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jmcdieselon Show HN: fman – file manager for programmers

How are you "sold out" of a digital license?

Sounds like a very Nintendo-esque intential shortage to drive demand. Not saying its true, but it was my first thought, as well as 5 of the people in the slack room i shared the link in... all of which went from "ok, lets give this guy money" to "... nah... this doesnt feel right, now..."

jmcdieselon San Francisco university lays off IT workers, jobs head to India

Can someone give an actual moral reason why this is bad?

Can you explain to me why where you geographically located needs to matter? Or why Americans should be or feel entitled to jobs? If someone is willing to do it cheaper, than a business is dumb to pay more just to reinforce nationalism.

This weird entitlement around jobs in America is strange to me. I appreciate the living hell out of my job, because I know it could be done by someone outside the US for cheaper (and my Company has a tech office in Bangalore). You can't appreciate something and expect it/be entitled to it at the same time.

Regardless of the rest though, that moral question is what matters - what is immoral about hiring people outside of your country? Why is nationalism considered a virtue?

jmcdieselon WordPress on .NET

You are far too serious a person.

I actually stand by the sentiment. Wordpress is a virus, and like jQuery, it has negatively impacted the development scene of the language is lives in. PHP, on the cusp of becoming a more respectable language (I freely admit my love for PHP, to this day, even though I primarily work in Java and Python now), was taken over by WP "developers" who flooded the market and sell themselves as engineers when all they can do is copypasta a few wordpress idioms.

I don't hate on wordpress itself, its a fine, though early on troubled codebase. The predatory community it has created, the security issues it continues to create, and the low-barrier to entry that floods the market with a ton of really bad code isn't something I would want to bring into another language's world.

And here's where the light-hearted part comes in... I know that projects like these would NEVER actually cause that kind of effect on their language because nobody would take it seriously... but the analogy of what COULD happen (you know, fictional, like ridiculous unrealism of the base concept of the movie) was apt.

I fail to understand why in a world so caught up in negativity and rigidness, people chose to not allow themselves to enjoy or notice light-hearted humor, and actively defend their stance against it, as if somehow eliminating light hearted jest is a benefit to a world already buried in such negativity...

jmcdieselon The Brilliance of Dwarf Fortress (2011)

Perspective?

I find the DF UI, while minimal, to be great. Everything can be done on keyboard shortcuts... its more challenging initially, really easy as soon as it clicks... then the idea of doing it all with a mouse seems crazy

jmcdieselon The Brilliance of Dwarf Fortress (2011)

I don't think "incredibly hard" is a good term.

In more development terms, to me, "incredibly hard" is embedded assembly programming (im probably not even using the right term for this) ...

The level of hard i would put DF at is "learning VIM"... which I think is apt, because 1) its a steep but rather short learning curve to get around, 2) over a while you naturally get better at navigating/commanding/etc and 3) there are plugins and "distributions" just like vim, to make it easier for a beginner, etc.

Now that I write this out, im thinking VIM is the perfect analog for DF :)

[NOTE] I'm a DF n00b. I have less than 5 hours playing. I'd say it took me about 30 minutes to "get it" though, and now I'm actually playing what I would consider "normally"

jmcdieselon WordPress on .NET

Your developers were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.

jmcdieselon A crater formed in Siberia's permafrost is growing

For anyone who doesn't catch Destination Unknown (TV series), this was a prominent feature in an episode... while its a bad sign for the climate in general, it's at least unlocking 300,000 years of geology and archeology to discover, specifically Wooly Mammoths

jmcdieselon Who Needs GPS? The Story of Etak's 1985 Car Navigation System

Airliners used the same basic system for a long time... and it was, in fact, an airline incident that lead the US gov't to declassify GPS so trans-oceanic flights could be tracked better.

