The American Dream Is Alive in China - <AUTHOR> https://palladiummag.com/2019/10/11/the-american-dream-is-alive-in-china/ <comment><USER3> While I disagree pretty heavily with the author's central thesis (and this thesis relies on an ill-defined "american dream" that the author roughly describes as the period of postwar growth & prosperity for middle/upper class americans in the 1950s), I do have to agree with this part of the author's conclusion:

> China's success scares me. There is something deeply disconcerting about > watching China surpass America in the ways it is. China is transforming > fishing villages into major industrial cities, while we fail to build high- > speed rail or new housing. How are we going to catch up?

Right now China is still high off a period of heavy growth and industrialization. How China can handle easing out of heavy growth in the next 2-6 decades will show how real the Chinese dream is, but my personal fear (as a person who believes strongly in western liberalism) is that a rich authoritarian country can unlock a world of efficiency that the western world can only dream of, leaving our standard of living in the dust by comparison

I fear that this will lead to an era of global authoritarianism as countries around the world seek to emulate the success.

As a rail enthusiast, watching China build huge subway networks and a massive web of HSR almost overnight while my very rich western city struggles to extend a century old trolley by a few miles in the same timeframe, it really feels bad.

<comment><USER4> I wonder about this. By all accounts construction of homes in China is so haphazard buildings frequently become uninhabitable, and occasionally literally collapse within a few years. Clearly China has a lot of money and has exhibited the capacity for some large scale construction projects. But to what extent it is merely attempting to outrun a construction bubble, and ensnare developing world countries in debt; versus building a sustainable economic model, is questionable.

At the bottom end, manufacturing is moving out of China to countries like Vietnam. While high tech manufacturing is still China's forte, this is largely confined to special economic zones like Shenzien, and reliant on lack of enforcement of patent and copyright, as well as government subsidies for import and exports of components and manufactured goods. We're all familiar with the impossibly cheap components and electronic devices available through services like Ali.

I'm not sure any of this is sustainable - whether in an environmental sense, or economically. There is much that is illusory about the Chinese economy, and the recent clamp down of state control may well be an effort for the CCP to maintain control during the inevitable economic collapse they see coming.

<comment><USER3> > By all accounts construction of homes in China is so haphazard buildings > frequently become uninhabitable, and occasionally literally collapse within > a few years.

Well, I'm not convinced that this effect is necessarily widespread. Certainly more common than in the west where we have strict building regulations and such, but this is the flip side of getting a lot of housing built cheaply, which is necessary for China. An analogue might be construction in the states during our industrial revolution - we had all sorts of horrid issues, from barely-livable tenements with no ventilation to massive fires that killed tons of poor workers. Most of the stuff we built back then doesn't come close to conforming with modern building code.

In any case, it's not a big problem I saw personally in China, but I'm n=1 here. I stayed in a relatives' apartment building from the 90s that was holding up fine, as well as perfectly nice newer apartments that relatives enjoyed in tier3 cities and older houses and townhouses that aged well.

I imagine this is the kind of thing that western media likes to play up, but isn't as visible for people on the ground (another example is the social credit system - I couldn't find any evidence the social credit system even exists yet during my time in China, much less the horrifying things we see reported regularly.)

> But to what extent it is merely attempting to outrun a construction bubble, > and ensnare developing world countries in debt; versus building a > sustainable economic model, is questionable.

Strongly agreed, hence my comments that the next 2-6 decades of slowing growth will be very telling on the "Chinese dream".

I don't think Chinese success is guaranteed - I think the CCP has made a lot of frightful financial gambles. My big fear is that it _does_ , somehow, pay off, and the world turns to China as a model of how to run a country as a result.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is the opposite of the American dream. Immigrants fled to the US for it's unprecedented social mobility and opportunity. Things being nice for the upper echelons of society has little to do with it.

</comment><comment><USER6> The author of this article seems to anticipate that the growth China has experienced during the past few decades will continue for the foreseeable future. I am doubtful. International corporations continue moving manufacturing to other countries. China's total debt / GDP ratio keeps rising and will eventually be unsustainable. Population is aging. Automation will displace many manufacturing jobs. I don't think China's future is totally bleak, but it isn't rosy either.

</comment><comment><USER7> I know I have always dreamed of being thrown in prison for criticizing the government:0

<comment><USER8> The 50s are quite often described as the time that America had achieved the 'American Dream'. And during that time thousands of people were imprisoned and/or lost their jobs due to Kafkaesque trails performed by the House Un- American Activities Committee.

<comment><USER9> The scale, intensity and length are just not comparable. It's like comparing the Gulag to modern American prison labour.

<comment><USER10> If we are talking about that specific time period, then what China is doing now is hardly any worse than what was being done to African Americans in the US at the time. And the scale is absolutely comparable.

The major difference, however, is that the US was still a democracy that had mechanisms to allow for things to be changed for the better. It's hard to see what mechanisms for improvements exist in China.

<comment><USER9> Sorry, not sure what it is we're comparing? 1950s segregation to the oppression of Uygurs, in which case no, in the 1950s the US was not running an all-encompassing dystopian surveillance state, mass reeducation camps and oppressive forced assimilation of African Americans? Or 1950s segregation to imprisonment and torture of political dissidents in general, in which case no, in the 1950s the US was not rounding up every Black activist and executing him or throwing him in jail for decades?

<comment><USER11> > Or 1950s segregation to imprisonment and torture of political dissidents in > general, in which case no, in the 1950s the US was not rounding up every > Black activist and executing him or throwing him in jail for decades?

Not on home soil perhaps. But from the 50s to at least the 80s, that was the general policy in Latin Amercia. Then for more recent you can look to the middle east for the mass round up of civilians, torture and decades long imprisonment without charge.

Not exactly the same, but correlations exist, as they do for the parent comment you are replying to

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> >Coverage I've read in American discourse focuses on the dystopian side of the Chinese government. Examples abound: from its oppression of Uyghurs, to its outright ban of many religious groups, to its increasingly aggressive influence in American political and social life—like the Blizzard and NBA cases over the last week. But over the last five years, this discourse, though often correct, has felt increasingly disconnected from my personal experiences in China and the more fundamental problems at hand. In particular, it fails to comment on the larger, more important context: how much better life has become for many Chinese people, China's new self-confidence, and America's struggle with development, optimism, and sovereignty.

What the hell is this guy saying? "Oh sure, China has literal concentration camps, but as long as you're not there then it's just great!"

>In many ways, China in the 2010s reminds me of what I've read of America in the 1950s: the country is powerful, economic development is booming, and people are optimistic about the future.

