I've only watched Tim Cook's introduction, but it sounds like his voice is being shifted (autotuned) to sound pitch-perfect. It's pretty uncanny valley and off-putting imho.
434 karma · joined September 2, 2019
It might not sound like a big deal because it's just "a bunch of users and their posts/memes", but many people get the vast majority of their social interactions through social media. A sudden, total loss of such a site could be devastating to someone's social life. They might've lost contact with an intimate friend group they knew only via aliases with no other way to reach out.
Even for older generations like Baby Boomers, life is an increasingly online experience:
- How many senior citizens are reliant on Facebook for tons of their daily interactions with old friends? Probably a lot!
- Entire degrees from reputable universities can be earned fully remotely, and the transcripts, curricula, forum posts, and even proof that you earned such a degree exist in databases and distributed systems vulnerable to the exact same types of flaws outlined in the OP.
- Dating apps like Tinder / Bumble connect people who form long-lasting and loving relationships, and the sudden loss of such platforms could quickly end your potential lifelong romance.
- LinkedIn networks are of huge importance to some for continued, gainful employment. Are there memes there? Sure! But does that mean it's "just a bunch of posts and memes" whose loss would be fine? Hardly, in my opinion.
That's actually why I built GnuCash-Helper[0]. It's a web-based personal finance tool written with Python and Flask that works with GnuCash files. It's not nearly ready for prime time, but I use it daily, and I don't even open GnuCash anymore.
In general, I really wish that GnuCash would get a visual refresh and some more modern features. It's amazing, but it looks very 2006, and it has bad stories for mobile and web. Obviously, HN readers are a different breed, but good luck convincing most people to run desktop-only software in 2023.
I don't have any CSS media queries to make it better on the desktop, but I'm going to copy Thomas Park's CSS to make it more usable in the future. Thanks for the critique!
In my opinion, the PDF generator made by OP makes way more beautiful invoices than GnuCash. However, generating is only part of the story; tracking invoice balances and knowing who still owes you is another. GnuCash does both in one place, which is why I am plugging it here. It's worked well for my small business. It even gives you a nice pop-up reminder when you open the program that reminds you about unpaid Accounts Receivable.
Afterwards, I realized there was a package called aiohttp that I could've used, but too late.
I'll be interested to see what other HN people have done.
Funny, I actually mentioned Snap-On by name in one of my other replies, probably around the same time you were commenting. They've got good brand recognition, apparently!
At least it's not as bad as the gilded age where workers got paid in company-store scrip and lived in company housing in a company-run town. Still, I think it's a step in the wrong direction.
I'm not trying to be dramatic or imply that Canonical's device policy is some act of pure evil, but it was a contributing factor to my decision not to move forward. I have a computer that would serve the purpose just fine. It's more about principles. By itself, that policy wouldn't have been so bad, but combined with other red flags it was enough for me to stay away.
As another commenter said, you're adding wear and tear to your own device. Sure, I have my own computers, but they're all spoken for, hosting VMs and containers or acting as my lab. Why should I subsidize the profits of a multi-million-dollar, for-profit company by letting them use my computer at no extra cost?
Your e-waste point is a good one, but I don't think Canonical's managers were looking out for mother nature when they made that choice.
One position required me to take a psychoanalytical test where they judge your personality traits to A.) make sure you have the desired personality traits for the role and B.) that you're smart enough for the role. I looked at the terms of service for the company they outsourced this test to, and it seemed like a data breach waiting to happen. I expressed my concern to the HR team in charge of hiring, and said I wouldn't feel comfortable having that kind of deeply personal info shared. I further expressed surprise that an open-source software company was using this test at all, given the usual penchant for data privacy in the FLOSS community. They (cordially) said I could either take the test or drop out-- I chose the latter.
For the other role, the interview process was going well, and I made it to final round. But, I ran when I saw their tech stack and tech debt. Lots of Jenkins and heavy reliance on Launchpad for almost everything. Launchpad might not technically be proprietary since it's GNU-licensed, but it's as good as proprietary if Canonical is one of the few companies using it commercially. And Jenkins is just Java / Groovy garbage all the way down.
It also struck me as a red flag that Canonical is 100% BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), and they do not provide a work computer. You can apply for a _loan_ to buy a computer for work, but they will not pay for one. If a company is too cheap to provide a computer at a job where you work remotely and exclusively on a computer, I don't want to be a part of that company.
Lastly, I read a lot of negative press about Canonical's CEO Mark Shuttleworth while researching the company. In general, Canonical seems like a sketchy place to work.
All of the above is explained in this article[1] (I just lazily searched for one).
Sources: 1: https://crk.umn.edu/library/primary-secondary-and-tertiary-s...
