ncphil · HackerTrans

Thanks cketti, for all your toil on K-9 and Thunderbird for Android. Over many years K-9 was the only mail client that just worked for me. When I finally transitioned to a certain secure web mail provider based in CH, I had to leave K-9 behind. But I still appreciate the challenge of making an open protocol mail client work reliably. Enjoy your sabbatical, however long it lasts, and keep an open mind about the future: the skills you've honed as a software developer are substantial and give you a head start in pretty much any field.

ncphil

2 jaar geledendiscuss

"Do Not Track" was a good standard, but on the today's global Internet, unenforceable without serious push back against non-compliant sites from either government regulators and/or consumers. In other words, privacy theater that misled users into thinking it made them safer. It has also been suggested that DNT signals are used by some advertisers in profiling users. But removing DNT suspiciously seems like a capitulation, and will short-circuit any existing efforts to use it to protect consumer privacy. Maskawanian is right, this was inevitable once Mozilla decided to become an ad company (as was their adding the deceptively named Privacy-Preserving Ad Attribution feature earlier this year). I think it's time for people concerned about privacy to consider alternatives to Mozilla.

ncphil

2 jaar geledendiscuss

Encouraged to see the skepticism here.

Recalling when, after years of hype, the demand for corn-based ethanol as a fuel competed with corn for food, leading to even greater food insecurity world-wide.

Grifter's gotta grift, but that doesn't mean their BS gets to go unchallenged.

ncphil

2 jaar geledendiscuss

It actually is as simple as that. Well, if you could actually get funding. The number one problem with our legal system is that only the rich can afford to play. Before someone says, "but... public defenders", let me suggest that even a truly great lawyer (and many of the PDs I've known were) is going to have a hard time with a caseload approaching 200 files. On the civil side there's... nothing, at least since the LSC was cut to the bone back in the early 80s and put on a very short leash. So, although I'm all for eliminating all immunities, sovereign, absolute and qualified, that won't do a damn bit of good for ordinary people until free (because no one in the working or even middle class can afford a $1,000 emergency, let alone a pile up of legal fees at $200 per hour) representation is available for every and any legal matter. Once that's in place, you can set up your "light touch" triaging mechanism. Then if you also abolish all immunities, you might even get some justice.

ncphil

3 jaar geledendiscuss

"Developers should test their own code" is emblematic of a juvenile mindset in people who regularly fire up their "reality distortion field" to avoid the effort of educating themselves on their own operations (and that helps them deny responsibility when things go South). As W. Edwards Deming, bane of all "gut instinct" executives, once wrote, "The consumer is the most important part of the production line. Quality should be aimed at the needs of the consumer, present and future." The lack of a dedicated quality team shows a lack of respect for your customers. You know, the people you need to buy your products or services (unless you're intent on living off VC loans until you have to pull the ripcord on your golden parachute).

ncphil

3 jaar geledendiscuss

Meritocracy is tyranny by another name. "Natural" aristocrats are still aristocrats, and being aristocrats it is their "natural" inclination to take power in their own personal and (when they are numerous enough to be organized in a coherent group) institutional interests. Meritocracy is a another false god, like its cousin, money. It is dangerous because it is exclusive, and self-reinforcing. Technologists, of all people, should be the first to recognize how vacuous and pernicious such an anti-egalitarian approach is, and should be repelled by it: because we know how empty and meaningless our own relative merit, based on our fortuitous collection of specialized knowledge and skills, is.

Am I really better, morally, ethically, or spiritually, than someone who _doesn't_ know how to patch an Oracle database? Even the landscapers blowing leaves into the street next door know that forcibly asserting ownership of another human being is wrong, yet this seems to have escaped the superior intellect of "the Founding Fathers" (who my own ancestors, having emigrated as impoverished peasants from Italy at the turn of the last century, had no connection with: something they sadly later forgot). Jefferson was a slaver, an oppressor of the weak, and a rapist, and the majority of high society and Congress were (and are) accessories before and after the fact.

The US Civil War was an aberration, because it was one of the few times that the schemes of one part of the oligarchy coincided with the growing disgust of the commons with a horrendous institution (chattel slavery). The moral outrage over slavery seen in the diaries of Union soldiers didn't disappear with the Confederacy's defeat, but the interests of the oligarchs worked against the success of Reconstruction and the later imposition of Jim Crow (whose legal framework provided inspiration for 20th century fascism in places like Germany).

We loosely categorize ancient Rome as a civilization. It was an oligarchic slave state, as were the later European and American empires. The main difference between them seems to be the mechanisms of slavery employed. In 21st century America we still have a feudal model of governance in most workplaces, and in governments bought and paid for by unfettered oligarch cash, the will of the common people, to the extent that its expression is able to pierce the corporate media bubble, is mostly ignored or explained away.

ncphil

3 jaar geledendiscuss

This is an enormously important distinction: security ne privacy. Although you can make your own Chrome install insecure, by default it really isn't bad. Transforming it into something that isn't actively compromising your privacy is another matter. Flash, for all its "democratizing" impact (not that I agree it really had), didn't address either. Back then too few were seriously doing anything about security or privacy. As someone who lived through the Rise and Fall of Flash, I have to second the sentiment of an earlier post: I'm happier now being able to use a text editor in my work instead of an odd assortment of vendor specific tools. That, and HTML5/CSS3 has proven to be amazingly innovative and flexible enough to finally make the case for standards easier. Now all we have to do is keep the big boys from perverting these standards into monsters from the pit of hell. Man, is that going to be a fun ride.

