#ios is a terrible operating system | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

hashtagloveloses · 3 years ago

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i don't know who needs to hear this but you can bypass most newspaper (and some other) paywalls using this browser extension. it has versions for chrome, edge and firefox.

you can block most ads online (doesn't work for youtube or in-feed social media ads) on iOS with this app. there's a paid version but you don't need it. if a website starts to act funky, you can toggle the VPN on and off. for android, all you have to do is change one setting (read how in the first section here and toggle this on and off if something isn't working right as well).

for your desktop browser, try ublock origin. it has versions for chrome, firefox, edge and opera. (on any website you can click the red shield icon and turn it off and then refresh the page if it's acting up as well). bonus: having a good adblocker like this makes 🏴‍☠️ movies and TV by streaming from sites like watchseries much safer.

your local library probably subscribes to a service called overdrive, which operates an app called libby. and yes, i don't just mean in the U.S. it is VERY popular in many countries. before you go straight to amazon or audible for a book or audiobook, get a library card/figure out your library account login and download the libby app. the interface is great and has a lot of good features. in some countries, you can send the ebook versions to your kindle/kindle account. the libby app can be accessed on your phone, browser, or tablet app to read or listen from, too. if you download the main overdrive app, you can see what movies and TV your library has available. your library might also use a service called hoopla (hoopla often has more comics, too). it depends on the library system which one (or both) they use. if your library doesn't have the book you want, the main overdrive app has a button to "recommend", and your library probably has a request form.

there's an alternative to goodreads called storygraph. it has twice the amount of features, is updating with more all the time, and is not owned by amazon. you can easily import your goodreads library, too. it has mobile apps, too.

stop listening to podcasts with apple podcasts, google podcasts or spotify. the interface is terrible and the companies are even worse. try pocket casts, which has both a mobile and desktop version. it's compatible with chromecast so you can use it with google home devices, too.

if you live in or near a city in the U.S., you may have noticed uber/lyft/rideshare prices have risen a lot lately. the "it's a startup we're disrupting the business" bubble has popped and now it costs just as much as the established system, just like most other gig apps. you'll be surprised to learn that the taxi apps now cost about the same (or lower, depending on the time of day). the curb app is available in a ton of cities (in new york for example it works in all the boroughs) and you can order a taxi with a fixed fare just like an uber now.

can you never remember when your TV shows are on or coming back? can you not keep track of all the shows and movies you watch or want to watch? the TV Time app is a literal lifesaver.

#these are all my most helpful resources go forth and prosper #original post

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tulipscomeinallsortsofcolors · 4 years ago

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io is actually short for iOS 14, the fourteenth major release of the iOS mobile operating system developed by Apple Inc. for their iPhone and iPod Touch lines. Announced at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference on June 22, 2020 as the successor to iOS 13, it was released to the public on-

youre all TERRIBLE ALSKDJALKDJ

#ask #anonymous #laoft io

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nodejsdevelopment · 4 years ago

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How NodeJS works behind the scene?

let's start by learning a little bit about Node working. So let's represent that structure in terms of Node dependence, which is a few libraries on which Node depends for efficiency. Node operating time, therefore, has several dependencies, and most important:

V8 engine

libuv

Node is a JavaScript run time based on Google's V8 engine, right? And then, that’s why it seems as a dependency. If it were not for the V8, Node would have no way of understanding the JavaScript code.

What is V8 engine?

And of course, the V8 is an important part of the Node architecture. Also, the V8 engine is the one that converts JavaScript code into machine code that a computer can actually understand. And the V8 itself is written in C ++ code. But that alone isn't enough to create a whole server-side like Node. And that’s why we also have libuv in Node.

What is Libuv?

And libuv is an open-source library with a strong focus on asynchronous IO. This layer is what gives Node access to a working computer program, file system, communications, and more. The important thing to note is that libuv is actually written entirely in C ++ and not in JavaScript. Apart from that, libuv also uses two of the most important features of Node.JS:

The event loop

The thread pool

And in simple terms, the event loop is responsible for handling simple tasks such as using telephones and network cables while the thread pool is for heavy work such as file access or compression or something like that. Node itself is a program written in C ++ and JavaScript and not just JavaScript. Now the beauty of this is that Node.JS binds all these libraries together, whether written in C ++ or JavaScript, and gives developers access to their works with pure JavaScript. So it really gives us a really good layer of extraction to make our lives a lot easier instead of liking dirt with the C ++ code. That would be a terrible thing, wouldn't it? So again, this build allows us to write 100 percent pure JavaScript code, working with Node.JS and still accessing functions such as file readings, background scenes actually used in libuv or other libraries in the C ++ language. And when it comes to other libraries, Node actually relies not only on V8 and Libuv, but also on the HTTP-parser to split HTTP, ic-ares, or something similar for certain DNS application objects, OpenSSL for Keepography, and compression.

So at the end, when all these pieces fit together properly, we end up with Node.JS ready to be used in server-side applications. And next, you'll learn more about the Node threads and the event loop.

So stay tuned for that.

#nodejs #node web development #thread #event thread #v8 #libuv

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captainfancynightperfection-blog · 4 years ago

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TP-Link’s New Deco X20 Mesh Network Delivers WiFi 6 To Consumers

Are there lifeless WiFi spots in your property or workplace? It’s something most of us have skilled sooner or later, in particular folks who live in massive houses or who've a home with thick walls. Many net companies have began providing WiFi mesh structures as an optionally available extra, alongside the routers they lend their subscribers. Many of those mesh network structures are quite small and maximum don’t use the cutting-edge WiFi 6 popular that’s capable of supply much faster WiFi throughout your home to extra gadgets.

parental control on tp link is a major player in the domestic-networking marketplace and likely one of the exceptional-known brands along Netgear. It’s been promoting the Deco variety of wi-fi mesh structures for a few years, but now there’s the brand-new Deco X20 AX1800 Whole Home Mesh Wi-Fi 6 System. The new Deco X20 can work with older Deco devices however in case you are taking into consideration updating to the present day WiFi standard, it’s quality to begin afresh so that you get the overall benefit of the quicker information speeds that WiFi 6 provides. Older Decos gained’t be able to use the WiFi 6 functions. Fortunately, TP-Link is selling the Deco X20 in kits of 3 X20s which should be enough to cowl a large house with superfast WiFi.

The new WiFi 6 popular ias a lot quicker that preceding WiFi standards It does this with the aid of combining the two.4GHz band and 5GHz bands to supply a theoretical throughput pace of one,800 Mbps. The Deco X20 game makes use of 1024 QAM that could raise throughput to devices through up to 25%. WiFi 6 additionally calls for less strength from the gadgets connected to its community so that you ought to note your cellphone or iPad has a longer battery life while related in your WiFi community Paid Program COVID-19 And Child Labor: A Time Of Crisis, A Time to Act TP-Link Deco X20

The new TP-Link Deco X20 supports the new WiFi 6 requirements for faster speeds and extra connections. ... [+] TP-LINK WiFi 6 is fast enough to address as much as five streams of 4K video or up to 45 human beings surfing the Internet. And the Deco X20 also helps MU-MIMO which enables information to be dished out to more clients at the same time. In exercise, this allows more human beings to down load more records at the identical time with out causing movies to buffer and the children can nonetheless move Spotify from their bedrooms with out noticing any slowdown.

