> It was easier to have non-threatening debates because everyone felt more secure. When people are stressed and afraid, the debates aren’t just intellectual exercises but things that could mean the loss of real opportunities in their lives.
You’re right that people feel less secure, but that doesn’t mean that they are correct when they feel that.
By pretty much any measure, I believe that people in 2025 are far more secure than they were in 1975, 1985 or 1995.
They were always a protection racket against retailers, and I haven't seen any proof that they started stuffing their affiliate code in 100% of the time only recently.
The racket is that they f*k with your campaigns by stealing codes typed by users of the extension, so even users who don't think they're sharing them end up sharing them with Honey. Imagine the fun when someone creates a valuable code for someone trusted and doesn't limit its usage sufficiently, and someone uses it on a Honey-infected machine. Now the whole Internet is getting a possibly loss-making discount!
Honey then contacts the business and says "Gee, wouldn't you like us to stop doing that? Just pay us 3% on every sale any of our tens of millions of users buy and we'll let you blacklist any codes you like!"
I think that this is correct. Also, we really shouldn’t forget that Markdown is meant to generate HTML, and that HTML blocks are valid Markdown: a system which does not permit it isn’t really using Markdown.
> If you run more than one monitor with different DPI, Wayland is the only choice.
I run multiple monitors with differing physical DPIs on X11. Yeah, that means they have differing resolutions. It doesn’t bother me, and I can do all the things that I want, unlike if I were using Wayland.
Maybe someday Wayland will be a replacement for X11, but that day is not today.
This really makes me wonder if you’ve used Tcl. Quoting in Tcl is so much simpler than in e.g. bash or cmake. It’s all about know when a string will be evaluated or not.
> Type errors are very common.
In my experience, no more so than in any other dynamic language, e.g. Python or Lua.
Again in my experience, if one wants a scripting language — i.e., one used to orchestrate a number of commands — then Tcl is exactly what the doctor ordered.
That doesn’t mean the “they” here isn’t unclear. I wasn’t sure whose Mastodon handle Paul Graham shared. I certainly didn’t think OP meant he shared his own handle.
To be perfectly pedantic, this should only be confusing if referring to the Mastadon employees. Otherwise, if referring to the non-person entity, singular or plural appropriate syntax would be “it”.
They originated around the same time, but singular you was initially only used for addressing superiors/showing respect (using the plural second person pronoun as a singular for this purpose is still a thing in a bunch of languages), a few hundred years later “you” became the standard second person singular pronoun while “thou” fell out of favour.
A very modern convention is now using “they/their” when a person may not be aware of someone’s preferred pronoun. And even still, I have also seen people abandon gendered pronouns entirely.
It's also a very old method. In fact, he/she is a later evolution of the English language. "He/his" used to be more equivalent to "it/its". It wasn't until ~15th century that the modern "he/him" and "she/her" fully evolved. "They/them" meanwhile was in full use by the 14th century
This train of thought makes no sense. The fact that something originated in Old English doesn't at all mean it's dead. He/She also originated in Old English, just a little later. Should I make fun of people using he/him, she/her pronouns because they're "clinging to Olde Anglishe"? lol
It’s also just far easier to use a plural pronoun to refer to a singular person to reflect the idea that you’re talking about their whole persona, brand, work, etc… and not just specifically the human being, IMO.
> Having a unified tool set works wonders for group productivity, no more messing around with some employees not having a certain package and others needing to customize their vim configs.
Completely agree: the entire company should be on a common, future-proof, extensible, free platform: Emacs!
I honestly don’t understand why anyone bothers wasting effort on any other editor.
You’re right that people feel less secure, but that doesn’t mean that they are correct when they feel that.
By pretty much any measure, I believe that people in 2025 are far more secure than they were in 1975, 1985 or 1995.