How to Choose and Learn a New Programming Language - <AUTHOR> http://micahelliott.com/2009/03/how-to-choose-and-learn-a-new-programming-language/ <comment><USER2> He misinterprets Norvig. The author claims that Norvig said: "it takes about ten years to develop expertise in [a programming language]." The author then goes to say Norvig was wrong, and he explains why.

Norvig really said that it takes ten years to learn programming. There is a difference. Norvig explicitly includes learning half a dozen languages (including one OO language, one functional language, one with macros, one with coroutines, one with parallelism, and so on). Norvig's 10 years is how long it takes to learn _all_ programming. After following his program, you should have expertise in pretty much every major paradigm and style, and be able to pick up any new language quickly.

<comment><USER3> That's also a bit of a misinterpretation - nobody can learn _all programming_ , particularly not in 10 years. Heck, it's basically impossible to keep up with just the programming going on in the Googleplex, because new knowledge is created faster than anyone can learn it. Just keeping up with the new features and best practices for the _webserver_ used on the _search_ property (that's one component of one product) is basically a full-time job.

Rather, 10 years is how long it takes to become an _expert_ in programming. Someone who's base of knowledge is broad and deep enough that he can form new connections between subject areas that advance the state of the art. Basically, the amount of time it takes to do useful, creative, original work.

Expertise in a bunch of programming languages is a necessary but not sufficient part of that. Hell, I know at least half a dozen languages, including OO, functional, macros, coroutines, parallelism, etc. I've been working seriously at being a programmer for about 5 years (plus dabbling with occasional programs since I was 10 - that's another 12 years). But Norvig's definition also includes significant domain knowledge, and having experienced all phases of the lifecycle of a project, and knowing what other people value in code, and fundamental algorithm knowledge, and plenty of other stuff besides languages.

<comment><USER4> Get into the semantics and formal methods side of things and you can pretty much "learn" all programming in ten grueling years. Start with lambda calculus, combinators, basic one-step operational semantics to reason about virtual machines, move to large-step operational semantics for the academic hand-waving, taste a little axiomatic logic stuff and proofs, maybe dabble in prolog-type resolution and inference, backward and forward chaining, take a deep breath and study a little syntax theory, mess with turing machines and automata, maybe pickup a little "actual" machine and write a compiler for a clean Algol dialect, say, Scheme (oh no I didn't just call Scheme an Algol dialect!) Yeah, like I was saying, do your first Pascal then do a little Lisp, like Scheme (wtf? didn't I just call scheme an Algol dialect? what is it?)

By now you're pretty much ready to mess with early Lambda papers, but before you start, grab Wilson and read up on Uniprocessor garbage collection techniques. Yeah, you pretty much ignored languages without automatic memory allocation, but you aren't missing much; ones with block structure and no heap allocation can be done with a strict stack discipline, pick up Hennesy and Patterson and play with SPIM, you targeted MIPS in your early pascal compiler right? right? And Algol type languages that need dynamic allocation usually need it for datastructures, and not executable code, so you wont have to worry about closures, again, read up on Wilson and implement that with the Unix brk(2) system call. Big boy! (or girl!)

It's time mess with a few real systems; you look at GCC and it's a mess, you opt for LCC and it's a well documented toy, you get bored with C and discover Common Lisp. Without even trying, you pretty much learned a bunch of scripting languages and tool syntaxes just to get things done. CMUCL keeps you busy for about 2 years during which you realize you're not really done with programming. So you "learn" denotational semantics. No one ever learns denotational semantics, not even Scott and Strachey. As a matter of fact, you didn't even learn lambda calculus when you said you learned earlier. Time for Barendregt! the big yellow book that falls apart in your hand. Worst binding ever. You spend six months in the first two chapters.

By now you have memorized CiteSeer, you have grown an afro and you're pretty much feral. You go back to fuck with combinators and you're side tracked to term-rewriting and all that jazz, stuff wacko British guys come up to milk Red-Brick institutions for grant money. Graph reduction is your next step and by now you're tethered to your last neuron, stretched thin. You're sick to your stomach of all this theory. You think more than you feel, so you go back to the basics and learn yourself mathematics .. but your ten years are almost over and you're still not a programmer. You know everything and nothing. You can hack on machines that haven't been invented yet.

All this hasn't prepared you for a career in web development, and now you're a lamer in SitePoint forums begging people to teach you CSS and Photoshop. The joys of being a startup hacker.

[Edit: inserted line-breaks for the meek]

<comment><USER3> I was gonna come back with "And then someone asks you to write a GUI...", but then I read your punchline. Well played.

The irony is that your post basically describes what I did in college while avoiding my physics homework. I learned Lisp, lambda calculus, Haskell, denotational semantics, SICP, continuations, 4 different ways of implementing continuations, multimethods, a bunch of different garbage collection algorithms, implemented a bunch of Scheme variants, combinator graph reduction, Ocaml, JoCaml and the join calculus, operational transformations, STM, and Erlang. And then I went out into the real world and became a UI programmer. The first thing I've gotta do when I get into work tomorrow is make this nifty JavaScript hack work with IE8.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Where do all of you suggest someone to start who is new to programming and interested in web development? I am beginning with Ruby, but would like to know what some of you think. Python would be my second choice.

Any pros/cons in your opinion?

<comment><USER4> Web development will expose you to the worst parts of programming: bug- compatibility, broken non standard-compliant systems, bad layering of one type system over another incompatible one (session management over state-less HTTP), and finally primitive edit-and-reload development process.

If you start with desktop application programming, even console programming, you will see what the fuss is really about. Once you have had your few years of honey moon doing stuff for fun and learning proper systems engineering, you can move on to developing web applications.

Ahhh fuckit, just learn PHP and you will be gainfully employed for a very long time, plus you will make useful things for other people. Also, avoid talking to people like me :-P

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I dislike C++, but I like how sometimes it allows me to solve problems that everything else cannot do as efficiently.</comment>


Ask HN: Why are the green items flagged and blue not? - <AUTHOR> http://i.imgur.com/R5zgvjd.png <comment><USER2> Flags are done by users, so it is expected that they are inconsistent (e.g. if not many people are looking at new submissions right now it is less likely that enough of them flag a post)

IMHO blue should have been flagged as well, since I don't think Stack Overflow questions belong on HN, with rare exceptions for extremely interesting ones, ideally with high-quality answers. Those look to me like you wanted more people to look at your questions in the hope to get a quicker answer, which is not what hackernews is for.

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah. okay that is what I was doing. I'll stop. I'll only post the super interesting ones.</comment></comment>


Scala, Kotlin, Ceylon, gosu..let's start by being honest - <AUTHOR> http://ochsenreither.posterous.com/scala-kotlin-ceylon-lets-start-by-being-hones <comment><USER2> who exactly are those Java developers that dismiss current Java options and are waiting for prototype languages? I was honestly unaware that someone important in the community had that opinion, can anyone provide references of those opinions?

<comment><USER3> This is just a opinion rant - there is very little factual information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I disagree with the article.

It claims that we should "start by being honest", and the whole article argues that there should be no other alternative JVM language except Scala?

Well, for some people Scala means just too much incidental complexity for too little power gains, and are trying to find different balance on complexity/power scale by inventing different languages. I can't see what's wrong with that.

<comment><USER5> Here here. I can not agree more about your statement: "for some people Scala means just too much incidental complexity for too little power gains" I've been telling fellow developers this when asked why I'm not interested in Scala: There isn't enough there for the trade-off in switching to another language. If I use Clojure I get the magic of a LISP. If I use Groovy I get all the power of a dynamic language. If I use Scala, I get..... Java++? Not enough for me, there's so many good options for JVM languages, I will happily use Clojure/Groovy AND plain ol' Java underneath the hood if needed.

