Google Tech Dev Guide - <AUTHOR> https://techdevguide.withgoogle.com/ <comment><USER2> "Given a string S and a set of words D, find the longest word in D that is a subsequence of S."

Found under "Foundations of programming" \-- this is exactly the type of problem I'd expect as question one under this section. When it's made by Googlers, that is.

I make a lot of cool stuff day to day, and usually that requires a lot of code and knowledge about programming and topics that are rather advanced (currently I'm building a distributed collaboration system with event sourced data in Microsoft Orleans) -- but questions like this are just about the furthest thing from what I want from a developer. We're gonna be in a lot of trouble in the future if every developer is learning Google sanctioned code problems at Google University on their Google Chromebook in Google Chrome on Google.com. And I'm not even speaking about how disgusting that sounds -- just tell me how that's going to breed diversity in thought?

If I came across this problem in my "Foundations of Programming" course equivalent when I first started to learn how to code, well I'd probably be enjoying my life as a woodworker right about now.

<comment><USER3> (Disclaimer: I work at Google). This is going to sound like a humble-brag, but it isn't, I'm trying to give some life advice based on my experience: I have used "CS" algorithmic thinking on multiple projects, I've even used facets of abstract algebra and number theory from my Math degree to further my career and it lifted me out of poverty.

Here's an example. A few years ago, I was researching ways to crunch down the size of GWT (Java-to-JS compiler) output more. Besides obvious compiler theory work on optimizations, I noticed that the code had a lot of common chunks that could possibly be gzipped better. Knowing how bzip2 worked with the BWT transform, I wondered if sorting JS code could improve gzip output, the result was this ([http://timepedia.blogspot.com/2009/08/on-reducing-size-of- co...](http://timepedia.blogspot.com/2009/08/on-reducing-size-of- compressed.html)) and writeups like this were one of the ways I got noticed by Google to get an interview. In other words, solving "useless puzzles" landed me a dream job.

The gist of that article is by using edit-distance/levenstein distance to 'cluster' JS code fragments, you can improve the efficiency of GZIP by bringing more code into its 32K window OR optimize the huffman codes it uses. However, edit-distance doesn't know anything about the LZ algorithm's mechanism.

Later on, I ran into the "LZ Distance Metric" in some papers while researching about optimal clustering and wrote an updated post: [http://timepedia.blogspot.com/2009/11/traveling-salesman- pro...](http://timepedia.blogspot.com/2009/11/traveling-salesman-problem- and.html)

It turns out optimally computing the LZ Distance Metric requires efficiently solving the Longest Common Substring problem, which can be solved with a generalized suffix tree in O(N + M) time.

In other words, if my only experience was doing web programming or standard forms + database enterprise apps, I probably would have never been able to even imagine this, because I wouldn't know what I don't know, whereas spending time actually thinking about data structures and algorithms in my past, prepared me for that moment, exposing me to stuff I would recall later when I needed it. Moreover, trying to solve this problems exercises memories you learned in college CS, so you don't forget them, especially the ability to read papers and consume mathematical notation.

Another example: I have long had a love affair with number theory. It's why I love cryptography, error correcting codes, block designs (See one of my own puzzles to see if you can solve it: [http://cromwellian.blogspot.com/2006/09/puzzles-you-cant- sol...](http://cromwellian.blogspot.com/2006/09/puzzles-you-cant-solve-with- google-one.html))

This led me to get into crypto. Early work on crypto during the cypherpunks mailing list days in the 90s, designing anonymous remailers, anonymous internet proxies, and digital cash algorithms, got me noticed, and led to a job at IBM TJ Watson research, my first, real, non-consulting job (before that I mostly wrote 6502/68000 assembly for games, and FastCGI+Perl). From there, I applied HashCash proof-of-work in the mid-90s to anti-fraud in hacked clients in 2-tier systems, patented an early re-CAPTCHA-like algorithm, and ended up getting acqui-hired by a California company. Now, I was born and raised in Baltimore City, grew up pretty poor, and had to start my first 2 college years in a community college. This was a fantastic dream come true for me, and I mostly credit it to serendipity made possible by being exposed to a lot of stuff.

