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Ah yeah, was generalising somewhat. You're right, it's perhaps a "mid" level language. Maybe even high level in areas it is intended for, such as channel tooling, etc. Regardless, it's much more verbose than true high-level languages such as Ruby and I would not consider it a good choice for a startup unless they were specifically writing actual infrastructure code.

Regardless - it's certainly implicated in the cargo cult of "dozens of golang microservices all talking to each other in a combinatory explosion of GRPC" antipattern i've seen startups succumb to before. One of them ran out of runway with less than 10 actual customers, after spending 18 months building an MVP that would "scale".

Maybe I can propose a new law: "If you have more microservices than you have customers, you are scaling prematurely".

I did say that Rails is perfectly adequate for certain classes of applications. I guess the point I was trying to make, poorly as it turns out, is that for consumer applications at least, Rails is no longer the "sweet spot" and you hit up against its limitations earlier than ever and will, not might, will be forced to deploy ever more complex workarounds for basic functionality that you get out of the box in something like Phoenix. OK, forget websockets. How about scheduling a daily summary email? Daily reports? Anything other than a build-the-world, serve-request, tear-down-the-world HTTP query? Now you're running some separate thing and boom, there goes the simplicity.

I get you. I'm the "use boring tools" guy as well. But the tools have to be actually capable of doing the job, and the job has changed, well the kind of things I seem to be involved with have changed, and the Rails productivity "edge" lasts weeks at best.

Applications these days - well, a large number of them - need to be realtime. Server push. Websockets. Push notifications. Scheduled jobs. Long running background jobs. Calls into other services. Presence awareness. The list just goes on and on. And sure, you can somehow deal with all of this in Rails - hell, you can do anything in any language given enough time and effort - but you are absolutely going against the grain, and you're not using Rails anymore, you're using Rails + sidekiq + node + some other thing + xyz. I thought Rails was supposed to be the simple option?

Rails still might be the best choice, if you're sure your domain will never need to do anything long-lasting or concurrent. Internal admin apps or simple e-commerce would be good examples. But if it's going to be more than that then Rails might save you some time at the beginning only to bite you badly later on.

Phoenix 1.7 is out now and I basically recommend all rails developers to start learning it. It is going to be a bit of a learning curve, and it's not quite as lovable as ruby and its near-perfect syntax, but it is vastly more capable and is, IMO, the way forward. Frankly, I don't understand why it isn't much, much more popular.

But I'd say "serious photography" is about where it's always been, maybe a little reduced. It's always been expensive to have a proper setup. The huge difference is that the new consumer stuff (phones) are just much much better than it used to be (point and shoots).

There's still a big difference though between what you can get out of a phone and what you can do with a "real" camera. I have never seen anything out of a phone that can match what you can do with a full frame and a fast 55 or whatever. Sure you can add fake depth of field in software but I'm not sure it will ever be possible to really duplicate in a phone. Especially the interface - phones just don't have the physical controls you need to play some of the tricks "real" cameras can do, like grabbing focus or white balance from somewhere else then holding it as you compose your real shot. At some point just the lack of dedicated buttons is holding you back. I know there's apps that can give you more control than the default apps but with a physical body I can set up that shot in 1 second.

I actually felt this acutely just last night. One of my friends went all out with halloween makeup and wanted me to take some pictures, but I only had my phone on me. They came out OK, pretty good even, but I know for a fact I would have been able to do much better with my half-broken old a7sii and a decent lens. Much, much better. But it's the camera you have with you...

Russia had already shut off the gas, "hurting" themselves by your own logic. They have a long, proven history of irrational behaviour and false flag operations. And if the USA had done it, against all reason and logic, why didn't they finish the job?

Anyway, I did say almost certainly Russia. Who knows, could have been some faction in Germany or another EU power seeking to really force Germany's hand. But it seems far more likely to be the obvious actor with the means, motive and mindset who started the bloody war in the first place.

Honest question. Now that you know just how easy it was for Russia (and only Russia) to do, does that change your calculus a little?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigging

Not a single credible analyst I know of believes the USA did it. Considering the (excessive, IMO) care they've taken to avoid any escalatory actions they've demonstrated so far, it would be incredibly foolish and out of character.

Russia, on the other hand, is run by a reckless maniac who delights in chaos and constantly and provably lies about everything, all the time. So unless you have some very very compelling evidence or even theories to the contrary, I (and everyone else with even the slightest knowledge of these matters) will assume the crazy, lying bad guy who demonstrably did these other 100 bad things did this one, too.

It's the "opinion" of pretty much everyone in the geopolitical community. Hardly propaganda.

And equating The Economist with Russia Today is just ludicrous and a sad demonstration of the effectiveness of the "Firehose of falsehood" propaganda technique employed by, well, guess who. (hint - same guys who blew up the pipeline)

Turns out, when I asked myself the question "is my email worth $50/year?" the answer was "yes".

It's been a hassle, not gonna lie, and I may never fully get everything transitioned - but it's an important service, and if it's important I want a prompt and easy resolution to any problems. That costs money. Why did we ever think free email was a good idea?

