I think you’re very unlikely to garner any sympathy here for living somewhere for 16 years without learning the language.

I also think it’s perfectly reasonable for a country to not allow someone who refuses to prioritise integration with the country to vote on loosening those restrictions. It seems the requirement is roughly equivalent to a B2 level.

I’m a bleeding heart leftie, pro migration, pro EU, and honestly I think visa renewals should come with language requirements. An initial visa sure, but after 2 years an a2 in the language should be achievable. There are definitely edge cases (do you require Spanish or Catalan in Catalonia), but if you can’t speak enough of the local Language after 2 years to be able to get around, you’re not really trying.

I think I was pretty polite about but I just think you’re looking for excuses. There’s a wild wild difference between being fluent and being able to hold a conversation and go about your day. Nobody is quitting job to learn how to read a menu, or to ask where the batteries are in the supermarket.

> your only opportunities to learn are evening classes which come at a cost of no social life and are completely impossible if you have kids.

One 60 minute class a week is not “no social life”. Having kids is a fair point but at the same time, you’re making time for other things (e.g. blogging) - learning the language of the country you live in should be one of those things. Again, we’re not talking fluency.

I think there’s some good points in your blog post, and your title is catchy - integration isn’t an evening class but the evening class is a prerequisite for integration. If you don’t have one time for one class a week as a prerequisite you don’t have time for any other activities you’d consider “integration” instead

OPs comment isn’t a charade, he’s pointing out that it’s a very blurry line.

If I receive compensation from company A for a product, and I genuinely like it, is it advertising if I talk about another item on their product line that I bought because of the free item I got?

If I run a retail business, and have a better deal with a provider, am I allowed to prioritise their results?

If I run an AI SAAS, with a bring your own key model, am I allowed to recommend a provider that I think gives the best results, even if my margin is bigger on that model?

I’m not trying to gish gallop you here - the point isn’t to cherry pick any specific example it’s that advertising isn’t just a billboard or a sponsored VPN segment in a YT video.

> HN commenters are not legislators

That doesn’t mean we’re not allowed to have a discussion about it.

> a minimally funded team of experts would have any difficulty with the problem.

I’m a hugely pro EU person, and support the vast majority of what they do. The Cookie Banner is a disaster and has just resulted in a massive step back for the Internet worldwide. The USB C charger rule missed the forest for the trees. Their stance on technology has been poor, misguided and misunderstood, and often pushes the needle towards US companies winning out.

>> HN commenters are not legislators > That doesn’t mean we’re not allowed to have a discussion about it.

To steel man, there's a commenting pattern where if someone doesn't like a high-level idea they demand answers to a dozen specifics that, if it were a legitimate proposal going through a legislature, could take hundreds of people months or years of committees, reports & consultations to decide on all the answers to, but if someone can't come up with an answer on the spot in HN then that's taken as proof that the idea is unworkable.

I’m just going to paste a section of my comment above to you

> I’m not trying to gish gallop you here - the point isn’t to cherry pick any specific example it’s that advertising isn’t just a billboard or a sponsored VPN segment in a YT video.

>> HN commenters are not legislators

> That doesn’t mean we’re not allowed to have a discussion about it.

I would even go so far as to say that HN commenters are going to be the ones trying to evade/break/find the loopholes in whatever laws the legislators write.

I’m an Irish citizen who lives in the UK. I’m entitled to vote for the upper house in Ireland (Seanad) and in both Uk and Scottish general elections due to our “special arrangement”. I have no plans to apply for citizenship, nor to leave the UK.

Honestly, it’s an incredibly privileged thing to be able to do and I think of it every time I vote. I am an ardent supporter of free movement of people. I genuinely think that voting in GEs should be restricted to citizens of the country (and that my exemption is unfair). Without that distinction, what is the difference between a long term resident and a citizen? Why would you ever go through it. The _citizens_ should vote for what country they want, and the residents (me) should decide do we still want to be a part of that world.

The UK is quite liberal with who can vote in general elections allowing both Commonwealth as well as Irish citizens living in the UK). I don't think there's any harm to it and it seems unavoidable given our history. It would certainly be untenable to disallow those who do not identify as British living in Northern Ireland from voting in UK general elections.

It’s certainly an interesting quirk - it’s also not just everyone who is a commonwealth citizen, it’s everyone who is a commonwealth citizen who has a legal right to be in the UK, which is… not everyone.

The UKs history is murky and I think that the rules reflect that. I don’t think a rug pull is a good idea for existing people. Despite what I said above, having that right removed from me would feel like a huge blow, as it would be a marks change on how the relationship between Ireland and the UK is.

> Without that distinction, what is the difference between a long term resident and a citizen?

You fall into an edge case. Irish citizens have special status in the UK as a result of the countries' shared history. In this particular case the biggest difference is that you can't get a UK passport as an Irish citizen.

I’m acutely aware I’m an edge case - I hoped I made it clear above that I am cognisant of it and that I think of it every time I exercise that privilege

> in this particular case the biggest difference is that you can’t get a UK passport as an Irish citizen.