Later, internal to Google, I came up with the idea of applying Broadcast Encryption used in copyright-protection systems (e.g. Blu-Ray AACS) and turning them around for a good purpose: creating a serverless, peer-to-peer group messaging social-network. That design was heavily based off of number theoretical knowledge I had to dust off, and helped facilitate an internal transfer to the team I'm on today.

There's nothing wrong with straightforwardly engineered apps, screens, forms, databases. Most of the world subsists on this. But sometimes, in fields of graphics algorithms, AI, mapping, bioinformatics, AR, VR, you encounter situations that aren't straightforward, and then it becomes valuable to be able to be confronted with a super-frustrating, mind bending puzzle, and bring all the weapons to bear on it. Can't you just Google-search it? Sometimes. I'd argue more often than not, you'll "flesh-based search engine it", by tracking down your local Jeff Dean clone and asking them for hints.

But IMHO there's no harm in being challenged like this anymore than being asked to complete basic training to be in the military, even though you might just be a tech-support soldier. You never know when you'll need those brain muscles, and if you're lucky, like I was, it could be a life altering opportunity. I don't think Google interviewers are interested in you solving the problem and getting the correct answer, they are interested in seeing how you work: how you think, how you communicate and ask questions of the interviewer, in other words, how you'd work as a member of the team. There's no shame in asking the interviewer questions, it's what you'd ask a coworker if you're trying to solve the problem.

It's not the end result, but the process.

<comment><USER4> >There's nothing wrong with straightforwardly engineered apps, screens, forms, databases. Most of the world subsists on this.

Most of Google subsists on this. Interviewing everyone for skills that only come up when you are pushing the boundaries of CS is pointless. 99% of engineers at Google fling protos and do menial translations on them.

Have a separate "CS" group if you want and apply the CS questions to them. For the rest, interview instead on their ability to write maintainable, testable, scalable software. Google would be worlds better off for it. It's shocking how incompetent the org is as a whole at delivering and maintaining quality software.

<comment><USER3> I don't think product excellence is a function of the interview process, it's mainly a function of what you are promoted for, and rightly or wrongly, launching new things tends to give you a better career trajectory than fixing or maintaining old stuff.

<comment><USER5> That's an unfortunate consequence of the OKR process. If the company has to be chasing near moonshot projects all the time. Then they also align resources towards it. That means money is chasing those projects.

There is a huge incentive to keep launching new things. To keep doing something big. Its the classic throw-pizza-at-wall-see-what-sticks approach except the experiment is run among a huge group of people. So eventually some Pizza sticks.

But even in that case. I hear '20% time projects' culture have long been dead for now. So that means the projects have to come some one from the top to get some resources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have been putting off a Google interview for a whole year now.

I have real experience building Cluster Filesystems, Distributed Caches, TCP/IP Control plane software and low latency Ad platform for more than a decade.

Sounds good on paper, but I can guarantee I cannot solve most of these puzzles without actually solving them beforehand. Why? Because I do not have cycles or time to solve these on my own. I have a system to build, Engineers to help and a product to ship. Family obligations do not help.

Seriously, Is this normal? What does this tell me? I should not appear for Google interview and waste their and my time.

Some of the replies here suggest that Googlers just push protobufs? Damn, that is one hell of an interview to push protobufs around :(.

Glad, atleast they are upfront about puzzles, so that's good.

<comment><USER7> I don't work for Google and i haven't interviewed with them. In our company (low level systems engineering) we ask similar question, with the following rationale:

I don't want to test if you can build systems, your resume already says so and there is but enough time to assess this properly anyway.

But, can you be bothered to try to solve problems outside of your comfort zone? Will you humor me as an interviewer for one hour with something that is maybe new to you?

If you rise to the challenge and attempt to solve these problems,i extrapolate to the systems engineering part.

<comment><USER8> I find this amusing because lots of people put bullshit on their resumes that one has to filter them out.

