It seems like what is happening is not Firefox now making a pivot to the privacy unfriendly side, but Firefox has already been selling data, but in a manner that---for whatever strange reason---they didn't consider to qualify as "selling data", and hence the original Terms of Use included the promise of "We never sell your data". Then lawyers came along and told them that this just wouldn't fly legally, and they have to change their terms now.
Even now, Firefox still doesn't consider what they do "selling data", and they are forced to change the wording only because the laws are weird.
Frankly, I just don't see how sharing data to partners to make yourself commercially viable can be construed as not selling data. In their own words, what Firefox does is:
> In order to make Firefox commercially viable, there are a number of places where we collect and share some data with our partners, including our optional ads on New Tab and providing sponsored suggestions in the search bar.
We could argue about whether the laws are slippery or over-reaching, or how responsible or not Firefox has been handling user data. We could argue about how much anonymization and aggregation of data reduce privacy concerns.
But to argue that the above action is not "selling data" is in my view not a reasonable position.
Ergonomics is really personal. I’ve tried a few ergonomic chairs, and they are all too big for my body. At the end of the day, the trusty old ikea wooden chair works the best for me, despite the lack of any adjustability, because it is the right size to begin with.
When standing, I strongly agree with the article that getting some sort of rug is good for comfort. I have a very furry rug for it.
Moving around often is the most important factor, which is easy for me because I like to walk around while thinking.
I find trackballs very tiring on the thumb. Vertical mouse is quite comfortable. Ergonomic keyboard seems unnecessary to me, because I type with straight wrists on a normal keyboard anyway.
I agree strongly on trackball being tiring on the thumb. In combination with smartphone use, it's far too much strain on this one joint.
As for straight wrists, I find that naturally happens for me as well, but my impression is that it's not great bc the torsion at the elbow can lead to RSI.
I also don't experience any noticeable torsion at the elbow. Putting my hands in front of my chest is a perfectly relaxed posture for me. Typing is not that different from writing in terms of where my arms and hands are (other than the two-handedness).
That said, I do move around a lot instead of keeping my hands always on keyboard, so maybe that's why I don't experience the typical fatigue at joints associated with keyboard usage.
The "attach the entire file" part is very critical.
I've had the experience of seeing some junior dev posting error messages into ChatGPT, applying the suggestions of ChatGPT, and posting the next error message into ChatGPT again. They ended up applying fixes for 3 different kinds of bugs that didn't exist in the code base.
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Another cause, I think, is that they didn't try to understand any of those (not the solutions, and not the problems that those solutions are supposed to fix). If they did, they would have figured out that the solutions were mismatches to what they were witnessing.
There's a big difference between using LLM as a tool, and treating it like an oracle.
This is why in-IDE LLMs like Copilot are really good.
I just had a case where I was adding stuff to two projects, both open at the same time.
I added new fields to the backend project, then I swapped to the front-end side and the LLM autocomplete gave me 100% exactly what I wanted to add there.
And similar super-accurate autocompletes happen every day for me.
I really don't understand people who complain about "AI slop", what kind of projects are they writing?
Different industries have different standard procedures. A huge portion of the world's internet relies on FOSS software, and none of those are insured.
Community reputation is the current _de facto_ standard for consumer-facing software, even for stuff sold by big corporations. There's not much else to rely on.
The worst offender I've seen in this regard was some GUI program on Windows, and it had this checkbox in its installation process with some wording like this:
"Please do not uncheck if you do not wish to not install XXX (bundled bloatware)"
I just assumed that the default state must be installing the bloatware, and changed it, and fortunately I was right.
A bicycle is not the same as a bicycle wheel though. I can't just roll down a bike down the street (at least not as easily as a single wheel); it almost always immediately falls over.
At very low speeds, yes, the bike will fall over. But a bike with some minimum amount of speed can roll upright on its own just fine. You can try it yourself with your least favorite bike and an empty parking lot. All it takes is a good solid push. It has to do with bicycle frame geometry and center of mass.
That's not countering the argument that steering is what is preventing the bike from falling over rather than the gyroscopic effect of the wheels. You'd have to tie off the handlebars with a static line before rolling it in order to prove that it was the gyroscopic effect keeping the bike upright.
I actually tried a it a lot when I was young, and it never worked even on a downward slope. Maybe I was too weak back then, but again, the point is that a full bicycle doesn't have the same behavior as a standalone wheel, which is very easy to roll, and pretty much stands on its own until its speed is really really low.
If the junk doesn't work right from the beginning, yes. The problem is that sometimes the junk might look like it works at first, and then later you find out that it doesn't, and you ended up having to make urgent fixes on a Friday night.
> And in that process I've found is where the real magic happens
It might be good way to learn if there's someone who's supervising the process, so they _know_ that the code is incorrect, and tells you to figure out what's wrong and how to fixes.
If you are shipping this stuff yourself, this sounds like a way of deploying giant foot-guns into production.
I still think it's a better to learn if you try to understand the code from the beginning (in the same way that a person should try to understand code they read from tutorials and stackoverflow), rather than delaying the learning until something doesn't work. This is like trying to make yourself do reinforcement learning on the outputs of an LLM, which sounds really inefficient to me.
If I sit in front of a computer all the time I'm awake, I still wouldn't be able to be producing as much content as Simon Willison. My productivity would start to decline after 5~6 hours, and probably diminish after 8~9 hours. The consistency in his output is just magnificent and awe-inspiring.
> Every time ChatGPT gives you a sketch recommendation, ask for downsides.
It's sort of the right lesson (double-check) but also not (you are checking the same stochastic source). This is like asking an assistant to find out what AWS tech to use by reading the internet, and then ask the same person to do the same thing again. It's better than asking once for sure, but the solution should be to actually check the source info (in this case, the AWS documentation).
But the more important lesson here is that, it should be a bare minimum requirement that if you want to deploy something new into prod, you should read its documentation and _know_ what it does.
Regardless of whether you are asking LLM or a real person or some forum's post, you don't just follow an advice without understanding it. This is a scary deployment tactic.
On work days, my routine is to get my coffee before anything else as much as possible, because I'm not good at falling asleep on time and often wake up groggy. I grind coffee and prepare the kettle the night before, so I have minimal work to do when I get up. While waiting for the coffee to finish dripping, I usually give my calendar/email a quick reading through, and if there's nothing requiring attention, I read some news.
Once the coffee is ready, I drink it while planning out the day (in a rough manner), basically moving stuff around in my calendar, turning some emails to tasks, etc. When I'm done planning, I get to work.
On non-work days, I sleep as much as I feel like, and no coffee, so as to avoid developing a caffeine tolerance.
Even now, Firefox still doesn't consider what they do "selling data", and they are forced to change the wording only because the laws are weird.
Frankly, I just don't see how sharing data to partners to make yourself commercially viable can be construed as not selling data. In their own words, what Firefox does is:
> In order to make Firefox commercially viable, there are a number of places where we collect and share some data with our partners, including our optional ads on New Tab and providing sponsored suggestions in the search bar.
We could argue about whether the laws are slippery or over-reaching, or how responsible or not Firefox has been handling user data. We could argue about how much anonymization and aggregation of data reduce privacy concerns.
But to argue that the above action is not "selling data" is in my view not a reasonable position.