It's not an issue of what I use. I don't use Windows, but if I did, I wouldn't mind putting up with their nonsense if it were just the OS for one computer, for my own personal use. No, the problem is that I'm an IT guy, and I have to manage thousands of random other people's computers, which is something that Microsoft makes impossible.
You can leave a review on Glassdoor after you leave the company.
But you're right to point out that it's not clear what this analysis means. Maybe Facebook employees are more prone to interactions similar to what happens in social media, and therefore more likely to post on Glassdoor. Or maybe Facebook bribes their employees to leave positive reviews. Who knows.
I mean, I'm sure that Facebook is a good place to work, at least in a lot of ways, so I don't necessarily doubt the outcome of this survey. Still, I'm not sure what good it does anyone. It's not like we're all going to quit out jobs and apply to Facebook because of this article.
Microsoft: Hey, we're releasing a build with all the crap stripped out, and with a stable and predictable update and support schedule. That way, you can use it on very special devices when you need to...
Everyone: Oh, that sounds great. I'll just install it on everything.
Microsoft: No! It's only to be installed on very particular devices, when absolutely necessary.
Everyone: But... why? What you're describing is what we want. Stable predictable releases with all of the crap stripped out.
Microsoft: But then we can't spy on you or put ads into your start menu.
Everyone:... yeah... that's what we want.
Microsoft: And we can't install random updates and reboot your computer at arbitrary times outside of your control.
Everyone:...
Microsoft: If you use the LTSB on your normal workstations, we won't really support it and we'll make it harder to upgrade when you want to.
This is just evidence that supporters of heavy-handed Internet regulations are becoming more desperate by the day...
See, this statement bothers me. Not because I'm insulted to be called "desperate" or because net neutrality is being called "heavy handed" (which it's not), but because it shows they fundamentally misunderstand their role. If you're in government and the people who you govern are becoming "desperate", that almost certainly means that you're doing a bad job. Your constituents should not be "desperate". Even if you think your constituents are wrong, the idea that their "desperate" should ring alarm bells that you're moving too fast, not communicating properly, or fucking things up in some other way.
But not Ajit Pai. The self-satisfied shmuck is congratulating himself on causing distress among the people he works for.
I was dismayed that a condition of joining the study is NOT knowing if you have AFIB.
My understanding is that they're hoping to be able to detect the condition that causes irregular heartbeats, and not necessarily detecting the actually instances of irregular heartbeat.
That is, the benefit would be for someone going through their lives unaware that they have a heart condition, and it could provide warning to them that they should talk to their doctor for an in-depth examination. It's not to alert you that you're having an irregular heartbeat while you're having an irregular heartbeat. I might imagine that the kind of measurements they're trying aren't reliable enough to warrant an emergency response in the event that a single event is detected. For example, it might be that scratching your wrist is enough to disrupt the contact between your skin and the watch, causing a reading that looks like an irregular heartbeat. But even if it's not reliable in detecting an individual incident, it might still be good enough to detect a condition when the data is taken in aggregate.
On the other hand, it does seem a little strange that they'd exclude people who know they have a condition. I would think they'd want to know whether people did or didn't have a condition, so that after taking the data and predicting who had a heart condition, they could compare their predictions of whether people had the condition with actual diagnoses. Otherwise, how would they be able to tell whether their predictions were correct?
All this innovation is available to buy; none of it is available to build. Not for mere mortals, anyway.
I kind of wish people would just stop talking about "innovation". First, because it's not clear what it means. Second, because most people probably don't really need innovation. Things certainly don't need constant innovation.
Most people and businesses don't need an innovating OS, they need a reliable OS that will run all of their applications. They don't need an innovative office suite, they need one that allows them to edit their office documents easily and efficiently. They don't need an innovative web server, they need one that will serve their web pages reliably, perhaps under a heavily load.
I know it's not fun for developers to think about making reliable tools that aren't innovative, but that's most of what we really need open source to do, and it's something open source has done pretty well with. Google, Amazon, and Microsoft haven't open sourced all their fancy cloud jazz, and I know the cloud stuff is really exciting to some small subset of developers, but really it's a fringe application.
On top of that, if I had to guess, I'd guess that it's probably not even extremely stable at this point (stable in the sense of "not changing"). These companies are probably rewriting things constantly to tweak for their own individual priorities, and I wouldn't be surprised if big chunks ended up being reorganized or rewritten in the next 5 years. (Admittedly, I don't know anything about the development process so I could be totally wrong, but going based on the rapidity of changes on Azure in the past couple of years, I don't think Microsoft even knows where they're going with it.)
