eludwig

I don't remember the author off hand (maybe John Varley?) but there is a science fiction novel where people are kept as heads with all of their nerves hooked up in such a way that ANY sensation could be perfectly created.

Needless to say, it was possible to go to some pretty dark places with this. Imagine, for example, feeling like you had to urinate but never being able to relieve yourself for all eternity. And that was one of the "lighter" abuses.

shiver

>>Did you experience this, and how did you push through it?

Apologies for chiming in, but the simple answer is that "you" can't. That is, if you believe that there is a "you" that can push past this barrier, then you will fail. It's an impossible task. Where you go after that realization is up to "you." ;)

I own the first 12.9 iPad Pro and it has no Apple Pencil lag that I can detect. It also does not have the Pro Motion 120Hz display.

I think Apple did something along the lines of doubling the sampling rate (not sure of the exact number) of the capacitive layer to eliminate pencil lag. Seems to be fine, at least for me. Maybe they did something similar with the new iPad?

What a great game! I played this for hours back when it was released and I did finally make it to (and beat!) the Black Knight level. So many good memories. IMO, the difficulty level was much closer to today's tougher indy games.. Not sure I'd have the patience today.

Beyond Dark Castle was fun too, but it was way more sprawling and confusing. DC was just a compact, tight, totally winnable game. Loved it. It being in black and white was not an issue, either. Given the mood and subject, it totally fit.

The vertical blanking hack is real typical of Mac software of the era. There were a bunch of things that low-level devs had to use it for, but you had to be careful, as it didn't last very long.

I'd also like to recommend the Ken Burns "The Vietnam War," which can be found on PBS. It is amazingly well done and the depth of it is beyond most documentaries. For example, there is one episode (1.5+ hours) that covers a six month period from 1967 to '68.

I was a small child during the war (10 in '68) and (to be truthful) only somewhat remember watching the coverage on TV. My mother said I used to ask her if I was going to have to go fight there and that I didn't want to. Thankfully, I didn't. The war ended in '75. I had just turned 17.

Strangely, the My Lai massacre is not covered until a later episode. They slotted it in the time line where it was first reported --not when it actually happened. But be patient, they do get to it eventually.

The sobering part about the series is that it absolutely captures the stupidity, futility, and mismanagement of the war over such a long period of time. The huge waste on both sides. The scale of it was staggering.

Myself, I am always drawn to the jungle patrols and the combat portions, which are fierce, terrifying and totally engulfing. I can see why certain people are drawn to war. It's the ultimate video game. Everything is on the line. You have no idea what the enemy will do and (really, in the end) no idea what you will do when faced with that visceral terror and excitement. What a rush it must be! And how horrible too. I am in inveterate coward. I don't believe I would have gone if called, but my 17 year old self is someone I don't really know anymore.

Anyway, the series is great and I highly recommend it.

I think this is a totally fair point of view. It is the flip side of optimism. Forgive me for bashing the obvious in the head here, but this point of view is entirely necessary and right within its purview. You can't have optimism without pessimism, no matter how hard you try.

These two points of view provide balance. You have to decide where you stand relative to this pendulum. Humanity will protect what it finds valuable. Valuable in what way will be the decision. We can make moral judgements now, based on where we stand in this moment, but the future will make its own decisions.

What would you be inclined to do if you were making something truly unique, something that required amazing attention to detail and custom effort?

Make two.

Yeah, this was going to be my suggestion, but again, i think it depends on usage.

I have a 12.9 inch (first gen) iPad Pro. Using it in portrait to read is completely amazing. It is actually almost too tall for my lap like this (I am not a large person), but I can just manage.

Some of these folks may be able to get away with this solution if reading PDFs, web pages, etc. I assume that at this point it is also possible to do console style development on an iPad (remote apps, ssh, etc). The only bummer is the iOS local development problem for people that need the software flexibility of working locally. I really, really wish Apple would allow this.

But for reading and writing, the iPad Pro is pretty darn hard to beat.

>>Two cashiers working out of 8 or so possible registers

And the worst part about this is that each cashier seems determined to relentlessly pester me with annoying questions at the register! Did I want to join this loyalty program? Did I realize that I could save $5 by signing up for so and so. Do I want to get on the B&N mailing list? Really aggressive questioning.

Oh my God. I realize that the cashiers have been ordered to do this (I assume) but knock it off already! This is so consumer unfriendly. I just want to pay and go. I'm sure that this also delays checkout times significantly over the course of a day.

This is one of the main reasons I use Amazon when possible. Retail checkout in the US has become a one-way grilling. You end up leaving the store feeling like a murder suspect.

Yes, not screwing up your children is a an excellent goal for a parent, if not a moral imperative.

