Anecdata to try and level expectations. As someone who *eventually* came out of that era fine, it wasn’t without hardship. Expect to graduate without a job. Expect to continue the grind for many many months. Expect to get rejected not for not meeting the bar, but for not exceeding everyone else who also passed that bar. Expect to very likely settle for a job that doesn’t meet the expectations that college (and the previous 10+ years of history) sold you on. Expect that financially, you will end up years behind the curve and that many life plans (ex: home ownership if that’s one of your goals) will be delayed. Expect that you will meet many people younger than you who will be at your financial level because they graduated post-recovery.
If you can accept that you just happen to be born at the wrong time, you will be in a better place mentally than where I was at for a long time. I won’t say it’s easy; it will suck. But it is possible to make it out ok. I luckily had some financial and emotional support from my family to keep me going. I don’t know your situation but hopefully you are able to find support too. I wish you the best of luck.
Huh. This is making me realize that perhaps my situation is more bizarre and unstable than I realize...
How uncommon is it for someone with no highschool diploma (GED), or college diploma to get a job as a software engineer at a Fortune 500 company? Am I completely fucked if I ever lose this job? It's my second SE job...
Like OP may have been hinting at, I had a really fucked up family situation and this path was the only one that I could take- should I plan on going back to school just for future job market security?
I wouldn't worry too much, 20 years ago when I entered the industry (with a philosophy degree), the adverts which emphasised degree pedigree over experience were common.
I have watched that diminish over the last 20 years.
The unspoken secret in programming is that a CS degree basically signals absolutely nothing about programming skill. You can get a 1st in CS and be a rubbish programmer, you can get a chemistry degree and be an amazing one. A lot of CS is utterly irrelevant to programming, and the vast majority of programming skills are not covered by CS degree.
Once you're past 2-3 years experience it stops being relevant, before that it's a way to filter CVs by managers who want to pretend their CS degree wasn't a complete waste of time.
If they're asking for a CS degree for a senior role it's basically advertising they're a clueless company.
I'm in the market now and I honestly don't think anyone even looks at the education section of the resume if there is applicable work experience following it. After 10+ interviews in the past couple of months, education hasn't been mentioned once in an interview, and my unofficial transcripts have been requested one time prior to and interview.
I'm in a similar boat. I dropped out of uni for reasons (a bit of a story, I can tell it if you buy me a beer) and ended up making a career out of software engineering.
The main thing to do IMO is spend time building a network. A recommendation in the right place at the right time can open doors that would otherwise be closed to you.
School is an option, but the opportunity cost has been too high so far for me. Though doing a freelance PhD thesis probably wouldn't hurt.
Yeah it sucks, but for many even in a good economy, you will struggle like that coming from a small college that isn’t well known or just not looking the right way. Life isn’t fair, just do what you have to, to get by
Honest question - when I compare the comments here to other threads that have been presumably flagged for political reasons, the discussions don’t look all that dissimilar. There’s no technical discussion and everything devolves into political chatter. Why are other posts flagged but this one not?
Either not enough flags (it's an article about space, not politics), or dang manually removes flags (he commented recently that he does this). I think the former, the latter usually happens when th article itself is political.
What led to the choice of using Blocknote over other editor packages? Would love to read about the decision making and comparisons between all the editors you considered. Also interested in any other write ups about choosing packages (ex: I see you using hocuspocus which I think is from another editor - TipTap) and why you landed on your particular tech stack.
Maintainer of BlockNote here (and contributor to HocusPocus). I can't speak for Docs as to why they chose BlockNote, but can answer some of your questions. BlockNote is actually built on top of Tiptap - but designed to take away the heavy lifting. As powerful as they are, to build a Notion-like editor on top of Tiptap (or Prosemirror) still requires quite some engineering firepower. We've built BlockNote to come "batteries-included" with common UI components and a simpler API to make it easy for you to add a modern, block-based editor to your app.
That's very cool, as a happy user of TipTap this is the first I've heard of BlockNote - excited to check it out. I've also built a few modest things on top of TipTap and felt a slight "tower of babel" unease, would you mind saying a bit about what BlockNote takes from TipTap which couldn't be accomplished with Prosemirror alone?
This comes from a place of pure curiosity, I don't actually believe this strata of editor packages is in any way inherently bad!
Hey! Not a developer but here are a couple pointers.
As Yousef says below, the text editing bit is hard. We wanted to be build fast and BlockNotejs makes it easy, you get the block stucture, the slash command, you can style your editor and extend with custom blocks. The BlockNotejs team researched the live editing space thoroughly so we could just follow the tracks: BlockNotejs, HocusPocus, Yjs. We "just" had to build the wrapper around with authentication, docs permissions and search and boom you have Docs!
I would fund Firefox, not Mozilla. I learned from all the recent discussions that money donated to Mozilla do not go to Firefox. It’s as if Mozilla is structured in a way such that Firefox cannot be community supported.
