Serious question: how can a build tool be fast or slow? From my understanding all it does is delegate the build steps to other tools, so wouldn't those be the bottleneck? Is it the resolution of order of build steps that takes so much time that a different build system can make a difference?
I'm afraid I still don't understand. One factor is having fewer features and not looking for obsolete files, that I can understand. I guess the other thing is using better rules to figure out when a file truly need to be rebuilt?
To be honest, it's not clear to me why other systems are not faster. Ninja is relatively straightforward but also not too clever.
Now that I think about it, I did write more about some of the performance stuff we did here: https://aosabook.org/en/posa/ninja.html Looking back over that, I guess we did do some lower-level optimization work. I think a lot of it was just coming at it from a performance mindset.
In my observations ninja more consistently uses multiple CPUs than GNU make. e. g. make -j40 will run up to 40 parallel processes (of clang/gcc) but a significant fraction of the time it will less than 40. With ninja average CPU utilization AFAIR was higher reducing build time. Not sure if it's specific to the project I was building (and how cmake generates makefiles) or would work for other projects too.
The problem with these staple-less staplers is that they permanently damage the paper. With a regular staple there are two tiny holes and that's it. You can bend open the staple to get back your individual sheets (e.g. to scan a particular page) and if you want to put them back together you can push the same staple or a fresh one back through the existing holes and bend it close.
You can repeat the process as many times as you want and there won't be any new damage to the paper. With a paperless stapler you would have to do new damage to the paper each time. Also, a regular staple is pretty much forever while these crimped folds can eventually come loose again.
I think Stop Killing Games is more important than just "oh noes, they took my toys away". Looking back, video games have been the gateway to computing in more than one one way. Before home computers people had game consoles (which were cheaper than computers) or arcades. Before iTunes and app stores there was Steam. Before the modern smartphone apps there were Wii channels. Maybe in some cases the games came technically later, but they were the initial contact for the broad masses.
What I'm getting at is that it has usually been through games that practices in general computing have been established. If Stop Killing Games is successful it will have much bigger effects on general computing. And I believe that this is why you keep the same false accusations getting repeated over and over again (e.g. saying that SKG would require publishers to keep supporting a game forever). I know it's said not to attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity, but at some point the pattern becomes too clear not to notice. All of big tech stands to lose eventually if SKG succeeds.
Have you played The Talos Principle 2? Yep, games are toys! It's nothing more than that. What we fail to realise in our industrial society is that toys are a fundamental piece of our culture, they enable learning lots of different skills that wouldn't be possible in the "real world", they foster creativity, problem solving, bonding and cooperation...
Toys are just toys, and yet they are the most important things we have. I honestly think the technological progress catalyzed by games is a byproduct, a huge one, but not central to the industry. We only think technology is the most important thing because we live in a world in which overvalues technical prowess in lieu of culture.
I agree with most of what you said, but describing video games as nothing more than toys does a disservice to the medium.
Yes, video games can be educational and entertaining, just like real world toys, but they can also be artistic and communicate stories. They're the most expressive and engaging storytelling device we have ever invented.
Not all games are all of these things, and there's nothing wrong with games that only focus on entertainment, but those that combine all of these aspects successfully are far more impactful and memorable than any other piece of media.
> Yes, video games can be educational and entertaining, just like real world toys, but they can also be artistic and communicate stories.
Storytelling and art isn't exclusive to video games though. Board games for instance have tons of storytelling and are very rich in art. They are, however nothing more than toys, and they don't need to be. That's my whole point. Being "just a toy" is pejorative only in the industrial, productive society.
I suppose it's a matter of semantics and perspective. The definition of "toy" seems too narrow to me to properly encompass the complexities of board and video games. A ball is a toy, but clearly it's unable to provide the same experience as a board or video game. At a certain point these experiences can be deeply engaging in ways that simpler toys can't provide. Not necessarily better, but certainly different. Maybe it has to do with the amount of play rules, engaged senses, or brain activity... I'm not sure. But at some point a toy stops being a toy to me. :)
Though I do agree with your point. Games/toys are unfairly criticized in our society.
I stand corrected: "an object that is used by an adult for pleasure rather than for serious use". Video games, board games etc... can very well be used for serious use cases, so they don't fit the definition of a toy.
