I imagine Microsoft announcing a data centre here played a significant role - AWS wouldn't want to be the cloud service with _less_ regions than Microsoft.
There are significant AWS customers in New Zealand (Xero jumps to mind) that I imagine Microsoft would love to target with that differentiator of a local data centre.
However Azure regions are a single DC, while an AWS region is 3 Availability Zones ( each being at least a single DC), which is much much better for redundancy. Remember that time the whole of Azure's portal and O365 were inaccessible (nobody could log in) because some equipment failed in a single DC in Texas? Design for failure
Depends how much you care about the equality and how strict. by default == will do type coercion so you can get weird results where things like [] == 0 are true.
I've been using Linux Mint for years now and really enjoy it. It looks good, works with most things out of the box and I've had minimal issues with it.
It's a bloated distro since it tries to cater to most set ups and ships with drivers, etc that you might not need which will annoy the purists but for me the compatibility and things just working is more valuable.
I only use it on a desktop PC so YMMV.
These days I only use Windows for work as that's what my company uses and for games that don't work with Proton.
On Mint, automatic updates started failing for me recently with an obscure error because the /boot partition had too many old kernels. I doubt my parents could have figured out that one.
This is true now but it wasn't when I started doing dot net development ~10 years ago. If it wasn't for my employer covering the costs I wouldn't have been able to do it.
There were free editions but they were crippled versions of the paid ones with no extensions, etc. The free versions were generally unloved and had annoying quirks.
At the time you needed to add a Resharper license in there too to be decently productive which was yet another overhead.
I disagree that Resharper was required to be "decently productive". Resharper turned your Honda of a Visual Studio into a Lexus, and Java developers (who were already used to Lexuses of their own) appreciated it... but you can still drive around with a Honda. Similarly, the limits on extensions in Express editions wouldn't hinder learning .NET development, or even working on most projects.
However, VS Express itself took a while to appear. Back when .NET first appeared, the only thing that was free was the .NET Framework itself (including command line compilers), and online MSDN documentation. Eventually, we got SharpDevelop.
But, well, there's free, and then there's free. In my home country, you could buy a bundle of CDs with complete VS 2002 + MSDN distribution on the black market for around $20. Which was still expensive for students, mind you - so the same bundle was then shared around the class (including the teachers, who only had an older bundle of VS6).
I learned from the sdk command line and a book... mostly because after 9-11 within a couple months my day job and side job were gone and had lots of time on my hands for about 8 months... through the later betas and the 2002 release I hadn't touched an IDE for it... after I got a job though, kept up with it... but SharpDevelop worked for me for the most part in the earlier years.
I never used Resharper and stay away from JetBrains products as much as possible, with exception of Android Studio.
It looks like they design for developers with gaming rigs and ten finger chords, I even start enjoying using Eclipse again after spending a couple of months on a Java assignment with InteliJ.
Then my .NET team wonders why I never complain about VS speed and crashes, easy, I am the only one not using Resharper.
You're replying to Tobi the CEO and founder of Shopify who recently and very publically posted about 40 hour work weeks and how Shopify lives and breathes work life balance which multiple employees confirmed.
I don't know him from a bar of soap outside of what's shared publically but a cold, calculating executive is about as far from the mark as you could possibly be.
Hm, I will admit I didn't realize the particular executive I was addressing, and that Shopify is off my radar in terms of executive abuses, but CEOs are all of a class, and 40-hour work weeks are still an untenable arrangement, and the Overton window for commonly acceptable work-life balance is far, far toward the wage-slavery side of things–to say nothing of the work-life balance for millions upstream of the Shopify supply chain, e.g. computer-mineral miners in the Global South. So I am not ready to give Tobi any humanitarian awards.
In truth, I have long admired Shopify for their open culture, their tech blogs, and a product that empowers small businesses. None of these things are enough, however, to convince me that he's anything more than a wealthy Libertarian seeking (primarily) personal gain through economic exploitation, managerial coercion, and authoritarian hierarchies.
> a cold, calculating executive is about as far from the mark as you could possibly be
This is an indefensible exaggeration. You're telling me Tobi is a saint? A CEO? An absolute absurdity.
Liberals love democracy until it comes to the workplace. You disgust me.
Also a kiwi. Everyone is hesitant and it's natural to be. By locking down we are guaranteeing that people's businesses will fold and a large number of people will lose their jobs / livelihoods. No leader wants to do that unless absolutely necessary.
We've had self isolation for people coming in from overseas in place for a few weeks and as soon as that progressed to community transmission we've locked down. We had 50 cases where 2 could not be traced back to international travel. We're now at 200 cases (as of yesterday) and still no deaths.
I think hindsight is always 20/20 and I think NZ has done the right thing in appropriate timelines given what we knew at the time.
We are fortunate that we are a remote island in the south pacific that makes it easier for us to close borders and contain this much easier than other countries can.
When I was big into running I wanted a smart watch that could play my music and connect to my headphones without needing to take my bulky phone with me
Other reasons for wanting spotify is a remote control. When I had my pebble and my phone was in my pocket I'd often use it to skip songs, drop the volume a bit, etc without having to pull out my phone each time
It can be taken too far, but generally, if you paid for their device and you're legally responsible for their well-being and things they do on the internet, then I don't see the issue.
Combine this with the fact that the kid doesn't have to use the device for anything/everything.
It's like wanting to know where the kid is driving if you paid for the car, the insurance, and you're legally and financially responsible if they hit someone/something.
Again, I do believe this can be taken too far (and I don't know exactly where the line is). Paying for a phone doesn't give you right to spy on absolutely everything. I haven't seen anything that is beyond just app usage time, though.
When those fixed rates end and they have to refix a ton of overleveraged people will force mortgagee sales.
In Auckland there's been talk of that for at least 5-6 years. For example, people I personally know only earn $80-90k/yr and yet own a $500k house (absolute entry level livable house in Auckland). They also got in under our old rules which meant they only needed 5% deposit instead of the 20% required now.
They're only being propped up by their record low interest rates. If those interest rates went up 2-3% they'd be in serious trouble.
EDIT: for more context the average fixed period for any home loan in NZ is roughly 2-3 yrs. The term is a 30 year term typically.