I already have my hands full trying to filter out the posers and assessing for culture fit. I don't have time to ask a candidate for some questions that aren't related to the role at hand.

But hey, you do you.

<comment><USER7> Fair enough, maybe we (rather small company in central Europe, but with gift profile customers) are an outlier here but I'm my hiring experience there weren't really any imposters. Usually they come from companies we know well, it are new grads in which case the question of experience is moot anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I checked out the "cloud infrastructure" section and there's no challenge questions or code snippets. It's less of a _" Tech Dev Guide"_ and more of a _" Here Are Some Bookmarks I Found, Check Off The Ones You Read"_. It's not a terrible idea, but more of a suggested reading list than a "guide".

There's at least 10 years of such articles and videos piled up on the internet. Going through them all will take a long time, and even if it covers working with Google products the way Google wants you to, it's not necessarily the way you're going to use Google products at your company.

What _I_ really want is a single place where all of this can be documented, first as overviews, and then deeper knowledge that isn't exposed by blog posts or books, or even official documentation. I want an authoritative tech encyclopedia built on knowledge shared by a community of experts.

I'm trying to cobble something like that together right now, but it's surprisingly hard to organize in a way that isn't just a list of quick start guides for tools. And then there's what you present first, and how. Do you need to know Git merging strategies before you learn build pipelines, or can you just make some assumptions and wait til later?

<comment><USER10> I've just checked the Cloud Infrastructure section and couldn't see your point there. There are readings for fundamentals, then basic practices, then online courses in udacity and kube-bootcamp, then step-by-step guides to deepen the knowledge.

I think they have accomplished a good thing here: a curated list of sources to get into the cloud computing/infrastructure world.

I don't think they can talk about every step in the development lifecycle, it would be very very opinionated. It leaves the reader/developer no space for elasticity and freedom of choice to what to learn/practice. After acquiring the fundamentals, we should all choose our own path by discovering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm impressed by the coding interview resource guide [0], which for once seems to include questions of realistic difficulty for a new grad interview (if slightly on the easier side).

[0][https://techdevguide.withgoogle.com/resources/types/coding-i...](https://techdevguide.withgoogle.com/resources/types/coding- interview-question/?no-filter=true#)!

</comment><comment><USER12> "Why not follow one of these paths curated by university computer science faculty and Google engineers?"

The fact that Google equates their engineers with university faculty is either incredibly delusional or arrogant.

<comment><USER13> Google employs a non-trivial number of former university faculty as engineers...

<comment><USER14> And a nontrivial number of current university faculty.

(Fei-Fei Li recently left, as a notable example, and I can name 3-4 profs from my alma mater who are also employed at Google in various capacities)

<comment><USER13> Indeed, and even stranger arrangements. I know one professor who comes to work for us every summer (with hilarious HR boundary condition consequences every year).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> On a similar note, Google used to have a "Guide to Technical Development" page for students. It now redirects to this link, but you can still find it archived [0].

[0]: [https://web.archive.org/web/20160628051101/https://www.googl...](https://web.archive.org/web/20160628051101/https://www.google.co.in/about/careers/students/guide- to-technical-development.html)

</comment><comment><USER16> Did a quick once over on the lessons titles, didn't see anything mentioning SOLID or programming patterns and paradigms.

<comment><USER17> Patterns and paradigms can be taught easily on the job, and can be overly specific. The "advanced programming" course teaches genuine problem solving. Breaking down a problem into it's mathematical components to develop an optimal solution. It builds you into a good engineer, not a programmer that can spit out patterns to fit a problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Tried out cloud computing. Went to the first lesson, clicked the link for the YouTube of the first video class, described as "What is the Cloud? Watch this lively video for a quick overview of the Cloud landscape. Though it's a couple of years old, it's a great intro."

But got hit with a "this video is not available" YouTube page. A YouTube search for the same title brings up lots of possibles.

I'm hopeful about this.

