I can see you’re frustrated by the downvotes and pushback you’ve received. It’s understandable to feel defensive when your viewpoint isn’t well-received. I appreciate you sharing your perspective, even if it goes against the majority opinion here.

Your points about the space shuttle program’s challenges are valid and worth discussing. It’s important to note the timeframes involved though. The shuttle was developed in the 1970s, well before agile methodologies emerged in the 1990s and 2000s.

Interestingly, one could argue that NASA may have used agile-like practices in the space shuttle program, even if they weren’t labeled as such at the time. However, I did a quick search and couldn’t find much concrete evidence to support this idea. It’s an intriguing area that might merit further research.

Regarding modern agile approaches, while no method is perfect, many organizations have found them helpful for improving flexibility and delivering value incrementally. NASA’s recent use of agile for certain projects shows they’re open to evolving their methods.

I’m curious to hear more about your thoughts on software development approaches for complex engineering projects. What do you see as the pros and cons of different methodologies? Your insights could add a lot to this discussion.

Edgy meme: agile bad

NASA: “Yep, we use agile” https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20160006387/downloads/20160006387.pdf?attachment=true

Your comparison is interesting, but let’s consider some historical facts. The Apollo program, which successfully put humans on the moon, actually employed many principles we now associate with Agile methodologies.

Contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t a straightforward Waterfall process. NASA used frequent feedback (akin to daily Scrums), self-organizing teams, stable interfaces so that teams are an independent path to production, and iterative development cycles - core Agile practices. In fact, Mariana Mazzucato’s book Mission Economy provides fascinating insights into how the moon landing project incorporated elements remarkably similar to modern Agile approaches. Furthermore, here’s a NASA article detailing how Agile practices are used to send a rover to the moon: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20160006387/downloads/20160006387.pdf?attachment=true

While it’s true that building rockets isn’t identical to software development, the underlying principles of flexibility, collaboration, and rapid iteration proved crucial to the missions’ success. Programs like the Apollo program adapted constantly to new challenges, much like Agile teams do today.

Regarding Kanban and Scrum, you’re right that they fall under the Agile umbrella. However, each offers unique tools that can be valuable in different contexts, even outside of software.

Perhaps instead of dismissing Agile outright for hardware projects, we could explore how its principles might be adapted to improve complex engineering endeavors. After all, if it helped us reach the moon and, decades later, send rovers to it, it might have more applications than we initially assume.

Humans care about belonging and fairness. Profit is one type of political good that can be distributed based on different criteria, for example by selling a good or a service or by stealing or copying someone’s code. But profit is not the only political good that exists. There’s also relevance. There is credit. There is legitimacy.

TL;DR: Money is not the only thing that humans care about. Humans also care about fairness.

The article’s “valuing your time” argument is problematic in certain contexts. My brother has had so much trouble with his dual-boot (Windows and Linux). Yes, he could learn how to solve something in Linux every time a problem arises, but he also has to deliver his projects on time. Because of that, he mostly spends time on his Windows dual boot. Yeah, it sucks ethically and has its own pragmatic issues, but he has never had issues resolving dependencies or hunting down the most recent version that can actually be run in NixOS.

I don’t doubt these will become issues that will not be as problematic in the future, but right now my brother cannot use Linux reliably for his assignments.

Edit: My brother has tried what I use: Fedora and NixOS. He has also tried PopOS.

In Fedora, he found some of his software didn’t exist as .deb, and struggled to make .tar files work smoothly for him.

He tried NixOS afterward. He really liked the whole immutability thing, as well as the idea that apps would have their own dependencies.

His dependency problem happened in PopOS. If I remember correctly, it was a code editor that required a version of something that was different to what a package he used in his software was.

I think the order he tried was Fedora -> NixOS -> PopOS -> NixOS -> ? (Haven’t talked to him about it recently)

With gratitude

It actually took me a while to realize he was not wearing the clothes of a McDonald’s worker.

I don’t use it as much because my day-to-day is RStudio and Libre Office, but whenever I edit .nix files, I do it with Neovim. What convinced me was the internet’s lauding of Vim and reading about Lua and other quality of life improvements in Neovim. What convinced me was how easy it is to install and use for my minimal use case.

I don’t think I had an evaluation period beyond using interactive Vim tutorials until I felt comfortable with it.

I agree. And that’s exactly my point 😅

Frame challenge: to avoid mass surveillance, a good FLOSS E2EE app ✌️😎

The way string of any material is woven should be durable. But plastic can be a magical material. It doesn’t cool when wet, regardless of whether it’s got fat on it (unlike wool, which requires lanolin). And its cheapness makes it readily available to billions of people.

To be clear, yes, we should avoid overproduction and overconsumption of plastic. Yes, we should research cheap ways of making durable and waterproof/still-warm-when-wet clothes that are biodegradable. Yes, we should require good filters in every washing machine and dryer so that we don’t get full of microplastics.

Sometimes I don’t either…

I’m not sure adblockers change the OS they report. Other tools I know for a fact do it.

Edit: However, as @[email protected] mentions, adblockers don’t have to change what OS is reported to change the overall statistics. They explain how in a comment below.

I found this: “With its plug still intact but threatened by warm water upwelling, the Ice Tongue prevents the majority of West Antarctica land and undersea ice from collapse and seabed displacement, respectively. The changes are profound and terrifying. The land-fast ice is gone in front of PIG and Thwaites before the melt season begins. This is not going to end well.”

Here: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/9/29/2195755/-Pinning-point-five-collapsed-the-sea-ice-barrier-buttressing-Thwaites-and-Pine-Island-Glacier

What could you lose?

I get that this could be making fun of the idea that a hypothesis is different to a theory, but there are epistemic stances that don’t distinguish between either. From that perspective, both a hypothesis and a theory answer the question of “What do you think is happening here?”

I think most of the criticism on Telegraph regarding how Matrix handles rooms and events are addressed by the work behind linearized matrix: https://www.qwant.com/?l=en&q=linearized+matrix+messaging&t=web

EDIT BEINGS HERE

So I actually watched a talk by the person who coinded “enshittification”, Cory Doctorow, recently, and I have changed my perspective about Kagi. I no longer think Kagi is doomed to enshittify.

Enshittification requires advertisers. As long as Kagi finances itself with money that does not come from advertisers, it will not enshittify.

This does not mean that it’s not problematic that their code is closed-source.

EDIT ENDS HERE

I like what I hear about the user experience, but there are many problems I see with the service.

For one, it’s based in the USA, so it is legally subject to the insane, antidemocratic, and awful state surveillance there.

It is also a corporation, so it is subject to enshittification. Currently, it is giving users loads of stuff so that users use it, but sooner or later investors will want their money back and Kagi will enshittify.

Finally, these two problems would be mitigated by open-sourcing and making libre their software. With that, alternatives in more sensible legislatures could open. Users could migrate to instances that are still libre and not enshittified.

It is really unfortunate that Kagi is doing so many things well while doing some fundamental things terribly. As it stands, Kagi is doomed to enshittify.

Veloren is written in Rust and is inspired by Zelda Breath of The Wild. Both of those are relatively recent.

I think this ignores that some children are more pensieve and reflexive…