<comment><USER6> With Scala you get:

1\. The performance of Java

2\. The brevity of Ruby/Python

3\. Static typing with a concise syntax => no need to write tests for type errors. The Lift devs claim allows less total code than an equivalent Ruby app. (See David Pollack on Quora)

4\. Functional syntax and Erlang style lightweight message passing, giving you the ability to more quickly pick up Haskell, Ocaml, Erlang etc. if you ever desire.

Not a bad list.

Regarding Clojure, I'm a fan of it too, but wasn't planning on jumping on that bandwagon till the JVM has invokedynamic, lambdas, and closures (eg, Java 8 out and relatively stable). But lots of people obviously are now, especially Rubyists it seems, including Heroku. Why is that?

<comment><USER7> You need not wait for invokedynamic to try Clojure. There is hardly any dynamic dispatch that can take advantage of that AFAICT.

Lambdas/Closures when they come to Java will certainly be backward compatible with the JVM (and hence just syntactic sugar) and will implement Runnable/Callable in some form.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ubuntu for tablets - <AUTHOR> http://www.ubuntu.com/tablet <comment> squeaky-clean I don't understand their branding. I'd love to buy "The Ubuntu Tablet", I don't really want to buy a "BQ Aquaris M10 Ubuntu Edition". It doesn't sound like I'm getting something from Canonical, but instead some alternate edition of a device by a company I don't know of. Especially since this is the only model being launched, why not offer a definitive edition?

It's like if Google had called the "Google Nexus 6" the "Huawei Nexus 6P Android Edition"

<comment><USER2> The M10 is an existing device sold with Android. You _are_ getting an alternate edition of a device by a company you haven't heard of. (Confusingly the full device name is either M10 HD or M10 Full HD, with 800p or 1080p displays, respectively; the Ubuntu one seems to be the Full HD model.)

The Nexus 6P is not available in another edition. But Google did, in fact, sell other devices much like you describe, though they were called "Play Edition" (running a non-customised stock Google Android).

<comment> squeaky-clean > The M10 is an existing device sold with Android.

Ah, when I googled it, the first page only had results related to the Ubuntu announcement, so I wasn't aware. That confirms my suspicions though.

I know it may not be entirely rational, but because of that, it feels like I'm buying into a fragmented device line. Like when buying an Android phone or Windows computer, you have to research brands and be careful you don't get a device that some crappy OEM filled with crapware or bugs/incompatibilities in the hardware. Like BQ will have more overall control over the device experience than Ubuntu.

>But Google did, in fact, sell other devices much like you describe, though they were called "Play Edition" (running a non-customised stock Google Android).

Yep, and I personally hated that convention, it's the OEM and Google admitting "Our device is actually much better, when you remove our custom modifications". It also didn't do very well (but that may have just been because of the prices of Play Edition devices).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I would buy an Ubuntu tablet in a heartbeat. I've been on a Mac for years now and I keep pondering the switch to Ubuntu but I'm having a really hard time justifying the investment in actually switching because these Mac's keep on chugging along.

The MS Surface is really appealing to me on form factor, but I won't switch to anything that doesn't have a Unix/Linux base. I really like the new iPad from a form factor standpoint...but I won't buy an iPad specifically because I'm not going to be coding on iOS.

An Ubuntu tablet would entirely fill my need.

<comment><USER4> Keep in mind that an Ubuntu tablet is likely going to run the arm version of Ubuntu which has far fewer packages and PPA repositories available than the amd64 branch.

Why not install it on your Mac and dual boot?

<comment><USER5> Surely you can cross compile or even compile on the target (albeit really really slowly).

<comment><USER4> For most packages this is a viable option for a more experienced user. But for someone just starting out it would unnecessarily complicate things and limit what they can do. For newbies it's important to remove as many potential stumbling blocks to make things as simple as possible.

Unfortunately there always seems to be one or two binary packages without any source available that I end up needing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I recently build myself an ebook reader from a Nexus 7 using Ubuntu Touch:

[https://www.exratione.com/2015/10/turning-a-nexus-7-fhd- tabl...](https://www.exratione.com/2015/10/turning-a-nexus-7-fhd-tablet-into- an-ebook-reader-with-ubuntu-touch/)

Dealing with other tablets and Touch is pretty hit and miss - you might be able to get it to work, but more likely not unless you're pretty experienced in low-level hacking in OS and devices.

Certainly that hardware doesn't have enough memory to keep Beru happy all the time, which is a pain, but I'm prepared to put up with the minor inconvenience in exchange for not having an reader that reports everything I do back to central.

If an official Ubuntu tablet can be disconnected from their report-everything- to-central mechanisms to the same degree that Ubuntu on the desktop can, then an official tablet may be worth the additional cost just to use as a reader.

<comment><USER7> Seems like taking a Nexus 7 and gutting its OS simply to make a privacy- conscious eReader is a waste of a perfectly good tablet. Wouldn't it be easier and probably cheaper just to get a "dumb" e-reader (i.e. some kind of Kobo)?

<comment><USER6> Well, it still does all the other Ubuntu things, and it is a cheap tablet. My survey of the ereader space didn't turn up anything I liked, or that seemed to come without strings. It is very possible that I missed an obvious and better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Oh, this is kind of interesting. I mostly use my desktop workstation, with my Dell tablet serving as my portable thin client over ssh. I use Termux ( [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.termux&hl=...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.termux&hl=en) ) to get my essential command line fix and it really is a wonderful example of a quality Android app for people like us, but I'd still kill to have a real desktop Linux on my tablet. How I pine for the option to sometimes drop into a good old i3 session on my tablet...

Has anybody used the Android version of this tablet? It looks decent but it's hard to say and my Spanish is too rusty to read most of the pages that talk about it.

<comment><USER9> I'd kill for a superb physical keyboard with that dream tablet :)

<comment><USER10> The Thinkpad Tablet 2 with the bluetooth keyboard w/trackpoint that's designed for it and cygwin installed has been serving me well for a while now. Anything involving local I/O is pretty horrible, but as "get me an X11 setup I can ssh to the systems I'm working on" rig it's been lovely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What's the battery life? That's a HUGE issue on mobile devices and it's something that you really have to optimize for. I'm surprised it isn't mentioned on the page (or, suspicious it's not good and was omitted on purpose).

Running generic Linux (as opposed to something highly customized like Android) makes me worry the battery life won't be that great.

<comment><USER12> Its a 7280mAh, which is ok. About the same as the old Samsung 10in tablets.

As for usage. Yeah I have no clue. BQ's Ubuntu Phone apparently gets around 2 days worth of use for most users, so who knows.

<comment><USER11> That makes sense, but if you can run 'real' linux apps instead of just 'tablet' apps you could be in for some hurt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What's the price on this, does anyone know?

Also, typed Ctrl-F "linux" on that page and didn't find a single mention, which is interesting from a branding perspective.

Edit: Can this run, say LibreOffice or Gimp or any other Linux program?

<comment><USER14> Canonical has been pushing that for a while. Even the main Desktop page doesn't mention Linux.

I guess the rationale is that for the consumer market, it's just another word that confuses [even scares]. Therefore it's safer to omit.

<comment><USER15> Everyone who cares already know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can you put this version of Ubuntu on existing tablets, or does it have to be an Extra Special Not Shipping Yet Ubuntu Edition Tablet?

Would someone in Shentzen please put this on generic $39 tablets and sell them on Alibaba? Thanks.

<comment><USER17> According to theverge[1], "Canonical's engineers tell me that given the technical capabilities of Ubuntu's users, they'll soon find ways to get the OS on other devices."

