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namingthingsiseasy

@ namingthingsiseasy @programming.dev

Posts
16
Comments
516
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • 5 reasons why desktop Linux is finally growing in popularity

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  • Agreed, Linux is quite popular in academia, particularly in any technical field. A lot of scientific software has to run on Linux because of supercomputers, and especially a lot of open source software is Linux only. So a lot of students run Linux for convenience, and a lot of computer labs run Linux as well. Of course, there's also the fact that lots of people just think Linux is better than the alternatives, and they're more likely to try new things when they're at a university student's age.

    So I feel like that would probably be a significant contribution to the 2% that's being reported

  • backdoor in upstream xz/liblzma leading to ssh server compromise

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  • Just updated on void and saw the same thing

  • Doug Ford calls on federal workers in Ottawa to return to office

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  • Not only that, what about the downtowns where people actually live? This is basically just picking winners here, saying those downtowns don't matter, but the ones in major cities do. Pretty shameless exhibition of picking winners and losers here...

  • Doug Ford calls on federal workers in Ottawa to return to office

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  • Hmm... I'm starting to get the impression this Doug Ford guy is a bit of a hypocrite....

  • What is the best hip hop lyric of all time?

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  • Honey, check it out you got me mesmerized

    With your black hair and fat-ass thighs

    I only wish I could find someone someday who will think of such romantic things to say to me...

  • What is the best hip hop lyric of all time?

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  • HO-TEL MO-TEL HOLLIDAY INN!!!!

  • US sues Apple for illegal monopoly over smartphones

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  • There's room for both in my opinion. Keyboards are good for accuracy. Touchscreens are good for custom inputs and slightly faster to type on. In an ideal world, we'd have both.

    To be frank, I find touchscreens so abhorrently useless that I just use my phone less than I'd like to - for example, I'm much more likely to just flat out ignore messages because of how tedious input is on phones. I don't know if a keyboard would make a huge difference for me since I think mobile devices are garbage in more ways than one, but the lack of a keyboard is by far the biggest issue.

  • US sues Apple for illegal monopoly over smartphones

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  • Even without the DMA, the EU and US have very different judicial systems. I'm not a lawyer, so I don't really understand the specifics, but if I had to describe it in a very hand-wavy fashion from my anecdotal, non-scientific experiences, US courts are more likely to favor preserving individual/personal freedoms over the common public good, and vice versa in the European system.

  • Google Allows Creditors to Brick Your Phone

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  • Right - they say that they're just going to use it to defend their "property rights". In practice, they're going to use it for a whole lot more than just that....

  • Google Allows Creditors to Brick Your Phone

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  • Of course! I hope you didn't read my comment as hostile. I read yours as sort of a devil's advocate type of argument and was just trying to point out the logical flaws in it. I'm glad that you didn't hesitate to voice a contrary opinion. The points that you raise are interesting... and it's always good to consider both sides of the argument, even because it just helps us hone our own arguments. You could certainly argue that this is just another enforcement mechanism. It's just that it comes with a lot of unintended consequences, which most people will overlook, and they'll inevitably be used in ways that we didn't anticipate, long after the fact that these kinds of mechanisms become commonplace.

    Regarding the reduced cost of lending: sure, in theory they could lower the prices. In practicality, will it? Any time we see cost-reducing developments, it usually ends up resulting in higher profits for the vendors moreso than better competition and lower prices for consumers. Look at how car manufacturers are just letting electric vehicles sit in their lots because they refuse to accept what buyers are willing to pay. The corporate types really, really hate to lower prices on anything for any reason. So I would be surprised to see something like that happen, even though it's still theoretically possible....

  • Google Allows Creditors to Brick Your Phone

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  • All your points are sound. The issue that I have with this is that remote disable functionality is not necessary to achieve any of these aims. Before they were connected to the internet, people were still able to rent/lease autos and the world managed to survive just fine. There were other ways for lenders to get remunerated for breaking lease terms - they could issue an additional charge, get a court order for repossession, etc. Remote disable was never needed or warranted.

    So let's start by considering the due process here. Before, there was some sort of process involved in the repossession act. With remote disable however, the lender can act as judge, jury and executioner so to speak - that party can unilaterally disable the device with no oversight. And if the lender is in the wrong, there is likely no recourse. Another potential issue here is that the lender can change the terms at any time - it can arbitrarily decide that it doesn't like what you're doing with the device, decide you're in breach, and hit that remote kill switch. A lot of these things could technically happen before too, but the barriers have been dramatically lowered now.