I think they mean it impacts less than 2% of user _accounts_. Not every account is created equal. If you were an open-source org with millions of image downloads a month, having your org deleted would have an outsized effect on the community. Many more Docker Hub users than 2% stand to be affected by these changes, even if the nominal value of 2% of user accounts is accurate.
Also, this "apology" does not feel even 2% apologetic. "I am sorry you misunderstood us" is not an apology. They're running the seldom used "docker pull gaslight:latest" command.
There are many armchair economists here, mostly with a pure software dev outlook on the topic. People who've never taken a single class about finance confidently chime in with some of the worst takes I've ever heard.
They seem to think that because they're good at programming, they must therefore be masters of all studies, since STEM majors are often harder to get accepted into. This is a logical fallacy, and it's pretty tiring.
I filed a support ticket asking for help, and they told me they only support Ubuntu and Pop. On one hand, I understand having service desk limits, but their garbage UEFI and lack of support left me no choice but to return the laptop. In fact, I thought this article was going to be about people returning laptops to System76!
I really hope they get their game together and make a pre-boot system that can handle non-Ububtu stuff easily. The previous System76 I had was able to handle a Debian install just fine.
It has clients for desktop on Linux, Mac, and Windows, and it's got Apple and Android mobile clients. There's also a browser plugin. I've had a great experience so far.
I also use KeepassX, though it's a lot less usable / portable.
References: 1: https://buttercup.pw
References:
But, once I started using Python, and specifically the ipython interpreter, I realized that programming didn't always have to be statically typed and compiled and work with a Makefile. It could work like a bash prompt!
Eventually, I did branch out into Rust for compiled languages, but my REPL realization gave me the ability to experiment and "fail fast" in a more familiar environment.
I gave libgrapheme a try, and it compiled just as the instructions said it would. The hello-world program also mostly worked, but in my terminal it malformed several things. For example the American flag emoji rendered in my terminal as [U][S], and the family emoji rendered as three distinct emoji faces (side-by-side) rather than one grouped one.
I went to a website that lets me copy emojis to my clipboard, and I directly copy-pasted the American flag into my terminal, and I still got [U][S], so I think the problem is just with the terminal and not the library.
edit: Indeed, this is a problem in Gnome terminal. I found a Bugzilla link[0] that is still open. The official name for the grouped emoji type is "ZWJ sequence"[1], short for Zero-Width Joiner, and it appears not a lot of terminals support them. If anyone knows of a good one for Linux, please let me know!
Great stuff, thank you for sharing!
References:
Still, there isn't a lot of novelty to this article-- no new technology, no real changes besides a slightly bolstered build for outdoor travel. The article just describes a new Ford vehicle and tells you the price and when it's available. How is this newsworthy?
On a side note, I don't think this game will necessarily make a player overall better at using the pen tool. This is more like "how to cheat at the pen tool" to achieve an approximation of a stroke with the fewest nodes possible. While playing, I had some pretty ugly-looking Bézier paths that technically passed the test and used fewer nodes than I had available. But, some of the places where the original image had sharp corners were really round on mine.
I understand that "server" is an abstract term and just means "something which provides a service", but most other uses of the word relate to something owned by the person operating it. E.g., if I run a Matrix server instance, it's mine to administer, manage, destroy, etc. If I start a Discord "server" it's a glorified chat room or set of chat rooms owned and maintained by the company.
Language is powerful and helps shape our world, and by redefining "server" to mean a segmented part of someone else's website, it's another nail in the coffin for the concept of real ownership.
I only got a couple paragraphs into the letter, but this sounds like the author is diminishing the severity of what Ross did.
This isn't so much a value judgement as it is an observation.
I host my own instance of Matrix / Element Web, so this would be great if it's not too difficult to set up.
You can try it here if interested: https://demo.checkyour.finance
Source code: https://github.com/bxbrenden/GnuCash-Helper
So, I made a small companion app called gnucash-helper [2]. It's a Python/Flask web app for doing the very basics of GnuCash, i.e. entering transactions, looking at their history, and checking balances.
If you want to try it out, there's a demo of it on https://demo.checkyour.finance. The container it runs in is destroyed every 30 minutes, but that's enough time to play with it. It's very simple, but it does everything I need, to the point that I no longer have to open the desktop program.
Your feedback is most welcome. I should say right now, though: it's more like beta software at this point. I haven't built the Docker container in a while, so the one on Docker Hub may or may not work. If anyone has any interest in contributing ideas or code to this, I would love to hear about it.
Edit:
A couple things I forgot to mention:
- The backend for this is a .gnucash file that is saved in the sqlite file format. You can add your own into an S3 bucket, and this will write to it using Python's boto3 library.
- There's no way as of yet to download the GnuCash file directly from the web app, but I would like to add that in the future.
- The heart of this app is the Piecash Python library [3]. It lets you use Python to alter GnuCash files.
References:
[1]: https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v4/C/gnucash-guide/basics-files...