyed at the simplification)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Um, Apple doesn't really care, but they are continuing to stick it to the FBI.

If the FBI cracked the phone, then Apple can smack them with it when this comes around again. If the FBI didn't crack the phone, then Apple can smack them with it for dropping the lawsuit.

This is just Apple saying "Fuck you, FBI, for bringing this lawsuit and then dropping it when things went badly. You're gonna sweat some more before you get off the hook."

<comment><USER10> Apple does care because the public (mainly non US) cares. That said Apple can't really smack the FBI, in fact if the FBI tries this again on a different case saying that they've exhausted all options and that neither them nor any other 3rd party can unlock the phone that puts pressure on Apple not the FBI.

And considering that the according to polling data only about 30% of the people say that Apple should not unlock the phone and 50% saying they should the public opinion doesn't really works for them currently.

The FBI might be playing the long game, they'll unlock a couple of phones (or pretend to do so), even cooperate with Apple and when the time comes go back to court saying that Apple fixed any potential flaw, and that the FBI might've even assisted them in doing so and now they hit a wall and need Apple's help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The only people who don't notify software developers of exploits they find in their systems are criminals. That the FBI are happy to act like black hat hackers in this is pretty amazing.

<comment><USER12> I'd be pretty amazed too if I wasn't jaded by knowledge of the history of TLAs (Three Letter Agencies, or more broadly Three Letter Acronym). I bet TLAs have quite the collection of exploits and vulnerabilities they don't tell you about. I'm quite sure some TLAs even acquire exploits on the black market. As if they _don 't_.

I mean, for heaven's sake, "in Syria, militias armed by the Pentagon fight those armed by the CIA"[1]. And that's just the latest incarnation of this tired old worn out story.

Governments are nothing but the criminals we've decided we'd be better paying off than let run loose, whatever good it's done us. That's why governments are, ostensibly, so against 'organised crime', just a turf war really.

The only question left, then, is: What major bit of dumbshittery will government agency XZY slap itself in the face with next and get away with it.

1\. [http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-cia- pentagon-i...](http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-cia-pentagon- isis-20160327-story.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This whole article is hilarious. At no stage whatsoever has Apple actually made a statement that confirms they haven even requested the method used. All this laughable article could provide is "quotes" from an antivirus company. Apple don't really care how they did it, or even if they really did crack it, just as long as they didn't have to be seen doing it for the government.

<comment><USER14> i'm sure they care how it was done so they can fix the security flaw in future ios devices. but they also have very little legal recourse to get them to do so (maybe dmca reverse engineering provisions, but thats never been very viable in court). Furthermore, it's fairly likely they've circumvented the issue via the secure enclave enhancements in newer ios devices. so why would they waste a bunch of money on litigation, to argue a position that if they win only results in exposing their security team of some minor incompetence that may not even be an issue in current generation devices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is it legally acceptable that FBI knows about a criminal activity and do not act to stop it? A security vulnerability like this will sooner or later be used by criminals, and the FBI are in the authoritative position to prevent it. Could future victims sue the government for allowing the crime to occur? There have been many lawsuits where an ISP has been found guilty for knowingly host a copyright infringer on their network and not acting to prevent it, so it should not be too implausible that a government agency responsible to prevent crime is held to equal or higher standard.

<comment><USER16> That's a strange standard to hold the FBI up to.

Should police, upon seeing an unlocked car, promptly find the owner and inform them? Of course that's a nice thing to do as people, but it's not really a legal obligation.

<comment><USER17> It's more like, if the police identify an exploitable weakness in a bank vault, they tell the bank. Businesses and the FBI usually work together to increase the safety of the public. In this case, there is disagreement about how to keep the public the most safe.

The FBI does not understand that no government will ever be able to force all encrypted software to do key escrow with them. That misunderstanding is costing a heap of tax payer dollars and risking public safety.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why are we believing anything the FBI says on the matter?

<comment><USER17> Because it's possible that they actually do think this is the right way to keep the public safe, and it is possible that domestic law enforcement's understanding of tech is a lot worse than we imagine.

The NSA and the FBI are very different in their understanding of tech. Former NSA director Hayden already said he thinks the FBI's plan is no good. He also said he understands why Comey is pursuing this path. He did _not_ say Comey is lying.

<comment><USER18> I don't care what Hayden says.

They lied about the motivation for the case, and they lied about a software update from Apple being the only means of recovering the data.