    On top of this, there are great privacy concerns as well. What kinds of additional information does the lender have? What right do they have to things like our location, our habits, when we use it, and all of the other personal details that they can infer from programs like this?

    There are probably lots of other issues here, but another part of the problem is that we can't even start to imagine what kinds of nefarious behaviors they can execute with this new information and power. We are well into the age where our devices are becoming our enemies instead of our advocates. I shudder to think what the world would look like 20 years from now if this kind of behavior isn't stopped.

  • Dwarf Fortress creator blasts execs behind brutal industry layoffs: 'I think they're horrible… greedy, greedy people'

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  • He's right. These people are so fantastically wealthy, but it's not enough. They still need more, more more. And meanwhile, actual people, real human beings are going hungry, without heat, without a home. Not only do laid off employees suffer, but their families and their children too. All so that millionaires can continue promoting themselves to being billionaires and even more.

    I don't know of anything realistically that can be done about it (in the short term at least). But it just needs to be shouted louder and louder until there's enough public sentiment that real change can start to happen. Greed needs to be shamed louder and louder. We know all the institutional power that the wealthiest people in the world have to suppress economic equality in every country and throughout the globe, but if our voices grow loud enough, eventually it will be too loud to ignore.

    Excessive wealth and greed is a mark of shame. Let's just keep repeating it and hopefully we'll eventually have enough power to reverse it.

  • Elder scrolls

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  • I hated the trend of flat buttons. Then they removed the buttons. Then they basically removed the entire scrollbar altogether.

    At this point, I'd happily go back to the age of flat buttons. That's how bad things have gotten....

  • Elder scrolls

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  • It's really depressing how often I have to turn off CSS entirely just to view a webpage. I could of course always go into the inspector and turn off the bad CSS, but Gecko-based browsers fortunately have "View -> Page Style -> No Style" which is must easier and faster.

    And seriously, whoever invented the font-weight CSS property can burn in hell. Ditto for whoever decided that we should only be allowed to read light grey text on slightly lighter grey background.

  • Elder scrolls

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  • In case you weren't aware, there are extensions that you can use to restore the older (better) UIs. Here are a couple:

    There are probably some for other browsers as well. I don't use them though. I instead wrote myself a tampermonkey script to change it:

     
        
if (!window.location.search.contains('useskin')) {
  var new_url = window.location.protocol
      + "//" + window.location.hostname
      + window.location.pathname;
  if (window.location.search == "") {
    new_url = new_url + "?useskin=monobook";
  } else {
    new_url = new_url + window.location.search + "&useskin=monobook";
  }
  new_url = new_url + window.location.hash;
  window.location.replace(new_url);
}

    You can compare the available wikipedia styles on this page to see which one you like best: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Skin?useskin=monobook

  • The quiet, pervasive devaluation of frontend

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  • I think most of the arguments here are kinda ridiculous and poorly thought out. A lot of them also sound pretty imaginary and made-up. For example:

    To assert that frontend languages are not programming languages is to assert that what one is doing when writing them is not programming, but something else. Something different.

    Something—perhaps not explicitly spoken, but undeniably implied—lesser.

    Basically, he's arguing that everyone who thinks HTML/CSS isn't a programming language is wrong, and then the only reason they feel this way is because of a prejudice against front-end developers. I think this is really just a wild leap in logical reasoning, personally.

    (No mention of Javascript/Typescript here by the way.)

    If you wanted to find the dev specialization with the most people who aren’t cishet white males, you’d pick frontend.

    Do we honestly believe the language around frontend is different purely by mere coincidence?

    ... yes? His argument that HTML/CSS should be considered programming languages is honestly quite weak. Couldn't that be the reason instead?

    Certain pursuits are validated with importance, dignity, and honor.

    Doctors; lawyers; architects; CEOs; software engineers.

    ... we relegate others to the role of the sidekick - even though their labor is no less important, and they do at least as much to push the work toward success.

    Nurses; paralegals; interior designers; executive assistants; frontend developers.

    Who the hell is making these groupings?? Front-end developers compared to nurses? Software engineers to doctors? And software engineers being held in the same light as CEOs... wtf???!?!?

    (Surely it’s a coincidence the first group tends to be more male than the second.)

    Once again, he's attributing his feelings with prejudice when really, I think his arguments are just very poorly thought out.

