I work in IT, and different definitions of what SaaS means are starting to wreak real havoc on the architecture as a whole.

We are better served just quitting the acronyms and taking the time to talk about a more detailed description of what the service actually adds in terms of value.

Amazon Prime is a subscription for shipping, video streaming, gaming benefits and more. Since software is not the primary goal, but a means of delivery for these other services, I will not consider Amazon Prime SaaS.

Yeah I believe this to be a fallacy. If all your contacts use WhatsApp, they still haven’t grasped the concept of installing two applications side-by-side. Or they don’t fully understand why people are using signal over WhatsApp. If you fail both of those, congratulations, you’ve failed to be a self-aware tech user and you’re now demoted to a braindead consumer.

I know, mind blowing right? Point is, society in general should not accept others forcing you to keep the WhatsApp monopoly in tact, which is exactly what’s happening here.

It will take some time but eventually adoption will spread, even among your contacts. It’s just a matter of critical mass, and there are some pretty compelling features within Signal that make it a worthy replacement.

I think it depends on the adoption of Linux on the desktop. When more people get a taste of what freedom of software brings, they are going to want that for their phones as well.

That or we might just be years away from the next big thing where everyone walks around with AR glasses and the cycle starts all over again with companies competing for a duopoly, and we’re just fucked.

Others in this thread have covered most of the points already, but it is mainly software support for certain key things I want to do using my phone, such as online banking.

I realise most of this is just anxiety about taking the plunge and seeing what it’s like, so if I have money to burn I might just buy a second phone just to see if it’s a viable option for me.

But yeah, I wish mobile Linux was popular enough for there to be support from key service providers. Though it might be a long shot since “desktop” Linux is still growing and we haven’t yet seen the support shift.

It was a big mistake by Google to base the Android Framework entirely on Java. Pivoting to Kotlin because you’ve discovered that working in Java produces nothing but garbage does nothing to fix the situation either.

Can’t wait for generic Linux phones to be a (more popular) thing so we won’t have to deal with this clown world nonsense anymore.

For this to become a serious issue a couple of conditions need to be met:

• there has to be enough second hand supply to meet demand and keep prices low.
• …which means lots of people need to circulate their games.
• …which means they didn’t like your game enough to want to keep it in their collection for replayability
• …which means you made an unremarkable game

Now, given the fact that I have full confidence in your ability to create something worthwhile (because you would do so from passion), this cycle will likely be broken at some point.

There’s also the other option where people will circulate their second hand games with the knowledge they’ll be able to buy back another copy somewhere down the road.

But yes, you’re right that this will bring a new factor to the gaming industry that everyone has to take into account. Keep in mind that your financial security in the indie gaming sector is fully dependant on wether you develop something worthwhile. You are in no way entitled to be able to make a living from publishing games regardless of their quality. Which is the beauty of the indie games segment: the more love and care you put into your game, the bigger the chances are that it’ll be a success.

A trend I’ve noticed over the years is that there are just very little jobs available where you “design shit”. It feels like the market is saturated with designers and companies already have all the workers they are looking for.

Meanwhile most people I’ve seen graduate have no real talent for the job. And they never seem to get hired for positions that require talent in design for manufacturing.

You’d think there would be more jobs available, but there simply aren’t. All the jobs are either trade skills, pure CAD or some other part of the product lifecycle that doesn’t require any real design skill.

engineer UK /ˌen.dʒɪˈnɪər/ US /ˌen.dʒɪˈnɪr/

a person whose job is to design or build machines, engines, or electrical equipment, or things such as roads, railways, or bridges, using scientific principles:

• a civil engineer

• a mechanical/structural engineer

• a software engineer

Cambridge Dictionary

I’m all for letting people ramble, but Engineering is, by definition, the design of tecnical stuff.

Risk management is a part of “designing things”, but it is not what makes you an engineer. Converting technology into objects that solve problems is what makes you an engineer.

And there are lots of disciplines out there that started calling themselves engineers while they are objectively very deep into the grey area. If your work does not involve calculus, logic or physics of some kind, it is highly likely that you are not in fact a real engineer. (Looking at you, Sales and Marketing Engineers)

Honestly that probably goes for any interpreted programming language that supports imports.

Many Javascript frameworks just put their configuration into -.config.js files in the project root. Which is a pretty elegant solution that does not require custom parsing. Just import the config and go nuts.

Compiled (and by extension bundled) software obviously requires a different approach, but at that point you should probably consider storing your config in some kind of database.

Maybe there just isn’t a right answer to the config conundrum if all the general solutions are janky in some way.

Yeah not a fan of YAML either. I simply don’t see the benefit of getting rid of delimiters and replacing them with indentation. Yes, it does save several bytes, which might be important if you measure space in kilobytes I guess. It does provide cleaner files which may or may not be more readable.

It does not provide any advantages in parsing complexity. It does not provide any protection against typos.

I guess the same can be said of python, which forces indentation and therefore readable code formatting. Which is a problem that does not exist since the invention of code formatters and linters.

I like python for what it does but delimiters are actually useful in terms of readability. They provide an extra hint that the text you’re about to look at conforms to a specific structure.

The python community would like to have a word with you.

Additionally, if you’re into mapping, give QGIS a try.

It’s an open source geospatial data management application, which is available cross-platform.