> How does a non Google owned Chrome support itself and continue development?
Possibly by trying to find a business model that can support Chrome development just like all other Chromium (and non-Chromium) based browsers?
As much as I loved Chrome when it first came out, I’ve also been well aware that Google’s backing of Chrome (and Chromium) has given it undue advantages in the browser market by effectively making everyone else compete with a loss leader. If Chrome itself cannot sustain its pace of development or even stay alive without the unlimited funding by Google, then I think that is a good thing and proof that it acting as a monopoly. Forcing Chrome to balance product velocity with revenue constraints evens the field amongst all browsers.
(edit: If Google killing competition by injecting unlimited funding into a project without needing to make a profit sounds familiar, it’s because they’ve done this for a long time. The often cited example being Google Reader.)
> Possibly by trying to find a business model that can support Chrome development just like all other Chromium (and non-Chromium) based browsers?
There is no such business model. Chromium development is almost entirely funded by Google. Other Chromium based browser rely on this humonguous investment of development resources; they would not have a "business model" without this "free handout", except perhaps Microsoft and Edge, who might be able to fund it by doing basically what Google is doing.
Good? I think sucking the air out of the browser ecosystem might be a good thing so they slow their roll. The breakneck speed Chrome adds features and devs adopt them is part of what makes it so damn expensive to keep up.
I think this could be a double edged sword. Slowing down new browser feature/"standards" could allow browser competition, yes. On the other hand, people don't explicitly need a web browser in 2025 like they did in 2015 - many operate mobile-only. Let's say browser features additions fall drastically behind native mobile, and content publishers progressively limit access to native clients only. The web browser market might be more free/open/competitive, but it doesn't mean much if the market just moves beyond the web.
Does the concept of an interoperable world wide web fade into obscurity? In other words, does separating Chrome from Google make the web better, or is Google's investment in the web holding back the death of the web?
Not sure how Chromium development relates to the order of divesting *Chrome* from Google. AFAICT, Google can continue pouring resources into Chromium. Was this an unintentional mixup in your comment?
Great question and one that I hope people would put more thought into. Here are two possible reasons off the top of my head:
- pushing for web ecosystem features that would help their own products (ex: Gmail, docs, etc)
- pushing for web enhancements that back SEO metrics that matter to them (ex: core web vitals)
I don’t think it’s as simple as - no more Chrome == no more investment into Chromium because Chrome/Chromium has been their strongest lever for getting web features that Google wants standardized. Stopping investment in that area cedes control of the web to other players who may have opposing goals to Google.
When google hit 51%+ of market share in search/mail (back in like 2005) they began to just fund "internet access" in general. They assumed that new users would put more money into googles pockets than other peoples pockets. Virtuous revenue circle.
Nowadays (post Omni-bar), one could argue that "the internet" is really a captive portal from g-browser, g-omnibar, g-search results, g-renderer with "content" being significantly funded by g-ads (of which a significant portion of _that_ is returned to google for search placement).
Take away "any browser at all" and does google then ship "Google Electron, powered by Google" that strips the Omni-bar and is a desktop client / portal into g-search, g-docs, etc... and then close off access to Google apps unless through the Google client?
You can't book uber without the uber client, why are you able to use Google without the google client?
Provide a read-only HTML4.0 version to plebes with lots of popovers and banners saying: "for the best experience..."
It's an interesting thought experiment, letting "the internet" lie fallow as each proprietary database attempts to accrue more content...
> Possibly by trying to find a business model that can support Chrome development just like all other Chromium (and non-Chromium) based browsers?
What would this business model be like, if, say, Google Chrome is eliminated?
As a reference, in China, very few people use Chrome because Google services are blocked. There are tons of third-party or vendor preinstalled browsers that bundles with bloatwares, put ads/clickbaits on every new tab, and spy on users. I'm pretty sure they are more sustainable than Firefox, former Opera, etc. But that's certainly a privacy dystopia :)
But, it also goes back to browsers being built by the operating system, that was also a no-no, e.g. MSFT / IE.
Browsers then shouldn't be a profit center, but ironically google starting chrome made it one and then defined web standards. IE afaik wasn't a profit center, and MSFT hedged outsourcing all dev costs to practically google and forking it offically to Edge, lol.
In China, the vast majority of people are exclusively on mobile, where they use neither browsers nor even Android apps but rather manifold applets that are installed on top of a handful of nightmare spyware super-apps like WeChat.
we will end up again with edge being dominant just because it's the default one installed by Windows.
what you say is nice in theory but you already have the Microsoft backed Edge and Apple backed Safari that are not hamppered by the "need to find a support model" and "not be a loss leader"
And I am not looking forward again to a world where Microsoft disctates web development because for all privacy problems peaople have or think to have with Google, Microsoft ha proven that does way worse and doesn't even care for the image.
All in All Chrome being a loss leader backed by Google has been a good thing for all involved. Developers, Users and 3-rd parties. without it you woudn't have all those 3rd party chrome based browsers.
