tracer4201

What is the downside? I was thinking it could compromise software security, although my layman understanding is we’re better off if the open source community finds and makes problems visible?

Or there are other software secrets that we wouldn’t want state adversaries to see, like things that block your access under export control laws?

I’m in leadership ic role at a big tec company. We pride ourselves in engineering.

hiring bar was dropped. expecting a mid level engineer to work with a byte buffer is considered “too complex” and non differentiated work.

the literal goal is to pump out features written up by mba/product team. none of these mbas use the product mind you. theyre chasing stupid features they think vice presidents want, because the thinking is it will drive promotions.

this is a cynical post and i will stop here. my org has problem of incentives. nothing else. you incentivize wrong things then this happens

At my work, I have colleagues who speak English as a second language. Many of them are using LLMs to up their document and other writing.

It’s actually quite awful. It’s obvious the text is LLM generated because of the verbose, generic writing style. It communicates clearly but without substance. Not gonna lie, I secretly judge these people.

What problem are we trying to solve?

When I think of holding in memory state, to me it’s less about class or OOP vs something else and more about race conditions, thread safety, possibly idempotency, and proper abstraction design.

Abstraction design meaning, I’m not exposing the keys to the castle or leaking internal details where it might allow another good intentioned programmer to do bad things or introduce some subtle, difficult to reproduce bug.

> It’s about the same as saying “kids just want to drink Tide pods nowadays.” There’s definitely something wrong with kids who do it

Supporting Palestinians is like drinking Tide pod? WOW, what an incredibly inhumane and racist take.

> Hope that we reign in spending in a drastic, unprecedented way (without impacting revenue as well...)?

American politicians, deliberately or out of incompetence, use the crisis of the moment and conveniently forego this topic.

I’m convinced the next US administration HAS to do something about this. I don’t see a way that doesn’t involve both spending cuts and raising taxes.

I don’t like discussing politics on HN, but I think this should be deeply concerning for anyone interested in start ups, technology, or innovation. All of our innovation is enabled by having a somewhat functioning democracy, courts, cops, civic culture, where people have the opportunity to critically think about hard problems and innovate, because they’re not worried so much about near term survival.

I worked at a big tech company in a staff/principal engineering position. I always had coworkers who didn’t start coding until college, who were better engineers, communicators, and overall leaders than I was. I turned to them for mentorship.

For what it’s worth, I learned to code in grade school.

I wasn’t terrible at my job, and left in that principal role.

Not sure how conclusive my anecdote is, but I 100% do not believe there’s a strong relationship with starting to code earlier in life and being a better coder, engineer, or general employee than someone who started in college or even much later in life.

I’ve worked on everything from back end enterprise apps used by day traders to building information retrieval systems for kiosks at airports to embedded software running on a particular eink device.

Everything was directly meaningful to me, insofar as it provided someone value, gave me money for sustenance, and/or was something I was personally extremely interested in.

Meaningful is a relative concept, and I sincerely hope people in this thread don’t fall in a trap of comparing what they’re doing so what others are or are not doing.

I’m mostly interested because Israel is funded by tax dollars I pay, and heavily supported by racist religious people who believe we must support Israel because “they are Gods chosen people”. We don’t share such view for any other country on Earth, and the topic of Israel has been essentially censured in the US. Even now, criticizing Israel is quickly equated with anti Semitism. You can burn flags, insult Presidents, insult any country or statesman on Earth, and it’s all within some acceptable boundary, but the minute you even dare question Israel, the discussion comes to an end.

American politicians will drag their heels at times to address issues impacting Americans, but criticizing Israel shows them immediately speak up.

I think that’s dangerous, and we have to overturn that. And the idea of any particular race being “Gods chosen people” is unacceptably racist. An Israeli person is no better than a person of any other nationality. They are not above criticism. And if your religion says it is, we need to work to completely remove any influence your religion has on our government. Racism is racism, period.

> it started going downhill for us developers on the macOS and ios platform;

You didn’t answer the question. Was there a time you could develop and distribute on iOS without paying the license fee?

> If you are fine with a corporate abusing their control over their platform to exploit money from you, both as a developer and a consumer, then we don't really have anything else to discuss because of our differing economic / political belief on this subject.

This is a logical fallacy — begging the question — when you state a position as an absolute truth.

No one is “fine” with a corporation “abusing their control”. But your argument is based on the premise that charging for an SDK or charging a license fee to build and distribute on iOS or Mac is itself an abusive practice.

