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Pure speculation here, but I imagine that Apple is probably working on a unified OS between IOS and MacOS. The pieces are there between Catalyst and now the new ARM macs. MacOS is pretty outdated from a UX perspective, but I reckon there is something in the pipeline. This is likely to continue to push the walled-garden approach where folks go to the app-store for downloads, but even my MIL had the same confusion with not being able to find certain software on the Windows store. Hopefully Apple keeps things open for power users, giving us the ability to install things from outside the app store. I don't think I would ever choose Windows as my first choice for doing development even with WSL (although Windows has become much more developer friendly within the last few years). At the end of the day, I don't care to spend much time configuring any machine I use to do work and would prefer stability over customization.

Besides this, it's actually a stupid move in a political, pragmatic sense. Like you're saying, it alienates precisely those you need to bring to your side ("it's pc gone mad!")

Alienates at best, emboldening the racists at worst. Clearly even the author was pissed by this change, not just because it's an empty gesture but also a change to workflow. I'm imagining some f̶a̶s̶h̶y̶ ̶e̶d̶g̶e̶l̶o̶r̶d̶ "Western Chauvinist" programmer throwing a fit every time they accidentally git checkout master, racism intensifies.

Judging by the article, this project likely started before Blazor was released, however, I have to agree that .NET should have been the obvious choice. Maybe the author wasn't able to decide this, but I wouldn't consider an SPA for an enterprise app unless there was a very good reason. Stick to boring stuff that works. Leave the bleeding edge stuff for side-projects and startups.

I mean, PRISM was a post 9/11 thing and yeah, Snowden's leaks directly noted Facebook, YouTube, etc. There is really no telling what exactly is out there, but we know the NSA has massive Data Centers and a massive budget. Basically, even the most personal private information about literally any citizen is just a FISA Warrant away. Things posted in a public forum are a cakewalk.

Maybe they aren't doing anything novel with this data, whatever, this is beside the point. The point is, we can't really count on the State to regulate this stuff, even though, you know, creating and enforcing laws is literally the reason the state exists...

IDK, I hesitantly have to side with big-tech on this, but this is a problem that the State either can't fix, or will not fix.

The internet is a wonderful thing, but it is also very dangerous. Having unfettered access to information, be it true or false, can wield some horrible side effects when such a large swath of the population lacks basic BS detection, critical-thinking and like, base level understanding of civics. Do we need a Vanguard? I wouldn't trust one coming from either side of the aisle in the current climate. Seems like 'censorship' from the platforms is the only viable solution I can see, but that can take a pretty dark turn. At least if it's a private company, you can always leave, create your own thing or find something else...for now.

Although I am concerned about the 1A and big tech being the arbiters of it, it seems like such a system has yet to go to production (probably never will). I understand that there are technical, financial, and legal complexities that are much more nuanced than 'FB doesn't care, as long as they can profit from potentially dangerous content' and 'FB just wants to suppress any speech which doesn't align with their neo-liberal ideologies'.

What I find troubling is that, a system to find/flag radical/violent content likely exists within the auspices of the NSA. Despite the massive infringement of privacy that these systems create, it seems that they still can't prevent people from being 'radicalized' by content from the platforms that is designed to do exactly that. Furthermore, they couldn't (or didn't) do anything to actually prevent people from storming the Capital. This begs the question, does this massive surveillance state need to exist if it does not do the thing it is purported to do (find and suppress violence, prevent terrorist attacks, etc).

If the owners of the platforms have any conscience, unfortunately, it seems that the responsibility will be up to them. It's murky territory for sure, and you have to strike a balance between far reaching censorship (i.e. infringing of 1A) and allowing disinformation, hate speech, and calls to violence to spread like wild-fire (i.e. how we got into this mess in the first place). I hate to say it, but the older I get, the more something like 'the great firewall' of China seems to make more sense.

To be fair, the actual 'far left' is Pro-gun. You're confusing leftism with Neoliberalism (you're not alone in this thread). The anti-gun people in this category are firmly rooted in the Auth-Right quadrant of the political compass (just a few hairs to the 'left' of Modern Republicanism).

That being said, it's understandable why these platforms don't want to be involved with promoting 'gun-safety' information, and it's not about censorship, it's about liability. You can't talk about gun-safety without talking about proper operation. This information has implications regardless of a users intentions (good or bad). Imagine the headline: 'Mass Shooter planned attack with help from YouTube videos'... The following uproar would only lead to greater censorship and restriction. Restricting content is not about censorship, but preventing scenarios like this. It's impossible to separate 'safety' from 'tactical training', and I for one, would prefer such information was not readily available to any would-be rogue actors.

