ItsBob

8 ms·

61.
by ItsBob 1y ago
> I think it should be OK for LMS to guess but only if it clearly tells the user it's answer is just a guess, when it is. Or, alternatively, it shows us the confidence level of the answer, e.g. a value between 0 and 1, with 1 being
62.
by ItsBob 1y ago
This post has come along at an interesting time as it happens... I was at my mum and dads yesterday and I was asking my dad if he'd seen any messages or nag screens about upgrading his computer from Windows 10? It's ancient and I
63.
by ItsBob 1y ago
I remember a time when the internet was ran by techies and hobbyists for zero money, zero expectation etc. Sure, there were some banner ads on some websites but very few mega-corps wanting their pound of flesh like today. A hobbyist-run int
64.
by ItsBob 1y ago
Ok, total shower thought but what if the likes of Dell, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, Acer, Asus etc. got together and said "Guys, let's form a consortium to create a new OS (based on Linux, of course) to break the Microsoft hold". Wo
65.
by ItsBob 1y ago
> Linux lacks designers and product managers I don't think that would be enough: adding those people to a team won't matter if the overall vision isn't there. It needs, and I'm about to choke on my words here, a Steve
66.
by ItsBob 1y ago
I've said it many times in the past: the OS is a toolbox, just like a carpenters toolbox. I use it to keep my apps (tools) in. I use the apps (hammer, saw, screwdriver etc.) to get a job done, then I put them away. The job of the OS is
67.
by ItsBob 1y ago
Genuinely, I won't care what the ruling is: my computer, my rules! :)
68.
by ItsBob 1y ago
Ok, I'll bite... what if an "ad" on a website is a bit of javascript that mines bitcoins using my GPU? Does this mean I have to let it do this? What if it does it while showing me an ad for something at the same time? How doe
69.
by ItsBob 1y ago
The Netflix documentary was great and the thing that I took away from it most was that in fractions of a second all the passengers literally blinked out of existence: They were here and then within a ms, they literally vanished (I assume...
70.
by ItsBob 1y ago
Interesting you should say that. I found a Substack post earlier today along those lines [0]. I almost never take my phone with me, especially when with my wife and son, as they always have theirs with them, although with elderly parents no
71.
by ItsBob 1y ago
> Curious what other folks are feeling. A lot of these tools seem like useless frivolity. Something I have long said when talking about operating systems is that I consider them tool boxes. The same kind of tool box a carpenter would hav
72.
by ItsBob 1y ago
In The Peoples Republic of Scotland, all primary kids get free lunches now, I think (Primary is aged 4/5 to 11/12). When it was introduced, my son was in P1 or 2. We spoke to the head and asked if we could pay for our son's l
73.
by ItsBob 1y ago
Side note... I just went to the Figma website there (never used it before, had no idea what they did) and they have one of my pet hates: They changed the cursor to some dark stylized thingy! Leave it alone! It's so off-putting! Why do
74.
by ItsBob 2y ago
Does it even need to be screenshots? Surely when I open up a chat in Whatsapp it would be as easy as doing a foreach on every msgElement.text value on screen and copying it to the mothership in plain text. After all, when I am reading them,
75.
by ItsBob 2y ago
> Even though they can't read your messages I've long wondered if this is actually true. If I have a closed-source app and claim (and can verify!) E2EE, surely I could still read every message from my closed-source app, within
76.
by ItsBob 2y ago
> Doesn't mean they don't need investigation. True. But there was a time when we managed to program software and not send every keystroke back to the mothership. It's possible to have a daily/weekly/monthly popup
77.
by ItsBob 2y ago
$250k is a staggering salary... not everyone lives in San Francisco. Or America for that matter. The guys I work with are on about £95k and the good ones are very good. I have seen what small teams of good devs can do with the right environ
78.
by ItsBob 2y ago
Not sure where the Chromium part comes in but I'm talking about Firefox here. Anyway, all the heavy-lifting is done: The JS engine, the CSS engine and so on.
79.
by ItsBob 2y ago
I know they have way more than that but I'd argue that you don't need that many. Hypothetically, if I was given the money and asked to build a team to fork Firefox I'd be more focused. Way more! The current devs work on stuff
80.
by ItsBob 2y ago
I don't consider things like crash logs and debug stuff to be telemetry. This can easily be dealt with by a popup saying "want to upload the crash log?". It can just be a text file with a bunch of data. I'm fine with tha
81.
by ItsBob 2y ago
Let's do some back-of-a-napkin maths here and see if we could... Just for fun of course :D === ANNUAL COSTS === 20 developers at $150k each = $3M Other staff costs, like pensions etc. = $1.5M Someone in charge of overall project = $250
82.
by ItsBob 2y ago
I'd fund a browser that has the following: 1. Zero telemetry. I mean ZERO: remove all telemetry code from the codebase. They can ask me about features the old-fashioned way - surveys! 2. Focus on privacy and security. Put these to the
83.
by ItsBob 2y ago
True. I'm a .NET dev and for the most part that's always worked on Windows really well so bugs (apart from the ones I introduce) are pretty rare.
84.
by ItsBob 2y ago
True, I never thought of that one. I know that Windows gets a hard (justified?) time for stability and whatnot these days but it's been pretty solid for me so I forget sometimes.
85.
by ItsBob 2y ago
I'd usually bow out at this point but if you've ever been on any Windows/Microsoft-related subreddit, there are many many people that download these betas. I did it once, many years ago, for Windows 10 and my printer started
86.
by ItsBob 2y ago
I reckon it depends on what kind of experience you want from your OS: there may be a variant that works for you already. Take me for example. I want my OS to GTFO of my way. It's a toolbox, like the one a carpenter would carry around.
87.
by ItsBob 2y ago
I'm genuinely curious why anyone would download a beta of Windows... can someone enlighten me? I can think of one scenario only - You have a desktop app or drivers that you want to ensure will work in the upcoming non-beta, so getting
88.
by ItsBob 2y ago
> AI that attempts to predict people committing crimes based on their appearance. FTFY: AI that attempts to predict people committing crimes. By "appearance" are they talking about a guy wearing a hoodie must be a hacker or are
89.
by ItsBob 2y ago
I'm a senior developer so I spot the bullshit, like sometimes it makes up table names in the sql. Things like that. It's definitely not fire-and-forget: more like extreme autocomplete (at least that's how I use it)
90.
by ItsBob 2y ago
Anecdotal but here's how I described using the likes of Copilot to my sceptical colleagues (they were late to the party!): It's like having a senior software dev over your shoulder. He knows pretty much everything about coding but

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