<comment><USER17> A good portion of the public still believes James Comey. That includes lower level law enforcement officers. I want them to do their jobs well. Depending on access to encrypted communications residing in the phones of terrorists isn't going to cut it in the future.

It'd be nice if they realized this future is coming very soon. We pay the FBI to be good at maintaining public safety.

On top of that, the polls about this issue showed there is somewhere between 40 and 50 percent of the public who sides with the FBI in the SB case. If backdoor legislation is introduced following a terrorist attack, there is a chance it could pass. We're better off educating the public now about how encryption works and where it is used.

The people we want to convince already trust the government. They will not listen if you include "the FBI lied about everything" in your argument. I think they could understand that backdoor-less encryption tech is better for our safety than backdoored encryption, given some explanation that one weakness exposes all devices. And, I think they could understand the impracticalities of enforcing what the government wants, given some discussion about how encryption is used in both commercial and free and open source messaging apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm skeptical that the FBI hacked into the iPhone. Seems more like a 4th grader trying to save face.

</comment><comment><USER20> Is there any way for Apple to compel them to provide the details? I would imagine that the Government has made the laws so they don't have to comply with them the same way we do.

</comment><comment><USER21> We don't know for sure if the FBI is only bluffing about hacking the phone just to not have to drag the case further

</comment><comment><USER22> Deduction should make it pretty simple. There are a large number of phones out that law agencies want hacked. If the FBI completely stops asking for assistance, Apple can consider the exploit still active.

</comment><comment><USER23> Which company, or group did the hacking? I was told it was an Israeli company? If the company is listed, I would be tempted to gamble my last $500?

My luck--it will go down.

(I am curious if someone they really did hack it.)

</comment><comment><USER24> I guess they should file a motion or how does this work to force FBI to disclose what they did :) It's only fair to give the FBI a chance to write a public letter too.

</comment><comment><USER25> well it seems to me that now they know the bug exists, and they have the source code, that makes it easier to find. They have plenty of clever people at Apple I'm sure they will work it out.

I guess the biggest problem really is that they don't know if this vulnerability exists in current versions or if it was already fixed. I don't know that they would normally bother to fix old vulnerabilities but they do need to work on identifying this one at least.

</comment><comment><USER26> The FBI usually went with the no-stones-left-unturned analogy. But did they actually find anything meaningful under this stone that they accidentally locked up?

</comment><comment><USER27> To best of my knowledge, there's no law saying the Government has to disclose squat to Apple. Given the public bickering/brinksmenship going on these past couple weeks, I doubt they'll be inclined to do so, and they're probably also bound by NDA's from Cellebrite or whoever created the hack (if the Feds even know how they did it)

There's some irony in here somewhere...

<comment><USER28> Is it possible that the FBI has violated the DMCA?

<comment><USER25> Probably not, according to Bruce Schneier

      https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/08/dmca_does_not_a.html

<comment><USER28> Yeah, I guess I should have expected that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Does anybody really believe that Apple doesn't either know how it was done or at least know it was one of X ways (with X being the number of exploits they know about internally that could have been used)?

This whole circle jerk was about the govt compelling Apple to bypass its own security so that they can do it in every other case to come after.

</comment><comment><USER30> Would the TPP be a possible basis for legal action in a case like this?

</comment><comment><USER31> If it was a million dollar hardware-level exploit, does it really matter? Much of the excited reporting on this seems to assume the FBI exploited an iOS software bug... do the press know something we don't?

</comment><comment><USER32> If they want to find out, they should buy Cellebrite.

</comment><comment><USER33> I am sure TAO has a rich portfolio of zero day exploits for iPhones. Still appaled how easily people took this stunt as proof the iPhone is not a surveillance end point.

</comment><comment><USER34> Compared with android phone, it's still better for us. Encryption means it's hard to decryption not impossible to decryption.

</comment><comment><USER35> what if they just guessed the passcode based on numbers found associated with the couple or some other means of figuring it out like discovering a commonly used pin?

</comment><comment><USER36> Ask these guys, not the feds: [http://www.cellebrite.com/Pages/cellebrite- solution-for-lock...](http://www.cellebrite.com/Pages/cellebrite-solution-for- locked-apple-devices-running-ios-8x)

You are welcome Apple.

<comment><USER37> The San Bernadino phone was running iOS 9. (It's reasonable to assume that if there was a vulnerability in 8.x, Apple would want to have fixed it in 9.)

