ElemenoPicuares

I don't think that's as rare as people say, especially in smaller organizations.

Having an art school design education and a bit over a decade in (mostly back-end) web development, I've had plenty of deseloper type roles. If they fall under a design or marketing department, they'll spend 80% of the time doing design work and try to throw it together on some shitty wysiwyg monstrosity, ignoring performance, stability, maintainability, etc. If they fall under technical departments, design, ahem, decoration and polish is something to be applied at the end, if there's time, after the real work is done. Either way, having the same group of people responsible for two halves of that coin rarely yields a good balance, and they almost never pay any real attention to usability ... at least not for use cases that don't exactly mirror their own. Seems to me that replacing the flexibility of current markup and styling tools with simple markdown and reader-type layouts is just trying to apply the tech-focused solution to the entire problem the way Flash tried to do the opposite.

Markdown is undoubtedly more readable, but HTML can be more readable than most people make it. And considering that the ultimate goal is to wind up with a layed-out, styled document, its capabilities in that regard are just plain-old more important, especially since markdown isn't going to replace WYSIWYG editors any time soon, and almost everybody who needs to know HTML can learn it relatively easily. Browsers collapse white space by default, so you've got a lot of flexibility with its formatting:

    <!doctype html>

    <title>
        Page Title
    </title>

    <h1>
        Page Title
    </h1>

    <p>
        Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur
        adipiscing  elit. Ut ac lorem ut massa 
        euismod vestibulum.
    
    <p>
        Nullam rutrum blandit eleifend. Aenean a 
        varius diam. Morbi sodales velit nunc, vel 
        vestibulum lorem tempus sodales.

--or--

    <!doctype html>

    <title>    Page Title    </title>
    <h1>       Page Title    </h1>

    <p>    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur
           adipiscing  elit. Ut ac lorem ut massa 
           euismod vestibulum.

    <p>    Nullam rutrum blandit eleifend. Aenean a 
           varius diam. Morbi sodales velit nunc, vel 
           vestibulum lorem tempus sodales.

I get why many developers like this idea... Web developers are responsible for implementing the complex user-facing parts, and their primary weapon is text: doing extra work sucks, and when you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. But developers are not designers, and design not being left to developers in mature organizations is no accident. Absolute, deliberate, limiting simplicity is always an attractive argument if you dismiss the value of, or maybe don't even understand the reason for the complexity. I won't deny the advantages of reader-view-level simplicity in web design: it's easier to visually parse, more performant, and easier to navigate compared to most web pages, similar to how books compare to magazines-- but about 225 million people per year in the US read magazines and I assure you most of them would not choose to have textural printouts in lieu of their current form. While people like having the option of a uniform, grey, easily visually parseable mode to view webpages, that's probably not what they want even most of the time, let alone as a deliberate limitation.

You keep saying that public perception comes down to speech someone doesn't like. In this context-- publicly questioning the word of someone victimized by the highest profile and influential serial sexual predators in recent times-- the idea that such speech is merely "disliked" is beyond obtuse.

Why would Peyton Manning implement a broad sweeping smear campaign against a faculty member that (not publicly) accused him of sexual assault? Why would that be a problem for the victim? Just personal preference, right? Delicate sensibility? Why would other victims ask to be shielded by anonymity in public disclosure?

Why do people make statements that convey anything besides entertainment or data? Why do companies pay influential people millions upon millions to deliver those messages? Why does Stallman advocate instead of just writing software?

Federal Rule 412 says that a sexual assault victim's reputation can sometimes be used as evidence in civil cases. Could questioning statements influence people's opinions on someone's trustworthiness, even subconsciously?

Recruiters almost always search for someone's online presence, and many are eager to avoid potential controversy, especially in higher-level jobs.

Public opinion destroyed Monica Lewinsky's life. Or maybe she merely disliked the public flaying of her credibility from a million different angles?

A Ukrainian truck driver in New England was quietly acquitted of DUI after a head-on collision killed seven motorcyclists from a local USMC motorcycle club. It turns out his drug use was 10 hours earlier, and the motorcyclists were all shitfaced, but public discourse on the matter shows he was convicted on the first day. The little commentary on the acquittal indicates most people haven't changed their opinions.

What are the chances of one of these people's potential future boss having such an opinion? What's the likelihood of that affecting a hiring manager's opinion, even subconsciously?

