I still use Firefox. It's mostly historical as I have no need to switch and have gotten used to it.

Pretty much all browsers have gotten 'good' enough with rendering and speed that it's not an issue for *most* people. Obviously keep up with that.

1. Keep the customization. For example, Firefox about:config lets you set the minimum TLS version. Yes, the browser should be up to date to keep things secure, but sometimes you like to play with things for developer/workaround reasons...

2. Keep and expand add/ons

3. Make it corporate friendly. Group administration/policies whatever.

This is very true. The hardest part of programming is specifying 'exactly' what needs to be done.

However, most of programming is the nitty gritty details. It might not be assembler, but there's still a lot of nitty gritty detail.

I got my start developing back in the Windows 95 days. Conceptually, let's I just wanted a display a grid of items.

So you had to learn about WC_LISTVIEW and message loops..

Then MFC came, and it it's own more object oriented way of doing it.

Then C#, Java, Javascript/html...

So many different languages and ways to 'code' up a grid. Abstractly, it all pretty much the same over and over and over again through the years. Practically though, there were details and nuances between each language that you to figure out to get it working right according to the 'specification'.

How do you populate data?
What happens if there is an error?
What happens if you scroll/click?
How do you tap into event?
How do change behaviour/defaults?
How do pre-populate data or do you load it in dynamically? ...

Theoretically, you could create a code generator where you could take in a specification in English and then it spits out the code in C#, Java... It would be fairly routine stuff. It just hasn't been done for all languages. But if you could train an AI to read these patterns from a large source like github, it could do a reasonable job.

So yes, you are correct that they basically just created a 'smart' compiler with a somewhat unpredictable output. But if it works... all the best. Personally, I got tired of just relearning showing a gridview over and over and over and over and over.

It's a real thing. I live in the Toronto area and I used to commute in to my job right downtown. I took the train in. It used to be packed all the stores and restaurants and workplaces were so lively. I honestly miss going in a few times a week. Not for work, but just for the social aspect. I tried going back in once a week, but no one else came in, so I just stay home. It's come back a bit, but nowhere close to how lively it used to be.

That said, there's a few interesting factors that actually make this weirder that were/are real positives.

I'm speaking specifically of my case here. You city or region will vary. We've really improved public transit in the Toronto area in the past few years. My 'commuter' train is now offering much more frequent service. I pretty much never drive when going into the city. Not just for work, but also entertainment or visiting friends/family. Which means, I don't really 'need' to live downtown. Even when people from downtown come to visit me, it's not inconvenient for them either. This is really a good thing, but you can see how it makes 'downtown' and 'urban' living less attractive.

Also in the Toronto Area, the suburbs and other regions have been adopting better urban plans, so they're getting more of the amenities and way of life that used to be more downtownish. People will complain about suburban mcmansions and this and that, but at least where i live, massive changes have taken place. Some good, some bad, but it's definitely there. Bike lanes are being built (separated from the road). New high density area are popping up with condos and what not that often brings more 'downtown' amenities like good entertainment and stuff. It's far from perfect and definitely not ideal, but you get the point hopefully.

I definitely think mixing more residential in those massive downtown employment districts is a good idea long term. They're great areas with great connectivity. If the city can plan and zone it properly, I think it will be a good thing. I just hope they keep enough commercial units, because it definitely makes commuting easy when you do have to go in.

I understand the desire of the legislation, but I really don't think it should ban the entire business model.

If it makes sense for automakers to simplify production by including features, and then selling subscriptions to turn on/off features, I see nothing wrong with that in principle. I actually think that's rather useful, especially if they move away from big packages. This is what they do now.

I'll give a personal example here.
When we bought one of our cars, we got the basic model. Were were very hesitant about all the enhanced driving features (in 2014 ish) and the enhanced features only came on higher models that had things I really didn't want like push button start, bigger wheels...

Later, we got a second car and got some of the enhanced features (blind spot detection...). I really love it. It doesn't automatically do anything, but it beeps.

If it was available, I'd definitely add that feature to our older car.

If the physical cost of the parts is minimal, I say let the car companies play with the business models and figure out how much they should charge everyone and then how much to charge for subscriptions for such features.

I'd much rather any legislation be more specific. If it starts to impact the basic driving on a vehicle, Or if it substantially raises the base price of the car... maybe do something there. Example, let's say adding automated driving actually costs like 10k in hardware. If you never use it, that's a lot of money in actual equipment that is paid for in the price of your car.

Who knows. Regardless I think the basic premise of subscriptions is okay. If there are problems that arise in the future, I think more specific legislation is better.

I think there needs to be a separation of what is the goal.

For example, automated driving has the broad goal of being able to drive a vehicle on public roads safely. If we can do that by basically pattern recognition and it works better than humans 90% of the time. That works well enough. It doesn't matter if it 'understands' it. It works for it's purpose.

