andersonvom

gitsh - https://github.com/thoughtbot/gitsh

Since git is by far the command a lot of people type the most, this shell comes in really handy. It supports all regular git aliases, has autocompletion, and you can set default commands to be run when you just press return. It's amazing how much typing it saves.

This could be mitigated by just having people you don't interact with often in some meaningful way (for some definition of meaningful), they just get automatically unfriended. As if you had forgotten about them.

There's not hard cut _per se_, just that after the 150th, if both people don't interact, the relationship fades away...

The values in the original PDF don't really add up [1]. It doesn't really change much, but it's still weird. If you apply the formula in the PDF to the listed values, they're all 1-5 points off:

    Each country’s value in each category is given the indicated
    weighting to achieve a country’s total score using the formula
    ((Visa Free Travel x 0.5) +
     (Taxation x 0.3) + 
     (Perception x 0.1) + 
     (Dual Citizenship x 0.1) + 
     (Overall Freedom x 0.1)).

[1]: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vXSsukPDoqSwXPbR-FKt...

Doh, I guess I could have used better wording. Hopefully it's clearer now. =)

You can also reverse engineer code, sniff your network traffic, and lots of other things with proprietary software, but that doesn't make it free.

Also, there _is_ a practical impact on the JS you see on a particular site: the fact that you can debug it doesn't mean you can change and redistribute it.

There are very real implications of having a piece of code released under a particular license and it's hardly accurate to call these implications "paranoia".

Plain squashing commits, while still a valid option in very few cases, will likely lead to gigantic commits that are hard to reason about.

I've seen projects where maintainers clean up poor commits before merging them: rebase/squash/reword only what's appropriate.

I agree that a well-done git rebase and commit strategy is much more useful. However, squashing everything will (most likely) lead to gigantic commits that are hard to reason about.

A better approach would be to create multiple small commits that work and are self contained. It's ok for commit N to depend on the preceding commit, but each N should be able to stand on its own.

If devs rebase everything before pushing and push often (therefore also rebasing often), conflicts will happen a lot less often. Devs can also use their private branches for temporarily saving all WIP, squashing/rewording only what makes before submitting the PR or pushing to master.

While this is "telling a story", the first commit will break your code for no good reason (i.e. if you rename a method, but not its usages, hell breaks loose). This make you lose one very useful features of git: the ability to binary search for the place where a bug was introduced - git bisect.

Which is why the author is granted a period of time in which they are the ones controlling/exploiting/restricting/etc their work. What I argue for is that this should not be forever. In fact, I would argue that the current generation should be free to derive work from works of their generation too, and not be restricted to "things from the past".

Whether the derived work is bad or good is beyond this conversation as one could argue is original work is not good/bad enough.

When I say compensation I'm not restricting it to "monetary compensation". In this sense, the years of "monopoly" over someone's work to benefit from it as they see fit is the actual compensation I was referring to.

As a developer, most likely your clients hold the copyright to the code you write, especially if this is not explicit in any other way. And even if you go one step further, the entire free software movement is based on copyright: the existence of copyright is what guarantees software remains free once published. Otherwise, people could just fork the code and close the source again.

To your last point, given that copyright already exists, is in place, and lasts for way too long, I believe it's the other way around: the burden of the proof lies on whoever wants to change it.

The so-called "myths" the author highlights are more like fallacies than actual facts. He briefly touches some points related to copyright and claims that that's all there is to it.

> Myth #5. Artists Feel Restricted by Copyright

Remixing works under copyright means you need the author's permission to do so, usually by paying royalties. This would be fine if copyrights ended at some point. Currently, in the US, they last way past the death of the author.

> Myth #4. Copyright Harms the Public Domain

He mentions The Little Prince as if all works are really popular. There are tons of works that are not popular, their authors don't even care about them anymore or are dead or companies have gone bankrupt, and remain under copyright. This makes it illegal for people to make copies and keep these works alive. Access to such usually also requires payment and what's affordable for some may not be so affordable for others.

