WebRTC Samples - <AUTHOR> https://webrtc.github.io/samples/ <comment> Sean-Der The term 'WebRTC' is overloaded, it can mean the protocol or the API. These samples only cover in the browser. This repo is also kind of dead [https://github.com/webrtc/samples/issues/1350](https://github.com/webrtc/samples/issues/1350)

If you are interested in WebRTC out of the browser there are lots of implementations and servers! I am also working on a book 'WebRTC for the Curious'[0] that tries to explain the protocol and the history behind it.

[0] [https://webrtcforthecurious.com/](https://webrtcforthecurious.com/)

<comment><USER2> This blog post from 2018 from Discord indicated that the browser implementation of WebRTC wasn't as good: [https://blog.discordapp.com/how- discord-handles-two-and-half...](https://blog.discordapp.com/how-discord- handles-two-and-half-million-concurrent-voice-users-using-webrtc- ce01c3187429?gi=70398163d427)

Is this still the case? Would you still hypothetically see better audio performance of something like Discord in a standalone app?

<comment><USER3> Still pretty bad. Firefox can't freely select audio devices per stream. Chrome has some kind of unbeatable adaptation that makes latency fluctuate.

<comment><USER4> Do you have more details on the Firefox problem? I have a WebRTC project that is currently in standby (priorities changed) and one issue that I have not been able to troubleshoot was an inability to send audio from Firefox while it somehow worked on Chrome.

<comment><USER3> It works fine in Firefox (send and receive) as long as you don't need to play on multiple output devices. Currently you can enable a feature flag, use enumerateDevices() and play audio files on specific devices, but you can't hook up WebRTC streams to the devices.

enumerateDevices() should enumerate audio output devices (feature behind pref): [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1152401](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1152401)

Enable by default setSinkId pref: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1498512](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1498512)

Alex Chronopoulos: "We keep it off because it does not work for everything. It works when we playback a file but not for webaudio or WebRTC. We want to add those too and we keep it off till then."

<comment><USER4> Thanks for your answer, I only have two devices connected so my problem must be caused by an unrelated mistake. I'll find out eventually :).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For those in the know, if I'm running something on my own that may only at any given moment see in the few hundreds of people using it, what's the best approach in terms of server-side infrastructure to support WebRTC apps? Is there any SaaS offering that has a meaningful product?

<comment><USER6> We use Janus Gateway, and it works really well:

[https://github.com/meetecho/janus-gateway](https://github.com/meetecho/janus- gateway)

We have upwards of 100 simultaneous users on it every day, and at the moment it seems to be 100% reliable.

<comment><USER7> Mizu gateway also does the job:

[https://www.mizu-voip.com/Software/WebRTCtoSIP.aspx](https://www.mizu- voip.com/Software/WebRTCtoSIP.aspx)

It has a nice config wizard and built-in STUN and TURN server.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There is also [https://janus.conf.meetecho.com/screensharingtest.html](https://janus.conf.meetecho.com/screensharingtest.html) just to have more resources to check

</comment><comment><USER9> If you want to build a multiple session (multiple people) connecting to a website with their camera and audio on, would you use WebRTC or WebSocket + getUserMedia ? Why ?

<comment> Sean-Der WebRTC is going to be better for most users (IMO). WebRTC provides congestion control so video stays real-time. It works pretty well with very little effort.

Some companies have decided to roll their own, [https://webrtchacks.com/zoom- avoids-using-webrtc/](https://webrtchacks.com/zoom-avoids-using-webrtc/) is a cool read.

<comment><USER9> how about if you want to integrate real time chat, can webRTC data channel accomplish that or one needs WebSockets for that?

<comment><USER10> Go do your own homework

<comment><USER11> suggest you read this (on the frontpage today): [https://nedbatchelder.com//blog/202009/how_to_be_helpful_onl...](https://nedbatchelder.com//blog/202009/how_to_be_helpful_online.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My favorite sample by far: [https://webrtc.github.io/samples/src/content/devices/input-o...](https://webrtc.github.io/samples/src/content/devices/input- output/)

I routinely hit it to validate my camera/audio options and confirm the audio is sounding good.

<comment><USER13> That was extremely loud from feedback amplifying. Are you doing this with headphones on?

<comment><USER12> Yup. Sorry probably shoulda noted that. :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If I want to add WebRTC capabilities to an existing server, what's the simplest way of doing that? This is for a game, all I need is an unreliable RTCDataChannel

<comment><USER15> I used simple-peer [1] for sending coordinates between clients in a canvas painting game [2].

[1] [https://github.com/feross/simple-peer](https://github.com/feross/simple- peer)

[2] [https://github.com/justo-rivera/dibujio-client](https://github.com/justo- rivera/dibujio-client)

Ps. Be sure to use a turn server besides a stun one, that was a big headache to get it working on mobile data

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Any reason why this requires both Python _and_ Nodejs?</comment>


New design could finally help to bring fusion power closer to reality - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/news/2015-08-fusion-power-closer-reality.html <comment><USER2> Meanwhile, MIT's fusion program is likely to be shut down soon. Their Alcator C-Mod has the strongest magnetic field of any tokamak in the world, and made a serious breakthrough in tokamak physics several years ago.

I had a chance to visit a couple years ago. A grad student showed us a metal tie, about a meter long, and said they'd calculated that two of them could hold down the Space Shuttle during launch. To hold the reactor together when they switched it on, they needed 38 of them.

They hadn't run the reactor for a year due to funding issues.

<comment><USER3> I had to run the numbers on that Space Shuttle thing, just to see. The Space Shuttle weighed about 4.5 million pounds at launch, and had a thrust-to-weight ratio of 1.5, meaning there was about 2.25 million pounds of net upward force on it. So each of those metal ties was capable of carrying a bit over a million pounds of load. Neat.

<comment><USER4> And in Si units about: 500 000 kg (453 592.37)

<comment><USER5> kg is a unit of mass.The Si unit of force is the Newton.

<comment><USER6> What's the SI unit of pedantry?

<comment><USER7> Easier to understand than the American/Imperial one :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The big problem with controlled fusion, as I understand it, isn't creating a net energy positive fusion reactor like this article implies. The physics is already there, we just need the engineering to catch-up.

The challenge is the materials that compose the reactor become brittle and highly radioactive far faster than usable. Controlled fusion as an energy source isn't just challenging because fusion is difficult, it's also challenging because materials don't handle neutron bombardment well.

I think where this advancement is going to really help is in the iteration phase due to lower build costs but I'm still waiting for a solution to the radioactive economic issues associated with the materials these reactors would be constructed from.

<comment><USER9> > "The challenge is the materials that compose the reactor become brittle and > highly radioactive far faster than usable. Controlled fusion as an energy > source isn't just challenging because fusion is difficult, it's also > challenging because materials don't handle neutron bombardment well."

Isn't that problem solved with aneutronic fusion?

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

Of course we should focus on getting fusion working (working in the sense of providing more energy than we put in), regardless of whether we use the aneutronic approach or not, but as the field develops I'm optimistic we'll find ways to have robust fusion reactors.

<comment><USER8> I can honestly say I'd never heard of that before you posted your link. I don't know enough to form a valid opinion here.

<comment><USER10> "I don't know enough to form a valid opinion here.".

Beautiful. This is pretty much the last thing I ever expected to read on the interweb.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Here's the paper (no paywall):

[http://arxiv.org/abs/1409.3540](http://arxiv.org/abs/1409.3540)

Interesting that the liquid blanket is the same as in the molten-salt thorium reactors (lithium beryllium fluoride (FLiBe)).

<comment><USER12> Iananp, but wouldn't that be for the same reasons? E.g. in both case you're trying to absorb energetic neutrons?

(Upon research: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLiBe#Coolant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLiBe#Coolant)) Apparently it has properties that make it _both_ a great coolant & a neutron moderator. Neat!

<comment><USER11> They actually have nearly opposite goals. The fusion blanket is supposed to transmute lithium to tritium [0] (create more fusion fuel), so it has capture as many neutrons as possible. The fission-reactor coolant is supposed to be transparent -- to capture as few neutrons as possible. Both of them need isotopic separation of lithium to be practical. But in opposite directions. ARC's FLiBe needs to be Li-6 enriched, and MSR needs to be Li-6 depleted.

The MSRE fuel used 99.993% Li-7 (your link), and the ARC blanket is 90% Li-6 (arXiv paper).

[0] [https://www.iter.org/mach/tritiumbreeding](https://www.iter.org/mach/tritiumbreeding)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _ARC: A compact, high-field, fusion nuclear science facility and demonstration power plant with demountable magnets_

Can it be miniaturized to power a suit?

</comment><comment><USER14> _" The design could produce a reactor that would provide electricity to about 100,000 people, they say."_

It would be a huge step forward if this can be built, but there still would be a long way to go. To scale that to "electricity for everyone in the USA", you would need to build about 3,000 of these (or build much bigger ones). And that's for _current_ electricity use, not if everybody starts driving an electric car.

