Ask HN: Who wants to partake in a pro-tech party initiative? - <AUTHOR>

The Party of the Minds http://www.partyoftheminds.com is meant as a blueprint for a programme of a party which would operate on a world-wide forum. It would be great to get contributions for:
* solving cosmic problems with consequences for entire humanity
* worldwide problems with potential technological solutions
* the future of political choices when current trends (such as from religion, or towards science) continue
* the role of AGI in future ethical/political decisions
* the decentralization of democratic methods (voting) or institutes (banks) due to e.g. the nature of new technologies (internet, cellphones)
* a cool logo
The party is meant to think of positive solutions and is admittedly naive with respect to the extend to which technology can be used to our benefits. If you are skeptical w.r.t. technology this might not be the initiative that would resonate most with your inner feelings.
The site is created using the front-end of the healthcare.gov site and will be put on github if there are enough people who want to contribute. <comment><USER2> [http://www.partyoftheminds.com/what-about-refugees- crossing-...](http://www.partyoftheminds.com/what-about-refugees-crossing-the- mediterranean)

Chance of survival is 1:100? I find it hard to believe that for every 100 who attempt it 99 die. The beaches of southern europe would be scattered with dead bodies

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it is staggering: [http://www.unhcr.org/542d12de9.html](http://www.unhcr.org/542d12de9.html): "In all, 90,000 people crossed to Europe between July 1 and September 30 and at least 2,200 lost their lives, compared to 75,000 people and 800 deaths for the period between January 1 and June 30."

<comment><USER2> Thats a 49:50 survival rate

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, dumb! I will correct it immediately!

Edit: I've put it in the right order now, chance of survival: 100:1

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Feedback: Partyoftheminds: Sounds elitist. Pro-tech party: A weird & big category to be pro or against. AGI: How will this affect FTL travel? :p Website: A wiki would be better, imo.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it sounds a bit elitist, but it's an anticipation of a broader concept of people that matter (a mind is that what we will be sharing with artificial minds).

Pro-tech. This is for hackernews a very big category. But not for the rest of the world who is often afraid for new technologies or to choose a technological way to solve problems. There are many neo-luddists and technophobia will be a real problem, especially with AGI.

FTL travel is not likely to be possible. :-)

The website has github underlying it (articles are written in markdown). So, it can be forked etc. for collaboration. It also looks better than the wikis I know, but correct me if you know a good one. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What is AGI?

<comment><USER5> Artificial General Intelligence, I believe: 'Artificial general intelligence (AGI) is the intelligence of a (hypothetical) machine that could successfully perform any intellectual task that a human being can. It is a primary goal of artificial intelligence research and an important topic for science fiction writers and futurists. Artificial general intelligence is also referred to as "strong AI", "full AI" or as the ability to perform "general intelligent action".'[1] In comparison to just AI, which is currently available in modern tech as algorithms and such (see Watson). But, AGI represents what a sci-fi writer would envision an Artificial Intelligence to be capable of.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_general_intelligence](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_general_intelligence)

<comment><USER4> Thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


John Resig on TraceMonkey - <AUTHOR> http://ejohn.org/blog/tracemonkey/

<comment><USER2> I think the key point of this article over the other related article (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=284192>) is that John points out that tracing will be able to be applied to DOM manipulation/property access in the future.

      "Being able to trace through a DOM method would successfully speed up, not only, math and object-intensive applications (as it does now) but also regular DOM manipulation and property access."

As I said on the previous article, "I believe tracing very well could be the key to unlocking advances in that [DOM] area as well."

To me, this means that JavaScript will finally be integrated with the browser in a way that is required to advance the web. I've always wondered what would be the "big thing" to lead up to the move towards the web even more, and this is definitely the answer.

The only thing left now is making it so JavaScript can be compiled (the only way I can think of how to accomplish preventing stealing code).

<comment><USER3> _speed up, not only, math and object-intensive applications (as it does now) but also regular DOM manipulation_

Agreed. The sooner they get to that, the better!

Edit: As an aside, the web arguably wouldn't have happened without "stealing code". I see this as a strength not a weakness.

<comment><USER2> I'm not against open sourcing code, or giving away helpful small things, but at the moment anyone can copy every bit of useful functionality of a JS application and just create their own back-end. That is a very ridiculous concept, and there isn't much that can be done about it if that person isn't within the same country.

<comment><USER4> It might be more valuable to avoid basing your business on artificial scarcity to begin with.

<comment><USER2> Well, I guess if the business model were to not make a significant amount of money then no scarcity would be perfect! But really, scarcity (real or "fake") needs to exist or else I would be wasting time creating a PRODUCT (in other words: something that is sold).

<comment><USER5> > scarcity (real or "fake") needs to exist or else I would be wasting time > creating a PRODUCT (in other words: something that is sold).

Not true: see 37signals, for example.

<comment><USER2> I think you misunderstand what artificial scarcity means (or I do somehow). 37signals is proof that artificial scarcity must exist in some form to profit. Adding a price to something creates a form of artificial scarcity. From my perspective, you just agreed with me.

<comment><USER4> Artificial scarcity is trying to limit access to something which can not be limited. Once bits, for any purpose, are put in the right order to do something or represent something, the cost to replicate those bits to other parties is zero. In contrast with an automobile, even after it is designed, significant infrastructure (currently) needs to be built and exist to create another one. What you are paying for when you purchase a car is the PROCESS that went into creating JUST that ONE car you bought. Additional cars would not exist if the infrastructure didn't exist to create more of them (and then economies of scale come into play, making the car actually affordable). Bits do not have that limitation.

Scarcity and want must exist in order to set a legitimate price. Artificial scarcity sets a price on something that isn't actually scarce. It is a (unfortunate?) side-effect of the market that potential buyers think that because something has a price, it must be worth having (ie scarce). I don't think there's actually anything wrong with basing a business on this, but don't be surprised when your customers realize you've been selling them something that should have a price closer to zero because there is infinite supply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Has anyone run a comparison between this new engine and SquirrelFish yet? It seems to me like two major ideas are competing:

1\. Better JIT for interpreters. 2\. Faster interpreters, period.

I'm really curious to see which has the faster ramp-up and which has the best end-game results.

<comment><USER7> One comparison was posted in the comments of the blog post: [http://www.masonchang.com/2008/08/tracemonkey-vs- squirrelfis...](http://www.masonchang.com/2008/08/tracemonkey-vs- squirrelfish.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> John does a really job of discussion what implications this had as well as how it does it. Great article.

</comment><comment><USER9> check out Steve Yegge's video/transcript about dynamic language optimization in case you missed it:

[http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/05/dynamic-languages- st...](http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/05/dynamic-languages-strike- back.html)

<comment><USER10> Things have been moving in this direction for quite some time, I think. Here's a master's thesis from March 2006:

<http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~plezbert/contcom/>

<comment><USER11> Michael Franz, the PI for the work at UCI, has been working on this stuff for almost 20 years. See his 1994 PHD thesis: _Code-Generation On-the-Fly_ ftp://ftp.inf.ethz.ch/pub/publications/diss/th10497.ps [postscript]. Reading it was one of my "Holy Shit!" moments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's funny, 2 months after I give up on GameClay (partially because of performance issues in the prototypes), this comes out. Maybe I should go back to it. Well, that's why I chose not to open-source the code and my cofounder's hanging on to the domain names.

Though any application to games needs to get over the fact that 90% of the casual game market still uses IE...

</comment><comment><USER13> Install the update and do the image manipulation test. For best results, run the test before and after. The difference is astounding.

<comment><USER14> I thought "astounding" would be an overstatement. Turns out you're right.</comment></comment>


Don't sacrifice - <AUTHOR> http://varun.io/post/dont-sacrifice <comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing, Varun. I do agree that we should only have one project at a time but have a few points I don't see eye-to-eye with:

1) "Broadly speaking though, interests don't change much over time. They fade, reappear, morph into something else; but mostly remain the same." \- - I think interests do change profoundly based on what we experience and are exposed to. I believe that the things we find interesting are rooted in our personality, not the 'things' themselves.

2) At some point, you've got to know when to throw in the towel and move onto something else. You're right in that shipping is always the most fulfilling thing, but sometimes starting to walk down a path is the best way to realize it isn't the right path to be on. Regrounding yourself in your core beliefs (see 1) and figuring out what's next is the best way forward.</comment>


Tesla won't be making 10kWh Powerwalls–it's 7kWh batteries only, for now - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/2016/03/tesla-wont-be-making-10kwh-powerwallsits-7kwh-batteries-only-for-now/ <comment><USER2> I'd recommend reading the article in this case. They make a very good argument for why the 10 kWh version was inferior to the 7 kWh version.

I guess the larger one used a different type of battery?

<comment><USER3> Yes right at the top of the article it describes the chemical differences.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting that they are not using a Lithium chemistry battery in these. I was thinking they were just repackaging variants on the Model S battery pack. Seems like a pretty simple plan to create an outer casing that hangs on the wall for a "half pack" (35KWh?) from the 70KWh battery pack. Perhaps they are getting better margins selling them attached to cars.

<comment><USER5> Maybe this is an opportunity to test out different battery chemistries that may initially move into their cars. Alternately, the magnesium chemistry could be cheaper than lithium but less energy-dense, hence not a great choice for the cars. Or it could be inappropriate for vehicle use for a number of reasons including safety, cycle lifespan, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I won't be making a snarky comment, for now.

