• 2 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • From the perspective of someone who uses Visual Studio Code, but also knows how to exit vim, there are a couple reasons that most developers who prefer one of the three, at least those I’ve spoken to.

    1. VS Code is a Microsoft product, and while “open source” it isn’t really open source. The core utility is but Microsoft ships the final application with some proprietary features. If this is your main gripe, then you can try VSCodium instead, which is a “fork” that doesn’t have the Microsoft additions.
    2. VS Code uses Electron, which is essentially browser emulation and isn’t exactly optimized. CLI editors like the above take up far fewer resources than a Visual Studio Code instance would. Unlike point (1), I don’t think there’s really a way around this in all practicality. It’s just an unavoidable fact. You can chose to still use VS Code of course, most personal computers can easily handle the load. But many see that as unnecessary when they get the same amount of “power” from a CLI editor.
    3. Plugins for the CLI applications are very powerful, and the ability to navigate using only the keyboard is by design. Many swear by keyboard-only operation of a computer because it’s faster and promotes more optimal methods of doing tasks. It forces discovery of new features and hotkeys by making things annoying to do otherwise. VS Code (and most editors) include a “vim keybindings” specifically for this reason. You’ll find that it’s a very popular method of working.

    Really it comes down to personal preferences and what you “grew up” using. It’s really hard to transition into something like vim and it takes a concerted effort to switch by most users. You have to want to switch, otherwise you’ll find it too difficult a learning curve or find yourself wandering back to more “featured” applications.

    There are likely more reasons out there, but these are, in my experience, the primary reasons.






  • Everyone outside of the U.S. almost assuredly still has SMS capabilities, it’s just not common utilized because everyone is already on WhatsApp or Telegram. It’s where their friends are, locking them into the ecosystem, which is exactly what I just said. And I would be willing to wager the only reason WhatsApp really got huge was because SMS hasn’t always been free to use and may still not be free in some countries and with some plans.

    Telegram, Signal and WhatsApp are fine, as for privacy how exactly are SMS better?

    I wasn’t speaking to privacy specifically, but where all your friends are.

    If you want privacy, then you shouldn’t be using Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp anyway, considering both are owned by Meta and their privacy track record is shaky at best.

    Signal is a great choice, but we get back to the main point where not everyone is on Signal, and once you are on Signal you’re locked in to using Signal and must have their app to participate in the conversation.

    My point wasn’t that SMS is better, but it’s simpler and more widely available and doesn’t require a standalone application to use.

    Ideally we would use an open standard like the Matrix standard to communicate, that way you can download whatever application you want and have all the privacy you could ever desire, but not have to download some random messaging application just to catch up from Gary from primary school



  • It sounds like a too good to be true situation. Definitely an interesting concept though. Sounds like they use remote servers to connect to the third-party apps using your credentials and then transcribe the messages using the Matrix protocol to the app. Source here and snippet below

    Beeper consists of two main components:

    • A client app that runs on your devices.
    • A web service run by Beeper.

    … Beeper’s web service consists of a Matrix homeserver and infrastructure to run open source bridges that connect to 15 different chat networks.

    Currently free but also will be a Plus version eventually rolling out, according to the FAQ

    For now, everyone has access to all the features of Beeper Plus for free. At some point in 2023, we will begin charging $5-10 per month for Beeper Plus.

    Also, no humor is lost on the fact that it is dangerously close to Wuph from The Office…











  • Thank you for the link! I realize it’s very much a LMGTFY situation, but I prefer to have the person making the claim provide the source because it puts us on equal ground of having the same source of information. From the article it’s clear that I could have looked up any right-wing article and found information to the contrary and we’d be in different contexts.

    Now, that being said, for anyone else coming to the thread, I recommend you read the whole article. But the TL;DR is that Eich was made CEO of Mozilla in 2014, which caused increased optics on his $1,000 contribution to Proposition 8, a California initiative to ban gay marriage in the state. Because of this, and because of his failure to diffuse the situation, he was removed as CEO shortly after. He was offered a high-ranking position at the company but declined.

    So, I would say he definitely has (had?) some close-minded views on gay marriage, however, he never publicly stated anything, but instead made a public donation that was “found out” by investigation, not because he outwardly publicized it. In fact, the article (and apparently Eich and his employees) makes it clear that he never let the viewpoint affect him professionally. But, it did make many of his co-workers uncomfortable and feel unwelcome in the Mozilla community, especially having someone hold those opinions so high up in the corporate chain.

    I just wanted to make sure the context was all straight here. I don’t agree with his close-minded views, I’m glad he was removed as CEO, and it’s another reason that I don’t want to use the Brave browser (assuming his views haven’t changed). But, I just want to make sure I had the whole picture