Yeah, the reality is that the ability to profit is a great strength of open-source code. It gives companies an incentive to invest in it. The fact that it's open source makes it so the rest of us can benefit from that investment.
Yeah, I agree. I don't think it's really an Apple problem, which is why I think they can get a away with it, but a more general "developer" problem. A lot of developers seem to spend endless amounts of time trying to develop new cool features, or else shuffling the UI around, but they don't actually fix some of the very real and fundamental problems that people have.
Working in IT, it's just endless. There are tons and tons of problems with every product that I deal with where it's needlessly complicated to deploy, and then features don't work right. In the case of Microsoft, there's also the problem of them constantly trying to force things down your throat (e.g. you can't turn off Cortana, you can't control Windows Update anymore, you can't stop Windows from pushing Windows Store advertising into your start menu).
And then there are really simple things that there still isn't a good solution for. Secure transmissions online is still a complete mess. There's no viable standard for something as simple as IM. Email archiving and management is still handled in moronic ways. Identity management and authentication is in the dark ages. Bulk management of servers and workstations is a hodge podge of different ridiculous and complicated systems. Imaging workstations is still harder than it needs to be, and a lot of developers won't distribute their applications in standard package formats.
Sorry, I'm off on a tangential rant, but most software development just seems so stupid. Apple's failure to create a fast and stable implementation of SMB is an example, but far from the worst things developers are doing. Hell, if I could, I'd take on a "passwordless root by default" bug if it meant Microsoft would again let me control when Windows Updates run.
It's not really worth arguing about. Anything can get "viruses" or "get hacked", especially when a lot of those "viruses" are trojans and a lot of "hacks" are social engineering.
Macs are pretty solid. They have problems too. Why can't we just get over these petty arguments and stop feeding the trolls?
Unless he did not stumble upon it, but read it elsewhere and that is why he is so "business as usual"...
This is his explanation:
As to how I stumbled on this, the answer is simple. Pure frustration. I'd read on one of the forums where in a user suggested we try using "root" for username and leaving the password field empty. I did, it failed. Out of sheer frustration, I tried again, and voila the **** thing unlocked my admin account much to my relief.
It kind of raises the question, what forum was he looking at, and did *that* user know about the bug. Because it is bizarre that something like this would be found by a developer who discovered it out of frustration, trying a username and password that he already tried and knew didn't work, and then telling people about it without realizing that it was a problem.
I mean, he's a developer? And he doesn't know that being able to access root without a password might be a problem?
Just 15 years ago we were wringing our hands about Win-Tel stranglehold and how it was impossible for innovation to happen.... Today we laugh at Microsoft.
I don't, and you shouldn't. They still have a lot of control over the business/enterprise market with Windows, Office, and Office 365. Intel still has a lot of control over computer processors and chipsets. There's been incremental improvements, but not a lot of disruptive innovation in either the server/desktop OS or chips. When there has been some kind of "innovation", it's largely because Apple or AMD starts making some headway, and Microsoft or Intel have to start trying again.
The whole "Wintel" thing is still a problem. It's just one that's become "the new normal", so you don't notice it anymore.
That's easy enough to say. Everyone on the Internet is always so quick to advocate quitting your job and disregarding job opportunities, but some people in this world actually need to work. I'm not sure everyone can afford to be so dismissive of a company because one hiring manager has odd or overly specific expectations. Also, I've had plenty of experience sorting through resumes, and there's a point at which you have to disqualify some resumes for fairly arbitrary reasons. When you have a few hours to sort through hundreds of resumes, you might start tossing out resumes because you don't like their font choice, so in that context, ditching the resumes that aren't in your preferred format doesn't seem so weird.
On the other hand, I don't necessarily disagree with you. Or I'd put it this way: You're going to have to make a choice of which format to send your resume, and I think PDF is the best choice. There's probably some hiring managers somewhere that will ignore you for that reason, but there's only so much you can do, and I'd probably rather work in a company with a hiring manager that disqualifies you for sending a PDF than in a company that disqualifies you for some other crazy format. If you really want the job and the job posting doesn't specify, you can try sending both a PDF and Word file, and explaining that you've done that so they can use whichever format is more convenient to them.