</comment><comment><USER7> prediction - Tesla will be making 10kWh Powerwalls for solar storage after the refresh this summer.</comment>


David Chelimsky on rake 0.9 and gem version constraints - <AUTHOR> http://blog.davidchelimsky.net/2011/05/28/rake-09-and-gem-version-constraints/

<comment><USER2> rubygems just needs to start "playing" with bundler.

When a gem has an executable in it rubygems creates a stub capable of running actual code from any gem version by using magic parameter:

foo 1.2.3 bar baz

will run foo from gem version 1.2.3

just 'foo' will run the latest version.

now….

this stub should check for Gemfile presence and initialize bundler.

thats it. it all should work now. 'foo' will run the version specified in the Gemfile.

<comment><USER3> You can already say "foo _1.2.3_ bar".

That said, I see little benefit in making rubygems bundler-aware, and I think it would constrain both projects in undesirable ways. For example, you propose rubygems checking for a Gemfile, but that is only a convention. Bundler supports an env var to identify the location of a gemfile. So right away, rubygems would need to support both of these techniques. When bundler adds new and better ways to do this, rubygems would have to be updated to keep up. Or, perhaps, it wouldn't, in which case the projects would fall out of sync.

Bundler already offers us simple ways to do this. See [http://yehudakatz.com/2011/05/30/gem-versioning-and- bundler-...](http://yehudakatz.com/2011/05/30/gem-versioning-and-bundler- doing-it-right/) (including the comments) for more information.

<comment><USER2> > You can already say "foo _1.2.3_ bar". I know. just as I wrote. What I'm > saying is that absent this specific version gem executable should check for > bundler before blindly choosing the latest.

the check for bundler presence can be easily "outsourced" to bundler. for example "bundle check" will only succeed if it finds bundle installation.

actually, bundler and rubygems should probably just merge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great article.. really helps you understand the magic that happens when you type 'bundle install'

<comment><AUTHOR> I liked Rails better before the Rake 0.9 hiccups exposed the magic.

Now everyone is writing articles to explain the mess. Here's one from Wyatt Greene:

[http://techiferous.com/2011/05/the-no-nonsense-guide-to- mana...](http://techiferous.com/2011/05/the-no-nonsense-guide-to-managing-gem- versions/)

<comment><USER5> Managing dependencies is a hard problem, and I admire the Ruby community for taking it on, and the big projects (Rails, Rspec) for having the guts to move forward with early implementations.

The payoff will be that setting up Rails apps, installing libraries that are both compatible AND up-to-date, will be fundamentally easier. It will be a competitive advantage for Rails.

No pain, no gain.</comment></comment></comment>


The state of Apple Pay adoption - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/05/us-apple-pay-idUSKBN0OL0CM20150605 <comment><USER2> > Some merchants said they were holding out because they plan to participate > in a new mobile payment system to be launched by a coalition of retailers > later this year.

Oh yes, CurrentC. [http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/25/currentc/](http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/25/currentc/)

> The idea behind MCX was that if enough retailers teamed up, they could > convince consumers to adopt their mobile payment system that would let > retailers avoid paying credit card fees in the 2 percent to 3 percent range > by processing payments through Automatic Clearing House transactions through > bank accounts that have much smaller fees. MCX's app could also help > retailers by encouraging loyalty to participating merchants and possibly > provide them additional intelligence on their customers.

They want to save money on transaction fees by having your bank account info on file. But don't worry, I'm sure they'll keep in safe. No history of huge data breaches or anything to be concerned about. Meanwhile, their app is a seaspool of their wildest marketing and promotional dreams coming to fruition. It's purpose / existence is not at all for you, it's entirely for them.

<comment><USER3> Every product exists to make/save money for its owners. Apply pay and stripe are no different. The glaring question mark is whether a consortium of retailers, none of which are that strong in tech, can actually make a product that holds up and is, as you say, secure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > The state of Apple Pay adoption

This is the thing that amuses me - Why is rollout of contactless so slow, and why is it being reported as being specific to Apply Pay?

AFAIK there's nothing for retailers to do to support Apple Pay! As long the reader the EMV contactless standard, it supports Apple Pay (and PayWave and PayPass and other brand names). It's all on issuing bank to support 'issuing' Apple Pay 'cards'.

I added my US credit-card to my iPhone and used it with Apple Pay here in Australia many times. Even small independent cafes support apple pay because they just support contactless payments.

Despite being much smaller, Australia is the largest market in the world in terms of contactless usage[1]. From last year:[2]

        More than 58 million Visa PayWave payments were made in July
        alone, up from 28 million a year ago and 40 million in
        January with average transactions standing at $31.38.

[1]: [http://www.mastercard.com.au/_assets/docs/2014-03%20MCW_RBA_...](http://www.mastercard.com.au/_assets/docs/2014-03%20MCW_RBA_Data_Analysis.pdf) [2]: [http://www.news.com.au/finance/money/contactless-tapandgo- pa...](http://www.news.com.au/finance/money/contactless-tapandgo-payment- gains-popularity-with-australian-shoppers/story-e6frfmci-1227073203032)

<comment><USER5> Support in Canada is also pretty good. I think the only retailer in my regular routine (Kitchener, Ontario) who doesn't have contactless POS is a building supply store.

It always boggles my mind being in the US and realizing the number of places which with either don't take cards at all, or have only stripe-and-sign.

<comment><USER6> Cards have big fees attached, so many smaller retailers insist on cash so they don't lose 3% of their income. Even at small, local places that do take cards, I try to always pay in cash to help support them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why doesn't Apple subsidize the cost of the POS devices that are compatible with Apple Pay? If the big hurdle for businesses, big and small, is the cost of upgrading their POS, then perhaps a company with $200B in cash sitting around could help pay for that. Average POS device is $2000 (1), and there are 10 million POS devices (2) in the US. If Apple covers 50% of everyone's upgrade, that's $10B. About 3 months of profit for Apple.

1 - [http://smallbusiness.costhelper.com/point-of- sale.html](http://smallbusiness.costhelper.com/point-of-sale.html) 2 - [http://www.gaoresearch.com/POS/pos.php](http://www.gaoresearch.com/POS/pos.php)

<comment><USER8> Your cost per station is wildly undervaluing things, since you are not taking into account shipping, installation, training, verification, auditing, disaster recovery planning, etc, etc.

<comment><USER9> Forgetting the exact cost, Apple has enough cash to give retailers an incentive and may have already done that with those that are already onboard. Note I said "incentive" not "paid for everything". This wouldn't be something that they would necessarily disclose either, for obvious reasons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The resistance really just boils down to 'we can't track our customers any more'. Big chains' POS systems almost all have contactless readers built in (but disabled).

To me this is a feature-I don't particularly want to be profiled by the places I shop at.

</comment><comment><USER11> I find it particularly annoying that Apple Pay isn't in the UK yet, although we've had contactless for a few years.

<comment><USER12> Same situation in Canada. About 80-90% of retailers have contactless payment terminals. No Google or Apple Pay though. Tapping a credit card is easy enough though.

<comment><USER13> If I recall correctly, Google Wallet should work with any of those contactless payment terminals. I've tried it a few times in the US, anyway.

<comment><USER14> the problem isn't in the hardware. It is in the backend payment processing. Both Apple Pay and Google Wallet have hardware support, just not the banking relationships.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In Houston the uptake rate is abysmal. I think Walgreens is one of the few places I see readers consistently. As a result it's not habitual to pay with my phone. Even if I am holding it while checking out. I do pay with the Starbucks app which I believe I would start using apple pay if it showed up there. The Starbucks rewards system is so incredibly broken that I rarely cash them in or think to use them. I could get a free drink for going a dozen times spending 2 dollars or 30 dollars. Does not compute.

</comment><comment><USER16> Apple Pay is literally a win for everyone

* Customers have an easier, securer way to pay than chip & PIN (swipe only will be phased out as it has in Europe)

* VISA/MC/AMEX get a reduction in transaction fraud due to device-linkage (combined with biometrics).

* Retailers can process transactions quicker without them costing more.

<comment><USER17> My sister, a retailer, didn't see it that way. It cost her something. Her normal (coffee-shop) transaction is cash. This scheme is a big loss for her.

<comment><USER18> Grrr! Cash only retailers! You don't get my money.

<comment><USER17> Didn't say that. She takes plastic too.

<comment><USER4> How would Apple Pay be a big loss for her then? From her perspective it's no different to regular debit/credit cards

<comment><USER19> Because cash can be lost in the shuffle, and there is not necessarily a hard record of it ever existing.

If everything is on the level, then there's no loss.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think the right way to move forward with the "payment system of the future" is to build it on top of a federated network where anyone can participate at any level without the need to go through some central entity. I vote for no more walled gardens.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> > _Some merchants said they were holding out because they plan to participate > in a new mobile payment system to be launched by a coalition of retailers > later this year._

Does anyone know what this is referring to?

<comment><USER21> CurrentC - which is an initiative spearheaded by Walmart. Unlike Apple Pay which uses NFC, CurrentC uses the good old QR code scanning technique, which should in theory make it ubiquitous. But it's not happened so far.

<comment><USER22> Wouldn't that depend on the customers phone having a data connection? You need 2 way communication to produce a secure payment protocol.

