Does anyone know if it's possible to do a 'reproducible build' of mainline Firefox so we can be sure their official releases are actually based on legit Mozilla code and not tampered copies with hidden nasties baked in?
What a slippery slope. I imagine a future when the entire URL itself has disappeared and we live in some sort of Google-controlled walled garden environment, like what they're trying to do with AMP[0]. Some sites only work with WWW prefixed as the APEX DNS record is misconfigured and points to nothing. I've even seen some sites point to `0.0.0.0' but had a CNAME record for WWW and I could then view the site.
Diana Hubbard, working from her home office in Texas, says she does not communicate about her private life on work devices at all. PHOTO: JONATHAN ZIZZO FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
My setup at home is a 3-foot monitor that I sometimes split-screen Mac and Windows on. I don't like to use Mac keyboards on Windows (and vice-versa), so rather than using Synergy I have two keyboards / mice at the desk -- one on a tray, and one on top.
In my experience I've yet to encounter a USB switch that will forward the LCD display data properly to the G15 keyboard. Although, I was using cheap USB and KVMs switches.
Another good question is who uses an overpriced "gamer" keyboard for work?
"Gamer" equipment tends to be far more reasonably priced than most good office-oriented equivalents. They also seem to be the only laptop segment that hasn't completely fallen to anorexia.
My old company ended up standardizing on Fnatic keyboards because they were the cheapest way to get silent Cherry switches with a reasonable layout.
I also used a gaming MSI laptop, because it was cheaper to buy and upgrade that than to buy a reasonable business Dell. ThinkPads weren't much better eiter (but also not an option anyway, thanks to Superfish and co).
My office has a large number of what I'd call "gaming borderline" keyboards mostly because people are looking for whatever has decent switches for not high prices. Also why Logitech makes the K840 I think, not that I'm recommending it.
Last time I tried a usb switch it would flip out and cause issues (it was doing the monitors too, and it was cheap). I forget what the specific use case was, but at my house we definitely had 2 keyboards on top of each other. It was a temporary set up of two computers at the same station, so didn't warrant looking into a better switch.
If I ran that setup daily in the long run, I probably would have.
> Hackers (and creative people in general) should never be bored or have to drudge at stupid repetitive work, because when this happens it means they aren't doing what only they can do — solve new problems. This wastefulness hurts everybody. Therefore boredom and drudgery are not just unpleasant but actually evil.
> To behave like a hacker, you have to believe this enough to want to automate away the boring bits as much as possible, not just for yourself but for everybody else (especially other hackers).
> (There is one apparent exception to this. Hackers will sometimes do things that may seem repetitive or boring to an observer as a mind-clearing exercise, or in order to acquire a skill or have some particular kind of experience you can't have otherwise. But this is by choice — nobody who can think should ever be forced into a situation that bores them.)
IMHO, this is just different defininiton of boring, as in "doing this repetitive shit is boring and I would be better off automating it and doing something challenging" vs "being alone with my thoughts rather than consuming delicious Internet information is so boring, let me just mindlessly scroll HN instead".
As a musician, I can tell you that practicing a song (particularly a well known song) is very frustrating partly due to boredom. A practiced musician will know when they’ve reached their limit for the day of learning a song. Muscle memory is much slower than neural memory, and usually requires “sleeping on it”.
Knowing you’ve reached the limit of your current capability is boring because you know the next few practice rounds will be much of the same, with minor improvements that provide a dopamine rush.
Regardless, nothing has changed in the age-old saying of how to get to Carnegie Hall: Practice, Practice, Practice. The practice is the boredom, but without training your muscles and building up myelin sheaths, you’ll never be good enough to automate most of the music to an extent that you can improvise on top of it (the fun part).
I guess my point is akin to OP’s, in that boredom isn’t inherently a bad thing, but a means to an end. Without the boring practice, we wouldn’t have experts/artists...and even then, the practice doesn’t have to solely be boring.
Yup. ESR's opinion and the OP are not mutually exclusive. Avoid boring, repetitive work, but deprive yourself of constant stimulus every once in a while.
I feel like maybe for hazards like this not only should there be warnings affixed, but testimonials from the parents of victims. Some people are just incapable of appreciating these hazards without being [emotionally] brow beat.
Another HN commenter on another thread last week made the point that for some people empathy (and its effect, like understanding that what can happen to someone else can happen to them) doesn't come easy--they often need someone to make it personal. While not quite the same as an in-person conversation, perhaps written, photographic testimonials would impress themselves upon some of those people. Alternatively, maybe pictorial warnings would help to warn children capable of appreciating the risk if brought to their attention.