MORE FOR YOU With ‘Cyberpunk 2077’ On Xbox One And PS4, CD Projekt Red Broke Player Trust, And It Will Cost Them Focal’s Bentley-Inspired Radiance Headphones Ooze Luxury And They Sound Superb Brothers Attract $2.5M Seed Investment For Their Innovative Podcasting Platform Setting up the TP-Link Deco X20 is so easy; simply join the primary unit to the energy and join the main X20 in your Internet router or cable modem using the provided Ethernet cable. The Deco X20 suggests a pulsing blue light after a minute or . The mesh community is setup the use of the free Deco telephone app which is available for iOS and Android gadgets. Setting up the network couldn’t be less difficult. Just supply your community a suitable name and a relaxed password and stale you cross. You can upload greater Deco X20s right now or upload them later.

The Deco app indicates a top level view of the network and warns if any of the Deco X20s at the network are misbehaving or not linked. In around 15 mins, you’ll have a totally functioning mesh community overlaying the whole house with simply one SSID or wi-fi network call. No be counted where you flow across the house, you will connect with the closest and fastest Deco X20. If you’re taking walks round along with your smartphone, it will in reality switch to the great Deco X20 signal to be had.

TP-Link Deco X20 on shelf The Deco X20 from TP-Link are pretty enough that they might not look out of location dotted across the ... [+] TP-LINK In addition to all the speeds and benefits that include WiFi6, TP-Link is also packaged with other integrated equipment inclusive of antivirus scanning and a full variety of parental controls that can be used to govern who gets to get right of entry to the network and while they could use it. Certain web sites or keywords can be blocked to make the Internet more secure for kids to use.

To get the great mesh community it’s an excellent idea to locate a Deco X20 unit on every floor of the residence. For people who live in large single-tale residences can genuinely spread the get right of entry to points out so that they're equidistant from every other. The app will quickly let you know if any of the Deco X20s are too far aside. It’s so smooth to set up and also you don’t want any network enjoy.

The Deco X20 gadget helps an Ethernet backhaul. If you put in the Deco X20s in an workplace or building where there’s already an Ethernet community mounted, the X20 can tap into that and use it as a backhaul for sporting information to and from the router. Each Deco X20 has two gigabit Ethernet ports and they can auto-sense between LAN and WAN connections. An Ethernet backhaul frees up more of your wi-fi bandwidth for wireless clients to apply.

Boxshot of TP-Link Deco X20 The Deco X20 from TP-Link may be offered as a hard and fast of three in any other case in single gadgets. TP-LINK Additionally, a guest network may be installation to operate as a completely separate community and protects the principle network from opportunistic hackers way to WPA3 encryption. Guest networks are brilliant for folks who run a café, inn, visitor residence or restaurant, and it’s an ideal way of maintaining a business community safe even as nonetheless allowing customers to get entry to the Internet. WiFi 6 simplest allows northbound visitors on a guest community so customers can’t snoop on each other’s gadgets and guests can get admission to WiFi without any safety issues.

Verdict: If you need a mesh network for the whole domestic that makes use of the cutting-edge and fastest WiFi 6 preferred, the TP-Link Deco X20 is a terrific answer that’s particularly lower priced. The package is strong and well made with high- exceptional strength elements. The units appearance fashionable and may without difficulty be hidden on a bookshelf or sideboard. The Deco app works fantastically and will even update the firmware for all the Deco gadgets on the community. Setting the whole thing up is so simple and as soon as achieved the community will in large part manipulate itself. It is so seamless customers gained’t even note it’s there. Meanwhile the X20 gadgets may be working away inside the historical past to make certain all of the devices linked to the community get the excellent speeds feasible and the strongest alerts always.

With its black textured cupboard and purple accented antennas, the AX11000 has gaming router written throughout it. At 7.2 with the aid of eleven.3 with the aid of 11.Three inches (HWD) it’s larger than the Asus RT-AC5300 gaming router (2.6 by using 9.6 by means of nine.6 inches) and will require an amazing chuck of devoted computer real estate. It sports eight detachable non-adjustable high performance antennas and an LED indicator that glows solid white while the entirety is running nicely, glows strong purple while the router loses Internet connectivity, and glows solid orange whilst Wi-Fi is disabled. Overall, it's a neat appearance, but if there is anything terrible to say about this wireless router is that it's going to soak up widespread actual estate anywhere you positioned it.

The rear panel is home to a bevy of I/O ports. Here you’ll locate 8 gigabit LAN ports, a 2.5Gb WAN port, a reset button, a power jack, and a strength switch. The right side of the router holds a Type A USB three.0 port and a Type C USB 3.Zero port. Under the hood are a 1.8GHz quad-middle processor, 1 gigabyte (GB) of RAM, and 512 megabytes (MB) of flash reminiscence. The AX11000 is a 12 circulation tri-band router that is able to reaching (theoretical) information quotes of up to at least one,148 megabits in step with 2nd (Mbps) on the 2.Four GHz band and up to four,804 Mbps on each of the two five GHz bands. It employs the modern day 802.11ax Wi-Fi 6 generation, inclusive of OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access ),1024 QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation), Target Wake Time, WPA3 encryption, 4X4 MU-MIMO facts streaming, beamforming, DFS (Dynamic Frequency Selection), and assist for 160MHz channel bandwidth.

TP-Link Archer AX11000 Next-Gen Tri-Band Gaming Router rear view product shot The AX11000 can be managed the use of TP-Link’s Tether cellular app or with the web-primarily based console, but the web console offers greater manage than the cell app and includes a Game Center dashboard. The console opens to a Home display screen with buttons along the top classified Network Map, Game Center, Internet, Wireless, and Advanced. There’s also a network map that indicates you what number of customers are related, and underneath the map is a panel that shows your Internet info (IP and MAC addresses, connection kind) and some other panel with SpeedTest gauges that show your Internet add and download speeds.

TP-Link Archer AX11000 foremost dashboard view display screen shot The Game Center button takes you to a dashboard that is loaded with equipment that will help you hold your network humming. It has a Network Traffic panel that presentations real-time add and down load pastime, a Performance panel that shows actual-time CPU and reminiscence usage, and a USB panel that suggests you the reputation of related drives. Below these three panels is a larger Device Priority panel with the names of all linked gadgets and their real-time records quotes. Use this panel to give a device bandwidth precedence with the click of a button.

TP-Link Archer AX11000 Game Center view screen shot On the left facet of the screen is a menu that includes tabs for Game Accelerator, Game Protector, Smart Game Assistant, and Game Diagnostics. The Game Accelerator choice lets you lessen latency and raise basic game speed for anything customer you pick, and the Game Protector alternative is in which you go to configure TP-Link’s HomeCare anti-malware and parental controls. These are the same Trend Micro powered controls that come with TP-Link’s Archer AX6000 router and provide age-precise internet site filters and lifelong protection against viruses, phishing attacks, ransomware, and other malicious content. Use the Game Diagnostics choice to run Ping and Traceroute assessments to assist pick out community problems. Other settings encompass VPN Server and Port Forwarding settings.

