It's me, I do it. But only when I need something to do to stay awake in hour five of today's meetings to address the "quick turnaround" patch that I finished coding three weeks ago, but now they want a label to change and no one on the six teams that have somehow become involved seems to know who owns the package that the field the label represents belongs to, but they're absolutely certain we need to programmatically retrieve the text in case the package owner changes it at some point, and someone remembers that the original developer wrote code to get the label text 16 years ago, but it was removed from the program two years before the project started using source control, and they have an old installer around here somewhere that we can decompile or trace with Wireshark to get the right RPC name (sharing their screen while they have a rummage for it, natch), and someone else volunteers that they might know how to get a version of the server application from around that time since the client and server versions have to match, but it's technically the intellectual property of a different subcontractor who was just a guy in Alaska who passed away five years ago, but they're sure they can convince his estate to burn it to a disk and mail it to me if they can just find the contact information...

Yes, I canceled my Ultimate account. Andy can believe whatever he wants in private, but publicly stepping outside of non-partisan policy advocacy at this exact moment in time was a red flag, doubly so because he espoused his personal politics through an official business account in his response to the Reddit thread.

Email/calendar went to Tuta, AirVPN for VPN, BitWarden for passwords. Everything is encouragingly smooth so far.

Fair warning: Tuta's email import is very new and only available on the more expensive tier at the moment (not sure if that's permanent). I didn't have any problems, but there were some issues a few weeks ago.

I do think people are over-reacting to Andy's words and assigning him political views he didn't express. He didn't endorse Trump or the Republican party at large, and definitely didn't "go full MAGA" or express Nazi sympathies. His statements about Democrats I partially agree with and partially disagree. His remarks about the priorities and actions of Republicans, though, were pure tailpipe-huffing fantasy. Being able to say these absurd things in public--under an official business account no less--shows poor judgement and implies he might believe other absurd things he isn't willing to say publicly.

Another factor in my decision: Proton's privacy policy specifies they can modify the policy at any time with no notification to users, and deems continued use of the services as agreement to the updated terms. The updated terms they didn't notify you about.

That being said, no service provider is perfect. I don't think Proton stores enough data to really be a concern if they turned over everything they have. But this whole thing is based on trust. Even with their clients being open-source software, you're trusting that they always serve the same browser scripts that they published. You trust that the password you provide at key generation or login isn't ever passed back to their servers. You trust that they don't keep unencrypted copies of your emails, files, or VPN activity. You trust that they aren't going to modify their privacy policy and quietly undo protections you thought you had.

The way Andy responded was enough to question my trust in the company with him at the helm. I didn't leave as a heavy rebuke, just as a "do better". There are plenty of other companies which provide equivalent services. That's the risk companies take when a major part of their market is ideological people: if you chafe their ideology they're more likely to put the effort into leaving.

Almost 20 years ago I convinced my high school library to let me install Debian on one of the computer groups. I found the "eject" command, and wrote a script that just invoked it with an argument to close the tray. I named that script "inject". Being high schoolers, my friends and I made scripts to "eject" and "inject", along with various beeps, and named the scripts suggestive and tawdry things. We all had a good giggle setting the systems off on their little routines and walking away.

No one here can adequately answer your questions, since they're not really questions. You were annoyed by something and think that there is no reason for it to not be in the general settings UI. Fair enough, I kinda agree, but I'm also a power user and don't mind tinkering in about:config, so it's no skin off my nose. There's nothing wrong with venting if that's all you needed, but if it's really rubbing you the wrong way why not file a feature request for them to change it?

Yes, but it's also important to remember that this is universally recognized because it's a common aspect of preadolescent brains. I know this is just a comic, but I've seen a lot of parents treat it like willful belligerence (and sometimes it might be), but that's not necessarily accurate or constructive. Kids don't choose that their brain makes them prefer certain things and have a visceral aversion to new foods. Some kids can be encouraged to try things and will enjoy them once they've tried them, but some kids just can't do it until their brain is more developed and the disgust reaction to new food dampens.

It's an extreme example, but I've watched my kid try to force himself to eat something because I asked him to try it and he was literally shaking and dry heaving trying to put it in his mouth. IIRC it was a french fry that was shaped differently than the ones he usually eats. Like I said, extreme example, but kid brains are legit wired differently when it comes to food, and that should be respected.

Even proper TED talks can have some big issues. I'm thinking specifically about Kary Mullis getting up on stage and saying anthropogenic climate change isn't real because he found a study that says there's a current that fluctuates and absorbs anything we do--or something to that effect. If you didn't know anything about Kary Mullis and just heard "Nobel prize winner" you might assume he's credible. In actuality he was a pariah for talking out his ass about things he doesn't have expertise in and doesn't understand, specifically his climate and HIV/AIDS denialism.

It's always a good idea to approach any lecture with a critical view, but I can see why TED talks might warrant extra scrutiny. They project expertise and authority which may or may not actually be credible. The organization has a mottled record of vetting their speakers for actual expertise. (ETA: actual expertise in the content of their talk. Obviously Kary Mullis had actual expertise, just not in the things he said on stage)

The source is not as reputable as it appears. The article in question is not from the Harvard School of Dental Medicine, and in fact was condemned by the HSDM. The actual dental experts at Harvard requested a formal retraction of the article: "Based on the significant flaws in the magazine article, we respectfully request that the article be rescinded, and a correction be published to clarify any misleading information that was provided."

Thank you for the link. It's worth mentioning that there are response letters to the publication you linked from other experts, the majority of which are critical and point out misinterpretations and omissions by the author. It's always good to question, but in this instance it looks like the consensus amongst experts evaluating that publication is still that fluoridation is safe and improves dental health. The response letters can be read here.

Edit to add: The responses include a letter from the dean of the Harvard School of Dental Medicine stating that the publication is deeply flawed and requesting a retraction, and a similar condemnation from the students of the Harvard School of Dental Medicine. The article was given greater weight by being linked to Harvard, but in fact Harvard dental experts explicitly disagree.

I'm assuming, given that the water company's reaction included a threat for immediate disconnection, that this is not for the first month of service. It's just the first time they "paid".

Save someone else having to look up the conversion: 1700 metric years is roughly 3092 years fahrenheit

Maybe "credentialed" wasn't the right word. I was thinking of software licenses and access to third party tools and systems. Probably not as big a mess in game dev as it is in government.

It's called Brook's Law. It takes a lot of time and effort getting people up to speed, and that takes experienced devs away from coding. You also have to get them credentialed, teach them the tools, need extra code reviews/testing/bugfixes while they learn the quirks and pitfalls of the code base, etc. In the long term you'll be able to get more done, but it comes at the cost of short term agility.