Sure, but I’ve also been here long enough to naturalise - it’s a decision for me, not something I need to do anything more to be eligible for.

Why citizens and not permanent residents?

For the same reason that married couples enjoy privileges that dating couples do not. The long term commitment and investment in a partner indicate and confer interest in long term stability and development.

So a permanent resident who has lived in a country, for say, 10 years? You don't think they're committed at that point and should have a right to vote on the society they are contributing to?

Is there any country in Europe where you can't naturalize after 10 years? Maybe some micro state?

My point is, if you're not willing to go through the naturalisation process when you're eligible, what's the problem?

I agree with your point - but to answer your question, none that take _more_ than 10 years but quite a few that take 10 years. Austria had particularly tough requirements - 10 years, language competency _and_ no dual citizenship

To throw it back at you- should a couple who have been together for 10 years be afforded the same rights as a married couple?

> you don’t think they’re committed at that point and should have a right to vote in the society they are contributing to

Honestly - no, I don’t. I think that voting in a GE is a huge privilege, and it should require an explicit declaration and an acceptance from the country they are part of.

I think you should look into common-law marriage. At least in Canada, living together for 2 years, means you are much closer to being married than not.

It's even applicable for taxes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common-law_marriage

Yes, you're not married. But you're not single either.

The article you are linking to specifically says that Canada doesn't have common law marriage only that “informal cohabitation relationships are recognised for certain purposes in Canada, creating legal rights and obligations”

Yes, it's marriage light in Canada. But other jurisdictions do have it.

Residency is citizenship light if you want to take that angle

Then apply for citizenship, take language and, usually, constitution exam and get the citizenship.

If somebody doesn’t care enough to prove they know the basics of the language and legal system in the country… Maybe they shouldn’t have voting privilege either?

I can vote in local elections, eg for people that spend my council tax.

Yup, they should definitely apply for citizenship

Are there no differences in obligations between the two (e.g., draft)?

It’s going to wildly depend on the countries, but between the UK and Ireland, no.

You do have to swear allegiance to the monarchy in the UK, which some people may feel more or less positively about.

It's kinda bizarre that we make people who want to become citizens swear allegiance to the Monarchy

I’m British and have never sworn, or ever will swear allegiance to the Monarchy

I believe the UK should be a republic in the Irish sense i.e. no monarchy and a symbolic president

I live in a fairly expensive city in the UK. Working minimum wage for 2 weeks will pay for a room in a flat share, plus my households food and required bills.

It’s not much of a life but the same still stands in many cities.

That's what, £1100 per month? How can you survive on that in an expensive city?

£1100/mo is about the minimum I could get by on in Edinburgh, yeah. It’s a room in a flat share with bills, £60/week on food, and £150/mo for “everything else”. It’s about as low as I think you could do. The person I replied to was talking about Nirvana in the 90s - when they were working part timeminimum wage jobs that’s roughly the life they’re living.

If you go to Liverpool (which significantly punches for musical history), it’s actually manageable on 20hr/weeek minimum wage.

You’re not talking sustaining a family or anything, but that life has been gone for 40 years at this point.

To back up the other commenter - it's not the same. https://godbolt.org/z/r6e443x1c shows that if you write imperfect C++ clang is perfectly capable of optimizing it.

What's strange is I'm finding that gcc really struggles to correctly optimize this.

This was my function

    for (auto v : array) {
        if (v != 0)
            return false;
    }
    return true;

clang emits basically the same thing yours does. But gcc ends up just really struggling to vectorize for large numbers of array.

Here's gcc for 42 elements:

https://godbolt.org/z/sjz7xd8Gs

and here's clang for 42 elements:

https://godbolt.org/z/frvbhrnEK

Very bizarre. Clang pretty readily sees that it can use SIMD instructions and really optimizes this while GCC really struggles to want to use it. I've even seen strange output where GCC will emit SIMD instructions for the first loop and then falls back on regular x86 compares for the rest.

Edit: Actually, it looks like for large enough array sizes, it flips. At 256 elements, gcc ends up emitting simd instructions while clang does pure x86. So strange.

Writing a micro benchmark is an academic exercise. You end up benchmarking in isolation which only tells you is your function faster in that exact scenario. Something which is faster in isolation in a microbenchmark can be slower when put in a real workload because vextoising is likely to have way more of an impact than anything else. Similarly, if you parallelise it, you introduce a whole new category of ways to compare.

This isn't a microbenchmark. In fact, I haven't even bothered to benchmark it (perhaps the non-simd version actually is faster?)

This is purely me looking at the emitted assembly and being surprised at when the compilers decide to deploy it and not deploy it. It may be the case that the SIMD instructions are in fact slower even though they should theoretically end up faster.

Both compilers are simply using heuristics to determine when it's fruitful to deploy SIMD instructions.