<comment><USER23> The goal isn't to be secure. As far as I understand it would basically be similar to Starbuck's current mobile payment service, where the scanner reads the code which maps directly to an account and processes the transaction. No two way communication.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> From personal experience, even retailers that are participating in Apple Pay (Whole Foods, Home Depot, Walgreens) don't accept Apple Pay. Most of the time only half the machines work. As a result, it has failed to be part of my routine. Apple really needs to get Starbucks on board to see real traction.

<comment><USER24> My main issue with it is I still have to get my wallet out for the grocery store's loyalty card, so I don't get much of a time savings.

<comment><USER25> Have you tried adding the card to passbook? There are a number of websites that let you generate a passbook card for an arbitrary barcode/qr</comment></comment></comment>


Noise: a JSON full text and ad-hoc query engine with example-based query syntax - <AUTHOR> https://noisesearch.org <comment><USER2> Oh hello, it's by Damien Katz. Who did CouchDb, and yonks ago worked on the storage engine underneath Lotus Notes.

<comment><USER3> His blog post about Noise, [Notes on Building Noise][0], was posted to /r/rust, and I found it to be well-written and entertaining.

[0]: [http://damienkatz.net/2017/05/23/notes-on-building-noise- a-j...](http://damienkatz.net/2017/05/23/notes-on-building-noise-a-json- search-engine-written-in-rust)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why would one use this instead of PostgreSQL with full text search / json?

<comment><USER5> This is embeddable (since it uses RocksDB). One might want to take advantage of these kinds of JSON search features in an application -- for desktop or mobile -- without spinning up Postgres in a separate process.

Of course, you could always embed the application in Postgres as an extension...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great stuff. It reminds me of jq [0]. If only MongoDB would replace its query engine with this or at least add it as a second option...

[0] [https://stedolan.github.io/jq/](https://stedolan.github.io/jq/)

</comment><comment><USER7> I honestly like jq and JMESPath syntax better.

</comment><comment><USER8> This looks really interesting</comment>


Netflix: ISPs who charge by the gigabyte are ridiculous - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/01/netflix-charging-by-the-gigabyte-is-ridiculous.ars

<comment><USER2> This is not accurate. Any time you have multiple people sharing a physical link you end up with a marginal cost for bandwidth in any sensible economic arrangement. If you insist on having every part of your connection dedicated to yourself, you're effectively back to a circuit-switched network with the corresponding orders-of-magnitude price hike in providing it.

For example, in the UK the last mile is usually supplied by the incumbent (BT), who also (virtually) route that traffic over a private IP-based backbone to ISPs to provide the backhaul. They charge ISPs by capacity. So these ISPs effectively have marginal costs that vary throughout the day according to demand, since they have to pay directly for an appropriate (fixed) amount of capacity to be available.

We also have LLU (local loop unbundled) ISPs who still use BT's last mile but provide their own equipment directly at the exchanges, thus effectively providing backhaul straight from the exchanges. They may only have a fixed cost for bandwidth depending on how they provision those links. But if they are buying capacity from anyone else, they will be charged by how much they are buying, and suddenly they have a marginal cost again.

The article says that Netflix are complaining about the situation where _Netflix_ have brought the traffic to the last mile. _In this specific situation_ it makes sense. But in the general case, ISPs still have marginal costs in providing bandwidth.

<comment><USER3> The article is not about bandwidth but about the amount of data you can download at a reasonable price. People are actually willing to spend more time downloading something instead spending more money.

<comment><USER4> The _amount_ of data, when aggregated over many people, adds up to _bandwidth_ of network needed.

An ISP's customers, all added together, are downloading a certain amount per month. That is, a certain amount of data per time period -- which is bandwidth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It certainly seems like a little bit of consumer education should go a long way, but without competition – or in the presence of collusion – we'll end up with something looking more like text messaging.

Everybody knows the cost to the carrier is only a fraction of what they charge, but there's no competitor willing to charge less. Education, unfortunately, seems to only go so far.

<comment><USER6> On Verizon's family plan, we pay 30 extra per month for unlimited texts for 5 people. 6$ per month for that seems like a fair price.

<comment><USER7> It's not really. <http://gthing.net/the-true-price-of-sms-messages>

<comment><USER6> Let me clarify. At 6$ a month, I don't feel like I'm getting ripped off, even if it really doesn't cost them nearly that much to provide me the service. The t-shirt I'm wearing costs maybe $1 in raw materials and manufacturing, but it sold for $20. I got it 50% off for 10$. Am I getting ripped off? Should $10 for a t-shirt not seem like a fair price?

<comment><USER8> > At 6$ a month, I don't feel like I'm getting ripped off

OP's point was about consumer education. Have you considered that maybe you _should_ feel like you're getting ripped off?

<comment><USER6> I have. I'm not dogmatic about this.

Part of my other point was that the comparisons in the link to why SMS is ridiculously overpriced, in which the cost of downloading songs via SMS is calculated to be in the millions of dollars, is that that's a bogus argument. If you're sending that many SMS's, get an unlimited plan. If your carrier doesn't have an unlimited plan, switch to one that does. Consumer education is fine, but there's also something to be said about consumer responsibility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> They're clearly limiting this discussion to wired ISPs, where I think this is reasonable.

Wireless (cellular) users can look to satellite ISPs to see just how crazy things can be. On a lot of satellite systems, users are sold "unlimited" bandwidth, but then aggressive fair access policy, unpublished caps, etc. apply, so your unlimited 2Mbps x 256Kbps connection might actually only let you transfer 500 MB/month.

True hilarity happens on the L-band services like Inmarsat BGAN when either someone leaves Windows Update or other autoupdate turned on, or isn't aware of the per-MB charging. $3 to $25 per megabyte adds up quickly; I've personally seen a $160k/mo bill due to users downloading movies and music over a BGAN system (with the bill paid by a third party, obviously, and no mechanism in place to communicate costs to the users).

</comment><comment><USER10> Now I wonder why Netflix might have a problem with that...

In any case, they're absolutely right. These plans are clear cash grabs, and they wouldn't exist if we had proper competition.

<comment><USER11> In Canada many people won't get Netflix[1] because of ridiculously low bandwidth caps. It's amazing how much lack of competition and corrupt regulatory bodies can stifle innovation.

[1] And of course, Netflix' catalog in Canada is very limited due to similar politics.

<comment><USER12> Indeed. I moved in with by g/f and soon after that, her Rogers Internet service went up in price and monthly cap got slashed to 60 GB/month. I subscribed to Netflix service for the 30 day free trail, but promptly canceled after I saw the horrid selection and b/w usage. Needless to say, we are switching to Teksavvy since I've been a customer of theirs since 2001

<comment><USER11> I use Teksavvy as well. Slower internet, but no caps (for the time being).

<comment><USER11> Spoke too soon. With UBB, they are capping it at 25 GB starting in March. :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This has been the status quo in South Africa from 1997. In 2009 I lost a legal battle via the Advertising Complaints Commission.

It boiled down to the wording. Uncapped means that they can shape your line to s __*, and still sell it as a 4meg ADSL service.

<comment><USER14> Australia has the same thing. 'Unlimited' = full speed up to X gigs each month, after that you get dial-up speed only until the start of the next month.

Most plans are advertised by GB/month though.

<comment><USER13> Sad, really.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's fun to look around at the limits in terms of how long it'd take you to do it with a 56k modem.

250GB, which they consider pretty high, would actually take a while:

<http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=250GB+%2F+56Kbps>

But smaller values are less impressive. 10GB is only half a modem month.

Looking at the $1/GB thing gets more interesting. How much would it cost me to run a 54Kbps modem 24/7 for a month at $1/GB:

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%2856Kbps+*+1+month%29+...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%2856Kbps+*+1+month%29+*+%241%2FGB)

<comment><USER16> You're forgetting, or maybe just never used a modem (some people ask what the hell a floppy is), but the max speed you could squeeze out of a 56k was like 3/4kbps for any single download. That's if you were _lucky_. You would never, ever have transfered so much as 10gb in a month.

Things sure have changed. I remember praying to the modem gods that the connection wouldn't simply drop when downloading something as small as 200kb. The good ol' days -- you made every moment on the net count.

<http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=10GB+/+3Kbps> 10 months.

Edit: What I just linked to above was incorrect. I should have used kilobytes per second, not kilobits per second.

<comment><USER17> the 56k stands for 56KBit/s. What you were seeing was 3.5 KByte/s which of course is still way off the theoretical 7 KByte/s you could achieve with 56KBit/s.

If you only got 3 KBit/s over a 56K modem, your download-rate would have been 375 bytes/s - a third of a Kilobyte per second. That's a bit more than what you could have reached with a 2400 baud modem from the eighties.

You get to your 10 months result by dividing the 10 Gigs by 3Kbit/s, while you would probably have ment to divide by Kbyte/s

<http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=10GB+%2F+3KBps>

38 days.

<comment><USER16> Thanks for the clarification on my points. I was conflating the two.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I hate the idea of paying per GB.

However, the foundation of this argument is baseless. All that discussion of how much it _costs_ to provide the bandwidth really is irrelevant.

I've said it before and I guess I have to keep repeating: the price of a product is unrelated to its cost!

The price of a product is the point at which a producer is willing to make another unit of it, and at which a consumer is willing to buy that unit. Costs don't come into the discussion at all. Everything based on the perceived value of the product from each party's perspective.