TP-Link Archer AX11000 wi-fi settings display shot The Internet button takes you to a display screen in which you can configure Internet Type and MAC Clone settings, and the Wireless button opens a screen wherein you may edit SSIDs and passwords, allow/disable OFDMA, enable disable Smart Connect (band steerage), and configure guest networking. The Advanced button takes you to a screen where you can tweak advanced wi-fi and LAN settings and configure things like the firewall, Network Address Translation (NAT) forwarding, and get entry to control. This is also wherein you can get admission to Administrator settings to view system logs and replace the firmware.

TP-Link Archer AX11000 anti-malware controls dashboard display shot Installation and Performance The TP-Link Archer AX11000 is reasonably smooth to install using the Tether mobile app or through its web interface. Both methods are brief and painless. We connected the router to our modem and then to our take a look at notebook, powered it up, and typed http://tplinkwifi.Net in our web browser’s URL bar. We then created an administrator password, set the time quarter, decided on Dynamic IP for our connection kind, and customized every band. As a very last step, we ran a connection take a look at, upgraded the firmware, created a TP-Link Cloud account, and the set up turned into entire.

TP-Link Archer AX11000 2.Four GHz SU-MIMO performance results The AX11000 earned excessive marks on our throughput exams. It’s rating of 133 Mbps on the 2.Four GHz close proximity (identical room) check was quicker than the Linksys MR9600 and the Netgear Nighthawk AX12 RAX120 but not pretty a fast as our different Wi-Fi 6 router Editors' Choice, the Asus RT-AX88U. However, it showed good range overall performance with a leading rating of sixty seven Mbps at the 30 foot test.

TP-Link Archer AX11000 five GHz SU-MIMO overall performance results Performance on the 5GHz band became also excellent. The AX11000’s rating of 831 Mbps on the close proximity check become proper there with the MR9600 and RAX120 and became 6 percent faster than the RT-AX88U. At 30 toes, the AX11000’s rating of 328 Mbps turned into faster than the MR9600 and the RT-AX88U however couldn’t catch the RAX120, which led with a score of 417 Mbps.

We degree record transfer performance by shifting a 1.Five GB folder containing pics, video, tune, and office record documents backward and forward between a USB three.Zero force that is related to the router and a laptop PC so as to test write and examine speeds. The AX11000’w write rating of sixty eight MBps changed into faster than the RT-AX88U and almost identical to the RAX120. The MR9600 led with a rating of 73 MBps, whilst on the study take a look at the AX11000 led the field with a rating of 85 MBps.

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cyle · 6 years ago

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My Engineering Career at Tumblr So Far

I’ve been at Tumblr for four years as of last month, and in those four years I’ve moved from Engineer to Senior Engineer to Principal Engineer. Everyone’s journey along the path of their career is different, and engineering is a little different everywhere, but this is my story. My hope is that it provides some insight into Tumblr's career ladder and some themes that are universal across engineering cultures at other companies.

Prelude: Full Stack Madness

Before I joined Tumblr, I worked for ten (!!!) years as a full stack developer at a college, mostly alone. I’d been writing code (poorly) and immersing myself in tech since I was a kid, so I felt pretty confident as a teenager taking a job building websites for my college.

Over the course of that ten-year job, I went from writing terrible PHP and Javascript to performing the ultra full stack of work: rack-mounting servers, installing operating systems on them, splitting them up into application servers and database servers and whatnot, managing them often, writing application logic to run on and across them, designing databases (relational and NoSQL), designing user interfaces, bridging lots of different APIs, and scaling my applications to meet greater demands. Way too much for one person to do, really.

It was an opportunity for me to get my hands on all facets of building things for the internet. It afforded ample time to figure out what felt best for me, which turned out to be backend application development. I probably waited way too long before moving on to my next job, which luckily became Tumblr. When I did get the job at Tumblr, I had two main goals: to work as a component of a team rather than alone, and to focus on backend engineering.

Being heads-down as an Engineer

When I joined Tumblr, I came on as an Engineer. It’s technically a step above “entry level” at most companies, and it was the baseline for new engineering hires at Tumblr at the time. Someone at the Engineer level at Tumblr is expected to be a team member who focuses on a certain technical domain, such as databases, SRE, iOS, Android, Javascript, PHP, Scala, etc. For me, in product engineering, this roughly translated into being either a frontend engineer (iOS, Android, Javascript) or a backend engineer (PHP, Scala). When I started, I did a little bit of both since I had experience with both, but over the course of my first year I shed a lot of my frontend knowledge in favor of deepening my backend knowledge.

The Engineer level usually means you’re someone who is relatively “heads-down”, being given tickets to complete during sprints which contribute to a larger project that your team is working on. That was me — at the time I joined we were working on finishing up the “new” post forms on the web, and my team was about to start building blog-to-blog instant messaging. I worked with senior engineers to flesh out the architecture for messaging, and through that I learned how to build something that seemed simple to me but became very complex at scale. I churned through a lot of tickets and wrote a lot of code, almost entirely feature logic, rarely touching anything outside of my domain.

While I didn’t spend a lot of time in meetings or making decisions, I did get to have a voice in pretty much everything my team worked on, and I felt empowered by my manager to speak my mind across the company. During my first year that actually got me in trouble, as I become a bit overconfident in my own opinion, and I didn’t have the experience necessary to back much of it up. That was a good learning experience for me; it taught me how to pick my battles and when to use my voice and speak my mind. Sometimes saying nothing is the best option, and it’s important to keep yourself mindful of what your voice is actually contributing.

Opening up avenues into Senior Engineering

After my first year I started feeling very familiar with Tumblr’s engineering practices and a couple of lucky opportunities appeared. The first was being asked to act as a pseudo-member of the Core PHP team since they were understaffed, which broadened my responsibilities and gave me a reason to start digging around in our framework-level code. It afforded me time to learn a lot about our framework level and our design patterns, and I made some fundamental changes to how the Tumblr PHP app works. More importantly, it almost doubled the amount of code I was expected to review, much of it outside of my previous work as a product engineer.

Around that time, the senior engineers I was working with on messaging moved on from the project, leaving pretty much just me to finish the work a few months before we launched. Because of this, almost all of the PHP logic that exists for messaging on Tumblr is my code, and I became the go-to authority on how messaging works under the hood.

After launch, we continued to iterate on messaging features. A few of these iterations required heavy refactors of a system that was humming along, being used by millions of people. I learned how to make dramatic changes without anyone who was using the product noticing, and I started being one of the engineers who’d help others do the same for their projects.

