Use it when it makes sense, but make sure you never, ever, depend on it.
They will do everything in their power so you do.
They will make it very attractive. Very convenient. At some point it will require active efforts not to. People might pressure you to do so, like when everybody asked you to create a FB account.
But unlike facebook users, you have the technical know-how, so if you put your entire dev stack in the proprietary cloud, with microsoft services on top of that, nobody will cry for you when you ineluctably get bitten by it a few years from now.
Big companies are not your friends. They will abuse it. You will get locked in.
> Use it when it makes sense, but make sure you never, ever, depend on it.
> They will do everything in their power so you do.
It seems utterly insane to me that we put up with this. VSCode is a pretty simple tool. A recent iteration of a tool that we've had since the 60s. But they do their damndest to hook you and then keep you hooked.
It's like if a tool company put out a hammer with a comfortable handle and everyone bought one. Then to make sure sales stayed high, they started selling them with the handles secretly coated in cocaine to keep people buying.
To parent's point, depending on your org "VSCode" is less the editor part, and more the server component coupled with specific extensions, and probably container definitions for some esotheric projects.
We have a setup guide for beginners, and the VSCode route can be set in 15 min , where going for any other editor would probably require half a day.
Switching to something else could of course be done with enough effort, but it would take some crazy level sabotage from Microsoft to go these lengths.
> So if you root an Android phone and get flagged by the Android Integrity API, several types of apps will just refuse to run.
That's just messed up. If like saying if your car detect you have been doing maintenance yourself, you can use this particular brand of carburetor because they will refuse to work.
I use Firefox on desktop and mobile, I use DDG, stopped using Google Analytics but I sadly still use Gmail and Android. I degoogled the east things (e.g. GA and Chrome) but getting totally rid off Google is hard.
Sometimes impossible in my case. Google Drive is always used in any collaborative project; so is Google Colab and Google Meet. And I still have the instinctual drive to reach for Google Translate/Maps, because it's so easy to access (physically and mentally).
When a shirt is dirty, one stain doesn't stand out much.
When a shirt is white and clean, the smallest stain stands out.
Mozilla is one of the rare companies with a mostly white clean shirt.
It is been judged harshly, while we should rejoice that they have been doing amazing things for 20 years despite the competition being terrible people playing dirty.
If we keep doing this, they will be no more Mozilla in the world. Who wants to be the good guys if you are held up against impossible standards when your competitors are paid handsomely to destroy the world?
I know some groups that target perfect ethics: they do nothing, because it's impossible to do anything without screwing up sometimes.
I disagree. The shirt isn't white anymore but turning beige. Precisely because people let a lot of Mozilla's shit slide just because "there aren't any better alternatives".
We're not holding Mozilla to higher standards than Google - we just have already discarded Google as an option.
Not collecting telemetry that many users have explicitly stated they do not want and even turned off at every opportunity is not a particularly high standard. Not wanting advertisements integrated into the web browser is not a particularly high standard. Criticizing that the CEO salary has been increasing to absurd levels while the browser has been declining and regular engineers are facing is not holding them to a particlarly high standard. Not wanting the last remaining competitive free web browser run as a commercial project rather than a non-profit foundation is not a high standard. Mozilla chooses to be shittier and shittier. Inaction would be better.
> The shirt isn't white anymore but turning beige. Precisely because people let a lot of Mozilla's shit slide just because "there aren't any better alternatives".
There's some nuance there, too.
It's "turned beige", in part, because people refused to use it while it was still "white". Mozilla has had to make the tough calculation of whether to be pure with zero users and therefore zero good impact, or to be beige to try to get some of these fickle users back and maybe have SOME good impact.
So, basically, people aren't satisfied when Mozilla is pure/idealist, and they aren't satisfied when it's compromising/pragmatic ("If they do that, I might as well keep using Chrome!").
I'm not letting Mozilla off the hook, or giving my blessing for every single decision that's been made. But, there's probably some utility to us taking the view of "just shut up and use Firefox" for the next N years.
