easong

Small hiccup in the grand scheme of things. I believe that they will get a product car out this year!

I love mobx (definitely not one of the 58), but I would use redux on large apps (maybe, more than 15 pages?), especially if you don't care too much about performance. Redux has better debugging, forces more structure to the code, has a immutable data story, and there are more resources on the net if you need to bring developers up to speed. There are some configuration options for MobX that force the user to be more organized, but redux still feels more structured.

That being said, MobX is absolutely my go-to state management library now - it's probably the easiest free FPS you'll find anywhere, it's ridiculously easy to write, and it results in fewer LOC.

I've had good experiences with https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=rtorr.vs... so far, but perhaps I've gotten lucky. When I first tried flow out a few months ago I was also very unhappy with the tooling.

It definitely has advantages. But I don't think using babel precludes shipping a binary with a standard pre-built config.

Totally. I tell new devs to use typescript. But I don't think using babel precludes shipping a binary with a standard pre-built config.

Microsoft has absolutely done an amazing job with typescript IDE integration. But are there any end-user IDE benefits to typescript over flow/eslint? (Not being snarky.)

I've been using both on separate projects (with MS IDEs) and haven't noticed anything major.

I suppose the problem is that I see typescript as the fragmentation. If MS leverages babel (they can even keep shipping TS as their own thing if they want, I just want them to provide babel plugins), we can all use that and focus on making it as cross-compatible and streamlined as possible. (Well, really, we can focus on providing a single well-documented on-ramp to new javascript developers, which I think is the main problem and the one MS set out to own with typescript.)

Right now, we have the typescript ecosystem, the babel ecosystem, and the other wannabe ecosystems. If I like Typescript's type system but want to use babel for async-await (for instance, I'm aware it's in TS next), I'm basically SOL. Babel has more end-users (AFAIK), generally has the first/only implementation of <feature>, and my impression is that the surrounding development community is larger and more active (typescript stuff tends to come down from On High).

For instance, you can use https://github.com/gcanti/babel-plugin-tcomb to get run-time type checking with babel/flow for free. That's really cool! Unfortunately, the same is not possible with typescript (AFAIK), because MS decided that was out of scope. If Typescript was offered as a babel plugin, somebody else could implement it for typescript and we could all be happy.

I really wish that MS would release typescript as a collection of plugins for babel that would handle only one thing at a time (eg, the type system). Having my production build, es6 transpiler, type system, JSX compiler and so on (including a bunch of features I would rather didn't exist at all) all in one package feels like a failure of separation of concerns.

I understand that people find Babel's plugin ecosystem confusing and intimidating (it is), but I don't think a separate monolithic typescript that reimplements popular babel functionality is the answer.

If anyone is looking for a similar tool for JS, I've used codemods to great effect.

https://vramana.github.io/blog/2015/12/21/codemod-tutorial/

Honestly, this sounds like a big step backwards in UX if implemented widely.

I would really rather not have to manually install a million packages when pulling down dependencies - "npm install && npm start" and then going to grab a glass of water feels great.

The given use case of a master parsing library doesn't really resonate. A handful of extra kb on disk doesn't bother me at all for an all-in-one solution, and I've never really had the problem of not being able to find a parsing library on npm to begin with.

Some discussion on the elixir subreddit a few days ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/elixir/comments/50nvhg/websocket_sh...

Of note is that of these, I think only the elixir and ruby (?) solutions are distributed. Additionally, Phoenix channels are doing a lot of work that the other solutions aren't.

(Note: I support trigger warnings and think that they have a lot of use as a tool even outside of the typical context)

I'm in close contact with a lot of social justice groups, specifically ones based out of UC Berkeley. It's not super widespread, but there are absolutely individuals who abuse the concept of triggers as a way to give themselves pretext to be cruel to others, to control conversations, or just as something to get righteously indignified about.

This is an issue with the individuals involved and not triggers per se, but just as with other social technologies it's definitely possible to abuse triggers.

I mean, react (and associated frontend technologies) are just a way of making it easier to write code within the constraints of browsers, which are honestly a small miracle. Yes, they're a pile of hacks upon hacks (the web was designed to share physics papers, not deliver complicated multimedia applications), but they let you write the same code for every major operating system, device, and form factor that exists and deploy it seamlessly over an unreliable network. It's shocking that everything works as well as it does.

And as programmers, everything we use is just papering over the horror of writing network-connected cat-sharing apps on weird-shaped bits of metal - why worry about a light abstraction over the JS build step?

My experience with Atom has also been sub-par, but Visual Studio Code is pretty cool and built on the exact same platform (electron).

I think you're the exact target audience for typescript, for what it's worth. It will give you type checking, IDE integration, compiler errors, modules, etc basically for free and is (not exclusively, and IMHO) built for people who find javascript distasteful.

