If simply pointing out negative facts is a "personal attack" now, I'm quite thoroughly done here. You should reevaluate your priorities and ethics, they're far removed from those of any decent person.
Your concerns apply equally to software aggregations generally -- e.g. every Linux distribution.
Import paths are not the appropriate method of providing "credit". That's the sort of thing that is handled by copyright notices, documentation, and metadata.
It's generally preferred that if you're using a software distribution, you either test bugs against a "pure" upstream version before reporting them, or report them to the maintainers of the distribution, who can triage and, when appropriate, forward bug reports upstream (possibly with patches).
All Linux distributions consist primarily of third-party code.
I don't know what you mean by "arbitrary", though. It makes no sense in context, and is notably at odds with your earlier use of the word "curated". Nobody ships random code. That wouldn't be curated, nor would it be useful.
> I'm confused, is this a curated set of existing Go libraries, or a brand-new set of libraries?
Toward the bottom of the page they talk about contributing back to open source projects and sponsoring the development of some packages, so it certainly appears to be a curated set of existing Go libraries.
> If the former, how are they going to guarantee their "3 years of bug fixes"?
Red Hat provides 10+ years on the code they ship. What's so shocking about 3?
The comment I responded to said "And mass pardons of federal prison could hint the governors about their power too.". This suggests two mistaken beliefs:
1) That governors as a whole have these powers.
2) That "hints about their power" would prompt them to act in the manner he wishes.
The governors don't need hints about their power in this area, they are well aware of it. They don't fail to exercise it as he wants them to because they need a "hint", they fail to exercise it as he wants them to because they do not agree with him.
I'm not addressing the thread as a whole. I'm addressing this little corner of it. I'm under no obligation to address the thread as a whole in every comment I make, and doing so would be both pointless and tiring.
Whatever justice is, it cannot be the vengeful, racist, wealth-centered system we have now. Nor can it possibly be found in the the mind of anyone prone to uttering the phrase "fuck this guy".
Whatever justice is, it cannot be forfeiting our own empathy and humanity.
The offenses were not against the United States. This man is in a Colorado prison for crimes under Colorado law. The President has no authority in this case.
There is only one correct response: "We thank the researchers who pointed out our mistakes, and apologize to all voters for our failure to adequately secure a vital system.".
The only correct response now, on the other hand, is the immediate firing of this "CIO", who clearly does not have the mentality necessary to be a CIO or a public servant.
> You are ignoring the line "But the real future of the laptop computer will remain in the specialized niche markets..." That's the part that's a prediction, which informs the tone of the whole article, which turned out false.
I'm not ignoring it, see my other comment[0]. Consider lessening your adherence to excessive literalism, and then reviewing the author's points free of the bias instilled by the unfortunate label of "laptop" that has been slapped on devices that are rarely used on people's laps.
See if you can't bring yourself to understand that the author was right a lot more than he was "wrong".
> You wouldn't agree that more than a few percent of the kind of people who were already heavy office PC users back in 1985 now use laptops on aeroplanes, in hotel rooms or at conferences or other people's offices?
No, I wouldn't. Hotel room is more likely, but is just substituting for home/office.
Huge numbers of heavy office PC users exist. Only a tiny fraction use a laptop anywhere but home or the office, and a tinier fraction of those do so routinely. It is a niche market.
> the "vast majority" of US business travellers who travel with a laptop
There aren't that many business travelers in the first place. You're already looking at a niche market.
> I promise you that the market for laptops back around 1989-90, when they started to be a real commercial hit, was not dominated by people who only wanted to shuttle theirs back and forth between home and work
My argument: On-the-go laptop use is niche.
Your apparent reply: Early laptop users used them on-the-go.
It's a non sequitur. That the ideal market for a product adopts the product does not mean that the market is not niche. The two have no relationship.
> But the writer went further, to claim that by and large even the people who were already regular users of word processors and spreadsheets would have little desire to work on them anywhere but in the office and at home: not that it was still infeasible or not worth the trouble, but that they just weren't interested in doing so.
As far as I can tell, he was right, and still is. I see no evidence that more than a few percent of such people do so to this day.
I don't see how that "disconfirms" anything at all. Is it your claim that the mere existence of the modern laptop proves regular work outside the home or office is not niche? Because I don't believe that at all.
> "For the most part, the portable computer is a dream machine for the few."
I would say that 30 years ago, this was an objective statement of fact.
> He just couldn't imagine any laptop ever being more than a "niche".
And you'll see he was and is correct if you consider, as the author was, the usage model. People largely use modern laptops the same way they use desktop PCs. They simply transport them between their regular workspaces. Multiple devices have been collapsed to one, but the way people use them remains the same.
You are focusing very narrowly on the physical devices that the (then and now) inaccurate label "laptop" has been applied to. The article makes much more sense if you abstract to the concept of a laptop, particularly as pushed by marketers 30 years ago.
I feel like we read vastly different articles. I read an article where the author discussed the limitations of laptops as they existed thirty years ago (when, I'll remind you, this[0] 12-pound beast was state-of-the-art), discussed some advancements that would need to be made for them to have more widespread appeal, and discussed some realities of how, when, and where people use computers that remain essentially accurate today.
> 30 years later you can't go outside without seeing someone with a laptop computer.
You certainly can, particularly outside tech hubs. Even in SV, when I was out and about, I don't think I ever saw more than perhaps 10-20% of people in my sight line using a laptop.
It is a small minority of people who routinely use laptops outside their home or office. Unfortunately, they will be disproportionately represented on HN.
I think the article's underlying thesis remains correct today. "Computers" are mostly used at a person's home or the office. Regular on-the-go use is niche, both because few people have the need, and because laptops are awkward to use without at least a decent table and chair (and tray tables don't qualify!). It is smartphones and tablets, with a vastly different interaction model, that have become a constant presence, and even those chiefly for entertainment and personal communication -- not work.
The most "wrong" thing in the article is simply overlooking that laptops would eventually become small enough, light enough, and powerful enough that they could usefully substitute for desktop computers without being meaningfully less convenient to haul back and forth than "a few floppy disks".
But the ability to use one computer both at home and the office -- or even from a hotel room -- does not significantly detract from the author's point, which has much more to do with usage model.