Unpopular opinion about Microsoft buying GitHub.

Just putting it out there that when you made your github repos you did so under their privacy policy and terms and will be protected under those in the future, and that both GitHub and Microsoft are corporations with the goals of making money.

Are people seriously mad that their code has gone from one capitalist corporation to another, with no foreseeable change in privacy or data policy? I have respect for those that switched to self hosted long ago since that's going from corporate to private, but if you throw away the UX and community GitHub has developed because a multinational corporation (with so many branches, products and divisions, which happens to have a few products you don't like) will soon own it, are you actually making a rational, guided decision?

Also just throwing it out there that GitLab is also a company. They've also had issues with keeping data intact in the past. They do, however, have free private repos (although I can't ever trust someone who gives me "free" privacy) as well as builtin CI. There are some definite upsides to it, although the UX has a ton of differences. If you're expecting the same dashboard and workflow you've used on GitHub, don't, GitLab has cool features but the bells and whistles aren't the exact same.

If you're switching to GitLab solely because of Microsoft, step back and think, regardless of how popular it might make you to hate Microsoft, is it really worth changing your development ecosystem to go from one corporate entity to another solely because you don't like the company?

I use GitLab and GitBub as well as Bitbucket and selfhosted git on a daily basis. They each have their upsides and downsides; but I think switching from one to the other solely because of Microsoft is not only totally irrational, but really makes light of/disrespects the amazing tools and UX the teams behind each one have carefully developed. Pick your Git hosting based on features and what works out for your use case, not because of which corporate overlord has their name plastered on it.

(Also just throwing it out there that lots of devs love VS Code, and that's Microsoft owned too... They did also build and pioneer a bunch of really cool shit for devs including Typescript so it's not like they're evil or incapable in any sense?)

Sorry for being late, stuffs came inbetween!

I have done a few privacy rants/posts before but why not another one. @tahnik did one a few days ago so I thought I'd do a new one myself based on his rant.

So, online privacy. Some people say it's entirely dead, that's bullshit. It's up to an individual, though, how far they want to go as for protecting it.

I personally want to retain as much control over my data as possible (this seems to be a weird thing these days for unknown reasons...). That's why I spend quite some time/effort to take precautions, read myself into how to protect my data more and so on.

'Everyone should have the choice of what services they use' - fully agreed, no doubt about that.

I just find one thing problematic. Some services/companies handle data in a way or have certain business models which takes the control which some people want/have over their data away when you communicate with someone using that service.

Some people (like me) don't want anything to do with google but even when I want to email my best fucking friend, I lose the control over that email data since he uses gmail.

So, when someone chooses to use gmail and I *HAVE* to email them, my choice is gone.

TO BE VERY CLEAR: I'm not blaming that on the users, I'm blaming that on the company/service.

Then for example, google analytics. It's a very good/powerful when you're solely looking at its functions.
I just don't want to be part of their data collection as I don't want to get any data into the google engine.

There's a solution for that: installing an addon in order to opt out.

I'm sorry, WHAT?! --> I <-- have to install an addon in order to opt out of something that is happening on my own motherfucking computer?! What the actual fuck, I don't call that a fucking solution. I'll use Privacy Badger + hosts files to block that instead.

Google vs 'privacy' friendly search engines - I don't trust DDG completely because their backend is closed/not available to the public but I'd rather use them then a search engine which is known to be integrated into PRISM/other surveillance engines by default.

I don't mind the existence of certain services, as long as they don't integrated you with data hungry companies/mass surveillance without you even using their services.

Now lets see how fast the comment section explodes!

Me before wathing Google I/O: *normal happy life*
Me (in a paranoid voice) after watching it: The are everywhere, they listen to every word, every sillable everything! They are onto us, they strive for world domination. I gotta hide somewhere!

Hey there 👋

I am more or less throwing any burden (WhatsApp, Facebook, Google etc.) out of my life. Of course I will continue using the Google account for YouTube and some games that need it.

That's what it looks like right now:

Raspberry Pi 3B+
✅ webserver
- forum - complete (atm just for me)
- blog - no ideas and just installed october cms and nothing done yet
- nextcloud - complete and filled with my porn... eeh... data

✅ mailserver
(missing spamassassin, clam or sth. like this but it's working 😂)

✅ matrix-synapse
(as an additional alternative to messengers)

______________

Raspberry Pi 2
✅ catches dust
(any ideas?)

Of course, many more configurations and the like are necessary before everything is ready... but what then or what else is there?

At the moment I still use WhatsApp. Just wanna take time before sending everyone a message about changing the messenger and that it should be important for thinking about the own privacy, which alternatives there are bla...

Edit: For passwords I'm using Myki - didn't hear anything bad about it yet and it's very easy to use (Firefox add-on, Android app).
I love my passwords with 200 characters 😂
Maybe someone's knowing more about them?