--

I initially posited that people in positions of influence shouldn't value their desire to publicly voice their opinions over the consideration of the adverse effects on others, especially those with vastly less influence who couldn't hope to defend themselves.

We've arrived at a point where you say he shouldn't care if his words affected public opinion and, consequentially, negatively affected someone with vastly less influence. You justify this and nibble at the general premise by saying nobody should care about public opinion and that people who influence it shouldn't consider the consequences of their speech (unless... giving them money) because it shouldn't matter.

In summary, you have a different ethical take on it and, despite lots of typing, haven't countered any of my assertions except that he should give a shit. Your opinion is not uncommon. Many argue that freedom of speech essentially means speech occurs in a vacuum, so we can all ignore the consequences of that speech, and anyone who disagrees is thin-skinned. And the funny thing about mob members is that they all like to think they're individual thinkers whose values are derived from pure reason, logic, and proven philosophical constructs, while those that disagree are irrational maniacs controlled by groupthink.

Anyway, you'll keep responding by restating the same subjective values you started with couched in arguments that nibble at the general premise instead of addressing my actual statements, so I'm done engaging with you on this.

> No. The purpose of FSF is not to be demagogues and bend at every whim of the mob.

By him discussing it publicly he did exactly that. Everybody likes to think their opinion stems from pure reason and logic while everybody else is just an angry mob driven by pure hysteria, but he was just as full of shit as any other random person talking about it. However, he was a public figure speaking about it publicly. If he had just shut his mouth, he would have been doing what you insisted he actually did. Giving a shit doesn't mean you have to be an activist. Sometimes you just need to recognize that you don't know any better than anyone else, and especially if you're a public figure, keep your mouth shut.

> Public opinion is driven by gossip and yellow press

Public opinion being based on yellow journalism and gossip means it's bullshit, but it absolutely doesn't mean it's inconsequential.

> How exactly does RMS voicing his thoughts and opinions make anything worse?

> You mention the phrase "stepping on people". What exactly do you mean by that - both in general, and in the specific case you've mentioned? Do you mean that people don't like his words, and he's figuratively "stepping on them" by expressing his thoughts?

I explicitly answered these questions. As a public figure-- someone whose words are read and commented on by many people-- I think it's pretty obvious that his public statements affect public opinion. You still didn't provide any real answer to whether you think that a) public opinion isn't consequential (as opposed to truthful or trustworthy,) or b) whether public figures don't influence public opinion with public statements. So? If you do think public opinion is consequential but don't understand how a public figure publicly questioning the account of an alleged a rape victim constitutes stepping on someone, I'm not sure what to say.

So this is just a case of "I'm glibly dismissing the question."

Do you think the court of public opinion is consequential? If not, why did he make those public statements in support of his friend? The accusation is almost certainly true, and a public figure publicly casting doubt upon and minimizing the woman's claims is consequential. If he was talking privately among friends or some random person whose words had no more influence than the next person, then who gives a shit. That's not the case.

You don't have to be an activist just because you give a damn. Being a good citizen in the world means caring enough about other people to not trample them. Not caring simply means not bothering to check if you're stepping on people and not changing course once you found out that you have.

For example, having a spokesperson who some people actually listen to publicly question whether a very young woman coerced by Jeffrey Epstein into having sex with his friend can justifiably say she was "assaulted." If he actually cared as much about his social impact as his friend's justifiably ruined reputation, he'd have just shut his mouth at the very least. If you think that's an unreasonable expectation then that's just sad.

Sure, but not particularly relevant in this context.

Are you arguing that FSF should deliberately disregard social issues to be different? Do social issues waste valuable care that could be spent caring free software? Or is there another reason to be frustrated by people caring about the social impact of their organization?

Which is great until the inspector comes.

Not sure what poor or lower-middle class communities you've lived in, but where I grew up, kids who were insecure about being clearly being disadvantaged by society's standards made a pretty big deal about the little they did have, and readily lorded it over those who didn't. If you all lived in the same shitty apartment complex but one kid had a nice pair of kicks, it was pretty noticeable. Beyond that, the only other people in poorer communities visibly living in vans are probably severe addicts and other folks not willing to or capable of living their lives in closer step with most other folks. Those are some pretty tough social stigmas to overcome.

