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yoda_sl

1,407 karma · joined November 9, 2010

Passionate leader (ex engineer) : iOS, Mac OS, large scale back end server system, mobile platform. Ex NeXT, Apple, Netflix…

To reach me: contact.ycombinator [at] tomyrealemail [dot] com And yes the domain for the email above is ‘tomyrealemail.com’; it is not a mistake.

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yoda_sl··on Ask HN: Was anyone working at Apple during Steve Jobs' return in 1997?
I came on board with the NeXT acquisition (or rather reverse acquisition as ex-NeXT often refer to)…

So I do recall seeing a few times after we relocated to Infinite Loop, that Steve at first was just working as a consultant, and not as an employee. Thus at the time he didn’t have a badge to enter in IL1 (Infinite Loop 1: hold Apple HQ); many times when he was coming in the morning, he had to wait at the glass door to enter the campus, until some kind soul was letting him in (despite the policy only badged employees could enter or visitors with a printed tag). I saw it happening more than once while grabbing a coffee at the coffee booth in the IL1 building.

Later on, after he came back officially as CEO (or iCEO), I remember clearly during a lunch with co-workers (at Café Mac, seating outside) watching at a distance Steve & Jony walking inside the campus, then seating at a bench and Jony opening some carrying case/luggage, and let Steve pull the content out of it, so he could look at it in the sun: it looked like a piece of plastic… at the time, we had no clue what it was, except the color was orange. Many months later, Steve introduced the first iBook (which was the first Mac with Wifi): when I saw the orange color of the iBook I made the connection with what we saw back that day; Jony was most likely showing to Steve the first shell of the future iBook.

Steve otherwise at work was truly laser focus at a time on different projects: I was working on backend web services development with public facing web site, so usually every 2 weeks our boss was presenting to Steve our progress (every week or even more while closer to ship): our boss usually was always coming back with clear feedback on what was good or terrible, which we obviously had to improve for the next presentation… stressful yes, but truly enjoyable. More than once, Steve did cut some projects that were close to finish and you just had to go along since no one had a say in it, except Steve.

Obviously I have a few more stories of that sort, since I spent close to 20 years at Apple (/NeXT).

It was quite something to get the hard work you did for months presented on stage by Steve… I still miss the excitement from it even if it is more than 15 years ago.

Edit: fixing a few typos

yoda_sl··on Ask HN: Is there a spiritual successor to del.icio.us?
Personally I am using GoodLinks: I am most of the time on mobile and it has good support for iPhone and iPad. You can add custom tag, mark link as ‘read’ when bookmarking. Simple but does what I need.

App Store link: <https://apps.apple.com/us/app/goodlinks/id1474335294>

Not related to the developer, just a happy user.

yoda_sl··on Why doesn’t “Look Around” cover more areas?
Yes he used to work at Apple in the Maps team for many years but left a few years ago... thus his guess.
yoda_sl··on Show HN: Sound visualisation, better than FFT (iOS)
Pretty cool! Any chance the app could import some audio file to visualize ?
yoda_sl··on Tesla Ventilator
Extremely curious the outcome... I hope they can get some folks in the medical field to provide quickly some feedback.
yoda_sl··on PDC 1996 Keynote with Bob Muglia and Steve Jobs [video]
WebObjects starting at version 5 was 100% java so it could run on any system running a Java VM, including Mac OS X. When Apple was selling Xserve then many Apple on Une services like iTunes, .Mac (ancestor of iCloud), Apple Online Store were running on WebObjects and Xserve thus on OS X server.
yoda_sl··on Enterprise Objects Framework Developer’s Guide [pdf]
No surprise there: Craig used to be the engineering manager for the WebObjects team which included EOF. In fact, if you were running one of the example app, it was going to populate a Movie database, and I forgot the movie name but all “actors” listed there included all the real names of the engineers working on WOF/EOF.
yoda_sl··on Rockstar: A programming language where programs are also song lyrics
Now each team of rockstar developers will have to find a really good name!
yoda_sl··on Losing 100 pounds in 276 days
Congrats! I have started a similar approach for the last 2 months using LoseIt as my app to count calories, and the goal to loose around 64 pounds by end of the year (going from 244 to 180 pounds).

I did join a gym, and this weekend decided to get a personal trainer for a couple months to be sure that I build some muscle mass too: my core is definitely weak, and gaining some muscle will not hurt to strengthen my body: had a few injuries (ankle/knee) where having muscles will probably avoid it.

So far on track, with almost 20 pounds lost (19.4 as of yesterday), and going to the gym 4 to 5 times a week 45 minutes to 1 hour at a time...

yoda_sl··on Apple ends production of AirPort base stations
Time Machine server is now built-in into macOS... it used to be part of macOS server but Apple recently moved it to standard macOS. Personally I have a Mac Mini being used as a Plex Server and now as a Time Machine server too.

Instructions on how to activate it:

https://www.kirkville.com/how-to-use-time-machine-server-in-...

yoda_sl··on Apple open-sources FoundationDB
From what I have heard, CloudKit is an API abstraction either of Cassandra/Solr and more recently Foundation DB.

So new CloudKit codebase nowadays is being run on top of Foundation DB

yoda_sl··on Ask HN: What are some tech companies that do not use an open floor plan?
Slightly incorrect! The offices there vary in size from one person to up to a dozen. A lot of offices in various sections of the ring accommodate 2 persons.