"People" meaning "the ruling class". It was great living in America in the fifties, as long as you were a white dude with a job.

<comment><USER13> I agree that there are many negative things that has done and still do. Including the things you name.

As an American, though I think my country might be even more shameful, We have Gitmo. We have a country that lied into a war that killed at least 100.000s of people.

Our treatment of asylum seekers now is certainly worth a dystopian movie or two.

As far as the 1950s you are defining the ruling class as the ruling class and the middle class? I dont disagree with you about diversity but the middle class was much better off than it is today.

Our ever-shrinking middle class and our ever getting richer oligarchs and the political class is contrasted to China's increasing middle class.

But you go from zero it is easy to improve, and in the US we used to have a large middle class so it is easier to lose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a bizarrely rose tinted view of China, which not only completely ignores mistreatment of ethnic, religious and sexual minorities - <USER2> imprisonment and 'reeducation to literal organ legging; but also the everyday horrors of life under an authoritarian dictatorship.

For example the frequent adulteration of food (including baby food) with poisons. The panopticon surveillance and control of movement which prevents the poor and those living in rural areas from travelling within their own country. Restrictions on free speech, not only political in nature but critical of any aspects of civil society - and the inevitable lack of reforms to public health and safety.

Increasing nationalism, police observation and 'patriotic' violent attacks on foreigners. Violence against medical professionals when patients feel (rightly or wrongly) that they haven't received the treatment they should have.

The rise of an unelected dictator forming a cult of personality and the subsequent reinvigoration of anti-foreign, nativist han Chinese sentiment, and the increased suppression of minorities and dissent that has resulted.

The thousands of 'incidents' of protests (attempted rebellions) that are ruthlessly crushed each year, while being actively hidden by Chinese media and social media.

The incredibly successful censorship of both China's own history and any discourse about political reform.

On and on.

China is a spectacular case of all the ills that can befall a centralised authoritarian regime when people cannot directly criticise their government. This article seems to advocate 'learning from China' in a way that implies replicating their authoritarian control. It reminds me of a bizarre TED talk a few years ago that celebrated the supposedly effective meritocracy of the CCP - just before it became one man dictatorship - while ignoring the fact that the CCP leadership is almost exclusively composed of the children and grandchildren of the communist party leaders that supported Mao. It is in short, thinly veiled propaganda.

<comment><USER11> > which not only completely ignores mistreatment of ethnic, religious and > sexual minorities - from imprisonment

but the US statistics on imprisonment of minorities is no better.

> For example the frequent adulteration of food (including baby food) with > poisons

all major countries have scares and recalls due to contamination

> The panopticon surveillance

really? After all the details come out in the last 5 years, surveillance cannot be thrown at the Chinese alone. UK leads CCTV per population (or some metric). NSA data slurping revelations...

> and the inevitable lack of reforms to public health and safety.

why do you think the Chinese do not make improvements to public health and safety? Of course they do.

> Increasing nationalism, police observation and 'patriotic' violent attacks > on foreigners

errr are you blind to the rise of this in the US since Trump and UK since brexit?

> Violence against medical professionals when patients feel

Bombing abortion clinics comes to mind

> The rise of an unelected dictator forming a cult of personality and the > subsequent reinvigoration of anti-foreign, nativist han Chinese sentiment, > and the increased suppression of minorities and dissent that has resulted.

Change unelected to "unelected by the majority" in higly disputed elections countrywide with many cases of fraud and vote tampering and I can think of another country this applies to

Anyway, why does the above mean there is no "American Dream" in China, when most the accusations you make can be levelled (in some form) to the US as well

<comment><USER14> Cherry-picking? Some of the objections are reasonably reflected back at the Western world, but most are nowhere to the degree perfected in China. War on Muslims (systematic destruction of Mosques etc); military conflict with Tibet (their own people?); the astonishing 'social credit score' system.

Sure there may be an American Dream in China, if you line up with the acceptable profile of citizen. But the Dream is supposed to be for everybody; that's foundational to the idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Yeah no, thanks.

Sure, everything is nice for many people if you don't dare speak against the authority. Tomorrow you're on the wrong side of the fence. Good luck coming back.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/chinese- ap...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/chinese-app-on-xis- ideology-allows-data-access-to-100-million-users-phones-report- says/2019/10/11/2d53bbae-eb4d-11e9-bafb-da248f8d5734_story.html)

[https://www.chinalawblog.com/2019/09/chinas-new- cybersecurit...](https://www.chinalawblog.com/2019/09/chinas-new- cybersecurity-program-no-place-to-hide.html)

<comment><USER9> Not to mention that, once in a while, even people who don't dare speak against the authority get caught up and obliterated by the system. It's the nature of oppressive authoritarian systems where the rule of law is absent. You don't necessarily need to _do_ anything for it to single you out.

On the topic of the 'American Dream': the more successful you are, the more likely it is in such a system that you don't pay off the right guy in time, or don't surrender enough of your wealth to a well-connected guy who wants a piece of it. And off to the Gulags you go, sharing a cell with the 'political prisoner' who pointed to as a cautionary tale of why you must not speak out and criticize the government. Wait, does that mean you're also a 'political prisoner' now too?

<comment><USER13> Assange, Snowden, Manning.. Speaking truth to power is not without its risks in the US.

The list can be made much larger, but then it needs to explain each case, whereas the ones above most people know about.

You can say this is not speaking truth to power, it was leaks that are different but not really.

Concentration camps in China, might be a secret. I dont think they are but what goes on in side of them is meant to be, breaking the government's repression of information is a good thing.

Just like telling the world what the US really does is good for our country.

<comment><USER9> Are you trying to say all states use coercion, or actually trying to draw parallels between Chinese and US government's methodology for suppressing dissent? Because if it's the latter, they are not comparable. You wouldn't even hear of a Chinese soldier who did what Manning did, regardless of motivations and how wrong the military's exposed actions were. Neither would his family hear about him, ever again. People have been executed in China for far less, sometimes simply for losing a high-stakes political game.

The larger point I was trying to make is that having the rule of law usually moderates the severity of repression, sure, but it's not just a difference in degree. It's a difference in kind - it prevents arbitrary oppression. You can fault the US for suppressing whistle-blowers/leakers, but you cannot tell me those whistle-blowers/leakers simply stumbled into their actions without knowing they'll get in trouble. They knew the game, and knowingly broke its rules. Are there rules in China? Maybe, until there aren't. Ask the two Canadians being held in isolation without even the right to a book, just because their files turned up at the wrong bureaucrats desk and became needed to send a message to the Canadian government.