To this day though, when I pilot starts up an airliner, they fire up that old system as a backup, its programed down to the gates at the airports, so they set their departure gate and as soon as they start moving, it tracks, through gyros, the whole flight. There can be a lot of drift in the system though, which is what lead to KAL007 being shot down by the soviets, killing almost 300 and prompting Reagan to declassify GPS to prevent that same kind of thing from happening again...

jmcdieselon Public Must Fight against Prism and Tempora Surveillance (2013)

Then by definition, its not an entitlement.

jmcdieselon Man jailed 16 months, and counting, for refusing to decrypt hard drives

If you wont stand up for the rights of even the most vile of humans, you deserve none.

jmcdieselon How to Close a Gender Gap: Let Employees Control Their Schedules

"No, many jobs aren't customer facing yet require you to be in a certain place at a certain time, such as most trades (carpentry and welding), long haul trucking, repairman, and deliveryman."

What about those, if you're not interacting with the customer, requires a certain time? A repairman can work any time if hes not dealing with the customer - as long as the job is done on time. The same for all of these.

Most of the things you listed are customer facing... which is why they have timeframes, so you can interact with the customer (or have access, etc).

jmcdieselon Public Must Fight against Prism and Tempora Surveillance (2013)

It will always be true.

We're not entitled to anything. Nothing. We're not entitled to life. We're not entitled to breath. We're not entitled to a damned thing.

People feel entitled to free speech, to living itself, and there is no such entitlement. You have to ensure, yourself, that the things you feel you should have, you have. If you don't they will be taken away over time.

jmcdieselon How to Close a Gender Gap: Let Employees Control Their Schedules

Which is covered by the whole "customer facing" thing I said... and even caveated against. My point still stands though, its not "fundamental" to work in general.

jmcdieselon How to Close a Gender Gap: Let Employees Control Their Schedules

It's very true.

In my situation, I struggled for years with attendance because my spouse had a seemingly impossible time getting up on a consistent basis to take care of the kids so i can go to work... lots of fights ensued, a even lost a couple of jobs to it (though the employers were mostly kind, and my managers appreciated the situation, but the strict rules of the company basically meant i had to leave)

Turns out, my wife has an actual sleeping disorder (DSPD[1]), and my new position, when I came to my managers about it, they worked with me. I work from home now every morning until about noon when I head into the office. If there is a meeting that I need to be in physically in the morning, than I still go in (waking up "early" once in a while is fine, the problem in the past was basically waking up early every day for years) ... it works out for everyone, I end up putting more work in (instead of sitting around for 3 hours before work when i woke up at 6am, now i am working at 6:30 ... then i go in at 12, and work till 5). I'm gladly putting in that extra time, too... as a sort of appreciation for what they are helping me with. It also drives loyalty, and I'm very loyal to both the company AND my managers for working with me. There is literally no downside to the arrangement from anyone's point of view... and it all comes from just being flexible.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_disorder

jmcdieselon How to Close a Gender Gap: Let Employees Control Their Schedules

I think your mindset is part of the problem...

WHEN someone works isn't a fundamental issue. IF we're talking retail, thats an obvious exception. If we're talking a job where the employee isnt directly contacting customers, then the time they work is largely less important. The most efficient team I've worked on in my career was made up from people around the world, there were 9 of us, everyone single one was in a different timezone, some 12 hours off from each other... and we got more done as a team than any Team I've been on before or sense... and it was largely due to the nature of our hours... we had to make sure we buttoned our shit up, we documented it well, we communicated VERY efficiently and effectively... etc.

I know it doesn't work for every position at every company, no single thing does, but to consider 9-5 (or any set schedule in particular) "fundamental" to business is short-sided at best...

jmcdieselon Whole Foods is struggling

Breath is monetized quite often. How much do you think an assisted breathing machine costs? Or a CPAP mask, or a scuba tank?

Everything is monetized, and profit drives everything, we are a capitalist society. A business will not operate on charity very long...

jmcdieselon Whole Foods is struggling

So... profit?

jmcdieselon Facebook Has No First Amendment Right to Send Unauthorized Texts, Says Court

I'm going to play devil's advocate here...

Sending a text does no harm, receiving a text incurs no harm. This lawsuit is ridiculous. There has to be some sense of harm done at some point, doesn't there?

