g00gler

Why should I use Firefox, or any other browser, from a standard consumer prospective?

Let me preface this by saying I am open to a new browser, especially one that is always in "incognito" and doesn't share sessions between tabs/windows. My favorite is Lynx but that doesn't always work .

Facebook & Messenger for Android is pretty much spyware and they have over 1B downloads each, so that takes spying out of the discussion.

The last time I checked Chrome performed best (even if it is only marginal) on all benchmarks.

I know there are lots of serious reasons not to trust Google aside from user tracking (changing search results for political reasons[1], Eric Schmidt being a little too friendly w State Dept.[2]) but they make damn fine products.

[1] http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/google-think-tank-launch...

[2] https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/

So I think you're agreeing with me? I can't really tell.

I agree that knowledge of best practices is really important, because why would you need to run a plugin on top of your site to force HTTPS?

I use Apache to force HTTPS, Apache to handle error documents, etc. My themes each have their own cache manifest.

It's common sense / best practice to have a second server to test updates on, that's what I do. Given I only have 12 plugins with a handful on active on each site, it doesn't take too long. I also add and develop plugins on the second server.

IMO the shittiest thing about WordPress is the library so by and large I choose not to use it when it isn't necessary, so pretty much everything besides querying posts and accepting AJAX calls since they make it nearly impossible to otherwise.

In general, I try to develop apps/plugins that run 100% independent of WordPress and just write a wrapper for the library that's used for administration on the WordPress dashboard.

An example of this is a plugin that's more or less a long test, with some custom GUI and other requirements (save progress, download CSV, take notes, etc). I wrote it to WordPress standards and used a short code to add it to a page. It was slow, sooooo slow.

So, I rewrote the entire front end to be an independent app that uses a custom DB table, propagated by a plugin on the WordPress dashboard. Result? 80% faster load times.

Another example, I made a simple app that gets some data from another custom DB table and sends tweets, triggered by cron. It uses a SQLite DB to track a few settings and a list of users to mention.

I wrote a wrapper for the library with a simple API to manage settings in the WordPress dashboard.

Unless there is a drastic change to WordPress's plugin system these apps will always work. Even if there is a change, pretty much all the code that WordPress cares about is displaying the settings page and receiving AJAX requests.

It might not be by the book but it's faster and in my opinion, pretty logical. This way apps are portable and can be transferred to other platforms easily, not necessarily other WordPress sites on shared hosts but they're custom so that isn't the point.

* Edit to say, I wouldn't recommend any non technical user maintain a WordPress e-commerce site, anyways. Square makes it so easy, hosted secure and has tools for inventory and other things, too. All included in standard credit card processing fees.

I'm sure they aren't the only ones but I was amazed at how simply someone could set up a site, as I know someone who has a store and uses square for payment processing already.

I suppose so. I like to think my custom plugins are well written and maintainable. I attribute this to the fact that I identity as a JavaScript engineer with some classic OO tendencies (shout out to Gilfoyle). More or less I write JavaScript and Java/C# so I'm not some dipshit writing WordPress plugins w PHP/Wordpress as my first and only language and framework.

The nicest plugin I've seen [code wise] is the Jasig CAS authentication plugin, and for that I had to modify it to specify the behavior I wanted (custom 500, 501 screens, don't upsert user). So, whenever an update comes around I have to either ignore it or modify the code. Honestly, I think that's even against the license since I didn't publish my changes.

What do they use so many plugins for?

I took over supporting/developing a WordPress site and one of the first things I did was delete a bunch of pointless plugins. I wound up writing quite a few of my own for different tools and left some third party plugins so there are still probably 10 active between 3 sites on a multisite install.

I installed Google analytics directly in the header of the custom themes on each of the multisites.

There were no comments so all of the comment plugins were pointless, as were all the form plugins except for one.

So, why so many plugins? Am I missing something?

This. I had programmed on and off for awhile, never anything big, until I started doing it everyday. Now it's part of who I am and the way I think, kinda crazy.

I love this.

I have to pay Comcast for TV when I just want internet, that'd be bad enough but my parents pay 2x more for 20x slower connection (5mb/100b).

Kinda inspired me to talk to some of my neighbors and ask if they'd like to share internet.

I agree, I don't want a new MacBook and competition is shit.

I wish the Asus Zenbook 15" models didn't have a number pad.

Vaio models look pretty nice, I'd seriously consider the Vaio Z over a 13" MBP.

I don't have any such issue.

What I've been doing is just writing in ES6 and testing on Chrome, then after its towards V 1.0 I'll add webpack to the staging branch.

Very little work to switch from a bunch of script tags to a bundle towards the end of active development, much faster than bundling every single time I change the code a little bit.

That is, of course, unless I have to compile typescript, then I'll just target ES5 anyways.

Good way to look at it. Double that it is!

Even explicit instructions don't work for some reason.

With Google voice assistant I can't say "look up the New York Giants score then text it to Phil"

I don't recall reading that functionality in the Alexa docs, either.

Seems natural and logical to me.

* I had to specify New York Giants because Google always brings up the SF Giants if I don't

For real? Lol maybe I'll try $50 and see where it gets me.

I'm primarily a JavaScript developer (jQuery, React, Angular, et. al + Node) as that's my first choice and greatest depth of knowledge.

