MattyRad

Relations with Google are definitely starting to sour, here are a few recent examples:

- IE switches to Chromium engine, Chrome has full clearance to dominate the web.

- Questionable actions toward ad-blocking (seen only just yesterday).

- Colluding with China to create a blatantly dishonest search engine.

- Questionable products (Google Fi, Pixel phone, Google Home, etc, are share their own controversies)

- Search results quality is decreasing (which is just my personal speculation, DDG is usually retrieves less polluted results).

Let me know if I missed anything.

I'm not aware of any security advantages compared to npm. But one thing that comes to mind is that a while ago npm, by default, did not generate lock files, which is very much a risk concerning deployment and dependency-management in general. It's not an issue any longer, though, both yarn (yarn.lock) and npm (package-lock.json?) generate lock files by default.

Agreed. Modern PHP development is very similar to Java development (although there are still quirks). I've programmed in PHP professionally for the last 8 years and can confirm that the language is improved by leaps and bounds. Composer by itself is a joy to use (especially compared to npm). We introduced PHPStan recently and it's basically a magic bug finder, it's fantastic.

Agreed. If that polarizing note were omitted, there would be dozens of comments here, on github, and elsewhere saying "oh, great another electron app, NEXT", which is equally bad IMO.

Other comments here (and probably GP) dismissed the software, due to the note, before even checking its utility. This is good, because the polarizing note deters people who value tone and identity more than utility, preventing these arguments down the chain. Basically it's leveraging outrage against people quickly susceptible to outrage, so I would say it serves its purpose effectively!

Yeah, I would like to see some context added to each piece of advice:

- Piece of advice

- Written by a {person's age}-year-old

- Background on how that advice affected them to this point in their life.

Otherwise, it kind of reads like a generic motivational quote.

Ha, yeah, thanks. Updated. This article went through a lot of iterations so make it sound least rant-y, so I had a lot of botched copy-paste.

That's interesting... my Macbook Air sometimes struggles by itself, but never has issues performance-wise (especially with docker and npm) when it's plugged in to the thunderbolt. Surely some kind of magic happens, but I guess it could just be happenstance, or my imagination.

This is a shameless plug, but if anyone wants a nudge toward Linux (Ubuntu), coming from Mac, I have a recent write up of things things that I personally gain by using Ubuntu over Mac. https://code.mradford.com/post/ubuntu-vs-mac/

You could argue that HN is similar, where the highest comments are often the most contrarian. Which isn't to say they're not always valid, but I think it's important to be aware of this pattern.

Damn, that makes it seem like less of an olive branch and more of a cover-your-ass move. Either way, it's still a boon to DDG! (or just D?)

Yeah, I mostly titled the article due to younger engineers not being aware of how configurable Ubuntu can be (or them possibly being intimidated by Ubuntu). I didn't anticipate so many compiz greybeards would check it out, haha.

I use Firefox as my desktop browser and love it, but I generally use Chrome in Android for mobile browsing; seeing this stat was discouraging, so I just now switched to Firefox for Android.

The [-] collapse buttons for these threads are weirdly a lot more difficult to click (specifically, register a press with your finger) than in Chrome... Anyway, I think committing to FireFox is more important so I can deal with it.

Really happy to see I'm not the only one using Ubuntu on a MacBook air! If anyone is looking for the most customizable Ubuntu desktop (and my favorite window manager since 2010), I highly recommend compiz!

> sudo apt-get install gnome-session-flashback compiz compiz-core compiz-plugins compiz-plugins-default compiz-plugins-extra compiz-plugins-main compiz-plugins-main-default compiz-plugins-main-dev compizconfig-settings-manager

You'll log out of GNOME, click the settings cog, and select Flashback-Compiz. Then you'll see a wonderfully clean desktop, and then you can go into Applications -> Administration -> Compiz Config Settings, and you'll have complete and total control over your desktop!

This video is kind of gaudy but it might help explain what's possible: https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=Jb7kFWTj28g MINUS the horrible sidebar, that will be replaced with an upper toolbar similar to Mac.

I actually have a proper write-up for how to get the Ubuntu Desktop you deserve using compiz, but it's very much a WIP unfortunately.

It sounds like you're not interested in film as a medium; to each their own. But regardless, "good" is definitely not the word I would use to describe these films.

For example, after watching It Comes At Night I felt strung out and miserable, but it's a very competent, well shot movie with a vision, and I'm glad I watched it, even though I don't want to watch it again. That's an example of what challenging means to me.

I agree that film is a different beast than literature, but if anyone is looking for mentally and artistically challenging films, I recommend anything by A24 Studios (https://a24films.com/films). I would argue that we're seeing a small/low-budget film renaissance, A24 is evidence of that.

It's really refreshing to see such a clean design, especially from a committed open source vendor. I don't even really have a need for a desktop right now but it could be nice having an "anchor", so to speak, instead of being mobile all the time.

I will add that since the learning curve is substantially higher for SPAs, non-technically proficient front-end people (designers or folks who just do HTML/CSS) will constantly bastardize your app; creating 1000 line components, splicing in jQuery, inadvertently creating elements with duplicate IDs. It's been a headache for me at times, and I often feel like I'm the maid cleaning up after people.