This is one of those "pizza was invented in New York City" arguments. Popularized and refined != invent.

The Brit Tim Berners-Lee designed the architecture, wrote the first browser and web server, and wrote the first HTML spec at CERN around 1989. Mosaic was released in like 1993 after Berners-Lee released his specs and source.

To claim the internet was invented in Europe is equally absurd.

I don't believe mono supports winforms on linux and I wouldn't classify VB.net as having a elm-like architecture with a unidirectional data flow... so yes?

“you could probably match everything to a single person if you wanted to.”

You could probably match it to a single car owner but I'll bet you'd have a hard time matching it to a single person purely using data without some research, and people let other people borrow cars more frequently than mobile phones. Though you probably could fingerprint someone's driving style based on starts/stop cadence, turn velocity, routes, destinations, etc. and some insurance companies may already do it. They use this data to modify their clients rates automatically, already. That's why I opted to not use my housing insurer, Lemonade, to insure my car. I don't need surveillance capitalism invading yet another part of my existence.

In the case of red light cameras (https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2017/01/18093/), I think the legal consequences are so comparatively minor that nobody bats an eye when this gets flubbed. When it comes down to this being used as evidence in a major crime, that will probably be harder and surely defense attorneys will be all over it. From a commercial data privacy perspective, it's probably enough of an edge case that their customers wouldn't care much.

I think civil cases may be the more interesting venue for this inconsistency. I don't know if it's still true, but in file sharing cases, folks often didn't question the idea that an IP address could be mapped to a specific person. I'd guess this wouldn't be that much different than having a series of witnesses spotting a license plate without getting a clear view of the driver?

Strange times we live in.

If you don't see contempt in the author's evaluation of other people's behavior, you're either not looking, or not a great judge of it.

> I'd challenge you to entertain the idea that this post has some good advice, and follow some of it. I have no data, but I expect you'll be happier as a result.

Personally, I don't fit any of the implied criteria for "terminal onlineness," so your challenge isn't possible. You don't merely lack data, you lack a valid reason for assuming this advice applies to me or any other person whose habits you know nothing about. I recommend you entertain the idea that neither righteousness in your conviction nor confidence in your words transform your assumptions and personal experiences into broadly applicable maxims.

Even if this advice addresses problems you, personally, struggle with, that's not necessarily true for everybody. I know brilliant, happy, well-adjusted people, like my wife, who engage in behavior this author deems undesirable. It's just not that cut and dried. Perhaps the author's conclusions suffer from sampling bias? Regardless, I will still skip the rest of their blog entries.

I hate to throw a purely negative comment up as a naked response to a post, but this is really just a contemptful screed about people engaging in online interactions the author doesn't jibe with. It's not even like they're presenting their opinion to elicit other perspectives-- it's presented as an objective list of unhealthy habits and patronizing instructions to align your behavior with the author's values and priorities. Not sure if the author intended this to be publicly consumed in this form but I'll skip their other blog entries.

Seemingly reliable for a specific type of problem, though. Most reliable software doesn't require a distributed network to be reliable, and I don't think binary execution on BEAM is any more inherently reliable than the JVM, right?

I'm neither a physics nor sound processing expert, but it seems like the microphone creates the signal to invert, and the speakers emit the inverted signal before the initial sound hits your ear. So I reckon the sound must first hit the microphone, then the speakers, then your ear. With headphones, the speakers cover your ears and the microphone is outside the enclosure, so that's easy. In a larger controlled environment with reliable sound dampening on 3 sides, maybe? My inexpert intuition says that doesn't stand a chance of working in an open environment with one microphone and two speakers usually closer to each other than the user's ears. It seems like having a door on a building with no walls.

Seems like Beam is a more specialized tool than JVM but if you need that sort of functionality it's phenomenal. With things like built-in performant persistent key value stores and cluster management I'm kind of surprised more people haven't pushed through the "this is useful but lacks broad adoption" barrier.

No — the actual controls on the map don’t work for me. If it works for you then it must be something weird on my device.

Interface seems to be broken on mobile iOS.

> Over the last decade, Safari has been innovating in areas that people aren't calling for, and are trailing years behind in areas that people want to use.

Ok. Given the downvotes it sounds like those people are pretty mad about it. Specifics?

