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kristopher

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  Hi there, I'm kristopher.
  https://github.com/kristate
  https://twitter.com/kristopher
  
  Always remember to say "Hello."
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Thank-you for the question. Most of heavy lifting is in the actual compiler itself and in the vtables/trait interface feature. Although the cpp implementation now differs most, we never claimed to be a hard fork of Zig.

Hi Loris, thanks for the question and congratulations on your new role at the Zig Software Foundation. We originally planned on supporting Zig in Japan via support contracts and this is from that preparation. Trademarks have multiple categories and one such category is for contract work and related materials. We don't plan to use this trademark to harm Zig.

Hello HN and sorry for this bizarre drama!

Although we have a page documenting some outlandish comments that the founder of Zig has made about Zen[0], we find it well inside of our rights to fork the MIT Licensed Zig and make a better product with commercial support.

We had initial plans to support Zig in Japan, but efforts to localize Zig were not accepted and we could not take the risk of not having some sort of formal role.

Regarding commercializing compilers: our main market is in embedded and as others have pointed out, charging for compilers and support is not uncommon.

One of our big main differences between Zig is that Zen natively supports vtables and traits that we call interfaces[1].

Although our core market is in Japan, we are preparing our English website and hope to have it out soon.

On a more personal note, I am happy that Zig is growing and that they got the foundation together. At the peak before the fork, I was the 5th largest contributor to Zig, so I am very happy to hear when people say that they are enjoying the language.

It's midnight in Japan, but I will try to field questions if any.

[0] https://zen-lang.org/zig/ [1] https://www.zen-lang.org/ja-JP/docs/ch06-interface/

Mr. Atwood, you may be too kind. I see this as a chance to bring Markdown to a larger audience by not only standardizing it, but also renaming it as well.

In this endeavor it would appear that you are giving too much credit to Gruber. It is unfortunate that he was not one to be more gracious in the matter.

I think that it would be appropriate to simply forget the "Mark" parlance and Gruber all together.

Everyone understands there is a Markdown ecosystem, but quite frankly this is the start of something new.

End-users also need an easy to follow name and site to learn the syntax.

I like the names SmartText or SimpleFormat or even perhaps CommonMarkup.

I wonder how the number of daily submissions were tabulated.

If reddit were using an ID based on some sort of fixed constant (for example time) then these results could be in-fact fairly linear.

Please note that I do believe that reddit is growing!

That investor was spot on. The best signal you can get from a Japanese business partner is their eagerness to go out for a night on the town :)

In Japanese, "We will consider it" or "kentou shimasu" (検討します) literally means to investigate and attack from its Chinese roots and is a way to signal distance.

If you are in early stage talks and if they are serious you will get a request to sign an NDA or some form of binding contract.

For those who had a hard time finding the official information, I will repost it here:

  Brian Alkerton
  Shopify Employee
  
  Hey Everyone,
  
  Just a quick update on this: our Bitpay integration is feature-complete and can be added to your store now.
  Due to the fact that it's a very new feature and not something we're ready to roll out to all stores just yet,
  you will need to contact me to have it enabled, and I may want to follow up with you for your feedback once
  you've been using it for a while, but it works. When active, Bitpay will appear as a credit card processor
  in the Checkout page of your shop admin - enter your access key and you'll be all set to go.

  One caveat: at this time, Bitpay functions in the same way as the other credit card processors on Shopify,
  meaning that you can't use Bitpay in conjunction with Authorize.net, Stripe, or other credit card processors.
  PayPal Express Checkout can be used as a secondary option with Bitpay in the same way it can be used with all
  other gateways.

  To activate, email me your shop URL at brian@shopify.com and I'll do my best to get everyone up and running promptly!

I'm afraid that you don't know who Paul is. As I was reading this I was saying to myself "That is so Paul... Oh, this is Paul :)"

From my perspective this is all because Panasonic pulled-out of the smartphone races. NTT Docomo has been a reliable safe-hold for Japanese electronics companies and Docomo would have had a decent lineup for fall if Panasonic would have committed.

Panasonic's R&D was firmly centered around Japanese flip phones and the jump to Smartphone put them in an awkward position.

And so it seems, iPhone's pull was too great for Docomo in the end. I cannot wait for the official announcements.

Nintendo in crisis 13 years ago

Nintendo is a great company with very informed people. The "problem" is two-fold:

1) Nintendo is not just a publisher of its own games, but also a platform for others. In Japan, there are major hits like the Monster Hunter[1] franchise that is currently exclusive to Nintendo. Japanese people do not look at devices for the devices themselves, per se, instead they will buy the device that allows them to play the franchise that they enjoy the most (ie, Monster Hunter or Pokemon, etc.)

Thus, it is wise for Nintendo to continue to make revenues that will be tied to successful software/game franchises.

2) Nintendo has a culture of ROMs and direct addressing. You will notice that when a game boots up that it is impossible to switch back to the home screen. In actuality, the OS/core libraries are actually statically linked into the software. The philosophy of the Nintendo platform has always been one where the device won't get into the way of the gaming experience. In other words, I would doubt if you ever see multitasking on a Nintendo console.

Nintendo is in its own unique position and is fortunate to have a wonderful and caring fan-base. They are building a new corporate office here in Kyoto and things are relatively well for them.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_Hunter

Where is everyone else's "Samantha" in the movie? If we had such AI, let alone "interface," I doubt that it would be his mere secret.

That said, I think these kinds of movies are good to help connect regular people with computing, or at least help people think about where computing could go.