<comment><USER19> You are ignoring competition. If the cost to produce X is 1$ and someone is charging 10$ then there is an opportunity for someone else to step up and charge 5$.

In an open and free market the cost generally works out to around 1.1x the cost of producing the quantity of product that customers want to buy. Which is why most large companies hate free markets and do everything they can to create monopolies either natural or legislative. Cable companies would love to charge 1$ for something it costs them 1c to make and they are trying everything in their power to make that happen.

<comment><USER20> And that's ultimately the discussion we should be having:

Pay-as-you-go, Unlimited, Monthly caps -- all are potentially reasonable ways to charge for network access. Provided there's competition.

And without competition, there's really no advantage to any of them. You're just picking a poison at that point. The monopolist(s) will get their profit out of you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm from Australia where fixed quotas on wired (typically DSL) are _de rigeur_ [1].

Several years ago the ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) banned the use of the word unlimited on Internet plans unless they were truly unlimited meaning no overage fees and no traffic shaping after hitting a soft cap.

Compare that to the UK where they've de died that unlimited means what 90% of users use, which is as little as 5GB/month!

In the US you typically still have caps (hidden behind terms like "fair use"). So the only difference in Australia is the ISPs are upfront about it.

So in Australia the net effect has been:

1\. You buy the plan most suited to your usage. In other words you pay for what you use.

2\. You get what you pay for. If you pay for 1TB/month you get 1TB/month.

Both of these situations are much better than say Comcasf or Time Warner really only giving you 250GB/month or UK providers declaring you're a downloaded and moving you to a network that in the evenings is utterly unusable.

The fact is that bandwidth still has a marginal cost so it's not unreasonable to expect users to pay for that. Nor is tiered pricing based on usage a bad thing.

In New York I have one choice for high speed Internet: Time Warner (some areas have Verizon FiOS; not mine). There are two plans for $65 and $99 (iirc).

In Australia I have typically a dozen choices or more ranging from $20 to ¢150+ pe month based on the features I want. How can that possibly be a bad thing?

[1]: <http://www.iinet.net.au/broadband/plans.html>

<comment><USER19> Australia has a terrible broadband network.

I live in the US and pay 45$ a month for a 35mbps up/5mbps down on a fiber connection with no cap. The actual cost of me downloading 1TB works out to around 10$, but like most customers I don't break 200GB/month which is a small fraction of my bill, and the company is wise enough to realize overcharging for bandwidth is just going to piss me off.

<comment><USER21> Yes and how much of the US by population has the option you have?

<comment><USER19> I don't know the percentage, but more people than live in Australia. I game with people in Australia and even in major city's they don't have reasonably priced high speed internet. Granted, laying undersea cables is expensive but compared to other countries in the reign Australian internet sucks.

PS: I am not saying that people living in the middle of the country need to have high speed internet just that you could wire up the major city's at reasonable cost because that's where most people live. [http://www.environment.gov.au/soe/2001/publications/theme- re...](http://www.environment.gov.au/soe/2001/publications/theme- reports/settlements/settlements01.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The real problem isn't even that they're charging by the gigabyte (although they are, and I strongly dislike it).

No, the REAL problem is that they preferentially exclude their own services from these charges/caps.

For example: If you get Bell's IPTV offering (in Canada), do you really think they're going to cap your consumption? What about Rogers on Demand? Is that subject to the same caps?

The answer is no, making their services more attractive than competitors like Netflix.

Ergo, the only solution is separation of concerns. Providers of pipe should not be providers of content. Ever.

</comment><comment><USER23> Now they know how I feel about text messaging rates. Captive consumption sucks.

</comment><comment><USER24> I know, I know I say this every time, but man, I would love someone in New Zealand to come and tell my broadband provider that their top-of-the-line plan that I pay $80 NZD a month for that only gives me 40 gigs is BS.

Oh and we've already prioritised traffic too..If i was to buy tivo, then all my on demand data would be "free". I don't think Net Neutrality is even a remote consideration here - though there are many of us who passionately believe in it.

</comment><comment><USER25> Welcome to Australia...

</comment><comment><USER26> At the risk of sounding trollish, this is one of the reasons I absolutely love living in Slovenia.

30 euro a month for unlimited and unshaped 20/20 FTTH. :)

From what I understand it's like this in a lot of Europe actually, especially those scandinavian countries.

</comment><comment><USER27> If charging by the gigabyte is ridiculous, what is AT&T data roaming on Rogers for $15/MB?</comment>


Ask PG: Will this year's Startup School talks be recorded and posted online? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> They have been every year for a long time now so I would be shocked if they weren't.

Last year's can be found here: [http://startupschool.org/2012/](http://startupschool.org/2012/) and this year's speakers page ([http://startupschool.org/speakers.html](http://startupschool.org/speakers.html)) uses the same HTML template.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I know past years have been recoded, but I'm just looking for confirmation. I know a lot of people who got an invite but are on the fence because of this question (not because the event isn't great, but because travel is expensive).</comment>


Elon Musk turns a tweet into reality in 6 days - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@loic/elon-musk-turns-a-tweet-into-reality-in-6-days-6189c1795a41#.fns4snrl9 <comment><USER2> Previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13258882](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13258882)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes for the same story but the point of view is different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> As far as carrot and stick go its fairly crude.

A more "entertaining" way to punish parkers would be to log how much time they waste parking, provide a reasonable allowance (whatever, fifteen minutes per month will be waived) then refuse to start charging until the time is paid back. Or decelerate the fast charge to make up for the time. People in a hurry will not like it when they come back to their car in 30 minutes and its not begun charging.

Even more amusingly would be gamification playing into the well known range anxiety problem where every ten minutes the car sits there, its discharged back into the grid 5%.

</comment><comment><USER4> I would be interested in reading the Supercharger agreement between Tesla owners and Tesla to see if this fee is allowed. As far as I understood, access to the Supercharger stations was included in the price of the package that Tesla owners bought without exception.

<comment><USER5> Free charge yes, but not free parking. That is the issue here. Something needs to be done about this issue. I live in Norway and we are seeing huge problems with EV owners clogging the charging stations depriving others of charging. Now since the number of EV owners is getting so big, people can't hog the spaces.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> One option to curb the abuse is to increase the fee each team they abuse a parking spot. Eventually the fee would be high enough that even the rich will balk at it. Over time the fee could be brought back down.

</comment><comment><USER7> In this instance the right move seems to have been made, but I do worry that stories like this will enable a new kind of techno-fascism. If Musk can change people's lives on timescales orders of magnitudes faster than governments, its going to go a long way to undermine people's faith in those governments.

</comment><comment><USER8> I hoped this was about his tunnel boring tweet.</comment>


Chrome And Safari Challenge Firefox For #2 - <AUTHOR> http://www.conceivablytech.com/7789/business/chrome-and-safari-challenge-firefox-for-2

<comment><USER2> This is according to StatCounter: "StatCounter is listing Chrome at 21.41% and Safari at 5.86% market share, which adds up to 27.27% combined share." Note this means Chrome+Safari > Firefox, not Chrome or Safari individually.

IE and Firefox have been experiencing a (very) slow decrease in market share in North America, while Chrome and Safari's have been increasing. Makes sense, especially considering Safari and Chrome's mobile offerings.

</comment><comment><USER3> The really interesting bit is in the graph: it looks like there's a fair percentage of users - 3%, roughly - who, every seven days or so, on the weekend, switch from IE to one of the other three major browsers, mostly Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER4> Oh look, yet another far-more-hype-than-substance article from conceivablytech.</comment>


Can This Breakfast Cereal Help Save the Planet? - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/04/13/711144729/can-this-breakfast-cereal-help-save-the-planet <comment><USER2> An important advantage of this grain is that there is no temptation to douse it with Roundup two weeks before harvest so it dries on the stalk. Unlike (e.g.) oats and chickpeas, for which things made of organic flour are increasingly hard to find.

The Roundup is not rinsed off, because the whole point was to cheapen drying it. So it is ground right into the flour.</comment>


It's Time for Microsoft to Reboot Office - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/its-time-for-microsoft-to-reboot-office-1444155726 <comment><USER2> As the article noted, Microsoft needs to update itself to the current trend of seamless and interconnected workflow already provided from such companies like google, who provide them for free. Perhaps Microsoft is an outdated program that needs restructuring.</comment>


Swift 5.3 Will Be Supported on Windows and Additional Linux Distributions - <AUTHOR> https://www.infoq.com/news/2020/05/swift-5-3-windows-linux/ <comment><USER2> > . It is hard to think that any Windows programmer would prefer Swift as a > language over .NET languages, as many commenters pointed out on Reddit, but > a port of Swift UI on Windows could be a game changer.

Everybody would jump to Swift [for new projects] if it meant a cross-platform GUI framework.

<comment><USER3> Creating a good cross-platform GUI framework is probably harder than creating a good cross-platform language.

<comment><USER4>
        Creating a good cross-platform
        GUI framework is probably harder
        than creating a good cross-platform
        language.

Way way way way way harder, I'd think. It's basically never been done in the modern era. All the successful ones from the past look (and work) like garbage on a modern desktop computer (I use gnucash for my dad's business, ha ha).

SwiftUI is an interesting re-think, though, and as a Windows 10 user, I can tell you that the current "native" experience sucks green potatoes. There are like 9 or 12 different UI technologies I must interact with each month. All with different text sizes and massively inconsistent UI paradigms.

