Piling up to the grateful comments, I've been using Sublime Text for years and still love it. It has never quite done it as an IDE for me as I'm used to more fully fledged ones like IntelliJ, however it is an amazing scratch pad and text manipulation tool. I pretty much have it permanently open.
This post made me realise I had never bought a license, it is now done. Thank you for it being fair, by the way.
It's amusing to see this message heavily upvoted on HN when most mentions of Firefox here are welcomed with an avalanche of perfect solution fallacies.
I'm dubious about people becoming militant about this when the software engineering industry gave Chrome a red carpet by using it and installing it on their relatives' computers while knowing very well it's adware and when switching to the alternative is incredibly cheap.
Chrome had the advantage for a long term because their dev tools were just so much better than Firebug in both features and performance. Even today, I can't pinpoint it to specific things because it's (relatively) little and subtle differences, but Chrome's dev tools feel way more polished than Firefox's.
It's almost as if Steve Ballmer and the legendary "developers developers developers" speech still rings true today - the key to getting people to use your software is to make life as easy for the power users as possible, let them spread the word. And it's ironic how Microsoft lost its ways there... a lot of people I know have gone from Windows to Mac and convinced their close relationships (aka those whose computers they fix) to do the same. It's just so much more relaxing to boot into an OS that doesn't try to shove advertising down your throat at every turn.
Personally I disagree. IMO, devtools were better when competing with firebug, but I haven't experienced much of a difference in the past... 8? years. Something like that.
> Chrome had the advantage for a long term because their dev tools were just so much better than Firebug in both features and performance. Even today, I can't pinpoint it to specific things because it's (relatively) little and subtle differences, but Chrome's dev tools feel way more polished than Firefox's.
My point exactly! You're talking about which browser to use for web development. That's not relevant for engineers not touching html/js/css, and for all non tech savvy family members whose computers we set up.
Interesting, in my murky memory Chrome's developer tools were at most "quite decent" but for a long period of time could hardly compete with Firefox's, maybe even with mere Firebug. It it true that in total "feature count" Chrome most probably leads now, and especially recently they seem to adapt features that used to be Firefox exclusive in remarkably increasing rate. But I really do not remember being blown away by Chrome's devtools, like, ever, actually. Even today I pretty much prefer Firefox Developer Tools over Chrome's, because they mostly has more features I actually need and also feel way less cluttered. Most of the times I need to do anything with Chrome's devtools it takes me just a little moment to stumble upon some missing detail I am used to (for example overflow/layout/event listeners badges directly in the DOM inspector tree) or to be mildly offended by unfamiliar (or missing) keybinding, or confusing layout. There are quite a few features In Chrome that I'd like to see in Firefox (command palette for example), but still prefer "living" in Fx albeit without them.
Yes, al subjective, biased and anecdotal, but wanted to leave one real (yet still virtual) vote in favour of Firefox's Developer Tools here.
I think we shouldn't minimize the harm Chrome does by calling it adware. It monitors all your activity for Google to tie it to your identity, who then publish your demographics, preferences, history, and mental state on the global markets.
Let's call it what it is: a brain tap.
No vibes and there is voluminous evidence, eg many links here: https://spreadprivacy.com/how-does-google-track-me-even-when... as well as Google Takeout itself. Oh and I forgot location data and shopping records, those are huge. So the collected data about you are well documented.
Given the data, why would a trillion dollar company leave money on the table? Their shareholders DEMAND they monetize it. There are few forces against this.
Given the 2.095 trillion reasons why this should happen, and few reasons it shouldn't, you should demand evidence it DOESN'T happen. Presumption of innocence is backwards when there are market forces.
For most of it you can just go to the customer facing part of ad services and see these as distinct chooseable options, for mental state you could hand wave it away as "do we really know the mental state of someone who closely followed political news and has been searching for air tickets and migration processes since Nov 6?"
> It's amusing to see this message heavily upvoted on HN when most mentions of Firefox here are welcomed with an avalanche of perfect solution fallacies.
HN is not a hive mind. There are people here who love Firefox, people who despite it, and everyone in between. It’s tiring to always be reading your type of comment, as if everyone is a hypocrite. Maybe, just maybe, the people making those contradictory comments are not the same individuals.
And it’s not like Mozilla is free from controversies, including several of betraying user trust. If every major browser maker is going to break your trust and sell your data, I can see why people choose their poison based on other factors.
