I would vote for docker as well. The last time I had to inherit a system that ran on virtual machines, it was quite a pain to figure out how the software was installed, what was where in the file system, and where all the configuration was coming from. Replicating that setup took months of preparation.

By contrast, with Docker, all your setup is documented. The commands that were used to install our software into the virtual machines and were long gone are present right there in the Docker file. And building the code? An even bigger win for Docker. In the VM project, the build environment for the C++ portion of our codebase was configured by about a dozen environment variables, none of which were documented. If it were built in Docker, all the necessary environment variables would have been right there in the build environment. Not to mention the build commands themselves would be there too, whereas with VMs, we would often have developers build locally and then copy it into the VM, which was terrible for reproducibility and onboarding new developers.

That said, this all comes down to execution - a well-managed VM system can easily be much better than a poorly managed Docker system. But in general, I feel that Docker tends to be easier to work with than a VM. While Docker is far from flawless, there are a lot more things that can make life harder with VMs, at least from my experience.

I doubt that you’re interested in arguing in good faith, but if by some miracle you do care about having an informed opinion before opening your mouth, how would you respond to things like this?

This essentially killed my (EU-based) startup in the project management and collaborate space. Before MSFT bundled Teams with O365 we were rapidly growing and closing enterprise customers in the automotive, energy and education industries with high retention rates. Right around the time the Teams bundling started our retention dropped, churn went through the roof, growth slowed down, we failed to raise our next round because of it and had to drastically downsize the company, causing even more churn (about 80% net churn in 2 years). This move by the EU is good, but too little too late - 99% of the companies that were hurt by this have already shut down, and the ones still running will take years to recover…

Interesting! Sorry, I don’t know why I thought you were using swipe keyboards, it must have been stuck in my memory from reading other comments. I definitely agree that pressing the buttons was a little annoying, but manufacturers could probably make softer buttons if they were willing to put the money into developing them.

Anyway, I really miss the phone I had from about 2008-2010. It had two sliders that moved in orthogonal directions. One of the slide directions revealed a standard 12-button phone pad, while the other had a 4-row keyboard. And yet, I’m pretty sure it was under 1.5cm, so not too large. It was definitely easier to keep in my pocket than current phones!

If it weren’t for reading Lemmy/RSS feeds and a camera, I’d probably be going back to dumb phones for my next one…

But what’s the error rate? I could type at 200 words per minute (even on a phone!!) if I didn’t care about how many typos I was making. And swiping keyboards get confused incredibly easily. The error rates are especially bad when you’re writing words that only use a single row of keys - on QWERTY keyboards for example, try writing something like “type”, and you could get that, or you might get something else, like wipe/write/ripe. Other groups could include things like tip/top, pit/pot, wit/wire and the selected word will be wrong almost as frequently as it’s right. And autocorrect systems can’t really correct for things like when you mean to press enter and hit the backspace key instead. Plus, their suggestions are generally just very stupid. So while buttons take longer to press on physical keyboards, the reduced error rate makes typing speed about the same in my experience.

Plus, with physical buttons, you get tactile feedback, so you can tell when your fingers are slightly off and adjust them, whereas on a flat surface, you have no idea whether you pressed the correct button or not. You have to stare straight at the screen to make sure every press is correct, which is exhausting and bad for your eyesight. I feel a lot more eyestrain from simply typing on phones, whereas with physical buttons, I didn’t even have to look at the screen, and I could look at something else around me while typing. And don’t get me started on how many calls I’ve missed because I accidentally hit the hang-up button, or couldn’t find the accept call button - not a problem when you have physical buttons!

Regarding screen real estate, all you need is a slide-out keyboard. They work great!

There are a few downsides to physical keyboards, but in my experience, they’re far superior to non-keyboard devices. But what can you do - in the 21st century, practicality never matters, it’s just all about aesthetics and nothing else…

The intent is to allow companies time to implement the change. But if you’ll pardon my cynicism, in practice, what ends up happening is companies just use it as a tactic to delay the implementation and continue recording the revenue.

At the very least they should forfeit the revenue that they earn during the period for this. I’m not sure exactly how the fines work and whether they take this into account, but I doubt Apple is seriously going to use the 12-month period to actually come clean and change their ways. I think they’ll just use it as more time to come up with some new bullshit form of non-compliance.

Excellent news:

At the heart of Monday’s findings are three elements of Apple’s practices, including fees charged to app developers for every purchase made within seven days of linking out to the commercial app.

source

This is, in my opinion, the most egregious non-compliant practice from Apple. They have no reason whatsoever to entitle themselves to purchases made outside their repository just because the software runs on their hardware. It’s also the most asinine set of rules that they established to pretend that they were complying with the DMA.

It’s a bit disappointing that it will take so long before the fines can be enforced, but I really hope that they get the maximum penalty over this because it’s really the most shockingly brazen breach of the DMA’s terms. In fact, I hope that they get imposed the maximum penalty multiple times - the same article I linked mentions that there are two other DMA investigations being launched into Apple, though I don’t know what grounds those other investigations are looking into.

And I really hope Apple gets the message loud and clear: they’re gonna start making less money. And this is a good thing. They don’t deserve it, and they were never entitled to it in the first place. This is what happens when you invent new revenue streams that are criminally worthless.