I always send my CV in PDF form... The only people who have demanded Word documents have been recruiters.
I generally send my resume in PDF, and as someone who receives resumes, I'd encourage people to do the same. However, one of the things I've learned from being on both sides of the interview process is, everyone does things differently. I have seen employers who demands Word documents, or plain-text, or HTML in the body of the email that you're sending. Maybe they're just quirky, or maybe they have a system that automatically parses the text and that system handles some formats better than others.
I've talked to hiring managers who just don't understand why anyone would send a resume in any format other than Word, and if they receive a PDF, they throw it out. They don't even put something in the job posting saying, "Send your resume in Word format." They just assume that everyone knows Word is the most convenient format for them, and anyone who sends anything else is being difficult.
Job hunting is just chaos. Thinking that there's some common set of expectations indicates that you don't know how it works.
What makes you think it's to avoid sexual discrimination lawsuits specifically? And why are you implying that it's to avoid getting sued specifically for not hiring men?
It seems like he wasn't actually saying "all security problems are just bugs" in the abstract. He's saying that, in the development of the kernel, security problems should be treated the same as a bug. That is, basically, you shouldn't freak out and make patching those bugs your only priority, breaking other things as you go.
In the world of all security problems, there are security problems that are not "just bugs". However, in the world of developing the Linux kernel, he's saying, "A bug that causes a security hole is still just a bug, and shouldn't be treated in a special way just because you're freaking out that there's a security hole."
Gold, of course, is a real thing. It can be used in electronics and jewelry. It can't just be forked or replicated by someone who thinks they can make better gold that will be more interesting to gold speculators.
So you may have a point, but on the other hand, it's not at all like gold.
No package should autoupdate its systemwide binaries.
This traces back to a failure on the part of the OS to provide an adequate package manager. Both Windows and MacOS suffer from this. I don't see any reason why every OS shouldn't have something like apt/yum that can update the OS and all applications via a system-wide updater and configurable repositories. Not only would it do away with the need for applications to update themselves, it would make mass deployment/updates much easier for IT departments.
But forget security, and forget making people's lives easier. Apple and Microsoft need to force everyone into their app stores so they can get a cut.
People hate Apple. They think that hating Apple makes them better than people who use Apple devices, so they look for opportunities to bash Apple in order to show their superiority.
The latter puts a focus on getting out a certain amount of new and shiny, which can result in lower quality releases.
Well I think this ties into another relevant criticism: There's no reason that an OS needs a lot of these "features".
Is the OS stable? Is the filesystem good? Does the UI allow you to open applications? Yes? Ok, cool, then you're done. Pretty much everything else should be done on the application level, not by the OS.
I know that sounds like crazy talk, but I just don't think things like web browsers, Dropbox competitors, Music stores, and AI assistants needs to be integrated into the OS. Tying these items to OS upgrades means that they have to push out a whole new OS upgrade when they want to release features. Kernel-level changes shouldn't get scheduled based on when they want to release new ad-blocking in the browser.
If there is even remotely any kind of competition for resources on a planet, a more advanced, more aggressive species will displace others, and it is likely that the one that prevails is one that is aggressive, xenophobic, competitive and ruthless, at least towards those that don't belong to their own species.
On the other hand, for a species to reach the level of interplanetary travel, there's a good argument that they'd need to be very good at communication and cooperation. Isolated animals don't develop technology. Cultures do. What's more, a lot of the need for competition of resources comes from those resources being limited. If a species became advanced enough to randomly go roaming the universe picking fights and conquering planets, it's not clear that they'd bother, since they could likely go find another planet that didn't require conquering.
Of course, we're both just speculating. We have no idea what form life might be taking elsewhere in the universe.
It always seemed like some kind of marketing gimmick that someone invented. As far as I can remember, it wasn't really a thing when I was a kid.
I mean, the day existed. It's not like after Thanksgiving Thursday went straight to Saturday. People sometimes referred to it as "Black Friday", but it was more of a bit of trivia that some people were aware of. A lot of people happened to spend the day after Thanksgiving doing their Christmas shopping, since, for a lot of people, it was going to be their last day off before Christmas. So the term existed, but it was pretty common for someone to be unaware of it. It wasn't a whole big thing.
As far as I can remember, it wasn't until the early 2000s that stores started having "Black Friday" sales (that were marketed as such), opening early, having crazy deals for limited-supply items, and causing near riots. It seemed to spring up out of nowhere, but everyone acted as though things had always been that way, like it was some long-time tradition.