There are a huge number of people who deluded themselves into reflexively protecting the interests of hundred billion+ dollar industries. No malice required for that, they also aren't stupid, propaganda works.
> [2] Any derivative works based on my Build source may be distributed ONLY through the INTERNET.
> [3] Distribution of any derivative works MUST be done completely FREE of charge - no commercial exploitation whatsoever.
> [5] The use of the Build Engine for commercial purposes will require an appropriate license arrangement with me. Contact information is on my web site.
Backup cameras are great for people who wear glasses. My visual cone is narrower, so I effectively have to turn my head 180° to see accurately enough, otherwise it's just a blur.
It absolutely boggles my mind that it's legal in the US for a deliverer to just leave a package out in the open for anyone to pick up and consider it "delivered". Might as well just throw it out of the window of your car, it has the same chance of getting picked up by the recipient. Where I live the package has to be handed over to the recipient. If the recipient is not available it will be handed over to a neighbour and this will be noted on a little card that's placed in the recipient's mail box. If that is not possible it will be taken back to the mail office and the recipient can pick it up in person.
Adding video surveillance is no solution. OK, so you saw a random stranger pick up your package. Now what? What are you going to do with that information? Are the police going to start a manhunt because of your 50$ Amazon order?
No thanks. I want packages delivered when I’m not home. If i want it to be handed to me I can require it be handed to me, picked up, or delivered to a nearby store. If I wanted to go pick up a package I would just go to the store in the first place.
Most stuff doesn’t matter, and is rarely stolen. If something matters I’ll just have the delivery company do what I guess is required in where you live, I can choose.
> It absolutely boggles my mind that it's legal in the US for a deliverer to just leave a package out in the open for anyone to pick up and consider it "delivered".
The actual answer to your conundrum here is that the package isn't actually considered delivered.
When you order something, it's the seller's responsibility to get it to you. They have the choice of having their deliveries require a signature to be delivered but that costs more so they consider stolen packages as a cost of business.
If a package is stolen, it hasn't been delivered. You report to the company you bought from and they send you a new one. They can negotiate with the shipping company if they are at fault.
The reason for the practice of leaving packages at your door is that it's cheaper to replace the few stolen packages for free than it is to pay a driver to require signatures for each package.
High value or non-replaceable items can be shipped more securely.
Do you live somewhere with high crime? The reason deliveries work this way in the US is that porch pirates are uncommon. There is a flurry of them during the holidays, but even then, the vast majority of deliveries are just fine.
> What are you going to do with that information?
Nothing, because by the time I look at my doorbell camera I would already have told the shipper the package was swiped and they will have shipped a replacement. They might take it up with the shipper, or call it a cost of doing business, whatever, but it won't be -my- problem.
No, they live somewhere with a working postal law like Germany. Hand it directly to the addressed or a person authorised by the addressed (in which case inform the recipient via card or sms) or deposit it in a postbox, post office. This way it is secure that you receive your stuff even if you are not at home: https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/DE/Fachthemen/Post/Regelung...
>No, they live somewhere with a working postal law like Germany. Hand it directly to the addressed or a person authorised by the addressed (in which case inform the recipient via card or sms) or deposit it in a postbox, post office. This way it is secure that you receive your stuff even if you are not at home: https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/DE/Fachthemen/Post/Regelung...
Sure. And that's great. But we're not talking about Deutsche Post, or even the US Postal Service.
We're talking about Amazon Logistics subcontractors who are so over-scheduled that they routinely need to urinate in bottles[0] rather than stop to use a restroom or they won't be able to fulfill their delivery quota for the day.
Those folks are assuredly not going to do anything more than the bare minimum (and not necessarily because they don't want to) because their delivery quotas don't allow for anything more than dumping a package on a porch (or in an unattended apartment building lobby) and maybe ringing the doorbell/intercom.
Those folks are assuredly not going to do anything more than the bare minimum (and not necessarily because they don't want to) because their delivery quotas don't allow for anything more than dumping a package on a porch (or in an unattended apartment building lobby) and maybe ringing the doorbell/intercom.