1: [http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/4/10914004/canonical-m10-ubun...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/4/10914004/canonical-m10-ubuntu- tablet-convergence)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Will an Ubuntu tablet ever be able to match an iPad as far as power consumption goes? I'm a fan of both Ubuntu and Fedora but both do pretty poorly on my laptop with respect to battery life compared to Windows (and Windows battery life is pretty bad compared to a comparable Macbook in my experience).

<comment><USER19> I've not tried it personally, but I've read good things regarding Ubuntu's battery life on phones compared with Android. My understanding is that a lot of it is down to background apps being paused, like in iOS. I think the tablet mode would do the same, while the desktop mode won't, but in that cause you could probably plug in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> When you connect a mouse and keyboard, is it running "full" Ubuntu or the sandboxed mobile version? (i.e. is it like an iPad compared to a Mac or like a Windows tablet compared to a PC?)

<comment><USER21> I ran their developer version on an old Nexus 7 for a while, and it was more like the latter (Windows analogue). There is still a full terminal experience available even on the phone as I understand it, just a lot more proprietary software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Great idea, let's see how well it is executed.

I signed up for email notification. I am a huge fan of iPad (I have a mini 4 and a Pro). This looks to be about a $250 product so the price is nice as well as being able to do software development on it with a keyboard. I do a ton of work on my iPad Pro (writing, research, SSH to servers) as well as reading and watching movies. A Linux tablet could be even more general purpose depending on how well it is executed.

<comment><USER23> It will be a more general purpose computing device. The point of convergence is that you can use it in either mode, 'consuming' as a tablet, or 'creating' with a keyboard.

But, _be reasonable_ with your expectations. It's not an iPad and won't have that polish. For a start there aren't _that many_ apps in the FOSS environment that are touch aware. Canonical has made a set, and provides a good development environment so that applications can be made touch aware. But, we're looking at Linux ala 2000, not ala 2015.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Sigh, I would love to try Ubuntu on my x86 based Lenovo tablet. But this is not that. This is tablet maker X trying to get unit volumes up by adding another OS choice other than Windows 10 (so I presume they only have ARM tablets)

</comment><comment><USER25> The real news is that they are planning to release one with the following specs: [http://www.ubuntu.com/tablet/devices](http://www.ubuntu.com/tablet/devices).

However, without a system to maintain it upright, and with those specs, the following marketing image, while very enticing, is a bit misleading.

[https://assets.ubuntu.com/v1/1273c568-tablet-overview- conver...](https://assets.ubuntu.com/v1/1273c568-tablet-overview- convergence.jpg?w=984)

<comment><USER26> Can't they just have a stand on the back like the surface does?

Doesn't really give you a "laptop" experience, but at least you can still set up shop on a table.

Anyways, it sounds cool. To me, the specs seem pretty conservative so hopefully it's a low cost device. Something cool to hack on.

<comment><USER25> The Surface's hardware in general would be a great fit, as it is also very reasonably spec'ed for a laptop. Unfortunately, Linux lacks drivers for the touchscreen, camera, buttons and the typecover connection.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/SurfaceLinux/comments/3xhmu7/just_i...](https://www.reddit.com/r/SurfaceLinux/comments/3xhmu7/just_installed_chakra_linux_on_surface_pro_4_i7/)

<comment><USER27> Depending on the model, Linux drivers do exist, even if they aren't all in mainline kernels yet. Just a week ago I booted [1] on my Surface Pro 3 from a pendisk (didn't even need to disable secure boot) and pretty much everything just worked, including the pen, touchscreen, type cover and sound. Note that Linux Mint is much closer to Ubuntu than Chakra, which is based on Arch Linux.

The only thing that didn't work so well was sleep (only slept the first time); that's sometimes the case even with "normal" PCs, I'm sure that can be sorted out given enough effort.

The situation is not so good with the Surface Pro 4... a matter of time, I guess. I've been reading even Microsoft is yet to get Windows working perfectly on it, so...

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/SurfaceLinux/comments/3w8du2/outoft...](https://www.reddit.com/r/SurfaceLinux/comments/3w8du2/outofthebox_support_for_linux_mint_173_cinnamon/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The big killer here is the lack of availability. I'd love to try an Ubuntu tablet, but this only for Europe. Given my issues with Android, I'd love to try an Ubuntu phone as well, but the only ones they sell, aren't available on my carrier or even in my country.

Heck, I wanted a Lumia 950... and Microsoft has decided not to support my carrier, even though the phone's hardware does.

A large part of why nobody has broken the Google/Apple duopoly seems to be that nobody can get another option in my hands.

<comment><USER23> Your right, but the routes to market for hardware devices are quite limited.

It's slightly easier to get tablets into market, but the major OEM's are very conservative.

For Phones the issue is that people buy hardware from their network provider - there are very few other routes to market. First, the network operators primarily focus on 'general' consumer users so they are conservative about the options they choose. Second their scale means that unless they believe they can sell _millions_ of units there's nothing in it for them. Finally, the rest of the market for mobiles is completely locked down - there are only a few alternative routes to market. All the software vendors (ie Mozilla and Canonical) have been trying to work with alternative (primarily online) providers.

The raft of issues is massive and far beyond the essential problem of creating software that's good enough!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Unity 8 is the reason why I bought a touch screen laptop 2 years ago, but it's just not production ready... Sported elementary OS from the SSD for a while, and o boy was it fast... I gave up on it and I've been using Windows 10 just because it works really well with the touch screen, but it's slow and annoying for any meaningful development work. Hopefully, Unity 8 is gonna be released soon.

</comment><comment><USER29> Amazon.es has an Android version of the tablet with similar specs for €195:

[http://www.amazon.es/Aquaris-M10-MediaTek- MT8163B-Lollipop/d...](http://www.amazon.es/Aquaris-M10-MediaTek- MT8163B-Lollipop/dp/B017LXZ9FY)

The Ubuntu version has a faster CPU and better camera.

</comment><comment><USER30> This is so awesome.

But the BQ Aquaris M10 still has a low resolution, compared to what most tablet users have come to expect. I deeply wish there were open source small (~10" diag.) high PPI touch displays outside of iOS or Android devices.

<comment><USER31> I found it hilarious they did not even mention this on the page. My first question was the screen size and I had to google the hardwares name to find it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> "using the micro HDMI port to connect to an external monitor"

If it can be made to be used as passthrough to be an external monitor, I'm sold.

</comment><comment><USER33> I see the processor to be MT8163A. Is this an ARM chip or Intel? If ARM, does that mean only apps compiled for ARM can run on this?

<comment><USER34> Yeah, it's ARM-based. Fortunately this isn't a big deal when the idea is to use a mix of new application created specificaly for this platform and existing open source applications, nearly all of which compile on and have been packaged for ARM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'm not buying one unless it sends all my interactions to amazon

[http://www.pcworld.com/article/2840401/ubuntus- unity-8-deskt...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/2840401/ubuntus- unity-8-desktop-removes-the-amazon-search-spyware.html)</comment>


Show HN: I'm not a programer and I'm building a Saas task-manager - <AUTHOR> I'm documenting everything about my process. From learning to code, to building the app, and all the way to my outreach efforts. I'm learning as I go and sharing it with everyone who's not a programer, and is daunted to build a software on their own.
Trust me. If I can do it, anyone can!
You can find my updates on: https://Claritask.com
...as well as video updates on https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdmqmifW4kIcPclXigay1dQ
Would love to hear your feedback on my progress and if you have any suggestions on what I can do better.
There's so many task managers out there, I'm trying to build a clean one which will help individuals and small teams track their progress and get shi* done
Also, My Newsletter is growing, which is great because it's helping me share the project with so many people = Feedback is king! <comment><USER2> If you're learning to code you're becoming a programmer.