This is somewhat akin to a new version of Steam coming out, that disables all Steam games until...
I guess it's somewhat akin to that, but... it's not really the same. It's more like if a new version of Steam came out that disabled some of the Steam Workshop addons unless the developer of the game released a patch. Sure, it's going to really piss off some users, but an awful lot won't know or care.
Speaking personally, all I really want from a web browser is a web browser. I don't know what kind of add-ons people are lamenting the loss of, but Firefox is a better experience for me now than it has been for 10 years. I have the add-ons I care about, which are basically ad-blocking and a password manager.
So I think it comes down to a question: Who should Firefox more want to please, people like you or people like me? I'm not saying that "people like me" is the right answer, but my point is, it's not all bad. It's not that Firefox is objectively worse than it was in v56. It's that they made substantial changes that some people will like, and some people won't.
Luckily if a lot of people really don't like it, they can fork it. Firefox itself started as a fork of Mozilla. Then when Mozilla switched to Firefox, someone forked the old Mozilla and made Seamonkey. Someone will fork Firefox now. If more people like the fork, it'll eventually win out.
If I can't use it one handed then I'm not much interested.
Yeah, I'm with you. To me, that is one of the big advantages to the SE. I can comfortably reach the entire screen, no problem. With the iPhone 6-8, I can reach a good portion of the screen comfortably and it's ok, but a bit annoying. The iPhone Plus models, forget about it. I need two hands to operate them.
And I'm not saying that the rounded edges and camera bump are a deal-breaker. I just think that, overall, Apple's design sensibility got worse between the iPhone 5 and 6. The increased size, camera bump, and rounded edges are all examples.
How long before that bursts and there are hundreds if not thousands worthless crypto-currencies, like dot-coms after 2001?
Well that's the question. How long? Because if it takes a year, that means that scammers have another year to make their millions. Speculators have another year to get lucky.
It's also another year where everyone who predicts things will crash will be disbelieved. "You said it would crash last year, and now it's up to $8k! It can't be a scam." All bubbles look good until they burst.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not an issue of what I use. I don't use Windows, but if I did, I wouldn't mind putting up with their nonsense if it were just the OS for one computer, for my own personal use. No, the problem is that I'm an IT guy, and I have to manage thousands of random other people's computers, which is something that Microsoft makes impossible.
At least you can play a game with your Pokemon cards.
You can leave a review on Glassdoor after you leave the company.
But you're right to point out that it's not clear what this analysis means. Maybe Facebook employees are more prone to interactions similar to what happens in social media, and therefore more likely to post on Glassdoor. Or maybe Facebook bribes their employees to leave positive reviews. Who knows.
I mean, I'm sure that Facebook is a good place to work, at least in a lot of ways, so I don't necessarily doubt the outcome of this survey. Still, I'm not sure what good it does anyone. It's not like we're all going to quit out jobs and apply to Facebook because of this article.
It kind of reminds me of the Windows LTSB:
Microsoft: Hey, we're releasing a build with all the crap stripped out, and with a stable and predictable update and support schedule. That way, you can use it on very special devices when you need to...
Everyone: Oh, that sounds great. I'll just install it on everything.
Microsoft: No! It's only to be installed on very particular devices, when absolutely necessary.
Everyone: But... why? What you're describing is what we want. Stable predictable releases with all of the crap stripped out.
Microsoft: But then we can't spy on you or put ads into your start menu.
Everyone: ... yeah... that's what we want.
Microsoft: And we can't install random updates and reboot your computer at arbitrary times outside of your control.
Everyone: ...
Microsoft: If you use the LTSB on your normal workstations, we won't really support it and we'll make it harder to upgrade when you want to.
Everyone: *sigh* Fine.
This is just evidence that supporters of heavy-handed Internet regulations are becoming more desperate by the day...
See, this statement bothers me. Not because I'm insulted to be called "desperate" or because net neutrality is being called "heavy handed" (which it's not), but because it shows they fundamentally misunderstand their role. If you're in government and the people who you govern are becoming "desperate", that almost certainly means that you're doing a bad job. Your constituents should not be "desperate". Even if you think your constituents are wrong, the idea that their "desperate" should ring alarm bells that you're moving too fast, not communicating properly, or fucking things up in some other way.
But not Ajit Pai. The self-satisfied shmuck is congratulating himself on causing distress among the people he works for.