> Mozilla has had to make the tough calculation of whether to be pure with zero users and therefore zero good impact, or to be beige to try to get some of these fickle users back and maybe have SOME good impact.
I can't really recall any decisions made that were unpopular with existing users, but likely to lure new users in. Ads on new tabs doesn't seem like something that would bring new users in. Pocket doesn't either, since iirc you could install the extension in Chrome if you really wanted it.
Most of the controversies I remember were either to increase Mozilla's revenue, or boondoggles like their mobile OS. My major annoyance was that the increase in revenue seems like it was spent on boondoggles or weird, unrelated charity rather than going back into improving the browser.
I'm still also a Firefox user, but it's like 99% because ads are not their primary source of revenue rather than any remaining fondness towards Mozilla.
I was thinking of EME, specifically, when I wrote that.
But, also, bringing money in is proxy enough for being able to do "good" for whatever definition we'd like to use. So, money or users, I think my general point about compromising their ideals for pragmatism is still valid (not necessarily true or correct, but it's an argument that can potentially be made).
> So, basically, people aren't satisfied when Mozilla is pure/idealist, and they aren't satisfied when it's compromising/pragmatic ("If they do that, I might as well keep using Chrome!").
I suspect those are mostly different groups. And my personal take is that Mozilla did indeed make that calculation... and proceeded to sacrifice the die-hard core userbase in order to get wider appeal, but they managed to not actually get the wider audience to buy in either, leaving them with nothing.
I agree with your assessment and I always suspected that would be the case, even when these decisions were being made.
Has there ever been a case of an underdog company/product actually gaining market share by becoming less different than the market leader? It always seems like a mistake from the outside, to me. I feel like an underdog is more likely to succeed by actually being different and attracting people who would prefer those differences. Why would anyone change from what they're currently using to an alternative that is almost exactly the same?
Very true. I just like to add their strategic investment in Hubert Burda's Cliqz. A thinly disguised attempt to shut out Google ads and replace them with the ones from the Burda empire. Their mendacious user privacy rhetoric still makes me sick and is on par with what we've read in the Web Integrity Standard.
> Mozilla is one of the rare companies with a mostly white clean shirt.
No. Not even close.
> while we should rejoice that they have been doing amazing things for 20 years despite the competition being terrible people playing dirty.
I reject the "other"-ness in this comment. I was a Mozillian. I was helping do those things. The notion that I should heap accolades upon a bunch of folks who are only now affiliated with Mozilla and who were not contributing during the era in which Mozilla was doing the great things actually deserving of the goodwill associated with its name? And who have themselves been positively poor torchbearers for that name? Condescending.
2023 is the project's 25th birthday. It did amazing things for about 15 of them—by which I mean the people who made up the project. "Mozilla" is merely a legal fiction.
There's no reason your question couldn't have been posted in a relevant (sub)thread, instead of here, where it's (i) not on topic for the current subject, but (ii) looks like it could be, and therefore (iii) has the same effect as moving the goalposts.
They did shift the goalposts, but I do wonder what browser you'd recommend (and I won't make a bad faith assumption that its chrome like they did). Brave?
The browser with a built-in crypto wallet? No thanks.
I stick to Safari and Firefox. They're not perfect but they're the only modern browsers that don't use Blink, which is what gives Google the power to make moves like this.
So that people handling the servers are not tempted to look at them, so that backup don't contain them in clear text, so that export must explicitly chose to decrypt them or not, etc.
I worked in various "alternative" industries in my youth.
One day I was having an informal diner with people that, in another context, could have been business partners.
One guy was making a killing with an astrology service by phone. He started with those text message based games, that were popular in the 2000'. Remember? "Send 'love' to this number to know if he loves you".
And eventually created a full phone call based business with about 200 freelancer astrologists and mediums. He just redirected, and took a cut. He made banks.
What he told me that night was that 99% of his customer base were women.
"You have to see astrology as porn for women", he said. "Porn public is mostly male, astrology mostly female. Both know it's not real, and most won't spend more than a few minutes on it. But many pay for it even if they would never say they do".