For comparison, a 1000MW nuclear reactor produces electricity for 690,000 _households_ ([http://www.nei.org/Knowledge-Center/Nuclear-Statistics/US- Nu...](http://www.nei.org/Knowledge-Center/Nuclear-Statistics/US-Nuclear- Power-Plants)), and US nuclear electricity generation is about a honderd times that (same page)

<comment><USER3> A fusion reactor able to produce net electricity _at all_ would be a massive breakthrough. I don't think the size matters much at all. Once anything is working, progress on scaling it up is likely to come quickly. The hard part is getting to the point where it works at all.

The first nuclear power plant attached to a grid was only 6MW. The first "full-scale" plant, according to Wikipedia and the BBC, had four reactors producing only 60MW each.

<comment><USER14> Honest question: how does this design scale up?

Does scaling up mean making a bigger setup with magnets of the same strength? If so, I agree it is just a matter of making the effort, but this 150-ish MW thing is "half the size of ITER", which means it already is enormous (ITER will be gargantuan with its 1400 cubic meter vacuum vessel).

Even at 'to the fourth power', I fear this would get really huge before it significantly improves on our largest fission reactors.

Alternatively, can one inject more fusion material while keeping the same magnetic field strength to get more power out without building a larger device, or would that require stronger magnetic fields? If so, are we sure we can make those stronger fields? (Correction welcome, but I don't expect we can; if we could, we likely could scale this design down)

I still think that, if this works as advertised, it will be both a huge result and only one important step on a long road ahead to 'free' clean energy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think one of the biggest issues fusion power needs to deal with is whether or not it's worth the money. Renewable energy has gained serious momentum in the past years, and while it takes up significantly more land-mass-mass (things like solar panels and wind turbines), it requires less research and development than fusion, and is advancing at a significant pace. Contrast this with something like nuclear fusion, that has been under development for decades, and still has yet to produce a long term viable product.

The one area I still think I see fusion reactors succeeding in, is that they can theoretically use nuclear waste as a fuel[0][1]. However, outside of Transatomic Power, I really don't see many fusion companies interested in dealing with that issue. Given fusions history of failure, I think that fusion energy really needs a hell of a selling point beyond a simple "we make energy" to be able to succeed. I think that selling point doesn't get much better than using nuclear waste as fuel.

[0] [http://www.transatomicpower.com/](http://www.transatomicpower.com/)

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UXXwWOImm8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UXXwWOImm8)

</comment><comment><USER16> Assuming this is the breakthrough the MIT press department makes it out to be, remaining engineering and material sciences questions can be solved and a commercially viable fusion reactor can indeed be constructed in the not too distant future, do we actually want one?

Sure, this is fantastic news in a tech-geek, star-trek sense, but here in this reality, can we actually deploy such a thing?

With the global climate in a delicate balance and energy released by fusing atomic cores or splitting them or even any process yielding energy not directly or indirectly gained recently from the sun is bound to increase the average temperature. A single reactor might not make a relevant or even measurable difference, but if a significant share of society's hunger for energy is to be satisfied this way, then it will, won't it (and if we're not sure, can we risk it)? So if this accelerates global warming, potentially even leading to a runaway greenhouse process (reducing earth albedo by shrinking the polar caps, releasing methane from the former perma-frost grounds in the Siberian tundra, etc.), then I hope they find us earth 2.0 and a way how to get there in a hurry.

<comment><USER17> The heat produced by humans is trivial compared to the heat produced by sunlight hitting the earth. That's why sources of energy that don't trap sunlight are desirable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> IANAP, but this sounds at least superficially similar to the reactor that Tokamak Energy are developing. Any nuclear physicists care to weigh in?

""" Tokamak Energy is particularly focused on Spherical Tokamaks, pioneered at Culham, because these compact devices can achieve a much higher plasma pressure for a given magnetic field than conventional tokamaks, i.e. they are more efficient.

Theoretical calculations show that a Spherical Tokamak using high fields produced by HTS magnets could be significantly smaller than other fusion machines currently proposed. For example, a compact ST power plant would have a volume up to 100 times smaller than ITER """ \-- [http://www.tokamakenergy.co.uk/about- us/](http://www.tokamakenergy.co.uk/about-us/)

</comment><comment><USER19> The lab demonstration, if and when hopefully achieved, will be great but still a long way from full scale demonstration, licensing and commercialisation. Physics may eventually work well but engineering must hold up at 1:1 and make sense from several points of view. We're not there yet, ITER in Cadarache, France, being the nearest and biggest shot. Fingers crossed.

</comment><comment><USER20> Curious, IANAP, but suppose they get this to work? What would happen in the case of a magnetic field failure? I assume the magnetic field is generated by running electricity through the new material? What if the power fails?

</comment><comment><USER21> They use new high temperature superconducting wires to get those higher magnetic fields. If those superconductor wires become commonplace, they have some other uses as well...</comment>


My Life of Starcraft - Day[9] Daily #100 [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJztfsXKcPQ

<comment><AUTHOR> It's the story of Day[9]'s Starcraft career, as told by himself. Quite inspiring and especially interesting if you are into Starcraft.

Warning: it's almost two hours long.</comment>


Companies Have an Aha Moment: Bullies Don't Make the Best Managers - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-09/nike-s-executive-exodus-shows-bullies-don-t-make-good-bosses <comment><USER2> This is great news and I wish more companies would follow. There are so many borderline sociopaths in management roles -- people that may know quality but lack empathy, and only know how to get what they want from employees by essentially bullying. Often managers above the bullies either don't know or don't care as long as they hit the performance metrics they're seeking.

Think of probably one of the worst bullies out there that achieved the pinnacle of excellence: Steve Jobs. Would Apple have had just as much success or even more success earlier if Jobs wasn't so heartless towards his _direct_ employees? I would bet on it.

Point being is that it's possible to be empathetic and still ask your employees to strive for more. If your employees are afraid of you or view you as someone that doesn't listen and doesn't have their back, you might be missing out on collaborations where they have great ideas that maybe need a little mentoring.

Here's a quote I often try to be mindful of when managing people:

"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea." \- Antoine de Saint-Exupery</comment>


Ask News.YC: Do you know of a world-class startup focused PR firm? - <AUTHOR>

I already know of Schwartz Communications from PG's "The Submarine" essay. Anyone know of any other firms like them that are worth checking out?<p>Thanks in advance. <comment><USER2> Mozilla's PR firm was Spark PR

</comment><comment><USER3> I dont know if we are "world class" - but at www.ShiftedPixels.com , we work with a number of early stage technology/web startups and deliver measurable, profitable results in both Traditional and Online PR.

We are startup people ourselves and know the pains in dealing with PR and Marketing jerks. They shirk accountability, they don't get the web and they avoid emerging trends. And worst of all - they still think a 50k+ launch party will make your startup great.

Let us know if you have any questions, we would be happy to have a friendly chat about how shifted pixels online pr can help your startup.

Nick - www.ShiftedPixels.com</comment>


The Book He Wasn't Supposed to Write - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/08/the-secret-life-of-a-book-manuscript/536982/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> I had a similar experience, which was more concise and, for me personally, more transformative.

My career as an architect had reached a point where I knew it wasn't going to satisfy my life goals. I needed to understand more about finance, innovation theory, management, etc. I needed an MBA -- not a bullshit one for the title, but to actually learn things. I decided I'd go to Oxford.

This was going to be challenging: I had neither the funds to pay for it nor the shiniest academic record. Good GMAT scores, but not much else. The admissions essay had to be a knock-out.

So I wrote something I thought was amazing, and was preparing to submit it, when I realised: _wait a second, I need some more eyeballs on this._

I looked around the coffeehouse where I sat. There was a guy there -- I wasn't sure of his name, but he was a regular. A philosophy student (part time? dropout?) of uncertain provenance. We'd had a few conversations occasionally, and he seemed bright. So I asked him, somewhat rhetorically, whether he had the time to read 4 pages and give me his feedback. He happily agreed...

...and he _hated_ it. Tore into almost every part of it. Didn't remotely grok the point I was trying to make. Made it clear that the essay failed on pretty much every level.

That was unpleasant to hear, but he was right. What mattered wasn't _my_ impression of what I'd done -- it was how it impressed other people. So I rewrote the essay from the ground up, keeping his criticism at the forefront of my mind.

Oxford ended up giving me the largest scholarship they had. Afterwards I stayed in the UK and built a life there.

Don't even know that guy's name, but _damn_ am I glad he was that asshole.

<comment><USER3> Nicely done on accepting the criticism! I would hope I could do the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _> "Sometimes my job is to be an asshole," he explained..._

It's _so_ difficult to give frank, negative feedback without coming across as an asshole but, sometimes, it's necessary.

"Constructive" feedback only goes so far. Sometimes people need to be told that their work is bad, so that they can improve. Accepting mediocrity in order to avoid hurting someone's feelings is doing them a disservice in the long run.

<comment><USER5> You can constructively tell someone their work is not up to the standard required, and not accept mediocrity. You don't have to be rude or uncivil to do that.