So I think there _is_ an opportunity here.

But, I bet SwiftUI → Web will come first. And if that happens, SwiftUI on Windows, and desktop Linux, will be a no-brainer and will happen.

And if it doesn't happen, then probably SwiftUI won't matter outside of the Apple ecosystem, and that will mean Swift won't matter much in the end, either. (EDIT: I don't mean Apple need do this and I don't expect they will. But SwiftUI is just an API; anybody could port it to whatever environment they want, and there are already some nascent third-party efforts to implement it for HTML/web.)

Full disclosure disclaimer: former NewtonScript programmer

<comment><USER5> I think the opportunity is particularly on how SwiftUI has been implemented in iOS, iPadOS and macOS, by relying on the native UI of each platform and providing a common abstraction for developers.

Instead of providing the same UI that works badly on every device, SwiftUI interprets each concept differently according to the platform.

For example, a Toggle in an iOS and iPadOS app looks like a on/off switch, while on macOS it's rendered as a checkbox. A Picker has is scrolling wheel on iOS but it's shown as radio boxes or a drop-down menu on macOS.

Navigation is also the same. On iOS, a NavigationView offers the drill-down navigation common to iPhone apps, while on macOS it creates a split master- detail interface.

Each implementation does so by using the native UI framework of each platform under the hood, UIKit on iOS, and AppKit on macOS. I don't know how UI development works on Windows, but my speculation is that a SwiftUI implementation would work the same way.

<comment><USER6> I can't comment on SwiftUI in particular, but I've found that a lot of things like this tend to break down in most other cross platform GUI frameworks, falling into a kind of uncanny valley, where the experience ends up being either:

1\. Native feeling, but sufficiently inflexible that only very simple, common UI patterns can be implemented

2\. An "uncanny valley" native ui, where things are _almost_ native but often feel _wrong_ in subtle ways

I think that's why Electron has succeeded where so many cross platform UI frameworks failed: it's so _obviously_ not native that it doesn't fall into that "uncanny valley" anymore

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Whenever I've looked at examples on Swift on Linux in the past, the code always started with (hazy memory here) `use glibc` or similar, whereas the macOS version used a different library. So for example even just to produce a random number you had to use two completely different library functions imported with completely different names. All that to say: it's always felt to me like "cross-platform" for Swift means "the same syntax on a completely different platform." Has that changed, or will basic functionality on windows require a third completely different set of libraries?

<comment><USER8> It depends on what you're doing. Swift Foundation is cross platform for Windows/Linux/macOS and exposes apis for things like file systems, paths, process creation with the caveat that what a "Thread" is or what it means if a file is executable is a little different between platforms. If you're writing a cli tool you should be able stay mostly within the Swift stdlib and Foundation and that'll work on all platforms. As more libraries are ported to Windows (e.g. hopefully swift-nio), that should become more and more the case.

Where this isn't the case would be if performance mattered, some of Foundation system api implementations (at least, the Windows ones) can be a little inefficient since the Foundation api model and the Windows way of doing things doesn't always match and the Windows implementation has to do extra work to match the semantics.

Another would be UI wise, I haven't heard of plans for Apple to open source SwiftUI. Though since Swift can call into the native platform apis, it's quite possible to write a (perhaps not as slick) alternative.

<comment><USER7> Sounds like things have improved in the last couple years, thanks for the information. If they get to the point where a basic database-querying microservice will usually compile on all three platforms, I could imagine a lot more server-side interest in the language. Who knows?

<comment><USER9> FWIW it's already viable to use Swift in the micro-service use-case. If you're running logic inside containers it's trivial to get a Swift service up and running.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is really exciting. Every time I see something about Swift my thought process is "that looks like a lovely language but I don't build iOS/macOS apps, oh well". Maybe now I'll give it a real go.

Fun fact: Graydon Hoare, the original inventor of Rust, now works at Apple on Swift.

<comment><USER11> That's an outdated but sadly common perception. TensorFlow for example is pushing Swift pretty hard: [https://www.tensorflow.org/swift/](https://www.tensorflow.org/swift/)

Disclaimer: I work at Google but not on TensorFlow.

<comment><USER12> I don't believe TF4Swift will go anywhere.

Fortran, C++, Python and Julia drive the show and work with full tooling across UNIX flavours, Windows, macOS today.

<comment><USER13> I'd love to have a modern statically typed language with type inferencing etc. that can be used for scripting, working in a REPL, as well as compiling to native code.

I've never tried Swift, but it seems it _could_ have all the required features. I guess it's just lacking a lot of libraries that work on Linux.

<comment><USER12> OCaml fits the bill.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, or Haskell.

But those have been out there in a more or less mature form for decades, with no major uptake in sight. I guess they're just too esoteric for them to reach critical mass. So here I am, stuck with bash/python/C, and dabbling a bit with Rust..

<comment><USER12> If you would like to work in finance or compiler development, there is enough uptake of ML derived languages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> But why?

Sure, there are people who want to tinker with it for fun, but outside of that what is the point in having Swift on Linux and Windows?

You can't use it to build mac or iOS apps on Linux because the important libraries aren't there. There is no cross platform UI and Apple isn't likely to port and support theirs from macOS. If you are into servers then you have plenty of better languages options with established ecosystems. Maybe there are some command line apps on macOS which can now be ported to Linux/Window, but beyond that, what is the point? Where is Apple trying to go with this?

<comment><USER15> It's a fully fledged programming language. An open-source programming language, at that, with a lot of community input and involvement.

Not a macOS or iOS app creation DSL.

It's also quite pleasant to use, and has already seen a few uses beyond macOS and iOS apps, including some backend development (Vapor, Kitura, SwiftNIO, probably others).

So you could use it to write command line tools. To write Linux or Windows apps. Or to write servers. Just like any other programming language.

<comment><USER16> I'd say swift is currently probably the best languages out there. Language features, standard library, performance, memory management.

<comment><USER17> I'm curious, how do people judge this?

Personally I have some significant experience with maybe 5 different languages, which is already more diverse than the average software dev as far as I know. But I still wouldn't be comfortable to judge something like this.

For instance, I haven't worked with Swift, but I find it hard to believe it's much better than, say, C#, Scala, or Typescript, regarding those metrics. Do you have experience in those languages?

<comment><USER18> It's subjective, naturally. I don't know if I'd be _that_ enthusiastic, but I definitely like it a lot.

My main languages are Python and C++. I've also used Java, C#, Javascript but not Typescript, among others.

In my opinion Swift does a pretty good job at striking a balance between expressiveness/usability, safety and performance. If it gets more traction under Linux (including a larger ecosystem and better tooling around it) I'd definitely consider it for projects where Python could become a bottleneck but C++-level performance is not absolutely required.

On the other hand, other languages in a similar niche - Rust, Go, even D or Nim? are already more established outside of iOS/MacOS, so I don't know. My experience with Swift has definitely made me more interested in learning Rust, which seems quite similar in some respects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > It is not clear at the moment if Apple has any plans to port Swift UI to > Windows and/or Linux

It seems pretty clear they have 0 plans on doing that. They could've open sourced it in the first place, along with Combine.

Not open sourcing Combine seems like a pretty short sighted decision to me.

<comment><USER20> Swift wasn't originally open-source, either.

<comment><USER21> Not only did they announce that it would be open source immediately, unlike the source code dump they did with WebKit, Apple made the entire git commit history public from the initial commit.

<comment><USER22> FWIW, WebKit's complete history is available in its Subversion repository, all the way back to the initial commits in 2001 when they were importing KHTML and convincing it to compile without Qt. Granted, there was around two years after Safari's initial release where Apple simply published source code drops, but the full code history has been public (first in CVS, then in SVN) since mid-2005.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Also worth noting that Saleem has also been working on a wrapper of Windows GDI for Swift. While it's not a port of SwiftUI, it looks pretty similar.

[https://github.com/compnerd/swift-win32](https://github.com/compnerd/swift- win32)

<comment><USER24> Would be more interesting Swift on top of WinRT/xlang. [https://github.com/Microsoft/xlang](https://github.com/Microsoft/xlang)

That would also means you would be able to deal with WinUI XAML and all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is good news to me! I've been very interested in Swift for a long time, but mostly work doing web dev so it would only be useful to me if I could run it on Linux and it initially didn't have a great support story. I know it has been able to run on some Linuxes for a while, but it just didn't appear to be a great ecosystem. Now, there's interesting stuff happening for both backend and fronted ([https://twitter.com/lrz/status/1250644001604042752](https://twitter.com/lrz/status/1250644001604042752)).

<comment><USER9> The ecosystem isn't npm or anything but it's not terrible if you don't care about targeting Windows. The standard library is pretty good, and between C and Python interop there's generally always a way to do something even if there's not great library support directly in Swift.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> > It is hard to think that any Windows programmer would prefer Swift as a > language over .NET languages,

It's not hard for me to think that. I've never been interested in .Net languages, and I write stuff for both Linux and Windows. If it was just Swift the language and compiler, and I had to wrap Win32 API calls by hand, I'd happily use it.

</comment><comment><USER27> XCode (and hence most of the useful parts of using the Apple development ecosystem) as of v11.4 won't install on Macs running Mojave it's actually better, in my view, to use Mono/C# and things like Xamarin than start off with Swift and think you can port the other way and not be forced into upgrading your laptop for the _privilege_ of writing apps for Apple systems.