This is also why I won't set foot in the PRC if I can help it. I don't want to be used as a message to my government, no matter how unlikely it is for an insignificant pawn like me to get caught up in something like that. I'll limit my travel to places where I can read up on rules beforehand, and those rules are actually followed.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is this type of engineer common at startups? - <AUTHOR>

At the last three startups/small companies I've worked at, the following type of engineer has had a principal role:<p>- 40+ years old - single not by choice - possibly virgin (or can only get laid via sexual tourism) - sexist - juvenile sense of humor - overly emotional/bipolar - creepy around women - talented<p>As a founder it's great to have these smart neck beards bust their asses for you since they have no responsibilities outside of world of warcraft, but they make life hell for their "well-adjusted" coworkers. <comment><USER2> At my last 4 jobs, I've worked with a variation of that guy. One was the most talented Unix admin I've ever worked with. He lived alone in a 2 bedroom apartment with no furniture, and slept in a sleeping bag. He was obsessed with anime and 4chan, and he loved long weekends because he could tune our servers for higher performance without interruptions.</comment>


Ask HN: Has the "Who's Hiring" thing worked out for anyone? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Given that I've hired a couple of very good people via it...

And given that a while after that I went through the round (at least 12 interviews by 10 unique people) at AWS because of it (though I later turned that down - I wanted a combination of tech and customer focus, they wanted either one or the other and felt I was too strong technically to be used on a customer focused role)...

Yes.

It works.

If you are hiring you should think hard about how you present it. Corporate- speak is ill-advised, and less is definitely more. Plain developer-to- developer language is the best route.

It is not unusual for candidates to go back over old whoishiring posts, filter by city and then look... so if you can include a permalink to a "positions available" page on your site you will continue to reap the rewards of a good, short advert for quite a while. Make sure to include an email address too (in the advert) so that HN candidates reach you directly rather than get lost in the official HR process.

If you are going for a position, I would advise that you use the opportunity to strike up a conversation and learn about the position and company, rather than just spam them with your CV (how does that help either of you?).

And as mentioned above... look at the whoishiring posts for the last quarter or 6 months, a company in growth probably is still looking.

It works, so long as you realise that this platform connects individuals, rather than treating it as an agency/corp HR style thing.

<comment><USER3> > felt I was too strong technically to be used on a customer focused role)...

seems like amazon and google have the same ideas when it comes to support.

<comment><USER2> My impression of Amazon was that they really are customer obsessed.

They did say I was too technical, but what I think they really meant is that they were looking for someone with more business/customer-facing experience and a bit of tech... it was an AWS Solutions Architect position.

What they offered instead was a very compelling purely technical position, but I have this deep belief that technology is a set of tools that solves customer problems. I didn't feel comfortable accepting a position in which I could not directly hear from a customer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> We've hired more people from HN than from any other single source of candidates.

I wish there was a rule that the "Who's Hiring" thread happened on the first Monday of every month, not the first day of the month. It's pretty silly to have that thread happen on a weekend.

<comment><USER5> Why? Do you not have your own net connection, and are relying on your employer's? Why can you not wait for Monday to roll around for you to finally see it?

I was very happy to see that post yesterday and applied to what I thought a great looking job. OTOH, I'm new here (HN).

<comment><USER4> Obviously, because fewer people read HN on Saturday morning than do on Monday morning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It has yielded many of our best candidates, but not yet any hires. We judge job boards mainly on the quality of candidates that it connects us with, since what happens from that point on is more a function of us and the individual candidate. So, yes, we consider it to have worked out well for us.

That said, I have my doubts about the mechanism. It seems to me that it would be more efficient to have a job board, since even a primitive one would allow candidates to better search for the jobs they are interested in. A basic job board doesn't seem very hard to set up, and we'd be definitely be willing to pay a monthly fee, because the quality of developers here is so high.

<comment><USER7> Would a job board decrease the quality of candidates on average? I would guess part of the reason the quality of candidates is so high is because it's active readers/participants of HN that respond/post to the threads. Having a job board would invite many other people as it is easier to access (non-active participants may miss the 'Who's Hiring' thread but a job board would be harder to miss).

There are potential solutions to this, for example only allowing users with a certain reputation point threshold to access it (I believe StackOverflow's job board employs a similar system). Just something to think about...

<comment><USER6> That's a good point, and I like your proposal, but we post on other job boards and don't currently lose much time sifting through obviously bad candidates. So, even without any such mechanism, I think that the benefits of improved interactions with HN members would outweigh the extra costs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My only recent issue with the "Who's Hiring" threads has been the repetitive nature of the posts. It is starting to be that the majority of the posts are the same 95% of the evergreen positions that were in the previous month's post - from accounts created mostly to post in that thread.

 _sigh_ Why did we think it was wise to brag to HR & recruiters about how well this mechanism is/was :)

</comment><comment><USER9> 100%. I would trust Who's Hiring and Who's Freelancing threads over any recruiter, website, etc. any day.

P.S. - For anyone thinking "oh wow, I could scale this type of thing with a website", think again. Tight communities > scale.

<comment><USER10> Can we scale tight communities? Isn't that what reddit is doing with the subreddit system? Check and mate sir. Don't tell me what I can and can not scale! </sarcasm>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Works very well for me, a startup CTO in London.

Average hit rate for me (in two different roles as hiring manager) has been about one inquiry every two or three postings and one hire per year. This volume isn't enough to grow teams as fast as I normally do, so it doesn't work on its own. However, unlike broadcast methods like StackOverflow that I also use, whoishiring gives me _only_ high-quality people so I don't have to do any CV weeding - so it is always a very important part of my hiring strategy.

Most recent hire was in March and we're _really_ pleased with him (hi Ben!)

<comment><USER12> > whoishiring gives me _only_ high-quality people so I don't have to do any CV > weeding

I don't understand this. HN is an open website where anybody can sign up, and the Who's Hiring posts can be reached from a google search. What makes you so sure that applicants are all high-quality people?

<comment><USER13> My guess is that the most unqualified job seekers don't know about HN. You have to be interested in Tech/startups to stick around HN for the most part.

And perhaps are the users who read the Who's hiring threads more restrictive with to whom they send application. That is, they only send CVs to openings that they think they can carry out.

The last part is just total speculation though but that is my own experience with Who's hiring, I've read many posts but have not applied for those I would be unqualified for. Unfortunately for me, that is almost all of them as I am no developer but it is quite interesting to see what kind of skills HN value highly.

<comment><USER14> What sort of work are you looking for? Would you be willing to relocate to London, e.g. for an internship?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've gotten a few interviews out of them, but more importantly, they were for places that I was very interested in. IMO the personal touch and EFFORT that it takes to post in a "Who's Hiring" thread makes me believe that the company is serious about hiring someone from the tech community.