<comment><AUTHOR> The link to [https://priyankamandikal.github.io/posts/gsoc-2016-project-o...](https://priyankamandikal.github.io/posts/gsoc-2016-project- overview) in 'Wikipedia accuracy review' also seems broken. Removing the trailing slash seems to fix it

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The first video for the Cloud Computing path, 'What is the Cloud?', is unavailable:

[https://techdevguide.withgoogle.com/paths/cloud/what-is- the-...](https://techdevguide.withgoogle.com/paths/cloud/what-is-the-cloud/#)!

<comment><USER20> And the videos in the ML course don't play for many people.

[https://support.google.com/machinelearningeducation/thread/5...](https://support.google.com/machinelearningeducation/thread/51878)

All MOOC sites have videos that play well in every browser. Google makes money by selling something else so apparently it doesn't care much about the quality of this site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Indian data scientists prefer learning from YouTube over IIT's online courses [https://qz.com/india/1498100/why-indian-techies-prefer- youtu...](https://qz.com/india/1498100/why-indian-techies-prefer-youtube-over- iit-and-iiscs-courses/)

</comment><comment><USER22> Is withgoogle.com a new subset of educational resources from google? Going directly to withgoogle.com just redirects me to google.com. My first instinct was suspicion when I saw the link.

<comment><USER23> It's legit. Also used for GSoC: [https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com](https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Are there sections on ethics and respecting an individuals privacy in there?

</comment><comment><USER25> wtf is this?

[https://techdevguide.withgoogle.com/resources/former- coding-...](https://techdevguide.withgoogle.com/resources/former-coding- interview-question-flatten-an-iterator-of-iterators/#)!

What a shit interview question.

<comment><USER26> Why do you think so? It seems to me to be a reasonable question to ask that can be written in the time frame of a typical interview.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How did your life change after you kicked Caffeine? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I am curious to know more about why people would want to stop having caffeine unless they specifically don't tolerate it well for some reason. I do understand why some people would want to drink _less_ coffee though, it is easy to go overboard.

I used to drink 3-5 cups per day, but over time I just found I didn't like the taste of our office coffee and so started having less of it. My life didn't really change, I still supplement my caffeine intake with other things (though not to the extent of 5 cups per day). Now I drink around one cup per day plus take a caffeine supplement when needed, or an energy drink with caffeine (I don't really restrict myself but it ends up being max 1 capsule per day). Whenever I drink coffee and plan on being productive vs just for the sake of enjoying the taste I also take L-Theanine at the same time, they seem to go well together.

<comment><USER3> For me the reason is simple: Panic attacks. Doc told me to cut out any caffeine since the increased heart rate triggered attacks. I got it under control again but still haven't touched caffeine. I miss coffee a lot, I was a lot more productive with some caffeine in my body.

<comment><USER4> I have a similar cause-effect with caffeine. I can drink a coffee in the morning before 10am and feel great because I'm still somewhat asleep - but an afternoon coffee is too much and overstimulates me. I find that alcohol can have a similar effect too!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My sleep was being wrecked and my sleep apnea was out of control until I cut out coffee after noon and limited my morning intake to 2-3 cups. I feel far better now, and on top of better sleep, I have a bit more control over my depression and anxiety. It wasn't a cure all, but I definitely noticed an improvement.

It's also probably a function of age, I think its effects became more negative and pronounced the older I got.

<comment><USER4> How much coffee did you used to drink per day? 2-3 cups in the morning does sound a little excessive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Being a 100lbs female, caffeine seems to have a much stronger effect on me than most other people. I get jittery and anxious, and when I have coffee after 12pm I have a hard time falling asleep in the evening. The little bit of wakefulness wasn't really worth it for me - instead I've been working on fixing my sleep schedule. And if I do need a little pick-me-up, I now drink green or mate tea instead.

This has the added bonus of having literally zero tolerance for caffeine, so if I do need (or want) to stay up long into the night, 1-2 cups of coffee or an energy drink will see me through until the early morning hours.

</comment><comment><USER7> I wish I could tell you. I tried for years to drop it but I can only do it for a few weeks at most. I will tell you that it's probably a good idea to drop it periodically since your body acclimates to it and it compensates overtime for the extra edge it gives you. It's like any other drug. You need more to stay ahead of the body's compensation.