One example of that kind of work was the Replies relaunch, which was outside my normal workload, but I lent a hand to help make sure it met the deadline we had set for ourselves. I also took the engineering lead on the infamous Lizard Election of 2016, coordinating work among designers, web engineers, iOS engineers, and Android engineers, while also building most of the backend for it myself. It was an extremely ambitious project that we put together in a very short period time, all for one absurd April Fools joke. The community loved it (or was extremely confused by it), and it provided a lot of insight for me into what it'd be like to lead cross-team efforts.

I also spent a lot of my first two years participating in Breaking Incidents — at Tumblr these are usually sudden high-impact problems that need to be fixed quickly, usually by someone who is on call. I probably learned the most about Tumblr's features, systems, and edge cases while helping fix these problems. Sometimes these incidents were small, like just a user interface bug that had been accidentally deployed, and sometimes these incidents were huge, such as entire database clusters failing. Jumping in and helping to quickly resolve these incidents showed that I wasn't afraid to get my hands dirty.

All of this additional responsibility meant I started going to more meetings and talking to more people across the company, as I had carved out a space that I felt was my own. It was really difficult and uncomfortable a lot of the time, and I made mistakes that broke things, but fixing them, persevering, and learning not to repeat them showed how much I was ready for a more senior role. I got promoted to Senior Engineer and stayed at that level for two and a half years, with a brief interlude as a Staff Engineer.

Raising the stakes as a Senior Engineer and then Staff Engineer

As a Senior Engineer, I felt much more empowered to take on difficult tasks, as I had a couple of major, successful projects behind me. The feeling of being uncomfortable became comfortable for me; I got used to being in a position where I didn’t have a ready solution to a problem, and I was happy to say so, but I felt confident I could figure it out by drawing on my past experience and doing some research.

I started being consulted by other teams when they’d be scoping out new projects, and I had a good sense for why a project could be difficult or easy. I also started going to meetings that had nothing to do with my normal job responsibilities, as I felt that it was important to stay on top of what was happening outside of those responsibilities. With only a couple hundred people at the company, it felt very feasible to know what was going on in most places.

It was around a year into being a Senior Engineer that I was invited to become a Staff Engineer, which at the time was parallel with the Senior Engineer role, having only a slightly different set of expectations. Being a Staff Engineer meant more talking about engineering problems and processes, more reviewing other peoples’ code and ideas, less time writing my own code. Usually this is actually its own dedicated step along the career path, as it typically means you're some kind of dedicated domain owner in a much larger organization of engineers. I fell into it naturally, as I was already doing a lot of the kind of work it expected, which highlighted to me that the best career moves are often the obvious ones.

However, over time it began to feel like Staff Engineer was a role that would be more practical at a larger company of hundreds or thousands of engineers, and actually impractical at Tumblr's size of just a hundred or so engineers. To me, many of the responsibilities of our Staff Engineer group felt like they should be that of any Senior Engineer or Managers/Directors. Many of our tasks involved shepherding other engineers and providing insight into how to fix hard problems, and defining processes that affected most engineers.

A lot of those processes were very administrative and felt like they'd be more enforceable if they came from someone at the executive level. At times, Staff Engineering also felt like the dreaded "ivory tower" approach to engineering, in which a select few get to decide what's best for everyone, which I strongly disagree with. I hopped out of the Staff Engineer role after nine months or so, and the Staff Engineering group was dissolved shortly after I left it.

Becoming More Independent

After spending so much time spreading myself around the company, I gradually shifted out of being tied to a single team and I became a kind of “floater” among the product engineering teams. I started tackling bigger problems with our legacy systems (such as getting them GDPR compliant) and helping shape the architecture of new features (such as the Neue Post Format). I had become the same kind of engineer as those who had helped me build messaging, acting more as someone who isn’t afraid to get their hands dirty contending with the obscure parts of a ten year old codebase. It was around this time that I wrote How I Code Now and How I Review Code, as a lot of my job felt like it was honing those skills to a sharp point.

As I became a Senior Engineer and then Staff Engineer, more of my work became self-directed rather than decided for me by a supervisor. Instead of being given tickets to solve in a sprint, I got to do a combination of choosing my own work and being asked to help in certain areas by other managers and my supervisor. I went wherever that focus was needed, which still meant more time talking about problems, but now also more time writing framework code in support of other engineers.

After gaining a lot of experience in how Tumblr worked, it became easier for me to see where there were opportunities for improvement, both engineering- and product-wise. Since most of my passion is in the product work, I was given the latitude to try to push forward Tumblr's product features more directly. Some of these projects I ran with myself, like the last three years of April Fools jokes and revamping Tumblrbot and pushing the Neue Post Format, but a lot of the time I've tried to help empower feature work that I'm just passionate about and want to see succeed.

Since I worked alone at my previous job for a very long time, I already had the ability to be self-directed and to self-organize. I try to keep my work well documented, I like to keep a trail of emails and tickets to show what I'm working on and have finished, and I can mentally context switch quickly between many different ongoing tasks. Most of that context switching ability centers around assigning priority to every task I do. If a project or task has no priority, it usually never gets done, but that's fine; there is always more to do than can ever be done. Sometimes I have "rainy days" when I can pull something from the bottom of the priority list that I've wanted to do for awhile but not had time.

It was also around this time of becoming more self-directed that I began mentoring other engineers one-on-one, and working with them to help them grow in the same way that I had, or in whatever way they wanted to grow. Sometimes I join a specific team for a brief period, usually acting as a force-multiplier to the output of a team while I was on it. I like to tear through challenges and make big difficult decisions when they need to be made, talking and documenting them out to reinforce shared knowledge, while trying to avoid the pitfalls of seeking perfection. One example of that is the ongoing Neue Post Format project, which has involved huge refactors of existing code, tons of new code, and a complete overhaul of how all new posts on Tumblr are stored and represented. Not to mention thousands upon thousands of words of documentation.

All of this led me to becoming a Principal Engineer, which is where I’m at now. For me, it's a role that expects continuous mentorship and sponsorship of other engineers, constant vigilance of best practices, tons and tons of code review and architecture-building, and heightened mindfulness of ones' words and actions. In my experience so far, it's a lot of talking and writing about engineering while making big, difficult engineering decisions, and actually writing fewer, but higher impact, lines of code.

Moving beyond Principal Engineer is a difficult and rare task. Of the hundred or so engineers at Tumblr, there are only a handful of Principal Engineers, and even fewer Senior Principals. From my understanding, moving beyond Principal at Tumblr means being a framework-level domain owner and decision maker, contributing to the entire scale of Tumblr’s success. I’m still trying to figure out if that challenge is something that interests me, but in the meantime there are more than enough challenges at Tumblr to keep me busy.

By the way, if my story sounds like an interesting adventure to you, we’re hiring.

#engineering #tumblrbot #npf

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mostlysignssomeportents · 5 years ago

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#5yrsago What David Cameron just proposed would endanger every Briton and destroy the IT industry

David Cameron says there should be no "means of communication" which "we cannot read" -- and no doubt many in his party will agree with him, politically. But if they understood the technology, they would be shocked to their boots.