Only a programmer can write a program, no one else.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe once I'm done I can say that pollyannas. Thanks for the encouraging words!

Also, I want to encourage everyone who thinks it's hard to code, that they can do it as well. Starting with the basics is really not rocket science.</comment></comment>


MIT cuts relationship with Huawei and ZTE over alleged sanction violations - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/04/mit-cuts-working-relationship-with-huawei-and-zte-over-alleged-sanction-violations/ <comment><USER2> As an MIT grad, I am pretty certain they used up the last penny of their last grant, so with ZTE near bankrupcy, and HUAWEI radioactive these last 9 months, this was a convenient time to make an announcement as the MIT PR director had nothing else to do and had free time on their hands ...</comment>


Ask HN: Any India (specially Ahmedabad, Gujarat) People out there? - <AUTHOR>

I was just curious if there are any HN users from India. I haven't seen a lot of things about indian startups here but that shouldn't necessarily mean there is nobody from India.<p>It would be wickedly cool to talk to some of you just to know the startup scene in India, specially gujarat. <comment><USER2> I am in Bangalore. And you can startups everywhere here! There's like 5 on every street in every locality! I am a final year engineering student and I have already worked in 3 different startups(out of which only one went totally bust).

<comment><AUTHOR> Banglore has always been the silicon valley of India. May be I will come there to get a summer internship if I can. Do you know any electronics related startup that will give internship to second/third year students? Somewhere I could actually learn?

<comment><USER2> Actually, there are tons of software related startups. Good electronics startups would be a little harder to find. I will look around and let you know.</comment></comment></comment>


How Apple Makes the Watch - <AUTHOR> http://atomicdelights.com/blog/a-glimpse-at-how-the-apple-watch-is-made <comment><USER2> What really interests and fascinates, and impresses, me is that because of Apple's ludicrous scale and huge profit margins, they can actually afford to manufacture their products in the best way possible. They don't have to cut corners, they don't have to worry that their EMS partner doesn't have the absolute best and newest machines, they don't have to worry about contention in their supply chain (except perhaps at the macro level with things like Samsung chips and Corning Gorilla Glass).

I work in high tech manufacturing and these kinds of things happen to normal companies all the time. An essential part of every BOM is the "alternates and substitutions" section, which lists the 2nd, 3rd, etc options for components if the first choice isn't available. Another is the potential inability of an EMS partner to build any given product at any given location because they literally do not have plug & play equipment at all of their facilities. And if a customer forces the issue, it could takes months to 1) spend the capex, and 2) wait for the machine suppliers (Fuji, Siemens, Yestech, Saki, Orbotech, Agilent, etc) to deliver it. To give you an idea of why Apple chose Foxconn as their premier partner, Foxconn owns their whole supply chain outright, and they operate at a scale similar to Apple, which allows them to drop a billion here or there on capital investments at Apple's request. Others have tried (Pegatron, Jabil), and failed.

<comment><USER3> As a counterexample, see the poor display quality of the iPad Mini compared to Amazon's offering. Apple bloggers were speculating that Apple simply couldn't manufacture enough of the good displays at their scale, whereas Amazon had no such problem.

<comment><USER4> I think it has more to do with iPad Mini being differentiated from iPad Air as a entry level iOS device.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Aren't you amazed that the richest billionaire who buys this watch from their palace or skyscraper has only access to the same promotional videos we have? Do they have a personalized purchasing experience? I thought the same when watching golden phone cases for iPhones: However rich you are, what's inside is still the same iOS, with the same usability perks and defects, with the same Flat UI, with the same Appstore apps as everyone. How mundane.

I reckon it's excellent that Apple finally addresses the billionaire market with a gold experience. By taking the money where it is, it provides a revenue stream that can fund features that average people will use.

<comment><USER6> In the watch world, a $10K watch is nothing. Billionaire watch collectors likely don't even have the Apple Watch on their radar.

<comment><USER7> I don't particular disagree, but I also don't think Apple is going after either "billionaires" or "watch collectors". Not that they would turn away sales from either category, but the Apple Watch Edition seems to be pointed at those that use Apple products already but also happen to have a boatload of cash. I guess I am saying that I see the target market as celebrities.

<comment><USER6> I'd agree with that. I actually think it was a bad move on their part. By having a $10k watch it draws media headlines away from their consumer product. I've seen many more headlines like "Apple's New $10,000 Watch" rather than "Apple's New Line of Smart Watches". For those that don't follow the technology news closely they may miss the launch of the regular product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The Apple videos are shot beautifully. They are quite a piece of work form a film-making perspective, and offer a glimpse at how much work goes into constituent pieces. I really enjoyed this article. Thank you to the author for putting together so much detail. Great work!

<comment><USER9> The steel watch video is the best promotional/informational video I've seen. The music, cinematography, and story telling is perfect.

[http://www.apple.com/watch/apple-watch/](http://www.apple.com/watch/apple- watch/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> These apple craftsmanship videos are trying to appeal to the high end watch enthusiast but this is not going to work.

Just look at the Patek Philippe 5175R grandmaster chime watch video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGPjFFMD3c0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGPjFFMD3c0) . You can't compare these hand made masterpieces with a mass produced item.

It's like trying to get Pagani Zonda owner to buy a Corvette.

<comment><USER11> The Corvette/Zonda compare demonstrates the point well. It doesn't account for Apple's target market though. The person that wears an expensive watch on the wrist, rather than the arm. The person that drives a Bentley convertible, or paints their Lamborghini matt black. These people don't buy a gold Apple Watch because they think it's beautiful. They buy an Apple Watch because they think _other_ people think it's beautiful. They have an inherent need to parade their wealth to others.

They're easy to spot, too. Expensive clothes, no sense of style. Usually loud, if not vulgar. Lack of empathy, coupled with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement. They won't buy a Murakami because it appeals to them aesthetically, they'll buy one because their rich friend bought one "for the kid's room". And enough disposable cash to buy an Apple Watch for no other reason than that they can. In Europe they're often called nouveau riche, or even Euro-trash.

<comment><USER12> Unfortunately I think that's exactly the market Apple _aren 't_ aiming for - but will probably get.

Watch is a slow-motion PR disaster. It's doing a lot of damage to the Apple brand, because Apple seem to have stopped pretending to make useful, affordable, luxury, and are now trying to make unaffordable, useless, luxury - which is a completely different market, for completely customers, with completely different rules.

This would be fine if the product itself had clear Veblen-differentiation. But it doesn't. Watch Edition is just Sport Watch in a blingy case with a nicer strap.

That is _so_ not how the luxury market works.

High-end luxury is defined by evidence that you can command some other human's skill and work. So, you can't have mass-produced or machine-made high-end luxury, by definition.

If it's not hand-made, or hand-marketed, or hand-concierged, or very strictly limited, of fundamentally different and exclusive in a way that proves that someone has had to work hard _for you personally_ to make it, it doesn't tweak those luxury neurons - no matter how much gold it has, or how much it costs.

<comment><USER13> > Watch Edition is just Sport Watch in a blingy case with a nicer strap. That > is so not how the luxury market works.

Have you _been_ to an upscale mall? That perfectly describes Williams-Sonoma, Coach, etc.

<comment><USER14> I wouldn't call Williams-Sonoma and Coach the luxury market.

At upscale malls, those kind of stores are squarely in the mid-range session, not the part of the mall with the designer boutique shops.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> An interesting claim in this article is that Apple is _not_ using its gold metal matrix patent for the gold Watch Edition, but are instead work-hardening a more standard/traditional 18k alloy.

<comment><USER16> Not just a claim from the article. The description in the gold video itself is quite explicit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I enjoyed reading the article a lot more than watching the Apple craftsmanship videos it was based on.