If you want to have a gun, that's fine. Take a class. Want tactical training, take a class. Better yet, join the military.

I'm not particularly convinced that owning a gun offers any net-benefit as far as safety is concerned. I'd reckon you're statistically more likely to injure yourself (or a family member) than you are to prevent an attack from an assailant. It's also a really hard argument to make that there is 0 correlation between the high level of gun-ownership in the US and the extremely high homicide rate. Especially when looking at hand-guns (Canada for example has similar levels of 'ownership' and a lower homicide rate, but less hand-gun ownership compared to US).

TLDR; restricting 'gun-safety' info is not about censorship, it's about liability and owning a gun probably doesn't make you 'safer'. (these are, of course, my opinions)

I should have included the South in my assessment, when you have states like Texas and Florida with 2nd and 3rd most (tie) amount of electoral votes, not forgetting 'swing' states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan that have a lot of pull. The middle of the US, and the East Coast South of the Mason-Dixon line is solid red. Gerrymandering has made it so even states like Georgia with a majority African-American population concentrated within congressional districts with enough political power to theoretically do something (Atlanta) will likely never flip blue (assuming said population were to vote blue). Same story where I live in southern Ohio. It's pretty sad. I think the electoral college needs to go away, but I doubt I'll ever see it in my lifetime. Hate to be a bummer on this, just tempering my own expectations.

Yeah, chiming in from the Mid-West, the Trump base is out in full force. Lots of Trump signs in yards (with varying degrees of offensive slogans), seeing Trump flags flying from the back of pickup truck beds and yards everywhere... one gets the opposite impression. Whether the 'silent-majority' is truly the majority or actually the 'extremely vocal minority' will decide the election. However, there is no denying Trump has a very energized base out here. I have a feeling the Trump will lose the popular vote, but as 2016 has shown, mid America will be the deciding factor.

The other troubling thing, as related to the article, is the huge role conspiracy theories like Qanon will play in this election. Just as the article describes, through FB's algorithm, people engaged with traditionally left-leaning communities (non-GMO, alternative medicine etc) are getting sucked into this madness. FB's work to suppress this is not only too little, too late, it also creates a self-enforcing narrative that 'the elites' are actively engaged in a cover-up. It's pretty scary stuff. Not to mention, the cognitive dissonance is only amplified by civil-unrest and a global pandemic. The psyche of the body politic has been absolutely ravaged by the events of 2020, creating a perfect-storm for the unexpected to occur.

I 100% second this sentiment. Granted, I live in the Mid-West, my workplace is not a startup, I'm skewed towards introvert, have ADHD, and my work is not necessarily collaborative.

Being in the Mid-West means car-centric living, WFH gives me at least 8 unpaid hours back to use as I please. I used to take a longer route on my way home, to decompress and avoid the stress of traffic. My carbon-footprint is also lowered significantly, which is personally important to me. As an introvert, I no longer feel the need to decompress from hours of maintaining false appearances and shallow office interpersonal relationships. The corporate world also loves meetings, and I estimate that the move to virtual over physical meetings saves literal hours per week (just by eliminating the need to physically move to a location, as well as the context switch and disruption of focus).

Additionally, as someone with attention issues, not being overstimulated by my surroundings helps my energy, focus, and productivity.

Again, I know everyone is different, but after living the wfh life, I am not sure if I can ever go back. I can see the argument against it, especially in the startup world. I still think it can be managed, with the right approaches and the right team.

Mention Python in a HN thread, and prepare for people to start moaning. IDK, maybe it's the SV filter bubble dealing with some mono-repo from google with a bajillion lines of legacy Python to support. Yeah, I can't imagine how unwieldy that might be. But for those of you that extol the virtues of the 'safety' a compiled language brings I say, try supporting a Java app that's been held together with shoe-strings and bubble-gum for 15+ years (in the enterprise world). Same nightmare, but much harder to re-architect.

Literally just discovered Zeit, what I liked about it was the ability to choose different run-times, with a generous free tier, with none of the existential baggage of the other PAAS's options out there. Sigh, oh well.