I'm just reading my comment above and thinking about how it's a bit elitist, but again I like it more for the personal touch / effort / show of good faith vs. "exclusive club" reasoning.

<comment><USER16> This reasoning is the converse of the importance of a cover letter with your application. Targeting and personalised messaging are important for both sides of employment!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The "Who's Hiring" threads are very interesting to me, and I imagine they also are for those who aren't currently looking for work. It's fascinating to see what established companies and startups are looking for.

One minor gripe I have about WH submissions is that many still aren't abiding by the rules. I see a lot of them that leave crucial info out, especially those that don't say if the role can be remote or must be at their office.

</comment><comment><USER18> I picked up a job from a "Who's Hiring" thread, and had a fairly positive experience moving to Boulder last summer to start work. The company offered $15K more than I was making, but in retrospect I should have taken the $30K bump I was offered to stay where I was.

What the new company didn't offer was an expenses paid on-site interview, relocation assistance, or an incentive structure. The software engineers work in a dark, boiler-room environment, and struggle mightily to maintain a sprawling, legacy code base. Turnover at the company is extremely high. I lasted 9 months; the last 6 of which were spent trying to 'change things' at the urging of a couple of friends I had made there. Several people from my group have left since, and nearly everyone I worked with has asked me to let them know about other opportunities I might come across.

The CTO making the postings to HN was hellbanned at some point, and stopped posting altogether once I pointed it out. I'm really not sure why that happened to him though. Is posting the same text every month grounds for removal? The environment wasn't right for me, but I'm sure there are a few HN readers who would be willing to put up with it to make a 6 figure salary as a programmer in Boulder. The right person might even be able to help turn things around.

<comment><USER19> Ouch ... Boulder huh? Now you've got me wondering who your talking about so I can warn others...!

<comment><USER18> I wouldn't want to go that route. Some parts of the company are better than others, and I would like to believe things are changing for the better in general. I shared the anecdote just to emphasize the value of an on-site visit, and to encourage people to look for signals that the hiring company intends to retain the people they bring on board. Others might be cognizant of those things already, but in retrospect, the fact that I found the opportunity on HN did influence my assumptions about what the culture would be like.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Yes, it works.

I used it once and tracked responses. The best and worst* candidates came from HN.

Worst, as in scattergun "here's my CV" emails.

Best, as in the "I love what you're doing because X. Here's the kinds of things I could do for you... and here are the things I've done before. I notice you're using X, Y and Z... perhaps we could try using this instead? Because..."

I'd definitely post here in future, but only after posting somewhere else.

I also posted for a remote job which I think helped. I had 0 responses from California.

</comment><comment><USER21> I got hired from a HN "Who's Hiring" thread back in mid-2010. My life's changed for the better ever since. And I live in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Been working remotely since then. Although I've switched jobs since then, that first gig was life-changing.

</comment><comment><USER22> I hired a backend developer through "HN: who's hiring".

And _in Prague_ , so it's not "SV only" either.

</comment><comment><USER23> I found my current gig through the August 2012 thread, so yes.

It was immensely useful to me in the many months before I picked up and moved to California because it gave me a great sense of what kind of companies were actively hiring, what sorts of skills were most in demand, and what kind of compensation was available. Now as an engineer helping out with recruiting I find it's a great way to get the attention of candidates with more unorthodox backgrounds. It's especially helpful for companies located outside of S[FV] since we don't have the same critical mass of local personal developer contacts to hire from.

I'd second that the thread should be the first Monday of the month.

</comment><comment><USER24> I've gotten a couple of interviews through the Who's Hiring threads. I've found that you tend to get a faster response from posts where the poster include an email address (for obvious reasons).

I've yet to get a job from those threads (if that's what you're asking), but I have met some awesome teams and my pool of contacts has significantly increased.

</comment><comment><USER25> We should do a "Who's Looking for a Job" thread. Post your location, should description of your skills and what you're looking for.

</comment><comment><USER26> Has not worked for me as a job seeker, but that's more because of geography than anything else.

</comment><comment><USER27> Picked up a long term contract a couple of years ago, started out with 20-30 hours/week and has tapered off a bit as they transitioned from bootstrapped to venture funded and hiring full time devs. I mostly do one off must haves for them these days as I've moved on to other things.

Best way to handle such clients is to be available, adaptable and competent.

</comment><comment><USER28> I think there's an unrelated and positive aspect to it as well:

I moved to London 3 months ago and often checked the freelance and job threads on HN. Seeing the amount of jobs available for London gave me a boost of confidence.

(I'm yet to approach anyone via those threads - because I've already got too much freelance work.)

<comment><USER29> Mind sharing what kind of freelancing you're doing? Things like Rails, or enterprise Java stack?

<comment><USER28> 100% of my work is Django and frontend web based.

Although I'm trying to market myself as an iOS/ Objective-C developer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Was hired using the thread last year. Would look here before looking elsewhere in the future. There are always clueless companies mixed in, but less noise here.

</comment><comment><USER31> Worked for me. I found one of the best companies I've ever been at from HN, and I'm in Minnesota.

</comment><comment><USER32> As a job-seeker, I've applied to a few posts in HN: Who's Hiring threads, but I haven't managed to land anything (thought it's not like I've applied to hundreds of posts, because most of them are not in my area).

Guess my karma can't be cashed in for a job. ;-)

</comment><comment><USER33> Yes it definitely works. We hired a very talented remote c++ dev using this method.

</comment><comment><USER34> While I'm aware this isn't the actual topic, this is just a warning to not take this thread as a accurate representation of how useful "Who's Hiring" threads really are (e.g. as compared to a recruiters/job site/googling). I say this because that's pretty much what this thread may be miscontstrued as.

Reasoning: the majority of the posters will be people saying they got a job, effectively ignoring the swathes of people who were looking for a job and didn't find one they liked on HN. Since finding a job on HN is obviously much more notable than not finding a job on HN.

</comment><comment><USER35> It's worked out very well for me - I got my first (=current) job through one of those threads.

</comment><comment><USER36> Chiming in with one more "absolutely yes!" We just interviewed and hired an amazing developer who's right down the street from us.

HN does seem to select for a certain set of folks who care about the industry and their craft, and the "who's hiring / who's looking" posts let me take a passive approach and ping people directly when they sound like great fits for what we need.

</comment><comment><USER37> Was introduced to and hired by a company through one of the who's hiring threads. Given my location in the US Midwest, the fact that the company even knew about HN and had employees active here was a good indicator that it was the kind of company I would like to work for - which turned out to be the case.

