> Spain, Italy and Greece clearly have a worse healthcare system, and those are just three examples I can think of quickly. Surely lots of countries in eastern europe has it worse than Sweden.
Spain has one of the best healthcare systems in the world, usually ranked by the WHO within the top 10 while Sweden's was within top 30.
Both Spain and Sweden seems to be about equal if you average the rankings in that list. So surely if Spain has one of the best healthcare systems in the world, Sweden is pretty equal, then Sweden is nowhere near being the "2nd worst in the EU" when it comes to healthcare.
Since I wasn't the one making the original claim, I could only try my best to find the matching source, this is as close as I could get. Sorry about that.
I lost faith in PIA caring about privacy of its customers when I noticed how they use unique tracking codes in their newsletter emails. I never received a response when I asked about it.
Just about every single one of the email newsletters you receive from anyone does this. It's for tracking clicks to links in an email, opens of an email, etc.
Not apologizing for PIA - They definitely shouldn't be doing it if they're trying to advocate for privacy. But just stating it's extremely common practice and the default for most email services. I use it on my e-commerce websites so that I can send specific emails to people who have viewed a certain page, abandoned checkouts, opened a certain email but didn't convert, etc.
It is pretty pathetic to go to any coworking space in an Australian major city and realise that people there are just playing the 'startup game'. These people will typically spend a few months playing the game, burning a bit of their severance package until finding another permanent job.
At first I thought it might be so that you could still access their website for support if you had an issue with their CA.
However it seems that https://community.letsencrypt.org/ which would seem a good place to get help is actually using one of their certificates so maybe it's just historical. The certificate dates back to 2015 and expires in next February, maybe they'll replace it by one of their own then.
We set that up before we were an operational CA and it has just never been a high enough priority to replace it. The team that would do it has a lot of other things to do. We'll get around to it at some point.
Because a good lawyer typically advises their client to shut up, as these sorts of statements will be brought up in court.
Based solely on VikingCoder's "T-shirt comparing Google to a gulag", the characterization will be of a disgruntled worker who didn't care about his job and felt like burning all his bridges before leaving in what he thought was a blaze of glory.
I dunno, I'm pretty sure defense* would easily be able to paint the picture that employee spent hours researching and writing an article because he cared about the culture. If you didn't care, you wouldn't be bothered to invest effort into carefully addressing the topic. Heck, you could even go as far as to pull the google doc authoring logs and show (theoretically) that the employee worked on it in off hours (I dont know this to be true, but if it was, even a stronger defense).
His actions after the firing could easily be explained away as hurt feelings for trying to be open and honest, and being publicly shamed?
* it's not the defense I suppose if he originated the suit, but you know what i mean
Have you not experienced a work environment where someone feels like burning bridges?
There are some people who are "mad as hell, and ... not going to take this anymore", so write such essays to 'prove' that they aren't wrong, the company wrong.
For that matter, there are some people in romantic relationships who do the same.
I'm not saying that's what happened in this case, I'm saying that this is what Google's lawyers will argue happened, so a good lawyer would advise him to not make things easier for Google.
* the word you want is 'plaintiff' as this would be a civil suit.
> I dunno, I'm pretty sure defense would easily be able to paint the picture that employee spent hours researching and writing an article because he cared about the culture.
Something like half the citations are to Wikipedia. There are five actual scientific papers there, three or four of which don't even support his thesis, and, if I recall correctly, many of which are in the Wikipedia citations, the classic trick of a rushed undergrad who needs trustworthy citations but has no idea how to find them.
But the memo does not read this way. It clearly is written in a way to start discussion/make changes at google, not as a "so long suckers, f??k you all".
Which is why a good lawyer would advise not going around with a "T-shirt comparing Google to a gulag", because the lawsuit won't be restricted to the content of the email but to the entire interaction between him and Google.
> Based solely on VikingCoder's "T-shirt comparing Google to a gulag", the characterization will be of a disgruntled worker who didn't care about his job and felt like burning all his bridges before leaving in what he thought was a blaze of glory
It doesn't matter. Those who like their job and are serious about wanting to change a corporate culture or other views don't usually, even after a wrongful sacking, go around wearing such T-shirts within a week or so.
While those who just want to roil the ant's nest, do.
That's how Google's lawyer's will portray him, which is why a good lawyer would recommend not doing that.
1. Android is the largest mobile platform on the planet.
2. It's been around for a decade now, but has only supported development with Java and C++.
3. The most recent version of Java supported comes from 2011. And full C++ support is only recent.
4. Few people (if any) really like these options.
5. This week Google announced that Kotlin is the next "official" language with first-class support.
6. A temporary wave of stories appear on HN.
Are you new here? I'm sure that next week it'll go back to the usual threads about Rust or Haskell, or someone will start a retro fad around Algol-68 or something.
Maybe the OP meant using C++ without at least a Application dispatcher/container object written in Java. This has only been possible with the introduction of NativeActivity (which you don't need to derive from, but only refer to via the Manifest).
That will be a short article, though: "Because Go doesn't really work on Android. In fact, I don't even know what I was thinking. Seriously. Why'd I do that?"
(Yes, I know you can run Go code on Android but last I knew that's almost exactly literally what it is; you can run Go code on Android, but it has next to no integration with the rest of Android, just a very basic binding to things that are very cross-platform: https://godoc.org/golang.org/x/mobile/app)
If you write a C# app with Xamarin and have problems, then it's Xamarin's support problem. If you write a JavaScript app with Qt (I assume?), then it's Qt's support problem.