I lived there for a year and while I appreciated the efficiency, when I needed it, the feeling of control of every little aspect of life and commerce eventually started to feel oppressive. I could give many examples but let me just choose one - I live in Thailand now and I can state for a fact that the single street I live on has more live music on any given night than the whole country of Singapore. (1)

Maybe that doesn't matter to you, but it sure matters to me. Singapore's one big, very well run, very efficient, very purposeful, corporate campus. Nice place to visit, you wouldn't want to live there.

(1) OK, maybe not every single night of the year - there are concerts and events in SG sometimes. But 99% of the time, absolutely.

Totally random and off topic, but since it took me 40 years to learn the only 100% effective way to get rid of hiccups, this is it.

You need to create an extended period of negative pressure in your oesophagus, to de-activate the vagus nerve, or whatever it's called. The reliable way to do this is to have a bottle of water and a straw. Plug your ears if possible - helps but it's not strictly necessary. Crimp the straw somewhat with your teeth. Now spend 20 or 30 seconds slowly, but with a high pressure, sucking water through that straw and swallowing it. Remember, your goal is negative pressure in the oesophagus for an extended period.

It is the only reliable method and for some reason is almost completely unknown. Well, now you know!

</tangent>

I honestly don't know what to do with the DSLR now. Maybe I'll point it out the window and live-stream the view.

Well, let me assist. The 13 is way better than the 12, which is way better than the 11. The camera on the 13 is hands down the best camera yet on any mobile device and was sufficiently better that I and millions of others dropped a cool grand to get it. And guess what? If the 14 is better enough, I'll get that too, and be delighted about it!

I get that many phones are now "good enough" for the more basic use cases but that doesn't mean strides aren't being made in other dimensions. You might not care, but others sure do.

I wouldn't say "some". Probably 90% of developers I know require exactly this, in fact off the top of my head I can't think of any who don't. Even the permanent, full-remote, no-really-there-is-literally-no-office types want to sit in a different room sometimes or work from a coffee shop.

It's pretty rare to have a "workstation" setup that cannot be moved.

Night mode in wide angle! Although it's quite a bit less capable than the other lenses. Maybe in the 14 ; )

And @eole666 of course I don't literally throw the old phone away every year, there's a whole downchain of very willing recipients of lightly used iPhones. Hell, my old iPhone 6 is still being used for QA.

I couldn't recommend them for any real business. Great to start with maybe, but make sure you have an exit plan.

Well... you're right about the lidar, but I absolutely care about the camera and refresh rate. As a lifelong photography geek I basically upgrade for the camera improvements every year..

Camera, messaging, maps and dating apps are basically the only things I use my phone for these days...

These aren't "schelling points". The nearest appropriate location of whatever kind (koban if it's outdoors or somewhere small, information desk in a mall or station) is likely obvious to both the loser and finder given the context and is no more a schelling point than, eg, the local hospital if someone got hit by a car.

A real Schelling point is more like, eg, the statue of hachiko in Shibuya which is so famous a landmark and prominent in everyone's shared cultural understanding that if you told two strangers to meet in Shibuya with no other information it's actually pretty likely they'd both just go there by default.

> both do the right thing for lost/found items and are widely believed to do the right thing explains most of it

Yeah, but what you're missing is the expectation that the finder will do the right thing too - which is absolutely cultural.

I'm not really claiming anything beyond saying that I believe there's quite a few successful people working in jobs they don't really need to be doing and i think the point of this essay is to encourage them to maybe have the confidence to do something on their own.

I'll stipulate that i have to tweak the way I say things as it's not coming across the right way.

That said, when people don't understand what you're trying to say, the fault lies with you. I'll try to rethink how i can phrase this kind of thing. I was trying to challenge in a positive way but it obviously didn't come across like that.

The fact is there's a large number of very, very capable people out there who probably don't need to work for anyone else again if they don't want to. But they get jobs anyway because that's just the kind of people they are. I know quite a few of these people. This essay is a CTA to them.

Give it a few years and you might find yourself in the exact same boat.

And in case you hadn't realised, this whole site is the poster child for a "privileged elite" deciding the world needed something and just going and making it, and thank the gods he did.

  This is a key part of what it means to be a responsible elite. You use your privilege and your personal judgment to explore and solve problems that no one else can.

You say this like that's some minor detail. It doesn't just "win", Sublime absolutely wipes the floor with VS Code, and for my development style at least, I feel that every minute of every hour of every day. I do like the look of VS Code but unless they can improve its performance such that I don't feel like I'm using a 286, I'll continue with Sublime as my main editor.

“Usually,” the man said, “I work on alien religions… I catalogue, evaluate, compare. I come up with theories and argue with colleagues here and elsewhere. But the job’s never finished. Always new examples and even the old ones get reevaluated and new people come along and come up with new ideas about what you thought was settled. But,” he slapped the table, “when you clean a table, you clean a table. You feel you’ve done something. It’s an achievement.”

> from Use Of Weapons, by Iain M. Banks