Such a sad world we live in. When the internet was hitting the mainstream, virtually everything was standardized. There were RFCs for probably every standard the internet operated on. Email, HTTP, DNS, TCP/UDP/IP, etc.

Today, we live in a world where we can’t even decide on a fucking chat protocol without making it a proprietary piece of garbage. The internet has been consolidated into giant companies that see interoperability as a weakness that enable their competitors and prevent them from oppressing and exploiting their users.

A small group of gatekeepers that kill anything nice for their own short-term gains: it is sad but true that it feels like any technology that’s commercially successful will end this way.

It can’t possibly be that. We have to abolish trees - that’s the real answer!

How is this supposed to be considered using the metric system? If you tell someone that you weigh 80kg and he doesn’t have a clue what you mean, then you’re not really using the metric system, are you?

One is clearly more applicable for day-to-day life.

And yet, 96% of the world uses the “wrong” system…

Don’t worry everyone, I’m here to help:

Mail

Garbage

Outlook

Hot Garbage

Outlook (new)

Shit-tier garbage

Glad to be of service! Until next time…

I only briefly dabbled with Arch >10 years ago. But it has always been evident that it is an incredibly powerful distro. The fact that its wiki is so extensive is a testament to how much people are using it. The problem it has always had is that most companies tend to support other ones (Debian, Ubuntu, Red Hat/Fedora, Alpine), so it never really had any corporate love. With Valve’s backing, we can see just how widespread Arch could be if it had more money behind it.

Not that this is necessarily a good thing of course. Look at how money has corrupted Ubuntu and Red Hat. All I want to point out is that it can do anything that the most well-supported distros try to do. And the fact that it has done so without any corporate support is a true testament to how powerful it is.

This is quite cool. I always find it interesting to see how optimization algorithms play games and to see how their habits can change how we would approach the game.

I notice that the AI does some unnatural moves. Humans would usually try to find the safest area on the screen and leave generous amounts of space in their dodges, whereas the AI here seems happy to make minimal motions and cut dodges as closely as possible.

I also wonder if the AI has any concept of time or ability to predict the future. If not, I imagine it could get cornered easily if it dodges into an area where all of its escape routes are about to get closed off.

What can we do?

It’s so funny that people are even asking this question. Go back a few decades (pre-Thatcher/Regan/Mulroney) and the answer would be obvious.

Every time we see people acting as moronically helpless as this, it’s a true testament to how utterly slaughtered our psychologies have become that we don’t even think of using the tools at our disposal (namely government regulation and anti-trust law) to take action against it. It is so unfathomably out of reach for people to think this way, and this is how utterly destroyed our image of economics and society have become thanks to the devastating policies that they pushed and adopted.

As overwhelming as it may seem, the most important thing that we can do these days is to make these kinds of conversation normal again. Sure, there are things we can do today, and we should do them, but it’s even more important to win back the public mindset. Once we do that, it will become much, much easier to fix the problem.

Your comment explains exactly what happens when post-expiration companies like Google try to innovate:

Let’s be realistic here, google still pays out fat salaries. That would be more than enough incentive for me. I’d take the job and ride the wave until the inevitable lay offs.

This is why it takes a lot more than fat salaries to bring a project to life. Google’s culture of innovation has been thoroughly gutted, and if they try to throw money at the problem, they’ll just attract people who are exactly like what you described: money chasers with no real product dreams.

The people who built Google actually cared about their products. They were real, true technologists who were legitimately trying to actually build something. Over time, the company became infested with incentive chasers, as exhibited by how broken their promotion ladder was for ages, and yet nothing was done about it. And with the terrible years Google has had post-COVID, all the people who really wanted to build a real company are gone. They can throw all the money they want at the problem, but chances are slim that they’ll actually be able to attract, nurture and retain the real talent that’s needed to build something real like this.

That’s what heathens like yourselves deserve for living lives full of sin. True servants of God like myself have been rewarded with the almighty TempleOS

Your Steam games will go to the grave with you

Great, then I’ll finally have some time to play them…

Two simple words: digital sovereignty.

Hopefully this serves as another case in the push for the EU[0] using native alternatives instead.

[0]: Not just the EU of course. Any non-American company should see dependency on Microsoft as a liability. I hope all countries around the world see this as a warning of things that could happen to them.

why is it a bad idea that studenst get some tools, free of charge, that they are free to use

I can’t find it right now, but there was a quote from a long time ago by Bill Gates where he basically said that it was fine if people were using Microsoft’s products for free because it would get them “addicted”. They would rather have people use Microsoft products even for free if it would prevent them from using alternatives.

That’s why it’s harmful. It’s free for students in the short term, but it prevents them from learning how to use an alternative product that will most certainly be free for them to use forever. Students waste those years when they have a chance to learn something useful, and instead get hooked on proprietary tools that will most certainly fuck them over at some point in the future.

The best part of all of this is that now Pichai is going to really feel the heat of all of his layoffs and other anti-worker policies. Google was once a respected company and place where people wanted to work. Now they’re just some generic employer with no real lure to bring people in. It worked fine when all he had to do was increase the prices on all their current offerings and stuff more ads, but when it comes to actual product development, they are hopelessly adrift that it’s pretty hilarious watching them flail.

You can really see that consulting background of his doing its work. It’s actually kinda poetic because now he’ll get a chance to see what actually happens to companies that do business with McKinsey.