Not trying to be snarky, just something worth considering... Owning physical media is not as popular as it once was due to the multitude of streaming options available. Subsequently, the cost of physical media has gone down due to the popularity of streaming. If you pick up some $5 blue-rays for older films here and there, or hit up a used place, $50/month can go pretty far. Best part, after a year or so, you would have amassed a pretty sizeable collection of media, that is yours to watch, forever (as long as you retain copy of the media). Can't really beat that. Archive it and stream it with Plex or Kodi (which I think is legal, as long as you own a physical copy). Other commenters have noted similar sentiments, but I feel like the subscription services are just the new cable. Until a better option exists, I find physical media to have the friendliest licensing for users.

Even my engineer colleagues still operate under the impression that Tesla Autopilot == Self-Driving. One of the dangerous things, to me, is a combination of PR and user experience. The PR/advertisement creates the impression (directly or indirectly) that a Tesla drives itself, and the technology enforces the sentiment by working well 'most' of the time. This article just enforces this. The driver killed was an engineer, who noted that Tesla's auto-pilot would veer into danger (in the spot he was killed), filed a report/complaint, yet still, had enough confidence in the tech to read a quick text.

Agreed, but again, I ETL my data into a warehouse, as a developer (not a BI person), I'm reaching for spark, flink, or whatever to roll my analytics, and python/flask/d3 for building web dashboards.

Then, once you have 'insight' into your Data, you can easily 'do' something with it without the limitations of a tiered product.

How about working with poorly designed schemas? I work with SQL-Server as well, dealing with legacy data designed around imperative t-sql programming. Our 'BI-Solution', SSRS, crawls on pretty simple queries, where 'hacks' need to be done, joining on same table, all kinds of dirty tricks...

I don't know... I honestly feel like 'BI-Solutions' are a poor-persons Python if you are doing anything more than simple dashboards. Something that can be done in 2 lines of code in a Notebook requires endless fiddling in an IDE, to produce something not easily reproducible.

Aside, I've no experience with Tableau or Power-BI, just know that Crystal Reports and SSRS which are pretty painful.

Interestingly enough, one of the reasons I'm learning Python is because I don't know Perl, which is used at my workplace. My experience is that Python works well as a 'glue' language for doing systems things.

EDIT: I should mention, I'm not just refusing to learn Perl, I'm just choosing to use Python where Perl would have been used before. No other Devs on our team are Perl experts, all our Perl code is Legacy.

People are being mislead. It appears that DoorDash has preemptively scrubbed anything from their website stating that drivers can make n dollars per hour, but at one point, I remember seeing the claim, somewhere between $15/$25 per hour.

I'm not trying to disparage people, but without some level understanding of economics, it's not obvious that whatever rate you receive is not your 'wage'. These gig jobs don't pay wages, they pay something closer to a fee. Maybe it's more like rent. Somebody else can comment on the pedantic differences. Point is, the relationship is skewed in favor of the party doing business, not the party providing the service.

So what? This is capitalism, you have the freedom to seek other opportunities elsewhere. Hold up. If this is your business model, you are dependent upon the current wave of de-regulation. What are you going to do if/once the pendulum swings the other direction? What happens if minimum wage ever becomes something reflective of a living wage?

These gig jobs posit themselves, subtly, as a 'side-hustle'. Something which shouldn't have to exist, but does, simply due to the lack of well-paying jobs for those without advanced education.

Depends on the 'intern' culture they have here. They are basically paying people 40k per year. Combine that with an actual program for entry-level hires (like a bootcamp), and I can see the value. I'm not sure what Dev salaries look like in Canada, but in the US, 40k is extremely low. I think Shopify is a rails shop, which is super quick to get productive in. Also, given the stack, it's probably not as easy to just throw H1b (or whatever Can equivalent) at the problem.

This is also a great value for the applicants, as you get actual experience, with no tuition. Very interested to see how this works out. Kudos to Shopify for forward thinking.

meh. I’m not trying to sound cultish, but if you’re not at least familiar with some of the packages I mentioned... Python is different than TCL. Python isn’t growing in popularity for nothing. At the end of the day, I just want tools that get out of my way, while keeping the loc I’m responsible for maintaining to be small and easy to grok.

I should note, I'm not particularly concerned with performance. We already have fairly optimized DB code, views, sprocs, indexes etc. This layer is currently sufficient for our needs. So ideally, we would still continue to leverage the SQL-Server. What we need, is to extract business logic from the DB, into application code which is testable. All of this processing is 'batch', we also have options for deploying (Azure, PCF) which can handle issues of scale. I'm more concerned with getting it right, than making it fast. I'm not very experienced with C#, but have experience with Java/Spring web development, and have yet to find any frameworks that allow for rapid development akin to flask or rails. Java/Kotlin is great for back-end dev with spring-boot, but full-stack... not so much. Also, I don't want to manage the complexities of any front-end JS framework-du-jour. I know React, Angular and some Vue. I'm very much of the YAGNI philosophy when it comes to front-end (at least for Enterprise apps). PyPy is a viable option, as I don't see any immediate need to call into C (although this assumption is likely to come back to bite me).