But the truth is that parenting is a huge messy business that never goes according to plan. You will screw up your kids in subtle ways, even if you avoid the major landmines. This is not due to any failing beyond being a human being that was also raised by fallible parents. The other parents on HN will appreciate this: how many times have you heard the words coming out of your mouth and thought "Oh my god. I swore I would never say that to my child! I sound just like my mother(or father)!" Way too many times, lol. It's completely unavoidable. This thought is usually followed by a small voice which sheepishly admits "So that's why they said that to me!"

As the article says, it is truly up to each one of us to remove the imaginary shackles of self-definition. We, as children, are willing co-conspirators in the building of our own false self-image. It is necessary to have a rigid model of ourselves in childhood? I guess that's debatable, but I would argue that it probably is. I think it gets us through to adulthood, where it can and should be gently discarded as a tool (like bicycle training wheels) that was once useful but no longer is.

>>What stops people voting multiple times or stops illegal immigrants from voting?

Let's face it. In the US the problem is getting people to vote at all -- not stopping them from voting multiple times.

But, to answer your question, when you go into a voting station you have to tell them your name. You don't get to vote anonymously, at least not in New Jersey! They look you up in the register and then you sign the register. No one there is a handwriting expert, so I assume that you could actually vote as someone else, but then that person would not be able to vote when they got to the voting station. There would be trouble.

Also, in the 99% of the voting stations not in big cities, these stations are small, local affairs. You couldn't vote multiple times because the people there would see you and notice that you had been there before. I suppose you could come back and try to vote later in the day again, but you would have to be a pretty dedicated fiend to do so.

Of course, the reason is that we wouldn't be talking about an article that described using your laptop to do something that its been doing since the 1990s! ;D

But seriously, I think these kinds of articles are great. I love to hear about people's different setups and trying to push what can be done on iPads. Why not?

The thing for me is that I absolutely LOVE my iPad (i have an Air2 for general use and a 12.9, mainly for art-related use) and I really, really want my iPads to do more -- to become more "real" work-capable. Why do I want that? I think the reason is because these things are so close to being a single thing to carry around. They are so perfect for certain things (web browsing, email, chat, and many types of gaming) that I would really like to keep expanding that list. I'd love a world where the iPad is the only device I take with me on trips.

I also think it's real important for everyone to keep pointing out the glaring flaws of tablets (iPads in particular). In a way, this article just reinforces the fact that the inability to do real, local programming work is a real limiter for a lot of people. Also, my favorite complaint is about just how awful selecting and editing text is. I'd love for Apple to fix these things.

No, not really, or at least, not comfortably.

I tried this with my 12.9 (with the same keyboard, the foldable one) for a few days on the train and it is possible to balance it on your lap while sitting nicely with your legs bent at the knee at a 90ish degree angle, feet flat on the floor. The keyboard is stiff enough as long as the gulf between your legs isn't too wide. The problem is that any shifting around can cause this set to move and tip. It just doesn't feel long-term stable. It is possible to do it for a few minutes, say, to reply to an email.

That said, the keyboard is really nice to type on and is really easy to get used to. I know these things are very subjective.

A thousand times yes! I have to back this up sentiment 100%. Text selection on an iPad for mousers like myself is so frustrating that it's absolutely a show stopper.

I understand that there are lots of gesture/touch target reasons for the current infuriating, knob-based interface, but I tried to switch to an iPad for full-time long form writing and just couldn't. Basic text entry is okay, but doing any sort of serious editing, i.e. selecting and moving a sentence somewhere else in a paragraph is just pure torture. Life is too short.

I am really surprised this isn't mentioned more in iPad reviews, especially since the reviewers are (kinda) long form writers! Maybe they are writing their iPad reviews on a laptop?

I wrote a wysiwyg, memory-based rich text editor from scratch on the Mac back in the 90s called Scorpio. It had support for fonts, colors, styles, inline pictures, etc. It used a single buffer for text and I had no problem with insert/delete into this buffer even back then, even with ginormous amounts of text.

The "trick" (not really a trick, but..) was to use external data structures for the style runs that had offsets into the text array for styles/rich object support. That way I didn't need to worry about object alignment or whatever.

The downside of that approach was that there was bookkeeping to do in these external structures when text was inserted/deleted (indexes would need to be increased/decreased by a fixed amount, etc). The other major downside was that multi-level undo became problematic. It was easy enough to do one level of undo, which I did.

BTW, writing a word processor/text editor from scratch is a blast. I highly recommend it!

>>I don't think this feeling will ever go away.

Relax! This is called a good "work-life balance." ;) Life is not some sprint. No one is going anywhere. There is no finish line unless you construct it.