Hope I didn't forget a thing... thanks in advance aaaaaaand... I'm gone. ☺

Anybody else get that massive windows 10 update today that fucking wipes a ton of your settings. Desktop image gone, privacy settings turned back, firewall settings reset.

Fuck I really need visual studios for Linux.

Testing is important. Like when you test your server program that forks another program in the privacy of your home, only to discover you put the child code where the parent code should have gone and vice-versa.
You and your wife can have a laugh about it, instead of getting reamed out by the client or your boss for fork-bombing the server.
Sucks because it's still a stupid mistake, but at least I managed to minimize the amount of shit that would have otherwise landed on me.

I'll have to make some tough choices over the next 6 months. With my tech career beginning and my college education ramping up, time is of the essence, and the skills I develop now will be at the forefront of my future. So what does this have to do with Microsoft?

Well, the story begins in the Spring of 2016. Social Forums was about to turn a year old, Trump's campaign was ramping up, and I had just found my love for technology. With all my friends having phones, I had to get a phone and get working on development. The year before, Windows 10 was launched, and I was psyched. I found Microsoft's products to be underrated with potential. That day, I purchased a Lumia 640, upgraded it to Windows 10, and immediately began working. After another year-and-a-half gone by, I went from loving Microsoft, to defending Microsoft, to tolerating Microsoft. I could go on and on about the lousy structure, the privacy issues, the forced upgrades, the redundant developer platform, and other such issues that is leading me away from them. But if there is one thing they have proven over the years, is that the they are completely out of touch with its developers and its customers. They spent years ramping up their phones. They failed. They spend years ramping up their phones. They failed. They spend years ramping up their semi-annual OS updates. They failed. So why did they fail? It's not that they made the wrong prediction out of chance. They legitimately don't care about feedback. It's their way or the highway. This sounds vaguely familiar. They have been spending a decade ignoring feedback from the community because they want to become just like Apple. Right now, Apple LIVES off of brand loyalty and its stable, useful ecosystem. This cannot work for Microsoft as they don't have a lot of brand loyalty. But most of all, they don't have a working ecosystem. They have Windows Insiders, which provides them with hundreds of feedback messages per day. These include suggestions, bug reports, and constructive criticism. The feedback is public. You can have several pages of the same complaint, and they still won't do anything about it. They say they have a good relationship with their community, and that this Beta program helps Windows become better for all. But in the end, we are nothing more than a glorified unpaid labor force. They fired hundreds of professional debuggers just before the Insider Program took off. We are only here to provide bug reports for free. Now that their phones, AR headsets, browser, online services, and VR headsets are failing for all these reasons, I see little reason to develop for Windows anymore. I don't just mean their UWP and App Store platforms, I mean Windows as a whole. I'm definitely not a Mac guy either. I never see myself going to Mac either, as they are really no different in terms of how they treat their Developers and PC users. If things continue down this route, I will leave the platform all together. I've always wanted to be a Systems Programmer, so I don't really need an established paid platform to be successful. Even now, I'm not certain about leaving Windows altogether but as a developer, I need to find my place. Time is of the essence in my life, and I need to find out my place in the software world. Now I think it isn't on the Windows platform like I had dreamed it would be. But where do I go?

Persisterising derived values. Often a necessary evil for optimisation or privacy while conflicting with concerns such as auditing.

Password hashing is the common example of a case considered necessary to cover security concerns.

Also often a mistake to store derived values. Some times it can be annoying. Sometimes it can be data loss. Derived values often require careful maintenance otherwise the actual comments in your database for a page is 10 but the stored value for the page record is 9. This becomes very important when dealing with money where eventual consistency might not be enough.

Annoying is when given a and b then c = a + b only b and c are stored so you often have to run things backwards.

Given any processing pipeline such as A -> B -> C with A being original and C final then you technically only need C. This applies to anything.

However, not all steps stay or deflate. Sum of values is an example of deflate. Mapping values is an example of stay. Combining all possible value pairs is inflate, IE, N * N and tends to represent the true termination point for a pipeline as to what can be persisted.

I've quite often seen people exclude original. Some amount of lossy can be alright if it's genuine noise and one way if serving some purpose.

If A is O(N) and C reduces to O(1) then it can seem to make sense to store only C until someone also wants B -> D as well. Technically speaking A is all you ever need to persist to cater to all dependencies.

I've seen every kind of mess with processing chains. People persisting the inflations while still being lossy. Giant chains linear chains where instead items should rely on a common ancestor. Things being applied to only be unapplied. Yes ABCBDBEBCF etc then truncating A happens.

Extreme care needs to be taken with data and future proofing. Excess data you can remove. Missing code can be added. Data however once its gone its gone and your bug is forever.

This doesn't seem to enter the minds of many developers who don't reconcile their execution or processing graphs with entry points, exist points, edge direction, size, persistence, etc.