Anybody with experience able to chime in on a question? So, at a high-level, I am looking at using Python at my workplace. We are a weird amalgamation of a Java and Microsoft shop, using Java and Kotlin for 'critical' systems, while heavily relying on SQL Server/SSIS/SSRS for all our back-office processing (batch jobs, reporting, ETL etc). This is the stuff my team is responsible for, and we are constantly hitting the limitations of this stack. My feeling is that Python brings enough to the table as a general purpose language to be a good fit for our use-cases. Simple automation of file io, analytics and reporting, small footprint web frameworks (flask), big data tools like Spark, libraries like Pandas, PyTorch etc. Also, I don't have time to learn idiomatic Scala. It's not about laziness, its just that I feel Python brings enough to the table to be useful, while still being productive and readable. Then I read threads like this and start second-guessing myself. I see some red-flags for sure, but I'm just looking for some validation here. Basically, we have a lot that needs fixing, we need to do it quickly, and I'm wondering if Python can work. We are certainly in the realm of 'big-data', and are currently handling everything with procedural SQL, some Java apps that need refactoring, Perl scripts and scheduled tasks on Win Server, and a bloated, poorly implemented Java Web App to provide a front-end to our poorly maintained, non-normalized database.

Sometimes, the people getting the most done, are either doing so based on proficiency (i.e. deep understanding of domain, system, language, stack etc) or are simply adept at finding the shortest path from a(requirements) -> b(code). These are the people I look out for, as essentially the root of tech debt. Hopefully, things like code-review will prevent people like this from pushing code that only they can understand, but that theory often proves false as these folks often out-rank you. Don't be afraid to call BS through any means available. At the very least, you need an explanation/comments/documentation explaining why simplicity was sacrificed.

That failure is ok. As a software developer, you are going to receive all the smoke. Whether failure means missing some arbitrary deadline, delivering something that doesn't meet requirements, has bugs, is not extensible, or not delivering at all. Obviously, none of us want any of that to happen, but it's a reality you will face at some point in your career. Your management probably does not care about the myriad of challenges that led to failure and will shift the blame to you to save face for themselves. Doing your best is all you can do. Failure means you are challenging yourself and working outside of your comfort zone, and this is where growth happens. Be honest with yourself, and honest with your team. You can take responsibility for your actions, but there are so many variables which you can't control. From poor planning/management, legacy systems, infrastructure, tooling, unrealistic deadlines/deliverables, funding, initiative, the work of others. These represent systematic issues that have their own inertia, and expecting them to be solved by a single overworked developer is simply asking too much. Learn to recognize when too much is being asked and say something. Recognize all the variables which you can't control. If you have a solution, go ahead and propose one if it is one that you can implement with reasonable confidence, otherwise, leave it to somebody else. Sometimes the hardest thing to learn, is learning what NOT to do.

Apparently my comment upset some people, I want to reiterate I was not insinuating anything about the President's current cognitive state, just stating it's something to look at. Both Sanders and Biden are tiptoeing on octogenarian status, making this concern as much of a consideration for them, or any other future president of an advanced age.

Anyway, to answer your question, I'm just a layperson, so I can't speak to exactly what is happening 'under the covers' when someone in the early stages of dementia experiences an acute episode. Trying specifically to recall my experiences as a caregiver, I'd say there is just a general confusion. They would seemingly not be aware of things like time (i.e. what year), no idea where they were or why (my experience was working in homes and in a hospital as a pca), no idea who I was, no idea who family members were, etc. Asking for deceased loved-ones was pretty common, they might even try to call them on the phone. It's all pretty variable. The point is, it's not hard to reason that having anybody in such a state being in charge of military power is a bad idea.

in reference to the 'Crazy President' Problem:

that isn’t how mental illness works (it tends not to flare up in a totally unexpected way among otherwise “sane” people)

This might not be how Mental Illness works, but it could present itself in the case of Alzheimer's/dementia. I don't have a study to link to, but plenty of anecdotes having worked as a caregiver. I've worked with patients in early stages of dementia that could go from being completely lucid and rational, to being completely unaware of their surroundings, and back to baseline within the span of a few minutes.

I'll leave any speculation on Trump's cognitive facilities to somebody else.