The article was very easy to understand for someone with little knowledge about manufacturing processes and did a great job of explaining how much effort and engineering goes into making a great product.

The Apple videos on craftsmanship were overly clinical and fancy, which for me took away from talking about the engineering and effort they put into the product.

</comment><comment><USER18> Here are the videos discussed in the article: [http://www.apple.com/watch/films/](http://www.apple.com/watch/films/)

The interesting thing is, Apple did not show the Gold video in the event at all. They showed all the other videos.

<comment><USER19> maybe they wanted to avoid people talking about how they managed to use less gold in the watches.

[http://leancrew.com/all-this/2015/03/apple-gold/](http://leancrew.com/all- this/2015/03/apple-gold/)

<comment><USER20> Do you mean like Hublot? [http://www.hublot.com/en/craftsmanship/materials](http://www.hublot.com/en/craftsmanship/materials)

stop trolling; they aren't trying to rip you off.

<comment><USER21> Spot on.

A Rolex submariner weighs about 135g. Let's pretend that all but 35g of it is gold (it's less, but w/e). So we're at 100g of 18k gold. Now, 18k gold is 75% by mass, equal to 75g of 24k gold or $2900.

The cheapest, non-gold submariner costs $7500.

Buying gold watches to get the gold - or even considering the value of their alloys when buying them - is as dumb as doing the same with computers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> So does Apple make these videos more to attract customers or more to demoralize the competition?

Hard to say.

<comment><USER23> I think it's mainly to show consumers just how much thought they put into making their products and how well made they are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Apple does all of this because Steve Job's father taught him the importance of craftsmanship even in the parts of cabinets no one ever sees. This stuck with him forever. When you have kids, what you teach them might someday affect a lot more than just your kid.

<comment><USER25> Steve Jobs is dead now. And I'm sure the current leadership has reasons other than Steve's dad to sell high quality goods.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I don't know if it's accurate, because I know little about milling, but I found this to be the most interesting bit:

> Apple chooses not to show us the manufacturing of the clasp components, > processes that I think would be (in some respects) more interesting than how > the watch case is made. Given the complex surfaces of the Modern buckle, > this might be the first example of Apple using 3D surface tollbooth in order > to machine a component (all Apple products have been created through the > very skillful use of relatively simple, precise prismatic 2.5D tool path, > with any complex curves being created from stampings).

<comment><USER27> "surface tollbooth"?

4 and 5 axis CNC mills for watch-sized objects aren't overly expensive. Roland has some nice ones in the $8K range.[1] Their little desktop milling machines are often used to produce medical and dental replacement parts. Apple's use of laser deburring is a nice touch. That's likely to become popular.

[1] [http://www.rolanddga.com/products/3d/mdx40/](http://www.rolanddga.com/products/3d/mdx40/)

<comment><USER28> Thanks for the "tollbooth" catch! I've taken to typing "toolpath" as all one word, and autocorrect got me...

(Author of the linked article).

Also, ain't no way an $8k desktop mill will ever have the rigidity or accuracy to be building stuff that would even pass as a junky watch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Nothing that special from a technical point of view - but... Some years ago one would use a 5-axis CNC mill to produce car engine blocks, but not for mass production for consumer products - everyone would have used plastic for that. The iPhone was the first phone out of aluminium. Also the using a full block of aluminium to mill a Apple notebook body out of it in mass production, was never though before. (Sure higher quality traditional watches were always made of high quality metals)

</comment><comment><USER30> Even those interested are going to suffer with making a choice between all the various watches and straps.

It's just rather absurd that on the premium "watch edition" apple watch, apple is charging around $7k just for the watch edition with the best strap.

What I find a bit funny is the $350 apple watch is the most feature rich watch. It may be aluminum but it is water resistant which makes it more useful than the more expensive alternatives.

</comment><comment><USER31> All that work to create one of the most boring looking watches I've ever seen. The craftsmanship is inspired, the design ... blah.

</comment><comment><USER32> Interesting. [http://cl.ly/image/360H1Q47090F](http://cl.ly/image/360H1Q47090F)

<comment><USER33> ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Do you need to buy a whole new case when the next version comes out, or will you be able to drop in a new module?

<comment><USER35> I hope you'll be able to upgrade the module and retain the same case+band, but I haven't seen anything definitive from Apple to say that's likely.

<comment><USER36> Since Apple hasn't said anything about upgrades, I think that means that there won't be any. Apple will replace broken or faulty electronics, but they won't upgrade you to the newest model.

That really indicates that Apple Watch will evolve slowly. Maybe it will be three to five years before there's a new model. It doesn't really need upgrades, because it's mostly a fancy terminal for your iPhone, plus a fitness band and iPod shuffle. And I think that Apple will support it for a much longer time than iPhones and iPads. Ten years from now, today's Apple Watch will work with the latest iPhones and iOS.

But they will introduce new cases and bands every year.

<comment><USER37> Hmm, I doubt it would be ultra-slow. They'll probably bring out new ones somewhat regularly (maybe every second year).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Link to the video?

<comment><USER18> Here you go: [http://www.apple.com/watch/films/](http://www.apple.com/watch/films/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Has a bit of "you're not worthy" feel that surfaced as satirical couple pages built in the mid 2000 (I don't think they are still around.) It was listing pumped-up exceptional characteristics of Apple products and mentioning that as not being worthy they probably wouldn't even take your order ;-)

<comment><USER40> A little bit of building "exclusivity" on top of a very much off-the-shelf product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I'm having a hard time taking this company seriously anymore, anyone else feel the same way?

<comment><USER42> What does that even mean?

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Yep, the watch is just a watch. They know it, I know it, you know it.

Now, how do we make it look more like a "personal, exclusive, luxurious" experience? I wonder...

The craftsmanship of a real watch is not something to be missed. But since Apple's watch is just electronics, they can't appeal to customers with a soul- less PCB. Instead, they make a Discovery how it's made movie about building a watch case.</comment>


California in World War II: The Shelling of Ellwood - <AUTHOR> http://www.militarymuseum.org/Ellwood.html <comment><USER2> > Workers on a nearby oil rig broke into guffaws at the sight of the proud > commander having cactus spines plucked from his posterior. Then and there, > the humiliated Nishino swore to get even.

Sounds like the damage was trivial, perhaps akin to plucking cactus spines from your rear end. I guess the commander "got even" in a very true sense.

<comment><USER3> This sounds like an urban legend designed to humiliate an enemy. Japanese records give a different reason for the attack:

>>"An ad hoc pow-wow is convened in officers' quarters to choose a suitable target, using a list of West Coast locations drafted prior to the aborted Christmas Eve shelling last year. The waterfront of San Francisco and the town of Castroville are among the rejected objectives. Lt Yamazaki Atsuo, engineering officer of I-17, finally suggests they bombard Ellwood's oilfields off Santa Barbara. His suggestion is approved, since it provides an easy access and escape route."<<

[http://www.combinedfleet.com/I-17.htm](http://www.combinedfleet.com/I-17.htm)

Edit: I also found this:

>>"Local legends, according to Hough, maintain that Nashino targeted Goleta because oil workers mocked him after he allegedly tripped and fell into a patch of cactuses in front of an off-duty working crew. After this humiliation and mockery, Nashino, an oil tanker captain at the time, swore revenge.

Hough said he disputes this legend entirely.

"He was a career naval officer and, thus, had never worked as a farmhand in Goleta," Ken said. "The story of him being a captain of an oil tanker that stopped at Ellwood where he came ashore and fell into a cactus patch is not true. It's a long told Santa Barbara legend, which may have happened to someone, but not to Captain Nishino.""<<

[http://dailynexus.com/2013-02-28/goleta-remembers-oil- field-...](http://dailynexus.com/2013-02-28/goleta-remembers-oil-field- shelling-of-1942/)

<comment><USER4> Why would they want to shell Castroville? Something against artichokes? Was it a major place for Fort Ord troops in training to hit the bars? I can't find any WWII era military target there...