What David Cameron thinks he's saying is, "We will command all the software creators we can reach to introduce back-doors into their tools for us." There are enormous problems with this: there's no back door that only lets good guys go through it. If your Whatsapp or Google Hangouts has a deliberately introduced flaw in it, then foreign spies, criminals, crooked police (like those who fed sensitive information to the tabloids who were implicated in the hacking scandal -- and like the high-level police who secretly worked for organised crime for years), and criminals will eventually discover this vulnerability. They -- and not just the security services -- will be able to use it to intercept all of our communications. That includes things like the pictures of your kids in your bath that you send to your parents to the trade secrets you send to your co-workers.

But this is just for starters. David Cameron doesn't understand technology very well, so he doesn't actually know what he's asking for.

For David Cameron's proposal to work, he will need to stop Britons from installing software that comes from software creators who are out of his jurisdiction. The very best in secure communications are already free/open source projects, maintained by thousands of independent programmers around the world. They are widely available, and thanks to things like cryptographic signing, it is possible to download these packages from any server in the world (not just big ones like Github) and verify, with a very high degree of confidence, that the software you've downloaded hasn't been tampered with.

Cameron is not alone here. The regime he proposes is already in place in countries like Syria, Russia, and Iran (for the record, none of these countries have had much luck with it). There are two means by which authoritarian governments have attempted to restrict the use of secure technology: by network filtering and by technology mandates.

David Cameron has already shown that he believes he can order the nation's ISPs to block access to certain websites (again, for the record, this hasn't worked very well). The next step is to order Chinese-style filtering using deep packet inspection, to try and distinguish traffic and block forbidden programs. This is a formidable technical challenge. Intrinsic to core Internet protocols like IPv4/6, TCP and UDP is the potential to "tunnel" one protocol inside another. This makes the project of figuring out whether a given packet is on the white-list or the black-list transcendentally hard, especially if you want to minimise the number of "good" sessions you accidentally blackhole.

More ambitious is a mandate over which code operating systems in the UK are allowed to execute. This is very hard indeed. We do have, in Apple's Ios platform and various games consoles, a regime where a single company uses countermeasures to ensure that only software it has blessed can run on the devices it sells to us. These companies could, indeed, be compelled (by an act of Parliament) to block secure software. Even there, you'd have to contend with the fact that other EU states and countries like the USA are unlikely to follow suit, and that means that anyone who bought her Iphone in Paris or New York could come to the UK with all their secure software intact and send messages "we cannot read."

But there is the problem of more open platforms, like GNU/Linux variants, BSD and other unixes, Mac OS X, and all the non-mobile versions of Windows. All of these operating systems are already designed to allow users to execute any code they want to run. The commercial operators -- Apple and Microsoft -- might conceivably be compelled by Parliament to change their operating systems to block secure software in the future, but that doesn't do anything to stop people from using all the PCs now in existence to run code that the PM wants to ban.

More difficult is the world of free/open operating systems like GNU/Linux and BSD. These operating systems are the gold standard for servers, and widely used on desktop computers (especially by the engineers and administrators who run the nation's IT). There is no legal or technical mechanism by which code that is designed to be modified by its users can co-exist with a rule that says that code must treat its users as adversaries and seek to prevent them from running prohibited code.

This, then, is what David Cameron is proposing:

* All Britons' communications must be easy for criminals, voyeurs and foreign spies to intercept

* Any firms within reach of the UK government must be banned from producing secure software

* All major code repositories, such as Github and Sourceforge, must be blocked

* Search engines must not answer queries about web-pages that carry secure software

* Virtually all academic security work in the UK must cease -- security research must only take place in proprietary research environments where there is no onus to publish one's findings, such as industry R&D and the security services

* All packets in and out of the country, and within the country, must be subject to Chinese-style deep-packet inspection and any packets that appear to originate from secure software must be dropped

* Existing walled gardens (like Ios and games consoles) must be ordered to ban their users from installing secure software

* Anyone visiting the country from abroad must have their smartphones held at the border until they leave

* Proprietary operating system vendors (Microsoft and Apple) must be ordered to redesign their operating systems as walled gardens that only allow users to run software from an app store, which will not sell or give secure software to Britons

* Free/open source operating systems -- that power the energy, banking, ecommerce, and infrastructure sectors -- must be banned outright

David Cameron will say that he doesn't want to do any of this. He'll say that he can implement weaker versions of it -- say, only blocking some "notorious" sites that carry secure software. But anything less than the programme above will have no material effect on the ability of criminals to carry on perfectly secret conversations that "we cannot read". If any commodity PC or jailbroken phone can run any of the world's most popular communications applications, then "bad guys" will just use them. Jailbreaking an OS isn't hard. Downloading an app isn't hard. Stopping people from running code they want to run is -- and what's more, it puts the whole nation -- individuals and industry -- in terrible jeopardy.

(Image: Facepalm, Brandon Grasley, CC-BY)

https://boingboing.net/2015/01/13/what-david-cameron-just-propos.html

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blade720dron-blog · 5 years ago

Text

blade 720 pro

Blade Drone 720 Benefits and features

Blade 720 Drone delivers rookie consumers for professionals. In this article are one of the desired highlights of this technology

•This really is foldable

This superior drone 720 comes with remarkable collapsible propellers. As a result, you can actually take it anywhere you want without having to worry about the risk of transportation.

•This can be controlled via Google android, iOS, or Smartphone

You may possibly manage this drone regardless if you are using an android os powered mobile device or an iOS. You need to simply download the mobile app, set it up up, and so the last thing which you will do is usually to hook it up towards the Wi-Fi then close to your blade.

•Altitude Carry Setting

It becomes an significant feature of the drone since it is able to sealing the size and also the drone’s spot so the consumer can steadily hover it on a single location and get awesome video clips and pictures.

•Improved Airline flight Time

This amazing blade drone 720 provide an remarkable battery at the same time. This drone is also considered to be among the swiftest drone today, with twelve meters per next as well as its top rated collection transmission of 2 kilometers.

•Contra--Selection Technology

Featuring its built-in detectors, you may possibly prevent smashing and collisions on the floor and in addition some challenges.

•Sensible along with Minimal Style

Its clever light feature development keeps with each other, supplying additional mobility.

•Panorama Method

By utilizing this drone 720, you are able to get images 360 qualifications above within a individual drive on its key if you use your smartphone.

•Incredible Video

The videos, together with the pictures which can be captured applying this drone, are found to get incredibly crystal clear and sharp.

•three dimensional VR Mode

In order that will help you the drone, you can use its joystick as well as its VR kit.

Let’s have more of the blade 720 benefits:

•Less headache placing-up

•Smooth and intuitive regulates for quick soaring

•Single-switch for attaining, taking off and coming back

•Battery permits the person to fly for a greatest of 10 mins

•Lithium battery power carries a large capacity which offers a longer period for flying

•Includes Wi-Fi interconnection which assists in easy and actual-time information transferring

•360 levels easy going

•Reduced and-velocity method

•Light characteristic can make it stronger in comparison with other individuals

Advantages of using Blade Drone 720

The major benefits associated with this specific drone are its price, portability, video camera, as well as simple to operate. This drone appears to be a huge android cell phone in proportion. It includes flip-style rotors as a result, you are able to surely get the most-loved easily transportable drone blade 720 pro. It would easily fit into your case or wallet. You can now use and fly this phenomenal drone. The user doesn’t have to pay attention to its elevation, just browse through and love your flight! It is actually unquestionable which every drone wants a fantastic camera. Hence, this blade drone 720 offers an awesome image as well as video lessons.