<comment><USER6> Yes and many times the recipients of that message do not seem to either internalize it or act upon it.

There seems to be a need to for continual escalation of feedback until it is processed. Often times this processing doesn't occur until they are uncomfortable, or as in the case of family, tired of listening to you!

<comment><USER5> > Yes and many times the recipients of that message do not seem to either > internalize it or act upon it.

Then phrase it another way until they do, or otherwise find a way to communicate it that makes the issue clear. That's still not a reason to become hostile or toxic, or berate or denigrate someone.

And bringing things back to the article we're commenting on, here: it doesn't actually look like that happened at any point here. Despite how the person in question self-described themselves, it doesn't seem to me that they actually _behaved_ in a problematic way. It's perfectly reasonable to offer precise, to-the-point, clear criticism. None of that requires being rude, uncivil, or unconstructive.

The comment I was replying to said '"Constructive" feedback only goes so far.'. I emphatically disagree; the article talks about a ten-page letter full of what sounds like highly constructive feedback.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a great article for those unfamiliar with publishing, but rather sparse on any interesting material for anyone with a basic knowledge as to how it works. To be honest the most surprising thing in this piece is the fact that the author didn't have this experience until his _sixth_ book--you mean to tell me this guy wrote five books without ever having to do a major revamp --without ever running into the knowledge that each book often brings mental collapse, incredible stress, and emotive highs and lows with it? I'm not sure whether I should be impressed or disillusioned.

<comment><USER8> My impression is that this is mostly a publicity feature for the book and the author than anything else...

<comment><USER9> More like an extended public thank you to his editor. Not that that's a bad thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Refreshing to see narrative discussed as a tool to get a good story out, and to help an audience, rather than as a tool to bend an audience to a particular view.

</comment><comment><USER11> So much has been written by and about Churchill that, short of some new revelations (like Magic), adding to the pile is hardly worth it.

If you want to learn about Orwell, read Orwell. He does write about himself occasionally, and rather critically.

</comment><comment><USER12> Blocked behind a paywall if you have privacy add ons / tracking protection enabled.

<comment><USER13> I have just uBO and it worked for me.

<comment><USER14> Fine even with uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger. Perhaps they are only doing weird stuff for certain regions?

<comment><USER12> Interesting, uBO and Privacy Badger on Firefox here in Australia gives the paywall, as does 1Blocker on iOS (safari)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Macron Secures €5B Investment to Boost French Tech Startups - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/macron-secures-5-billion-investment-to-boost-french-tech-startups-11568749343?mod=rsswn <comment><USER2> I worked in both French and US startups, and the french startup ecosystem felt like cargo cult.

Our business school culture is so prevalent, techies are always ignored. Engineers are poorly paid, if not at all. And the rare VCs have zero tech knowledge too, resulting in poor investment choices.

It's a cultural problem, and throwing money at it won't solve it.

<comment><USER3> In France, if you are an engineer (Grande Ecole), you go work for companies like EDF, Thales or Safran. If you're BTS/DUT (c'est ca la puissance intellectuelle... bac + 2, les enfants), go work for a small company, preferably outside of Paris. But never work for a bunch of assholes from HEC who are copy/pasting some American ride-sharing or social media startup.

<comment><USER4> What is BTS/DUT? What's the advantage of working for a small company outside of Paris?

<comment><USER5> The English "engineer" is split into three in French: 1) technicien, 2) technicien supérieur and 3) ingénieur. DUT is for techniciens, BTS is for techniciens supérieurs. Ingénieur can come from university, but most come from a side system (grandes écoles), with the écoles further split into 3 tiers depending on selectivity and prestige. Complicated? Yes... Even for most French ;) But in the business world in France this is all known and will influence your career.

A technicien is supposed to be on top of ones field techniques, and know how to apply them. A techicien supérieur is the same but for more advanced and complex fields. An ingénieur is not only supposed to understand the "what" and "how", but also the "why" and be able to evolve things, of design from scratch when needed. That, of course, is the theory: there are plenty of techs with an ingénieur mindset (good), and unfortunately plenty of people with an ingénieur degree who couldn't innovate out of a paper bag.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> People taking money from French state related funds should be very careful with the small print and study the case of DailyMotion with great attention to detail. Lest you too end up being deprived of a well deserved exit.

<comment><USER7> Does it really have to do with receiving money from state-related funds? It's not unusual for a government to stop foreign acquisition of companies they consider a strategic asset for the country. E.g. Donald Trump recently rejected the acquisition of Qualcomm by Broadcom.

<comment><USER8> Do you really think DailyMotion is a strategic asset for... anything? They most likely stopped the acquisition because they didn't want the founders to profit from something they built using state money (and maybe rightly so)

<comment><USER7> DailyMotion can be a strategic asset for a country like France. E.g. if they project a steep decline of broadcast TV and a YouTube monopoly, having a French-controlled video streaming alternative laying around may become important in the case of a USA-EU "cold war". The chances for this scenario may be very slim, but countries at the level of France would want a contingency plan anyway.

<comment><USER6> I think that's reaching. That's not just 'slim', that's vanishingly small, so small that such a factor would never make it to consideration in a case such as this. The real truth is that it was the first time that France had a name on a website that had international recognition and they didn't want to lose that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The French model of innovation is very much that it is a thing that happens in a lab buried deep in the bowels of a giant state-backed enterprise, by salaried workers with absolute job security but no equity participation.

The entrepreneurial French all leave for London or Berlin.

<comment><USER6> Or Amsterdam, or Barcelona. If they stay in Europe. But the vast majority leave for Silicon Valley if they are skilled enough to get hired by any one of the larger players.

<comment><USER5> Can you call them entrepreneurs if they want to be hired by a large player?

That entrepreneur leave France is almost a meme, and I know it happens and have some friends among them, but not everyone leave either. I have the chance to regularly meet French entrepreneurs staying in France. It's certainly harder than in the US but definitely possible. The thing is, most are not in areas that can massively scale. It can be very high tech, with international exposure, but it will never become a Google or Amazon. It tends to be specialized tech that can sustain a small to mid company, but not a massive one. And as a result, it tend to stay under the radar when discussing start- ups and everyone having the GAFA in mind.

<comment><USER6> I know quite a few founders in France and elsewhere.

First off - and I hate doing this - there is the definition game at play here. I sincerely loathe how the start-up community has decided to redefine the word start-up to mean 'business with very large scaling potential' or something to that effect. This removes a lot of the companies that one would normally consider to be start-ups from the equation and also from many discussions.

Of course if your start-up does not have the potential to become a billion dollar company that does not help. So for the moment let's assume those are all still 'in'.

Then, of those companies that you refer to: high tech with international exposure that can sustain a mid-to small company is precisely the sweet spot, SME (small-to-medium sized enterprises), it is the backbone of the economy in many places.

But hardly any of those will be names that people recognize. In Europe we had several of those, and Dailymotion was one of them.

There are quite a few EU based brands that have global recognition: Nokia, Airbus, TomTom, TeamViewer, Skype, HelloFresh, N26, WeTransfer, Revolut, Deliveroo and so on all - maybe except for the first two - at some point in time could claim 'startup' status according to the HN/YC definition of the term.

But for every one of those there are 1000's that do just fine in their local eco-system. The important point is that France is quite underrepresented in that segment, and that is something worrying. More capital isn't necessarily going to solve it, for France to thrive in this sense it would have to change a lot more than just to hold out a bag of money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> SeedTable sent out a newsletter last Friday about this but with additional insights on the French tech scene. Also worth a read: [https://us8.campaign- archive.com/?u=32b602d9ab9d238ceb45e3f0...](https://us8.campaign- archive.com/?u=32b602d9ab9d238ceb45e3f05&id=3522e9805f)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is just a gimmick. France is not America. That does not mean it doesn't work; it's just a different model. The focus should be on improving the current system rather than trying to import a model that is too culturally incompatible. The current system is essentially a technocracy, with the government and a few large companies working together (but in a different and much better way than they "work together" in America). So far, it has remained mostly meritocratic, with a few exceptions, naturally. This has produced amazing stuff; the Minitel (first nationwide computer network in the world, as far as I can tell), focus on nuclear power, high-speed trains, Airbus, an entirely indigenous launcher and defense program and so on. And a generous welfare system that used to work.

Him mentioning "unicorns" is just silly in a country where almost no one cares about the stock market. It would be more sensible to focus on SMEs and catch up with Germany and Italy, that have a more robust network of middle-sized industrial companies.

<comment><USER11> They do seem to be dominating the no-frills end of server hosting with OVH and Online.net/Scaleway. Perhaps an exception, but it's interesting that they have little US competition in that niche.

<comment><USER3> Well, the French and American approaches to customer service are different, to say the least. So if you can't compete on customer service, you compete on no customer service :D Meaning costs and technical aspects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> No money for small companies, only for scale-ups.

<comment><USER5> There is money for small companies already, with seed funds, business angels and regional funds. It's after that it's getting harder, so it makes sense to me to focus on the scaling part.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Startups need a fertile market to thrive

<comment><USER14> Plenty of startups coast along on VC money for a _really_ long time before admitting they're not actually thriving and shut down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Not sure how smart it is for insurance and pensions companies to invest their endowment and policy funds in startups.