<comment><USER5> The target was the oil fields, and the goal was to deprive the U.S. Navy of materiel (in this case, fuel).

<comment><USER4> Hence my question of why Castroville was a possible target. No oil fields, just lots of artichokes...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> When I lived in Santa Barbara 15+ years ago one of the local barbers I went to claimed that he and a friend, I believe they were eight or nine at the time, were playing at a secluded section of the beach one day when all of a sudden a naked Japanese man ran past them. They immediately ran home and told their parents. Of course no one believed them. A few days later this attack occurred.

The guy had clippings from all the local newspapers of the event posted on the mirror by his chair. True or not it made for interesting conversation.

</comment><comment><USER7> There were 3 seperate Japanese attacks on the US mainland. They were all pretty ineffective. [http://www.history.com/news/history-lists/5-attacks-on-u- s-s...](http://www.history.com/news/history-lists/5-attacks-on-u-s-soil- during-world-war-ii)

<comment><USER8> What about the Japanese invasion of Alaska? Nearly 1500 Allied soldiers lost their lives.

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

<comment><USER5> The Aleutian Islands are not part of the North American mainland.

If we were talking about talks on U.S. sovereign soil (is that what you meant?) we'd have to include Pearl Harbor as well.

Also, this source gives American casualties as 3,929 (!) of which only 549 (!!!) were combat casualties: [http://ww2db.com/battle_spec.php?battle_id=20](http://ww2db.com/battle_spec.php?battle_id=20)

Friendly fire and Japanese booby traps apparently account for most of the remainder. The most infamous friendly fire incidents occurred during Operation Cottage, when the US invaded an island that the Japanese had already abandoned two weeks earlier: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cottage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cottage)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You can find the full history of the submarine (I-17) as well as lots of other great information about the Imperial Japanese Navy here: [http://www.combinedfleet.com/I-17.htm](http://www.combinedfleet.com/I-17.htm)

</comment><comment><USER10> More here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardment_of_Ellwood](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardment_of_Ellwood)

</comment><comment><USER11> Was this the same incident that was parodied in the Spielberg/Belushi film _1941_?

<comment><USER12> Wasn't one of the Blues Brothers named Ellwood?

<comment><USER13> Yes to both.

<comment><USER14> Actually, Elwood Blues, not Ellwood; Elwood was named after the Elwood Ordnance Plant, which made TNT and grenades during World War II.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What about the Japanese invasion of Alaska? Nearly 1500 Allied soldiers lost their lives. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleutian_Islands_Campaign](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleutian_Islands_Campaign)

</comment><comment><USER15> You can find the full history of the submarine (I-17) as well as lots of other great information about the Imperial Japanese Navy here: [http://www.combinedfleet.com/I-17.htm](http://www.combinedfleet.com/I-17.htm)

</comment><comment><USER16> Ellwood isn't a city, title seems misleading. The closest city is Goleta, CA. (I work at UCSB)</comment>


Color Emoji in Windows 8.1 – The Future of Color Fonts? - <AUTHOR> http://opentype.info/blog/2013/07/03/color-emoji-in-windows-8-1-the-future-of-color-fonts/ <comment><USER3> Having both a color-unaware and color-aware versions can be really useful.

Printing for example would retain the meaning without a gray-scaled rendition losing the details to understand what the symbol might be. (This is just a guess, not an assertion that black-and-white symbols would be used in this context.)

From an accessibility standpoint, consider situations where high-contrast (and or size) is necessary, and it is perfectly legitimate to throw out or ignore the text and background colors for such users.

This solution seems to best satisfy comprehension needs for disabled users as well as printers--not that we need to print the bible translated to emoji any time soon.

</comment><comment><USER4> I enjoyed this thorough breakdown of the different technologies. "Colorful typography on the web: get ready for multicolor fonts" [http://www.pixelambacht.nl/2014/multicolor- fonts/](http://www.pixelambacht.nl/2014/multicolor-fonts/)

In particular, it expands on the details behind Adobe/Mozilla's SVG approach, as well as browser support.

</comment><comment><USER5> I can't read this article without allowing Javascript.

<comment><USER6> That is true for about 50% of the links posted here these days. I usually just close the tab and read the comments on HN.

Note to site designers: something is terribly wrong if JS is needed to render the main textual content of your site.

<comment><USER7> Or just get with the program and allow JS. It's not going away, as flawed a language as it is.

Web browsers are an execution environment, no longer just document viewers.

<comment><USER8> > Web browsers are an execution environment, no longer just document viewers.

Indeed they are. But there is a real duality here. On HN, I see links to both applications and documents. Both of them happen to be HTTP links, since the web supports both.

I am mostly interested in the documents.

If you have a document to present, perhaps you should present it as a document, instead of requiring users to run your application to present your document?

<comment><USER9> If you want a _responsive_ document that scales to all different screen sizes, _modern_ touch-sensitive navigation for the content of this document, view- able on all the cornucopia of mobile and desktop browsers today then you need to use JS. Yes, maybe one in ten thousand web devs are the CSS master-wizards who can find a declarative way to do everything everywhere on any browser but it usually takes 10x the effort. Simpler to just use tested JS libraries

<comment><USER10> This seems pretty responsive to me:

[http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/](http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/)

>This site doesn't care if you're on an iMac or a motherfucking Tamagotchi.

<comment><USER11> That link is the best thing that's ever happened to the internet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think this is a great implementation. Embedding PNGs in to a font feels wrong - surely that doesn't scale up to large font sizes well? Or causes a blurry/pixellated downscaled image? Mixing bitmap with vector seems an odd engineering decision. Microsoft's approach is elegant in maintaining backwards compatibility and also enabling colored vector images on top.

The only downside seems to be a limited color palette, but I don't think that outweighs the benefits, and also encourages a clear and simple design.

</comment><comment><USER13> These look really cool as does the technology, but I don't think I've ever used Emoji past a couple of ASCII smilies. My Android handset seems to have them but I don't use them and neither does anyone else I know.

Is this a cultural thing I'm missing?

<comment><USER14> Yeah, they're wildly popular with just about everyone I know 25 and under, especially on sites like Instagram. There's even been a music video created from them: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmlJveN9IkI](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmlJveN9IkI)

<comment><USER13> Ok thanks. That's well under my age so I understand. Does it replace "TXT SPK" which I'm still too old to use and find terribly annoying?

(I'm sounding like a right grumpy old git here)

<comment><USER14> That sort of hyper-abbreviated writing has largely disappeared thanks to spell-check, predictive autocomplete, and so forth.

Emoji can certainly stand in for text, and I see plenty of comments and text messages that consist primarily of emoji. But just as often they will accompany text to add personality or mood the way ASCII smilies or textual kaomoji always have on bulletin boards.

<comment><USER15> >That sort of hyper-abbreviated writing has largely disappeared thanks to spell-check, predictive autocomplete, and so forth

Now that I think about it, you're completely write. It's been years since I've seen text-speak.

<comment><USER16> I think right autocompleted to write for you there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is offtopic, but I really miss emoji for "shrug" \- expression of I don't know and I don't care. They should add something like that to Unicode.

<comment><USER18> ¯\\(°_o)/¯

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I still have the feeling that emojis in general are an unsolved problem, especially on iOS, where it takes so much time to find a proper "character".

</comment><comment><USER20> I've seen browsers use a colour font for e.g. mahjong tiles (🀄) already; was that a different implementation, or what?

