trey-jones

As a parent who gave my oldest child a (very used) smartphone just before she turned 14, I would be in favor of making smartphones illegal under age 15 (or some other number, higher or lower I don't care). I'm pretty sure they're worse than cigarettes for the future of humanity.

The classic comeback - every time I mention simplicity to a particular team member of mine, this is what he says. Complexity is unavoidable. Yes. But if you don't fight it tooth and nail, spend more time than you want trying to simplify the solution, getting second opinions (more minds on difficult problems are better!), then you will increase complexity more than you needed to. This is just a different form a technical debt: you will pay the price in maintenance later.

This may be a bit pedantic, but Emacs-as-a-hammer metaphor might work better than you intended, since a hammer is definitely useful for more than just hitting nails. This seems pretty neat to me.

Calling one of the most mature software projects on the planet a buggy mess is something, but yes, I would opt for TODO.org instead of .txt

Serious question - what does AD do that OpenLDAP (or similar) doesn't?

I'm on record saying it's "like the smartest coworker I've ever had" (no offense).

Doing my own post-mortem of a recent project (the first that I've leaned on "AI" tools to any extent), my feeling was the following:

1. It did not make me faster. I don't know that I expected it to.

2. It's very possible that it made me slower.

3. The quality of my work was better.

Slower and better are related here, because I used these tools more to either check ideas that I had for soundness, or to get some fresh ideas if I didn't have a good one. In many cases the workflow would be: "I don't like that idea, what else do you have for me?"

There were also instances of being led by my tools into a rabbit hole that I eventually just abandoned, so that also contributes to the slowness. This might happen in instances where I'm using "AI" to help cover areas that I'm less of an expert in (and these were great learning experiences). In my areas of expertise, it was much more likely that I would refine my ideas, or the "AI" tool's ideas into something that I was ultimately very pleased with, hence the improved quality.

Now, some people might think that speed is the only metric that matters, and certainly it's harder to quantify quality - but it definitely felt worth it to me.

It's funny, I would not put this or the Martian into made-to-be-movie category, mainly featuring a single protagonist alone with his thoughts of how best to effect survival. I haven't (and probably won't) see the movies. I preferred the Martian very much compared to PHM, but I did enjoy it. Just had a problem with suspension of disbelief to do trivialization of language learning and communication (especially alien).

Worse, I've been told that attempting to dry indoors would result in rot (given not enough air flow, which might not be the case in all indoor environments), and consequently have never tried it. I've exclusively air dried pine, oak, poplar, pecan, cedar, all under open walled structures and not had too many problems over the last 20 years (and my dad was doing it for another 30 before that).

I think it's pretty easy to learn to just M-x dired compared to however you switch to terminal in these cases and probably would be worth it. I guess we're using this "file management" term to mean delete or move - it's whatever you want it to be.

dired-mode is fairly necessary in emacs to preserve the continuity of what you are editing.

For example, if I'm editing a file called originalfilename.txt, and I decide it should be called newfilename.txt, I can mv originalfilename.txt newfilename.txt in the terminal and it's all good, but you're still editing the buffer originalfilename.txt in emacs and if you save it you will have a new file with that name.

Using dired to change the filename updates all the buffers that are using that file.

dired gets some hate, I think because it creates a lot of buffers and they tend to stick around, but it's never bothered me.

As someone who occasionally does use WSL, I definitely think it's not better no. But I'm still biased, because I know a lot more about using linux than I do about using windows, and WSL is still windows.

Well, I'd still rather just use linux, but I take your meaning.

It's a silly idea for a hack. If I can do it for 20 minutes, I can (and will, if necessary) do it for 8 hours; it's getting started with that first 20 minutes that holds me up.

Marie Antoinette was "just disconnected" and look what happened to her.

Wow, did you travel here from 2002?

Edit: In case it's not clear from my initial, gut-driven snark: I definitely think if you use a reasonably popular distro (commercially backed or not) in 2025, you should never have any trouble connecting peripherals to it, with the possible exception of Bluetooth, which I hear also applies to macOS.

Many people here are commenting that brew is a good way to get modern tools. I must say, I prefer Docker by several country miles.

I think this can be mitigated by proofreading and changing up a few things.