The counter argument is that it isn’t. Because anyone could develop and distribute software for Windows or Unix doesn’t mean that that is the only model and anything else is abuse, which you’re claiming as an absolute truth.

I don’t think you answered the ops question. Was there ever a time that you could develop software for Mac or particularly iOS and distribute it without paying the developer license fee?

To be fair - the Unix market is different than iOS apps. And on Windows, anyone could run whatever program… which caused a lot of problems and financial loss. And just because Windows or Unix used those models, why are they the one and only acceptable model?

Picking up Rust is not the same as picking up Python or even Java, in my opinion.

I started learning Rust and C++ at the same time, coming from a world of Java, Python, and Ruby.

If I need to solve a problem in C++, I would much rather write Rust because the compiler actively screams at you when you do bad things.

And in my opinion, the challenging part is learning what those bad things are. In other languages, the compiler doesn’t care. You immediately see your program crash or things fail in subtle, hard to reproduce ways later in production. Rust changes that model.

I disagree with you on the documentation. I think the Rust documentation is superb. I have yet to see any language give nearly as meaningful information when your code fails to compile. Secondly, Rust front loads and throws issues immediately in your face, as opposed to having you discover problems in your code at runtime. I don’t think that makes Rust difficult - it’s forcing you to think about your choices. And particularly it’s making you think about concepts that perhaps you completely overlooked in other languages - thinking about stack vs heap allocation, moving semantics, shared ownership, etc.

If you want to quickly prototype something, Rust isn’t the best language IMO. But if I have a choice between C++ and Rust, I’d go with Rust anyday. If I was starting a new project from scratch and it was more of a web service, I might go with another language over Rust only because I’m more of an expert in Java, Python, etc. and it’s easier to hire developers for those languages than Rust.

But I’m biased. Rust has a special place in my heart. It’s the first language I’ve learned in many years where I felt some sense of accomplishment and did not at all feel like “Oh great, another tool that fundamentally doesn’t add value.”

For my use cases involving Java and iOS interoperability in a multi threaded environment, nothing else came even close.

>However, with Amazon’s own gaming streaming service, called Luna, in testing, it could help transform FireOS into a much more appealing gaming device to enable even more access to games that only require a controller and an internet connection.

I’ve only considered Amazon Fire tablets as a cheap tablet you might give to a child, relative to spending several hundred dollars on an iPad or higher end Android tablet. I never quite understood who is the target audience for these devices though. I was recently in an Amazon Books store and tried the higher end model. It felt very unresponsive and clunky. But I’ll assume Amazon continues to produce these because they help get people into the Prime ecosystem with the tight Amazon Video and Kindle integration?

The worst part on the device I tested was how it has the Kindle app built in. And the main screen was just ads labeled as “recommendations”.

Google is often the default search engine across many operating systems and phones. There’s no apples to apples comparison with Amazon, and before you force this false analogy, let me clarify that you’re arguing a strawman.

The irony is NYT ran an article chastising Amazon for the very thing they also engage in.

I recently had to call NYT to cancel my membership. The person on the other side ran me through a script, and each time I told them I didn’t want their counter offers. It was annoying.

To be honest here, I canceled my NYT subscription because of the very subtle yet obvious propaganda laced in their articles on a recent news event. They present themselves as honest reporters, when in reality there’s language that in a subtle manner takes a clear side and provides a distorted view of a complex situation.

The honest truth in my opinion is the NYT isn’t honest or more objective than other papers. Yet time and time again, their reporting is viewed as gospel.

Not selling on Amazon doesn’t mean you exit the industry. If this was the case, every retailer would have an Amazon presence, which isn’t true either. You’re merely repeating what was stated earlier.

>The person who wins the lowest price box is not the lowest price. It is the lowest price who agreed not to sell on other sites for a lower price than one Amazon. You as the customer are being tricked.

There's no dark pattern involved here. When the buy box doesn't show you the lowest price, you usually see something like "Available for a lower price from these sellers" or some wording like that. In my 15+ years as a Prime customer, I've seen this quite a bit where I can find a competing offer for a lower price, often though with a longer delivery time.

>Where is the chat button? Where can I ask a question? Where can I let Amazon know something was wrong with the refund they sent?

I'm going to assume you're not writing this in bad faith and that this isn't a rhetorical question. From Amazon.com, I see "Customer service" is the second link from the left just below the search box. From that page, I see a big box in the center titled "Returns and Refunds".