</comment><comment><USER21> This reminds me of the customizable shape avatars, like from Halo 2

</comment><comment><USER22> It's not "the future of color fonts", it's just the present of emoji in Windows. And I really don't like the way they did this.

The technical approach is smart, but lazy, and the resulting emoji look bland and lack definition. No wonder, since this approach doesn't support the way artists work. It's not SVG, it's not PostScript, it's not a bitmap, it's just a glyph sandwich. No opacity, no gradients, no effects. It must be a pain to split your pictures in layers so they can be in a font like that.

As far as using this for text... the novelty of such effects faded out sometime in the 90s when Word Art was all the rage among design-blind office workers.

In the modern world of Unicode, it's even less likely we'll start making fonts with hardcoded layers of cheesy effects when you need to cover a good range of international characters, weights, cursive, hints, kern pairs, ligatures, alternate versions and so on.

<comment><USER23> > It's not SVG, it's not PostScript, it's not a bitmap, it's just a glyph > sandwich. No opacity, no gradients, no effects.

Well thank god. What you call "opacity, gradients, and effects", I call "total inability to be bolded, colored, embossed, etc." Apple's and Google's emoji basically entirely ignore CSS in favor of looking, well, exactly the way they look. Styling emoji to actually fit your site's theme? Who'd have imagined?

<comment><USER22> You seem so passionate about this, it hurts to break your heart.

When you set your text to be bold, that's a _separate font_ , made by a human hand.

Browsers have a fake bold look when the font is missing, but it's not a look you want on your site. They just, well... smudge it to the right. For Emoji the fake bold look is disabled, because _bold or italic emoji_ is just non- sense on the face of it, so they don't support weight settings.

Also, you can't set the color of Windows Emoji via CSS. _They 're already colored_.

<comment><USER24> The design of the windows approach to colored fonts actually has affordances for recoloring the text. It's not implemented, but it's mentioned in overviews of the format.

Because the colored glyphs use a palette instead of hard-coded colors, it's possible to assign semantic meanings or names to each palette entry and remap them. This would enable you to render a 'high contrast' version, or adjust the primary color of an emoji (for example, changing the skin tone of a face), etc.

The latter is actually a topic of concern: Most current emoji represent a caucasian or light-skinned individual, so the lack of emojis that represent other races is a problem. People are still figuring out how to deal with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I must be getting old because I hate these things. They're the blink tag on steroids.

<comment><USER26> The main point of the article has nothing to do with emoji. MS's approach to implementing emoji however could lead to a very useable color font format. Read it.

<comment><USER25> the main point of the article is that these awful things are spreading like herpes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> My phone has color emoji. Facebook has color emoji. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER28> You obviously didn't read the article.

This solution is totally different, building up the color emoji using a cool font table approach. You should read it; it's worth the time. :)

<comment><USER29> Actually it is a pretty dirty hack -- it seems ok because the flat design is currently popular. But quite likely gradients and shadows will come back in a few years and then few single-color layers won't be enough.

<comment><USER30> You could build gradients with this, but it wouldn't look nice zoomed in. And, importantly, Apple's current gradient-filled font wouldn't work!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Seems neat, and I appreciate the forward-thinking mentality. But, as far as I am aware, emoji are a fad and won't really stand the test of time anyway. Either way, I guess, it's nice to see these easy-to-use, easy-to-create principals in play.

<comment><USER32> I thought so too, until I started using them in my messages to my friends and girlfriend. Now I find them an integral part of my communications. 😄

<comment><USER33> Oh the irony. Your emoji comes out as a blank square for me (Windows 7 - <USER2> 12)

<comment><USER34> Chrome does the blank square as well, but it works in Firefox and IE. (win7)

<comment><USER35> Works for me in FF on Linux.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Design and UX in an Agile Process - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/whafro/design-and-ux-in-an-agile-process-presentation <comment><USER2> Really liked the presentation style</comment>


Proposal to delete the r/golang subreddit - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!msg/golang-nuts/XoOhzUClDPs/jgSWxng7CAAJ <comment><USER2> Brad's post was a colossally bad idea.

First, it reveals a very hostile attitude within Google toward the go community - a complete lack of empathy for what his actions will do to tens of thousands of developers who have adopted his team's product. Just by posting what he did he's damaged the subreddit, which is apparently his intention.

Second, it reinforces the impression that Google is very temperamental in support of their products and services. This is just another in a large stack of examples of why not to choose Google for your project or company.

Third, Brad, please go talk to your PR folks. This could easily be spun as "Google attacks Reddit in support of Trump forum", "Google abandons go community", or any number of other baitings. About the only thing they will like about it is that it was at least posted on Thanksgiving holiday, which means most people who could exploit it will not notice.

Last, there is a larger, more adult concept known as equity in behavior that Brad should try to adopt. Just because he has a personal ethical issue does not mean he gets to damage other people. It's one thing to say "my personal code does not permit me to continue here, how can I withdraw in the way that is least damaging to others" vs "I'm going to use my position of privilege to inflict as much harm on Reddit as I can, with no regard for damage to others".

I agree with @4ad. This is a team that really has no business doing community support.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for this - I don't follow Go and until I read your post, I'd assumed that he was just a pissed off reddit user with no vested interest in Go outside his capacity as a moderator. The fact that he's a developer who is heavily involved in the product makes this a far bigger issue than I initially thought it was.

Announcing that he's stepping down as moderator as a result of this is his right and I'd completely support such a choice. Announcing that he's deleting his Reddit account and will no longer be involved in the Reddit community is a powerful statement given his position, and again, is a stance which I completely support whether I agree with him or not. Openly suggesting that other moderators also step down is perhaps a little OTT, but I still don't really have a major problem with it. If the Go team as a whole want to distance themselves from Reddit following this incident, that's understandable.

But if that's what they want to do, the way to do that is to recruit interested and active members of the subreddit to take over moderation duties. I'd go as far as to say that, with a community of 25,000 people, that is your duty as a moderator. Closing the subreddit completely shows a complete disregard for a significant proportion of your user population. Doing so on the ground of "unethical and immature" behaviour on the part of the CEO is more than a little hypocritical. Making your proposal on a separate platform so that those affected by your decision don't see it is unforgivable.

If you want to leave, fine. Taking your ball with you is just childish.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow. I am speechless.

The reddit until very recently had no involvement from the Go team whatsoever. It was founded by uriel, which then added as mods some Go developers which then never posted there. The community was thriving without any involvment from the Go team at all.

More recently they decreed they _owned_ the place. Nobody was asked. It just happened. They took over and proclaimed authority over it. They still were not involved much, so it was just a change in name.

But now they want to delete it??! A place they had nothing to do with whatsoever. Wow. What arrogance.

<comment><USER5> Exactly. I'm pissed of that they treat us Reddit users that way. If they don't want to use Reddit they can just fuck off somewhere else and let us be. We don't need them to "moderate" us.

I have a lot of respect for the Go team but they sure are bad at managing communities.

<comment><USER4> Oh yeah, they totally blew it with the Plan 9 community too. I had hoped they learned their lesson, but no.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Reddit discussion [https://www.reddit.com/r/golang/comments/5eqs64/proposal_to_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/golang/comments/5eqs64/proposal_to_delete_rgolang/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Apparently the background story broke yesterday, in case anyone is as clueless about the impetus as I was:

[http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/24/reddits-ceo-edited- comments-t...](http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/24/reddits-ceo-edited-comments- that-criticized-him.html)

<comment><USER7> Does anyone know if u/spez edited anything in r/golang?

<comment><USER8> I was the one who proposed deleting /r/golang.

That's not the point.

If Github were modifying our code or Google Groups were modifying our mailing list messages or SMTP content for their own amusement we wouldn't trust them for a platform either.