So, implement surveillance of all, not only for the fracture of a percent of dogs returned but also because there are no functioning labour laws. Right. Got it. (/s)
>So, implement surveillance of all, not only for the fracture of a percent of dogs returned but also because there are no functioning labour laws. Right. Got it. (/s)
Why stop there? People actually lie once in a while and say they never received a package that was supposedly delivered. We need to put those cameras inside peoples' homes, especially in the bathrooms and bedrooms where they hide the packages that were "never delivered." And why stop there? if we find that folks are lying about that, they should be tased, beaten and sent to prison (or just shot dead on the spot) for many years because they tried to defraud the powers-that-be ^H^H^H megacorps, and we can't allow that now can we? /s[0]
On a more serious note, there actually are labor (but without that extraneous 'u', friend!) laws in the US. But those generally only apply to "employees" and not subcontractors. Here's a page from Amazon about how to become a "delivery service partner"[1] (read: subcontractor so Amazon can avoid pesky things like labor laws, minimum wages, health care coverage, etc.), so you too can spend thousands and finally be allowed to urinate in plastic bottles. Good times!
[0] My '/s' is much broader and more absurd than yours. Please get ready for round two of the /s-waving contest :)
I will say that we don't use those limey flavoured spellings over here across the pond, nor do we allow such things in our adverts either, even if we're filling our caravans up with petrol.
It's an honour to be singled out for this, especially as I was whinging about it. ;)
The US is very rural compared to Germany. If I had to drive to a post office for every package that would be a ridiculous hassle. Plus if the delivery try companies needed to hand it to people in person that’s going to take a lot more time, most of which will be completely wasted as people are at work. That means they’ll need a ton more delivery drivers, they’ll use a ton more gas, and our shipping rates will go up a lot.
Where I live nobody can even see my door from the road. Our laws “work” just fine for our situation.
The post depot boxes are located every couple of kilometers, you could walk there. You can define the people allowed to receive your parcel, don't tell me you don't have at-home neighbours at all in your street/block. I prefer this to total neighbourhood surveillance and laws that work "just fine" except where they need to protect my privacy.
I don't even live in a super rural area, but if you think you could just walk a couple of kms in a couple of foot of snow to get something like a bookcase and bring it over is hilarious. Also, I would rather not receive packages for my neighbors, and I assume they wouldn't for me either. Ring works fine, I don't share the footage but I feel it is a cost of living in high crime regions.
You leave out that they can keep it in a warehouse at the other side of the country for pickup and there is no law saying that it cannot be further away than the point of origin. Fun times.
Sadly I rarely see an option for "place it with a neon sign on my front porch" when I order things online, because the chance of having things stolen would often be preferable to a daytrip to the middle of nowhere.
Porch pirates are so uncommon that it became a yearly hunt/thing for a major american youtuber and is the only reason people outside the US even know it exists!
Ah yes, porch pirates do not exist anywhere but in the US.
You know that the reason someone can make it newsworthy is because it is uncommon, yeah?
A security firm, which may have a particular interest in the numbers being skewed in a certain direction, pegs the number at 250K packages stolen from porches every day. Sounds like a huge problem! There are 60M packages delivered every day. Even if they are providing accurate numbers, which I doubt, it is uncommon.
If you live somewhere with high property crime and a large fent problem, the problem isn’t that uncommon. But I have lots of cameras and yell them off (and pick up deliveries quickly).
Not sure about this one. I understand the need and the idea behind it is well-intentioned, but I can easily see denouncelists turn into a weapon against wrongthinkers. Said something double-plus-ungood on Twitter? Denounced. Accepted contribution from someone on a prominent denouncelist? Denouced. Not that it was not possible to create such lists before, but it was all informal.
The real problem are reputation-farmers. They open hundreds of low-effort PRs on GitHub in the hope that some of them get merged. This will increase the reputation of their accounts, which they hope will help them stand out when applying for a job. So the solution would be for GitHub to implement a system to punish bad PRs. Here is my idea:
- The owner of a repo can close a PR either neutrally (e.g. an earnest but misguided effort was made), positively (a valuable contribution was made) or negatively (worthless slop)
- Depending on how the PR was closed the reputation rises or drops
- Reputation can only be raised or lowered when interacting with another repo
The last point should prevent brigading, I have to make contact with someone before he can judge me, and he can only judge me once per interaction. People could still farm reputation by making lots of quality PRs, but that's actually a good thing. The only bad way I can see this being gamed is if a bunch of buddies get together and merge each other's garbage PRs, but people can already do that sort of thing. Maybe the reputation should not be a total sum, but per project? Anyway, the idea is for there to be some negative consequences for people opening junk PRs.