Now, if you write an app with Kotlin, then it's Google's support problem. I can see how that would change the game for a lot of shops.
You can write a forum post. And then you'll get confirmations from another 100 developers, so you'll definitely feel a bit better and not alone in your pain. ;)
You don't have direct access to Android's API with C#, you use a dedicated runtime wrapping your calls and allowing you to interact with the framework. This comes with a very large variety of issues.
The C# tooling is good but it's partially closed-source and sold by a vendor (Xamarin). On that basis I don't think it really 'counts'. JS does, at least, since there are many ways to ship JS-based Android apps for free.
> Are you new here? I'm sure that next week it'll go back to the usual threads about Rust or Haskell, or someone will start a retro fad around Algol-68 or something.
I just do not get how the disconnected list of events you provided justify the promotion of Kotlin we have seen this week. But hey, you might even be on the payroll.
I doubt it's being paid promoted, but I don't think your cynicism is unreasonable. It is pretty obvious that the big tech companies maintain a presence on this board and attempt influence through human and automated measures.
Eh, neither Nim nor Elm are backed by huge companies. You'll want to look at Rust and Swift for that. ;)
Seriously though, speaking as a contributor to Nim, I can confidently say no-one in the Nim community organizes massive multi-post promotion campaigns like this. The only submissions that come from the core developers are the announcements for new language versions, and (unfortunately) none of the community members seem particularly inclined to regularly submit links to libraries/blog posts either.
I'm sure Elm developers do the same thing - it's the only way for such projects to actually gain recognition among other communities.
As someone who's become adept with a few modern statically typed languages (C#, TypeScript, F#), and still sometimes has to write (pull teeth) crufty old Java for Android development, I can tell you that I'm happily pitching into this PR campaign unpaid and of my own volition.
I wouldn't be surprised if money wasn't involved, HN has always worked like this.
Some tech post about some technology gets a ton of votes, some people get excited about the tech, they investigate and find articles about that tech, they share it, and all the excited people upvote it.
Has happened several times with Rust, Go, Ember, Meteor, Angular, TypeScript, etc etc
This time android support and that steve yegge blog post set it off (it probably wasn't an accident that these two coincided though?)
Kotlin is simply a much more modern option than Java in general, and doubly so for the old version of Java used for Android. Giving Kotlin some official backing gives it a lot of credibility. The big argument favour of using Java over Kotlin until now has been that Kotlin was seen as more of a fringe language than the one (Java) officially endorsed by Google. Now that has changed. As a Scala developer I'm quite happy that Kotlin is getting this much attention as I see it as Scala-lite. I doubt there's a campaign of any sort, just lots of excited developers who are sick of Java and excited about Kotlin.
You see too much into this. It was the same wave of HN interest when Swift was launched, back in 2014. Or when RubyMotion was announced a few years ago.
People are simply excited about being able to use Kotlin as an official alternative to Java on Android. I'm also pretty excited about this ...
People are just excited. Articles I have seen so far don't sound like PR. People are just excited that they will have an alternative to Java.
This is the same kind of an excitement as the one when Apple announced that Swift will be a first class citizen of iOS development. I rarely get excited with programming languages, but this one went straight to my heart. Maybe I am biased because I like JetBrains as a company.
I think it would behoove you to use Kotlin. When every other post on this board is about Kotlin, it is clear that is where the industry is headed. Use Kotlin, or risk being left behind.
Um, no. What happens on HN is nowhere near an industry driver. It's better than many forums, but it's not some powerhouse of technology industry influence, nor does a trending topic on HN necessarily indicate a particular trend in the industry in general.
No, because Google dropped huge announcement that Kotlin will be first-class citizen on Andorid. And there were people who like Kotlin, but knew it will be hard to use it in real life. They are happy now and having a moment. With time this wave will decrease, and something other will come. That's normal.
I have been hoping for this move, and then Google using Kotlin for Android. They made the smaller step of officially endorsing Kotlin which I think helps, but acquiring Jetbrains and opening the entire Intellij would be huge for the developer community, Android, Kotlin, etc...
Of course that assumes Google doesn't drop support a year later.
Yeah, please, no. Jetbrains have been a consistent, effective, and mature presence in this world for a long time. The last thing I would want would be to inflict Google's capricious approach to acquisitions on such a valuable player.
To put it into more perspective, I live in Orlando and Kotlin has been the new growing language for Android since before the announcement. Developers wind up trying Kotlin for themselves and enjoying it for themselves, the rising numbers and the fact Google realized it's popularity and adjusted their support for it shows that Kotlin is a reasonable solution for Android development. It also doesn't help the fact that Java is hostile against Android, and that Kotlin is working on native compilation, which could make it one day one of the most powerful assets of Android if they go full on for native compilation for Android, a benefit that afaik Java doesn't have.
I feel your pain. It is extremely difficult in Australia to get interest in anything related to innovation. I have had surreal experiences when dealing with companies and particularly Government. They will do anything to boycott something that resembles change, particularly if it affects the the way they work, or of course that might expose their incompetency.
Australia is not a place to live unless you work in health or in a trade. Scientists and engineers (engineering is not even understood in Australia, usually being associated to things like infrastructure or maintenance) are screwed.
I'm immune to it now. My motivation in writing about this is because from a public policy perspective I'm convinced that our approach was the correct one. I like to keep the idea alive for those who come after us. I just hope they have more luck with it than we did.
Spain has one of the best healthcare systems in the world, usually ranked by the WHO within the top 10 while Sweden's was within top 30.