Rjevski

Apple adds a lot of value via the App Store for initial app purchase/download.

I agree they add very minimal value for recurring subscriptions, and their fee should be dialled back to be inline with what card processors charge (because they're essentially offering payment processing and not much else).

Maybe context should be taken into account?

I have no problems with people calling themselves doctors (whether fake or real) unless they are doing so in order to gain a certain advantage (trust, credibility, etc).

I only have a problem when someone pretends to be a doctor if they're trying to profit or harm people in some way, by for example making medication or similar.

1) London, United Kingdom

2) A lot (pretty much unlimited, considering anyone can resell DSL service from OpenReach, the company that manages phone lines nationwide).

In London we have Virgin Media which is an HFC/DOCSIS (cable, think Comcast) network, HyperOptic which is an actual fibre to the premises network (capable of 1Gbps and most likely more upon request), a few local fibre providers that can get you a leased line (higher price, but possible if HyperOptic/Virgin don't cover your area), and finally the dozens of DSL providers (which work anywhere you can get a phone line).

3-4) £64 for 1Gbps (symmetrical, so 1Gbps upload too) from HyperOptic. Failing that, 350Mbps (20Mbps upload) from Virgin Media for 50£.

5) 30Mbps Hyperoptic for 24£/month. DSL providers (which there are a ton) could probably go even lower at the expense of speed (especially upload speed).

6) Virgin Media is decent in terms of speed. Customer service is run by monkeys, akin to Comcast. No IPv6, etc. DSL providers are mostly trash so you get what you pay for.

7) No.

8) No (customer service is trash), but speeds are decent and since I'm not in a contract (I always choose the monthly commitment instead of yearly) I can switch if things get too crazy.

Job hopping every few months as a contractor doesn't seem to be an issue. At least it isn't for me - recruiters and clients reach out to me despite that and nobody ever questioned it.

I am at a standstill on how to build up my reputation after wasting so much time not building it.

Not sure about reputation, but you can at least build a decent network on LinkedIn to guarantee a steady supply of contracts by engaging with recruiters.

TLDR: this site converts your 24 words into an URL encrypted with a questionable key derived from a pattern and a color (from a dozen choices or so).

This doesn't actually solve the problem of storing the resulting URL, and the added encryption can be brute forced trivially.

The author also makes the assumption that only entering the first few characters of a seed word (which is enough for the site to tell which word it is because the dictionary is limited) is effective at thwarting keyloggers. It isn't. If the site can infer which word you mean based on the first few characters, so can the attacker.

Doesn’t solve the issue of device fingerprinting. There are a lot of data points that can be used to create a near-unique fingerprint of a device.

iOS doesn’t provide a system-wide unique ID however there is still more than enough data (WiFi network names, device name, device type, IP address, etc) that Shitbook can uniquely fingerprint a device and identify a user.

I'm not sure they have playlists. They probably spend more time tweaking their system than actually listening to music on it, negating the need for a playlist.

I'm not sure what's worse.

From my limited observation of flat-earthers on YouTube, they at least seem to be willing to do measurements but then either misinterpret the results (due to lack of knowledge) or knowingly twist them to say what they want to say.

Audiophiles on the other hand seem to reject the whole idea of taking measurements.

Groupon [...] pissed me off with retargeted ads, and earned a lifetime ban.

You too? Can't believe I'm not the only one. I used to see their crap every single time on Youtube a few years back (before I discovered adblockers).

Their brand was definitely imprinted in my mind so I guess it's a success... just a shame it's imprinted in the "go burn in hell" part of my mind.

Where are you seeing this? Here in London I still get way more as a contractor then I would be full-time, like 50% more.

I have a little developer experience.

By "developer experience" I meant the equivalent of "user experience", ie whether the codebase is enjoyable to work with.

I didn’t get the impression the original poster was just starting out

IMO it would still require them to get familiar with Wordpress before being able to get the good jobs, which means he's going to be stuck with crap gigs for some time while he builds references.