It's understood that this can also happen in an MPA, but I think the blast radius is much smaller.

It's a mercenary approach, interesting even just as a sociological experiment. Obviously a lot of people don't agree with the methodology, but Netflix isn't hiding anything; if you accept a job at Netflix then be prepared for a mercenary culture.

Ultimately, I'm most interested in seeing the results. Does having this mercenary culture increase or decrease the quality of the product? Hard to measure, of course, but if the ultimate answer is decrease or no significant change, we can probably all agree it's needless and potentially cruel.

When referring to "state" are we talking about just mutable state? Or are we talking about both mutable and immutable state as being equally undesirable? Because in my experience immutable state is fine, and often desirable, whereas mutable state is almost always toxic. I could be convinced otherwise, for sure, but it might be worthwhile to make the distinction between the two.

This is my experience as well. We briefly worked with GraphQL for one of our smaller projects. One of the biggest shortcomings of the API we created was that there was an incredibly large learning curve for teams/people not interested in using GraphQL. Instead of using the sensible features of GraphQL queries, the other team consuming our API were writing the most verbose queries they possibly could, not utilizing any of the nice convenience operations that GraphQL offers.

They were no doubt frustrated with what they thought was a needless hassle compared to REST, and I myself found a lot of the query building pretty tedious.

We've been using Vue in production since Vue 0.12. It was a joy to use way back when, and it's only gotten better and better.

That's not to say that I haven't shot myself in the foot dozens of times in the process though. We've had to solve a lot of pain points from our original 0.12 code (two-way binding, too many props in components, some jquery dotted in, lots and lots of pre es6 code). But even sitting on code I wrote that looking back makes me cringe, Vue is always enjoyable.

It has truly improved my daily quality of life and I owe Evan You a lot of gratitude.

That's a good point. Like another comment below regarding culture, it's a good PR campaign to raise awareness about plastic waste, which can help lead to better solutions (and better culture) down the road. Sometimes the cynic gets the best of me.

To me it seems like a lot of people are more interested in absolving themselves from guilt than actually coming up with legitimate solutions to plastic waste. Like the article says, straw waste is negligible, it's even fairly obvious that straw waste is negligible, but banning straws will give faux-environmentalists an "easy win" in their minds. There's a dozen better ideas (all listed here on HN recently), ranging from taxing corporate plastic generation, to better recycling filters, to charging extra for plastic products (like some states do with plastic bags). It's unfortunate that this non-solution has gained traction, but "Ban Straws!" acheives a simple-minded satisfaction versus "0.5% tax penalty for large scale corporations exceeding x tonnes of consumption grade plastic!"

Heh, personally I could use this for discreetly working on projects via mobile phone. Maybe in meetings that I'm not interested in, or hanging out in an obligatory social setting. But for everyday use, I also don't see how it's practical.

I've distinctly noticed a sharp rise in toxicity in media (mostly, but not limited to, politics). But even if you cut that toxic part out of your own life, we don't live in a vacuum; friends, co-workers, and family will relay toxic news and media, despite effectively all of it being irrelevant to our everyday lives. This actually affects my demeanor not in that I just heard toxic news, but that I can see this person in my life is actively being needlessly poisoned by irrelevant negativity.

I don't have an answer to this though. Thoughts on how to improve the situation would be appreciated.

I haven't heard that saying before but I think it very succinctly describes an order of escalation that some people, parent comment included, might not immediately appreciate.

Additional info for anyone interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_boxes_of_liberty

Very interesting. One might also say something like "half measures break the whole." The conclusion drawn about the State getting stronger and weakening mobility for coyotes seems like a legitimate concern too.

In the case of Bitcoin, being such a foray into uncharted territory, I'm unsure of how you would be good at the meta game, or figure out how racoons will abuse your radical new idea. Maybe I need to improve my meta game, heh.

An interesting opinion. If true, the future holds interesting problems, and I liked that it noted that there are worse things for a society than calmly growing old together.

And as an aside, I find myself very willing to click on any HN submissions linking to the New Yorker. It's website is usually clean, minimal, and seems genuinely intent on conveying an intelligent message to the reader, which is a breathe of fresh air as clickbait and sensationalism seems to only be growing.

RubyConf 2017: Keynote - You're Insufficiently Persuasive by Sandi Metz - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzWLGMtXflg

To be the devil's advocate here....

There is such a low barrier to entry for our industry that virtually anyone can can call themselves a software developer after a week of coding exercises, compared to other engineering disciplines which have a very high barrier (mostly in requiring a degree and often difficult certification like the PE). What's worse is that even computer science majors aren't guaranteed to be an effective hire. This is NOT a new problem[1].

Ultimately I would argue that the risk is higher, for a company, of hiring an incapable engineer, than it is for an applicant being hired (and paid) as an incapable engineer.

Requiring an applicant to demonstrate capability is smart. Where we draw the line for how much needs to be demonstrated is what is being questioned here.

[1] https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/