I think this story also shows the problems with patents. If Takata was allowed to use the mixture that was "invented" by other airbag makers, would they have used their dangerous ammonium nitrate mixture?
It also shows the dangers of the drive for lower costs in companies like this. The current system is doomed to reintroduce the same problems all over again, regulation and more control will not change this.
I was wondering if GitLab provides a Markdown editor that could be used by non-technical users directly from the web interface? Something like Prose[1], Dillinger[2] or StackEdit[3].
Of course you could argue if it's in scope for a project like GitLab, but it means that I could use static site generators for projects where non-technical users need to edit the content without ever thinking about a CMS.
Would be nice:
- if it would also provide an easy upload/commit of images to some configurable directory from that Markdown editor;
- configure a content-editor user that's restricted to a subset of directories;
- allow the user to preview the full website without pushing to the live environment;
- use a tag or branch to mark the version that can be pushed to the live environment.
It would probably be the most flexible CMS that's available right now.
Fixed costs aren't totally fixed, it's just that they won't change for every unit produced. But it may be the case that they will change when you produce say an additional 100 units (or 1,000 or 10,000 units).
So if you ramp up production and you need for example an additional factory, that means your fixed costs will go up.
I think that the gist of the article is that you can be more creative (i.e. come up with ideas that hardly anyone thought of before), if you have more distance from culture. In other words, people that are deeply entrenched in culture, can only think of doing things in the way that the culture is doing it now.
Alan Kay tries to express this concept in his talk "Normal considered harmful", it may give a different perspective on the same concept.
I think it's very good to point this out in relation to immigration right now. However, it's just one of the reasons we should be open to immigration: humanness (brotherhood); a better outcome for both parties ("immigrants" and "natives") in the long run if we give immigrants a possibility to start a "normal" life as fast as possible; we can share the workload and may alleviate the problem of ageing western societies; etc.
This is really a problem I think. Maybe GitLab could reconsider to adopt a licensing model[1] for the Enterprise Edition that would make it more Free Software friendly?
[1] I.e. a licensing model based on GPL and selling services that Red Hat uses for RHEL, instead of a licensing model like they, and a minority of the "open source" companies, use.
This reminds me of one of my first programming jobs as external consultant for the Baggage Handling System at Schiphol in 2000/2001, I was 17 years old.
My employer at that time was using MS Excel to parse the log files of all sensors of the predecessor/older part of the system that is shown in this video. I told her that I could probably do it 10,000 times faster by creating a simple program in Visual Basic.
Visual Basic was way too slow on our "high-end" Pentium laptop to parse that many 1MB log files, so I rewrote it in C++ (learned it on the job)[1]. The managers got insight in the performance of the various components of the system which they never dreamed of having (they were hardly aware that the system was creating this detailed log messages).
By the way, the system is developed (at least partly) by Vanderlande [2].
[1] Took me a couple of days, probably even weeks back then. I would write the code in 1 or 2 hours now.
How hard would it be to create a backend for PostgreSQL?
I'm currently in doubt to move to either Mailpile or your platform on my personal server. However, PostgreSQL would be a big plus for your platform, since I don't have any experience with MySQL in recent years, and I rather do not run it on my VPS just for mail.
The invoice data from my hledger file and a HTML template together are generated to a HTML invoice. The HTML invoice together with a CSS file are processed to PDF using WeasyPrint [1].
I agree. For me the automatic "pulling" of local variables from the context feels like "magic", and I think that's an undesirable property for a programming language. Of course, PEP498 has the same issue.
I agree. I've a T530 with Quad Core i7 and I prefer it to my previous MacBook Pro. I'm running Debian Jessie.
I believe it's also possible to replace the BIOS with CoreBoot, however I haven't tried.
I like the fact that I can easily replace components (battery, cd-rom with an extra HDD, etc.). Lastly, I agree, they're rock solid and survive most drops and even waterspills.
You're right about you're being clear about working there, I'm sorry if I've sounded a bit harsh. Thank you for your analysis BTW. I think it's always useful to provide constructive review to fellow developers.
I agree with you that the only alternative is self hosting. That's why I'm anticipating a new wave of low power mini-computers with solid state memory, a fully configured embedded GNU/Linux or *BSD distro, and a webbased interface for management which would make it possible to host our own services at home using OSS only. The FreedomBox is an example of this.
You've forgotten to include the plug for FastMail. And maybe you should include the fact that you work for FastMail (it's not that you're hiding it, it's in your profile, but it's nice to mention in the text if you're working for the competitor).
Personally, I stay clear from any hosted e-mail services. I don't care if their backend is open source or not. RMS explains all problems with SaaS in his essay "Who does that server really serve?".
It's sad that the current selection of open source e-mail clients is not that great. Especially, for less technically inclined people.
But for me the biggest problem with adoption of SSL is still that every domain name needs it's unique IPv4 address, and all problems that come with that, not registering or paying for the SSL certificate.
At work, I usually use virtual hosting for about 100 domains on one IP address. I don't see us buying an IPv4 address per domain and adding them to my NIC configuration one by one. Once we can safely ignore IPv4 and use IPv6 only it will probably become easier and cheaper.
(Which is available now, while the GUI will be available at a later time.)