beyondcompute

Another weird product from Google. I have an impression (I might be wrong) that decisions there are made by a) hardcore geeks, b) “politicians”/ideologues. It manifests in company’s complete inability to connect with real-world everyday people, to understand what consumers want, what they prefer or dream about.

Another possibility is “self-organization”, of course, or decisions made by committees where everyone us afraid to hurt others’ feelings and the responsibilities are blurred so much that the resulting products always turn out awkward and full of compromises.

Products that are totally devoid of fun, desire and in some cases common sense.

Don’t forget firing some people based on their nationality. Gitlab’s good at that!

I like the idea. However, am I the only person who haven’t used an actual phone for years and is relying mostly on internet messaging services? So we should get an e-ink phone with only messenger apps installed and simplified UI to switch between them.

In my opinion, this does not mention the main point. Individuals (plus families, small communities, small businesses) loosing their power (privacy in this case) means corporations and governments get (even) more power. I’ll live it as an exercise to the reader to see why the latter trend might not be so good in the long run.

It’s just great! I think, it’s a very useful initiative!

Paris helped shaping almost every artist in Europe at that time :)

I think, that it’s reasonable not to use servers located in certain countries and not to use (closed-source) software made by some bigger companies there. I myself would not use much of the software or services from the countries mentioned. Because I know who might well be getting access to my data and what those people’s approximate values are.

But not hiring devs that are maybe trying to get away from those places? As a dev and an immigrant myself I could not just stay silent about that.

Well, the answer to that is simple. #boycottgitlab

I am working at a European company where the amount of Russian engineers is constantly increasing (similar thing happens in many of the bigger companies nearby). And they prove to be quite ok.

So since today I will speak strongly against use of Gitlab in my workplace should such a talk begin.

“Good news! Congratulations! You’ve got 10 weeks of learning and the amount of money lost is not so large! You’ve got subjected to a stressor and survived. Therefore, becoming stronger. Courage, experience, growth!”

So what?

Reality is for people with poor imaginations :)

Is typing bad for my brain?

“Nicotine – a learning platform for adults”.

Why is Googleʼs design so bad then if they have such a tough interview process? Corporate structure/culture kills even best-of-the best talentʼs initiative? I think, what they need is non-conformism. But they donʼt select presumably for non-conformism during interview. They select for obedience. (Just thinking out loud) When Google (having so much resources) will release a product whose UI would make people say, “wow?” Not just the (superior) data-processing capabilities or pretty good hardware.

Can’t use it because it requires too new a MacOS version :)

So how many programmers you know use a professional keyboard, say? I don't want to provide free advertisement here so I won't mention any brands. But the ones that have hands separated and keys placed in recessions for comfortable wrist position and modifier keys under thumbs? And those that are fully programmable, the ones that cost from 300 euro and up? I don't know about you but I have (on my mechanical 100+ euro keyboard) 'Ctrl(Caps Lock)-Command(Alt)-Enter' remapped to 'Alt-Backspace' (in parentheses — the original key) using a Lua-scripted software. If it's your idea of “refined” and “precise” then that's fine :) Moreover most of programmers I know (hundreds and hundreds) use a “minimalist slick” keyboard from a Californian company. It's a good keyboard for googling a guacamole recipe and a nice example of a “good-looking“ industrial design. But it's not a professional tool by any means.

I don't really want to get started about those slow laptops (that have “Pro” labels on them). I don't know about you but for me their performance is disappointing. (By the way, I use a 2010 Macbook Air as my home machine so no need to call me “picky”). Yet those “Pro” machines seem to be “default” ones in so many organizations I know. They are a good trade-off indeed between looks, portability, versatility and price. But they are nowhere near “pay whatever it takes to scrape every last drop of performance and reliability from your tools” approach that to me seems to designate the choice of tools by professionals.

About software. There's the brilliant, inspirational and slightly sad article: https://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff . Where, I remember, was a comment with a person asking, “do you want to pay hundreds of dollars for a text processor written with the level of quality described?” And my reaction was, “Hell, yes! If it's a professional tool and I earn tens of thousands using it, I should be able to pay accordingly for my main equipment”. In web development industry there's an apparent trend now to switch to “hipster” (I mostly like things hipster) text editors. Won't specify the names here but they are usually written in Javascript and HTML and are “highly customizable” but I rarely see them made to perform functions my IDE does out of the box. In the meantime, IDEs for web development are a few (are there any besides the Prague-made ones?) and are not very customizable by my needs (compared even to aforementioned lightweight editors).

Anyway, thank you for your answer and I am glad, that you do focus on the positive side of things!

● The two most successful and widely used to solve everyday problems paradigms/environments: spreadsheets and shell scripting (with pipes, etc.) are the ones that have the least attention from “industrial” and academic programmers. Lessons and strong points from those systems are being ignored.