As however, we have not helped bring up this particular blade is designed with ABS plastic material. And that the thing that makes it stronger and less heavy. Finally, its cost is remarkable. It is actually offered for only 1000 US money without being concerned about its reliability along with its high quality. Featuring its inexpensive selling price, you could have your own super light-weight and foldable drone, which may endure each misuse. This is definitely worthy of getting.

Blade Drone 720 Benefits & Disadvantages

Same with another products available, this drone also has its experts and its particular cons. Therefore, it is very important to ascertain its pros as well as its disadvantages to suit your needs so that you can have a crystal clear picture if the certain item is best for you. Let’s have a look at the pros and cons of blade drone 720.

Experts

•Cheap, effective, and Dealing with is not hard

If you use this drone, you can expect to surely save your valuable funds by lowering the manpower along with its gasoline cost. This drone offers a accurate take a look at these regions which are thought to be hard to achieve furthermore, it extraordinary in surveillance, rescue missions without consuming a better amount of cash. This drone 720 is considered to be an affordable and practical alternative for choppers due to the fact that it drone can swiftly be flown.

•Remarkable Taking photos

This blade drone 720 may help you in consuming spectacular, awesome, and instagrammable photos. Competent photography lovers do uplift their profession along with their company by using this specific drone. Individuals motion picture-make that are just commencing on their own field also increase the value of their generation together with the amazing aerial photos made available from this blade drone 720.

•Thrilling to Use

When you find yourself already familiarized with how you can work it, you will get fun as well as an satisfying experience.

Negatives

•Personal privacy Attack

This is regarded as the primary problem according to the drone use considering that the user can check around and use this drone for trespassing homes. Hence, this can be distressing concurrently, upsetting.

•Damages or Accidents

This drone is prone to damages. When you don’t get the appropriate coaching together with the necessary capabilities for making this drone fly, you could possibly cause drone collision or collide, which may result in hitting somebody or doing damage to items. You will even find studies about drones traveling near some strength cables or airport terminals that posed harm or damages that may lead to significant accidents for human beings.

•Feasible Mishandling

Its pleasure and its ease of access draw in enthusiasts, technology geeks, along with those with illegal motives. Terrorists and thieves have realized way to use this particular gadget for his or her harmful likes and dislikes.

•Cause harm to

Regardless of whether the point is useful or terrible, this drone can cause problems for individuals. You will find cases wherein drones can be used as hauling radioactive substance for people transporting unlawful pursuits. Should it be not licensed, this technologies may play since the principal for wrongdoers to commit criminal activity confident.

•Airport Dangers

Because the blade drone is very well-known amongst adults in addition to children, it then makes a significant threat to airport terminals. This is not from the defeated track incidents, nevertheless outstanding level disruption which continuously has an effect on a number of journeys monthly. From the moment this blade crashes in the airplane, this might result in a disastrous case.

Buyer Viewpoints and also Activities

This brand-new drone compatibly characteristics using a mobile device that is used when planning on taking beautiful photographs along with video lessons. In addition to simply being employed like a selfie drone, additionally it is popularly called a great stuffed toy. It is actually easily run and maneuver, as stated on some blade drone 720 evaluations accessible around.

Abilities and knowledge about drones are certainly not required. Even individuals who are not tech-experienced people can possibly run this product. However, it is actually greatly advisable to be attentive to the present climate before running this drone in the area. Due to its light-weight feature, it is far from advisable to have this drone to take flight once the rainwater is heavy, and there exists a strong wind.

•This drone is suitable for novices. This doesn’t need abilities in drones. In comparison to other individuals, this is a bit sturdier- which is, in accordance with Andrea Harnum, who acquired this product like a Christmas present for males within his early on fifties as well as two teenagers. They have got explained some positive opinion of this drone. In the event you will get, be sure you permit enough delivery service time, specifically if you could have this as being a gift idea.

•According to Bod, this drone is very good. Your friends will certainly be amazed by its camera resolution. It is capable of doing offering beautiful video tutorials and photographs.

•As outlined by David Frocione, he will surely buy more of this system. What he loves most is the sincerity and trustworthiness with regards to this drone.

A number of folks who possessed employed this drone are pleased, delighted, along with satisfied with their encounter. Almost every other way, some users find it difficult to position excellently up over, especially there exists a powerful wind. This only implies that in the event you desired to get around it properly, you have to have some required exercise in coping with this drone. Some users are inspired to make themselves familiar with the restrictions and regulations in drones flying inside the area, or else the arm from the rules can possibly confiscate this drone. Be mindful that flying drones near the airport or helipad and energy cable tv should be eliminated for you to prevent mishaps.

What Is the Value of Blade Drone 720?

It is possible to personal this drone for only 199.99 bucks. Nonetheless, when you will attempt to acquire it from its established website, you can find for a selection of cost. Huge discounts are made available from the drone business like acquiring two devices will entitle anyone to have one drone totally free, getting three units will entitle you for 2 totally free drones. Hence, this gets very helpful for a few family members who look at flying drones as being a past time as well as for loved ones bonding. Another good thing about purchasing the product is the free delivery campaign. Therefore, you will need to get the opportunity to jump at blade drone 720 benefits.

At times, this blade 720 is offered with running a campaign. In some countries, you can absolutely have yourself this Blade 720 given that some companies give a one half discount. And in relation to internet marketers, they also supply shipping and delivery, meaning it would actually help all those people who have a tight budget. This device if available on the internet, and in case you lookup its principal web site, you will possess the opportunity to have a drone with the very best quality and value.

Conclusion

This device is created in order to meet users’ demands and also calls for. Having its functions, such as remarkable steadiness as it flies, 720HD camera and vast lenses, controllable controls for convenient traveling, you may be impressed by its low cost. In purchasing any item, it is envisioned that purchasers will have a second seriously considered receiving the item. Purchasers will certainly question and ponder if the product is worthy of buying or perhaps not.

With regards to blade drone 720, the answer is definitely yes! You might just think of the stunning and awesome video clips and images that you’ll be able to have with the use of this blade drone 720. It is not only about taking photographs and getting videos but much more on the enjoyment and entertaining it gives you for users.

Haven’t you tried out traveling a drone? This is the right time for you to use a try! Rush up and experience and like the good quality photographs for your cherished images, for your personal video clips, and even for your personal live stream adventures.

#blade 720 pro

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bestblade720 · 5 years ago

Text

Blade Drone 720 Benefits and features

Blade 720 Drone delivers rookie consumers for professionals. In this article are one of the desired highlights of this technology

•This really is foldable

This superior blade 720 drone review comes with remarkable collapsible propellers. As a result, you can actually take it anywhere you want without having to worry about the risk of transportation.