I don't think we should demand less of Reddit.

My proposal is no longer to delete it, but to just disassociate ourselves from it, making it unofficial like it used to be.

<comment><USER9> Honestly, if I had been opening thousands of issues on GitHub that called defunkt a pedophile, I would be wholly unsurprised if I got trolled back, and I certainly wouldn't expect unrelated organizations doing real code things to leave the platform in solidarity.

Not to say this was okay in any way, but certain subreddits are... pretty special places.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Dupe (no comments): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13035122](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13035122)

Let's see which thread survives.</comment>


Why I hate everything you love about Java - <AUTHOR> http://romanroe.blogspot.com/2010/02/why-i-hate-everything-you-love-about.html

<comment><USER2> Nick gave a nice response in the comments.

[http://romanroe.blogspot.com/2010/02/why-i-hate- everything-y...](http://romanroe.blogspot.com/2010/02/why-i-hate-everything- you-love-about.html?showComment=1265934723222#c3228185280175768802)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm not an alpha programmer and the journey to learn Clojure has not been easy, but after reading article's like this one I'm starting to "get it".

</comment><comment><USER3> While I understand the benefits of the more configurable futures approach, in most cases I'd just use the Clojure convention and send my task off to an agent. It's good to be able to fall back to something configurable when that approach isn't good enough though.

Convention over configuration, but allow configuration as an option.

</comment><comment><USER4> it's a tool. do you "love" and "hate" hammers and screwdrivers? get over it already.

<comment><USER5> When I have to work with them for any length of time, I certainly do hate some screwdrivers more than others.

<comment><USER4> so what word would you use for the feelings you might have towards someone that rapes your kid sister? "i _really_ hate ..."?

it's silly (for anyone other than adolescents) to use such extreme words for such commonplace things.

<comment><USER5> Uh huh. And if you say you love pizza, does your significant other get jealous?

<comment><USER4> i'm not sure how i can make it more clear, but fwiw i don't say i love pizza. if i did, then what i posted earlier wouldn't make much sense, would it?

oh, hang on. here we go. maybe this will make things clearer: saying "love" and "hate" is really stupid and i hate it and you suck.

presumably that connects?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


$19/Month Cell Service: Unlimited Everything, No Contracts - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/07/republic-wireless-officially-unveils-19month-service-unlimited-everything-no-contracts/

<comment><USER2> This would work great for me. I am on wireless with my phone about 95% of the time, and only on 3G when in the car or shopping I guess.

If I can still use 3G when I absolutely need it, with no "real" limitations, but stay on my wifi otherwise, I'd be golden.

Now, I just have to wait 2 years so I can subscribe.

EDIT: Maybe they can add a $29 per month contract and buy me out of my old one :)

<comment><USER3> Ditto. The month-to-month service is extremely appealing for those of us dragging around the ball and chain known as AT&T. :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Couldn't happen too soon. The cell phone industry is ripe for disruption. One of the primary offenses is making users route voice data over their expensive, slow cellular networks even when a cheap, fast physical network is also available. Or worse yet, not letting them use the cheap, fast physical network even when the cellular network is not available. The situation became genuinely absurd is when companies decided the best solution to offer to customers with poor home reception was to sell them microcell hardware.

</comment><comment><USER5> _"Here's the catch: if you're routinely using a lot of cellular data, then the service reserves the right to boot you."_

Like every carrier, there is no such thing as "unlimited".

<comment><USER3> I don't think there's any such thing in the universe as "unlimited." ;)

But seriously, if you're using the phone on Wi-Fi, which is where the vast majority of people use their phones, then the only cap is the one on your broadband connection (usually at least 200 GB). I would suspect that for greater than 97% of cell phone subscribers, Republic's data limits are not going to be an issue.

And frankly, I think it's high time a new carrier disrupted the AT&T/Verizon/Sprint/T-Mobile oligarchy.

<comment><USER4> If I remember right, the way it worked out back in the days of AT&T's original unlimited iPhone service plan was that basically everyone was paying higher prices in order to subsidize a very small number of YouTube addicts whose 3G bandwidth usage was larger by an order of magnitude or two. Keeping that kind of user off the network would be a key part of making prices reasonable for everyone else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How's the reception?</comment>


Difference between full and quick format of a floppy disk - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1194762568948056064 <comment><AUTHOR> "threadreaderapp" link: [https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1194762568948056064.html](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1194762568948056064.html)</comment>


7 Places for Social Developers - <AUTHOR> http://www.mahdiyusuf.com/post/17190735090/7-places-for-social-developers

<comment><USER2> The Coderwall site scrapes your public Github information but doesn't show you any "achievements" until you tweet about "@coderwall". Seems like a shady way to kick start a developer community.

</comment><comment><USER3> For Twitter, you may want to use Paper.li to track the stories linked by people you follow. You can also add in hash tags, lists, and a few other non- Twitter sources (e.g. RSS feeds) as well. I have two that I use, one built around my "Security" list and another based on two or three hashtags and my "Data-Science" list.

<comment><AUTHOR> cool, I will have to check that out!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thought it might be cool to list places where developers hang. Anything I miss?

</comment><comment><USER4> Thanks! I may have included IRC

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point!</comment></comment>


Concrete Problems in AI Safety - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.06565 <comment><USER2> This was posted earlier, with a link to the OpenAI blogpost: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11950687](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11950687)

</comment><comment><USER3> Hmm article seems to miss socialeconomics aspects. Can it put too much power or wealth in hands of few? Can hackers cheat AI to its advantage?is it more risky than current systems?

Analogy, the article analyze as if main risk of nuclear power was accidents or uncontrolled reactions. However the main problem with nuclear is with weapons which could give destructive power to few individuals. Sometimes civilian use cases can be mixed with military one (e.g. Iran, North Korea).

<comment><USER4> It doesn't claim to give _all_ the aspects; only some concrete and fairly well-specified ones.</comment></comment>


Offer staff more time off instead of more money? - <AUTHOR> http://www.callum-macdonald.com/2007/09/03/more-time-instead-of-more-cash/

<comment><USER2> I think we have to understand the employment scenario in place before you can assume that employees will care about having more time off.

For example, the "10 minutes early" piece would be laughed at where I work. Why? Because the knowledge workers on my team can leave 10 minutes early any day they want. They aren't bound to the clock. They're bound to getting their work done. If they do that, I don't give a damn if they pick up their kids at 4:15 every day.

In addition, the most of the time, my employees struggle to take the vacation they already have, why would they want more? (21 days + for the most part) I'd rather give them a few extra bucks as incentive than hound them to take even more vacation come November.

Finally, there's an important point to realize. If people like their jobs, they don't necessarily care too much about vacation. Sure, they want to be able to go on a trip in the summer, away for a few weekends and time for the holidays, but since they enjoy working, a lot of the time that's where they want to be.

<comment><USER3> What _would_ help is fewer mandatory time-wasting activities. Fewer meetings, and when there is one, it should have an agenda of issues that need to be decided that meeting. Fewer interruptions and distractions. No bullshit technology choices dictated by managers who don't understand the technology involved.

Most hackers want to get things done. Getting them done quicker lets them choose whether they get more done (= more money) or take more time.

<comment><USER2> Yes, yes, a hundred times yes.

The other thing I'm a big proponent of is offices for everyone. The "open office collaboration" trend is the biggest scam to hit the workplace in the last 30 years. How one can be "more productive" hearing everyone else's weekend stories whether they choose to or not is beyond me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely, open plan offices are a nightmare. I haven't yet figured out how to balance it out though. Social contact is important, interacting with other team members, etc. Maybe longer lunch breaks, or social meeting or something. Being in an office alone all day is pretty unhealthy!</comment></comment></comment></comment>