> The real problem are reputation-farmers. They open hundreds of low-effort PRs on GitHub in the hope that some of them get merged. This will increase the reputation of their accounts, which they hope will help them stand out when applying for a job. So the solution would be for GitHub to implement a system to punish bad PRs.
GitHub customers really are willing to do anything besides coming to terms with the reality confronting them: that it might be GitHub (and the GitHub community/userbase) that's the problem.
To the point that they'll wax openly about the whole reason to stay with GitHub over modern alternatives is because of the community, and then turn around and implement and/or ally themselves with stuff like Vouch: A Contributor Management System explicitly designed to keep the unwashed masses away.
Just set up a Bugzilla instance and a cgit frontend to a push-over-ssh server already, geez.
I mean, "everyone already has an account" is already a very good reason. That doesn't mean "I automatically accept contributions from everyone", it might be "I want to make the process of contribution as easy as possible for the people I want as contributors".
Hatching a reputation-based scheme around a "Contributor Management System" and getting "the people you want as contributors" to go along with it is easier than getting them to fill in a 1/username 2/password 3/confirm-password form? Choosing to believe that is pure motivated reasoning.
> GitHub customers really are willing to do anything besides coming to terms with the reality confronting them: that it might be GitHub (and the GitHub community/userbase) that's the problem.
The community might be a problem, but that doesn't mean it's a big enough problem to move off completely. Whitelisting a few people might be a good enough solution.
GitHub needs to implement eBay-like feedback for contributors. With not only reputation scores, but explanatory comments like "AAAAAAAAAAAAAA++++++++++++ VERY GOOD CONTRIBUTIONS AND EASY TO WORK WITH. WOULD DEFINITELY MERGE THEIR WORK AGAIN!"
I know this is a joke, but pretending for a moment that it isn’t: this would immediately result in the rep system being gamed the same way it is on eBay: scam sellers can purchase feedback on cheap or self-shipping auctions and then pivot into defrauding people on high-dollar sales before being banned, rinse, and repeat.
Let's also see the differences: On github you can always see the interactions. On ebay, once a sale has been made, you have no idea what happens next. On Github you always have all the artifacts of where the reputation comes from.
On auctions, you do not have to provide a payment method to bid. So once you won an auction you still have to pay the agreed price. Only after the buyer paid, does the seller get the shipment address. Depending on the buyer this can take longer or shorter (or won't happen at all).
I don't know how it is where where you live, but here there are two possibilities I can think of:
- When I buy an item I still have to click a "check out" link to enter my address and actually pay for the item. I could take days after buying the item to click that link.
- Some sellers might not accept PayPal, instead after I check out I get the sellers bank information and have to manually wire the money. I could take days after checking out to actually perform the money transfer.
There are people who bid but then don’t pay if they win the auction. Or take weeks to pay after winning. That’s just a pain for the seller, because they have to spend time trying to get the winner to pay, or else have to put up the auction again (which used to cost some fee each time for the seller, I don’t know how it is now). The only penalty for non-paying winners is the negative feedback they receive.
I think merged PRs should be automatically upvoted (if it was bad, why did you merge it?) and closed unmerged PRs should not be able to get upvoted (if it was good, why did you not merge it?).
Intrinsically good, but in conflict with some larger, out of band concern that the contributor could have no way to know about? Upvote to take the sting out of rejection, along with a note along the lines of "Well done, and we would merge is it weren't for our commitment to support xxx systems which are not compatible with yyy. Perhaps refactor as a plugin?"
Also, upvotes and merge decisions may well come from different people, who happen to disagree. This is in fact healthy sometimes.
>The only bad way I can see this being gamed is if a bunch of buddies get together and merge each other's garbage PR
Ya, I'm just wondering how this system avoids a 51% attack. Simply put there are a fixed number of human contributers, but effectively an infinite number of bot contributers.
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