In most cases you can use the car port and just make a custom cable that bridges the two data pins together which tells the phone to use high current charging. The car’s port’s overcurrent protection will kick in if it’s an issue but I’ve got such a cable and so far I have yet to see any issues and I’ve used it for years with hundreds of different devices. No fire yet.

iOS devices will outright not charge if there’s just 5V on the port. Even the lowest charging current requires some sort of resistor arrangement.

Fortunately it seems like bridging the two data lines (essentially a 0 ohm resistor) is what’s needed to allow high-current charging (I think it’s 2 amps), so as long as your supply can withstand it (which pretty much every single device can, given that it’s tied to its own 5V rail which can supply many amps) you can just bridge the two pins together. Worst case scenario the overcurrent protection on the port will protect the source device.

Another problem with Bluetooth is that most devices cater to the lowest common denominator which means even though there are ways to make it better, most devices stick to older protocols to make sure it works with old, outdated garbage.

Who cares if WordPress isn’t a “modern framework”

Developer experience? I'd rather spend my way working with Laravel than crap old PHP code written like it's in the 90's.

It pays the same as any other programming as long as you don’t scrape the bottom of the barrel putting up mom & pop sites

It's good that you manage to find good clients but this wasn't my experience. A lot of WP projects go to the lowest bidder which just doesn't happen with the technologies I work with and recommend.

So if you already make good money on WP then go ahead by any means, but I personally wouldn't recommend getting into it if you're starting out.

A lot of businesses have custom ways of working that can't be modelled in off-the-shelf ERP software - they need something custom to either bridge the gap or completely replace their current ERP for example.

It's all custom, there is no one-size-fits-all approach so it's more about selling an unique product to each one rather than offering it as an SaaS.

Meh. Wouldn’t recommend Shitpress.

This niche itself doesn’t pay too well because prices are pushed down by so-called “developers” from third-world countries (they are bad, but clients don’t know any better and still end up going with them).

The product itself is crap, code quality is bad (PHP can be done right with good practices and modern frameworks like Laravel, but Wordpress is the total opposite of all that by design).

A Wordpress client ends up being a nightmare. Maintenance and support nightmare for you, not a good experience for the client because it always breaks and requires constant maintenance, etc.

Also a lot of Wordpress projects involve dealing with bad code from previous developers. I’m not saying that to shit on the previous developer - it’s just that shitty code is normal, accepted and expected in the Wordpress world, but is definitely not enjoyable to work with and will make you miserable.

Finally PHP clients are often bad. I recently turned down a client after arguing back and forth how upgrading their crappy Joomla site with 20+ plugins (most of which will need to be updated manually because the original developer is not around) and developing a custom theme from scratch will not take one days worth of work.

So I would recommend staying away from CMS projects completely. If a client needs a CMS just get them on a hosted solution like Squarespace so you don’t have to maintain the crappy CMS down the line.

Doubt it but always worth trying these attacks yourself to make sure.

LinkedIn is how I got started. Recruiters are always hungry for fresh meat so it’s an easy way to get your first gigs and build relationships with clients directly.

A blog might be good but honestly a lot of clients don’t know what they want so a tech blog is unlikely to bring them your way (if they’re reading a tech blog chances are they’re already developers and might not need your services). I personally write but I do it more for the fun and for giving free advice rather than a way of gaining clients.

It is not my business yet (I’m still just a contract software engineer) but I’m going to look into this next year. I know one of my ex bosses has a successful small business developing bespoke business software so I think it’s a good market, and if anything will make a few lucky people happy with great software instead of the usual Oracle/SAP/Salesforce garbage.

My email is in my profile. Feel free to get in touch if you want some advice.

Disable voicemail. This should frankly be the default anyway - voicemail is a relic of the past. Nowadays we have SMS or email for those who want to leave a message.