<comment><USER16> It's actually pretty smart, especially if, for example, an insurance industry incumbent invests in a promising insure-tech business to further bolster their own future position in the industry.

<comment><USER15> They can use their own money to invest in those and they do, not policy funds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Getting funding in EU right now typically involves miles of red tape and/or friends in the right places. Hopefully they address these issues. Would not hold my breath though.

<comment><USER6> That's nonsense. Lots of start-ups are getting funded in the EU without' miles of red tape and/or friends in the right places'.

I see lots of them (50+) every year.

<comment><USER18> Early funds are easy here in Europe. But exit over 100M are scarce and often involve an American big corp.

<comment><USER19> Do we actually want people to "exit" in this way though? That seems to just make more millionaires, and further centralise control of good technologies / ideas.

<comment><USER18> Personally no, I don't and I consider the whole start-up culture harmful.

But I wanted to highlight the key difference between European and American start-up ecosystem regarding funding.

<comment><USER6> > I consider the whole start-up culture harmful.

I don't think it is quite that black. There are plenty of good companies and nice people that make bank from starting new companies. The hype and the bro- culture are not the only faces the start-up community has and if that all you see then you're missing a lot of the good that is happening: Female / minority participation in start-ups is substantially above country average for most countries in Western Europe, there are quite a few start-ups that are working hard to achieve something good for the world, but not in an 'Instagram' like manner kind of 'good for the world'.

SMEs are the backbone of private enterprise in Europe, they create more jobs and employ more people than all of the enterprises _combined_. They are the backbone of the economy and I'm more than happy to see a thriving eco-system around them.

<comment><USER18> SME aren't startups, quite the opposite. And my gripe with startups lays in the difference between those two. A regular company makes business, at some scale, and sometimes grow because they were efficient and profitable. They are the realm of people knowing their business and their market.

Startups raise funds, try to build a big scale business as fast as possible and sometimes become profitable because they became big enough fast enough. Move fast, break things (first websites, now satellites and automated cars, YOLO) and become rich ASAP please.

<comment><USER6> > SME aren't startups, quite the opposite.

That's what people are trying to tell each other but it's BS. For every start- up that made it there are 1000 SME's that didn't. Usually you only know that your company has the potential to succeed big quite a few years after you've started it.

The whole idea that world wide scale companies are the only ones that deserve the label 'start-up' should die, it's a SV born re-purposing of words to suit a particular agenda.

> Startups raise funds, try to build a big scale business as fast as possible > and sometimes become profitable because they became big enough fast enough.

They can, but they don't have to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I have hard time seeing why state needs involve itself in private market financing.

> "We need to create our champions," Mr. Macron said, adding that his goal was > to have at least 25 French tech unicorns by 2025, referring to companies > with valuations exceeding €1 billion.

I see this as a rather futile endeavour, and a little bit of a personal insecurity manifestation. Just like as when Xi Jinping vent to California, been dined with all those "smart startupers," and then it hit him "Americans have startups, lets make some too!"

Second to it, why such fixation on the most egregious forms of "tech craze?" France has strong position in materials, chemicals, which strike not less hard economically, and are not less "tech" than cat video websites valued at $1B+

It is a foregone conclusion to me that $1B+ webdev weekend projects have no true economic backing behind them, and they are just artefacts of speculative expectations runaway.

<comment><USER21> Agree. I have seen Airbus trying this 'lets do what the Americans startups do' model for a few years now and it went no where. It's not their strength.</comment></comment>


Language Servers and IDEs - <AUTHOR> https://perplexinglyemma.blogspot.com/2017/06/language-servers-and-ides.html <comment><USER2> Worth mentioning the Google Kythe project [0] which is designed around the idea of providing a graph of entities appearing in the code to build tools which work with code.

I always thought that it would be good if the Google Kythe and the Language server protocol projects could merge, i.e. if the Language server protocol could expose a Kythe-like graph to editors. This seems to be along the lines of what OP suggests.

[0] [https://kythe.io/](https://kythe.io/)

</comment><comment><USER3> If I had read this a week ago, I probably would have dismissed this due to having already had a better experience using the RLS with VS Code than any other Rust editing experience so far. However, quite recently I started trying out using Intellij with the Rust plugin, and I've noticed all sorts of little things that make the editing experience better that weren't present when using the RLS; for instance, if I originally importing something like `use foo::Bar;` and I want to import another item from `foo`, I can add an open brace before the "B" and start getting autocomplete when I being typing even before putting the comma delimiter and closing brace. I'm not familiar enough with the LSP and general implementation of editor plugins, but it's fairly easy for me to believe that implementing the above feature in Intellij using a custom plugin more fully integrated with their existing completion engine than eschewing the tools the IDE already had and building something independent of them.

</comment><comment><USER4> As an alternate design, check out Dart's analysis server [1]. It's Dart- specific but has successfully been used with multiple editor and IDE plugins.

[1] [https://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/dart- lang/...](https://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/dart- lang/sdk/blob/master/pkg/analysis_server/doc/api.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> > _LSP is incomplete

The protocol currently only specifies very basic functionality: autocompletions, quick fixes, semantic highlighting, finding uses, formatting and that just about covers it. This is nothing compared to things a good IDE can do. Specifically when it comes to code generation, I think that's where IDEs truly shine, but at the moment LSP does not specify how to do general code generation._

Yeah, get your thing to the point that it does even these, and we can talk about enhancing LSP later...

<comment><USER6> I think the point is that the OP has been contracted by Google for 3 months to provide those things. The IDE in question is fully featured, hence why in three days the OP was able to fully implement the features RLS provided. The OP is now at the point where they have to do their how thing. Why so hostile?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting post. I have worked a lot with LSP personally and professionally. I'm CEO of Sourcegraph, and we use LSP everywhere. (Go to [https://sourcegraph.com/github.com/mholt/caddy/-/blob/caddyh...](https://sourcegraph.com/github.com/mholt/caddy/-/blob/caddyhttp/httpserver/https.go#L22:23$references) and open your browser's network inspector Web Socket list to see it live, for example.)

I think LSP's success is a demonstration of the "less is more" principle. It is simple and designed only to satisfy an editor's needs. But unlike many similar attempts, LSP has a lot of traction; see [https://github.com/Microsoft/language-server- protocol/wiki/P...](https://github.com/Microsoft/language-server- protocol/wiki/Protocol-Implementations) for a list of implementations ([http://langserver.org/](http://langserver.org/) for more details).

One of the reasons why this simplicity is necessary is that if a protocol even _tries_ to represent structure or relationships across many different languages, it becomes harder and harder to add support for more languages. You can try to make it work for N languages, but the (N+1)th language always has some new language or syntax element that requires you to either change the specification (and update the N previous implementations) or deal with hacks (which goes against the whole reason to design the "one schema to rule them all").

A second reason is that even if you can make it work for all the languages _you_ care about, it's very difficult to find enough language experts across all of those languages to build and maintain the implementations. It takes a lot of time to understand and communicate a complex schema and how the edge cases are handled across the various languages. And in the time it takes you to find and educate that team, you've already fallen behind new languages features being added or new popular languages coming on the scene. (Unless you are Google. Their Kythe project is an exception. :)

LSP has explicitly rejected the goal of modeling complex language features, at least so far. Perhaps with the impressive initial traction they could add it on and succeed where many other attempts haven't yet. But I doubt it.

(If you want to read more background about LSP, in addition to the Microsoft repo, you can check out some articles my cofounder wrote: [https://text.sourcegraph.com/how-sourcegraph-scales-with- the...](https://text.sourcegraph.com/how-sourcegraph-scales-with-the-language- server-protocol-a4e8fd3fbae5), [https://text.sourcegraph.com/part-2-how- sourcegraph-scales-w...](https://text.sourcegraph.com/part-2-how-sourcegraph- scales-with-the-language-server-protocol-73b86175f38b), and [https://text.sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph-code- intelligence-a...](https://text.sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph-code-intelligence- and-the-language-server-protocol-f2479fdd92ef.))

<comment><USER8> > _It is simple and designed only to satisfy an editor 's needs._

But isn't that exactly the point of the post? The approach is nice for editors but unsuitable for IDEs.

> _You can try to make it work for N languages, but the (N+1)th language > always has some new language or syntax element that requires you to either > change the specification (and update the N previous implementations) or deal > with hacks (which goes against the whole reason to design the "one schema to > rule them all")._

Seems to me LSP has the exact same problem with use-cases. By the description of the post, the goal seems to be to solve a fixed set of use-cases (highlighting, autocompletion, etc) for a flexible set of languages. If you want to add use-case n+1, you're faced with the same rewrite/hack conundrum.

(Disclaimer: I don't have much expert with LSP)

<comment><USER7> > But isn't that exactly the point of the post? The approach is nice for > editors but unsuitable for IDEs.