I;ve had to coerce gcc to emitting SIMD code by using int instead of bool. Also, the early return may be putting it off.

Doing both of those things does seem to help: https://godbolt.org/z/1vv7cK4bE

GCC trunk seems to like using `bool` so we may eventually be able to retire the hack of using `int`.

I see yeah that makes sense. I wanted to highlight that "magic" will, on average, give the optimizer a harder time. Explicit offset loops like that are generally avoided in many C++ styles in favor of iterators.

Even at a higher level of abstraction, the compiler seems to pull through: https://godbolt.org/z/1nvE34YTe

It emits a cmp/jmp still when arithmetic would be fine though which is the difference highlighted in the article and examples in this thread. It's nice that it simplifies down to assembly, but the assembly is somewhat questionable (especially that xor eax eax branch target on the other side).

Hot reloading for development loops is _the_ canonical use case for this.

If people are realistically a baseline of 10x more productive where are all the features, games, applications, SAAS’s that are suddenly possible that weren’t before?

They're out there. I've noticed a surge of Show HNs right here. A lot of it is vibe coded.

I would like to see GitHub's project creation and activity charts from today compared to 5 years ago. Similar trends must be happening behind closed doors as well. Techy managers are happy to be building again. Fresh grads are excited about how productive they can be. Scammers are deploying in record time. Business is boomin'.

It's likely that all this code will do more harm than good to the rest of us, but it's definitely out there.

Windows 11

AI might be 100x faster than me at writing code - but writing code is a tiny portion of the work I do. I need to understand the problem before I can write code. I need to understand my whole system. I need to test that my code really works - this is more than 50% of the work I do, and automated tests are not enough - too often the automated test doesn't model the real world in some unexpected way. I review code that others write. I answer technical questions for others. There is a lot of release work, mandatory training, and other overhead as well.

Writing code is what I expect a junior or mid level engineer to spend 20% of their time doing. By the time you reach senior engineer it should be less (though when you write code you are faster and so might write more code despite spending less time on it).

I can tell you, with absolute certainty, that before AI ~0 junior/mid level devs spent just 20% of their time programming. At least not at tech companies

Every company I've worked for that is the case. Note that I divided a lot of the work out that might be counted as coding though.

My experience is very different. A junior should be spending >90% of their time coding, a mid level about 75% and a senior about the same. It only really splits after that point. But the senior spending 25% more time on the wrong thing is worse than than them spending 25% less time on the right thing.

It’s only when you get to “lead” (as in people manager) or staff (as in tech unblocked) you should spend the rest of your time improving the productivity of someone who spends more of their time coding than you do.

For a very small number of people the hard part is writing the code. For most of us, it’s writing the correct code. AI generates lots of code but for 90% of my career writing more code hasn’t helped.

> you do end up taking on more than you can handle, just because your mob of agents can do the minutia of the tasks, doesn’t free you from comprehending, evaluating and managing the work

I’m currently in an EM role and this is my life but with programmers instead of AI agents.

Also EM and it feels like now I have a team of juniors on my personal projects, except they need constant micromanaging in a way I never would for real people.

Does AI write 100% correct code? No, but under my watch it writes code that is more correct than anything that anyone else on the team contributed in past year or more. Even better when it is wrong I don’t have to spend literal hours arguing with it nor I have to be mindful how what I’m saying affects others feelings so I get to spend more time on actual work. All in all it’s a net positive

I agree.

I provide specific instructions, gotchas when prompting the Agent to write the code. I churn out more instructions quickly by using my voice.

Yes it makes mistakes, but it can correct them quickly as well. This correction loop takes more time if it is a human in my team working.

I never said it’s not a net positive - I said that writing more code won’t solve the problem.

> under my watch it writes code that is more correct than anything that anyone else on the team contributed in past year or more

This I don’t believe.

> For most of us, it’s writing the correct code.

I am not sure about this statement, aren't we always cutting the corners to make things ~95% correct at scale to meet deadlines with our staffing/constraints?

Most of us, who doesnt work on Linux kernel, space shuttles, and near realtime OSes, we were writing good enough code to meet business requirements

My point is that coming up with the business requirements was always the hard part (unless you’re writing a scheduler)

> Stuffing agents somewhere they don't belong rather than making the system work better with the agents people already use.

I'm not bullish on LLM based agentic coding, but if there was ever a place to put an agent it would be in a centralised provider that has access to your CI, issues and source code. It seems like a perfect fit.

> if you make your build scripts bash, they’re Linux only

Git bash exists on windows and is perfectly usable.

It's still much less dependable compared to something fully supported like Bun.

I’m no bash lover, but I’ve used git bash as my primary driver on windows for I don’t know many years. It has its quirks (like any tool) but I don’t think I’d say it’s less dependable. Anecdotally I’ve had way more issues with node on windows than I have with git bash and node is fully supported.

Fully supported, until they sell it to someone.

I mean, Anthropic now own it

Yes, bash is the near-universal language for build scripts as long as git is the near-universal source control tool.