No you're correct. I personally feel silly asking Siri to do anything, but yeah. I've never successfully written a speech-to-text text-message, my brain just struggles to make it happen. Here is to hoping that brain-link stuff actually happens (not holding my breath though).

This will get buried, but whatever, here are my $0.02 as an Airpods user. I have the gen 1 airpods, have had them about 1.5 years and overall, I have been pleased. Many people complain about battery life in the gen 1, I've never experienced this, but I typically only use 1 pod at a time and cycle them out when the battery gets low on one.

Pros: I think that the overall design/form-factor is the true winner. The conveniently pocketable charging case, and the ability to wear them during physical activities without falling out, without the need for annoying straps etc is a huge win. Seriously. My hobby is skateboarding, and I have taken countless falls, tons of high-impact activity, and have never once had them fall out. Being free of wires also helps this. The pairing capabilities are fine (Mac and Iphone user), but I agree with what others are saying in that other options also handle this (almost) as well. I switching from IOS to Mac to be mostly seamless, but sometimes have issues switching from Mac to IOS. The sound quality is, meh, but this is Bluetooth, if you want audiophile quality, you must look for wired.

Cons: One major gripe I have with the Airpods is that, while using 'Find-My' works great if you lost an Airpod outside the case (while paired), it does not work at all when the pods are in the case. I understand the charging case has no speaker, therefore no good way to alert, but if Apple had this feature on a new version, it might be enough to make me buy them before my current Airpods reach EOL. My second complaint, is that I feel like Apple is under-utilizing them as an input device for IOS/Mac. You have the capability of summoning siri, and skipping tracks, but you can't do both on a single pod. This design is bad UX for people like me, who typically only use 1 pod at a given time. I also think it would be nice to adjust volume with a gesture. I also get that Apple probably doesn't want to have feature overlap between Airpods and Apple watch, but I digress.

Overall, despite some gripes, I don't really see any better options at this time for what I need them to do. When my Gen 1s die, I will shell out for new ones. I hope that Apple doesn't just rest on their laurels and actually adds some new features/capabilities on subsequent releases, but I'm not holding my breath.

I don't know about carpel tunnel, but the reason I became interested in Vim/Emacs was due to RSI caused by using a mouse. This was my first job, doing shudders Java-EE (7) web development (no live re-loading, tons of clicking in IDE, manually reloading web-page etc, crappy windows touch-pad etc).

Started learning Rails, drank the Kool-Aid, switched to VIM. I don't use VIM for development at my day-job, mostly just key-bindings in Intellij/VS Code, however, the amount of time saved has been worth the effort, and no RSI (also thankfully am able to use the fantastic track-pad on mac and a trackball for anything else).

Lately I've been feeling the pull to learn Emacs after learning about ORG-Mode and the extensibility of the software... unfortunately, the time investment here is likely to have no real benefit in my (current) work as a Java dev. Sigh, time to browse the who's hiring thread.

I don't know enough to speak intelligently about this, but my gut says that people predicting a recession simply because we are 'do' is short-sighted.

I wonder if High-Frequency/Algol trading has anything to do with our current bull run. Maybe removing some of the human response from the equation has stabilized the market to some extent.

That being said, I'd be VERY surprised if a recession does not occur within the next few years.

One problem with this analogy is that a surgeon does not go into the operating room solo to remove your appendix. You would first be seen by an anesthesiologist, someone with a nuanced understanding of biology and pharmacology, just to get you prepped for the operation (the surgeon likely has only a surface level understanding of this, and doesn't need it to perform her job). Once in the OR, you would also be attended to by Nurses to monitor your vitals and administer any medications and perform any life-saving interventions should something go awry. There also may be a Surgical Technician involved in preparing tools needed to perform the procedure. Perhaps an ultrasound technician is present to make sure the surgeon's incision hits the mark, etc, etc. The point is, there is still a ton of abstraction happening so that all the surgeon has to focus on is performing the procedure. This is very similar to how Software Development works on large projects, except we often have multiple surgeons operating on different parts of the same body at the same time!

I think a better analogy for software would be construction. Multiple people of different specializations and skill-levels working together to produce a single artifact. As a framer, you don't need to know how to lay the foundation, you just need to know how to build on top of it. Furthermore, you don't need to know the chemical process of concrete to pour the foundation, you just follow the recipe that's been proven. You don't need to know the math required to determine the integrity of a structural load in order to frame a roof, you just follow a plan. Some projects may require engineers and specialists who do have a deep understanding of such things, but only to create the blueprints.