What stack are you using? The description you give doesn't match my experience with modern javascript (react, webpack, flow/typescript, etc).

If you have to build a desktop app with jquery soup (or even angular), I definitely feel for you.

What are you having problems with? I remember setting up react-native to be a total breeze the first time around, especially compared to html react.

While the cryptocurrency conversation online is dominated by right-libertarians, I think you'll find that a lot of hard/radical leftwing direct-action types are very much obsessed with cryptocurrency and structures like the DAO. I personally don't look at the cryptocurrency scene/DAO with anything more than bemusement, but I think that community is often presented in a very unpleasant light (look at the weird nerds!).

A more charitable stereotype might be that cryptocurrencies and automated contracts appeal to anyone who thinks that they can design (through their technical expertise) a better world than the current political elites. I'm not saying that they're right or that their line of thought hasn't been historically responsible for atrocities, but I don't think it's fair to paint them as sociopaths.

It's disappointing that this article doesn't address the various animals with a degree of biological immortality (eg jellyfish, lobsters). I'm not convinced that the laws of thermodynamics make (human-scale) aging inevitable and insurmountable if there are several unrelated critters who have managed it.

More likely is that immortal monkeys don't make evolutionary sense given the energy requirements.

We don't have anything remotely close to a free market in housing, though - I would be much, much more apt to lay the blame for the current housing crisis at the feet of misguided zoning and NIMBYism (often dressed up in pseudo-leftist rhetoric). We need to build more houses, for anyone, as quickly as possible and as much as possible if we want to shift the curve of rental pricing. Right now, the market wants to build - we should let it. If the state wants to step in and build more housing too, great, but first it should get out of the way.

I agree that tiny houses are a feel-good distraction.

That's how these things always go (15 years is the usual "sentence"). Assuming that the US is willing to play ball, they'll start negotiating now and eventually trade him for a visit from the director of the CIA or some rice or whatever. AFAIK no American since the Korean war has actually served a sentence from the DPRK.

I don't want to get into too much detail on this out of respect for Otto. I wasn't there when he took the poster down, but I definitely believe that he did.

Also, no invisible lines were crossed - we were told very specifically before arriving in NK by the tour company that under no circumstances should we go to the staff-only floor of the hotel and that people had gotten in trouble for going there previously (it's moderately infamous). My memory of that is hazy, but it may even have been in response to a question about that floor from Otto. As I said in another comment, I really don't think that the NK government is interested in oppressing tourists for no reason.

Definitely! But imagine you're North Korea, looking at the world's most powerful military by a huge margin, practicing the invasion of your country a few miles from your border, on a regular basis. Makes you feel pretty nervous, right?

Whenever I got home from my previous vacations, my mom would say, disapprovingly, "Where are you going next, North Korea?!". I had a spare week this winter and thought that sounded like a pretty good idea. Also, it's an interesting place that's much maligned (rightly), and I wanted to see it for myself. It occupies a unique place in the modern international mythology.

To be honest, I didn't get a whole lot out of my visit. Everywhere I go, humans are pretty much like humans elsewhere. If you've been to another repressive third-world country and pay attention to posts like this, you have a pretty good idea of what North Korea looks like - its aesthetic form is just more extreme and it's trying to pretend to tourists that it's a second world country. My inner giant-statues fan was pretty pleased. I would say that it met my expectations going in. If anyone is ever in China and has a few days and a few hundred dollars to kill, I would highly recommend it. I wouldn't recommend making the flight just for the DPRK.

My personal takeaway is that I no longer like the hard-line stance against North Korea, don't think the sanctions are a good idea (I did going in), and would rather see them brought into the international community via the inexorable march of global capitalism. I suspect that isolating them only makes them more dangerous to the civilian population and more willing to lash out to the international one. (In other words, they behave like humans everywhere else in the world!)

Hrm, that's the not impression I tried to give in my comment. Obviously I was in a dystopia, and it was made very clear that we were being handled - not even the guides tried to pretend we were being shown the North Korea that civilians see. The guy who sat in front of me on the bus was literally arrested on the way out of the airport and is still stuck there! I'm pretty aware of the situation.

The way the North Korea tours work is as following:

1. The government-run North Korean tourist organization partners with foreign tour companies (all based in China, AFAIK). There are several foreign tour companies (Koryo Tours, Young Pioneer Tours, etc), which all cater to different segments of the market and advertise their services differently.

2. Every tour goes to the same locations and in theory gets the same commentary, but the various tour companies can send different foreign guides, and have some power to get different Korean guides. This, combined with the different sections of the market, has a pretty huge effect on your experience on the tour. I went with YPT, which is why it was a party with a bunch of mid-twenties Americans/British Commonwealth guys. If you go with, say, Koryo Tours, you're signing up for what I referred to as the dystopia experience where it's an older, primarily continental European crowd and the guides yell at you for taking pictures. I personally think that this is what the people taking the dystopia tours are looking for - they want to go home and talk about how they braved the tyranny of the government minders and snuck pictures of random rice fields.