•This can be controlled via Google android, iOS, or Smartphone

•Altitude Carry Setting

•Improved Airline flight Time

•Contra--Selection Technology

Featuring its built-in detectors, you may possibly prevent smashing and collisions on the floor and in addition some challenges.

•Sensible along with Minimal Style

Its clever light feature development keeps with each other, supplying additional mobility.

•Panorama Method

By utilizing this drone 720, you are able to get images 360 qualifications above within a individual drive on its key if you use your smartphone.

•Incredible Video

The videos, together with the pictures which can be captured applying this drone, are found to get incredibly crystal clear and sharp.

•three dimensional VR Mode

In order that will help you the drone, you can use its joystick as well as its VR kit.

Let’s have more of the blade 720 benefits:

•Less headache placing-up

•Smooth and intuitive regulates for quick soaring

•Single-switch for attaining, taking off and coming back

•Battery permits the person to fly for a greatest of 10 mins

•Lithium battery power carries a large capacity which offers a longer period for flying

•Includes Wi-Fi interconnection which assists in easy and actual-time information transferring

•360 levels easy going

•Reduced and-velocity method

•Light characteristic can make it stronger in comparison with other individuals

Advantages of using Blade Drone 720

The major benefits associated with this specific drone are its price, portability, video camera, as well as simple to operate. This drone appears to be a huge android cell phone in proportion. It includes flip-style rotors as a result, you are able to surely get the most-loved easily transportable drone. It would easily fit into your case or wallet. You can now use and fly this phenomenal drone. The user doesn’t have to pay attention to its elevation, just browse through and love your flight! It is actually unquestionable which every drone wants a fantastic camera. Hence, this blade drone 720 offers an awesome image as well as video lessons.

Blade Drone 720 Benefits & Disadvantages

Experts

•Cheap, effective, and Dealing with is not hard

•Remarkable Taking photos

•Thrilling to Use

When you find yourself already familiarized with how you can work it, you will get fun as well as an satisfying experience.

Negatives

•Personal privacy Attack

•Damages or Accidents

•Feasible Mishandling

•Cause harm to

•Airport Dangers

Buyer Viewpoints and also Activities

•According to Bod, this drone is very good. Your friends will certainly be amazed by its camera resolution. It is capable of doing offering beautiful video tutorials and photographs.

•As outlined by David Frocione, he will surely buy more of this system. What he loves most is the sincerity and trustworthiness with regards to this drone.

What Is the Value of Blade Drone 720?

Conclusion

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druware · 5 years ago

Text

Windows 10 & Surface Pro X

It is a strange turn for me. After 20 years of using primarily Macs and iOS devices, I find that my preferred portable device is a Windows machine. The last time I carried a Windows machine as my primary portable device, Windows 2000 was the operating system, and it was a Dell laptop with 2 PCMCIA ports. Unplugged, 60 minutes would have been a light usage day, and at the time, it was a beast.

Then I switched ( unintentionally ) to an Apple iBook. I picked up an iBook to play with OS X and see what they were doing. A few months later, that little, underpowered, but well designed laptop supplanted that Dell laptop. Since then, I've been through many laptops. I've had iPads, I've had Windows tablet, and none, to date have been able to become the device that I reach for first as my mobile device.

The Surface Pro X has become that device in the last few weeks. Like that iBook all those years ago, it really is not best of breed at anything, but it is better than average at almost everything. The items that keep my iPad in the bag are the books I have on it, and a couple of tools that just don't work on the Surface Pro X yet, if ever

Being a Windows ARM device means there are a handful of compromises in place that can make software choices tricky.

ZWIFT

One of the fitness tools that I use in my life, is simply a non-starter on the Surface Pro X. Built on .NET, and the Unity game engine, most of the platform should be portable, and they do run the same code on iPadOS, iOS, tvOS, Windows and MacOS X, so in theory it should be no problem. Sadly, as they've elected to adopt 64bit only on Windows, and the engine uses OpenGL rather than DirectX on Windows, not only will it not run in x86 emulation, it cannot be corss compiled to ARM64 as Windows on ARM does not support OpenGL.

Embarcadero Delphi

Not something I use terribly often anymore, there are still occassions that I need to open some legacy code and work on it. For this, I still hve to revert to other environments.

#It is

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qonqr · 6 years ago

Text

The Migration from Hell

TLDR:

A new update will be out today

This upgrade/migration was very difficult

Expect some small issues over the next few weeks

Some older phones won’t work anymore, after the migration is complete

Greetings QONQR players. It has been several months since my last blog update. I hope my absence hasn’t created too much concern.

In early winter I began undergoing a massive migration effort on our servers. This followed a 4-month effort to accomplish a similar upgrade of our iPhone and Android clients to move to the new platform recommended for cross platform mobile development.

The server migration was excruciating to say the least. For the technical folks in the crowd, we moved to the modern Web Application hosting model in Microsoft Azure, from the Classic Cloud Services model. This included a migration from ASP MVC 4 to ASP.Net Core.

For the non-technical folks, image that you built a custom car five years ago following the instructions published by a big electric car company, using mostly that company’s parts. Now said car company says that if you want to keep getting replacement batteries, you need to make some changes to your car. BUT don’t worry, you can re-use almost all of the parts. Then you find out, that bolts are no longer allowed to connect the parts, and some new fasteners are needed. Some parts need to be moved from the front to the back of the car. You need to change out the engine start button on the dash to a thumb print reader on the gear shift. Also, the car must be re-assembled from the top down, which requires scaffolding to hold the car up as you build it. Now imagine that some of the new instructions are missing a few critical steps and you need to email support, which takes several days, to get to a solution. Also imagine that other instructions are complete, but the example diagrams are only samples of how to put things together, but you would never do it that way if your goal was to ever drive the car over 30 mph (and it doesn’t note that important detail).

This effectively describes my last 6 months. Almost none of the logic on the server changed, the code parts were for the most part the same, yet it took months to connect my software to Microsoft’s new services and restructure the code to fit the new runtime requirements. All the while, avoiding the many mistakes in Microsoft’s documentation or avoiding the bad architecture advice that hurts the security and scalability we had in the old model.

I’ve talked to a few game developers over the years who had built a profitable game, but let it “die” or removed it from the store while many people were still playing it. In almost every case, the developer(s) reason for ending the game was because they couldn’t afford to do the upgrade that would be needed to keep the game going. Like with version 2 (QONQR Blue), I was too damned stubborn to abandon the game, and forced my way through the upgrade.

It was awful, and I can see how others have been smart enough not to try it. Software developers want to be creating new stuff, being innovative, overcoming challenges and solving problems they created themselves. Working to upgrade a large system has almost no innovation, requires reworking old stuff, and deals almost entirely with solving problems someone else (Microsoft, Apple, Google) created. In many companies, a sure way to lose your best software developers is to make them spend months doing exactly this.

