> i'm fine letting Chrome function simply as a dev tool and actually browse with Firefox, Opera, Servo, etc. w/uBlock Origin & uMatrix

I'm definitely in the same boat. That makes me wonder if it would be a bad long-term move for Chrome. Just guessing here based on personal anecdata, developers are more likely to use ad blockers, which could alienate the developer community. If that's true, I wonder if we would see a resurgence in Firefox and other browsers.

Firefox needs to improve its dev tools first. I love Firefox as a browser but I find myself forced to use chromium devtools because I can't figure out how to get our source maps to work with Firefox :(

This is going to get a whole lot better. Try nightly now to see what's coming.

You must have a really good internet connection. I pay close to $200 USD/mo for a wireless, 10Mbps max connection, and that's literally the best I can get unless I were to personally invest in running a fiber-optic line to my house.

Yes, I have a decent uplink. And I use fast VPN services.

With 10 Mbps, you should be able to get 3-5 Mbps through nested VPNs. I use UDP for all of them, so there's no retransmission chaos. As you add VPNs to the chain, bandwidth doesn't necessarily go down. But rtt increases, of course.

Out of curiosity, does anyone here use tig[1]? I've been wondering if it's worth learning.

[1] https://jonas.github.io/tig/

I use it occasionally, mainly just when I want to get a better look at the git graph. I'm sure it has more uses, but that's all I've needed so far.

> The main roadblock is the current lack of a way to ask the visitor for her language of choice in a way that does not involve words nor country flags

The whole point of the blog was that the browser already has asked the user that question in the sense that it defaults to the system language setting, i.e. the first things you do on a computer when you open it for the first time.

> but even a partial success is better than having an automated way force a broken choice upon the human visiting the website.

I don't understand. What you're proposing as a solution (asking visitors their language on first entry) is essentially the fallback scenario for guessing incorrectly.

I try to think of the number of different websites I visit and thinking of every single one asking me for a language preference makes me feel not good about using the web. Right now, the worst case scenario is when chrome automatically detects that the website doesn't match my language and gives me a popup asking me if I want to translate.

I definitely agree with you here, the first 2 nano-seconds of the article says to use the language header. I thought everyone already did that! :) Even if that metric isn't perfect, I don't know any browser that doesn't let you change that. Further, if it's a user preference to quickly see a website in a different language, get this extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/quick-language-swi...

IIRC it's the browsers language, not the system language. Might be wrong here.

Just looking through the Chrome settings, I get linked to this help article: https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/173424

> You can set Chrome to show all settings and menus in the language you want. This option is only available on Windows and Chromebook computers. > On Mac or Linux? Chrome will automatically display in the default system language for your computer.

Obviously it's different for different OS and browser combos, but the important thing I think is that it's a browser setting and not something that needs to be configured on every site.

I was playing with this today: at least on OSX, I couldn't find a browser that reasonably handled "I speak more than one language comfortably" out of the box (eg, using the OS settings).

Safari: sends the primary OS/environment language, and nothing else. (the OS allows for a weighted list of multiple languages, Safari honours only the primary language). There is no configuration option for this.

Chrome: sends the primary OS/environment language, then en_US, then en. If you had a second preference that wasn't english (eg Belgium, Switzerland, etc), tough. It is atleast configurable (if you look hard enough)

Firefox: entirely ignores the OS environment; uses the localization you downloaded. But is also configurable.

What I love about Firefox in this space is that it lets you configure fonts per-language, which is important because default fonts are often not that great.

I've never found sites that actually use Accept-Language properly, so I care as much if that works well.

Serious question: how do we know for certain that their DB hasn't been stolen yet?

That looks similar to the Kenyan Matatu: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matatu

Or even better, the sticker for a competitor to your actual system.

Just because something else was more shit doesn't make it any less shit.

> Oh and Wellington is the windiest city in the world. This is not an exaggeration

Seriously. I agree that it's a beautiful city in so many ways, but just spending a week there made me wonder if I would want to live in such a windy place.

It is windy there, but I lived there for 4 years, and you kinda start to love the wind, at least for me. It keeps things interesting :P

Maybe you could commute to work on one of those sail powered bikes? Those get a bit scary if the wind is gusty though.

> You can't write a good blog post without having already written some number of bad ones.

To add to this, I'd say: if you don't have a writing habit, the barrier to actually writing something when you do finally have something useful to say will be incredibly high.

I am willing, however, to give the GP the benefit of the doubt because they said "Engineers should blog publicly when they have something to say", not "Engineers should blog when they have something to say". Practicing writing does not mean that you have to publish everything.

So how do you get feedback for non-public work? On technical blogs, I always read the comments. Even for obscure/somewhat poorly written articles. Because someone who knows more than the author will sometimes leave feedback which will lead you in a better direction and expose you to more ideas.

And thankfully, technical blog articles don't attract too many comments on average. Quite often I find that a blog article on a technical point actually advances discussion on that idea.

All I would say is to make a honest effort. Try and do a basic rewrite before hitting publish.

People have been practicing privately and only occasionally getting checkpoints of public feedback across all kinds of skillsets for centuries. It's silly to act like we don't know how to practice in private.

Yes, you need a good guide, good general principles so that you're not practicing in the wrong direction. And yes, you need occasional "recitals" where you test audience reactions. But 99% of the work involved in developing any skill is just raw, rote repetition that most audiences are not only not interested in, but actively avoid.

>> People have been practicing privately and only occasionally getting checkpoints of public feedback across all kinds of skillsets for centuries. It's silly to act like we don't know how to practice in private.

Fair enough. I can see why my comment came across as if I said there were no other options.

But my point is to use resources at your disposal. One of the amazing resource at our disposal today is the ability to cost-effectively publish a half-baked idea on our website knowing that a) that could still be useful for a small section of people and b) its mistakes could be corrected by another small section of people who know the topic in greater detail and c) all this happens in such a way that everyone is, quite literally, "on the same page".

I also find that the second I hit publish, l tend to find errors and implicit assumptions, etc. Something about going public adds extra polish.