This is why imperial makes more sense to me than metric. If we had a base-12 number system, metric would be perfect, but base-10 is terrible under division. For practical divisors like these, imperial shines.
If you're doing science, metric makes more sense because units work out. But most all US science has already adopted metric.
I won't disagree with you on this because you'll always feel more comfortable with something if you've been using your whole life. For example, I would never understand why you think 1/2ft = 6in is simpler when you have to know in advance that 1ft = 12in. It could be because I'm not used to it.
Using the metric system you'll rarely write 1/2m, as fractions are not what a person used to metric would default to. That is why 1/6m looks so weird as no one would use it like that, but if you write it 0.5m now it's obvious we are talking about 50cm, or 500mm.
BUT,
In those examples you are not using the system, you are just using one unit. If the question were, for example, what is the mass of the water contained in a 1m x 1m x 1m box, then the answer is obvious which system is by far the most sane one.
> If the question were, for example, what is the mass of the water contained in a 1m x 1m x 1m box, then the answer is obvious which system is by far the most sane one.
You're not disagreeing, the GP said
> If you're doing science, metric makes more sense because units work out. But most all US science has already adopted metric.
Your question asks for mass of a cubic meter of water, presupposing a typically scientific quantity (mass, instead of weight) and presupposing that a cubic meter (why not a cubic foot?) of water is a useful collection of water for some purpose. Fine, use metric. But imperial units as a system are made for practical everyday utility, which your example doesn't presuppose. On the other hand if we imperial users run across a situation where metric seems more useful, fortunately we can precisely convert, so it doesn't really matter.
In other places of utility (such as engineering disciplines) adopting a unit agnostic approach is the best. Some fields don't use either imperial or metric units but their own domain specific things, and software can always present units in whatever preference someone has or whatever is the most useful for the moment.
Do you know anyone important who spent 100% of their time programming? That rules out books, talks, blog posts, entrepreneurship, etc. That's your answer.
3. Even if the "this" installed wasn't the "this" you read about in your browser, it still came from your package manager repos, which you could consider safe, and you'll be able to uninstall it cleanly.
chromium-browser is the one. Although on Ubuntu it's in the Universe repository, so you have to add the chromium-team ppa in order to get on-time updates.
I will admit that Chrome/Chromium is one of the few things you can't easily get from the repos, on Ubuntu at least.
So how does that prevent a malicious PPA or repo that the attacker could push up in the search rankings? Just like the attacker here pushed up a malicious download page in the search rankings?
It doesn't in this case, however you can determine that the chromium-team ppa is the official one in Ubuntu by following links from the Chromium website.
The security of the package repository system falls down when people add apt signing keys that are untrusted/unverified, which is what happens when you add a ppa in Ubuntu.
> Googling debian google chrome results in instructions for getting chrome on debian.
Yes. I know. I'm not picking on debian specifically here, fedora's dnf doesn't help you install chrome either.
My point is rather the following: The GP asserts that the way to find (and subsequently install) software is "apt search `software`" and that way breaks down on exactly the piece of software that the article is about. You have to google instructions and then install either the .deb or add googles repo. And that's where the attacker could just as well insert an ad pointing you to a malicious repo. Just as the attacker currently points people to a malicious download. So the GPs solution isn't a solution at all. Not to this problem.
> GP's solution is valid for the majority of software - at least the sort of software that us HN folk probably use.
That’s a bold statement to make, especially since a single piece of malicious software is sufficient. And yes, I want chrome. I need chrome. I need to test stuff on chrome.
Going to googles official webpage will tell you how to get chrome for Debian/Ubuntu/Opensuse/Fedora. This is about as good as it can be because chrome is closed source.
> You might succeed in convincing me to change the English grammar rules in my mind, but don't you dare demand it. "
Oh, the irony. The person writing a ruleset on grammar for others to follow feels uneasy when others ask the same of him. If he ever listens to hip-hop –or visits Australia– they's gonna have a meltdown.
The cube animation was introduced in 2002-2003 if I remember correctly, and it is still present in macOS when changing users using fast-user-switching.
I would say it is not what it adds, but what it expresses without attempting anything else than having those words read. It echoes the disconnect a lot of us feel between the power of a world-changing-device with what is being used for, embodied I think in what I often read here on HN comments: "This era has produced the smartest (or more knowledgeable) and wealthiest people in the history of humanity an what are they doing? trying to make you click on ads."
The smartphone has reached maturity and very little more can be said that hasn't been said about the technology inside of it so maybe it's time we take a step back and rethink the place of it in our society, or maybe not or not yet. The value of at least asking that question is what I took from the article.
In other words, it is more a "review" not of the phone but of the people using it.
> "This era has produced the smartest (or more knowledgeable) and wealthiest people in the history of humanity an what are they doing? trying to make you click on ads."
At first I nodded my head in agreement. Then I paused, pondered a bit, and reworded it a bit:
We are living in a system designed for viewing ads and clicking ads; the scale of this system is creating an unprecedented amount of wealth; the system best rewards those who disregard guilt in order to service it; profits are the new progress; shamelessness the new barometer of success; exploitation the new innovation.
I was hoping you'd contrast the world-changing device as seen in ads and how it changed the world in reality, which is what the author did but you put in a nice tag line. Maybe the Internet (from its invention up to a certain point) made thr world a better place, but "Web 2.0" certainly made it a worse planet: like the author wrote; genocide, mass surveillance, the constant expression of rage made worse by anonimity and mob-building (140 characters at a time, excuse me, 280 characters at a time...).
Now I want to do a mock phone ad with all the images of these atrocities and end it with a shot of a shiny phone and the tag line "We make world-changing devices. - Silicon Valley".
There is always a real reason for the rage and immediate communication just exposed it.
Building mobs worked before too, it just got cheaper and harder to control by silencing or bribibg mob leaders. Buying out a newspaper or TV or radio station.
Most people never had an outlet for it before not knew about the atrocities done on the world. Or had a comparison to people living in other countries.
Ignorance is bliss, literally. Even when you live in a nasty and deadly neighborhood.
The only thing to avoid is fake outrage and manipulation.