I was dismayed that a condition of joining the study is NOT knowing if you have AFIB.
My understanding is that they're hoping to be able to detect the condition that causes irregular heartbeats, and not necessarily detecting the actually instances of irregular heartbeat.
That is, the benefit would be for someone going through their lives unaware that they have a heart condition, and it could provide warning to them that they should talk to their doctor for an in-depth examination. It's not to alert you that you're having an irregular heartbeat while you're having an irregular heartbeat. I might imagine that the kind of measurements they're trying aren't reliable enough to warrant an emergency response in the event that a single event is detected. For example, it might be that scratching your wrist is enough to disrupt the contact between your skin and the watch, causing a reading that looks like an irregular heartbeat. But even if it's not reliable in detecting an individual incident, it might still be good enough to detect a condition when the data is taken in aggregate.
On the other hand, it does seem a little strange that they'd exclude people who know they have a condition. I would think they'd want to know whether people did or didn't have a condition, so that after taking the data and predicting who had a heart condition, they could compare their predictions of whether people had the condition with actual diagnoses. Otherwise, how would they be able to tell whether their predictions were correct?
All this innovation is available to buy; none of it is available to build. Not for mere mortals, anyway.
I kind of wish people would just stop talking about "innovation". First, because it's not clear what it means. Second, because most people probably don't really need innovation. Things certainly don't need constant innovation.
Most people and businesses don't need an innovating OS, they need a reliable OS that will run all of their applications. They don't need an innovative office suite, they need one that allows them to edit their office documents easily and efficiently. They don't need an innovative web server, they need one that will serve their web pages reliably, perhaps under a heavily load.
I know it's not fun for developers to think about making reliable tools that aren't innovative, but that's most of what we really need open source to do, and it's something open source has done pretty well with. Google, Amazon, and Microsoft haven't open sourced all their fancy cloud jazz, and I know the cloud stuff is really exciting to some small subset of developers, but really it's a fringe application.
On top of that, if I had to guess, I'd guess that it's probably not even extremely stable at this point (stable in the sense of "not changing"). These companies are probably rewriting things constantly to tweak for their own individual priorities, and I wouldn't be surprised if big chunks ended up being reorganized or rewritten in the next 5 years. (Admittedly, I don't know anything about the development process so I could be totally wrong, but going based on the rapidity of changes on Azure in the past couple of years, I don't think Microsoft even knows where they're going with it.)
Yeah, the reality is that the ability to profit is a great strength of open-source code. It gives companies an incentive to invest in it. The fact that it's open source makes it so the rest of us can benefit from that investment.
Yeah, I agree. I don't think it's really an Apple problem, which is why I think they can get a away with it, but a more general "developer" problem. A lot of developers seem to spend endless amounts of time trying to develop new cool features, or else shuffling the UI around, but they don't actually fix some of the very real and fundamental problems that people have.
Working in IT, it's just endless. There are tons and tons of problems with every product that I deal with where it's needlessly complicated to deploy, and then features don't work right. In the case of Microsoft, there's also the problem of them constantly trying to force things down your throat (e.g. you can't turn off Cortana, you can't control Windows Update anymore, you can't stop Windows from pushing Windows Store advertising into your start menu).
And then there are really simple things that there still isn't a good solution for. Secure transmissions online is still a complete mess. There's no viable standard for something as simple as IM. Email archiving and management is still handled in moronic ways. Identity management and authentication is in the dark ages. Bulk management of servers and workstations is a hodge podge of different ridiculous and complicated systems. Imaging workstations is still harder than it needs to be, and a lot of developers won't distribute their applications in standard package formats.
Sorry, I'm off on a tangential rant, but most software development just seems so stupid. Apple's failure to create a fast and stable implementation of SMB is an example, but far from the worst things developers are doing. Hell, if I could, I'd take on a "passwordless root by default" bug if it meant Microsoft would again let me control when Windows Updates run.
It's not really worth arguing about. Anything can get "viruses" or "get hacked", especially when a lot of those "viruses" are trojans and a lot of "hacks" are social engineering.
Macs are pretty solid. They have problems too. Why can't we just get over these petty arguments and stop feeding the trolls?
Unless he did not stumble upon it, but read it elsewhere and that is why he is so "business as usual"...