I'm talking about a browser here, like the parent was talking about a browser and not talking about an operating system or a company. We all get that distinction, right?

Been my daily driver for quite some time. Great dev tools for working with CSS Grids too for those front end folks out there. Download, install, disable everything related to pocket, install my password manager, and then I've got my ideal browser.

As is Safari.

I actually had a big long response to your approach pointing out how damaging of a mindset that is for design projects, but I think this is more relevant.

I worked as a nightclub bouncer for well over a decade. I learned that you can gauge how confident a bouncer is by how friendly and warm they are to people they might have to fight later that night, and by how calmly they respond to people challenging them, physically or otherwise. If you're genuinely confident you can handle the odd bad actor appropriately once they reveal themselves, you don't need to assume every interaction is a potential battle, and everybody benefits. It creates goodwill and encourages understanding when mitigating your own inevitable inadvertent transgressions.

I learned that people who openly talk about their toughness are, without exception, trying to convince themselves more than anyone else. They can't help trying to turn every potential confrontation into supporting evidence for their argument. These people can't help trying to proactively win situations that aren't competitive and unlikely to ever be dangerous. Not only does that causes a lot of collateral damage, but the combative attitude is much better at creating self-fulfilling prophecies than discouraging bad behavior. However, without exception, they believe they're responding rationally to the dangers of the world. It's an exhausting, often self-defeating, anxiety-inducing way to live.

I’m not really sure what you’re pushing back against here — are you taking issue with the terminology? Or are you saying that scratch should not be used as an intro to programming logic because it was originally designed to control visual components fairly superficially?

Have you been working on actually detecting them or are you assuming they’re easy to detect? Did you go digging for false negatives or false positives in other languages? Considering that not all special characters are printable, these platforms don’t limit their users to ASCII, random foreign words are common in other languages, the false positive rate has to be pretty much zero, etc etc etc I’ll bet it’s a whole lot more sophisticated than you imagine.

And that's totally fine. We all have our own heuristics for determining what we like in a candidate, but we need to be very, very critical of those measures and make sure they aren't masking other less justifiable gut instinct decisions. Bias is generally subconscious— If it really was as cut-and-dried as we like to think, then it wouldn't be a gut feeling metric at all— we'd be able to back up our reasoning with hard facts. As rational as they might seem, 'gut feeling' criteria almost universally favor people we're comfortable with rather than the most qualified candidate. That's a real problem for folks who aren't part of the dominant culture of the industry: Millenial to Gen-X straight white and asian guys.

If a qualified candidate only having certificate credentials merely prompts further investigation, then great. However, it's quite often the tipping point between round-filing a good candidate and calling another one in for an interview. While it might seem innocuous on a micro level, on a macro level this affects big swaths of the population.

In the 2005 Study Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal (https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w9873/w9873...), they responded to 1300 job ads with 5000 equally-weighted resumes with randomly assigned names which were either stereotypically white, like Emily Walsh or Greg Baker, or stereotypically black, like Lakisha Washington or Jamal Jones. Resumes with white sounding names were 50% more likely to receive a callback. Fifty percent! The likelihood of 1300 randomly chosen job ads being run by the KKK is pretty low. Most, if not all of them were probably letting "gut instinct" criteria swing their judgement.

If you had a video game where the sole task was getting a job, one race having a built-in buff where the callback was 50% greater without being balanced somewhere else would be insanely unfair. Not only is it not balanced, but we're literally only talking about these folks names— never mind their appearance, manner of speaking, cultural references, etc.

We all like to think of ourselves as good people but that's not enough to stop this. We need to deliberately interrogate our MO, here.

You can't just bolt on other theoretical negative factors to change the usefulness of the analysis itself. This conversation is not about bad or irrelevant certificates— it's about certificates in general.

The candidate included them on their resume for you to evaluate, so evaluate them. Nobody's arguing that candidates with only free LinkedIn certs and nothing else should be given equal consideration to those with formal education.

The question is whether or not people with any certificates can ethically be dismissed out-of-hand because they list certificates on their resume. The answer is still no.

I see people argue for the real-world skills gaming affords— but when the biggest risk is embarrassment among people you’ll never meet, and the primary real world reward is inadvertently exercising a few organizational muscles in a vastly different context from the real world, I just don’t see it. Not saying there’s no benefit, but it’s not even in the same ballpark as actual work experience.