The edge it gives you declines over time to the point that you need it just to function normally.

</comment><comment><USER8> I recently actually decided to give up coffee for a time, after drinking it almost daily since high school.

For the me the biggest changed I noticed was how much more strict I need to be on my sleep schedule. Before I could have an extra espresso shot or three if I didn't get enough sleep. Now I have no way to compensate for my tiredness. So in response I've been way more aggressive at getting to bed at a good time.

</comment><comment><USER9> After my mid 20s, I became incredible sensitive to caffeine. Drinking a single cup wires me for 24+ hours, gives me rather unpleasant anxiety, and causes racing thoughts when I'm trying to sleep at night.

Giving it up is a struggle (I love having multiple cups of tea), but I generally sleep a bit better and am less anxious. Not a life changing amount, but enough where it's worth it.

</comment><comment><USER10> Less migraines triggered on weekends. I found that idf I did not consume a similar about of caffine per day I coul more often get a migrain on a weekend when I did not have the same amount. E.g. I used to drink 3 Mt Dew a day and have none on weekends.

Now I limit the amount I drink to be infrequent (maybe 1 a week) And I love Mt Dew

</comment><comment><USER11> I used to drink up to 7 cups a day.

I understood that small naps throughout the day are better to recuperate energy than coffee, naps gives energy while increasing focus without stressing the body. But uses time.

Coffee give focus, with no invested time, but side effects are mild to severe stress and tiredness.

Now I drink 1 cup max only for taste and enjoyment.

</comment><comment><USER12> Ohhh... My relationship with caffeine has changed.

I will regularly stop and start drinking coffee and tea because after stopping for a week I get a "buzz" again.

Other than the buzz I don't notice the difference unless I drink an outrageous amount of caffeinated drinks.

</comment><comment><USER13> TL;DR: It didn't change much. Better sleep on average, but I eventually missed the occasional bursts of inspiration and productivity that I would get with caffeine which caused me to pick it up again. \--

I've gone off caffeine a couple of times, each for a period of about 1 year. If going "cold turkey" (which I did and don't necessarily recommend), I found it took about 2 weeks to return to baseline without headaches or other withdrawal symptoms. After this point it's mostly smooth sailing: I no longer felt I needed caffeine to wake up in the morning and didn't have any cravings.

On average, my sleep quality was quite a bit better. It was usually easier to fall asleep at night and wake up feeling rested. Overuse of caffeine can make it hard to feel tired at the end of the day, which can cause a vicious cycle of insufficient sleep leading to more caffeine use, etc.

On the flip side, during my periods of abstinence I found I would eventually start to miss it. A good caffeine buzz is one of my favorite small pleasures in life; I've had many of my best and most creative productive periods assisted by it. In addition, I also just really love the taste of good coffee and the ritual of preparing it in the morning. While the latter can be satisfied by substituting decaf, personally for me there just isn't any replacement for that feeling of being "in the zone" on caffeine where it feels like all my neurons are firing and forming connections rapidly, and the ideas and creative output just flow effortlessly.

As an aside, I do suffer from minor persistent depression, which is possibly one reason why I find caffeine helps to give me an extra boost to feel like a normal functioning person :)

To date I've found that totally abstaining from caffeine isn't the best fit for me, but I've learned over time to use it more moderately. Some of the measures I currently take that seem to keep me in a healthy balance:

\- Maximum of 2 cups of coffee per day

\- Practice being more mindful of caffeine consumption: I have one cup every morning around 8am, but instead of mindlessly chugging it throughout the day I will check in with myself before having another. If around 10-11am I feel like I really need a second cup, I have it. If I don't, I drink green tea or seltzer water instead.

\- No coffee after ~2pm. If I feel groggy or tired after 2pm I'll try drinking a low-caffeine or decaf tea instead, or going for a walk. 9/10 times just the act of drinking something hot will be enough to perk me up. This is probably the most helpful change I've made, as avoiding caffeine later in the day ensures I can sleep properly at night

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks bootz for this in-depth analysis. it helps me a lot to get into these nitty gritty anecdotes. its my last vice ( next to the occasional red wine or craft beer ).

im not a heavy drinker (by American standards ) just 1 cup in the morning and after lunch i love drinking argentine mate.