>You're also making the assumption that the buy box always offers the lowest price, which isn't true if Amazon are factoring non-price variables like is the manufacture undercutting Amazon on their own site. So as a seller you could be offering the lowest price with the fastest shipping, but still lose the buy box because you had the audacity to offer a better price on your own site or at Walmart.

I'm on Amazon page right now. It tells me that I can get a product the fastest with the buy box offer, or I can get a cheaper price from other "offers". And when I click that link, it shows me higher and lower prices, but the lower prices have a delivery date (actually a range, between X and Y) more than a week out.

Let me start just by saying that the offer is still shown. It's not immediately in the buy box, but as a shopper, I have access to the lower prices and can buy from a different seller. This information is not obfuscated from me or hidden through some dark pattern.

>This in turn creates a very strong incentive to sell your products everywhere for the same price, regardless of your actual costs. So your prices at Walmart and your own site go up.

>If pricing at other stores wasn't a factor in the buy box algorithm, then consumers could find lower prices else where if they wanted to. Thus allowing competitors to slowly loosen Amazon strangle hold on online retail, and reduce prices for consumers.

The incentive goes away if you don't sell on Amazon, right? Any Amazon "strangle" (your word, not mine) only exists because people choose to sell on Amazon, right?

>How can this ever happen if selling cheaper elsewhere loses you the buy box on the biggest online store?

See my previous point. Don't sell on Amazon.

>Again you're completely ignoring the size of Amazon market share here. Who is voluntarily going to give up 50%-60% of all online sales? It's a bit like US ISPs, if Comcast screws with fees stupid prices on your cable contract you can just go to a competitor right, we'll just ignore the fact the competitor is selling 2mb DSL.

I don't agree with this. Companies like Comcast are deemed monopolies because their customers don't have a choice. Just as you stated, Comcast gives me high speed broadband. But my choice is limited to Comcast, and the only competitor (if there even is one in my neighborhood) will offer 2MB DSL.

This is NOT the case with online shopping.

I can purchase an iPad from Apple, Amazon, Best Buy, and a bunch of other websites.

I can purchase my razor blades online from Target, Amazon, Gillette, etc. including several of the grocery stores in my city (who will ship them.

Yes people shop at Amazon, but it's because they choose to. I have the option of not shopping with Amazon. As a matter of fact, I bought 10 "5 Star" brand notebooks on Amazon. I saw later that Wal-Mart had them for $3 instead of $7/notebook. I sent them back to Amazon and got them from Wal-Mart instead.

With internet service, many people don't have a choice but to go with Comcast, Cox, or whichever single provider offers the service in their neighborhood.

The crux of the article was that you lose winning the buy offer if you sell elsewhere cheaper. Okay - so who wins the buy box? Someone who is actually offering a cheaper price, one that’s more enticing for me as the shopper?

How is that hurtful for the consumer? You’re calling that “punishment”, but in fact as a shopper I just want to see the lowest price with the fastest shipping.

The seller fee bit part isn’t relevant. Wal Mart and Target or any other site could well offer lower seller fees - in fact, they’d HAVE to undercut Amazon in order to catch up with Amazon. But that doesn’t mean Amazon has to bring their prices down. I don’t buy that.

One other thing - as a shopper, no other shopping website comes close to Amazon’s customer service.

There is quite a bit to this article that’s disingenuous, for example -

> How do sellers handle these large fees from Amazon, and the inability to charge for shipping? Simple. They raise their prices on consumers. The resulting higher prices to consumers, paid to Amazon in fees by third party merchants, is why Amazon is able to offer ‘free shipping’ to Prime members. Prime, in other words, is basically a money laundering scheme. Amazon forces brands/sellers to bake the cost of Prime into their consumer price so it appears like Amazon offers free shipping when in reality the cost is incorporated into the consumer price.

If pricing on Amazon is too high, consumers won’t buy those products at Amazon and get rid of their Prime memberships too. But this isn’t quite true. Using hyperbole like “money laundering” also doesn’t help the case.

> Amazon also uses its bazooka of cash from Prime members paying high consumer prices, laundered through third party sellers, to distort industries across the economy.

Again, hyperbole. The author merely brushes off the fact that these sellers don’t HAVE to sell on Amazon in the first place. Presumably, Amazon is growing because more and more sellers flock to their website. If it’s a bad deal for sellers, they can sell on other websites. The article makes a one line claim - representing it as a ground truth - that a new business HAS to sell on Amazon. So this is clearly stating that no business can survive if they only have their own store presence or sell on Amazons competitors. I don’t believe this is true (based on a very successful family business). Yes my data point is anecdotal, but if we’re saying no business can survive without the ability to sell on Amazon, then the entire article is moot - the simple reason for breaking up Amazon is that no small business can survive without Amazon.