I use neither Firefox nor Chrome. Is Safari any better? Or Brave? In some areas yes, in others no. I don’t think there’s a single browser vendor which gets it unambiguously right.
> HN is not a hive mind. There are people here who love Firefox, people who despite it, and everyone in between. It’s tiring to always be reading your type of comment, as if everyone is a hypocrite. Maybe, just maybe, the people making those contradictory comments are not the same individuals.
I didn't mean to say that all of HN despises Firefox, but simply that it very often brings negative sentiments, so seeing the comment I was responding to so high up in the thread made me react. It was also a kind reminder that militating is as simple as using an alternative to Chrome.
> And it’s not like Mozilla is free from controversies, including several of betraying user trust. If every major browser maker is going to break your trust and sell your data, I can see why people choose their poison based on other factors.
> I use neither Firefox nor Chrome. Is Safari any better? Or Brave? In some areas yes, in others no. I don’t think there’s a single browser vendor which gets it unambiguously right.
And you're making my point about the perfect solution fallacy as well! Of course Firefox isn't perfect and has screwed up on several occasions, does that mean it's comparable to a piece of software that sends every single bit of information it can gather to its parent ad company?
> but simply that it very often brings negative sentiments
Just as often as it brings positive sentiments. Something that is (from anecdotal observation) quite common from both camps on HN is disappointment with Mozilla’s governance.
> does that mean it's comparable to a piece of software that sends every single bit of information it can gather to its parent ad company?
Not the argument I made. As I said, I use neither.
Mozilla would be the first to request permission to stab you so that they can then analyze the blood of the knife in order to make future product decisions.
Seems like a perfectly valid question to me. Why the flagging? Redirecting to IndiGoGo makes it look like it's not yet a real product. Linking directly to the product mentioned when the link was provided seems like a much more helpful thing rather than some generic self promotion. So is the product being pitched actually being sold as claimed, or is it hoping to become a product while looking for funding?
The link was our original pre-launch page, and now redirecting to the Indiegogo campaign!
The product does exist, and is in use, but until now our clients have been B2B, who are able to pay upfront for the commands.
As we are now opening to the general public, and we're a startup, we needed a schema like Indiegogo to get the money upfront and be able to buy the materials to assemble all the batteries!
This is definitely on my radar, and not just technical skills which have a diminishing return at some point. Mainly understanding business considerations (product, market, timelines, costs, etc.) to be a person deciders can bounce ideas off of when still considering and defining features.
I like the personal five-year plan idea. It will help setting clear expectations and action plans. Thank you!
Building some kind of steady, independent lifestyle business (that's how I interpret your answer, correct me if I'm wrong) is an option but stays a bet and nothing says it would survive through the years. Salaried employment feels like a safer bet, despite the doubts I mentioned.
There are several side projects I started, halted, came back to, etc. over the years, and I love them but none of them could actually pay the bills. I also struggle to be consistently productive when I'm not part of a team.
AI is a variable in the equation but it's hard to tell how much actual impact it will have. Many jobs in software engineering go beyond taking in requirements and outputting code such as understanding business concerns, technical limitations, trade-offs, maintainability, etc. Today AI is just barely okay at the outputting code part, who knows when and how much it'll be able to do the rest.
It's definitely a tool I use though, but as a centralised documentation. And I keep up with it to somewhat understand how it works under the hood. But even this does not answer the question of how to prepare should it actually help making most software engineering jobs obsolete.
I've been suffering from tinnitus and hyperacusis for over three years. It led me to read a bit about hearing in general, and more and more studies show that most of the hearing loss we experience as we grow old is nothing natural but the result of the years of abuse we inflict upon our ears in our everyday lives ( https://www.jneurosci.org/content/40/33/6357 ). Even though my situation is specific, this article does not surprise me at all. I believe it has also been proven that loud noise reduces brain activity levels and cognitive performance.
I wasn't a fan of loud noises before my hyperacusis appeared, but now I've grown to absolutely despise motorcycle drivers who seem to feel obligated to make as much noise as possible in dense areas, accelerating as strong as they can regardless of common sense and speed limits. I won't even mention those doing this late at night throughout the city, not worried about waking up hundreds if not thousands of people.
I've moved out of a big city to be less exposed to traffic noise, unfortunately the area I'm now in is coastal and often has said drivers "enjoying" the coastline in their own unique way as soon as the sun is out.
I hope that this major public health issue will be tackled in the upcoming years, and that strong limitations on engine noise will be put in place, enforced by sound radars, heavy fines, and incentives to go electric.