ncphil

3 jaar geledendiscuss

Depends on the model year. The one we bought in 2003 only needed regular oil changes and a new set of tires every few years. We did have to get a rebuilt transmission just before its warranty ran out, but didn't pay a dime for that ("Not a dime? Really?" Yeah, well, I was a trial lawyer before going into tech). The 2013 is still running and other than normal maintenance the only problems we've had are with the sliding door coming off its track and one of the stow-away seats getting stuck. In both cases YouTube saved the day. Don't get me wrong, I really hate the look of that car. It definitely is not an identity statement. But given the astronomical prices of new (and used) vehicles right now, we're probably going to keep it for a while longer. Here's hoping that changes. Soon.

ncphil

3 jaar geledendiscuss

Totally personal preference, but not a fan of the Brave UI. At least from my perspective they (like Vivaldi and Edge) are trying too hard to distinguish themselves from the outward look and feel of Chromium. It's their right as a fork, and that of whoever finds it works for them. I'm not even bothered by (or much notice) the built-in crypto-based gamification. I just wish someone would do a minimalist fork of Chromium, maybe with a rudimentary sync service.

ncphil

3 jaar geledendiscuss

Piketty's _Capital in the Twenty-First Century_, cited in the article, remains a fundamental resource for understanding how we got here. It's really essential reading. Given all that, the solutions presented in his later books appear to be inevitable. As for whether we're in a new Gilded Age, I'd say the we're way past that: it's more like ancient Egypt under Pharaoh.

ncphil

3 jaar geledendiscuss

Love FiraCode. Have it installed and configured for all of my terminals, everywhere. Even on Windows. In fact, the one customization I've done to my work laptop (that I otherwise leave in it's official, shipped, state), is to add FiraCode.

ncphil

3 jaar geledendiscuss

Interesting idea, but I think I'll stick with DNS challenge and LetsEncrypt. Lazy me really needs to finally sit down and automate the process (all the pieces are in place on my registrar's side). Did the private CA thing for almost two decades, and yes, it was a PITA, but even that was mostly because I failed to invest the time to automate it (Linux and Windows devices aren't _that_ hard to manage with OSS tools, printers might be a harder challenge; Android refusing to play nice with private DNS just makes it easier to disregard it altogether, as do all those IoT firmwares that don't even pretend to give you a choice). Ultimately, the current infrastructure, like that for message encryption, is just too damn convoluted. Eventually it might get fixed, but I'll probably be long retired to an Internet dead zone by then (raising goats can't be harder than managing fleets of application servers, can it?).

ncphil

3 jaar geledendiscuss

This is a good point. Of course anyone who thought the MSM, or print journalism, were in business to reveal the actual truth really needs to review their history. The worst part is that Julian (whether intentionally or not) probably made that sacrifice for nothing. At least here in the US most people don't know or care. That's a shame. And an embarrassment.

ncphil

3 jaar geledendiscuss

This was really funny. Got lost in it, and the site, for a while yesterday. Made for an enjoyable week end. Many thanks to the author.

ncphil

3 jaar geledendiscuss

Although I'm not a fan of the common law system, it isn't the problem here. The problem is a culture that so elevates informality that there are no guardrails left to ensure careful, thoughtful, deliberation even in business deals involving tens of thousands of dollars. Next up, declaration of war by tweet.

ncphil

3 jaar geledendiscuss

Under the Sonny Bono Act in the US corporate copyrights were extended beyond 100 years. The original US Copyright Act was limited to 14 years, and allowed a single renewal of the same length. After that, public domain. The short term goal was to provide authors with some income during the term, but with the ultimate purpose of enriching the commons to benefit the public. "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." US CONST, Art I, Sec 8, Cl 8. It could be argued that copyright copyright terms of over a century, especially during a particularly dynamic period in world history such as ours, no longer serve that purpose. As you point out, the end result of the current regime is the debasement of any real practical value many works would otherwise have. All that will be left are the cold entries in whatever royalty ledgers survive.

ncphil

3 jaar geledendiscuss

Visited DC in 2010 or so. Kids were eager to see Nat Geo headquarters. Turned out to be a big disappointment. Lots of empty spaces where displays had been. We were told they were renovating. Looks like they've now lost a lot of their experienced writers, but I wonder about the photographers and artists who were the real stars of the show. On one hand, it's amazing they lasted this long against the Internet and digital media, on the other I can't help but wonder if trying to run a knowledge resource like Nat Geo like a business no longer makes sense.

ncphil

3 jaar geledendiscuss

It has been awhile (about 10 years or so), but I can recall at least two widely used enterprise access management systems that had trouble with some special characters. Access management is hard. Even those able to pour boatloads of cash into it don't necessarily get great results. On the other hand, there's nothing hard about providing users with a clear statement of your system's limitations. What ever happened to UAT?

ncphil

3 jaar geledendiscuss

Netscape Navigator -> Sea Monkey -> Opera. It was a thing. Set aside mostly to improve performance of the browser. When Firefox was first released it seemed... lacking. But it _was_ fast. That was still the Age of IE, of course. For me, using a separate mail client turned out to be more efficient. Thunderbird worked, mostly, for a long time. I did a full immersion test of Vivaldi a while ago. Wasn't impressed enough to ditch my current setup (Firefox + Mailspring, the latter mainly for the unified inbox). It's good that people are out there trying different approaches. Monocultures are dangerous impediments to progress.

ncphil

3 jaar geledendiscuss

Because they don't see technical debt as a bad thing. Go back to the original pitch for technical debt by Ward Cunningham. He was working for a finance company and used the debt metaphor to advocate in favor of "borrowing against the future" when implementing new code. The idea was that you could use the latest stuff without reinventing everything. Like mortgage payments, the reinvention could happen over time, in increments, until it's "paid off". The problem is that nowadays, especially in finance, you're dealing with people who are used to over leveraging everything. To them, the idea is to pile on debt until it becomes unmanageable: and then sell. Or go into Chapter 11.

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