</comment><comment><USER38> Developer in Stockholm, Sweden here. I usually check who's hiring in Stockholm, even though I am not actively looking for a job at the moment. You never now when you need to find something else, and having seen a company posting to "Who's Hiring" is always a good indicator of an interesting company.

</comment><comment><USER39> Yes, I got my first job in London almost three years ago through a "Who's Hiring" post.

</comment><comment><USER40> Yes. I saw a comment that interested me and was in the area I was looking for. I sent them an email asking if they had any internship positions.

I'm looking forward to working with them next week.

</comment><comment><USER41> Most definitely. I've found two developers through HN posts.

</comment><comment><USER42> For me it helps in the sense that I would prefer to work for a company that actually knows what Hacker News is. Not that easy to find here in Europe...

</comment><comment><USER43> Very effective. We hired 3 people at <https://circleci.com> directly from HN's "Who's hiring" posts.

</comment><comment><USER44> Yeah, I found my previous job through a "Who's Hiring" thread. It was a great place, but I left when they were acquired.

</comment><comment><USER45> Found my actual employer on Jan 11's HN Who is Hiring :) Still here. Working from Spain and my employer is from SV btw.

</comment><comment><USER46> Got hired 2 months ago because of a Who's Hiring thread. I don't think I'm ever using another job posting board again.

</comment><comment><USER47> I would love to see more non-technical/semi-technical posts on the thread as well...

Most of the companies that I've dug into from the "Who's Hiring" thread seem to have non-tech jobs open once you get to their site and poke around but they don't seem to get posted on the thread.

</comment><comment><USER48> I've gotten an offer via a who's hiring. I didn't took it, but yeah I'd say it works :)

ps: it was for London.

<comment><USER49> Well, since you left for London eventually anyway, it could probably at least be said that it sparked some interest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> _No evil eye_ , I found my internship for this summer on a "Who's Hiring" post.

</comment><comment><USER51> I got an offer on Thursday and expect to give an answer on Monday, so yes. :)

</comment><comment><USER52> Yes. I recently hired a great, ambitious developer from one of these threads.

</comment><comment><USER53> About three years ago I've forwarded a link to a friend of mine, and he got the best job ever. Just last week I got hired after responding to the last month's "Seeking freelancers" post. So, yes.

</comment><comment><USER54> I'm not job hunting but I read the thread anyway and there are a number of companies on my radar that otherwise wouldn't be. Unfortunately about half of them are SV and not remote though.

</comment><comment><USER55> Worked for me. I applied because of a Who's Hiring post nigh on two years ago, and was hired. As an aside, I eventually ended up working on the same team as the guy who made the post.

</comment><comment><USER56> Absolutely. I found the job that allowed me to move back out to the place I love (San Diego) and work at a great place from a Hiring thread. It was literally life changing.

<comment><USER57> Congrats! Note there's an HN meetup in town on the last Friday of every month, may want to check it out :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> I was hired at Monetate (Philly area) after hearing about the job on HN. I believe we have hired several other software engineers who found out about it from HN, as well.

</comment><comment><USER59> I got a client and several inquiries with my first SEEKING WORK post. The second one got me nothing. How you write it matters a lot and having some karma helps.

</comment><comment><USER60> I found my current position on a Who's Hiring post back in March 2012. I love my job and couldn't ba happier.

</comment><comment><USER61> yes, found a job where i am well compensated and and stuff i am doing is actually very enjoyable for me.

</comment><comment><USER62> Yes, I got hired via "Who's Hiring" and I've hired an intern through it. A positive experience indeed.

</comment><comment><USER63> By the way any tips for writin a SEEKING WORK post? I can't figure out a good way to stand out.

</comment><comment><USER64> Worked for me, been working with a great company scaling their video platform and its been fun.

</comment><comment><USER65> Got my current position, which I really like, through it.

</comment><comment><USER66> Yes very well. Found most excellent gig thereby.

</comment><comment><USER67> Our first hire came from one of these :)

</comment><comment><USER68> I'm new to HN. I have just now found out this "Who's Hiring" thread. looks interesting. takes some time for me to see if it's working.

</comment><comment><USER69> i got mine through HN, changed my life for better</comment>


:-moz-any() CSS selector grouping - <AUTHOR> http://dbaron.org/log/20100424-any

<comment><USER2> This doesn't seem to be linked to any upcoming or finalised W3C/WHATWG standard. It certainly looks like a nice idea, but isn't this arbitrary introduction of non-standard features exactly what we hated IE3-6 for? Prefixing it with "moz-" doesn't really make it less propriatory (we can easily have imagined all the IE* 'extensions' having an ie- prefix). If IE9 came out with a load of new CSS selectors and syntax that nobody had heard of, there'd be uproar in large sections of the technorati.

This kind of experimentation is certainly useful. However, with the vendor- prefixes leaking into real world sites, we seem to need a real playground for experimental new CSS/HTML features that ensures they don't get used in production. Alas, I'm not sure what the best route to this would be.

<comment><USER3> The vendor-prefixed properties being used on production sites are the fault of those who create the sites, not those who create the browsers. The purpose of the vendor-prefixes is well known: to put new capabilities into the hands of developers and designers to allow them to test different implementations without having to use non-production versions of browsers. You are welcome to use these properties however you see fit, but you don't get to complain when they go away or change implementation because they are, by definition, not standardized and in-flux. So if your site is relying on them, and you don't want to spend the time to maintain them when they change, it's your own fault.

I thought this had been to put to rest. <http://searchyc.com/vendor+prefix>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> More than any added fancy gradient, shadow, etc. property, I look forward to progress on the CSS syntax. Supposedly it is so simple as to allow non- programmers to use it, but I honestly have never met a non-programmer who found CSS easy to use. It would be nice if we can keep the old syntax around, but have shortcuts like these added for those who wanted to use them.

</comment><comment><USER5> OT but my favorite item on his blog is this one <http://dbaron.org/log/20100309-faster-timeouts> which helped me figure out an animation smoothness problem was with the browser renderer itself and not settimeout specifically</comment>


My Swift Dilemma - <AUTHOR> http://owensd.io/2014/09/24/swift-experiences.html <comment><USER2> I'm not sure I understand the point of his post.

In all the examples he gives Swift comes with better and more succint syntax plus more safety than Obj-C, and on par with his "Obj-C 3.0" idea.

And of course it has tons of other features and flexibility he doesn't delve into.

The whole post for me boils down to his "I hate Generics" rant at the end.