I'm also very knowledgeable about PHP but prefer to use classic OOP patterns with it hence my reprehension for WordPress.

I use ASP.Net and JavaEE at work. Kinda more circumstantial than anything, ie working with third party software. I actively choose not to seek further work with these tools because I don't enjoy using them.

I wouldn't mind building web services with .Net or Java, though. I imagine those jobs are probably not very prevalent but I was only on Upwork for a short time.

In all seriousness, how much of this was total bull shit? 100% or less?

How would you show them that using the HTML source?

You can use dev tools to view the network tab to find whatever URL Pandora is using.

You can use dev tools to find a media elements src attribute.

To see the JavaScript sources... You check the dev tools.

If anything, in the days of JavaScript, the HTML source will missing a few things.

Maybe perceived value has something to do with it. I believe I listed my hourly rate at $25 thinking I'd be competitive for some side $$.

I made some money but it seemed most things tagged JavaScript or PHP were either design work or WordPress plugins.

This thread inspired me to sign back up and raise my rate to something more realistic IRL ~ $30-35/hr.

Right-o about using the built in FDE. It's kind of funny to think about how many lay users walk around thinking their laptop is safely protected by a password.

My girlfriend was shocked at how easily I was able to "hack" her laptop and reset the forgotten password by changing whatever accessibility.exe to cmd.exe.

I sell phones and other electronics on a semi regular basis. Usually the only problem I have is people who send obviously fake PayPal emails and request the phone be shipped overseas.

No longer accepting addresses outside of the US helped reduce the spam.

I write procedural scripts all the time for just getting things done, often in JavaScript, Perl and PHP.

I've only worked on one application written without any OO patterns, completely procedural, and it was a complete mess.

Adding or extending features caused cascading bugs. Eventually we had to rewrite the backend (PHP) into MVC to be productive. I quit because I dreaded the work. I didn't want to write another line.

I have been pretty interested in functional programming lately, or the functional paradigm everyone in JS is following nowadays, but haven't gotten the chance to take a deep dive yet.

No, not the same. The general concepts are similar, though.

My thinking goes: understanding classic OOP is helpful in learning JavaScript because the high level concepts are the same but in my opinion more obvious and easier to implement in Java/C#.

By more obvious, a Java/C# (+ others) program starts with a class and to add functionality you either have to add more methods to that class or implement another class. So to a new programmer "duh, everything is an object and objects are instances of a class".

It's kind of hard to convey the same idea to someone in JavaScript when {} is called an object, "xxx" is an object, and to compose a new class, you compose a new function.

However, to someone who already understands classes and objects, it's just a new/different way to create classes and objects.

I second this. It was so easy to write JavaScript after writing C# and others for awhile.

Now I write mostly JavaScript (<3 TypeScript) because it's so easy and fast, but having traditional OOP principals in my head is very helpful.

You'll also find many more, much better examples for data structures and algorithms in Java or C#.

I find myself in a similar boat quite often. I come up with lots of different ideas but they're not very good or have already been done.

Other times I start building then get bored and convince myself it won't work out anyways.

So I was considering this today and this is what I came up with:

I think it'd be fun and helpful to have another developer to work with, someone to keep you interested in the project and discuss the work with who will actually care.

Pretty interesting. I use the money I get for holidays almost exclusively for cigarettes, alcohol, and gambling.

Someone should perform a survey of middle to upper class people and see what they spend free money on. Are they just projecting their insecurities on other people?

* Disclaimer: Correct me if I'm wrong, I haven't used flow extensively but I did check the docs.

One big thing is TypeScript classes are entirely different than standard JS classes. I guess you don't have to use them but it adds Abstract classes, interfaces and access control (eg private, protected vars).

I have to second Mr.timruffles. After using TS in a couple of projects I grew to miss it when I couldn't use it.

If you don't like the C#-ness of Typescript, try using Facebook's flow. Typing isn't a magic bullet, typescript isn't even type safe, but it sure makes development easier and your apps more stable.

That's hilarious. I wonder if the scammers hired actors + set up a scene to make the recording.

Yes, this exactly. If anyone cared to check out the advanced configuration it is pretty much exclusively turning off security vulnerabilities.

One of them is "Automatically trust WiFi connections my contacts trust", a bunch of others are sending data to Microsoft. It's been a few months since I turned on a new Windows 10 PC but I was completely turned off by the advanced configuration.

The #3 story on HN right now is "Windows 10 in-place upgrades are a severe security risk"

I thought this was a good read the other day https://www.brokenbrowser.com/abusing-of-protocols/

It just seems terrible security wise, the OS itself is spyware.

That is to say, I was excited to be trying out a sexy new Asus Ultrabook with Ubuntu mixed in but didn't care to try after setting it up.

You could sit your girlfriend down and do the "advanced configuration" on Windows 10, then she'll understand why Linux is better.

Site is offline :o

Right. That is fucking nuts.

I've yet to read his book, but I'll just leave this excerpt here

https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/

I had the same experience building a SPA with jQuery. Updating the view and keeping it in sync was atrocious.

I also made the mistake of making a non SPA recently, using jQuery on the front end. It's a nightmare. I did this so a friend could collaborate and learn, but I really dread writing code for the front end anymore.

Coming back to the old ways from Angular, Backbone, etc feels like a HUGE step backwards in terms of the amount of time. Like if for some reason I decided to ride a horse instead of drive a car.