<comment><USER38> Cellebrite is a multinational with lots of resources. I would expect they already had some solution for iOS 9 devices in the pipeline, which was not ready to be made into a public product yet. Nonetheless they were more than happy to field test it with the San Bernardino terrorist's phone. DISCLAIMER: That's my speculation, based on my own coverage of the whole Apple-FBI thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Isn't this how it was done:

> Apple already knows, and you can be sure the engineers already knew the > mechanism that can be exploited. They hired an Israel firm to remove the > nand flash, clone it, and brute force the pin code by trying each > combination until valid data was readable from the nand flash (combined with > the hardware encryption key located on a second chip). It's not particularly > difficult with the right tools and engineers.

Source: [https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/4cj2pd/apple_wan...](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/4cj2pd/apple_wants_the_fbi_to_reveal_how_it_hacked_the/d1iqog9)

<comment><USER8> It's speculation. Maybe it was, maybe not. Random reddit comment from a person unrelated to FBI is unlikely to know. Also the "combined with the hardware encryption key located on a second chip" is handwaving away a lot of complexity. That's actually the only hard part in this scenario.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Examples of teams that have left big companies in tandem - <AUTHOR> Are there examples of teams that have left big companies in tandem to join other companies? I found an article from when the Mozilla mobile team left at once for a new start up. I'd love to find more, and figured y'all might know of a bunch right off the top of your head. <comment><USER2> The "Traitorous Eight" are eight men who left Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in 1957... including Gordon Moore (creator of Moore's Law). They founded Fairchild Semiconductor, which became an incubator of Silicon Valley, and was directly or indirectly involved in the creation of dozens of corporations such as AMD and Intel.[1]

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traitorous_eight](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traitorous_eight)

<comment><AUTHOR> Love it, super helpful.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I also saw that Uber attracted a huge number of Carnegie Mellon robotics profs at once: [http://www.theverge.com/transportation/2015/5/19/8622831/ube...](http://www.theverge.com/transportation/2015/5/19/8622831/uber- self-driving-cars-carnegie-mellon-poached)</comment>


A New Government - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/supragma/final-covenant/wiki <comment><USER2> This is an interesting start!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Second coming of Christ. AMA.</comment>


Social networking for the Rich - <AUTHOR> http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/tour-social-network-rich-people/story?id=25127119

<comment><AUTHOR> All that money in dues and all they offer is a bad implementation of wordpress and buddypress.</comment>


Superintelligence - <AUTHOR> http://foundersfund.com/2016/07/anatomy-next-utopia-episode-4-ai/ <comment><USER2> It is statistically likely that other life exists in the universe. At the same time it is reasonable that there should be just as many civilizations that are smarter than we are than those with less evolved capabilities. One could conclude that at least one of those billions of civilizations have developed super intelligent machines. Not one of those has visited our planet to wipe us out. Why? Perhaps we just aren't that important.</comment>


What Is Trump Worth to Twitter? One Analyst Estimates $2B - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-17/what-is-trump-worth-to-twitter-one-analyst-estimates-2-billion <comment><USER2> The thing that bothers me about twitter is the approval seeking aspect of it.

In amateur photography there is bokeh to kick around, in Twitter it's throwing anything and everything to either get a rise out of people or to get approving nods.

It's been reduced to a popularity contest and the jocks and their fans only want their voices and no one else's.

Even simply informational stuff is presented as some big expose and we should be aghast at the realization. It's hard to keep on digesting this kind of communication. Nevermind actual politics which degenerates almost exponentially fast.

OMG, they've been putting wax on old apples to make them look appealing on market shelves!

This graduating class is having one if the most challenging times getting offers and it's because [reason].

<comment><USER3> Twitter really feels like a broadcast / subscribe network to me. Unless you're a celebrity, you aren't getting significant interaction on there, and interaction is what I use social networks for. Whenever I log in there it is just a news feed of who made the most noise today. I can leave a witty comment and some people might see it, maybe a few more would argue against it if it's incendiary, but at the end of the day it's mostly just consuming. It leaves me wanting something more and because of that I almost never use my Twitter account.

<comment><USER4> The amazing thing about Twitter is even though it really is publish/subscribe for celebrities, many people following celebrity feeds feel like it's two-way communication.

Which is crazy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It does rather cement in people's mind the association that Twitter is now mostly a haven for bullying, trolling and harassment. Something POTUS uses twitter for regularly.

Twitter had been trying to shake off the negative image it had acquired, but Trump's unchecked behaviour is rather putting paid to those hopes.