● There are “clusters of bugs”, i.e., finding a bug in a certain module increases a chance to find a subsequent bug in the same module. This is understood intuitively by most people yet very few act on it, discarding modules that have too many bugs (and rewriting them from scratch) instead of continuing to sink resources into maintenance.

● While professionals in other industries use professional tools, programmers use commodity hardware and software (the kind a homemaker would use to google a guacamole recipe). :(

● Managers and programmers think that personality traits and team members' individualities do not matter and there's no role “human factor” plays in development. Ditto for self-organization vs constantly “organizing”/policing employees.

● There were pretty cool systems back in the day (with orthogonal persistence, ability to inspect and modify any object on-the-fly, etc.). The modern ones are not “bad” either but some lessons could still be learned.

● Sometimes there are notions that bad software is created due to sales people/economic pressure but analysis of, say, build tools shows that it is not the case. ;)

This is absolutely brilliant :)

Here's pretty nice material on the role of media in election 2016 from Hoover Institution at Stanford: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSZDiBjkaCM

I don't believe it's the 'best food city' even for vegetarians, let alone vegans :)

If you treat your employees like machines, the customers will inevitably sense it in your products.

> Google's Pixel phones built to challenge Apple iPhone

> Google Pixel phone launched to take on iPhone

> ...Pixel: Google’s First Real Threat to Apple’s iPhone

Why not "a phone to delight customers" or "phone to make people healthier and more connected with their family" or "a phone to democratize Android (and make it somewhat accessible to non-geeks)"?

Bret Victor is pretty interesting though a bit philosophical.

The best practical talk is of course this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asLUTiJJqdE - Robert "Uncle Bob" Martin, Clean Architecture and Design

I am glad about my decision to switch away from the Apple smartphone. Now I'm also thinking that I shouldn't wait for their laptops lineup update as well. There's our little way of fighting for justice and for society's interests against money-making paperclip maximizers. :)

That's a good question. I'd love to hear about it as well. But so far the popular answer is "hobby groups" (dance classes, photo walks organized via discussions on flickr, etc.).

What sort of worked for me the most so far, are various "international" meet-ups/communities, like Couchsurfing (they now have this feature called "Hangouts" where you could hang out with locals and travelers in real life) but those of course are a bit farther from "locals" and more into expat/traveller scenes.

Also, I believe, going to bars works as well. But you need some calm, cozy and compact places (not the crazy/party ones). Craft beer places work good in my experience also some "artsy" venues.

First of all, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma

Second of all government intervention already does lots of cool things for us: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2013-06-19/who-creat...

But we don't appreciate it because we're being fooled into "libertarian dream" by rich who want to get rid of our control: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-...

One more time, it's not in reality a "natural force". It's company owners and their severely overworked cliques consciously plan to put hundreds of millions people out of jobs to become personally more prosperous and they tell you that it's a "natural force".

No, of course, no. Goods becoming cheaper means people who sell goods at "adequate prices" will go out of business. Namely, local manufacturers, family businesses, people who pay decent sick leaves, people who obsess over sustainability. Your desire to save that 10% on a pack of potato chips means that instead of a neighboring guy who works in this shop for his entire life, who smiles to you, who knows what you want, you get these cold supermarkets with miserable people working like robots to make ends barely meet. Cheap things mean children working in China to make junk that goes to waste pretty soon, etc. Our obsession with unthoughtful saving means we're stealing pennies from our own future.

Well, I still believe that world became better than it was: https://www.ted.com/talks/larry_brilliant_makes_the_case_for...

And, of course, it all is just a food for thought, doesn't necessarily mean we need to prohibit sales of self-driving vehicles (except for special technical applications).

But still we have to understand that it's our conscious effort, not just the "natural force of Progress". As a society we should intervene and regulate things, and make that decision to steer the economic trends in ways harmonious with society's needs. As a related thought, I think, Jaron Lanier puts it nicely: https://youtu.be/XdEuII9cv-U?t=11m37s

Yeah, I've been thinking lately as well, why are we doing that? I mean as a society? (I recall a phrase said by someone, that we are consciously building a future nobody wants to live in.) What exactly are we getting from that?

Ultra-rich, namely car companies owners and shareholders, will become even more rich. (Why are they doing it, by the way, don't they have enough super-cars, mansions, yachts already?)

What am I getting from it? Basic goods will become 7% cheaper? Who needs that? I am happy with current prices.

And then dozens if not hundreds of millions people worldwide will lose their jobs and even more the very means for their existence. What will be the impact on their families, communities?

I may be terribly wrong but it seems like yet another round of value extraction by a small cohort of ultra-rich from general society.

There are technologies that are genuinely useful, like space exploration, scientific projects, disease fighting, urban development, planetary computer network, and so on.

And there are "comfort gimmicks" like refined sugar (and sugary drinks), tobacco, toasters, etc. that produce effects from which people living consciously and healthy would want to get rid of. And that are propelled only by "economic factors". Which are a paperclip maximizer.

Finally! After all these years someone is fixing the obvious basics. Yet still limited. Why only apps and not all websites as well?