awesome_dude

Trunk based development is still a hotly debated topic. I personally prefer branches at this point in time, trunk based development has caused me more trouble than it's claimed worth in the past, BUT that could be a me limitation rather than a limitation of the style

Just FTR - git /can/ store that information, but it requires human input.

If you rebase the feature branch into the main branch THEN follow it up with the merge commit that records the branch name you store the branches (that have been made a part of main) and can see where they are in your log

Mercurial's notes can become cumbersome if there are a large number in the repository, but, obviously, humans can sort that out if it gets out of hand

The levels do the most important thing in computer science, give discrete and meaningful levels to talk/argue about at the watercolour

Hmm, that feels a bit subjective - I'm not going to say X is easier than Y when I've just finished saying that I found both tools to have a lot of black magic happening.

But what I will point out, for better or worse, people are now looking at LLMs as Git masters, which is effectively making the LLM the UI which is going to have the effect of removing any assumed advantage of whichever is the "superior" UX

I do wish to make absolutely clear that I personally am not yet ready to completely delegate VCS work to LLMs - as I have pointed out I have what I like to think of as an advanced understanding of the tools, which affords me the luxury of not having an LLM shoot me in the foot, that is soley reserved as my own doing :)

I mean, in the fickle world that is TECH, I am struggling to believe that that's what's happened.

I personally went from .latest.latest.latest.use.this (naming versions as latest) to tortoise SVN (which I struggled with) to Git (which I also was one of those "walk around with a few memorised commands" people that don't actually know how to use it) to reading the fine manual (well 2.5 chapters of it) to being an evangalist.

I've tried Mercurial, and, frankly, it was just as black magic as Git was to me.

That's network effects.

But my counter is - I've not found Mercurial to be any better, not at all.

I have made multiple attempts to use it, but it's just not doing what I want.

And that's why I'm asking, is it any better, or not.

Whatever your opinion on one tool or another might be - it does seem weird that the "market" has been captured by what you are saying is a lesser product.

IOW, what do you know that nobody else does?

AI is still a token matching engine - it has ZERO understanding of what those tokens mean

It's doing a damned good job at putting tokens together, but to put it into context that a lot of people will likely understand - it's still a correlation tool, not a causation.

That's why I like it for "search" it's brilliant for finding sets of tokens that belong with the tokens I have provided it.

PS. I use the term token here not as the currency by which a payment is determined, but the tokenisation of the words, letters, paragraphs, novels being provided to and by the LLMs

If Claude was used in the creation of the change, there's usually some dialogue for Claude to use.

FWIW i use Claude to help with code changes, then give the diff to Gemini to review/ create meaningful commit messages

This is where the "Trunk based development" people live - I personally believe that commits should be atomic, because git bisect on smaller meaningful commits is a hang of a lot better than a monster 90 file change commit

For now - the law of enshittification means that the free/cheap access to AI will be curtailed soon enough.

The relevant XKCD comic https://xkcd.com/1597/

FWIW I too was once a "memorised a few commands and that was it" type of dev, then I read 3 chapters of the Git book https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2 (well really two, the first chapter was a "these are things you already know") and wow did my life with git change.

> and then replacing those hacks with better code just never happens

Yeah, we even have an idiom for this - "Temporary is always permanent"

I think that it's a fair title - it takes the "hidden" search terms and brings them to the surface for users.

The (default) YouTube search is barely useful

They have made a search WITH the advanced features available

Everything as advertised (IMO)

Not all hackers!

> Is that a skill or communicating experience?

uhhh, how is communicating experience not a skill?

Sure kid, go play with that footgun

uh no.

The best way (IMO) is "Look, I've tried that idea and X happened, you might have better luck, but be aware"

> While I'm at it, Eucalyptus trees have very very dense wood which means the wood burns very hot. This makes it even worse for forest fires where Eucalyptus trees dominate.

Forgive my ignorance, but I had understood the density of the wood meaning that the trunks of the trees were less likely to burn in a forest fire (which eucalypts encourage by shedding large amounts of dry bark)

The most recent example - I have been seeing reels/tik toks fronted by young women, that push Iranian talking points, they were saying that Trump's announcements on the conflict were timed to manipulate markets, and to "watch tomorrow"

They were referring to a Sunday before the Markets opened, and right on cue President Trump started making announcements that had a massive effect on market movements

Previously the USA government were downplaying (then retaliatory) Iranian drone attacks on bases in the middle east, claiming zero damage, and laughing at the attackers, the Iranians provided footage that showed real damage, and the US military released statement(s) that agreed with the Iranian claims.

Now, I'm not going to pretend that the Iranian regime is anything but a steaming pile of ew, but the lesson we were supposed to learn from the Vietnam war, and the Iraq war (II), was that hearts and minds are the key to "winning", and that's built on trust, which is built on transparency and honesty.

edit: and the Afghanistan invasion

This.