This is his explanation:
As to how I stumbled on this, the answer is simple. Pure frustration. I'd read on one of the forums where in a user suggested we try using "root" for username and leaving the password field empty. I did, it failed. Out of sheer frustration, I tried again, and voila the **** thing unlocked my admin account much to my relief.
It kind of raises the question, what forum was he looking at, and did *that* user know about the bug. Because it is bizarre that something like this would be found by a developer who discovered it out of frustration, trying a username and password that he already tried and knew didn't work, and then telling people about it without realizing that it was a problem.
I mean, he's a developer? And he doesn't know that being able to access root without a password might be a problem?
Just 15 years ago we were wringing our hands about Win-Tel stranglehold and how it was impossible for innovation to happen.... Today we laugh at Microsoft.
I don't, and you shouldn't. They still have a lot of control over the business/enterprise market with Windows, Office, and Office 365. Intel still has a lot of control over computer processors and chipsets. There's been incremental improvements, but not a lot of disruptive innovation in either the server/desktop OS or chips. When there has been some kind of "innovation", it's largely because Apple or AMD starts making some headway, and Microsoft or Intel have to start trying again.
The whole "Wintel" thing is still a problem. It's just one that's become "the new normal", so you don't notice it anymore.
That's easy enough to say. Everyone on the Internet is always so quick to advocate quitting your job and disregarding job opportunities, but some people in this world actually need to work. I'm not sure everyone can afford to be so dismissive of a company because one hiring manager has odd or overly specific expectations. Also, I've had plenty of experience sorting through resumes, and there's a point at which you have to disqualify some resumes for fairly arbitrary reasons. When you have a few hours to sort through hundreds of resumes, you might start tossing out resumes because you don't like their font choice, so in that context, ditching the resumes that aren't in your preferred format doesn't seem so weird.
On the other hand, I don't necessarily disagree with you. Or I'd put it this way: You're going to have to make a choice of which format to send your resume, and I think PDF is the best choice. There's probably some hiring managers somewhere that will ignore you for that reason, but there's only so much you can do, and I'd probably rather work in a company with a hiring manager that disqualifies you for sending a PDF than in a company that disqualifies you for some other crazy format. If you really want the job and the job posting doesn't specify, you can try sending both a PDF and Word file, and explaining that you've done that so they can use whichever format is more convenient to them.
I always send my CV in PDF form... The only people who have demanded Word documents have been recruiters.
I generally send my resume in PDF, and as someone who receives resumes, I'd encourage people to do the same. However, one of the things I've learned from being on both sides of the interview process is, everyone does things differently. I have seen employers who demands Word documents, or plain-text, or HTML in the body of the email that you're sending. Maybe they're just quirky, or maybe they have a system that automatically parses the text and that system handles some formats better than others.
I've talked to hiring managers who just don't understand why anyone would send a resume in any format other than Word, and if they receive a PDF, they throw it out. They don't even put something in the job posting saying, "Send your resume in Word format." They just assume that everyone knows Word is the most convenient format for them, and anyone who sends anything else is being difficult.
Job hunting is just chaos. Thinking that there's some common set of expectations indicates that you don't know how it works.
What makes you think it's to avoid sexual discrimination lawsuits specifically? And why are you implying that it's to avoid getting sued specifically for not hiring men?
It seems like he wasn't actually saying "all security problems are just bugs" in the abstract. He's saying that, in the development of the kernel, security problems should be treated the same as a bug. That is, basically, you shouldn't freak out and make patching those bugs your only priority, breaking other things as you go.
In the world of all security problems, there are security problems that are not "just bugs". However, in the world of developing the Linux kernel, he's saying, "A bug that causes a security hole is still just a bug, and shouldn't be treated in a special way just because you're freaking out that there's a security hole."
Gold, of course, is a real thing. It can be used in electronics and jewelry. It can't just be forked or replicated by someone who thinks they can make better gold that will be more interesting to gold speculators.
So you may have a point, but on the other hand, it's not at all like gold.
No package should autoupdate its systemwide binaries.
This traces back to a failure on the part of the OS to provide an adequate package manager. Both Windows and MacOS suffer from this. I don't see any reason why every OS shouldn't have something like apt/yum that can update the OS and all applications via a system-wide updater and configurable repositories. Not only would it do away with the need for applications to update themselves, it would make mass deployment/updates much easier for IT departments.
But forget security, and forget making people's lives easier. Apple and Microsoft need to force everyone into their app stores so they can get a cut.