Ive been on this daily routine for years and im now worried this element alone has been the main culprit to my light sleeping habits + waking up with a lot of tension in my hands and fingers. Taking a .5mg of Xanax is my only respite but that too is just a bandaid/slippery slope. I guesd im long overdue for a full detox.

Of course the timing is never good is it? especially when you are on the cusp of launching a new startup. fun!

<comment><USER14> I agree for the most part with bootsz. One trick I play on myself is to make my own coffee at work using an Aeropress. Aside from it being cheaper than Starbucks and much better tasting than office coffee, it naturally limits me to two cups a day because of the effort involved.

<comment><USER13> I like that trick; might just have to adopt it myself! I've heard of it being applied to other things like sweets (e.g. you can have dessert but make your own from scratch, don't buy junk food). Just putting that extra obstacle in the way helps to avoid mindless consumption. Plus you probably end up enjoying it all the more when you have to work for it.

<comment><USER14> Yeah combine that with grinding your own coffee using a handheld burr grinder and you even get the benefit of some mild arm and wrist exercise!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've realized that it (coffee) was triggering an anxiety.

</comment><comment><USER16> I had to clean my kitchen up.</comment>


Cheapest way to buy an iPhone in the UK / The seperation of devices and carriers - <AUTHOR> http://cgarmstrong.me/post/22369448633/the-cheapest-way-to-buy-an-iphone-in-the-uk

<comment><USER2> I have suggested this to everyone I know who asks me about getting an iPhone on contract.

I used to send out a little excel sheet detailing the expected costs and actual costs to show how much differecne there was, especially as most UK contracts now want you to sign up for a 24 month deal, tying you in to a longer contract at a rate of £30 or £40 per month.

I currently use O2 but will be switching to giffgaff next month because of that unlimited data deal.</comment>


Facebook to be hit by its largest ever advertiser boycott over racism - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jun/24/ben-and-jerrys-joins-facebook-advertising-boycott-racism <comment><AUTHOR> A similar post was link earlier today but the link was from the NYT. Most of the comments went to discuss NYT intentions in publishing this, instead of the boycott. So i am linking the guardian and hopefully discussion will be about facebook/ads/boycott and maybe opportunistic marketing.</comment>


Germany's secret plan to bring Google to heel - <AUTHOR> http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/business/Tech_and_Media/article1433616.ece

<comment><USER2> This article is paywalled and only the intro paragraphs are available. Here's an article that's derived from the original article, but is freely available:

[http://news.softpedia.com/news/Germany-Wants-to-Treat- Google...](http://news.softpedia.com/news/Germany-Wants-to-Treat-Google-as-an- Utility-to-Make-Sure-It-Doesn-t-Misbehave-450624.shtml)</comment>


Ask HN: Did anyone see that really weird Show HN bug? - <AUTHOR> It was live for about 2 mins.
There was a link that said something like: SHOW HN: A Totally Legit Website
When you hovered over it, it crashed chrome.
Was it just me? Or some kind of attack? <comment><USER2> I saw it. It crashed my HN tab in Chrome. It contained the following:

          Show HN: A totally legit website

          7 minutes ago by Hacker News

So it appears that the URL [http://google.com/%%30%30](http://google.com/%%30%30) crashes Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER3> Someone clearly saw this game earlier and was testing it out [https://github.com/szhu/3030/tree/master](https://github.com/szhu/3030/tree/master)</comment>


The iPad CPU: Details on the Apple A4 - <AUTHOR> http://www.maclife.com/article/feature/ipad_cpu_all_you_need_know_about_apple_a4

<comment><USER2> This is less 'details' and more 'guesses'. There have also been (equally unconfirmed) reports that it uses a different GPU (an ARM Mali).

<comment><USER3> I stopped reading after I noticed the word "likely" is used 7 times in the single page article...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pure speculation on my part, but I wonder if Apple can and/or has baked trusted computing into the A4 silicon.