About a year ago, I switched from full-time Java development (15 years, mostly server side -- some Swing) to full-time Javascript development (React at first, then Angular) with all of the mental anguish that the amazingly arcane world of modern Javascript entails. I did have a little bit of a leg up in terms of previous html/css experience, but other than that it was a whole new world.

It seems to me that there is no other way to go other than full immersion and feeling really dumb for quite some time. The thing is though that you really need to depend on an unshakable faith that you will eventually come through the other side. You need to be firmly convinced of this. If not, convince yourself. It really helps to have done these career pivots before (which I have) and that may be the best thing about being an older developer. I know that there is nothing that I cannot come to grips with given time and effort.

Some hints:

Never pretend you understand something unless you do. Always admit "I don't know that" rather than fake it. This rule can be bent for small stuff that you are going to look up when you get back from your meeting.

Take notes (which you seem to be doing already). This is what you will google when you get back to your desk! ;D

Have a really understanding tech lead. Of course, I realize that this is just luck and a crap shoot, but working with great teachers and humane people is always best.

Have faith in the fact that the problems in your new domain are largely (probably) problems of computation that are generally applicable in ALL programming domains. Look for patterns that you are familiar with, like: what are we actually doing here? Reading some data files, transforming the result and storing them somewhere else? Oh! It's ETL! I know this. Ignore the weird jargon and get to the heart of the matter.

Give yourself time to feel like a dunce. You aren't, it's just gonna take time.

So um, where do you work again? (jk)

But seriously, great answer. I am in a similar situation time-wise. 30+ years as a dev. My situation is a little different. I am currently working at an international bank out of NYC. The people I work with are great, but the company situation is not that great. Poor, outdated equipment, horrifically restrictive IT security policies (no DLs from Github, or very limited, many legit dev sites blocked, horribly intrusive performance killing anti-virus software, etc, etc, the list goes on and on: basically a dev nightmare)

But you know what? I don't care. On the days that I actually get to write software, I feel at one with the universe. It doesn't even matter what that software is for. I am certainly not saving the world or even working on cool stuff, that is unless you consider publishing Risk & Analytics data feeds to be cool (;D). I just love writing software and always have. I consider myself to be greatly blessed by my circumstances. I had a 10 year period where I played at being a team lead and a middle manager and absolutely hated it.

Long story short: love being a senior dev. Hope to do it for as long as I can.

>>I don't really see how our approach can survive first contact with grade school.

I hear you. Best of luck. This whole subject is hard to find "reasonable parental balance" around. I'm really not sure what we would have done.

I totally agree with you. My kids are in their 30s so I avoided this whole question through timing. I am fascinated to see what the others here think, especially those with kids that are in the affected cohort.

There was a very tragic event in our area (Norther NJ) just recently. A 12 year old girl committed suicide due to bullying, some of which was described as "cyberbullying." There are not a lot of details available yet, so it's hard to say if there was a smartphone involved or not. Can you imagine that not only are you getting bullied on school grounds, but now it also follows you home in your pocket? Egad. No escape. All by yourself. Horrible.

I guess in the end it really is up to the parents to do what they can.

What always come through for me in Jane's writing is the love she has for humanity in general and her main characters in particular.

Yes, I get that her writing is consider by some to be about spoiled, stupid, privileged white people and why the heck should anyone care? But I feel like this is a red herring. She writes about a group that she has chosen (for whatever reason) and uses the interactions within that group to explore love, life, civility -- all the human foibles. The Regency nobility is her palette and humanity is her paint.

Let's talk plot and pacing? She's a master, imo. Her prose is beautiful and satisfying. Her books are fast reads, wonderfully skillful, funny and ironic. For those that have never read her, please do, you'll be doing yourself a favor. "Pride and Prejudice" or "Emma" are great places to start.

Yes, I guess I'm a fanboy. :D

As a parent who's was "Why"ed to death by two curious kids in the pre-google era, I can tell you that I would have killed for "someone" to take on a part of that burden! ;)

>>I couldn't help but think it won't be too long until kids don't need parents much

I think you meant need as pure "question answerers," but we do a few things for the kids that Siri and Alexa wouldn't have the stomach or, for that matter, the arms for. Oh, also: love!

Agreed. A lot of this has to do with where you came from and what you were used to previously.

I initially switched to Java in the late 90's from C++. At that time, C++ was just achieving (imo) its densest, most arcane features that were making me crazy. What I really wanted was a C+- or something that didn't force a bunch of stuff I didn't need on me. Java was exactly what I needed at that point.

After 15-20 years of Java, I recently switched to full time Javascript development and woah! It was like the freshest breath of fresh air. What, no types if I don't want them? Closures and protoype inheritance? Yes, Omg!