Consciousness may not even be a good thing for some goals. I remember a few years back there was a driver in Quebec who slammed on her breaks on the highway because ducks were there and ended up killing 2 people. This could really only occur due to people understanding what is happening. She saw the ducks as living beings that she would never want to hurt. Of course she lacked the complete understanding of everything (like the human lives in the car behind her), but we rarely have complete understanding of everything in a real-time manner.

Even in areas where you might 'think' it matters more, like conversations. How many of us have had problems communicating with people. Having to clarify because we could not get 'our understanding' to match 'their understanding'. It happens all the time. Can you even have a conversation without a common basis? Are people even more like cut taxes = hate poor or social spending = authoritarian government. There's a pretty large percentage of humans that have this kind of automated response.

It's all very interesting and I love that more research is happening. Yet, I think we've made huge progress on pattern recognition (AI) for it to be very useful even if there is no 'understanding'. Put is some appropriate sanity checks and it's far more useful than understanding.

It's not as unusual as the headline would make you believe.
I only have Netflix and Amazon Prime. In Canada, that works out to about $25/month.

I got a lot of utility out of that and I'd have to be pushed pretty far to cancel those.

Food. I have a lot of frivolous food spending that I could easily cut back on and not miss. A trip to the grocery store is not just rice and beans here. It's a little package of muffins that I don't really care about. I could cut that easily. It's pure filtered milk whatever that is that I could easily downgrade. It's the pack of drumstick ice creams that I won't miss...

I think it's perfectly reasonable to have an average person cut back on groceries than the subscription services. I mean, unless you're talking about life essential foods here... then it's silly.

To put it simply. If I wanted to save $25/month, I'd take it out of my grocery budget than my Netflix or Amazon. I get a lot of utility out of the subscription and I have a lot of frivolous grocery spending that I could cut out that has very little value to my life.

I taught high school computer science and mathematics (in Canada) for a few years. I can't believe there was actually a theory that computer programming could help kids learn math.

In my experience, it's generally the reverse. Kids who understand math (especially algebra) can learn computer programming. If you don't understand basic algebra, you're not getting computer science.

Obviously this is slashdot and some very technical people are here. Yet, the concept of a variable is not an easy thing for a lot of people to grasp. It's abstract. Yet, if you can't understand X+5=12. Solve for X. You're not going to do computer science.

The math is really about as straight forward as it gets relative to programming. Once you add in computer science, it only adds complications, making it harder for students. Syntax, libraries, more lines of code. If you try and make it 'fun' by adding GUI elements, that's more complication.

I'm not wise enough to know why some kids are able to think abstractly in terms of variables and other kids can't. Yet I can say with relative high confidence that the kind of basic algebra you do in high school is far simpler and easier for students to work with than computer science. Algebra should always come before computer science. One might even call it a prerequisite.

Here's the funny thing about academics.
Talk to any psychologist or scientist of the mind and they WILL TELL you scientifically that most people do not act rationally on facts. Scientifically, we know this.

From an evolutionary stand point, we know humans are able to be so successful because we can cooperate in large groups, mainly by telling ourselves stories. Convincing people they are religion X, or ethnicity Y, or political view Z... hey, we'll even kill each other and risk our lives over these stories.

Now that all said. Why are these same scientists obsessing over misinformation. They know we're not going to read those 'facts' they provide and then come to their conclusion. Doesn't this seem weird to anyone?

If only WE only presented the 'correct' facts to people and shielded them from 'bad information', they would do what we want; and supposedly what is best for them? It's so silly, because scientifically and historically, we know this is a failure.

At the end of the day, what it boils down to is who is in charge and who gets to tell people what to do and what values to have and the story we tell people to get them on board.\

This is sociological and psychological problem that really doesn't differ much from any other form of political control. Convince people of a religion and they should only look to this book for how to live. Ban and shun all other books. Then we will have utopia as people will just listen to us. When we tell them drugs are bad and they know it is bad because we tell them... then they won't do drugs and we won't have drug problems!

Again, it's immaterial whether or not the new political control is based on science. It's actually not important in that what we're concerned with here is political control, which is not a new problem and we've never been able to do it in any other society. What makes you think we can do it in this one? Every religion splinters. Every political ideology splinters. People deviate. People believe other stories. Life changes.

Which is why it is so frustrating listening to people who claim to believe in science and evidence pretty much ignore all the science and evidence on government society.

Seems like a very simple problem to solve in the age of over the air car software updates.

Can't the car be advised to not charge during a period of time? Even if you plug it in at 4pm, it won't charge. Then at 9 pm, it will start charging. You can of course override it.

My Nest thermostat works like that with my utility provider (at least in Ontario, Canada).I signed up for it. During peak load, the utility provider will let my Nest know there is high load and it will not blast the AC as high. It sends me a notification this is being done. In general, I let it do it's thing. Sometimes, I really don't want to deal with the extra heat and I just override it and blast my AC anyways.

Seems like a pretty easy fix for this networked automotive world.

This is not like a massive tidal wave comes in and floods the land with 10 feet of water.

This is heavy rain. Plenty of time to pack your things and move to higher ground. It's not likely to be 10 feet of water everywhere. Submerged, might just mean 1 foot of water. That's plenty of damage to land, crops, and infrastructure, but it may not translate into immediate deaths.

