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Search - "not sure if i should switch back"
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I am trying to understand something for a while. devRant is full of privacy advocates and to be honest, part of it is almost taken by a group of people that call other people random swear words people because they are using a particular product of a company.
I will raise some points and will try to discuss them with other people in comments.
I will stick with Google. Since it looks like it's the most hated one. A company that has built one of the most intelligent infrastructure, the most popular mobile operating system and of course, the best search engine currently available.
The problem everyone sees is the privacy. Google tracks the search history to give users a better experience and show relevant ads. You might not need this "better experience". In case you don't know, you can turn off personalized search any time to make sure Google doesn't track. Same goes with Google Chrome, you can turn off all the data it is sending to servers in settings. You can simply not sign in if you don't anything to be synchronised.
An argument is Google should be opt-in rather than opt-out. But the general users are not tech-savvy. And yes, going to settings and turning on personalised search is a lot of work for a huge amount of people. Trust me, I worked in IT before. If they find other search engine giving them a good experience without changing anything in the settings, they will just simply move to that engine.
What interests me most if how people back DuckDuckGo. First of all, not all parts of DDG is not open source (it's fucking not, you can argue all day). Parts of it is closed because of licensing issues.
That is perfectly fine to privacy community. But it's not when Chrome is closed source for almost the same reason. I mean when you're using DDG, you are supporting a US-based company that has privacy all over its face and using closed source application on their server. Have you not learned anything from history?
You might be wondering about my obsession with Google. It hurts me when I see a giant company whose popular software is open source is bashed like this. Google has made huge contributions to open source communities. Chromium, Android, Kubernetes, Angular, GoLang, TensorFlow etc.
And PRISM, how do you know that DDG is not part of it? it's US-based after all.
I just saw an article that used a video with a title "TNW - Aral Balkan - Free Is A Lie | The Next Web" while asking us to switch to DDG. Ummm....DDG is also free right?
Maybe we should raise concerns with the US gov first rather than Google.60 -
I've been working late nights for so long that falling asleep when it's still dark is an achievement for me. So is waking up when it's still morning.1
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I used to think that I had matured. That I should stop letting my emotions get the better of me. Turns out there's only so much one can bottle up before it snaps.
Allow me to introduce you folks to this wonderful piece of software: PaddleOCR (https://github.com/PaddlePaddle/...). At this time I'll gladly take any free OCR library that isn't Tesseract. I saw the thing, thought: "Heh. 3 lines quick start. Cool.", and the accuracy is decent. I thought it was a treasure trove that I could shill to other people. That was before I found out how shit of a package it is.
First test, I found out that logging is enabled by default. Sure, logging is good. But I was already rocking my own logger, and I wanted it to shut the fuck up about its log because it was noise to the stuffs I actually wanted to log. Could not intercept its logging events, and somehow just importing it set the global logging level from INFO to DEBUG. Maybe it's Python's quirk, who knows. Check the source code, ah, the constructors gaves `show_log` arg to control logging. The fuck? Why? Why not let the user opt into your logs? Why is the logging on by default?
But sure, it's just logging. Surely, no big deal. SURELY, it's got decent documentation that is easily searchable. Oh, oh sweet summer child, there ain't. Docs are just some loosely bundled together Markdowns chucked into /doc. Hey, docs at least. Surely, surely there's something somewhere about all the args to the OCRer constructor somewhere. NOPE! Turns out, all the args, you gotta reference its `--help` switch on the command line. And like all "good" software from academia, unless you're part of academia, it's obtuse as fuck. Fine, fuck it, back to /doc, and it took me 10 minutes of rummaging to find the correct Markdown file that describes the params. And good-fucking-luck to you trying to translate all them command line args into Python constructor params.
"But PTH, you're overreacting!". No, fuck you, I'm not. Guess whose code broke today because of a 4th number version bump. Yes, you are reading correctly: My code broke, because of a 4th number version bump, from 2.6.0.1, to 2.6.0.2, introducing a breaking change. Why? Because apparently, upstream decided to nest the OCR result in another layer. Fuck knows why. They did change the doc. Guess what they didn't do. PROVIDING, A DAMN, RELEASE NOTE. Checked their repo, checked their tags, nothing marking any releases from the 3rd number. All releases goes straight to PyPI, quietly, silently, like a moron. And bless you if you tell me "Well you should have reviewed the docs". If you do that for your project, for all of your dependencies, my condolences.
Could I just fix it? Yes. Without ranting? Yes. But for fuck sake if you're writing software for a wide audience you're kinda expected to be even more sane in your software's structure and release conventions. Not this. And note: The people writing this, aren't random people without coding expertise. But man they feel like they are.6 -
Should I be optimistic about my profession and growth as an android developer, or should i start gaining experience in other domains?
I am currently a Junior Android Developer in a small company which is a subsidiary of a bigger company (TATA) . I currently hold a working experience of 3+ years but in last 5 years , I have mainly explored Android App development the most. I did courses in it, then internships, then switched jobs to reach a decent salary package (more than INR 10 lakh per annum).
Recently I have been pretty worried regarding my career choices and i can't seem to be optimistic about my role as a mobile engineer. I joined my current company 4 months ago, but my switch this time gave me a hike of -10% (you read that right, it was a negative increment since previous company was asking me to relocate and i had no choice but to take this offer)
This switch made me worried not just because of the salary decrement but as a worthy candidate too. I know my tech stack well , but this time, I had very less options. I feel that the demand of a mobile engineer seems to be very less and I am not sure if its only me or for everyone in the same space as I am.
So , are jobs of Native Android Development really dying? My goal is to reach at premium salaries of INR 80-90 lakhs or 1-2 crores per annum, so can I reach there while just being a good android engineer? I am not sure what to run for. Please help
Some paths that i came to conclusion are for me, based on my limited knowledge are :
CONTINUE ON YOUR PATH : Stay in 1 place , grow as an engineer, get your salary/ role increase slowly and you will probably be able to reach that amount in 5-6 years
SWITCH YOUR PATH TO OTHER TECH SKILL : Do web frontend/backend courses in your free time, then grab a job of 4-6 LPA , start as a basic web dev, grow into senior dev and then reach that amount in 5-6 years (coz frontend/backend devs are the real deal?)
SWITCH YOUR PATH TO HIGHER STUDIES : do courses to crack foreign exam papers, then take out all your savings and got to foreign to pursue some masters in management, then do a job there and get settled / come back to India and grab a better paying job as a manager, then grow/switch into lead managerial roles and earn the goal amount in 5-6 years (coz foreign studies are the real deal/ foreign countries give fair wages to skill?)
GET INTO BUSINESS : start a business of something , grow it, reach that amount in 5-6 years (coz doing business is the real deal and only way to get lots of money in black/white)
Which do you think is the most accurate/realistic?15