This is an excellent addition to the lineup and changes the list of reasons for why the average person would go for a Windows laptop from “cost” to practically nothing, but from a consumer perspective, is there any reason to buy this over M1 MBA which can be purchased new for less than the education discounted version of the MB Neo?
Readit Newsmiav commented on MacBook Neo apple.com/newsroom/2026/0... · Posted by u/dm
It is genuinely incredible how well-fitting clothing is only generally available to some one-third of women who fit well into the anticipated height-waist ratio. Petite options exist in some places, but god forbid you're tall - your choices will be limited to "too short" and "too short and also too wide" if you try to go for a size up.
miav commented on Discord/Twitch/Snapchat age verification bypass age-verifier.kibty.town/... · Posted by u/JustSkyfall
The reaction to Discord age verification fiasco once again makes me believe that HN users just don’t have friends.
There is no alternative for Discord for bigger groups.
If there was, I still couldn’t move multiple social circles to it, no matter how much I evangelised.
The “just don’t use the less morally aligned platform” argument has always been valid only for those without a strong need for it, whether it’s X or Discord.
miav commented on Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills qu8n.com/posts/most-impor... · Posted by u/quanwinn
There are plenty of devs who do nothing beyond taking a Jira ticket scoped by others, implementing it, and then grabbing the next ticket.
While they may not have been very successful, they did have a place.
Is this genuinely common? I’ve only ever seen that level of hand holding extended to new grad hires.
miav commented on Open-source communications by bouncing signals off the Moon open.space/... · Posted by u/fortran77
Anecdotal, as a kid I was really into CS:GO skin betting. Ended up losing my entire collection, never gambled since.
miav commented on A Case for Feminism in Programming Language Design (2024) dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/36... · Posted by u/smitty1e
Guys, the author presents an overall reasonable argument and I think it's more useful to engage with it in good faith than going "so it's all my fault just because I'm a man?" - no one's implying that.
At its simplest, the point is that much of programming language design is done with a masculine perspective that values technical excellence and very little feminine perspective that focuses more on social impact. Most, including myself, have a knee-jerk reaction to dismiss this argument since at first glance it appears to trade off something known useful for something that's usually little else than a buzzword, but upon further reflection the argument is sensible.
The theme of forsaking technological perfectionism in favor of reaching whatever end goal you have set is widely circulated on this forum and generally agreed with. Those of us that work as software engineers know that impact of your work is always valued more than the implementation or technical details. It's thus reasonable that when building programming languages, the needs and experience of the users should be considered. Not override everything else, but be factored into the equation.
I know if I were to write a programming language I'd probably focus on pushing the boundaries of what's technologically possible, because I find it fun and interesting. But I would have to agree that even if I did succeed in doing so, the actual impact of my work would probably be lower than that of Hedy - the author's language. Hedy is not novel technologically, but the fact that it makes it meaningfully easier to learn programming for significant numbers of people is real, undeniable impact.
Lastly, I want to note that the author's argument for underrepresentation of women in PL cannot be reduced to "those nasty men are keeping us out". Humans are tribal and any group of humans is bound to form complex social structures. Those are going to affect different people in different ways, linked paper investigates the effect on those structures on specifically women because the topic is close to the author. Whether you care about low numbers of women in PL design or not, the dynamics that have led to that being the case are worth investigating and are quite interesting on their own.
miav commented on A Case for Feminism in Programming Language Design (2024) dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/36... · Posted by u/smitty1e
> Error messages are another PL design feature shaped by
peoples’ standpoint, by their lived experiences and values.
For many programming language designers, error messages
are an afterthought. Other aspects of design will likely over-
power the careful crafting of error messages, such as an op-
timized compiler or an elegant syntax. Many language de-
signers, explicitly or implicitly, take the stance that ‘users
will just have to deal with error messages when they oc-
cur’. Error messages in many languages explicitly do not
include the user in their phrasing, saying things like ‘miss-
ing bracket’ or ‘unknown variable’, which leaves the user
out of the equation. For a person with the lived experience
of being told they don’t belong in programming and being
afraid of failure in the programming world (a common expe-
rience for women in computing), unclear or unhelpful error
messages are more likely to have negative impacts. More
readable error messages are not just helpful for those with
less prior knowledge, clear error messages are a better ex-
perience and will help all users—even professional develop-
ers. A recent study on error messages in Elm showed that
their well-phrased error messages were the most-named
positive experience of professionals working with the language [citation].
The author must consider the audience is either stupid or childish. An intelligent adult deserves respect and should not be talked about in this way, implying that they are emotionally unequipped to handle a straightforward computer error message.
The author is not advocating for friendlier messages in the googlesque sense of dumbing them down or introducing more positive wording, but in the sense of making them more readable and useful.
Of course it does not matter for "a straightforward computer error message", in cases where the error is a simple type mismatch or a missed semicolon, but if those were the majority of the problems we encounter as programmers, our work would be trivial.
It's not difficult to imagine a situation where structuring a compiler in such a way that it keeps more state and perhaps has to perform more analysis is worthwhile, since a more useful error message saves the user time in understanding and fixing a problem.
An example that comes to mind is when in Rust I tried to create a dynamically dispatched trait, where the trait in question contained a function an argument of which was generic over a different, statically dispatched trait. Since the compiler did not know at compile time the exact object which would be instantiated, it was incapable of inferring the exact type of the second, statically dispatched trait at compile time, thus failing to compile.
The error was presented to me in a clear way that pointed out the problematic relationship between dispatch types of the two traits allowing me to understand and fix the problem quickly. If the error message was far simpler, such as "can't dynamically dispatch trait", I would have figured that out too, but it would have simply taken more valuable time. Most importantly, having to track down the issue from a minimal error message, would not have been an honorable test of my intelligence and emotional maturity, it simply would have been inefficient.
miav commented on Apple takes UK to court over 'backdoor' order theregister.com/2025/03/0... · Posted by u/latexr
How do you guys interpret the fact that the UK hasn't requested such backdoors for Android-based stuff ? Ie. is this an indication that they already have such thing ?
The UK "laws" are extremely evil when it comes to violating basic rights, they can essentially force companies to shut up, "gagging orders", etc...
This is about end-to-end encryption. Google doesn’t do that.
Could anyone more knowledgeable on the topic explain to what extent common wireless connectivity standards are open and feasible to implement for, say, a medium sized company? Apple has been working on a 5G modem for what feels like a billion years, but other standards seem to be more democratized.