Alternatively create your own voicemail (using Twilio or Asterisk or similar) and change the call divert settings to divert to your custom voicemail instead of the default one.

I disagree with some of them being unused. This page lists some units like “rack unit” (length) and “jiffies” (time). They are domain-specific but not unused by any means - physical servers are measured in these rack units (1U, 2U, etc) and jiffies is a common way to measure time in kernel development.

Good. A lot of meme accounts are just spam, reposting the same crap over and over again with no attribution or credit to the original author.

I also can’t feel bad for the people that lost their main source of income from this. If your main source of income is reposting shit (that you haven’t even created yourself) on the internet then that’s the main problem right there and this is a good wake-up call.

Nothing wrong with memes per se and there is a place for them (subreddits, Imgur, 9Gag, etc) but I feel like they are just noise as far as social media is concerned. I was definitely annoyed by the constant stream of them and other “funny” (but not really) content back when I had a Facebook account.

I wish social media platforms make an actual set of rules they enforce about only posting your own, original content instead of reposting shit. This is what I miss about forums - there’s always been a list of rules and a moderation team that dictates what’s appropriate and not and deletes inappropriate content. I was in fact surprised when I realised modern social media has none of that and you can pretty much get away with anything (even if it gets reported) as long as it doesn’t blow up in popularity

The good news is that the vast majority of people with the necessary technical skills are not willing to commit mass murder.

This is the key point of the article. The truth is, you could build a drone capable of taking down an aircraft, or delivering explosives, or similarly nefarious thing even 10 years ago.

I looked into AeroQuad around 2009. The site seems to be dead now, but it was a community around building DIY drones. Everything needed to build a fully autonomous, remotely controlled (through mobile networking, so could be operated from anywhere in the world) drone was there already.

Similar to Pinterest, they pollute search results with pages that ask you to login or signup before you can view the content, despite offering the content to search engines without the login requirement.

I wish search engines would crack down on this and completely delist the entire domain if such behaviour is detected.

About the content itself, it’s often spam. There seems to be no moderation against people posting “answers” that promote their own solutions/companies which means a lot of answers about tech are simply “use <this> service which allows you to do <copy/paste of what you asked for>“.

My advice - stop seeing yourself as a developer / software engineer and become a consultant.

Start with contracting - you’ll still be doing software but instead of being employed you’re now running your own company offering solutions to others.

After a year or two of that you’ll have references and can look at the bigger picture - there are a lot of companies out there suffering with either shit software, shit/pointless processes, or both.

You can solve their problems; often the solution will be a mix of better software and review of the processes (why are they doing this in the first place? Can it be automated away, or just done away with completely?).

If you haven’t already, start a LinkedIn and play the LinkedIn game - accept pretty much everyone (as long as the profile is legitimate, nearby, relevant to your industry) and engage with recruiters - that’s where all my business comes from nowadays as a contractor, used to be only recruiters but now companies are reaching out to me directly.

Good luck!

Vagrant is using VirtualBox under the hood, and presumably the default VB config is to let the VM use two-way audio, so it preemptively opens both the output and mic channel in case the VM needs it.

Signal/Telegram/WhatsApp, which are all cross platform?

You connect to other carriers directly. Some of them will connect you to other carriers, and so on.

So for example if you’re a small operation you will just connect to one carrier like Twilio or Nexmo and it’s up to them to connect you to everyone else.

When you get bigger you may be able to set up “routes” (that’s how they’re called in the industry) to carriers directly.

So yes, carriers do see where the calls are coming from, however given that it’s commonplace to route your calls through a carrier that has no relationship to the originating number, there’s no easy way to tell whether a number is spoofed or not.

There is a solution which is to respond to complaints and stop interconnecting with a carrier that spews too much garbage, but that would go against the entire industry’s business model so nobody cares to do it.

Just caller ID, and even then it seems like it’s between service providers only - you have to trust your carrier to validate signatures and reject bad/missing ones.