Question is if there's sustainable business in being the largest interpersonal abuse platform on the net.

<comment><USER6> Has Trump ever doxxed anyone? Encouraged others to dox or harass? I hate him but AFAICT most of his Tweets are simply disliking public figures, which isn't generally considered harassment.

<comment><USER7> This is false, Donald has harrassed an 18 year old girl on twitter for asking him a question in the primary:

[https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/65389793993336422...](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/653897939933364224) [https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/65396140136346828...](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/653961401363468288)

Which led to her getting harassed by his followers: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/this-is-what- happens...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/this-is-what-happens-when- donald-trump-attacks-a-private-citizen-on-twitter/2016/12/08/a1380ece- bd62-11e6-91ee-1adddfe36cbe_story.html)

<comment><USER6> It can't be false: it's a question, not an assertion.

In the tweets you linked to, he mentioned someone who asked him a question had worked for his opponent.

How is that harassment?

Where does he incite others to harass?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm coming to the conclusion that we can have rapid, thoughtless discourse _à la_ Twitter or painfully slow communal deliberation of views and opinions drawn from a common, if gate-kept, set of facts; the kind of deliberation that underpins democracy.

I don't say this flippantly. I just don't think the difference in virality between outrage, which requires no substantiation to provoke, and argument fares well with scaling.

<comment><USER2> You make a good point. Part of the problem with Twitter when it comes to discussion is that it does not lend itself to drawn out lengthy presentations, but the opposite. And in addition, it allows you to throw mud, unsubstantiated, as truth.

It's like "yo momma" jokes. Whoever is quick to wit with sharp tongue wins, and merit is disproportionally disregarded.

<comment><USER9> Almost every medium lets you throw mud, sans substantiation, to great effect.

Limiting mud-throwing to 140 characters isn't effective anymore than allowing more than 140 characters of mud conveyance.

The problem _may_ be that people need to be convinced (one way or the other) now in less than 140 characters, in which case we're all doomed, as very few stories worth telling can be told in <140 characters.

Drawn out - or reasoned, moderate, thoughtful, civil, researched exchanges - are almost a thing of the past. No one has time for that kind of luxury anymore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Twitter has changed a lot, particularly throughout this past election cycle.

Once twitter made the change to showcase News in the "Moments" section of their platform a few years ago, Twitter content started getting very politicized and more news-centric.

I really like twitter, and ultimately what you see on your TL is directly who/what you follow, however Twitter's change to try to be a "live news conversation" has really changed the feeling of Twitter and politics are really dominating most of the conversations on Twitter at this moment.

<comment><USER11> > and politics are really dominating most of the conversations on Twitter at > this moment.

I believe this to be societal. Many people simply want to get likes & RTs - which are easy grabs if you post e.g. a photo of Trump blindly looking into the sun, or whatever. People like to hate Trump, people like to laugh, so naturally they will post stuff that makes people laugh about Trump, therefore they all get likes & RTs, while your feed remains a firehose of "dump Trump" and memes.

<comment><USER12> It's really the perfection of the Skinner box, where you carry this device around in your pocket, and you can get instant dopamine hits, and it even feels justified on some level because politics is truly important. But ultimately it is a waste of time because it adds nothing to the political dialogue except increasing polarization.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The only reason I still have Twitter is to see what crazy thing trump will say next! I've been saying for a while that if trump were to stop tweeting the usage would plummet

<comment><USER14> I don't actually think thats true. Most people aren't on Twitter. The media is and they report in their own channels. Twitters problems or success has nothing to do with Trump what so ever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Maybe that is also the reason why Trump's account was not banned for violating the terms of service yet?

[https://twitter.com/kalpenn/status/896013769410740224?ref_sr...](https://twitter.com/kalpenn/status/896013769410740224?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)

<comment><USER16> Or maybe its just because he is the President of the United States. I find it incredible that some people feel so strongly that these rules and terms have to apply perfectly equally to everyone. That's not reality.

If Twitter existed in 1939, would Kal Penn be mad at Roosevelt for threatening Hitler with an invasion if he didn't stop his shit? Sounds weird, but all externalities considered I doubt it.

Also weird that Kal didn't speak out when a state senator called for Trump's assassination on Facebook [1]. Sure is against Facebook's ToS.

Point being: Kal, and the general anti-Trump population, doesn't actually care about breaking Twitter's ToS. They don't care about any individual action he takes. They _use_ those actions to reinforce this immutable evil picture of Trump in their head, and then look for any excuse to get that _zinger_ in on him because it will play well with the liberal bubble they live in.

