- > quite puzzling is how the Air India disaster still does not have a root cause analysis done
Not that puzzling: the most likely explanation is pilot suicide and the Indian government does not want to acknowledge that.
- "Need blind" here just means that your ability to pay the fees doesn't factor into the admissions decision, not that the admissions office doesn't know how wealthy you are (...since as you note, this is often easily inferred).
In other words, you won't be refused an offer simply because the university thinks you can't afford it.
- > Can I now build my app in Xcode with an Android target and use that binary in the Play Store?
No. The vision document[1] lays out the direction of travel. Currently the focus is on shared business logic and libraries, rather than full native applications (although that's certainly a goal, albeit a very long term one).
[1]: https://github.com/swiftlang/swift-evolution/pull/2946/files
- > These tasks aren’t business priorities and had no impact on customers and other teams
...the author has reached the wrong conclusion from this. The problem is they weren't able to articulate why the modernization tasks were business priorities, not that the modernization wasn't a business priority in the first place.
If the tech debt is problematic, fixing it will presumably bring a number of benefits (faster development cycles, reduced defect rates, etc). They were doing the wrong work - they were doing a terrible job explaining why that work was necessary.
In many ways, tech debt and modernization is a near guaranteed way to have business impact, in a way product work is not. If you're at Meta and you figure out how to save 1% of total CPU time on the server by fixing some tech debt you can expect to be showered with money.
- > I wonder what the technical details will look like
It’s already a thing, the EMVCo standard predates ubiquitous internet connectivity. Mass transit systems typically use it, airlines used to for in-flight purchases before the advent of reliable WiFi.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMV#Offline_data_authenticat...
It is somewhat common to maintain a denylist of known fraudulent cards, but as you note the main mitigation is on the bank to track the card down. One of the key things you need to figure out with an offline payment system - and what I imagine is needed here - is a consensus on who has the liability for offline transactions and what the dollar limits are.
- > This is textbook strategy [...] attempt to build a moat around something that ideally is open and interoperable
It's so textbook that Google two weeks ago came out with their own competing "open" standard for doing the same thing!
- > I've seen a lot of harsh, misguided takes over the past few days, like that the Windsurf founders screwed over their employees [...] In this case, this seems like a happy ending for all parties involved
There is no evidence at all in the announcement that is the case. It just says "100% of Windsurf employees will participate financially in this deal". What "participate financially" looks like is not elaborated upon.
It is possible you're right. It's also equally possible that the founders have still screwed over their employees, we just don't know. Nothing in this post supports either position.
- > How the hell did this pass code review? Are booleans strings on Android?
You are misreading the documentation, it's a key/value API.
`DISALLOW_FUN` is the string key you pass to `setUserRestriction`, which takes a boolean value.
- > MasterCard and Visa have no business unilaterally, secretly, and unaccountably policing their idiosyncratic idea of moral righteousness. They need to move money and shut up.
Mastercard and Visa don't block companies from processing because of morals, they block them because they lose them money. They will happily process your payments for all kinds of shady schemes that are - to them - low risk.
- > the OP is in the EU and UK, where none of the above is true.
You can absolutely be dismissed without cause in the UK, protections against this only kick in after two years of employment.
- > Gemini and Chat GPT with search are both perfectly capable of producing decent essays with accurate citations
OK, but this quote from your essay:
> The National Cancer Institute (NCI) reports that "cigarette smoking and exposure to tobacco smoke cause about 480,000 premature deaths each year in the United States."
...that citation is wrong. It's not from the NCI at all, the NCI cited that figure which came from another paper by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The essay doesn't have accurate citations, the model has regurgitated content and doesn't understand when that content is from a primary source or when it in turn has come from a different citation.
- > Some people prefer to handle their devices with care and expect to get longevity in return
I guarantee you however carefully you are handling your device it is a world apart from a datacenter.
- > It does seem to very much just be at the consumer level. We've still got servers chugging away in datacenters that are pushing 15 years old and still have several years of life left in them.
The datacenter is temperature controlled and the air is filtered. The server is locked in the rack and never moves. By comparison, your laptop or your phone go through hell on a daily basis.
- The entry-level 2014 Mac Mini had a launch price of 499 EUR, I'm not sure it was ever that cheap new. If anything the price has deflated.
- > question: isn't arm somewhat apple?
Not for decades. Apple sold its stake in ARM when Steve Jobs came back, they needed the money to keep the company going.
- > Can you explain your thinking as to how and why it might work?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prosecution
...has a good summary of how it works in a number of countries.
- > It looks like Visa debit fees are about $0.21 + 0.05%. Compare that to cash handling...
Debit fees are that low because of the Durbin Amendment, which legislated caps on debit card fees (amongst other things). Credit card fees are where the real money is made, and the meat of the complaint here.
- > when they do go into the office, they’re just having Zoom calls in the office instead. That’s what Amazon is trying to fix here.
Not really. At a company the size of Amazon teams are often in other buildings, if not other cities or countries entirely. The zoom calls continue unabated.
- > Is "musicians who don't even know the genre they'll use professionally yet" a valid market in the first place?
That's not really Teenage Engineering's primary market, in the same way Rolex's primary market isn't "people who need to tell the time". Both T.E and Rolex products do their jobs really well, but the people buying them are buying more for the aesthetic than the function.
Teenage Engineering are primarily a design boutique, although musicians do use their products their main audience are collectors / audiophiles / graphic designers going through a mid-life crisis.
I don't...think this is true? Google has no problems shipping complex software projects, their London HQ is years behind schedule and vastly over budget.
Construction is really complex. These can be mega-projects with tens of thousands of people involved, where the consequences of failure are injury or even death. When software failure does have those consequences - things like aviation control software, or medical device firmware - engineers are held to a considerably higher standard.
> The private market is perfectly capable of performing this function
But it's totally not! There are so many examples in the construction space of private markets being wholly unable to perform quality control because there are financial incentives not to.
The reason building codes exist and are enforced by municipalities is because the private market is incapable of doing so.