> Myth #3. Copyright is an Attack on Artistic Freedom

He only mentions the freedom of the original author. Indeed, their freedom is not touched. Everybody else is hurt, though. Nobody else can express their artistic freedom on works under copyright without permission (which usually means paying royalties, but can also be impossible if the author doesn't approve the derived work).

> Myth #2. Copyright Costs Consumers

Nobody argues that authors need to be compensated for their work. How much is "fair" is a whole different story. Should they keep being compensated 25 years, 50 years, 100 years, 500 years, forever?

> Myth #1. Copyright only helps Corporations

Copyright, in general, is a good thing. Perpetual copyright is not. Copyright that extends beyond the life of the original author is not. After some time, only corporations will benefit, since their heirs will live much beyond the original authors and will profit on someone else's work.

EDIT: Here's a nice video on why eternal copyright is bad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk862BbjWx4

One very good reason can be seen today: after some of the books from the Sherlock Holmes series went into public domain, artists today are free to use and create derivative works based on/off of them.

Case in point: "Elementary" [1] is a Sherlock Holmes series where both Moriarty and Watson are women, Sherlock Holmes lives in NY and he doesn't get along with Inspector Lestrade.

If things never fall into public domain, doing something like this can be either very expensive (e.g. paying royalties) or plain impossible (e.g. the author simply doesn't allow it).

Copyright laws were meant to incentivize authors to create more, but no amount of incentives will make Sir Arthur Conan Doyle create more interesting stories, about Sherlock Holmes or otherwise.

[1]: http://thetvdb.com/?tab=series&id=255316

Many have done things that were common place in the past and are not anymore; or are plain illegal; or were found to be wrong. Sustaining something just because many people still do it doesn't really seem reasonable.

I think you mean "I don't care about my privacy at this moment". These are very different ideas. Or would you not care about your privacy if you visited a country where reading HN content was illegal? Or would you not care about the privacy of someone denouncing some government wrong doing? Or if someone started harassing you because of the things they found out you're doing?

There are plenty of cases where privacy are important, even if you think they don't currently apply to you.

This logic only applies if the company is trying to take advantage of their employees. Ultimately, it always blows up anyway because employees talk to one another.

From the perspective of a company who is not trying to exploit anybody, having open salaries (or at the very least, open initial salary ranges) benefits everybody: neither companies nor candidates waste time.

Perhaps a better way to make upvoting/downvoting work better would be to use rules such as some of the ones described on r/NeutralPolitics [1]. Here's the summary:

> Downvoting: reserve downvotes for posts that are explicitly breaking subreddit rules. Do not downvote someone simply because you disagree with them.

> Upvoting: legitimate evidence, solid reasoning, or respectful discourse; Upvote someone admitting that they are wrong. Upvote outstanding use of logic where evidence can’t be had

That seems to prevent - at least in theory - the whole hivemind behavior. You don't upvote/downvote because you agree, but because you see that there's something good about it, whether or not you share the same point of view.

[1]: http://www.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics/comments/ptgxf/meta_...

What if knowing you prefer Ethiopian coffee would make your insurance company charge you more because statistically these people are more prone to medical issues? Would you tell them in a heart beat?

The pendulum swings both ways, and this is the reason why all of this should be opt-in.

I would say there is a correlation, which is not to say it is causation.

I'd venture to say that going to school and getting a degree in CS would increase the likelihood of one becoming a better engineer. That is not to say everybody that has a degree is a great engineer or the other way around.

So, in a sense, it makes sense to take that into consideration when hiring someone, but much like everything else in an interview process, it should be taken with a grain of salt.

I think mode-based editing will be the answer of almost everyone, plus the imperative that you have to have a shortcut for everything.

That makes vim/emacs not only fast editors in the processing sense, but editors where you can be really fast at what you do. All this comes at a steep learning curve, which is the only downside I can see.

Everything you do has pros and cons. By spying on other countries, you may create enemies and eventually lose many lives in a war, for instance.

The point seemed to be: "just because it has a pro, doesn't mean I should do it". I could use the same logic to state that I can only gain by spying on my friends as well. Does that mean I should? Does that mean it has no downsides?