[1] [https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2017...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2017/08/18/maria- chappelle-nadal-eric-greitens-call-resignation-after-trump-assassination- comment/582468001/)

<comment><USER17> Are you singling out someone prominent for criticism about how they singled out someone prominent in an ironic way or was it by accident?

<comment><USER16> Is Kal Pen famous or something? I just copied the name from the Twitter profile.

<comment><USER17> He's at least a B list celebrity, "Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle".

<comment><USER7> He was also a member of the Obama administration.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If I was Trump, I would short twitter stock and delete my account.

<comment><USER19> Access to his millions of followers is worth more than the money he will make following your strategy.

<comment><USER18> The next day, I would buy twitter stocks and create another account :)

<comment><USER20> I love it. Leaves him venerable to the FCC though.

However he could invest heavily into a startup competitor. Something like Bright Bart + Twitter, then delete his account and move his Tweets onto a platform his base would support and that he owns a significant percentage of.

They could either continue to develop this Alt-Right Twitter, or sell quickly back to Twitter, and no FCC regulations would have been violated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Twitter is needed precisely because there is nothing like twitter.

Where else can you have completely clueless unfactual stream of consciousness garbage being sprouted 24/7?

As a libertarian I think this garbage is as much a requirement for a free and stable society as alt-right, neo-left and msm outlets. It provides views and opinions that you don't want to hear but that you probably should know about.

</comment><comment><USER22> Twitter is the White House press secretary. At least the deleted tweets are being preserved (according to the WH anyway). [https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/3/15168956/donald-trump- twit...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/3/15168956/donald-trump-twitter- white-house-archives-tweets)

<comment><USER23> There is no correlation between WH claims and facts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> How long until he starts running sponsored posts?

<comment><USER25> We're way past that point.

[http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and- tech/new...](http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and- tech/news/donald-trump-twitter-ivanka-nordstrom-potus-tweets-account-retweet- rt-a7570101.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Ultimately, Trump is what will kill Twitter. All the awful, dreadful, inane and stupid things, all coalesced into the most powerful twitter abuser of them all. Thanks Twitter!

<comment><USER27> He brings a lot of attention, Trump switching to another platform would be a real blow for Twitter. If it is to a platform more friendly to free speech, it could be real competition for Twitter.

<comment><USER28> I'm surprised somebody like Steve Bannon hasn't tried to launch an alternative and move Trump to it.

<comment><USER29> Trump moving to Gab would be interesting both for the effect it would have on Twitter's valuation and on the media profile of Gab as a Twitter-like service. Trump would have the 'pull' to draw attention to Gab and the media would feel themselves compelled to cover it.

<comment><USER30> Gab was booted off the Google Play store already

[https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/17/alt-social-network-gab- boo...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/17/alt-social-network-gab-booted-from- google-play-store-for-hate-speech/)

Google made this statement :

> In order to be on the Play Store, social networking apps need to demonstrate > a sufficient level of moderation, including for content that encourages > violence and advocates hate against groups of people. This is a long- > standing rule and clearly stated in our developer policies. Developers > always have the opportunity to appeal a suspension and may have their apps > reinstated if they've addressed the policy violations and are compliant with > our Developer Program Policies.

Somehow though, Twitter remains so we can enjoy the friendly discourse on the hashtag #KillWhites

[https://twitter.com/search?q=%23KillWhites&src=typd](https://twitter.com/search?q=%23KillWhites&src=typd)

You don't even need to type it, enter #KillAll into the search box and enjoy the auto suggestion

Rules for thee, not for me.

<comment><USER31> Interesting, because Googles "AI" deleted war crime evidence from Youtube recently out of "good intentions".

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14998429](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14998429)

This isn't AI, it's just a stupid search engine.

<comment><USER31> Update: Youtube "AI" censoring US Army destroying Nuremburg swatzika: [https://boingboing.net/2017/08/14/film-of-u-s-army- destroyin...](https://boingboing.net/2017/08/14/film-of-u-s-army- destroying-n.html)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Visualize your site load time, online (by the Load Impact guys) - <AUTHOR> http://loadimpact.com/pageanalyzer.php

<comment><AUTHOR> We're both Swedish but otherwise I have no affiliation with Load Impact.

I think this is awesome. Safari's Developer tools come closest to this, but things like the detailed tooltips, previews of images and switching between different browsers (and thus load behaviors) make this really cool.</comment>