Can attest to this, all folks that I know are into this are women. Even seasoned doctors. And the response? 'Yeah I know its not rational but you know....'.
Some form of quick reward system gets invoked in the brain with this apparently. Well still better than looking for tobacco kicks or chocolate instead.
I always wonder what the morals and ethics of these kind of business owners is.
You're selling a service you know is bullshit and liken to porn. Personally I would not be proud to say I run that business. I would rather that these businesses didn't exist, and so I don't want to contribute to perpetuating them.
Of course there's the "fulfilling the market need" type of answer, but that's basically saying you will do anything for money regardless of morals and ethics.
Not 100% sure if the GP and I share the same friend, but I know someone that fits the description exactly. Morals and ethics are all relative. There are people who have absolutely no qualms about running a porn business and there are people who couldn't care less about you or someone else spending your hard earned money on nonsensical information.
They would see it as just as valid a business as an author that sells fiction books. Depending on their background this may be understandable, or not. I know a gay guy in Toronto that runs a porn empire, he doesn't care one bit about other people's opinion on it. Given infinite time he would spend it all on watching porn so for him it's a natural to want to be on the supply side, he understands his audience perfectly and the way his business is set up (co-op) gives everybody in it their own share of the take.
What I think you'll find is that morality and what is ethical can differ greatly from one person to the next and that it is possible that someone disagrees strongly with you on what is ethical or moral and that all you will end up doing is to argue the case based on your own experience and your own (cultural) background without ever arriving at some idea about what 'absolute' morality or ethics would look like.
You can see this very clearly in debates around abortion, war and other controversial subjects. People on both sides of those arguments fervently believe that they (and only they) are in the right and that everybody else is delusional, amoral and un-ethical.
>> "You have to see astrology as porn for women", he said.
If that is the case, what is the pleasure they get out of it? Porn triggers the pleasure centers that sex triggers... but astrology, what does that trigger? Sense of security that you "know" your future after reading your horoscope? Or what? Did the guy have any theory about that?
> Sense of security that you "know" your future after reading your horoscope?
No, it's comfort in knowing that some(thing|one) else is controlling your destiny. It's not about knowing your future. It's about knowing that there exists a path you're being ushered along.
It's worth noting that women experience sexuality differently. You can see it clearly in romance novels. Women don't read smut for the sex scenes, they read it for the sexual tension and character development. Male sexuality is image-based, female sexuality is language-based.
To say an astrology hotline is strictly equivalent to an orgasm is silly, but for women the circuitry is very nuanced so I wouldn't be surprised if the same neurons were firing.
- Move to a better paying job easily. You make instantly more money.
- Move to a cheaper place when times get tough. This gives security because your life is flexible and can adapt to the ever changing life.
- Change the space if you get a wife, kids, a dog, a parking space, or if they leave you. Well, the parking might stay.
- Leave if a neighbor becomes invasive, if they build a supermarket under your windows, if water gets contaminated...
- Get closer to your job so that you save time, energy and transport money.
- In case of divorce, you don't have to share anything.
- The gap between rent money and mortgage payment money can be used for anything. Sometime you can invest it. Sometime you can buy a gift or holidays. Sometimes it saves your ass for tough days.
Selling a house is hard. It cost money, time, energy, and you still have your loan running after that if you didn't negotiated early repayment. Plus, good luck getting a new loan to buy the next place if you are still paying the first one.
A house is a lot lock in, for the money it provides.
I agree a house is a lot lock in, but there are many other nuanced pros and cons to home ownership.
- Homeowners can modify their dwelling. Renovations, painting, etc.
- Banks lend millions of dollars to ordinary people through mortgages. Subsequent loans can also be taken out against existing properties. This enables enormous leverage, with commensurate risk. A good way to get rich (or lose it all).
- Homeowners can be confident in their cost of living staying static long term, whereas rent typically increases every year. Decades later this can mean an initially pricey mortgage payment looks cheap compared to renting.