It neatly integrates many processing tools into a relatively intuitive GUI, and having even some basic skill can lead to some job opportunities.

You can even import OSM data through plugins or download services, which you can use for all kinds of fancy things.

It’s a simple and elegant way of covering 95% of document structuring needs, while being as close to readable plaintext as possible.

The vast majority of documents currently written in MS-word could just be markdown. The vast majority of web content could just be markdown. This would save the modern world petabytes of XML bloat.

If you need something fancier, either use a vector format or do fancy client-side styling.

That was awesome, thanks for sharing.

I fully get what you’re saying and I think I know a thing or two about how lifestyle branding consumes people’s lives to the point where they’re fully absorbed.

Social media platforms seem to be by far the worst offenders of stimulating this kind of addiction (let’s just name it for what it is).

Coming from a background of designing products, as opposed to selling them I tend to be focused on product representation, rather than selling an idea. Which is not actually the route to making stupid amounts of money.

You’ve convinced me that marketing is definitely part of the problem. Here in the Netherlands they’ve recently (about two years ago) relaxed some legislation on online gambling (gambling itself is legal, just the ads weren’t) and since we’ve seen a surge of ads on television and social media featuring sports icons and influencers. The result has been a giant increase in profits, which directly corelates to figures of increased debt, prevalent mostly in young adults. I firmly believe this is toxic and needs to be fixed asap.

If you do decide to host a Q&A I’ll be sure to have a look for more cool insights.

Interesting take, mind if I dig a little deeper?

The key part of Apple’s success is that they make idiotproof devices for people who want something to “just work” (insert linux desktop memes here). The way I’ve come to understand it in the last couple years (having relatives who’ve drank the cool-aid and are starting to spot the cracks in the facade), is that they have been pulled in by values way up high in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. They are locked into the ecosystem, believing that their current solution is somehow ideal and they seem most of all afraid that anything else will completely turn their world upside down. The weird part is that Apple manages somehow to convince people they are the only ones capable of providing an experience that will cover those needs.

The thing is: Being convinced that there is no greener grass elsewhere puts up a barrier to entry into the unknown. I really do wonder if the solution there is cracking down on marketing, as it would require broad sweeping legislation that would likely defeat the purpose.

Sure, companies will put forth the occasional blatant lie, misrepresenting their product, but oftentimes the heavy lifting is done by the established brand image. I would not know where to begin preventing such an image from forming in the first place without community pushback.

And that is where my original point comes in: If we push back by ridiculing the userbase we’ll have a culture war on our hands. The trick is to be smarter than that and actually show them that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. Every time the consumer gets fucked over by corporate greed, it is because we’ve let it happen by accepting the slippery slope brought upon us. (Publicly traded) companies will only listen to financial consequences from their actions, which means we have the power to stop their bullshit by not buying into it. Doing so requires a large enough group of people to start spending money elsewhere.

Problem is: The current market is affected by Apple’s shenanigans (though examples of the same pattern are also found in other industries). Which means other manufacturers are copying all the anti-consumer design decisions and you’re not left with much of a choice.

This is where legislation comes in. By providing basic consumer protections like in the proposed right to repair bills, we can at least be sure to have the option of choosing our own repair provider.

Though I’m curious if there is an additional angle we need to explore as consumers. Having said all the above, would you still disagree that educating our peers in a respectful manner will lead to people changing their behaviour, and if so, why?

Agreed, they’re usually influenced by their emotional attachment to the Apple brand (or [insert fashionable electronics manufacturer here]). And my hunch is they respond to valid criticism with a defense along the lines of “they obviously know what they’re doing” or “tech is hard/dangerous/intellectual property, we can’t have just anybody working on it”.

The reality is, they often fail to see the bigger picture because they’re blinded by what they’ve convinced themselves is the truth. This unfortunately also means that clowning on them is counterproductive, as they won’t see the light without being eased into it.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t judge people for believing soldering an SSD to the motherboard is somehow innovative and progress, but it is hard to accompany our laughter with the patience to actually explain to them in a respectful manner that this is not the way.

It takes a hard reality check in the form of their data being gone when their SSD inevitably dies someday, and recovery not being an option “because you should have paid for an iCloud subscription”. Or it takes a way for “them” not to see “us” as the enemy when we’re advocating for Apple and competitors not to pull us further into a dystopian technological hellscape where devices are single use. Try convincing a cultists that they’re in a cult and they’ll see you as a threat. We have to make sure this doesn’t escalate into polarizing tech culture war any further than it already has.

We need repairability and sustainability to be the basis for consumer electronics going forward. Corporate profits don’t justify wasting resources on single-use electronics.

While this is very much welcome news, I am a little skeptical because this might still be a PR stunt.

Apple has shown they have the engineering capacity to design their devices to be virtually unfixable, all while still technically being compliant with this proposed piece of legislation.

Nonetheless, this show of support might finally be a means for us to end the ongoing culture war on repairability. It has been too much of a polarized debate lately, where opponents seem to be under the impression that a lack of repairability is a good thing for everyone, when it is really just having a choice that matters most.

Now that Apple has officially put in writing it’s support for repairability of consumer electronics, we can finally stop debating wether or not repairability is a good thing, and instead how we’re going to ensure the new situation works for everyone involved. Hopefully.