Again, I don’t think that’s true, and the author knows that - hence, the long wordy article to come at the issue from other angles while sprinkling in hyperbole.

I work in a Principal role at a company whose products or services many people use every day. All of my work is done on on a Mac, which you’d have to pry from my dead cold hands before I’d be willing to go back to a PC (especially Windows).

I didn’t read the rest of the review after finding that sentence. Shockingly, the author is listed as an Executive Editor.

I’m going on a tangent here, but these companies like Wired produce trashy content, lose readership, and then go on to blame anyone and everyone but themselves.

I want to convince you this isn’t a good idea. If all the businesses shut down in my town or city, what happens after? Where do I find work? Especially if I don’t have sufficient capital to start a new business (never mind the skills or training), what will I do then? How does society go back to normal?

Do we stop all output and just have the government mail checks to every individual forever? That’s not going to work. Who is going to produce the things we need to function as a society?

Are we saying a rent payment is a “transfer of wealth”? I’m not invested in real estate, but I imagine many people in real estate were just as impacted. Don’t you likely need to pay towards a mortgage and put some aside for capital and day to day maintenance?

Your comment is written as if a rent payment is a transfer from one person to directly to someone else’s savings account. I’m not convinced this is true.

With respect, I don’t understand your comment. You’re saying Facebook provides you utility. Well, FBs business model is they provide you a service in exchange for your data. You have the option of engaging in that transaction — using their service in exchange for your data. Or you have the option of not using their service.

Legally, I’m not sure how you can have it both ways, aside from either FB offering a paid tier (you pay cash instead of providing your data), or we shut FB down entirely.

What exactly do you believe is the solution?

Personally, I think social media is more harm than good. I don’t want to ban or control social media companies (my local officials aren’t even capable of keeping drugs and homeless addicts off school grounds, let alone dictating internet regulation). My personal choice is to not use it.

Everything seems to have a subscription model these days. In my personal opinion, I’d rather pay for a service I really want instead of this “free” model where it annoys me with ads.

I don’t fully understand the value proposition of Ticketed Spaces, although to be honest I understand the value proposition of social media - it seems to be voyeurism and exhibitionism with folks pretending to have a lifestyle that’s not sustainable or real in the first place.

I cancelled my Prime membership because as a paying Prime member, I don’t think my search results should be plastered with ads. I already paid you for a premium experience. Don’t insult me with cheap Chinese flea market garbage.

I took 3 weeks vacation last December. I typically take a few days off a year and don’t have formal vacations — and this is by choice.

At the end of the three weeks, I was dreading returning to work. Now my compensation is over $500K a year. Financially I’m doing really well, although I haven’t quite hit the number I have in mind for retirement.

If someone is getting paid $40K or minimum wage, I can’t imagine why they would return to work. 3 weeks is all it took for me to go from loving my job to dreading going back to work. If I was home for months, I’d very much would get used to that lifestyle and try whatever side hustle I could to cover my costs.

Personally, I’d happily accept being a lifeless drone, at least for a few years. Save the extra income and invest it. Reap the dividends.

Having said that, I don’t know how bad those roles actually are. Obviously, it’s not worth it if it affects your mental health… and unfortunately yeah, that is an issue working in this field.

Out of curiosity what do you define as being paid well? What country and region or state and what’s the compensation?

I had a recruiter try to lure me for a $130K “senior” role on the east coast in the US. I earn several times that.

This blows my mind. I remember begging my dad in 1999 to buy me a Voodoo 3 3000 and literally crying until he agreed. He wouldn’t let open the Compaq and install it myself, and so I walked him through the installation. It was a big upgrade from the ATI Rage Pro card we had.

All that so I could play Quake 3 with higher detail at 1024x768.

I don’t know the direct answer to your question, but I briefly looked at your github. It wasn’t clear to me what your value proposition is.

What are you doing that’s different? If I had a new web project, why would I use your framework? Is there something that it simplifies for me? What does it do better? Is there a particular vision you have?

You might consider entering some of these questions in your README.

If you were placed in a situation where everything feels like it’s on fire and falling apart, don’t go complaining to your manager. There’s a good chance your leader ship already knows, and that’s exactly why they put you there. Because they trust you to get things back on track. But this isn’t necessarily great for your mental health. So you have to prioritize and strike a balance on what matters and what doesn’t. Don’t let small things get to you.