<comment><USER28> You can still get around this because it's still possible to run Hackintosh in a VM.

<comment><USER27> Okay, but surely that's a workaround for devs who are primarily on non-Mac systems who want to use native features for Mac. What's the win with Swift if I'm developing on Windows over using, say, C# and benefitting from all the support for my primary base and then using something like Xamarin.

I'm on a Mac already (Macbook with 10.14) - am I really going to have to run a VM because of a _point release_? (That goes for both the OS and Xcode so that's even more absurd)

The standard of their laptops is not good enough any more for me to justify the continued and continuous upgrades. Maybe access to their market would be but I'd need an existing set of customers to justify it, else Visual Studio et al look just as juicy.

<comment><USER29> > because of a _point release_

The second set of digits represents major releases. The third set represents point releases.

macOS has been out, using this versioning scheme for a little over 20 years. Don't belittle the work between major releases just because the first set of digits hasn't changed.

Windows Vista through Windows 8.1 are all 6.x, but nobody would claim that Vista and its service packs, 7 and its service pack, and the 8 family are minor upgrades — there were some colossal technical changes under the hood between each, especially regarding security and device drivers.

Same thing for major releases of macOS, even if the user-facing stuff doesn't appear to be all that different.

Also, if your machine supports 10.14, it supports 10.15. The last MacBook Pro that dropped support for anything more recent came out in 2011. Nobody's asking you to buy a new laptop.

<comment><USER27> > The second set of digits represents major releases. The third set represents > point releases.

It's called _being facetious_. Regardless, Xcode definitely does not use the 2nd digit for major releases[1], which does require 10.15.

> Windows Vista…

Completely irrelevant.

> Also, if your machine supports 10.14, it supports 10.15. The last MacBook > Pro that dropped support for anything more recent came out in 2011.

Yeah, the reality for my machine is that the upgrade did not take, which is funny considering I only tried to upgrade because of the Xcode requirements.

> Nobody's asking you to buy a new laptop.

They sell hardware. If you think they introduce breaking changes to the operating system tied to the hardware because of necessity then I have a bridge to sell you.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xcode#Xcode_11.x_(since_SwiftU...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xcode#Xcode_11.x_\(since_SwiftUI_framework\))

<comment><USER29> > It's called being facetious

Then stop being facetious. It wasn't clear you were being facetious, anyway.

> Completely irrelevant

No, it isn't, not to the point I was making. You also don't get to decide what's relevant to a point _someone else_ is making.

The point is that Vista's version number is 6.0, 7's was 6.1, 8's was 6.2, and 8.1's was 6.3. All seemingly minor version number bumps, all major releases.

> Yeah, the reality for my machine is that the upgrade did not take

That's unfortunate — but nobody else's problem. If you have a capable machine, harping on about ...

> They sell hardware

... doesn't really stand. They may be selling hardware — but you don't have to buy any.

<comment><USER27> Personally, I try to read in a charitable way by assuming that the person writing isn't being robotic - we may (most of us here) be techies but we're still human. I enjoy the wit of others, especially served wry.

Now, to versioning. There is no one standard for versioning. _Again_ , we're mainly techies here, we know this (I hope). I like semver[1] (though I'm having doubts[2]), some prefer calver[3], others use versions as branding[4] (which extends beyond computing). Hence, the choice of version scheme chosen by another organisation or project has _no relevance_ to any other project, their being in the same category or field or competing or whatever simply have no more relevance to this subject than Ford Escort MkII moving to MkIII.

If you're into recursion you might also try applying you "who gets to choose the relevance" logic beyond your own comments, it'll be enlightening.

Finally, if you're going to suggest that all X are capable of something but ignore exceptions to that to me smacks of dogmatism, and more importantly, _of no help whatsoever to the person you 're responding to_.

If you have something helpful or insightful _for me_ then please respond with that, else you can comment further up the thread with your thoughts about versioning and how a hardware company that has been fined for planned obsolescence _via software updates_ [5] isn't angling for more purchases when it stops its dev environment being backwards compatible so it can support a half finished UI library.

[1] [https://semver.org/](https://semver.org/)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyLBGkS5ICk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyLBGkS5ICk) A fascinating talk by Rich Hickey where he questions semver and the way we handle change as developers.

[3] [https://calver.org/](https://calver.org/)

[4] [https://hbr.org/2011/05/the-best-way-to-name-your- product-20](https://hbr.org/2011/05/the-best-way-to-name-your-product-20) It's interesting, they did lab tests:

> In laboratory and field studies involving hundreds of subjects, we found > that when consumers see a brand-name continuation, they expect improvements > to existing features. When they see a brand-name change, they expect > fundamentally new features, and they perceive the product as riskier > (likelier to fail or more prone to compatibility problems with previous > products) but potentially more rewarding (higher in quality, more satisfying > to use).

If OS X to macOS isn't a brand name change then what's the point (pun intended) of the 10?

[5] [https://www.itworld.com/article/3316958/apple-and-samsung- fi...](https://www.itworld.com/article/3316958/apple-and-samsung-fined-for- planned-obsolescence.html) I got a free battery out of this one, perhaps I shouldn't complain? (wry humour alert;)

Edit: I managed to muck up the numbering. Is Markdown capable of off-by-one errors? I can make it happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I have a Swift Cookbook that I maintain on Github:

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

</comment><comment><USER31> Wonder if some macOS only software will get ported to Windows once this happens. That if course is assuming there's good support for the Windows APIs for building apps

<comment><USER16> Apple is strengthening their services revenue. They week profit from the extra reach. Also, people will continue to but their hardware because the alternatives aren't that great

Simple example.... the MacBook trackpad

<comment><USER32> Ten years ago when I was offered a choice, I told the office manager I wanted a MacBook because of the trackpad.

Apple's trackpads are even better now. How has nobody figured out Apple's 2010s trackpad technology?

<comment><USER33> _How has nobody figured out Apple's 2010s trackpad technology?_

I think because the focus is so much on the trackpad technology itself, which may be a misplaced focus. My fear is that the solution may involve rearchitecting the entire application-GUI stack to get it working on Linux. Why? Because Apple's trackpad is not a mouse emulator, it's a first class input device all the way up to the application. Trying to make the driver really smart is fruitless if you throw out all of that rich information and try to reduce the inputs down to what a mouse is capable of.

<comment><USER34> Eh, I think you're overblowing it a bit. While Apple's trackpad does do some unique things (like Chinese character input[1]), most of the behavior that people are interested in emulating here can be reduced to the cursor position, click events, and (high-resolution) scroll events. The only part of this that isn't currently available on Linux, AFAIK, is the scrolling bits, and even that isn't critical.

[1]: [https://support.apple.com/guide/chinese-input-method/use- tra...](https://support.apple.com/guide/chinese-input-method/use-trackpad- handwriting-scim27935/mac)

<comment><USER33> It isn't just that. The scrolling in macOS is 2D (you can scroll a small rectangle inside a large one in any direction) and has position, velocity, acceleration, and a bounce effect on the boundaries of the content area. Additionally, you can pinch to zoom (in and out) and the zooming is smooth and continuous centred on the cursor location.

There are also various 3-finger swipe gestures, and force touch lets you click on things with different levels of force to do different things.

The only Linux application I've seen that uses smooth scrolling with acceleration is Firefox, and that isn't nearly as smooth as macOS scrolling (which is available in every application).

<comment><USER34> Two-axis scrolling isn't unique to macOS. The way that scrolling has traditionally been implemented on Linux (as mouse buttons 4 and 5) makes it difficult to implement any kind of continuous scrolling, but once you have one axis working, a second one isn't much harder.

The velocity and bounce effects on scrolling are implemented at the application layer. They don't depend on any unique features of the trackpad hardware or driver stack.

Zoom and swipe gestures are nice to have, but I don't think they're critical in the same kind of way that pointing and acceleration are.

Force Touch is more of a gimmick than anything. It's a relatively recent feature, and was only added to the Macbook Air in 2018; very few applications do anything interesting with it. Personally, I leave it turned off.

<comment><USER33> _The velocity and bounce effects on scrolling are implemented at the application layer. They don 't depend on any unique features of the trackpad hardware or driver stack._

I didn't say they did. Oh macOS they're not implemented by the application though, they're implemented by the UI APIs and thus available to all applications for free. This is not the case on Linux.

<comment><USER35> It is the case on Linux. Both GTK and Qt have this built in for a while now:

[https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/GtkScrolledWindow.ht...](https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/GtkScrolledWindow.html#GtkScrolledWindow --kinetic-scrolling)

[https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qscroller.html](https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qscroller.html)

Why it's not working on your applications is a different question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> They need objc2swift, something like c2rust[1], to speed up the legacy code upgrade. Transpiler and code refactoring tool, all while preserving the ability to run tests. Or, on the other side, c2rust should get an Objective C support as an input.

[1] [https://github.com/immunant/c2rust](https://github.com/immunant/c2rust)

<comment><USER37> In my opinion, the integration between Objective-C and Swift is so incredibly seamless, that there's no need to translate existing Objective-C code.

When I started working at my current client, there was a huge existing Objective-C code base to talk to an internal HTTP API. I just started coding. When I needed to add functions, I subclassed Objective-C classes in Swift.