I’ve been very honest with my friends the past few months, and I’ve always done my best to be candid with my QONQR players. The past year of migrations and upgrades, dealing with Apple, Google, and Microsoft’s terrible documentation and awful mobile platforms have destroyed my love of writing software. The industry has been flooded with “best practices” that make the easy things easier, and the hard things much, much harder. Ironically many of these “best ways to do things” hurt security on the mobile devices and reduce performance on the servers. It has been very difficult to fit within the “new way” of doing things, but keep our app secure, fast, and scalable.

What’s next for the app?

The new server hosting should save us money in our hosting costs and should support more users. Some new features I hope to add in the future, were not supported in the old architecture.

The new servers are running now and a new QONQR app is in the stores for Android and iOS, version 3.1. I have decided to benchmark this as a major update, despite most the changes being on the server.

The new and old servers will run in parallel for a few weeks or months. Old apps will continue to connect to the old servers for now. The new app has an option in settings that will allow you to connect to the old server if we find a bug impacts some users on the new server.

Android 4.4 and below will not be supported with the new app. The security issues with 4.4 are too significant and the operating system is now 5 versions and 6 years behind the current Android version.

iPhone 5 and up will be supported for now, but that may change to iPhone 5S and up before the end of the year.

We think most features in Windows Phone will continue to work with the new servers once the old servers are shut down. We are not testing WP anymore. Two things we know will not work are chat and the SyncLock protection mini-game. It is unclear how much longer we will allow Window Phone clients to connect to the servers. Microsoft is officially discontinuing support for Windows Phone in 6 months. If the new server migration breaks the ability to launch and harvest on Windows Phone, that will be the end of our support for WP.

Chat and the SyncLock mini-game will not work between the new and old clients. The new services for “live” connections are very different and I have not found a way to support old connections with the new services. This will be a pain point we simply need to deal with during the migration.

Many new Android phones are flagged as tablets in the version 2.X version of the app. This restriction is be removed in the 3.1 version.

What is next for Silver?

I need to find a way to enjoy this again. What makes QONQR great is the people who contribute positively to the community. Perhaps I need to spend more time in the chat rooms just hanging out and chatting. Maybe I need to work on something completely tangential to QONQR, such as finally shutting down the old forums that are plagued with Russian spam and moving to a new system. Maybe I should work on making it easier to crowdsource updates to the several languages QONQR support. Perhaps I need to spend some time cleaning up duplicate zones. Maybe I need to go fishing once a week. I am looking for ways I can enjoy writing code again.

I hope this new server migration goes smoothly. The sooner I can stop working on old problems, the sooner we can all get on to new and more exciting features. Please bear with me as we work through the final migration issues.

Thanks for supporting QONQR.

-Scott (aka Silver)

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dracox-serdriel · 3 years ago

Text

There are benefits of using an Apple given certain coding environments, but that's ultimately because of groups like Homebrew, which provide an open source package management system that Apple couldn't be bothered with (despite their heavy push for marketing to coders/engineers).

A few years back, Mac finally rolled out Dark Mode for its UI. The length of time it took to implement this was staggering (literally decades), which was particularly astonishing because a while back (maybe 15ish years), there was a third party software that allowed you to set custom colors for your Mac (essentially, you could create your own theme). People created and shared themes, just like they did on windows.

And then Apple declared it a "security risk" and actively disamantled the user's abilities to set their own fucking theme colors on their own computer. And even now, Dark Mode isn't truly available for all apps - and even if it is, you now have exactly 2 themes for your computer. You cannot set your own theme on the Mac operating system--you've got 2 choices, and that's it.

You can completely customize a theme on Windows, and have been able to do this for, well, ever.

I grew up with Macs--back when they were not terribly popular and were "virus free" (let's be real, hardly anyone owned one, why make a virus targetting them). The biggest issue was that nobody wanted to make third-party software for such a small user base. But you know what? They were a good company with a good product. When they made their "big comeback"--and started to get popular--they built their new OS off of UNIX. If you are a coder and use a Mac (and dread switching to Windows because of all the hoops for setting up an evironment), you may find it pretty easy to switch to Linux instead.

Don't forget - on top of all of Apple's BS - they have a "walled garden" of apps, where adult/mature contact is essentially curated into non-existence, which is the cause of many battles over Tumblr tags no longer having content on iOS devices. No, seriously. And it's not just Tumblr that gets this shit from Apple.

Some also have argued that Apple acts like a carrier rather than a platform, including their 30% tax on all in-app sales. And then there's this gem of a quotation:

"Apple’s fortunes—now swollen to a brain-melting $2.1 trillion market cap, currently highest in the known universe—are not maintained through one-off product sales, but rather the careful construction of behavioral cycles." -- Source: Apple’s Walled Garden Is Becoming Harder to Escape

Seriously, Fuck Apple.

I grew up with Macs and loved it when Apple made a comeback, but now? Their products are subpar, and they know it--so much so that they do everything they can to trap users in their products (rather than, you know, actually compete with other tech companies) and then hike up their prices. Hell, these days, they can barely be bothered to flag when an upgrade will change the appearance of an app (seriously, I upgraded Outlook on my computer and now nothing looks right and I can't find anything), let alone bother with real assistance to users.

Let me repeat that: Fuck Apple.

I am sorry. I’m bashing Apple here. And for good reason.

This is a plea to my followers.

Stop buying Apple products. I know you’ve used them for most of your life, and I know it’s inconvenient to move to a new brand because in most cases, you cannot take your contacts with you on various chat apps.

I know this is inconvenient. I truly do.

But Apple is not the company it was before. There is now no difference between an Apple computer and a Windows computer in terms of graphic design. I know this for a fact. I had to use both in college 20 years ago, and non-apple computers are now generally better for design work than Apple computers.

Most non-apple companies encourage self-repair of your own devices, while Apple refuses it. I also know this for a fact, as I watched Apple computers become slowly less reparable through the late 90s and early 2000s. Where I was once able to do the repairs on our office computers, we had to start sending out our Apple devices because they started gluing things down on their logic boards. Notably the glue they used was not heat-resistant and led to device damage should the heat sink system fail. But they did this because they wanted to dig more money out of their customers.

Apple software is also designed to fail. I cannot believe people are still buying new devices after the scandal where Apple was slowing their phones in order to force people to purchase new versions.

Apple hardware is designed to become obsolete. Motherboards and logic boards are designed to hold exactly what comes attached to them and will fail if upgrade attempts are made.

Apple refuses to work with software developers despite promises of cross-compatibility. One of the very first coding problems I discovered was to discover a gigantic hole in a software program that made a plotter (giant printer) compatible with iOS. This caused a memory leak, leading to necessary resets of the computer after every 2 feet of printing.

I know that it’s not possible for most of you to just throw your devices away and buy a new one. I wouldn’t be able to do that, either. But eventually there will come a time when you have to upgrade, and I encourage you to take the plunge and purchase a non-apple device. I don’t even have a recommendation for you because literally anything is better than Apple. A rock that you write on is better than an Apple phone.

Unfortunately I expect to be shadow-banned on Apple devices because of this, and I’ll try to report on decreased activity as much as I can.

It’s time to stop trying to beg Apple to change. They won’t. It’s time now to just stop supporting Apple.

#apple #i've given up on this company hardcore

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