Imagine my dismay when I was first introduced to TypeScript! My code looked just like Java again. :( Seriously, I understand the reasoning behind TS and getting into it a little further convinced me it wasn't too bad after all. Again, what are you used to has a lot to do with your state of mind as a dev.

Any language that lets developers express their intent in the way they like is great. Kotlin, Scala are like the JS & TS of the Java world. All good (as long as they work!).

I would definitely agree that my mousing is not as efficient as an expert-level keyboard only approach. But it's what I do and what is comfortable to me. Random text selection in big bodies of text is always easier (for me) with a mouse first, trackpad next, keyboard last.

Keyboarding, mousing, editing is a very personal thing to folks who have to work at their computer all day. Lot's of different ways to work, lots of approaches to the work. Each person has to find their comfort zone.

When the article says: "because for all the multitouch gestures Apple can add, there’s just no beating a good old mouse when it comes to selecting text." I have to wholeheartedly agree.

I am a heavy mouse (and trackpad) user and have been for decades. Editing and refactoring code for me is all about the mouse. The same goes for editing prose, which I also write a significant quantity of.

The two-finger, on-glass "trackpad cursor" trick doesn't work well for me--it never has. It looks like the "ghost caret" is in the right place, but at least half the time, when I lift my fingers the cursor appears a character off in either direction. Verrry frustrating. Also, the two-finger trick requires the on screen keyboard and is clumsy to use if you are using an external keyboard.

About a year ago I gave up on my personal quest to use the iPad as a heavy writing device. It's just not for me. I picked up a bottom-of-the-line 12" Macbook and have never looked back.

A nicely laid out and illustrated article that's well written.

That's about the best I can say. The worst is why? Who is the audience for this? I firmly believe that if you found this article by clicking on a link on the HN homepage, then you already know all this. It's exactly the kind of article we've been reading about in one form or another for 20 years.

If you didn't find this article on the homepage of HN, then the odds are that you will never read it. Why? Because of all of the noise that the very article itself points out!

This is a type of preaching to the choir, imo. Reinforcing to the wrong audience. The points made are fair, but obvious.

But it is pretty! :)

instrumental?

Great article. I laughed. I wonder if this is mostly a matter of indiscriminate visibility and a lack of friction?

In the old days, there was that moment when visiting someone's house (friend, relative maybe) and the topic of family vacations came up. Then someone suggests the slide projector. You could almost feel the silent "uggh" from the people who were not on the vacation. The worst part would be the unknown length of the slide show. (ten minutes? two hours?) But setting up the slide projector was a fair effort, so it could easily be put off "until next time you come over" (phew! Dodged a bullet!)

Now you just pop them up on FB and they are there for all to see. Compound that with the fact that FB's sharing controls are so complicated that actually just sharing with a particular subset (immediate family, grandparents, etc) is nigh impossible for ordinary mortals and there you are! Bazillions of terrible family photos a click away, or worse: a scroll away, no click needed.

Physical photos did have some advantages: at least they could be avoided! ;D

I realize that this is about Mac podcast apps (hopefully you won't mind a quick diversion), but I'd like to quickly plug my favorite iOS podcast app: Castro (no relation, just a happy user)

I tried Overcast and really loved the features (smart speed, etc.) but I didn't love the queue handling. It's not that there was anything wrong with Overcast in that regard. It certainly works fine (it's a great app), but it didn't map to the way I listen to podcasts.

Castro is ideal if you only have a few hours a week to listen to the occasional podcast and you don't always listen to every episode of every podcast. All other podcast apps (disclaimer: that I know of) have an on/off relationship with podcasts. You are either subscribed or you are not. If you are, you can specify how many of the podcast episodes to automatically download and put in your queue. So if you like to listen to occasional episodes of, say, a hundred podcasts, you will use a TON of storage.

Castro has a triage model. When you subscribe to a podcast, you can have the app automatically either queue it up immediately (like the traditional method) or have it appear in your inbox (along with a notification), which is a kind of temporary time-based view of recent arrived episodes, or you can have it put in the archive, which is where all of the older episodes eventually go. You can always queue up an episode from any of these locations.

The best part is that only things that you put (or specify to automatically add, which I never do) in the "listening to now" queue are actually downloaded. So if you keep that list at 5 podcasts, then only those 5 are downloaded. Very nice and a perfect match for my use.

>This is the kind of attitude that reviles me. You can't blame someone for becoming alcoholic/depressive/etc. If you do then you don't understand what those are: illnesses.

Waaaait a minute. This is another strawman. My comment did not blame illnesses on the individual. But I think we need to define carefully what an illness is. I don't doubt alcoholism is an illness, but I would reasonable argue that browsing Facebook on your phone is not an illness. Do you really believe that? I don't. There may be people at the far end of that spectrum that cannot help themselves, but there are plenty of others that are just bored.