People hate Apple. They think that hating Apple makes them better than people who use Apple devices, so they look for opportunities to bash Apple in order to show their superiority.
People are stupid.
The latter puts a focus on getting out a certain amount of new and shiny, which can result in lower quality releases.
Well I think this ties into another relevant criticism: There's no reason that an OS needs a lot of these "features".
Is the OS stable? Is the filesystem good? Does the UI allow you to open applications? Yes? Ok, cool, then you're done. Pretty much everything else should be done on the application level, not by the OS.
I know that sounds like crazy talk, but I just don't think things like web browsers, Dropbox competitors, Music stores, and AI assistants needs to be integrated into the OS. Tying these items to OS upgrades means that they have to push out a whole new OS upgrade when they want to release features. Kernel-level changes shouldn't get scheduled based on when they want to release new ad-blocking in the browser.
If there is even remotely any kind of competition for resources on a planet, a more advanced, more aggressive species will displace others, and it is likely that the one that prevails is one that is aggressive, xenophobic, competitive and ruthless, at least towards those that don't belong to their own species.
On the other hand, for a species to reach the level of interplanetary travel, there's a good argument that they'd need to be very good at communication and cooperation. Isolated animals don't develop technology. Cultures do. What's more, a lot of the need for competition of resources comes from those resources being limited. If a species became advanced enough to randomly go roaming the universe picking fights and conquering planets, it's not clear that they'd bother, since they could likely go find another planet that didn't require conquering.
Of course, we're both just speculating. We have no idea what form life might be taking elsewhere in the universe.
Black Friday was never a majority event.
It always seemed like some kind of marketing gimmick that someone invented. As far as I can remember, it wasn't really a thing when I was a kid.
I mean, the day existed. It's not like after Thanksgiving Thursday went straight to Saturday. People sometimes referred to it as "Black Friday", but it was more of a bit of trivia that some people were aware of. A lot of people happened to spend the day after Thanksgiving doing their Christmas shopping, since, for a lot of people, it was going to be their last day off before Christmas. So the term existed, but it was pretty common for someone to be unaware of it. It wasn't a whole big thing.
As far as I can remember, it wasn't until the early 2000s that stores started having "Black Friday" sales (that were marketed as such), opening early, having crazy deals for limited-supply items, and causing near riots. It seemed to spring up out of nowhere, but everyone acted as though things had always been that way, like it was some long-time tradition.
This is somewhat akin to a new version of Steam coming out, that disables all Steam games until...
I guess it's somewhat akin to that, but... it's not really the same. It's more like if a new version of Steam came out that disabled some of the Steam Workshop addons unless the developer of the game released a patch. Sure, it's going to really piss off some users, but an awful lot won't know or care.
Speaking personally, all I really want from a web browser is a web browser. I don't know what kind of add-ons people are lamenting the loss of, but Firefox is a better experience for me now than it has been for 10 years. I have the add-ons I care about, which are basically ad-blocking and a password manager.
So I think it comes down to a question: Who should Firefox more want to please, people like you or people like me? I'm not saying that "people like me" is the right answer, but my point is, it's not all bad. It's not that Firefox is objectively worse than it was in v56. It's that they made substantial changes that some people will like, and some people won't.
Luckily if a lot of people really don't like it, they can fork it. Firefox itself started as a fork of Mozilla. Then when Mozilla switched to Firefox, someone forked the old Mozilla and made Seamonkey. Someone will fork Firefox now. If more people like the fork, it'll eventually win out.
If I can't use it one handed then I'm not much interested.
Yeah, I'm with you. To me, that is one of the big advantages to the SE. I can comfortably reach the entire screen, no problem. With the iPhone 6-8, I can reach a good portion of the screen comfortably and it's ok, but a bit annoying. The iPhone Plus models, forget about it. I need two hands to operate them.
And I'm not saying that the rounded edges and camera bump are a deal-breaker. I just think that, overall, Apple's design sensibility got worse between the iPhone 5 and 6. The increased size, camera bump, and rounded edges are all examples.
How long before that bursts and there are hundreds if not thousands worthless crypto-currencies, like dot-coms after 2001?
Well that's the question. How long? Because if it takes a year, that means that scammers have another year to make their millions. Speculators have another year to get lucky.
It's also another year where everyone who predicts things will crash will be disbelieved. "You said it would crash last year, and now it's up to $8k! It can't be a scam." All bubbles look good until they burst.