Some European countries like Austria have been doing this for many years. Roadside noise level measurements with harsh penalties. If you exceed the limits, they take the licence plate off.
Lucky them, here in France we're probably far from ever seeing such laws given the high percentage of bikers who simply don't care about making harmful levels of noise even right next to small kids.
I've considered reaching out to my neighborhood council about it, but I'll probably have moved again due to motorcycles before it goes up to the city/county/department/region...
Well, there actually are laws in France regarding noise. I don't remember what the numbers are, but technically most of the loud pipes on motorcycles are illegal. The registration has a line for the noise generated by the bike under certain conditions, and if you modify the bike (usually the muffler) such that the noise is above that level, your bike is illegal.
The issue, of course, is that there's no enforcement.
Maybe a year or so ago there was some campaign about this with police stopping people in Paris who were too loud. Everyone was talking about how the noise is unacceptable and how there would be a crackdown. This lasted a whole 2 days until the cameras tired, and all of a sudden it became acceptable again, and has been ever since.
Interesting, I had a look and it seems like it should be limited to 80dB for the biggest motorcycles. But that's when measuring in specific conditions in a lab, so there's a more "practical" (ahem) limit that depends on the model but is always at harmful levels (>80dB) and is measured when the engine is only at 50% of its maximum power.
So we have a badly designed law which is, as you mentioned, not even enforced. Sounds like France indeed.
I've looked a bit into it, and it's actually not that bad. [0] is a French source (not government affiliated).
Basically, as you said, there's the "official" test, which is dynamic (the bike has to be moving) and involved enough to not be practical for everyday controls by police.
But there's also a "static" test, for the purpose of facilitating police controls. The meat of it, from the article, is below. The parameters for this test are given on the registration slip of the vehicle (expected sound level / RPM).
---
The sound should be measured with a microphone placed as follows:
* At an angle of 45º to the vehicle's longitudinal axis
* At 50 cm from the muffler
* At the height of the highest point of the muffler and at least at 20 cm from the ground
* If the bike has mufflers on both sides, testing should be done with two microphones, one on each side
Testing conditions:
* Testing must be done at 50% of the nominal power RPM [not max RPM]
* If max RPM is 5000 or less, testing must be done at 75 % of nominal power RPM
* There must be at least 3m of free space around all sides of the vehicle
---
This level is higher than the one in the official test, but it doesn't really mean anything. The official test is done wide open throttle starting at 50 km/h, so it should reflect fairly well the actual noise produced when riding around town. The static test isn't involved in the homologation of the vehicle, it's just there for the police to be able to check that the vehicle hasn't been tampered with.
Thanks for clarifying. Given the considerable amount of motorcycles that are way too loud, it still feels like the noise limits for homologation are way too high. Or if that many bikes have been tampered with, it means there really is absolutely no enforcement whatsoever. Either way it sucks :/
I would have thought French have a more strict approach given how they throttle performance of bikes. Like a hayabusha with 100 HP. I think a while back max. performance was 100HP for bikes.
Well, as always, there's the theory, and then there's the practice.
The 100 HP law has been removed around 2016 because the EU said it was it against free trade in the block. I'm not really sure how that works and if a vehicle must only comply with EU regulations in order to be sold in any and every country. As a biker, I'm happy it was removed. It was just silly and useless. A 100 HP bike, even a heavy one like a Hayabusa is powerful enough to give you a bad day if you have no idea what you're doing [0].
More related to the issue at hand, limiting was very easy to circumvent and practically impossible to verify without putting the bike on a dyno. Older, non fuel injected models only had some kind of mechanical limiting for admission. My bike was limited by the ECU which is trivial to swap. Actually in my particular case it's a bit more involved since the coded key is tied to the ECU, so you'd have to also change the key. The ECU is just a black box with a bunch of connectors. It doesn't say anything as to what it does.
It's more or less the same issue with mufflers. They're pretty trivial to change and even if they're sold as street legal, it's very easy to remove a capsule to "open" it up.
However, this is much easier to control than the ECU mapping. Just put out a mic and measure the sound level. Is it above the value in the registration? It's illegal. Done.
But I think it's just much easier to enforce speed limits. Just set up a speed camera and take pictures of the guys passing by. You don't even have to stop them. And, as a bonus, it counts as "doing something" for traffic safety.
