Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | creato's commentslogin

This ignores capital and opportunity cost. Building a GPU data center or chemical plant costs a lot. If you only use it 20% of the time, you're effectively paying 5x more for that capital equipment.

In the 80s, the US was 80% white, and upper management is going to be people from the 1930s-40s, when the US was 90% white.

Just glossing over the “men” part....

And do you think upper management was more or less than 90% white?


Have you seen what the president of the US posts about renewable energy?


No.


I don't know if they do this, but those conventions could be enforced by a tool.


Theres C++ in military airplanes, they just cut out 90% of the features: https://www.stroustrup.com/JSF-AV-rules.pdf

And heres a nice video about it: https://youtu.be/Gv4sDL9Ljww?si=Z4riPMKAKcIKaU0s


Yes, in WebKit, SaferCPP guidelines are enforced by a static analysis tool.


My work bans raw new and delete, so we only use unique_ptr. It's not as memory safe as Rust's borrow checker but I've never seen a segfault.


Yes, they do this, and it's really not an unreasonable requirement.


Of course. It's just a coincidence that they're placing onerous restrictions on competi- I mean alternative browser engines. Restrictions which, of course, they're not obliged to follow themselves.

I am sure that Apple will make no other efforts to impede others from unwalling the garden. That would be completely ridiculous, and frankly, un-Apple-esque.


Both Chrome and Firefox are already compliant, so I don't see it as onerous, but the full context of the list is indeed an extremely loud and clear "FUCK YOU, WE OWN YOU" to regulators and other browser vendors.


Which of the restrictions do you feel they don’t abide by? It looks like they meet all their own restrictions


> Use memory-safe programming languages, or features that improve memory safety within other languages, within the alternative web browser engine at a minimum for all code that processes web content;

There is absolutely zero way to satisfy the latter part here. It's at best non-enforceable. If I'm using C++ and use std::span instead of a c-style array, is that good enough?


Why not? The wording is “features that improve memory safety”

It doesn’t say that it needs to provide absolute memory safety. Based on the linked WebKit guidelines, it seems like they meet the criteria.


That's the commenter, not from the Apple page as far as I can tell.

My point is the requirement is too broad. It cannot be meaningfully enforced.


It’s literally from their requirements page

https://developer.apple.com/support/alternative-browser-engi...

You have to request explicit permission to be able to be a browser on iOS. You can’t just ship an app. I assume part of that process is that you specifically demonstrate that you try your best to use best safety practices.

Again, it’s also not absolute safety. It’s just due diligence review.


Sorry if I wasn't clear. I meant the WebKit guidelines were from the commenter, not from the apple page.

> or features that improve memory safety within other languages, within the alternative web browser engine at a minimum for all code that processes web content;

This can't be analyzed in any real way, so its just another way that Apple will restrict web engines and claim it was due to "not enough use of memory safety language features"


Why does it matter if Apple themselves don’t link the WebKit docs? It’s literally their project and seems to meet their requirements.

There’s a lot of things in the requirements like funding that Apple cannot verify. I think you’re being too binary in this.

Some of it is very clearly intended to be a “show us you are at least considering these security measures and have practices in place to minimize known issues”. Again, for the third time, it’s clearly NOT a list for ongoing perfect security, given that there are other items on the list that deal with further mitigation strategies.


> It’s literally their project and seems to meet their requirements.

This is meaningless. Apple can carve out special exceptions for themselves all day long.


What is the exception? I’m saying they meet the same requirements they are asking for other browsers.

This is literally the question I started this thread with and you have gone in to a loop of saying “they can’t enforce this” without any response of substance.


Your "substance" is "trust Apple will enforce something correctly where there isn't a correct answer". I don't agree with that. Apple has a history of interpreting things favorably for themselves and locking 3rd parties from doing the same things for wave hands reasons.

If you are going to make guidelines, make them evaluable. These aren't. If you care about memory safety, either say use a memory safe language or point to an exact reference guide to use to allow XYZ language to satisfy it.


Then you’re basically strawmanning here because you’re applying your own interpretation to the rules as written.

If you would pause for a second and actually read the rules in their entirety it is obvious that the lines you’re fixating on aren’t meant to be absolute security measures and therefore don’t need to be continuously evaluated.

Your conjecture about Apple withholding the permissions for arbitrary reasons is not borne out of evidence. When asked REPEATEDLY to show where they’re giving themselves an exception to their own rules, you continuously fail to provide any example and are just hand waiving conjectures.

Maybe they are doing what you’re saying but you’re making an incredibly poor argument regarding it.


Maybe he just likes building things that others find useful.

When I was younger I rented furniture from a company called CORT. I happened to notice on the contract or receipt or something, that it was a Berkshire company (I didn't know that before then).

If I were Warren Buffet, I would have been happy to know that someone was a satisfied customer of one of his companies. I got some decent furniture for a few months at a reasonable price.

Just like I'm happy when someone is a satisfied user of my software.


What has he built


That's not entirely fair, he may have been profit chasing or he may have actually believed in the companies he was investing in.

If he believed in them as an investor he helped build the companies.


> What has he built

He took Berkshire Hathaway, a struggling textile company, and transformed it into one of the largest and most successful conglomerates in history.


That number seems very unlikely to be accurate. It's more than 2x larger than all local, state, and federal government spending in 2025 combined.


No that's the actual figure since the 60s when they were built. I'm cheating a little, that's not a per year number.


Does that setting actually matter? When I lived in the area that had these, I always forgot to set it when the number of passengers in my car changed. I never saw any difference. The charge is the same.


Depends on the area. The 210 in Los Angeles allows you to jump on the toll-lanes for free if you have >= 3 people in the car.

And I think at certain times it's only >= 2 people.


It makes a difference in some locations such as I-580 5am-8pm: https://www.bayareafastrak.org/en/help/using-your-fastrak-fl...


The one time I saw traffic lights go down, it was total chaos. There were two separate crashes that had already happened when I got there, and there would probably be >1 wreck per few minutes with the driving I observed.


I moved from South Africa to Ireland 2 years ago. It was very noticeable to me how drivers in Ireland have no idea what to do when the lights are out. Absolute chaos!

In south africa, traffic lights not working is a daily occurrence. And we've all learned how to navigate a dead intersection wit zero casualties.

Massive 6 way intersections with 2-4 lanes per direction worked perfectly with everyone taking turns to go.


Past innovation did though.


The fatal mistake I see people repeatedly making is that it isn't about the system or checks and balances or whatever. It's about the people. The US had a deep bench of mostly reasonable leaders that mostly respected ideas like checks and balances or conflicts of interest.

Those people are mostly gone now. Our society used to elevate people like that, but it just doesn't now.


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: