This is exactly my problem. It's easy enough to say "give it away if you won't use it soon" but how do you know? That urge might come on any time, and the act of giving it away is likely to reignite that passion.
And for small things, like cables you don't often use... You never know when you'll need them. I've been telling myself I'm just going to throw them away after all, but then within a month of deciding that, I end up using a cable that I hadn't even seen in 2 years, and I had to hunt pretty hard for it. And it's a $10+ cable.
The article sounds like it's going to address these issues with the dots, but then just doesn't. I'm actually not even sure what the point of the dots is other than to convince the author that they're doing something about their problem, when they're really just putting stickers on things and buying more bins.
Pick a dollar amount and delivery time period you are comfortable with. Get rid of everything you haven’t used in a month that you can get cheaper than that amount and within that time period.
Dont justify after the fact just dumbly implement the rule.
I can think of two instances from the past year or two where this happened: "printer cable" (USB-A to USB-B?), and USB-A extension cable (both at separate times). I think I spent ~$10 for each of these, so my total bill was $20.
So $20 fee to pay for getting rid of a bunch of other cables I didn't need years ago and saving ~500 cubic cm of space.
And I gave the printer cable away to a friend when I was done with it, happy to repurchase it in a few years in the increasingly unlikely scenario that I need it again.
Yeah, after years and years of hoarding lots of hardware and cables that's how I operate now. I have so much less tech trash in my house now, LOL.
Keep a few extra cables of sorts I actually use fairly often (a few spare HDMI cables, some ethernet cables, and a few types of USB cables are no-brainers, for instance). Toss all the rest (am I ever, ever going to use a DVI cable again in my life? Decent odds, no, and on the off chance I do I can just buy another)
Any cable that's more than ~2 spares for a port on some device that is plugged in or otherwise in-use in your house, or isn't a kind of port you've used in a couple years (even if you could) should at least get some serious scrutiny and more often than not be donated or go in the trash.
Like, I held on to a couple coax cables more than ten years after the last time I plugged anything into a coax jack. So stupid, in hindsight.
The dollar amount and delivery time is a good rule is a good one. This varies quite a bit based on the nature of your projects. The month might be flexible. Maybe a quarter or half year for some people?
At some point you may need some old cable but you probably end up buying one because you can’t find it.
I simplified a lot of things when I was moving back in. I’m sure I threw out some things I should have kept. For cables specifically I need a better system than going through a large plastic box. Probably some garage reorganization thing.
I solve the problem by not throwing things away unless I don't have room for them. As a result, I have electronic components that are 30+ years old.
My wife's strategy on clothes I had that she didn't like was to hide them in the back of the closet. If I hadn't asked where a particular shirt was in a year, that was her signal that it was fine to throw out. Must have worked because I wasn't aware of it until she told me, years later!
I hang my clothes from left to right, so clothes on the left have been worn recently, things on the far right have not. This makes it super simple to once a year, go through the close and just clear out things on the right of every compartment.
Companies do want to be secure. They try, and they often fail because it's hard.
They hire auditors to find problems and to shift blame. But since they only have 30 days to fix the problems that are found, it's going to see a lot like they only care about shifting the blame. Because at that point, they only care about passing that audit.
Right after that, though, they start caring about security again.
How do I know? 19 years experience going through those audits on the company side. For 11 months of the year, it was clear the boss cared about security. For that 1 month during the 'free retest' period, they only cared about passing that audit.
Leaking customers' data bears no meaningful penalties and has no repercussions while securely storing said data costs money, add frictions and brings nothing but expenses to the bottom line.
Many companies will make a wise business decision to never spend a single cent in the direction of security and safety of data.
I used to work tech support. Those lines are there because they work. In only 9 months, I had a few different people tell me they were pc repair techs and knew what they were doing, and I didn't need to do the basics.
I did them anyhow because the company said so, and I found that more often than not, it fixed the problem.
If I had sent that to second-level support without making sure of it, I'd have been written up.
So yes, they're trained to treat callers like they don't know what they're doing, because they often don't. Even if they claim to.
The best thing you can do is just go along with it quickly and get it over with, even if you've already done it. There's no way around it.
But my problem and main point is that now L2/L3 doesn't seem to exist, or is way way harder to access.
When I did L1, I was trained to permit escalation. Now, it seems people are trained to gaslight people that actually nothing is broken and it's all their head.
I'm not convinced that allowing Node to import "code generated at runtime" is actually a good thing. I think it should have to go through the hoops to get loaded, for security reasons.
I like the idea of it mocking the file system for tests, but I feel like that should probably be part of the test suite, not Node.
The example towards the end that stores data in a sqlite provider and then saves it as a JSON file is mind-boggling to me. Especially for a system that's supposed to be about not saving to the disk. Perhaps it's just a bad example, but I'm really trying to figure out how this isn't just adding complexity.
I had to laugh, because the post you're replying to STRONGLY reminds me of this story, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31778490 , in which some people on the GNOME project objected to thumbnails in the file-open dialog box because it might be a "Security issue" (even though thumbnails were available in the normal file browser, something those commenters probably should have known about, but didn't, but they just had to chime in anyway).
But then you go "hang on, doesn't ESM exist?" and you realize that argument 4 isn't even true. You can literally do what this argument says you can't, by creating a blob instead of "writing a temp file" and then importing that using the same dynamic import we've had available since <checks his watch> 2020.
A virtual filesystem makes it possible for the ESM you import to statically import other files in the virtual filesystem, which isn't possible by just dynamically importing a blob. Anything your blob module imports has to be updated to dynamically import its dependencies via blobs.
As a user of embedded Node.js - I need the ability to package JavaScript into the binary and feed it to Node.js without writing it to disk.
My current flow is to literally embed the JavaScript in the binary, then on start, write the JavaScript code to `/tmp/{random}` and point Node.js to execute the code at that destination.
A virtualized filesystem also allows for a safer "plugin" story for Node.js - where JavaScript plugins can be prevented from accessing the real filesystem.
And yet, I find a coding agent makes it even more fun. I spend less time working on the boilerplate crap that I hate, and a lot less time searching Google and trying to make sense of a dozen half-arsed StackOverflow posts that don't quite answer my question.
I just went through that yesterday with Unity. I did all the leg work to figure out why something didn't work like I expected. Even Google's search engine agent wasn't answering the question. It was a terrible, energy-draining experience that I don't miss at all. I did figure it out in the end, though.
Prior to yesterday, I was thinking that using AIs to do that was making it harder for me to learn things because it was so easy. But comparing what I remember from yesterday to other things I did with the AI, I don't really think that. The AI lets me do it repeatedly, quickly, and I learn by the repetition, and a lot of it. The slow method has just 1 instance, and it takes forever.
This is certainly an exciting time for coders, no matter why they're in the game.
Cool you had it do something for you, this isn't building or learning no matter what you tell yourself. Your brain is going to atrophy. The process of building can be frustrating, so what, so is training for a marathon or anything rewarding in life.
"Antirez closes his careful legal analysis as though it settles the matter. Ronacher acknowledges that “there is an obvious moral question here, but that isn't necessarily what I'm interested in.” Both pieces treat legal permissibility as a proxy for social legitimacy. "
This whole article is just complaining that other people didn't have the discussion he wanted.
Ronacher even acknowledged that it's a different discussion, and not one they were trying to have at the moment.
If you want to have it, have it. Don't blast others for not having it for you.
Having this discussion involves blasting others for not considering it. Consider the rest of the paragraph you quoted:
> But law only says what conduct it will not prevent—it does not certify that conduct as right. Aggressive tax minimization that never crosses into illegality may still be widely regarded as antisocial. A pharmaceutical company that legally acquires a patent on a long-generic drug and raises the price a hundredfold has not done something legal and therefore fine. Legality is a necessary condition; it is not a sufficient one.
They're not innocent bystanders: if you take the premise of the article seriously, their actions should be criticised. Please consider re-reading the article more slowly.
As someone who lived alone for years, my recommendation is to make friends. Not people on a forum. People you enjoy messaging directly. Or calling. Or texting. Or even seeing face to face.
It's not going to happen immediately. But if you aren't looking for the opportunities, they will pass you by.
I've met them playing games, doing community events, joining clubs, etc. Meetup.com is a great place to find groups you might like.
Other than that, you'll eventually toughen up and get used to it. You'll find the advantages and learn to enjoy them.
I once used the analogy of the PM coming to the shop with a car that had a barely running engine and broken windows, and he's only letting me fix the windows.
His response: "I can sell a good looking car and then charge them for a better running engine"...
And for small things, like cables you don't often use... You never know when you'll need them. I've been telling myself I'm just going to throw them away after all, but then within a month of deciding that, I end up using a cable that I hadn't even seen in 2 years, and I had to hunt pretty hard for it. And it's a $10+ cable.
The article sounds like it's going to address these issues with the dots, but then just doesn't. I'm actually not even sure what the point of the dots is other than to convince the author that they're doing something about their problem, when they're really just putting stickers on things and buying more bins.
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