By controlling this much of the hardware, Apple can make it next to impossible to jailbreak their devices.

<comment><USER5> There was nothing stopping them before: both generations of iPhone / iPod touch chips were bespoke SoC hardware too, just via Samsung.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The core of the piece:

 _The A4 is actually built around a CPU core based on the common ARM Cortex A9 CPU, a 32-bit core that comes in several different flavors, with different numbers of cores. In typical cases, companies like Apple actually license the CPU design -- rather than paying $278 million to acquire the whole company!_

If Arm Holdings could be acquired for $278m, I'm sure Apple would have done it by now. Unfortunately for Apple, though, its market cap is actually in the $2-$2.5bn range.

<comment><USER7> The point is that Apple bought PA Semi for $278M. It would be unusual to spend so much money for a processor company and then turn around and use off-the- shelf ARM processors.

<comment><USER8> A PA VP told me Steve Jobs asked them to drop their nearly-finished Power design immediately to build AAPL a custom ARM SoC; they said no, so he bought them, to help them say yes. He probably could have poached their stars for a lot less than $278M, but I guess he was in a serious hurry, or just viewed $278M as not worth the hassle.

<comment><USER9> If he'd tried the "poach" approach, he'd probably not have gotten intact teams and there would have been a _lot_ of unhappy people.

Buying the entire company almost certainly worked better, another sign that Jobs "gets it" even without being a hardcore techie. A one of a kind, I think.

<comment><USER8> Perhaps. But if you look at the comps, PA investors got a sweet deal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I remember when Apple brought out the Macbook Air - and it sounded like a huge partnership between Apple and Intel. What is the relationship going forward?

<comment><USER11> I don't have any inside scoop here, but a huge partnership between Apple and Intel and an ARM-based iPad are not mutually exclusive. Most people acknowledge that, to get the kind of energy efficiency and battery life that people are starting to expect in mobile devices, current x86 parts are not a good solution. Nonetheless, we are stuck with x86 for anything that wants to run most existing desktop/laptop software until we come up with a virtualization, cross-compilation, or binary translation scheme that is efficient enough.

If Apple wants to continue selling Mac Pros and Macbooks, they will probably stay Intel for some time. Until Intel comes out with a part that can get Apple anywhere close to the many hours or even days they require for their mobile devices, Apple has no choice but to look elsewhere, and I can't see that as a reason to end a partnership on desktop/laptop processors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> A 1.6GHz Intel Atom spanks an entire week of lunch money out of a 1 GHz ARM, in terms of CPU performance. No doubt AAPL can mostly hide that with faster SW, relative to Windows Vista/7. But I would hate to compile anything on A4, whereas, a $200 Linux netbook is fine for most development.

IMO it's sad for something iPad's size to not have a reasonable native development environment.

<comment><USER7> _A 1.6GHz Intel Atom spanks a 1 GHz ARM_

Not necessarily; ARM claims that the Cortex A9 is the one doing the superscalar out-of-order spanking and I'm inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.

<comment><USER12> I'd love to see citations on both rphlx's and wmf's claims. Not trying to sound mean - I'm honestly interested in the future of low-power computing and I kind of hope ARM wins.

<comment><USER13> Here is one link: [http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2009/09/16/ARMCortexA9SMPDe...](http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2009/09/16/ARMCortexA9SMPDesignAnnounced.aspx)

Also Anandtech on the Cortex A9: [http://www.anandtech.com/gadgets/showdoc.aspx?i=3714&p=3](http://www.anandtech.com/gadgets/showdoc.aspx?i=3714&p=3)

and the pages around that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I read somewhere that the A4 has an ARM MALI graphics processor, not an SGX.

<comment><USER7> That guy _also_ has no idea what he's talking about.</comment></comment>


The Internet Is Making You a Not Nice Person - <AUTHOR> https://rosakranse.com/2016/09/29/the-internet-is-making-you-a-not-nice-person/ <comment><USER2> Actually I wasn't that nice to begin with.</comment>