Ultimately, regardless of what the cause is, 'water management' needs to be a priority in Pakistan. Directing excessive water into planned areas. Keeping populated areas in higher ground protected by flood control systems...

Floods from monsoons are not a new problem. Maybe global warming makes them worse, but they've had floods from the monsoons for as long as I can remember. They just lack water management systems. Start with that.

I agree. There is no free market in the world. The whole world uses subsidies or various techniques. There is a pretty good free-market within America, but the whole world is not a free market.

The world is multi faceted and you can't be ignorant of games of power. If you are, you are pretty much guaranteed to lose. If the other side is playing to win and you don't even realize there is a game going on.

Countries/Region are in a game of power. Maybe it would be ideal if they were not and we all competed on equal global footing with equal laws, but that's not the reality of the world we live in. So you must play this game of power at some level. It's not a natural state of the world that the West is successful and rich and the Asians are there to service the West. That's just the game of power in life.

I'll give an example here. I come from an Indian background and there is a natural game of power that we were all aware of. It is patriachal and what not and I was never big on it, but I was aware of the game. You try and grow your community and you try and minimize the other communities. For example, you would try and have sex with girls from other communities, while trying to keep them from having sex with girls from your community. It was pretty evident even when I moved to Canada. My high school was Indian heavy, so if an outsider was caught trying to date an Indian girl, the guys would threaten the guy...

A lot of Western people were unaware of the game. To them, women are free and relationships are a choice between one man and one woman. They don't even know there is a game of community power going on. I've had to explain to them that this is very basic way of thinking for a lot of people in the world.

Again, I'm not saying I agree with this or that it isn't bad and patriarchal. I'm just explaining that it exists and it is a game being played. You can't be unaware of it. You can't simply think everyone in the world is playing by rules of individualism and the nuclear family.

In the same way, people who talk about global free trade can't pretend another game doesn't exist. One where nations seem to better themselves with games of power. You can't pretend the whole world is just individuals and companies.

Like any problem in life, solutions are multiple.

We can and should do more to reduce ocean pollution.
Regardless of that, we still need to clean up what's there. The fact that these folks are figuring out how to do it and actually doing it is just damn impressive.

They're even doing things like trying to intercept things at rivers before they make it to the ocean.

Yes, it would be nice if we stopped polluting. But as long as we do, we'd better clean it up.

Personal example. It pisses me off to no end that kids in my neighborhood (not my kids) drink water bottles.You're at home, close to clean drinking water, and these kids are just so used to grabbing a water bottle to drink.

I used to find them on the lawn and places. I bought an outdoor garbage can and told them to throw it in there. They still drink out of plastic water bottles, but at least they throw them out now.

Sometimes I'll leave a jug out for them or something hoping to reduce it.

We've seen all kinds of attempts at managing this over the years.
There is an argument for network management that cannot be ignored.
There has also been a tendency for operators to use network management to gain fees.

I think we've come to some pretty good models after years in this space.
1. Sell packages according to speed. Most of the time speed packages are an artificial limit. If I can just login to my account and click a button and next thing you know, my speed has double for an extra $10/month... This is one way we contain usage is by artificially limiting speed.

2. Have a datacap for the highest speed; after that you get throttled to a low speed. We tend to see this in the cellphone space. You'll get 20 GB at the full 5G speed. After that, they throttle you down to allow you basic usage.

These seem like pretty good solutions in my view and tend to avoid overage charges, while still allowing operators tools to manage bandwidth.

The real question you have to ask yourself is does a doctor do anything different? There is what a doctor CAN DO. Yet, there is a reality of what a doctor DOES DO.

I'm in Canada and in my experience general practice doesn't seem like it needs a doctor. You spend maybe 10 minutes with the doctor. It's very much and in and out system. If you answer their questions, you might get sent for a test or a prescription. Yet, it does seem ripe for an actual script, because that is what they tend to be doing anyways.

In case this reads wrong, this is not a knock against family doctors. I don't know what they can actually do with the short time they get to see us. In my experience, most family doctors are wasting their years of training. Their job can basically be scripted as the real work gets sent to specialists or what not.

Increasingly, even here a lot of the work is going to nurses and other helpers. In my doctors office, and I'm lucky enough to have a family doctor, you will initially see a nurse (I think she is at least), who will take your blood pressure, weight, make some short notes. I might get to see the doctor for like 5 minutes tops.

The issue for a lot of this stuff is easy management of rights. This is not an easy problem to solve, but it should be where a huge amount of effort goes.

The idea of running downloaded code has been there for a long time. Even ActiveX had it's day.

There's obviously use cases for it, but the browser's ability to manage it is key. Some registry keys or something somewhere is not enough. I don't think you'll need it at the moment for the average website, do it's probably best it has to be an opt-in. Maybe there's a game site requiring it. You should have to manually add that site to a whitelist. This management part is key and making sure the list is up to date and pruned. It's not an easy task, but should get way more attention that more technical security measures.