559 karma · joined August 26, 2016
I'm curious what kind of applications your building that require some sort of specialized tool that Firefox dev tools doesn't provide.
The best thing about Firefox is that if there is a dev tools feature that you need, you can easily submit a feature request in the support forums: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/firefox
Or, if you have the time and energy, you can always build it yourself: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Developer_g...
The Simplest way is usually the right way.
What I mean is that fancy algorithms, sweeping design patterns, and "clever" pieces of code are generally not the best approach to 99% of coding specific problems.
Example: Nested for-loops. Generally a bad choice. When encountering a nested for-loop, one may be tempted to try and refactor it into some sort of recursive and highly-performant function with O(n) complexity, etc. You go through all that work and then realize that the most iterations that for loop will ever see is ~10. You just wasted a ton of time writing code that is more complex, harder to debug, and generally more opaque.
In my experience, I've seen this a lot in the context of premature optimization. I've also been the perpetrator many times as well.
Wish I could help you with this, but I have been out of the loop with Nim recently.
> I don't really understand why you'd want this in a compiled language.
Quick iteration in development. Not needing to manually recompile every time you make a small change.
With this package, it seems like I can just get my debugging via stderr.
You claim it's a relevant yet provide no reasoning as to why.
> It's 97% of their income. I think things would change a lot.
Sure, one major thing would change: the default search provider. People are quick to forget that Mozilla received no funding from google between 2014 and 2017. The only reason they signed a new contract with google in 2017/18 was because Yahoo went under. Without Google they would need to find a new search partner, and there are definitely other companies chomping at the bit.
> Nope. I'm actually wondering if anyone has some insight as to whether Google intends to stop funding them.
As far as I am aware, no, Google has no intention to end their contract with Mozilla. Also, you keep using the word "fund". That's not really what's happening here. The default search agreement is a business contract. It's in Google's business interests to be the default search provider on every possible platform; that includes Firefox. In fact, Mozilla actually holds most of the cards in this agreement. That's why google had to offer such a lucrative deal.
That said, I have no doubt in my mind that google would kill Mozilla without hesitation if they had the option. Luckily, they do not have that option.
Is that a relevant question considering that Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit organization?
> Any chance Google stops funding them soon?
Probably, but that won't stop them from doing what they're currently doing. Also, Google doesn't "fund" them so much as pay them for search integration.
> (Wow, a question was asked. Better censor it Mozillans!)
The question was not presented in good faith. In fact, it's clear that you weren't actually asking a question at all. You were stating your opinions sarcastically in the form of a question.
Mozilla is a registered non-profit. This means they are legally required to uphold their mission statement: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/ . Mozilla Corp. (the for profit arm of Mozilla) simply exists as a funnel for money into The non-profit.
It is not in Mozilla's best interest to create any sort of walled garden. In fact, Mozilla has a long history of fighting against the concept of walled gardens on every front.
It's reasonable to be worried about Mozilla turning to the dark side, but claiming that they already have is simply false. What we need to do as people concerned with the well being of the internet and the people that use it is support Mozilla financially and politically to keep them on the right path.
Just as an example, if people were more willing to donate to Mozilla, do you think it would be necessary for them to take on search partnerships?
I disagree. Laws like this are outwardly hostile to the culture of innovation that the internet enables.
> This particular law may not be the best implementation but governments do need to take action to provide their citizens with a real public square online.
I disagree. Governments do not need to provide a public online discussion forum. Plenty of forums already exist. Reddit, Facebook, Hacker News, various phpBBs, deviant art, the chans, tumblr, mastodon, etc. The beauty of the internet as it stands is that if you feel like you don't have a place to speak your mind online, it's extremely easy, and in many cases, completely free to create your own blog or forum. Government should not be involved in public discourse in any role besides that of an observer. It is important for a government to hear the words of it's people, but it is ridiculous to suggest that a government should hold control of where people can have discussions or who can have discussions. This law is authoritarian at best, dystopian at worst.
> Excluding fake and paid users (without a declaration of who is paying them) from that space and protecting free speech in that space is essential to having a public policy discussion.
Protecting free speech is very important. However, this law does no such thing. In fact, it makes it easier to persecute people whose opinions you don't like. Requiring identification for the exercising of free speech is not free speech at all.
> Private corporations have not done this, and probably never will, so government is the only option left.
Regulation on how private companies handle their users is not inherently a bad thing. This law, however, is not only stifeling to free speech, it prevents smaller players from entering the game. It makes it hard for individuals to create their own small online communities by forcing them to navigate murky legal waters.
This law is bad. Everything about this law is bad. There is no single part of this law that is good for the internet.