On a personal note, I've been to some of the worst places on Earth by most objective and subjective measures, and digging under the skin (and into the dumpsters) of dysfunctional places is a hobby of mine. It's always a little funny to me that if you try to humanize the North Koreans a little (not even trying to make excuses for their government!), the default assumption from people who've never been there is that you're a rube who has been taken in by obvious propaganda.

No sarcasm tag on HN, sorry.

Right, but imagine that you're the head of the DPRK military and you're reading this comment as the general attitude of America. Now you think that you have to get nukes ASAP, and you're risking US invasion at any time until you do (look what happened to Saddam!).

Once you have nukes, you think, you'll have a shred of leverage over the US since you'll have the capability to nuke Seoul. With that leverage, you can ensure that your glorious people's republic will continue to prosper without another devastating war. Who cares if you throw the economy under the bus until you're nuclear-armed - that's just the price you have to pay for security.

I personally don't think that the DPRK has any real intention of starting a war - they know that there's about five minutes between hostilities being declared and Pyongyang turning into a radioactive parking lot.

The North Koreans are totally obsessed with the Korean War, and seem to think that the entire world is too. They've convinced themselves that the US started the first Korean war because controlling the Korean peninsula is vitally important for some reason that I can't remember (the propaganda drones on a bit too much). It's a bit silly, but it seems to be what they believe. As an American I obviously don't think we have an all-consuming desire to invade and subjugate the Korean peoples or that it's a major goal of our government.

That said, it wasn't that long ago that North Korea was on Bush's hit list ("axis of evil"), we regularly organize large military exercises preparing for a new Korean war, and we've got all sorts of belligerent rhetoric that a paranoid DPRK intelligence officer would definitely take as a threat. Even confirmed war hawks like Bernie Sanders name them as the biggest threat to the US on the world stage (which is ridiculous, IMO).

They're totally related.

That said, it doesn't mean that the paranoia you see in these sorts of blogs is entirely warranted - in my experience NK wasn't particularly interested in oppressing random tourists (they want those sweet, sweet dollars). They will take a great deal of offense if you go in and rip down their propaganda posters, though. :)

I went to North Korea in January as an American (incidentally on the same tour as the kid who is currently being detained there and in the same group). As mentioned in the article, Americans can't go on the train, so I can't speak to his experiences specifically, but I have a few reactions to this.

1. He probably didn't need to modify his camera firmware - I took pictures of basically whatever I wanted and they didn't look or care. The only exception to this was the (singular) grocery store, which I thought was hilarious because it was actually pretty nice. (With surprisingly good food, too! I'm still snacking on some of the candies I bought there.) I went on a helicopter ride and took a bunch of pictures of anti-aircraft guns and the like hoping that they would make me delete them and I would have a story to tell, but no such luck.

2. There's a big difference between the different tour companies. Some of them really sold the dystopian totalitarian state experience, with extremely strict guides who yelled at people on the tour and checked everybody's cameras and so on. The people on those tours seemed to have signed up for that experience and were, I think, happy to receive it. My group was drunk off our collective asses literally 24/7, our guides were making dick jokes, a guy wandered off on his own on New Years Eve and didn't get back to the hotel until ~3am after getting in a fistfight with a cab driver, and it was generally a party. It seems to me like the author of this article went in looking for a dystopia to photograph, and the tour company gave him one.

3. North Korea is poor as hell, obviously has a horrible government, etc. If you've been to other extremely poor parts of the globe it's obvious that it's a poor country trying to pretend to be a rich one. The successful example of neighboring South Korea makes their failure to provide for their citizens even sadder. But I would guess total quality of life is comparable or better in the DPRK than many other places I've been. (Somalia, nasty bits of Bangladesh, etc)

4. The citizens and possibly government are (not totally unreasonably) terrified that the US is going to invade and crush them like ants at any given moment. I think this drives a lot of their government's malinvestments.

If the law is never enforced, that's almost as good as it being repealed. Given the lack of any other effective mechanism for obsoleting laws, I would book 'this joins the thousands of other bad laws that are never enforced' as a win for anyone who thinks we could do without it.

No, the point I'm trying to make is that seemingly one of the only ways to get stupid laws changed is for them to be broken, and for people to see that the law is pointless (or not pointless!). Why exactly the law is or was in place doesn't matter too much.

Another example would be the woman who has the gall to braid hair without a license - if she hadn't broken the law, nobody would talk about it, there would never be any chance for reform, and we would all be incrementally poorer for it.

I'm not taking a position on specific laws, just that it's important that some laws occasionally be broken so that as a society we can test whether or not it matters if someone breaks them. If breaking a law doesn't result in negative outcomes, it shouldn't be a law.