Yep. I'm just giving my thoughts on what it'd take to extend LSP so it addresses the issues raised in the blog post. I think it's much harder than it might seem.

> Seems to me LSP has the exact same problem with use-cases. By the > description of the post, the goal seems to be to solve a fixed set of use- > cases (highlighting, autocompletion, etc) for a flexible set of languages. > If you want to add use-case n+1, you're faced with the same rewrite/hack > conundrum.

The difference is between "What does an editor need?" and "What is a faithful representation of an element of code in a programming language?" The former is easy (and it's what LSP does) even to do for 50 languages; the latter is way harder than the casual reader would expect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What's people's thoughts on learning languages with basic editors first before switching to IDEs?

Especially with scala/sbt I feel like no mortal is able to contribute to a project unless they use the same version of the same IDE (which then effectively becomes a hard dependency of the entire project).

Should I give in and learn to bundle the editor with the projects? This feels wrong. Programming is not CAD. Or is it?

<comment><USER10> > What's people's thoughts on learning languages with basic editors first > before switching to IDEs?

When I started learning Rust 6 months ago, I asked myself this question.

I chose to use rustfmt so I could spend more time worrying about what my code was doing as I modified it and less time over what any Rust style guide might say.

I chose to not use anything else though. My focus was on learning the language and not getting a project done. With that in mind, I wanted the learning process of digging through the documentation to become familiar with what is available rather than just doing "auto complete programming".

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > LSP does not specify how to do general code generation.

Don't quick fixes cover this?

<comment><USER12> It covers specific known cases recognized by the particular language server implementations.

It doesn't do _general_ code-generation, which would imply that pretty much _anything_ could be done.

But I guess that's really nitpicking. Code fixes are mostly fine for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If I understand correctly, there are missing features in the RLS?

Why not improve the RLS?

<comment><USER14> It's not only that there are missing features in RLS (specific implementation), but also that there are missing features in LSP (protocol). As long as RLS follows LSP, RLS can't be improved in certain ways.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why is a server specification better than a DSO (library) specification that is shared between editors?

At [http://langserver.org](http://langserver.org) it is noted that plugins are created for N languages X M editors, and the USP of the language server idea is to reduce M to 1 through a shared server. I just don't see the force that drives us towards a server instead of a library.

<comment><USER16> Because depending on your programming language it can be anywhere from annoying up to impossible to load and utilize a shared library. IO (and especially HTTP) however are easily available in most environments.

Also languages servers might often be written in the language-that-they-care- for themselves (e.g. the C# language server in C#), because that's the environment where most of the tooling for that language is available. If you need everything in C then you need to rewrite the tooling. Or you just build a C library which then internally does RPC to the non-C process, but in this case you made the language-service an implementation detail for one language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> As reference, the Energize Programming System for C++ from Lucid as they pivoted from Lisp Machines, did make use of a language repository known as Cadillac.

[https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Foundation-for-a-C- Pro...](https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Foundation-for-a-C-Programming- Environment-Gabriel-Bourbaki/50048b7bbf93b7980a6947e48efda629c405e296)

<comment><USER18> Lucid never developed for Lisp Machines.

Lucid's business was Common Lisp for Unix.

<comment><USER17> Thanks for the correction, you are of course right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > _Now, whether I would personally use [the language server protocol] in Vim > is a whole different story._

Anyone writing rust in vim would presumably use rust-lang/rust.vim - which I don't _think_ uses RLS - is that all that's meant here, or is there a more general reason not to use LSP in vim, regardless of language?

<comment><USER20> It does not currently use RLS, but it also doesn't have any comparable features, really.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Are you sure you don't want to pool your efforts with intellij rust? Having one great ide beats having several kind of ok ones. They're releasing weekly improvements and it's the nicest IDE I have found to code rust in.</comment>


Is WSL actually ready for developers? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@carlosbaraza/is-windows-an-option-for-developers-in-2019-6fafaee8ea03 <comment><USER2> The question isn't "Is Windows ...", what he's actually addressing is the question "Is WSL actually ready for developers?"

Windows is. All of his issues either seem to be from WSL, complaints about keyboard shortcuts, or not setting up his monitors properly (his claim that Windows doesn't properly support 4k monitors is a strange one).

To be honest, I don't get why he's installing VS Code on top of WSL, when you have native windows VS Code. This seems completely unnecessary, but maybe I'm missing some benefit?

<comment><USER3> > To be honest, I don't get why he's installing VS Code on top of WSL, when > you have native windows VS Code. This seems completely unnecessary, but > maybe I'm missing some benefit?

When I develop Python with Visual Studio Code, I run it from a virtual environment. I have auto-formatting enabled, so whenever I save a file, it will automatically be formatted with the formatter which is installed in my virtual environment.

I don't know if the same is possible if your virtual environment is in WSL and your VS Code is in Windows.

<comment><USER4> There are some integration issues between VS Code on Windows and WSL. (there are currently 29 open issues on Github for this.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Agree with all of these. But compared to Macs you get a couple of things:

* native and fully supported MS Office

* ecosystem of professional windows apps (atm. I need MS SQL Management Studio as an example)

* much much better connectivity on laptops. bye bye dongle land.

* a wide variety of hardware options to choose from, including ones with great keyboards. even the latest Thinkpads have vastly superior keyboards compared to 2016+ MBP.

* gaming

At the end for me personally, the tradeoff was worth it. I switched last summer and by now I'm not missing much. Same with iPhone - switched to an S10e last week and I'm already used to it. There's a couple of things still stuck in Apple land, such as our photo share - not yet sure what I'll do about that.

I was an Apple customer for 13 years before - at some point I had to cut it off, it made me too angry.

<comment><USER6> Having worked for companies that used both, I actually vastly prefer G-suite to Office.

Office seems to have stagnated over the years in the corporate environment. The two main issues are 1) email search is slow and returns weird results and 2) shared document editing is non-existent so people email everything to each other, things go out of date, no version control, etc.

I'm much happier now using Linux with G-suite than I was using Windows and Office just because the rest of the developer experience in Linux is so smooth.

In finance, there's also something to be said for the culture of a company where people know to use numerical software like R or Pandas instead of leaning on Excel. Like over the years I've noticed that the kind of person that insists on sending me Excel spreadsheets is markedly less conscientious.

<comment><USER7> I'm not a huge fan and managing it is a bit of a pain but if you use Sharepoint you can configure it to allow simultaneous document editing. I believe this was introduced in Sharepoint 2010.

<comment><USER8> It exists, but it's been a pretty terrible experience every time I've tried it (roughly once every 12-15 months since ~2011). GSuite has some occasional issues arising from connectivity issues, but these also happen to Office365, and are at least as bad (often worse) than in Google Docs and Sheets (I almost never use PowerPoint or Slides, so maybe things are different there.)

<comment><USER7> I hear you. Concurrent editing is not enabled where I work because the headaches aren't worth it.

I honestly don't have enough experience with GSuite to make a good comparison, just mentioned Sharepoint because we just recently reopened the conversation about concurrent editing. Once again we're passing for now!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I stopped reading at the second line: "As you may all know, developers are a social tribe that is well known for using MacBooks with stickers on them"

I don't know if this is an American thing or the industry I'm in, but I've never seen a single developer use a Macbook or have stickers on their laptops. Is this is a silicon valley, web developer kind of thing?

Edit: Just to clarify, I'm a low-level C developer in the UK. Most everyone I know uses Windows/Linux and laptops are mostly Dell/HP

<comment><USER10> I doubt I've been to a conference that's even vaguely oriented towards developers or even technical folks more broadly in the past 10 years where Macs with project stickers on them aren't the most common laptop, often by far. This is true even at conferences where one might expect Windows to be more common (don't know specifically about Microsoft events but VMWorld, say) or Linux (Open Source Summit and the like).

This is broadly tech industry I'm talking about but not some narrow Silicon Valley or web dev space. I'd never believe Macs were only about 10% market share based on pretty much any of my own anecdotal observations including walking into a random coffee shop.

<comment><USER11> Definitely a US thing. In every french conf I go, PC are a majority. In the french PyCon where I regularly give talks, Linux PC always are.

The diversity is even a problem in workshops because everybody has a different config and you get weirds errors due to this or that combo.

But yeah, you will see stickers. Lots of them.

<comment><USER10> I can't say I've taken a survey but Macs certainly don't seem conspicuously absent at a venue like FOSDEM (Brussels). Of course, that's an international event even if it's disproportionately European. It's probably fair that the further you get from US tech companies in general and possibly Silicon Valley in particular and the closer you get to developers doing open source in their spare time in non-US countries, the fewer Macs you probably see. If only because of price.

ADDED: And, of course, if you look around inside a company that mostly runs their infrastructure on Windows, most of the developers will be running Windows on Dell/HP/Lenovo/etc. machines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I do not think Windows ever stopped being an option for _developers_. Perhaps web developers prefer to use a Unix-like OS since a lot of the work they do is running on Unix, but not all developers are web developers and not all web developers are using a Unix-like OS (FWIW none of the web developers i personally know are using Linux or macOS).