- Renters have the risk of being forced to move at the whim the landlord. Usually there are some protections like minimum notice periods and laws against arbitrary evictions, but there's always some chance whereas homeowners can stay put for generations provided they pay their continue to pay their mortgage and property taxes.
Yeah, it turns out you need to put something on the line to have a huge reward.
To me, home equity is a game changer for this discussion. the ability to open a HELOC and have access to a massive amount of capital is a gateway to real wealth thru various investment vehicles - not the least of which is investing in further real estate.. which will accumulate more equity itself etc..
If you take a 3% loan over 30 years for a $300000 home and a 20% down payment, you will eventually pay $124265.89 in interest.
This doesn't take into account any work you have to do on the house, the notary and agency fees, and any taxes on the way. Your $300k worth of investment may very well cost you around $500K. If it's worth $800k later on, you earned $300k buy selling it 30 years later.
We can also add the cost of opportunity, since you can't move easily when you have a home to get a new, get closer to your children, follow you the love you just found, discover a foreign country...
And that's in the best case scenario where:
- You found a cheap good home.
- You actually end up liking leaving here.
- Nothing changes to the point you have to flea the place.
- No accident, no fire, no water pipe breaking, etc.
- You can ensure you can comfortably pay the mortgage for three decades.
That's... a lot to consider.
To give you an idea, here is what happen if you take the same down payment, and invest $100 a month and interests into the S&P 500 index for the 30 last years:
You end up with $11 159 316.
With no lock in. And no worries.
I think it's fair to say there is a difference of at least $100 between your rent and mortgage payment.
> I think it's fair to say there is a difference of at least $100 between your rent and mortgage payment.
In my country the rent has usually been more expensive than the cost to service a mortgage (particularly taking into account only the interest repayments, not the principal repayments).
Mortgages are one of the only easy ways to leverage 5x for the average person, and over the course of 30 years you can expect to be earning more (inflation of your salary) whereas the mortgage stays the same.
Rent, on the other hand, typically rises in proportion to your income, so your cost are increasing each year. With a mortgage, your costs are either the same or decreasing if you repay the mortgage faster than the initial term.
Where I'm from, interest and dividends from other forms of investments are taxed as income, but repaying your mortgage is not. In addition, as long as it continues to be a desirable place to live and incomes keep rising, real estate prices will continue to rise as a function of income. This means that you're leveraging into a fairly low risk asset with good growth potential, and tax-free returns.
Plus all the intangibles, like being able to:
- Have as many pets as you want, or pets at all
- Not be kicked out with a short amount of notice
- Redecorate, put pictures up, improve the house as you please
- No 3-monthly house inspections
I'm not saying home ownership is a panacea but it has a lot of positives over renting, both financially and otherwise.
I really don't know how S&P500 indexes work in the US but that seems a lot.
so let me get it straight you are saying that by investing 60k (and then another 36k over 30years) (and by investing you mean put it in an index and forget it)
you get 11 Million out? So a return of 103218.96% even if yuod have invested all of that from the start and not over the years?
That is surely something wrong in that math or you just happened to be lucky with some ballooning stock.
The S&P average return rate over 30 years is 7.5%. Assuming you invest all 100k from the start you would have 800k after 30years and that's assuming having a consistent index over 30 years something that is less guaranteed than the Property market.
You are right, the calculator I used included buying SPX with apple in it on the cheap very early, so the results are skewd. Plus DCA often produce better return the long run.
You will usually not be as lucky.
$800k is still likely more than the house, with less worry, less locking, and less work though.
Use it when it makes sense, but make sure you never, ever, depend on it.
They will do everything in their power so you do.
They will make it very attractive. Very convenient. At some point it will require active efforts not to. People might pressure you to do so, like when everybody asked you to create a FB account.
But unlike facebook users, you have the technical know-how, so if you put your entire dev stack in the proprietary cloud, with microsoft services on top of that, nobody will cry for you when you ineluctably get bitten by it a few years from now.
Big companies are not your friends. They will abuse it. You will get locked in.