---
[0] One good thing in France (and maybe the whole EU, now) is that getting a motorcycle license is not as easy as the car license. But in traffic stats, motorcycles are usually counted in the category of "2 wheelers" (which actually includes some trikes). The issue here is that not everyone has an actual motorcycle license. And, related to the power issue, it would seem that "inappropriate speed" was a factor in more accidents involving small bikes (those not requiring the full motorcycle license) than bigger ones. Below is a (2008) study showing that:
* "small bikers" are more often the cause of the accident than "big" ones.
* big bikes, when the cause of the accident was a "loss of control", were on average going 15 km/h above the posted speed limit. Pretty much any 100 HP motorcycle can go above 145 km/h (highway speed limit is 130).
I lived in Austria for half a year and never saw this being enforced. In fact, I was awoken daily by 2-cycle dirt bikes echoing through the streets. Austrians never seemed the type to follow laws all that well and I doubt they're enforced as much as you think they are. There's a general disdain for anything authoritarian there (for good reason).
Ive been wondering about my hearing issues lately, too. I have occasional "bursts" of tinnitus, i assume from my hypertension, but ive also been looking for answers regarding a weirder phenomenon ive started noticing in recent years. Hyperacusis seems to be the closest word for it, but for me it manifests as isolated spurious noises seeming louder than they are. It sounds like someone turned up the gain on my ears for a split second before the sound occured, and then right after, returned it to its normal volume envelope. Its startling and unsettling, but i dont have the "conversational voices are too loud" type of symptom. Anything similar for you?
If by bursts of tinnitus you mean a high pitched noise for a few seconds (sometimes longer), these are rather normal and very common, not much to worry about I believe.
Is the sensitivity you describe specific to certain sounds? If so, that could be some kind of hyperacusis as it can be very focused on certain frequencies. Mine is mild/moderate so I can tolerate a loud discussion for a while, but stuff like broken glass is simply unbearable, it feels like the glass is breaking inside my ears and usually makes them painful for a couple of hours.
Just a PSA. I thought I had tinnitus a while back because that’s the first search engine hit on “ringing in ears”, but it turns out it was just ear wax touching my eardrum. If it happens to anyone else, it may be easy to fix.
Yep just get your ears properly checked by a good ENT when it first appears. There can be numerous causes and some of them can and should be treated early. Also do not panic, in many cases it will go away.
In some other cases like mine it's unfortunately not as likely to disappear, so protect your ears and wear earplugs at concerts or anywhere noise is at uncomfortable levels.
In the context of Git, "master" is not used in the sense of a master/slave relationship but as a master copy. Are you hoping for a blanket ban of the word "master" regardless of the context?
Again, in the context of Git, "master" is not used as in master/slave. Words can have different meanings in different contexts. Should chess players stop using "master" for their titles? Should the music industry stop calling "master" the initial recording of an album that will get replicated?
I don't think chess grandmasters should be necessarily named differently, though having a gender-neutral term would be better.
Not sure about the master used in the music industry.
Do you know where 'master' originates from in the context of Git?
Yes, Petr Baudis decided on that name (and also "upstream"). [1]
He regrets it now because of his lack of English language knowledge at the time and that "main" makes more sense but he originally based it on the "master copy" concept.
I personally don't understand why people decided on this hill to die on. There are much better targets like database master-slave replication.
It seems then that master doesn't seem like a very loaded word in the context of git.
Even so, changing it would then not be very impactful as well (not counting any CI/CD or other config that relies on the master branch name).
I think this discussion raises several interesting questions, two of which: “when is vocabulary non-inclusive?”, and “should vocabulary be changed accordingly even if the word doesn’t have an offensive origin?”.
I have played and replayed several debates on the latter in my head over the last 24 hours and it always comes down to someone arguing “why not?” with the counter argument being “where does it end?”.
To be honest I do not believe there to be a correct answer to these questions, and certainly not an answer that will last for more than a couple of years, maybe a decade.
My personal belief is that inaction born from fear is always worse than action sprung from kindness (yes history has proven me wrong on multiple terrible occasions, I know) so I would say, change it, for a better world starts with the first step.
Not renaming the default branch of your version control system is not inaction. You should first ask: does it make sense and does it accomplish anything? While the cause is just, you still have the right to nuance your thoughts and actions, and not decide to ban words "just in case".
Let's be honest, the world isn't going to be better because the default branch of git is called main instead of master, but it will probably be slightly worse if you impoverish the language of hundreds of millions of people, which also happens to be the main international language.
As maushu said above there are much more meaningful targets.