I think this sort of perspective is a bit of a bubble, considering that Windows has something around 85-90% desktop/laptop market share and developers aren't really any sort of special snowflakes to expect anything different (even if Unix-like OSes are more likely among developers, it will only be a bias towards them, not something that inverts a 9 out of 10 statistic).

</comment><comment><USER13> _" Windows high DPI screens support sucks. I have a 4k screen and everything looks very small. There is an Accessibility option to increase the size of the windows. However, when you do that, most of the applications look very blurry and it is even more annoying."_

In my opinion, Windows 10 has the best High-DPI support of all systems. It allows you to change scaling in fine increments on per-display basis. Moving windows from one display to another scales them pixel-perfect, if supported. Pretty much all applications I use regularly work fine.

On Linux, the only thing I found to work out reasonably well is 2x scaling. I can't speak for Mac OS, but in my recollection the non-2x scaling isn't pixel- perfect.

 _" The text is rendered very poorly in Windows, creating a kind of chromatic aberration around it."_

This is ClearType sub-pixel rendering and again in my opinion it's the best font rendering of all platforms, though FreeType on Linux works about as well. Font Rendering on Mac OS is just blurry by comparison. With Retina displays it doesn't matter so much anymore, but it was really annoying on the lower res displays.

Perhaps the author has it misconfigured for his displays and needs to run the builtin "ClearType Text Tuner" tool.

 _" Microsoft has made great efforts to support the needs of developers and creators, but as of 2019, I think OSX is still a stronger option for developers."_

If you implicitly rely on a lot of UNIX-specific stuff, Windows will suck. That probably won't ever change.

</comment><comment><USER14> As someone who develops primarily on Windows and occasionally uses a Mac Mini to build iOS binaries, I feel vastly less productive when I'm using macOS. I've also come to realize I use my Home/End keys a lot since my Magic Keyboard doesn't have them.

It's not that macOS isn't "developer ready", it's that I'm used to the Windows way of doing things and have those keyboard shortcuts in muscle memory.

The main reason I like Windows as a development environment is Visual Studio. I wouldn't trade my data breakpoints, variable watch list, memory views, and Intellisense for anything. Then again I'm working on games, i.e. multi-million line C++ projects that run on 4+ platforms. Most of that stuff is unnecessary in other situations.

Also good luck getting any of the console devkits/SDKs to run on anything but Windows.

<comment><USER15> > Home/End keys

On MacOS it's good to get used with unixy/emacsy shortcuts like Ctr-a/e for Home/End. Fn+Left/Right works too (and Fn+Left has a slightly different behaviour). Basically if you love Linux and unixy tools you can get productive on a Mac in no time...

The developers who love Macs are the ones who love the "unix spirit" but for whatever particular reasons can't do all their work on a Linux desktop, if you're not into that then stick to Windows :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It has always bothered me that developers insist on using Macs for development. Sure, it's Unix, but how many servers are running macOS? Zero.

You need to develop on a platform that matches what's running in production. Production almost always uses some form of Linux, so you at least need a local VM running Linux. Then it doesn't matter if you have Windows or Mac as your main OS, and you can use the tools you need in those platforms, but otherwise actual builds and testing should be happening on the VM.

<comment><USER17> If it doesn't matter whether developers are running MacOS or Windows, why does it bother you that some developers prefer Macs?

Isn't completely fine?

<comment><USER16> You are mischaracterizing the discussion. The builds and testing should be done in an environment that matches production, and macOS does not match any production server environment available today. Developing on Macs is frequently done on the MacOS itself because it's Unix so people think it's close enough. Once you use a VM for the builds and testing, _then_ it doesn't matter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I develop on windows using wsl and jet brains suite, and I've never been more productive. In general I find windows to have much better keyboard shortcuts than mac, because of universal alt key menu navigation. I've also learned over time that the more you can script away your cli workflows, the less RSI you'll develop. Plus the hardware is much cheaper.

</comment><comment><USER19> I find Windows to be more and more hostile towards development these days. Windows 10 may have a very impressive kernel but the UI (aka Explorer) is a nightmare of "simplified" screens. Something like UI spaghetti.

Windows search and windows defender constantly spin your laptop cpu fan to max speeds because, you know, nobody minds a noisy laptop that they are not actively using.

Windows updates are constant, slow, often fail altogether and completely out of your control. Your machine may reboot at any time so good luck with that long running task. It's like they shipped a swimming pool that was actually a sieve and they are madly patching it every day.

Windows doesn't respect the users desire to put the laptop to "Sleep". It will wake up at any time and often just stay awake and drain the battery.

Windows has also become some sort of hybrid advertising and tracking device which you can, admittedly, disable although some things like the search listening service Cortana really does not like being disabled.

Not everything is doom and gloom however. The virtual machine engine HyperV is extremely fast and easy to manage making things like Android development is a pleasure. Visual studio keeps getting better too.

</comment><comment><USER20> > The text is rendered very poorly in Windows, creating a kind of chromatic > aberration around it. Coming from an Apple MacBook, this turned out to be > quite annoying, because I didn't know if my design looked bad or if it was > just Windows messing up with it.

I think the OP is describing an intentional feature (subpixel antialiasing). Mac OS Mojave disabled this feature by default because you don't need antialiasing if your screen resolution is very high. The chromatic aberration is ugly, granted, but the technique allows you to get a higher effective horizontal resolution which ultimately improves readability on low-resolution displays. And if you don't need it, well, it can be disabled on Windows too: [https://www.isunshare.com/windows-10/turn-off-or-on-clear- ty...](https://www.isunshare.com/windows-10/turn-off-or-on-clear-type-text-in- windows-10.html)

</comment><comment><USER21> I use WSL for NodeJS professionally, and I can't find any troubles. It was hard to get to the point were my terminal was easy to look at, but that's it.

There's also a great community of Windows employees bettering Windows Console, with honesty and humbly (they even created a themer that reads iTerm2 style files).

With a bit of patience, you can get it to the point where you never look back.

Also, very important: my employer disables real-time protection, which otherwise would make WSL unbearably slow. Make sure you test on an old PC before committing fully to it.

</comment><comment><USER22> IMO there is a slight history of people wanting to "look the part" by having a Mac. This seems to be changing though, my company has shifted to XPS-15s running Ubuntu and people seem to be loving it.

If your company relies on MS Office (we use G-Suite and Confluence) you might not have such an enjoyable time.

</comment><comment><USER23> The article refers specifically to Web development.

I manage & develop a Win32 desktop app (because that's what my customers use). I am converting to Qt so I can also run on macOS.

I cannot imagine why I would ever consider an option that does not run on the Mac, such as WPF or WinRT.

(My customers hate Parallels, VMWare Fusion and Wine).

<comment> Const-me > I cannot imagine why I would ever consider an option that does not run on > the Mac, such as WPF or WinRT.

For some applications cross-platform frameworks are good enough, Electron has become quite popular.

For others, native frameworks just work better. Works both ways, same for Cocoa. For example, it's hard to integrate Direct3D or Metal into QT.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I used to use a mac, but moved to Windows when it became obvious that Apple isn't making top of the line laptops anymore. My old MBP was one of the best computers out and stayed at the top, spec wise, for a while. Eventually I needed more, but when I looked at what I could get for the money, Macbook Pros were ridiculous.

Moving to Windows had its hurdles, when an program doesn't support font scaling it's a pain in the ass, I bought a non-4k monitor just to make sure I would always have the ability to use apps that broke on my 4k.

WSL is amazing and easy to use. Mostly I found I missed the Windows ecosystem. OSX has a few nice programs, but does not compare to the options available for Windows.

</comment><comment><USER25> Just moved from Linux to Windows at work.

It's not WSL I find myself using to have a good shell experience. It's MinGW/mintty. I even got a plugin to wrap it around WSL, since the Windows console experience is pretty painful. I miss my middle-click pasting and nice color schemes.

I just wish I could setup the path translations in PyCharm to use the same mapping. Things work, (and not too bad) but I just hate having to rewrite all of the paths in my environmental variables.

My other gripe is with the Cisco VPN client running all internet traffic through it, rather than having OpenConnect sort it out ahead of time.... but that's not really a Windows issue.

</comment><comment><USER26> My company doesn't allow Linux machines, and I prefer a Unix-like environment for the work we do, so it's Mac for me. I could do most of what I need on Windows, but I feel like doing my work on Windows takes ten more steps than it does on the Mac.

I prefer using Windows at home, and I _can_ write software on it just fine.

</comment><comment><USER27> I've got a pc and mac and I web develop on both -- Normalized hotkeys in vscode and I use git bash. Have to hop in to cmd for some very specific things but I could really care less which machine i'm on if i'm just developing

</comment><comment><USER28> yes, we're in a more cross-platform world now than ever before!! you have WSL and git bash, intellij tools are class-leading, etc. that said, if you're not a gamer, why not linux?

EDIT: oops, thought this was an ask-hn.

</comment><comment><USER29> I don't understand the Mac dominance. The last few updates on MacOS have bricked so many coworkers machines. Unbelievable.