Yes there is a big glass/sliding door but from what I have seen when closing the door it is quite soundproof (unlike some small conference room). And they provide inside each section different zone with huge whiteboard and sofa/chairs to help facilitate brainstorming/discussion, even each area has its own Apple TV to project on a huge screen through AirPlay.

So overall it is quite good from what I was able to see for the few hours I was there. Folks working there like it.

yoda_sl··on Was there a civilization on Earth before humans?
Funny I just posted about it... the English name is “The Ice people”: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ice_People_(Barjavel_nov...

And yes a great sci-fi book, even so the civilization in question is just 900,000 years old not multi millions like the original article.

yoda_sl··on Was there a civilization on Earth before humans?
Over 20 years ago, I read a good sci-fi story which I would love to see in a movie; the book is “The Ice People” by Barjavel (French author).

Article on Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ice_People_(Barjavel_nov...

Highly recommended! At least from my recollection!

yoda_sl··on Apple – NeXT merger 21 years ago
It was 21 years ago exactly that Apple was announcing the acquisition of NeXT. Who could have envisioned the impact it will have on Apple!
yoda_sl··on Tesla Roadster
Stumble on this video from last night where a few lucky invitees could feel the experience of riding in the new Roadster. https://youtu.be/C6nN-GlghAc
yoda_sl··on Kotlin/Native v0.4 released: Objective-C interop, WebAssembly and more
See the answer for the 2nd comment:

Memory management is cooperating with Objectve-C runtime memory mgmt, see https://github.com/JetBrains/kotlin-native/blob/master/runti... (function runDeallocationHooks())

yoda_sl··on Amazon Key is a new service that lets couriers unlock your front door
I guess people like us - i have 2 Belgium Shepherd dogs, are not the target market. Probably for us Amazon will try to promote their “Amazon Locker”. I just noticed yesterday that they are now being installed at Whole Foods, which make sense.
yoda_sl··on The End of the DreamHost vs. DOJ privacy case
Updated to be more accurate and keeping still the initial blog title. Thanks for the suggestion.
yoda_sl··on CrashPlan is exiting the consumer market
Like many I'm really disappointed by that news. Not only I have been using CrashPlan for over 7 years, I did recommend it to many family members and friends. I remember back in 2010 it took more than a month to upload / backup all my Macs at home... Since then I have added a few extra TB of data which CrashPlan uploaded without any issues. Asst one time, I even had to restore my MBP which had a drive failure and I did loose only 15 minutes of work.

I need now to check all the different solutions, and start from scratch again! I wish they had offer some bridge to transfer what is already backed up to another provider; yes I know this is not a simple task but at least their customers will not be upset by that news.

yoda_sl··on Robocalls Flooding Your Cellphone? Here’s How to Stop Them
Not right now, since it is one of the aspect where my app will be different than other app.
yoda_sl··on Robocalls Flooding Your Cellphone? Here’s How to Stop Them
Just a landing page and no info on who is working on this service... doesn’t make me confident.
yoda_sl··on Robocalls Flooding Your Cellphone? Here’s How to Stop Them
As I did mention a month or so ago in a post related to robocall I decided myself to tackle a solution to help fight those calls. I am still working on it as a side project, and 90% of the backend system is done, and probably 50% of the iPhone app done (considering to add Android support later). It will add a twist on the way to fight such calls do it has at least a feature that differentiate it from similar apps.

If anyone will want to help beta test when it is ready (require an iPhone with iOS 10 or 11), ping me! (Email info in profile)

yoda_sl··on Apple Removes Apps from China Store That Help Internet Users Evade Censorship
Where do you get that from? Creating app with your own dev account can run on your device for more than 10 days...

[Update] ok I just checked the limitation of the free dev account, and yes because of certificates it is only valid for 7 days... I was thinking about the regular $$ account.

yoda_sl··on FCC Takes Stronger Aim at Robocalls
I do receive at least between 2 to 5 calls a day ! Same for my wife. We are in the Bay Area. It is becoming such a pain, that I have decided to work on an app (iOS first) to help filter/detect such calls... it will not necessarily catch every calls but it should help make a dent into it. There are many apps on iOS with similar features, but I have a different/novel approach for it. The most important piece is the backend system which I have almost complete now, so I have started as of yesterday the iOS code... I would love to get some beta testers before I release it. Contact info in my profile.
yoda_sl··on FCC hits robocaller with agency's largest-ever fine of $120M
The CallKit framework is definitely a welcome addition, and Nomorobo is quite good. I am actually working myself on a new app similar to Nomorobo, but with some additional features that so far no other app using CallKit provides. I decided to write such app because of the daily robo/telemarketers calls I am getting.
yoda_sl··on Mac on Linux (2007)
It is an old project which if I recall stopped moving forward a couple years after Apple switched to Intel processor. The sourceforge page show latest news is from 2007.
yoda_sl··on Mysterious 'ping' sound from sea floor baffles Igloolik
Reminds me of a book from Barjavel (French author): The Ice People https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ice_People_(Barjavel_nov...
yoda_sl··on Welcoming Adrian Cockcroft to the AWS Team
Nice addition to AWS team! Adrian was my boss at Netflix when Netflix started the transition to the cloud. Not only Adrian is a great smart guy but he had always been happy to share his knowledge. He was the best engineering manager I ever had in my career by a huge factor! Congrats Adrian!
yoda_sl··on Karabiner – Easy Keyboard Remapping for OS X
Wow, I have been using OS X for years, but never heard about that tip! Ok it is limited to Cocoa apps but still a great thing to know!
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