One of the things I have disliked about the Iranian conflict is that their propaganda/messaging has been, by quite a margin, more reliable than what the US/Israel have been putting out.

I like to think that I live in a free/liberal democratic portion of the world, but seeing the "other side" being more honest really puts a dent in things.

I think that there is a problem here - you're talking about the firing of the defense system at targets, whereas knowing that that radar needs to be readied because missiles have been detected is what the other radar system provided.

For me, the big issue is going to be mobile devices (phones, and tablets to a lesser degree)

I've already had it up to my back teeth with Google arbitrarily updating things such that the on/off button was hijacked, preventing me from switch the device off, instead triggering an interaction with freaking Gemini (what sort of IDIOT thought doing that to a device was a good idea)

I'm seriously trying to find a way to no longer run Apple or Google OS based phones - which puts me in the "Linux" or "Graphene" market

Yeah - have a wee think about what a sink is bud.

> Illegal bookmaking (SP)/Race fixing

> The race track, it appears, is a great meeting place for criminals. The Costigan Royal Commission (Australia 1984), the Connor Inquiry (Victoria 1983), the Moffit Royal Commission (New South Wales 1974) and the Fitzgerald Inquiry (Queensland 1989) revealed that a vast network of SP bookmakers exists throughout Australia. They found the monetary flow in the industry huge, and as such has the potential to finance many other illegal activities.

> Mr Justice Moffit warned that there was evidence to indicate that SP syndicates were in contact with major heroin smugglers and domestic drug distributors (New South Wales 1974).

> Connor estimated that the annual turnover for SP bookmaking was $1800 million in New South Wales and $1000 million in Victoria. Connor has said of illegal bookmaking: >> Illegal bookmaking is a multimillion dollar industry run by people who can get up to forty or fifty telephones and who, if their telephones are closed down, can get them in new premises a week later. Illegal bookmakers prosper, making millions of illegal dollars, simply because they do not pay income tax or betting taxes (Victoria 1983a, vol. 2, ch. 14).[0]

McMillen, J. (1996). "Gambling Cultures: Studies in History and Interpretation."

This academic study explains that SP bookmaking was a "submerged" culture. It operated through "runners" in pubs and massive illegal telephone exchanges. If you weren't a "punter" or part of that specific working-class pub culture, the infrastructure was invisible by design to avoid police detection. (unfortunately I cannot link you to a direct copy - but https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/97802039935... )

[0]https://www.aic.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-05/tandi024....

https://henley.austlii.edu.au/au/other/cth/AURoyalC/1984/2.p... (It's a prick of a thing to search, but the phrase "River of gold" was used to describe the profits the union was taking from illegal gambling)

True - legalisation increased total gambling.

But your original claim was 'very few gambled illegally' which the historical record contradicts.

The Costigan and Fitzgerald inquiries showed illegal gambling wasn't just widespread - the profits funded other organised crime including the heroin trade.

We can debate whether legalisation was net positive without rewriting that history.

Sorry, but what?

Illegal gambling has been rife for a very long time - the bookie down the pub taking bets on horses, games, whatever

Add to that that the Costigan Commission (1984) and the Fitzgerald Inquiry (1989) proved that illegal gambling was the foundational "river of gold" for organised crime in Australia.

I would love to know more, but am so ignorant about working with multiple sessions running in parallel that I don't know where to start - do you have a blog or published article to share that might get people like me into a more educated space

The ads are going to continue from 8:30pm on, NRL has a game starting at 8pm this evening, the gambling ads will hit just before half time under this new legislation

People that consume more are carbon sinks...

How ludicrous is this argument going to get?

The (NZ) government that changed the approach is heavily loaded with Tobacco friendly Ministers - the expectation is that when the government is voted out (no government lasts forever) the age based approach will be bought back in.

> Right now, we have a similar situation with AI. Not enough people are asking why AI is being pushed so hard. Instead they pointlessly bicker about its effectiveness.

We know why it's being pushed so hard - people need a return on all that money being burnt.

It's effectiveness is argued about because it's not clear one way or the other where things are, where they are heading, and where they will end up.

There has been a strong push for AI/AGI since before computing, so every time there's a breakthrough to the next level there's a hypewagon doing the rounds, followed by a "oh, actually it's not there yet" - and this time, like every other time, we go through a "is this the time? It's so tantalisingly close"

Are we actually there now? Emphatically no.

Are we at a point where it's usable and improving our lives - yes, with a PILE of caveats.

Edit: I wanted to add

There's always "True believers" whenever there is a fork in the road, and con artists looking to take advantage of them, but that happens whether there is a genuine breakthrough, or not - the hype is never a guide on whether the breakthrough exists OR not, so purely being a sceptic isn't worthwhile (IMO)