Font rendering, yeah ok, still seems to be nicer, literally that's the only advantage I see.

</comment><comment><USER30> I typically write Node apps. My build step, test cycles, and application commands all execute identically on Windows and OSX.

</comment><comment><USER15> As someone who kept switching Window -> Linux -> Windows -> Linux -> finally Mac, I can say that _a MacBook is a breath of fresh productive air for anyone developing software intended to run on a Linux server somewhere but still wishing to have photo /video-editing and ms office software at hand:_

\- all Linux stuff you'd want is available and "just works"

\- default Terminal is amazing and enough for me and most (iTerm 2 is there for whoever wants more) you'll get a sane Linux-like experience where copy paste just works in the terminal etc. (not the hellish terminal experiences you'd have on Windows even with smth like WSL) - also, even things like the touchbar play well with Terminal, you can open a man page from touchbar, change terminal bg color shade from TB to mark a production server ssh terminal tab as "dangerous" with a shade of red etc. ...lots of "small touches" that matter a lot

\- mac keyboard is amazing for developers (you'd get the wrong impression that it's bad for developers from people complaining about the touchbar upgrade, but disregard that):

\-- having Cmd and Ctrl keys be different means that you can have all you unixy/emacsy ctrl-p/n/b/f/a/e just work in all your desktop GUI apps too (the feel of having ctrl-a/e work in Chrome, VSCode, and other "regular apps" is _amazing!_ ), and the same time you can Cmd+C/V copy/paste in the terminal same as in other app - _it 's hard to put in word the nice warm fuzzy feel this good mixing of unixy-world with GUI-world gives you!_ (it's the opposite of Windows where the "two paradigms" feel like locked in a cold war with each other and you always have to switch your brain when switching tools)

\-- Fn key is in the right correct place you'd expect it, bottom left, _just like on the Thinkpads you know and love!_

\-- OS settings allow easily remapping things like CapsLock -> Ctrl that lots of people will do (if you're more into Vim than Emacs you'll do CapsLock -> Esc, that's in standard settings too)

\- multiple virtual desktops + external monitors etc. works productive and intuitively: if you love Gnome, you'll likely love MacOS too! (Also, tools like Divvy give you some features of tiling window managers if you're into this, and they also enable windows-like split-left/right shortcuts. Btw, there's an equivalent tool for Gnome/Gnome-based-Unity on Linux side too).

I'd urge _all_ developers coding for Linux or Android to leave Windows for a while and try either (1) Linux on a Thinkpad (preferably a Gnome-based desktop if you're a developer new to Linux: Ubuntu, Pop!_OS, Fedora etc.) or (2) a MacBook: both experiences are slightly annoying to get used to at first, but dramatically increase your "feel good" factor and productivity! Windows may seem enticing hardware-wise (SurfaceBooks are amazing with their nvidia gpus etc.), but unless you write software targeting the Ms ecosystem, they are horrible machines for both developers and creative people imho... Window should be _your last option in 2019 if you 're a developer!_</comment>


The best things and stuff of 2013 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fogus.me/2013/12/27/the-best-things-and-stuff-of-2013/ <comment><USER2> For the politically inclined - the GQ interview with Kim Jong-Il's sushi chef is brilliant (and will probably become a movie someday because the arc is so crazy).

Excerpt: "The chef's name, an alias, is Kenji Fujimoto, and for eleven years he was Kim Jong-il's personal chef, court jester, and sidekick. He had seen the palaces, ridden the white stallions, smoked the Cuban cigars, and watched as, one by one, the people around him disappeared. It was part of Fujimoto's job to fly North Korean jets around the world to procure dinner-party ingredients—to Iran for caviar, Tokyo for fish, or Denmark for beer. It was Fujimoto who flew to France to supply the Dear Leader's yearly $700,000 cognac habit. And when the Dear Leader craved McDonald's, it was Fujimoto who was dispatched to Beijing for an order of Big Macs to go."

Fogus, thanks for sharing this in your list: [http://www.gq.com/news- politics/newsmakers/201306/kim-jong-i...](http://www.gq.com/news- politics/newsmakers/201306/kim-jong-il-sushi-chef-kenji-fujimoto-adam- johnson-2013?printable=true)

<comment><USER3> Interesting in that Air Koryo is banned from EU operations.

<comment><USER4> This was taking place in the 80s/90s. They flew Koryo to China, then somewhere eastern Europe where they apparently even had private jets stashed back then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hi Mike, the movie you ask about in your footnote #3 (the one with the force bubbles powered on a 9v battery) is "Explorers"[1] - which stars River Phoenix and Ethan Hawke in their screen debuts.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explorers_(film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explorers_\(film\))

<comment><USER6> This movie blew my young mind at the time. A-team meets NASA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The amount of books you're able to get through in a year is amazing! According to Goodreads, you're also able to do this consistently, which is even more incredible. How many hours do you spend reading in a typical week?

<comment><USER8> Curious about this too. I've always had to sort of verbalise in my head when I read, I think because of the way I was taught in primary school. This is extremely slow though.

I can however read code without verbalising, and with sheet music I can sort of directly execute the notes with thinking explicitly about the notes I'm seeing.

I can imagine some people can read prose in a similar manner, and I'd love to know how.

I've tried to sort of 'relax' my brain while reading, but then it seems nothing has actually registered!

<comment><USER9> I tried a number of things over the years, and the technique that finally worked for me was counting in my head as I read. By occupying the verbalising part of my mind I found I was able to train myself to read without it, and with a little practice I started to be able to read tat way without counting.

<comment><USER8> Interesting idea. May I ask where you found that technique please?

<comment><USER9> I'm afraid I don't remember. I read somewhere that when asked to count in their minds, people count in one of two ways. It's my understanding that the majority do so verbally, sounding out the words in their minds. But some people count visually, by visualising the numbers, picturing them scroll past on a tape, for example.

Those that verbalise couldn't simultaneously do another verbal task, while the visualisers couldn't do another visual task, suggesting that separate parts of the brain were involved, and occupied by counting.

Now that I knew visual counting was an option (I was a verbaliser) I trained myself to do it. Unfortunately I'm yet to find an situation were the ability to choose between visual and verbal counting has been useful.

<comment><USER10> "Surely you're joking mr Feynman" is where most of us read about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great list! My two favourites were "Internal Reprogrammability" which reminded me of Steve Yegge's "Pinocchio Problem" [1] article and "Ruins of Forgotten Empires" which made me want to learn more about APL languages.

[1]: [http://steve-yegge.blogspot.ca/2007/01/pinocchio- problem.htm...](http://steve-yegge.blogspot.ca/2007/01/pinocchio-problem.html)

</comment><comment><USER12> I didn't expect to see Sean Ross' excellent Haggis design diary on your list. But you are right, it is a great read.

[http://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/34429/item/734152](http://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/34429/item/734152)

</comment><comment><USER13> A simpler description of the rules of Cannon [http://www.pyromythgames.com/products/cannon/Cannonrules.htm](http://www.pyromythgames.com/products/cannon/Cannonrules.htm) (from the same site as the PDF linked by Fogus)

</comment><comment><USER14> The Autobiography of Malcolm X is indeed an excellent read. The three phases of his adult life were completely and radically different from one another. It's amazing how committed he was to holding himself up to the standards demanded by his _current_ beliefs, even when it meant renouncing all that he had previously stood for; and he did so, twice. I think this is the great lesson from his life and something the public should be aware of, more so than his "By any means necessary" vs King's "I have a dream".

<comment><USER15> I read that a long time ago and remember being inspired by Malik's commitment to educate himself after he was overcome with dread due to the realization that he had basically wasted his life up until then.

Like Malik, I too felt I was behind on my reading and picked up a lot of non- fiction that year because I did not want to waste time on reading fiction (I don't believe reading fiction is not useful, just stating how I felt at the time).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The past: [http://giacomoballi.com/13-most-popular-products- of-2013/](http://giacomoballi.com/13-most-popular-products-of-2013/) and the future: [http://giacomoballi.com/13-trends-that-will-drive-the- future...](http://giacomoballi.com/13-trends-that-will-drive-the-future-of- america/)

</comment><comment><USER17> -1 for disabling pinchzoom

<comment><USER18> For what it's worth, pinch zoom works for me on a Windows 8.1 tablet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think I've collected about a year's worth of content from that blog post and its links. So much for 2014!

</comment><comment><USER20> The Carver Mead interview is more than a decade old (and honestly I'd never knew about it before) -- great find and read. Is his characterization of Bohr and the statistical thinking (a remnant of poor tools) still believed?

</comment><comment><USER21> I liked the inclusion of PG Wodehouse - can never get enough of it.

</comment><comment><USER22> Cool list, will definitely check out when I have some free time. I really loved the lispy newsletter, looking forward to future editions.

</comment><comment><USER23> Thanks for this. There's a broken link from "newsletter" to www.readevalprintlove.org

</comment><comment><USER24> Interesting list. Will check out later.</comment>


It's not just you: Visa outage disrupts payments in parts of Europe - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnet.com/news/visa-outage-europe-disrupts-payments/ <comment><AUTHOR> If you're about to use your Visa card to pay for something in Europe, you may want to use cash instead.