<comment><USER3> This is just a side-effect of the blub paradox disease. One of the symptoms for those that are afflicted with it is ranty blog posts about new languages that the afflicted person does not perceive as being better because it doesn't really have the same semantics as the one language they are used to.

I think it was Douglas Crockford that said this. We don't get new and better technology because the old people accept it. We get new and better technology because the people using the old crap just die out.

<comment><USER4> Post [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8367012](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8367012) suggests that it is actually Swift that is the Blub language...

<comment><USER5> That doesn't suggest Swift is a Blub-like language to me.

Though not explicitly stated in the Blub paradox, I'd say it implies that a fresh programmer, unfamiliar with both Blub and the more advanced language, would pick the more advanced language.

The Blub paradox doesn't automatically apply to every language whose syntax you find bizarre. It also has to be a more advanced language, and the reason that you don't like the language's syntax and constructs must be because you don't understand the advanced features they enable.

This is clearly not the case with Obj-C and the post you mentioned.

<comment><USER6> No? You've never ever heard Java/C++ programmers complain about ObjC's syntax? I find that... unlikely. [http://bit.ly/1CqrYY4](http://bit.ly/1CqrYY4)

<comment><USER5> Yes, I've heard it many times.

How is that a counterexample? _Bizarre syntax alone_ is not enough for the Blub paradox. I don't know anyone who seriously argues that Obj-C is a more advanced language than Java/C++, so Blub doesn't apply.

<comment><USER4> You should get around more.

Objective-C object-orientation via dynamic messaging is much more advanced/powerful than the Abstract Data Types available in C++ and Java. It enables such features as target/action, NSUndoManager, Higher Order Messaging, distributed objects...and their concise implementation.

If you don't understand dynamic messaging and see Objective-C as just a way of doing things that you would do in Java or C++, then I'd agree that it is less advanced at doing those things.

Blub.

<comment><USER5> This is entering highly subjective territory.

The consensus is that Objective-C's brand of OO is not particularly advanced, and Objective-C as a language is definitely _not_ considered advanced. Keep in mind Paul Graham's essay had _Lisp_ in mind, not a C derivative.

Nevertheless, the post that sparked this thread was a comparison _between Swift with Obj-C_. Now, even if you consider Obj-C an "advanced language" (which most people do not), it's completely unreasonable to think that a programmer looking at both Swift and Obj-C would disregard the latter because of the Blub paradox. It would be highly... let's say nonstandard to consider Obj-C more advanced than Swift.

Not Blub.

<comment><USER6> On the contrary, it is well known that ObjC and related languages represent a different strain of OO than Java or C++. In fact, people has gone so far as to say that C++/Java don't really represent "real" OO at all.

It should be obvious that ObjC belongs to the Smalltalk linage, which is quite different from C++/Java. Unless you have understood why Smalltalk is still held in high regard, you haven't understood the language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "I look at the feature set of Swift, and I have to ask myself the question: what's the point? What is really trying to be solved? And does it provide significant benefits over languages that already exist?"

One reason may be that large companies want _ownership_ of a modern, C#/Java/Go-like language [1]. I was an intern at Adobe when it was trying to develop such a language (ActionScript 4) + VM, and a primary reason not to adopt an existing language is that they wanted control and to be free of legacy baggage as much as possible. Obj-C is reasonable to use today, but its C and Smalltalk underpinnings sometimes feel like anachronisms for people writing App Store apps. This is probably especially true if you're a language designer like Chris Lattner at Apple and are tasked with fixing the most prominent pain points that your language users face.

[1] I realize these are somewhat diverse languages.

<comment><USER8> > One reason may be that large companies want ownership of a modern, > C#/Java/Go-like language

Quite true. A major reason why c# exists is that circa 2000, Microsoft wanted _ownership_ of a modern, Java-like language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The author's comment on the first example is:

> _what is the type of $0 and $1?_

Surely a great thing about Swift is that the compiler _knows_ the types of $0 and $1 and will prevent you from doing stupid things with them like you can in Obj-C?

<comment><USER10> Yes, and having lambdas and unnamed parameters is a great thing when the local context is enough to explain it.

People are totally okay working with unnamed numbers and values, and it is as important with functions when you program in functional way.

We write

      x2 = x1 + 10

if it makes sense in the context. When it needs a better explanation we name the value

      width = 10
      ...
      x2 = x1 + width

If we would need to name EVERY number, the code would be less readable. Same with the functions, sometimes lambda with unnamed parameters (e.g. $0 < $1) is more readable than naming the lambda and all the parameters. Each name adds a conceptual burden.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I felt mostly the same way, until last night.

Last night was one of the few times I touched ObjC in months, since I was starting a project from scratch, it took me a while to recall the precise details of @property syntax.

He's right to say that swift is _mostly_ syntactic sugar. However, as he points out, all we really needed was ObjC with a better syntax.

Also, the debugging tools suck right now. My biggest beef with the language is not removing the return keyword. I was really hoping for a language with that was more OCaml, less C++.

In summary, is it perfect? no. is it an improvement of ObjC? Definitely. are there areas which ObjC shines? a few.

</comment><comment><USER12> Great post. I'm not sure if it's because of my Objective-C bias or not but Swift just seems messy to me. Everything from how it's spaced and structured in the editor to how it's read. (Lack of headers, clear separations between data structures, methods..etc). Say what you want about Obj-C but it was damn organized.

<comment><USER13> > Swift just seems messy to me.

You probably mean "unfamiliar".

Give it some time, you'll soon realize how more modern Swift is than Objective C.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> My instinct is that most well-versed Objective C programmers won't get much out of Swift. But for people like - non-Objective C programmers - it's been great. I've long since been put off by the alien syntax of it. I've been told numerous times that once you get to know it you adjust, and I believe it, but iOS programming is never going to be my full-time job, so I'm not interested in spending that amount of time getting comfortable.

With Swift, however, I was up and running very quickly. Also running in EXC_BAD_ACCESS errors, but hey, early days...

</comment><comment><USER15> As he predicted, I was with him until his rant about generics. While the example he makes support his point, that's nothing specific to _generics_ but instead to the implementation of generics. For example, he uses the following example as "bad" generics:

        func reverse<C : CollectionType where C.Index : BidirectionalIndexType>(source: C) -> [C.Generator.Element]

and the following example as "good" non-generics:

        func reverse(source: CollectionType) -> CollectionType

However, you can have equally clean syntax _with_ generics. For example, consider the hypothetical syntax:

        func reverse(source: CollectionType[a]) -> CollectionType[a]

in which `CollectionType` is parameterized by the type variable `a` [0].