Two uses for me (as a native English speaker who writes pretty well on my own):

1. Reformatting notes or bits of information into something more formal (something I consider actually counterproductive in a way, since formal is often more verbose, but that's expected in certain contexts...)

2. Sifting through the crap of the internet to answer obscure questions. The Google replacement that has been needed.

It's not even spiritual, it's just care. If you care about something you build, and you are able to put in the required time and effort, there is a great possibility your output will be high-quality.

Unfortunately, high-quality is playing second fiddle to low-cost (and does the job) for the majority.

Safer for buyers and users I guess. Based on being able to smell marijuana coming from so many car windows just walking around town, I'm not sure it would be safer for the public. I'm not anti-legalization by the way - I think it's similar to gambling: a mixed bag.

I proclaimed nearly this exact opinion in the jury box after being summoned between 15 and 20 years ago. They didn't pick me for trial, which was the intended effect. I really did believe it at the time. Nowadays, I just think it's way more complicated and there are no simple or blanket answers.

Using web technology to build "native" mobile apps has been around almost as long as mobile apps themselves. I used Appcelerator Titanium and Phonegap to do this beginning in 2012 (maybe even 2011) before eventually trying Native development later after finding these options underwhelming.

I have a reasonable amount of experience doing both, and my opinion is that development tools aren't really the problem. The biggest pain point is the platform specific deployment and maintenance requirements (including legal and technical documentation) that will be needed regardless of what technology you use to actually build the product. Because of this I always advise clients that they don't really need a mobile app. Just build it on the web.

If you absolutely must have a mobile app, you need to fully commit and hire an internal development team and be prepared to keep paying them as long as the app is going to be in use.

Well it's definitely possible to have different takeaways from the same book. I can't remember what I took away as a high school student, but when I read it again in my late 30s (I think) it blew my mind a little bit because I had adopted a sort of libertarian view that anything that doesn't directly impede the happiness of someone else should be legal. Coming down to the idea that personal happiness is ultimately what I want (not just for myself; for everybody). Brave New World (which is almost 100 years old at this point) says, "OK, here is a world where everyone can be happy all the time. What do you think?" And as a reader, of course I'm on the side of John Savage. The Soma holiday and ignorance (bliss) is not what I'm after. And of course, without contrast against strife and unhappiness, how can there be happiness at all?

To pile on the battery issue, we had some very severe storms in my area that took down power for days and internet for weeks. Credit card processing was not possible for gas stations during that time period, but the pumps worked when the power came back on. The only way you could fill up at those stations was with cash. It doesn't happen every day, but it does happen, and perhaps more importantly could be made to happen.

Not that cash is necessarily a lot better. I can't remember what sci-fi character made the observation that "all currency is mutual delusion", but I observe the truth of that. I've thought it was in Hyperion, but have not been able to find it.

Well, about 25 years ago the EU issued 1 and 2 Euro coins (no bills for those denominations) and as far as I know still do. So it's working for them. When I lived over there (2005ish) I didn't care much for carrying a coin purse in addition to my wallet, but I think that's just a cultural/personal preference. Likely same as you.

It's tricky, because an insurer of your body (for medical care) has a vested interest in you taking good care of it (health care). By offering to pay for these services, they can potentially realize savings by not paying for the surgery that your undiagnosed diabetes or heart disease or whatever resulted in later on.

And since this is capitalism, if one guy offers that (an obvious benefit, or so it seems at least), their competition must do the same. Now the marketing department has us convinced that insuring only for major expenses (high deductible plans, basically) is stupid and that good coverage means only paying copays (which are also on the rise, duh). And it's easy to convince the public of that because paying a $35 copay for a 10 minute exam is still an easier pill for most of us to swallow than $100 or $200 self pay for same, since we're not thinking about the $15,000 premium which can be made nearly invisible to the consumer if their employer is paying for it, etc. Numbers made up of course, but I think the scale is reasonable.

I don't have all the answers, but I do think it's obvious that capitalism is not the correct approach if your goal is a healthy population.

Apparently poor time management throughout the match, though I didn't see every game. It sounds like he was lucky to survive 6-6.

Spoiler alert! I was planning to watch the recap without knowing the outcome, but I'm not that invested. Congratulations to the new champion.

No worries, I think maybe I replied to the wrong comment - I would have expected to reply to someone who can't see how an Emacs (or vi) user could be as productive as an IDE user.