    Other forms of development are generally considered serious work. They’re important. They’re real computer science. (Computer science itself being a higher level of things we’ve decided are real, serious, and important—maybe not quite as much as medicine or law, but then again, maybe so in some circles.)

    Again, I don't see anyone arguing or claiming this. I'm sure the author would argue that just because we don't say it aloud, but it's just implied, but I honestly just think no one says it because it's just silly.

    Writing CSS seems to be regarded much like taking notes in a meeting, complete with the implicit sexism and devaluation of the note taker’s importance in the room.

    Though critical to the project, frontend work will quite often be disregarded by those who consider it beneath them (usually men, and usually only tacitly, never explicitly). It’s not serious enough; not important enough; not real enough. Too squishy. Like soft skills.

    Once again, just unfounded accusations of bias. "You didn't say it, but I'm telling you that you said it anyway."

    Their [software engineers'] output is easily measurable. A new API feature; a more efficient database; crises averted and crashes prevented. They go on charts and get presented to board members.

    Board members couldn't give less of a shit regarding what software engineers do. We're considered a cost that they'd love to get rid of as much as any other position. Look at all the AI hysteria going on right now, like Nvidia's CEO telling people not to go into software because it won't exist anymore. Again, I have no clue where this guy is getting his ideas from.

    If our job title does include the word “engineer,” it will almost certainly specify what we’re engineering. It’ll be UI engineer, or frontend engineer, or maybe the newer (and arguably more fitting) design engineer.

    But it’s probably not “software developer” or “software engineer” without any other qualification. Because that, tacitly, is not what we do.

    Completely disagree. Front-end development is a subset of software engineering. He even admits this as much:

    Sure, this is nuance of language and these titles serve to disambiguate. I get that.

    but then he goes on to dismiss that by saying "that's not really it though, it's really because we're not considered real engineers":

    by definition, somehow what we do isn’t seen as software engineering. It’s different than that. It’s softer than that.

    By what definition exactly? He just explained the reason for the difference in terms above, but then goes on to say that's not really it - the real reason for everything bad is (what he perceives as) negative bias.

    There's a couple interesting ideas in here. He makes a good point that layoffs on the front-end are more likely to hit underrepresented classes, though there's not much that can be done about that. Layoffs are happening everywhere, and DEI is probably not what's on CEOs' minds when they make those decisions. And sure, there are unrealistic expectations at times, but that happens everywhere, not just in the software industry, but in pretty much any labor scenario.

    But overall, I think this guy has major issues with his self-perception. Pretty much all of his arguments are predicated on very poorly thought-out or straight up imaginary ideas. And blaming everything that's wrong with his perception of front-end development on the white male hierarchy is just... I can barely even find words for it... nonplussing? I think he figured it out by the end of the article:

    Maybe I’m feeling sorry for myself. Maybe I’m just a little depressed right now. Maybe I have an inferiority complex and I’m projecting it on everyone else.

    I'm pretty sure it's all of those.

    I wish this guy the best. Shit is hard right now. But I'd be a fool to say that I agreed with more than 10% of what he's trying to argue.

  • temperature

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  • I could be wrong on this, but I think Kelvin is basically required for thermodynamic measurements. Entropy measurements, for example, depend on ratios between temperatures relative to absolute zero. You could still manage using centigrade of course, but you would have to offset all of your temperature measurements by 273.15

    Probably a lot of other physical applications that also depend on having an absolute zero reference, but that's the only one I can think of for now.

  • Roku’s Ultimatum: Surrender Jury Trial Rights or Lose Access to Your TVs

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  • Yeah, that second paragraph is more what I was thinking (terrible phrasing on my part). The issue is that fighting these contracts in court is risky - you might lose, and even if you don't, it's a big commitment to fight a legal case against a large company no matter which jurisdiction you're in.

    To put it another way, look at it from a game theory perspective - there's plenty of benefit from putting these terms in, and no downside whatsoever. So the optimal move for vendors is to put garbage like this into the contact.

  • EU Commission fines Apple over €1.8 billion over abusive App store rules for music streaming providers

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  • Perhaps! But only if they allowed third party app stores. Because as it stands right now, they're basically inventing a cost that they pass on to developers, and then rewarding themselves handsomely for the cost that they would have never needed to pay if they allowed others to compete in this area. It's still a tactic they could not get away with if they were not a monopoly.