I also take issue with the idea that removing static checks isn't a big penalty. In particular, I cringe a little at the following sentence

> Because it does not actually matter. If an Int gets in my array, it's > because I screwed up and likely had very poor testing around the scenario to > begin with.

The benefits of static typing is that you don't _need_ testing of things like that. The compiler guarantees safety, allowing you to avoid writing test case that are mundane and boring, such as checking that you don't put an Int into a String array.

The following paragraph also seemed questionable to me:

> Yes, in this example, I've moved the validation from compile-time to > runtime. But you know what, that's likely where many of these types of > errors are going to be coming from to begin with because the content of the > array is being filled in with dynamic content getting coerced into your > given type at runtime from dynamic input sources, not from a set of code > statements appending items to your arrays.

I think this is somewhat incorrect. You should never just be type-casting your inputs. (In fact, I think it should ideally be impossible to do so without the compiler generating really big flashing warnings saying "THIS IS DANGEROUS!"). The static verification here will prevent you from doing silly things, and should ideally force you to do input validation at the location of input, instead of blindly casting things to the type it needs.

All in all, not a bad discussion, but I think that this piece demonstrates that bad implementations of static typing can severely detract from the good qualities of static typing, and that it takes some getting used to to program well in a statically typed language (not casting things spuriously is a good example of that). That said, I know very little about Swift, so take all of this with a grain of salt.

[0] It may at this point be clear that the inspiration here is Haskell and ML; I am a big proponent of these languages, and believe that static typing can eliminate many common errors.

<comment><USER4> >> Because it does not actually matter. If an Int gets in my array, it's because I screwed up and likely had very poor testing around the scenario to begin with.

>The benefits of static typing is that you don't need testing of things like that. The compiler guarantees safety, allowing you to avoid writing test case that are mundane and boring, such as checking that you don't put an Int into a String array.

This is a canard. You hardly ever (within an epsilon of "never") write tests for types. You write tests for values that you expect, which the type-system doesn't guarantee. Those values have types, so those get tested as a side effect without any additional effort.

<comment><USER16> > Those values have types, so those get tested as a side effect without any > additional effort.

Not in the presence of implicit conversions, often insane in dynamic languages. (like, 12 + "34a" gives 46).

<comment><USER17> Often? what language does '12 + "34a" gives 46'? Not even perl does that.

<comment><USER18> PHP does, I just checked.

<comment><USER19> using PHP in a discussion about types evokes Godwin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> In regards to optionals, I've personaly found myself using the `property?.member = value` syntax quite a bit, which lets you avoid the nil check in many cases. I don't think a nil optional should be an "error case" as the author puts it most of the time.

Overall, I've been finding Swift to be more coherent and faster to use than Obj-C in my projects, which is nice. But I'm not a language power user.

</comment><comment><USER21>
      toUpper array := map (x => uppercase x) array

Why not just `map uppercase array` ? That way you don't even really need to define a function `toUpper array`. Isn't it customary not to mix lifting and program logic in functional programming languages?

Filter example:

      notPrefixedWithA name := not contains (prefix name) ["a", "A"]

then use

      filter notPrefixedWithA names

</comment><comment><USER22> Good rant. I concur with respect to Optionals, but I don't mind the ObjC block syntax that much.

It's a real pain trying to find out what functions are actually applicable to a given value (bad reflection / discoverability / documentation).

My guess is that it will take ≥ 2 yrs until Swift can possibly replace ObjC, and even then only partially. ObjC is still a fully grown C, after all.

</comment><comment><USER23> The author fails to realize one critical thing—that the imaginary "Objective-C 3" language he wants requires intentionally breaking the fact that Objective-C is a strict superset of C… exactly what Swift has done.

<comment><USER6> I think you misunderstand then. I think he's all for a new language, the problem with Swift is that it's not quite the language he hoped for.

<comment><USER23> "It's the syntactic sugar that makes the syntax modern, not the feature set within Swift itself. A cleaner ObjC could have done the same thing."

I think this statement is false—a cleaner Objective-C could be nowhere near as clean as Swift!

<comment><USER6> Look at Eero for to how a simple updated syntax could look. On top of that, many of Swift's features could run on an updated ObjC as well. The problem is that the features that required a whole new runtime and compiler model are very few.

In other words, we could have gotten almost-Swift by building squarely on ObjC and would have avoided most of the runtime and performance issues that still plague the language. Plus it would have been a simpler language than Swift is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> My take on swift : use it once apple release a real product made with it.

<comment><USER25> Which is fair enough, but if you look at the amount of effort they are putting in to bring Swift's documentation / tooling up to speed, it seems pretty obvious that Apple themselves have high ambitions for the language.

Also, it's going to be hard to tell how much Swift code is being shipped by Apple - the interfacing with existing Obj-C code is sufficiently clean that it's _relatively_ simple to have parts of a product implemented in Obj-C and other parts done in Swift, and we, sitting on the outside, may never know.

<comment><USER24> I recently learned that core data wasn't used internally at apple. That freaked me out, because it made me feel that choosing that technology for a serious project was a mistake, despite the numerous documentation and support apple provides for it.

<comment><USER26> Really? Not that I'm doubting you. Could you please provide me a link so that i can educate myself?

<comment><USER24> Unfortunately it's not a written statement ( you can imagine that nobody working at apple would publicly say a thing like that). And it's not a direct source either, so you can very well take that with a grain of salt.

Actually, I am still hoping that someone will contradict me by providing concrete example of apple software using core data though, because as i stated, i invested a lot in that technology for an important project.

<comment><USER27> Well, the Notes app on Mavericks uses Core Data. I know it's a trivial example but it's the first one I found.

(~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes/Data/Notes/NotesV2.storedata is a Core Data SQLite store.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> when I first saw Golang, I hated it, but now I think it's the best server side language. Galang is an insanely pragmatic language. It's not fancy, just works.

Facing Swift, I had mixed feelings. It's a beautiful language, probably as pretty as Ruby, but what really makes it unique, or extremely productive? I can't find any.

Am I the only one agrees with the author that generics probably do more harm than good. I'd argue that generic gives programmers a fake feeling of control and easily leads programmers spending time on over design.

<comment><USER29> > Am I the only one agrees with the author that generics probably do more harm > than good

It's really the same debate as 'Dynamic' vs 'Static' languages, since without generics your code is relying on runtime type checking in anything remotely complex, thus is effectively a dynamic language.

Personally, I'm of the opinion that people that don't like static typing only feel that way because they've only used the shitty implementations in Java or C#.