Visa announced Friday that it's experiencing a "service disruption" that is preventing transactions from going through. Right now, it seems like these problems are localized to the UK, Ireland and parts of Europe. Visa says it's aware of the problem and developing a fix, which might be working already. Major UK bank HSBC claims that service is slowly returning.</comment>


CDC: Zombie Preparedness - <AUTHOR> https://www.cdc.gov/cpr/zombie/index.htm <comment><USER2> I have a game coming out on mobile that initially got rejected for being too related to the current pandemic. I rethemed it as zombies instead with the same gameplay, different graphics and sounds. So I can see where it would be helpful as a topic for them.

</comment><comment><USER3> Padi (scuba certification org) has a zombie course, good way to have fun and learn some new skills underwater.</comment>


A Bookmarklet That Creates a Game of DDR on Bandcamp in the Browser - <AUTHOR> http://jeremyneiman.com/bcr/

<comment><AUTHOR> Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!</comment>


Facebook hackathon special airs on MTV tonight - <AUTHOR> http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1660828/facebook-diary-hack-a-thon.jhtml

<comment><USER2> A documentary about geeks coding all night on MTV. Man, how the world has changed.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I'm still confused how they are going to make this interesting to the masses... Hell, even watching Coders code as a Coder can be dull.

<comment><USER4> Easy, just focus on everything going on except the actual code, just people talking about some of the stuff they are doing at a more basic high level and how it fits into users ever day usage of the site. That and looks like the random fun going on around people doing work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This could have easily been an April fools joke

</comment><comment><USER6> Will this be available online?(of course it will, I mean legally) No cable/dish for me.

</comment><comment><USER7> Hey, it's mkilgore! :D Surreal seeing people I know on the trailer.

</comment><comment><USER8> the meek will inherit the earth</comment>


5 Completely Insane Facts About the Apple Approach to Taxes - <AUTHOR> http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2013/05/the-five-most-completely-insane-facts-in-the-new-york-times-story-about-the-apple-approach-to-paying-taxes?mobify=0?intcid=full-site-mobile <comment><USER2> This article, and others like it, imply that what Apple is doing is unethical. However, the opposite is true: it would be negligent for Apple not to do this.

Apple's responsibility is to its shareholders, and that responsibity is to maximize profits. Because it stands to lose billions of dollars in taxes if its income is reported naievely, it makes perfect sense for Apple to spend millions, tens of millions, or even hundreds of millions to optimize its tax flow.

As long as nothing illegal is happening, this is just an exams of a company fulfilling its fiduciary duty to its owners.

If people think this behavior is egregious and needs to change, the solution is to pass new laws to that extent. No one is going to voluntarily overpay on their taxes.

<comment><AUTHOR> But that's exactly it: at what point does tax "avoidance" become unethical or "civically irresponsible". After all, Apple is operating in the USA: doesn't it have a responsibility to the country (and state), along with it's shareholders and customers?

<comment><USER3> The point is that Apple is not just operating in the USA; it is operating around the world and makes profits around the world. No one disputes that Apple pays U.S. taxes on their U.S. operations, and no one has accused them of moving U.S. profits overseas to avoid taxes. The big to-do is entirely about their earnings overseas.

The question of the ethics of international taxation is complicated by the fact that most countries in the world do not expect their companies to pay both local taxes and domestic taxes; the U.S. does. So it is not like Apple is violating some broad standard of behavior. If anything the U.S. tax system is the aberration.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > in 2011, individual income taxes contributed $1.1 trillion to federal > coffers, while corporate taxes added up to $181 billion.

amazing. Corporations pay 5 times less taxes.

<comment><USER5> Why tax corporations at all? It's not like they're a magical pot that you can tax without taxing people. People disagree with how much corporate taxes fall on consumers vs shareholders, but if what you're concerned about is equity you can pretty easily target an income tax hike toward rich folk.

I'd say taxing corporations is a fool's errand anyway, because they'll always have the resources and the centralized control to figure out how to escape taxes as much as possible and carve out further special tax breaks for themselves. Disaggregate individuals can't do that.

Limited liability is one externality that needs to be corrected for, but the idea that it adds up to hundreds of billions of dollars strikes me as implausible.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> My lawyer cousin always said it's all about the difference between "avoiding" versus "evading" taxes. But this just seems to take things to another extreme...

<comment><USER6> There is a difference between avoiding and evading, but it's often difficult to tell when a company is doing one or the other. When people say "well they either did something illegal and should be punished, or they didn't and everyone should shut up", they usually don't understand how complicated the situation is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's really crazy how fast Apple tax stories get flagged off the front page.

<comment><USER8> Agreed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If your CFO is not doing everything legal to reduce your company's tax burden, then s/he is negligent in his/her duty and cheating the stock holders. Apple's CFO is very good.

</comment><comment><USER10> Why not just link to the NWT piece instead of this VF blogspam/linkbait?</comment>


The Web We Have to Save - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/matter/the-web-we-have-to-save-2eb1fe15a426 <comment><USER2> While the author makes good points, but clearly also has some nostalgia, I'm mostly thankful for the web we have today, it could have been much worse.

All serious publishers have their own website, and use social media for advertising mostly. Facebook articles and google news have failed. Facebook has not become "the web" as some feared.

</comment><comment><USER3> Everything on the web is converging to the same bland, middle of the distribution curve, unoffensive mean. Everyone has A/B tested to the exact same product, and it's a bad experience.

The technology industry has become more about marginalization, to the point of nonexistence, those who don't fit in the middle of the curve. Might as well not exist if you're outside the 90% intervals nowadays.</comment>


Don't Buy a 13 Inch MacBook Pro - <AUTHOR> https://www.eva.nmccann.net/blog/dont-buy-a-13-inch-macbook-pro-right-now <comment><USER2> We shouldn't really buy any of them until basic repairability is addressed with screws and removable components instead of solder, rivets and glue.

This is a company that could pioneer socketed CPUs in laptops instead they are productizing $1000+ repairs and hoping they don't get hit with the bill themselves this time as with their butterfly keyboard replacements. Repairing these computers shouldn't be a future billion dollar industry.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair point. Apple definitely should be better about designing for repairs and upgrades. They have been going the wrong way on that for years now.

I like what Microsoft did with their latest Surface Laptop. We should be making devices more repairable, not less.</comment></comment>


Privacy under the Donald – and why you should care - <AUTHOR> https://worthhiding.com/2017/01/07/privacy-under-the-donald-and-why-you-should-care/ <comment><USER2> beautiful writing, especially from a 15 year old!</comment>


Nice bug discovered in web GMail on desktop - <AUTHOR> To reproduce, go to a folder/label/tab that has at least one message with an attachment (like a PDF, or video), then click the "select all" button to make all messages on the page are selected (50 or less, DO NOT "select all 3000 messages"), then right click the attachment and choose the bottom option "Open in new window", sit back and watch as 50 (or whatever the number of messages on that page) of windows open for your attachment. <comment><USER2> You should submit a bug report. Click the send feedback button in Gmail

<comment><AUTHOR> No you should be grateful I made it here. Click that little up arrow to show it, and if you want a bug report, go make it yourself.

They're more likely to see it fast here, than in one of the 40000 feedbacks per day. Even more likely if you show your appreciation.</comment></comment>


Delayed fatherhood may lead to longer lived children/grandkids - <AUTHOR> http://www.myhealthnewsdaily.com/2704-delayed-fatherhood-children-telomeres-lifespan.html

<comment><USER2> As a 30 year old with a 5 year old son, I question what this does to the life expectancy of the father. :)

I don't know how older dads do it. My kid wears me out at my current age. I suppose I'd be a much richer first-time parent if I delayed having kids, so I'd have more help, more baby sitting, nicer vacations, etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> Reminds me a bit of Methuselah's Children.

Also this article seems to support the theory of Lamarckian Inheritance. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamarckism>

I'm 47 years old with a 3 year old son. When my boy is my age, I will be 91, older than his only living great grand-father. Or, more likely, I'll be dead.

It makes sense to have more than one kid if you are an old first-time parent so your kids have family around after you are dead or very elderly.

</comment><comment><USER4> I have my doubts, don't feel this takes proper account of cause->effect vs. relationship. Doesn't go into WHY fathers "choose" to have kids later in life, so things like economics, accumulated wealth providing easier access to healthcare and a lifestyle that supports longer life span. Also the autism bit is as much a function of the mother's age too, so did they compare old guys with young wives autism rates vs. same-aged couples?

<comment><USER5> Did you even read the article? It was about genetics. This is a scientific study not a sociological study.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I forget where I read it (The Selfish Gene?) but Richard Dawkins predicted that life expectancy would increase as people had children later.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is odd. I thought I remembered reading someplace that telemore length was longer for children of younger mothers also.

</comment><comment><USER8> Had my kids when I was 20 and 23 ... they're healthy. All that matters.</comment>