<comment><USER29> There _is_ need to translate existing Objective-C code: on platforms where the Objective-C bridge is unavailable (Linux and Windows), Swift code can not call Objective-C code, nor toll-free bridge with Objective-C types, and therefore Objective-C types cannot be subclassed.

For non-Apple platforms, you have to use a different implementation of Foundation — which has pretty good but not identical coverage to Apple's one.

As a side note, it's always seemed clear to me that when Apple provides a new technology, they provide a stop-gap solution, like Carbon, for developers who, for a variety of possible reasons, may not be able or willing to use the new tech, like Cocoa.

The bridge between Objective-C and Swift has always seemed like Carbon to me.

Fortunately, unlike when Carbon was canned and rewriting for Cocoa seemed like a real chore, I don't think Apple will can the Objective-C bridge any time soon — but for Swift code now targeting or intending to target non-Apple platforms, it may be best to start thinking about migrating away from relying on the bridge now — decarbonify your Swift code.

<comment><USER38> Doesn't seem like there would be much demand to run legacy Objective-C code on other platforms, as it would most likely be strongly tied into macOS or iOS APIs that would be availble anyway.

<comment><USER29> Indeed. Although, some of the things that Apple's ObjC Foundation provides that aren't in Swift's cross-platform Foundation are sorely missed — but I doubt there's much impetus to put them in Swift's cross-platform Foundation, either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I imagine the idea is basically writing Swift servers and sharing code between platforms.

I could be wrong but I _seriously_ doubt we will cross platform SwiftUI, UIKit, etc.

</comment><comment><USER40> This is extremely exciting for me. I started writing a toy application for my iPhone using SwiftUI a few months ago and have been _very_ impressed by Swift (coming from C#). So far, SwiftUI has felt exactly like what I wished XAML would become.

The documentation and error messages are a complete disaster though ([https://nooverviewavailable.com/](https://nooverviewavailable.com/))

<comment><USER41> Regarding error messages, which Xcode version are you on? They substantially improved after the Xcode update with an overhauled diagnostics engine. Documentation has been steadily improving, I've found that Apple does respond to Feedback Assistant reports about missing overviews and code listings, albeit way slower than I'd like.

<comment><USER40> I'm generally always on the latest released version. It _has) gotten better, but its still not good enough. For example, having two @Published variables in the same class with the same name causes a crash in the compiler with no pointers to the source.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Quick question: Does it mean now we can write games on Windows using SDL + Swift, and it will run on MacOS without any change at all?

<comment><USER43> Quick answer: no.

<comment><USER42> Could you please explain why?

<comment><USER44> No OP, and I don't know much about game development, but "without any change at all" is too strong. SDL only does so much, and you still need platform- specific APIs for file access, networking (if applicable), threading, etc. So you'll still need platform-specific code until someone writes those abstractions in Swift.

<comment><USER45> not OP either. but i think the problem is simple. apple said no to opengl, which any other platform out there supports.

btw, they are even deprecating opengl! i have no idea what that means for the tons of games written with an opengl backend. probably not an issue for the iOS ecosystem though.

so that's what is going on...

<comment><USER46> OpenGL isn't relevant here, as SDL2 has a metal backend that's used by default on MacOS. See [https://hg.libsdl.org/SDL/rev/1acae5590352](https://hg.libsdl.org/SDL/rev/1acae5590352)

<comment><USER45> > OpenGL isn't relevant here

oh nice, i had no idea SDL had metal support!

no one in the SDL developer community tells you how to support metal or how to use it. instructions for MacOSX redirects you to another library, which has since removed their instructions.

who exactly are we kidding here?

<comment><USER12> The whole point of using SDL is that the framework takes care of it for you.

Here,

[https://wiki.libsdl.org/SDL_SetHint?highlight=%28%5CbCategor...](https://wiki.libsdl.org/SDL_SetHint?highlight=%28%5CbCategoryAPI%5Cb%29%7C%28SDLFunctionTemplate%29)

[https://wiki.libsdl.org/SDL_HINT_RENDER_DRIVER](https://wiki.libsdl.org/SDL_HINT_RENDER_DRIVER)

And after a 5 minute search,

[https://gist.github.com/gcatlin/b89e0efed78dd91364609ca4095d...](https://gist.github.com/gcatlin/b89e0efed78dd91364609ca4095da346)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Good news. I'm feeling a strong reluctance against languages that only work on one platform.

</comment><comment><USER48> Sounds like great news! Am excited to see, where Swift will end. I am no developer but I like to code things and script tasks (at work that's even my job). Already tried many different languages. In the end I always used Python, because i feared that nobody can rewrite my code, if I write it in something more exotic.

Out of interest I spend some evenings in swift (server-side) and it felt some kind of fresh air. Python feels so 'slugish' all the time. But I am worried, if swift will ever be 'useful' server-side.

</comment><comment><USER49> I don't think this is evidence for a move to cross plattform UI apps, but I hope it's a move to make Swift more useful on the server side.

As I've understood it, Foundation support is pretty good these days? But it would be cool if Apple ported even more frameworks that could be useful for server side applications. Recently I would have loved to have had AVFoundation available when doing some HLS parsing server side, for example.

</comment><comment><USER50> Very interesting - so basically it will be versus React Native on Windows & Mac (using Typescript) [https://microsoft.github.io/react-native- windows/](https://microsoft.github.io/react-native-windows/)

Arguably people are already used to creating desktop apps using JS/Typescript using the Electron framework. React Native builds upon that.

2021 is going to be interesting

</comment><comment><USER51> I hope they also add better builtins for HTTP. Last time I worked with Swift it was difficult to get a simple server up and running without a framework.

<comment><USER52> Huh? Apple provides an example implementation at [https://github.com/apple/swift-nio](https://github.com/apple/swift-nio) and I would say it's straightforward to "get up and running".

It's pretty easy to take Apple's HTTP implementation, add a router, integrate a template engine and have something working, but then the real issues start, because the ecosystem and community just aren't there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Off-topic, but I read the title as "Supported on Linux distributions including but not limited to Windows". Microsoft, you know what we want.

<comment><USER28> Windows switching to the Linux kernel would be wild, but I think we all know it's coming.

<comment><USER54> I don't know how they can pull that off.

They would need to support customers who need that compatibility. So either they start being major contributors to WINE or something like it ... But then what about people who need a propriatary driver? Maybe a VM with hardware passthrough....

But they already have WSL for compatibility in the other direction. Not good enough?

<comment><USER28> It won't happen all at once. Linux already coexists with Windows through WSL and virtualization. The real work is in porting the APIs that the core MS products make heavy use of (DirectX, .NET, GDI, etc.).

The old Windows kernel will run in a hypervisor as needed. Windows already takes advantage of virtualization for everyday programs for security purposes. It wouldn't be that much of a shift to virtualize the kernel too.

More and more of the MS stack is being ported to Linux, seemingly in preparation for this. As of recently you can run PowerShell on Linux and run .NET "Core" on Linux. Since Visual Studio and Office are all .NET, if the Windows graphics/GDI layer is also ported to Linux, then it should be possible soon to build Microsoft Word for Linux.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Surprised OP have overlooked the importance of adding Amazon Linux 2.

That opens the door to seamless and full supported AWS Lambda functions in Swift.

</comment><comment><USER56> What's the best resource to learn Swift? Should I grab a Bluetooth keyboard and go through Swift Playgrounds on iPad? Or is that more for children brand new to programming?

<comment><USER57> Paul Hudson's books and guides are very good. I churned through his "100 days of SwiftUI" a couple months ago, really liked it. [https://www.hackingwithswift.com](https://www.hackingwithswift.com)

<comment><USER58> Paul Hudson is the best, along with Ray Wenderlich's stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> This looks good. I started learning Swift a few days ago because I want to play around with iOS and macos apps, so good to see I could use it on other platforms too.

</comment><comment><USER60> ... but not on OS X Mojave. What a joke.

</comment><comment> awinter-py linux builds of ios apps would lead to general improvement in the state of build tooling for mobile (IMO)

I take it this isn't that?

<comment><USER28> This will never happen. Part of the reason programmers or aspiring programmers buy MacBooks is they think they will be working on iApps at some point in time. This is an example of the most intolerant minority winning[1]. I may have to use Windows to make games, but I can install Windows on a MacBook. I cannot install MacOS on a laptop with Windows or Linux pre-installed.

[1] [https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the- dict...](https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship- of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15)

<comment><USER61> > Part of the reason programmers or aspiring programmers buy MacBooks is they > think they will be working on iApps at some point in time.

Or perhaps they like the hardware or OS and have no intention to work on apps?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> This is excellent news.

</comment><comment><USER63> Huh, might finally get around to Apple garbage. Closing your users to one internal system with internal hardware works for speed and maintenance issues([with users] look at early Windows with it's struggles and blue screens despite it's prevalent use across various hardware systems. But it doesn't work with devs. Dude if I can't code your stuff or for your platform on my shitty little linux, I have zero interest in working on your platform or utilizing your tech stack.

</comment><comment><USER64> I will find swift interesting only once you can build apps without having a Mac

</comment><comment><USER65> So many comments suggesting different UI frameworks with varying levels of cross-platform support.

Guys, I hate to say this, just use Java. Its fully cross-platform with a complete UI toolkit that looks native and isn't slow. You're not going to find anything else thats as complete or performant. Java has been focused on this niche forever.

I bet you use Java GUI's all the time without even knowing it. Most of you every day. Tons of IDE's, database visualizers, and other dev tools are made with Java GUI's.