We're filing lawsuits over being annoying now...

jmcdieselon Whole Foods is struggling

A company's goal should be profit. Why is profit a bad word so often? They aren't abusing customers or employees to get that profit... both of those groups regularly praise the company... so I don't see the problem in seeking as much profit as you can. Thats how free market works, right? And if they go to far in the name of profit, they will see it reflected and profits drop... on a site created around startups, its interesting that the "profit" as a bad word is still a thing here...

You can want to make as much profit as possible while ALSO doing the right thing ethically.

jmcdieselon Vim's 25th anniversary and the release of Vim 8

They are in a private-ish... its my company's internal... because i do share it with coworkers, but it does setup a lot of environment variables specific to our products, so its not fit for general public consumption :)

jmcdieselon Vim's 25th anniversary and the release of Vim 8

Why is that?

jmcdieselon Vim's 25th anniversary and the release of Vim 8

What about updating a file on the buffer that is changed on the disk means you cant trust them? (Especially since its an option that can be toggled?)

jmcdieselon Vim's 25th anniversary and the release of Vim 8

You're right, I'm being stubborn and reactive.

I removed the offensive part.

jmcdieselon Vim's 25th anniversary and the release of Vim 8

my vimrc (and all my dotfiles) are kept in my private github so, with a single git command, they travel right to me... :)

jmcdieselon Vim's 25th anniversary and the release of Vim 8

I don't consider people who use throw away accounts to spout crap and hide in cowardice to be real commenters... their feelings an opinions are worth the value of the throw away account they created to spout them.

jmcdieselon Vim's 25th anniversary and the release of Vim 8

"Vim hasn't been on GitHub as long as Neovim." -- which says a lot, considering its age... it speaks to one of the core problems, Bram's godlike grip over VIM.

On top of that, he only started to introduce these features AFTER neovim came and put the pressure on by doing it better... if neovim's approach wasn't better, why would he be implementing features he's previous said he wouldn't implement?

jmcdieselon Vim's 25th anniversary and the release of Vim 8

https://github.com/vim/vim

https://github.com/neovim/neovim

The numbers tend to disagree with you. Unless you think that only hacker news users are on git... Given VIM is bundled with OSes, i would never expect neovim to take it place in usage numbers (unless OSes start adopting neovim as well)... but when it comes to actual interest, in just about every measurable aspect, neovim is coming out on top of developers who actually know about it.

Most devs I work with use it (if they use vim at all), I've seen it more than VIM lately at conferences as well. You give up nothing using it an gain a bit (and will gain much more as its further developed)

[removed reflexive jab at poster]

jmcdieselon Vim's 25th anniversary and the release of Vim 8

Still doesn't address separation of concerns... if you prefer a single monolithic script to do everything, thats cool, im not trying to change your mind, but for my tastes, i want my provisioning script to be as simple as possible, concerning only what it needs to, and let the apps configure themselves in a way that is obvious to anyone who uses my scripts (a few of my fellow devs use my stuff to bootstrap their setup)

jmcdieselon Vim's 25th anniversary and the release of Vim 8

Also, disabling plugins is much easier... just comment the line... instead of delete the folder. That way, if im working through an issue that a plugin is causing, i can easily just toggle the plugin. Vim just loads whatever is in the folders, so i'd have to delete the folder, then readd it when i want it back... its less of a use case, but since i write vim plugins from time to time, its nice to be able to easily turn on/off my own plugins that may have bugs in them when i need to actually work...

jmcdieselon Vim's 25th anniversary and the release of Vim 8

Because i can install vundle with a single line in my setup script (already have a "provisioning" kinda script for each time i fire off a machine).

I dont have to update that script for new plugins, its a single "Vundle user/repo" in the vundle.rc file. Vundle then installs it, and handles it.

Could it be scripted, sure... but its much more readable in the vundle form (or other managers for vim), and its also in a more logical place... and its portable, even to a windows machine... its kinda a separation of concerns kinda thing...