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The most popular blog posts about tech industry & business on Hacker News. 8,981 posts.

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1179

Why Greet Apple's Swift 2.0 With Open Arms?

Apple announced last week that its Swift programming language — a currently fully proprietary software successor to Objective C — will probably be partially released under an OSI-approved license eventually. Apple explicitly stated though that such released software will not be copylefted. (Apple's pathological hatred…

1180

The weakest link by far is Apple

Apple tech support gave the hackers access to my iCloud account. Amazon tech support gave them the ability to see a piece of information — a partial credit card number — that Apple used to release information. In short, the very four digits that Amazon considers unimportant enough to display in the clear on the web…

1182

Cities can cost effectively start their own utilities

Most PG&E ratepayers don't understand how much higher the rates they pay are than what it actually costs PG&E to generate and transmit the electricity to their house. When I looked into this recently I was shocked. The average PG&E electricity charge now starts at 40 cents per kilowatt hour and goes up from there …

1183

Why Don't People Use Formal Methods?

I saw this question on the Software Engineering Stack Exchange: What are the barriers that prevent widespread adoption of formal methods? The question was closed as opinion-based, and most of the answers were things like “its too expensive!!!” or “website isn’t airplane!!!” These are sorta kinda true but don’t explain…

1187

The Ballmer Days Are Over

Disclaimer: I own Microsoft stock. Yes, this is *not* pro-Microsoft but I feel the need to be very open about this. He’s employee number 30 and has been with Microsoft since mid-1980. In 2000…

1200

YC Annual Letter 2017

Dear YC Community: In response to a comment on Hacker News, I’m going to try writing an annual letter to the YC community with an update on our progress. Our mission is to enable the most...