Every Jetbrains tool, DBeaver, DB Visualizer, MySQL Workbench, other stuff I'm too lazy to look up. If you have a tool thats not web with a big UI, its Electron or Java 90% of the time.

<comment><USER29> > that looks native and isn't slow

No.

> You're not going to find anything else thats as complete [...]

Qt. WxWidgets. Soon, React Native for Windows and macOS.

> [...] or performant

No.

> I bet you use Java GUI's all the time without even knowing it.

Oh, people know it. Even users of Windows and Linux, platforms where a consistent native look and feel for applications is now a veritable pipe dream, can tell.

Plenty of people specifically _avoid_ apps written with a Java UI because they feel so non-native and slow.

(Disclaimer: I'm not saying Qt, WxWidgets, necessarily feel any more native than Swing or JavaFX; I only mentioned them as examples of complete cross- platform UI kits, not necessarily as ones with the best integration — although well-designed Qt and WxWidgets apps will still feel miles more integrated with both Windows _and_ macOS, notoriously difficult to emulate, than Swing)

> Every Jetbrains tool, DBeaver, DB Visualizer, MySQL Workbench, other stuff > I'm too lazy to look up. If you have a tool thats not web with a big UI, its > Electron or Java 90% of the time

If you use apps from that specific set you listed, sure.</comment></comment>


Google hopes to improve search quality with 'offensive' flag - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/google-adds-tool-to-flag-offensive-search-results/2017/03/16/3af3f404-0a6d-11e7-bd19-fd3afa0f7e2a_story.html <comment><AUTHOR> The article cites another site - [http://searchengineland.com/google-flag- upsetting-offensive-...](http://searchengineland.com/google-flag-upsetting- offensive-content-271119) \- that has a much more comprehensive explanation of the practical impact.</comment>


The Best Hiring Tip - <AUTHOR> http://zakimahomed.posterous.com/the-best-hiring-tip <comment><USER2> _"CV's (people lie) and reference checks (everyone knows 2 people they like) "_

Marissa Meyer was asked on the Charlie Rose show about Google's hiring process, and she answered that they had done the numbers and the only correlation there was between the hiring process and how well new employees worked out was their CV. People that had prior experience in the area they were hired for did better than people who didn't. Except for that there were no significant correlations to be found.

I believe Marissa Meyer over Zaki Mahomed(the author of the article)

<comment><USER3> You have a good point and in my (much more limited than Ms. Meyer) experience, the CV is a very strong indicator. But there are times it does not work:

1\. The candidate has to be truthful or you have to actually verify. Also, its worth being very careful about exactly what is said. I have met someone who genuinely had 4 years as a Senior DBA. It was true, and his former boss loved him. But when I proved for details, he was the senior DBA because he was the only DBA in the small company and mostly maintained a system consultants had set up earlier. He did not seem ready to do new development or manage a major system to me after a thorough interview.

2\. The candidate is straight out of school. While there are exceptions, most people don't have much of a resume at that point.

3\. The candidate is making a career change. Similar to being straight out of school (in fact they may be straight out of school for the second time) they won't and can't have a lot of experience in that particular field.

Of course, 2 and 3 might indicate you don't want to hire them for a senior position anyway, but it does make using the CV as the primary determinant challenging.

<comment><USER4> Regarding 1) the interview questions and a little research/verification on the CV should be able to flush that out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So, the "best hiring tip ever" is a question that's easy to bullshit once you've heard it, and that puts people whose proudest achievements relate to their careers in the uncomfortable situation of inventing a response that dresses up the importance of their hobbies? Brilliant.

Advice like this makes me realize why employers believe that qualified applicants are so hard to find. If this is the garbage that passes for best practice in interviews, they might as well be sacrificing chickens to the gods of employment.

<comment><USER6> I'd say it's a very easy to verify question. If someone is experienced in interviews (you can usually tell that's the case) they might talk a lot about the stuff they did, but they will have nothing to show. Usually when you're excited about something you will have _some_ proof, or will know enough details that it's easy to confirm. For almost all people I work with, it's enough to google their name to find their projects / blogs / ... everything the employer would be interested in.

<comment><USER5> Now you're hinging your hiring decision on your ability to verify a person's hobby?

It seems to me that it would be both simpler and more effective to spend your energy trying to determine if the candidate can do the job for which you're hiring. Leave their hobbies out of it.

<comment><USER6> Of course. I didn't say that is a good question, or that the answer should be taken into consideration when hiring. I just don't agree that it's easy to talk BS in that situation if the person asking it really wants to know the truth. (i.e. they don't ask it just because it's on the list)

Personally - I think it's a good question to decide which person you'd rather spend half the day with, if you have 2 equally good candidates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > "lame excuses like charity work"

Buzz off. How is this at the top of the front page on HN?

Also, it's idiotic to to perpetuate the "rock star programmer" meme. All the great developers I have ever known would never consider themselves rock stars, however most of the biggest assholes I've ever known did consider themselves rock stars. As a developer, I'd never work somewhere that looked for rock stars, ninjas, or what have you. It clearly shows they don't understand programmers and programming.

edit: language.

<comment><AUTHOR> did you read the article? "lame excuses like charity work (most likely they spent one night feeding the homeless and are bragging about it since),"

most people do very little charity, and brag a lot about it. If you have hired people and seen otherwise, i'd love to stand corrected.

<comment><USER7> Yes I read your post. That's why I was able to quote from it. If you want to hire a good programmer, ask them about programming. It's that simple. Set up a few scenarios and let them talk and whiteboard their way out of it. Ideally you'll be able to come up with a range of problems that range from familiar to totally unknown. The familiar scenarios will tell you if they are bullshitters, and the unfamiliar scenarios will tell you how quickly they can adapt to new environments.

While it is true that people who program outside of work tend to be good programmers, it is not true that all good programmers program outside of work. And your note about charity work is outright insulting to anyone who has spent their free time helping those in need.

<comment><USER8> I think there's a lot of validity in the assumption that if you are extremely technically capable (a good programmer), then it is also extremely unlikely for you to not have come up with an idea (and thus be passionate about it) and committed to its realisation. That is, if you truly are good, it's pretty unlikely that you never implemented something on your own.

But also keep in mind it's a tip for hiring into startups, and startups at the early level require a certain amount of passion that usually comes with programmer who actually love to program (and if you love to program you've probably done it outside of necessity before).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I just got done doing a 4 hour long programming problem as the first start in the interview process at a company. In my long history of finding jobs, this is the way to go. It was a well thought out, challenging problem, and the solution really flexed a lot of different aspects of what a good programmer should be able to do.

It has the added bonus of me thinking this might be an above average company and I'm more interested in them than any of my other prospects.

</comment><comment><USER10> My experience has consistently been that the only reliable way to tell how good someone is is to work with them on a real project. Since that actually works, and nothing else does, I'd say it's the interview and hiring processes that are broken.

<comment><USER11> would there be a way to try out a new hire for a 'trial period', maybe on like a 3-month starter project paired with someone more senior? then after the new hire has proven him/herself over those months, a formal offer could be made.

<comment><USER3> There are ways to do that, but there are a lot of complications.

First, most truly good workers, especially in the tech industry, aren't sitting idle for a long time, so they are often either being hired away from a job they already hold and possibly being asked to relocate. A lot of those good people will not make a commitment like that to you and disrupt their lives if you aren't ready to make something of a commitment to them. So, this might work well for entry level positions but probably less so for senior people.

Then there is the cost of dealing with them for three months or until you figure out if they are right. While this is much less expensive than keeping the wrong person on for a long time, it is still very expensive. Most managers want to try very hard to find the right person the first time not go through a whole series of short term hires looking for the right person.

In some situations this is a great idea (and what many companies actually do), but there are many occasions it is impractical.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Meta point: There's mixed views on HN'ing your own stuff, but I think it's pushing what's "decent" to use such subjective headline as "The Best Hiring Tip".

Even if that's the title of the post on your own blog, I think most HN'ers enjoy a bit of objectivity.

</comment><comment><USER13> You probably shouldn't even have to ask a passionate person this; at some point in the interview, they probably would've told you what they enjoy doing outside of work.

Regardless, there's no perfect way to interview someone for a development job. It's equal parts experience, your feeling about them, how they fit into the existing organization, and a ton of other variables.

</comment><comment><USER14> In my experience the "Best Hiring Tip" is actually: ask the person to do the thing that you are hiring them to do (or a representative exercise), and see how well they do it, or how much potential they demonstrate.

</comment><comment><USER15> I wholeheartedly agree with this man. Of course, I'm currently unemployed and would receive heavy bias from a person using this technique.

</comment><comment><USER16> What 85 years worth of research says about who to hire:

[http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/10/selecting- tal...](http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/10/selecting-talent-the- upshot-from-85-years-of-research.html)

</comment><comment><USER17> Although what about the people who, misguided though they may be, haven't done anything outside of work because their passion is their work?

<comment><USER18> If someone's interviewing for a job, there must be _something_ they want that they aren't (currently) getting from their employer.</comment></comment>


Heat-map.co: Discover the Heat Map of Your Website - <AUTHOR> http://heat-map.co

<comment><USER2> I'm confused. How does this work without inserting any code on your site?

<comment><USER3> It shows not how visitors click on the page, but how they perceive the page visually.</comment></comment>