Regardless, This is a religious war that has raged for decades, and isn't likely to be answered anytime soon. The answer really comes down to "It Depends". I fall firmly in the 'static typing is good' camp, mainly because I have hard evidence to back up my opinion that it results in significantly fewer defects.

(Specifically, very clear reports from from issue tracking systems showing our defect rate in production dropping by 90% (!!!) when we switched from Groovy to Scala, with a notable increase in productivity).

Some of the developers complained, since they had to learn knew tools. But being professionals, they learned new tools and were better off for it.

Now while I'm an extremist religious zealot about proper static typing being the one true way, I'm quite mindful that, for many developers, that tasks they are working on just aren't complex enough for it to make much of a difference in practice - they are able to test all edge cases and deploy stable software to production, just with a little more runtime testing than they'd otherwise need.

Some languages - such as Go, or pre-enlightenment Java, do not implement Generics, and thus require runtime casting in many cases. In these languages, there's still a degree of compile time checking, just not as thorough as it should be. As with dynamic languages, they can work with no perceived issues for projects up to a certain size and provide a reasonable halfway point. Beyond this, you're going to hit a wall.

As to your argument that Generics do "More harm"? I'd strongly disagree. If you're unfamiliar with the gotchas generics introduce (i.e. Variance can be a mindfuck), then they can seem difficult and problematic. But like any other professional tool, once you've gotten over the learning curve you're more productive with it than without.

tl;dr If I wanted to bang a few pieces of wood together, I'd feel comfortable using a Hammer. the learning curve small, and I can connect those two pieces of wood in no time.

My Uncle is a carpenter. As a professional carpenter, he bangs pieces of wood together all day long, every day, for his entire career. As such, a nailgun is a more appropriate tool. While being more complex to use and having a steeper learning curve, he's a professional, and uses a professional tool to do a professional job. Occasionally he might want to bang some quick project together in his shed, and getting out the nailgun is overkill, so he uses a hammer for the odd thing here and there.

I'm a professional programmer. I use professional tools, even if they have a steeper learning curve and might be more complex. Occasionally I want to whip up a quick script, so will just hack it together in Python.

<comment><USER30> There is a lot of interest in research on the benefits of static vs dynamic typing. But unfortunately there is not a lot of hard data. There were some experiments, e.g.

        http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2047861

which seem to support the claim that dynamic typing is better for rapid prototyping. So if you have data that correlate typing disciplines with bug rates, it would be hugely valuable to share it.

<comment><USER5> On the other hand, there's the 1994 Navy sponsored study which had as an (informal) conclusion that Haskell was better at rapid prototyping when compared to other languages of the time.

[http://haskell.cs.yale.edu/wp- content/uploads/2011/03/Haskel...](http://haskell.cs.yale.edu/wp- content/uploads/2011/03/HaskellVsAda-NSWC.pdf)

The experiment mostly compared Haskell with imperative languages such as C++ and Ada, but there was also at least one Lisp variant. There were several informal aspects to the study, not the least of which being that there were no clearly defined requirements for the system to be implemented (so it was up to each participant to define the scope), but the conclusion is very interesting nonetheless:

The Haskell took less time to develop and also resulted in less lines of code than the alternatives, and it produced a runnable prototype that some of the reviewers had a hard time believing wasn't a mockup. Many of the alternatives didn't even end up with a working system. It should also be noted that the Haskell participants decided to _expand_ the scope of the experiment; i.e. they didn't "win" because they implemented a heavily simplified solution, but in fact added extra requirements to their system and still finished earlier!

Even though Obj-C wasn't included in the study, there were similar enough C-like languages in it, so my bet is that Haskell would have won against it as a rapid prototyping language as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I wonder if it really makes sense comparing a language that is less than one year old to others that have decades of improvements and fine tuning behind them .

If there was a perfect language, all of us would be using it: each one is the result of compromises between features, performance, readability, simplicity...

For an argument against an hypothetical ObjC3, just look the unending transition between Python 2 and 3.

<comment><USER32> I'm not sure it's right to compare it to the Python versioning issues. Apple can just break old Objective-C code for later versions of iOS/OS X if they wanted to. Also, you can look at the adoption rate of ARC when it was introduced. Pretty much every popular third-party iOS library jumped on to implement it, and those that don't usually are abandoned projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I personally choose to give Swift a chance. I think it sucks largely because Xcode 6 itself sucks, but that will improve over time.</comment>


Drawing fractals with PostgreSQL - <AUTHOR> http://explainextended.com/2013/12/31/happy-new-year-5/

<comment><USER2> Blowing my own trumpet, somewhat, but here's my write up of creating the Mandelbrot set in Oracle 11g (which I'm forced to use at work) SQL:

[http://xoph.co/20130917/mandelbrot-sql/](http://xoph.co/20130917/mandelbrot- sql/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I initially read the title as "Drawing fractals with PostScript," which is also fun. Here's a fractal fern in ps:

/t0 [ .85 -.04 .04 .85 0 1.6 ] def /t1 [ .2 .23 -.26 .22 0 1.24] def /t2 [-.15 .26 .28 .24 0 0.44] def /t3 [0 0 0 .16 0 0 ] def

/rmax 2 31 exp def

/map {rand rmax div dup .81 lt {pop t0} {dup .90 lt {pop t1} {.99 lt {t2} {t3} ifelse} ifelse} ifelse} def

/plot {2 copy .001 dup rectfill} def

290 50 translate 70 dup scale 0 0 2000000 {plot map transform} bind repeat showpage

</comment><comment><USER4> Is there any advantage to using SQL or PostgreSQL here or this one of those "just to show we can" exercises.

<comment><USER5> There is no advantage: the modern GPU can build thousands of full page resolution fractals per second while SQL takes seconds to produce a hundred by hundred characters ASCII art.

It's just a New Year SQL picture post, something I do every new year on my blog.</comment></comment>


QSEE privilege escalation vulnerability and exploit - <AUTHOR> https://bits-please.blogspot.com/2016/05/qsee-privilege-escalation-vulnerability.html <comment><USER2> So how do we remove this "Widevine" malware from our phones?

<comment><AUTHOR> Widevine DRM is integrated into virtually all Android phones. If you're building your own ROM, you could remove the widevine.bXX files from the ROM image itself - I've never tested it, but it could probably soft-fail. There's no other way to remove it.

Anyway, this specific issue has already been fixed (but there are probably more bugs lurking either there on in other trustlets).

<comment><USER2> There really should be a way to disable it.

People are trusting their phones to keep their business and private data safe. It is unacceptable to expose 2 billion devices to extra-privileged vulnerabilities to appease some MPAA executives in their completely ineffectual schemes to control how the world consumes content.</comment></comment></comment>