The conspiracy theorist in me is starting to see these laws as some sort of ploy by the big players(google, amazon, facebook, etc.) to create a sort of monopoly on the internet by making it so difficult to enter the web application space that only large companies with massive amounts of resources can even play the game.
As someone who is currently working on a new art sharing platform that will include discussion threads, I'm starting to get worried about needing to comply with these types of laws. Not that I would comply, as I believe one's internet experience should be as anonymous as one wants it to be.
It's a real shitty place to be. I hope this law gets shot down and all future laws in the same vein don't gain traction.
I haven't heard that. Could you link where you found that information?
Not exactly. In most cases, the ice accumulates into glaciers and slowly flows towards the sea.
As you can see from this relief map: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Topographic_maps... , Antarctica's interior is very mountinous and consistently a higher elevation than it's edges. Gravity forces the compacted ice downhill. As the ice on the mountains moves, so does all of the ice in it's way.
It was actually my favorite structure in Rome when when I visited with the Pantheon in a close second.
I believe that it counts as an example of a long running and grandiose engineering project.
For instance, the `is_diagonal` function provided as the "correctness checker" looks to me like something that would be in a unit test for the `double` function. However, I think it goes a little bit deeper than that. In a unit test, you are somewhat required to pass specific values to the constructs you are testing. The given example is more complete than a unit test in that it doesn't just test for the correct value being produced by the `double` function when given specific values, it actually checks all possible outcomes by asserting that the `double` function always produces a `Point` where `p.x == p.y`.
Given that the example is relatively trivial, I would like to see how this would work for more complex functions and structures.
As a United States citizen, I feel like the moment political preferences are brought up I have to duck out of the conversation or risk being judged very harshly. I've been in situations where I've made my leanings known to a group made up of liberals and conservatives arguing with one another who then immediately band together and try to bash me on how stupid I am for believing in a pipe dream. It's ridiculous.
That said, I have definitely met more tolerant people who are actually willing to have legitimate discussions on the topic. In the U.S., Socialism is a dirty word; just like sex.
I think it really does come down to normalization. If society becomes more open to talking about sex, the effect should start compounding to where it eventually becomes not only something that's OK to discuss, but something that people are expected to discuss. I don't think it will ever really be "elevator conversation", but I think it will be something you can talk about in the open with your friends and acquaintances.
Sure, staying late makes sense sometimes(deadlines to meet, production bugs, making a client happy, etc), however, staying late on a regular basis would indicate to me that these people are either very inefficient, need some extra manpower, or have a process problem.
Hours worked does not equate directly to productivity.I think believing that they do is a toxic mindset.
The only little nit-pick I have here is the use of the word "clever". Maybe you and I define clever differently in a software engineering context, but to me, "clever" is a dirty word in programming.
For me, "clever" means undefined behavior, one-off hack, difficult to parse, shortcut, etc. The difference between "clever" code and "bad" code is that "clever" code is written by someone with a lot of knowledge and experience. Their knowledge and experience has allowed them to work with the undefined/undocumented behavior of languages, libs, etc in order to come up with a solution that has the least lines of code/uses the least memory, etc. Not to say that those things are unworthy metrics, but "clever" code doesn't seem to consider maintainability or stability.
I think a better descriptor to strive for is "elegant", defined in my opinion by code that is beautiful in it's own simplicity, succinctness, reliability, and correctness.
That said, software testing isn't really an apt analogy now that I give it some thought. Testing real world equipment has to contend with a lot more edge cases and environmental factors.
They should fire whoever designed the arrow key layout. The up and down keys(the ones used most often) are super tiny. I regularly find myself wanting to hit up and accidentally hitting down or left.
> To me, the ideal workplace is one that lets me enjoy my own life… not one that tries to merge with it.
I don't think I can overstate how profound this is. I've worked for a couple of companies that tried to sell themselves with "You'll be part of a family", or "We do all sorts of department events". It always means the same thing: "We want you to stay in the office as long as humanly possible and we'll treat you strange if you want to work from home instead of commute 1.5 hours to the office every day."
Unfortunately, the "family" mindset seems to be growing more popular in many sections of the software industry.
If a job doesn't require physical presence in order to completed to a high degree of quality, remote work should not be treated as a privilege.
What's strange to me is that in most tech companies, having employees work remote could drive expenses WAY down considering that the company would not have to rent/lease/buy any office space, desks, coffee machines, etc. It also means that they will not need to pay an office manager or janitorial staff.
It's really fun to have Google Earth open while reading the stories so you can find the places he is writing about.
Sometimes, all someone needs is a rubber duck. We can help by becoming that rubber duck.