The point is simple: Google has a monopoly in search and has used its control of Chrome to maintain that monopoly. There is no monopoly in browsers, and the DOJ has evaluated that selling off Chrome will not adversely affect the browser market. If we go from Chrome having 66% market share to Edge having 66%, but in the interim the search market has seen more entrants competing fairly, wouldn't that be a benefit?
The DOJ logic is its going to fix the search market! Are you seriously believing that it will take a year for people to give Microsoft a monopoly position in browsers (which Google still hasn't achieved) when Google divest itself from Chrome?
Get real, the DOJ forcing Google to get rid of Chrome is one of the best tech news in years!
I’m a bit confused by this comment. I didn’t mention any of those and didn’t callout any specific business models for browsers. Just that Chrome would need to figure out how to monetize itself like how other browsers are trying to do. Diving into the different business models that other browsers are trying is a very different conversation that needs nuance. For example, how would Brave and Orion fit into your remark?
I think this viewpoint is too simplistic in that the assumption is that if Google has to divest Chrome, then there is no benefit to investing in Chromium. I think that is too black and white (see my other comment on why - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43306985).
Let’s do a thought experiment - If Google truly felt that Chromium has no benefit, then smaller players will drive the project and, as others have pointed out, new feature proposals/implementations will slow down. That isn’t a bad thing in my opinion because it allows other engines to not be stuck in catchup mode. The field will start to even out and innovations will start to come from alternative engines. With an even playing field, what was once an unprofitable endeavor can become a differentiator in the browser ecosystem.
If Google is still paying the maintainers of chromium what would change in your example?
The real question is what happens when Google stops paying Mozilla and Apple unthinkable amounts of money for Google search to be the default on their browsers?
It seems clear that Mozilla intends to just become an ad company themselves and who knows what Apple's response will be, I doubt it's going to be to increase the amount of development on Safari vs where they currently are.
So if Google has to effectively divest from Chromium but still supports it's development but now isn't paying the only two current competitors what is the expected outcome there? Whoever now owns Chromium becomes even more of a monopoly, and Google doesn't even need to pay them to make Google the default for it to be implied they are to be the default or the developers go away.
Maybe in the actual long term we will see an improvement from this decision, but all I see in the short - midterm is more invasive user tracking in all current browsers that isn't Safari, which you can only use on Apple devices anyway.
This pretty much confirms that this is what everyone thought the change was about. So we get clarity, but no actual change in course from Mozilla. Good. We now know very clearly where Mozilla and Firefox stand on privacy.
If one opted out of all the possible data collection and privacy related options, are they still able to collect your data? If yes, how does it work? Is this called client-side scanning?
Companies have been long concerned about exfiltration of data and ran MITM proxies to stop it, which ironically has been the target of propaganda about "privacy" by the browser makers.
Don't forget the push for browsers to ignore your DHCP-provided DNS server and instead get their DNS from a server outside your control over an encrypted tunnel. It's an obvious attack on stuff like PiHole, with little to no real upside for users.
If this is in reference to DoH then I found an upside. Generally, DoH servers allow HTTP/1.1 pipelining by default. This allows one to fetch DNS data in bulk over a single TCP connection. The DNS specification RFC 1035 suggests that computer users would be able to send multiple queries in a single _packet_: QDCOUNT is any unsigned 16-bit integer. The implementation of servers that can handle QDCOUNT greater than 1 has not happened. But at least with DoH I can send multiple queries over a single TCP connnection.
Once retrieved, I load the DNS data into the memmory of the "MITM proxy". This eliminates the need for DNS queries to be immediately proceeding associated HTTP requests for web pages, etc., or within some DNS cache duration period.
When I use other sources of DNS data^1, I eliminate the need for remote DNS queries altogether.
1. For example, I extract DNS data from Common Crawl data.
Indeed, it does not seem like DoH was implemented to improve life for computer users but, at least for me, it can be useful. It can also be useful for example to computer users who use remote DNS servers where their ISP is hijacking port 53.
I avoid DHCP-provided DNS and use a local copy of unbound which does DNSSEC validation. A home I control the DHCP, but everywhere else, you can get any sort of custom crap.
One point to support this is that any "privacy" offered by DoH is generally defeated by the TLS SNI extension exposing cleartext domain names on the wire. (Exception being use of ECH-enabled browsers^1 to access Cloudflare-hosted websites that support ECH. But even then, there is no privacy from Cloudflare. HN commenters have historically acknowledged Cloudflare is itself a "MITM".)
I have been running one for long time now. I depend on it so much that I cannot imagine using the internet without it. It is much smaller and easier to compile than a graphical browser.
Others will have different opinions but I personally remain skeptical that TLS provides internet users with more value than it provides so-called "tech" companies that profit from data collection, surveillance and online advertising services, and the CDNs that collaborate with them. While it can be used to protect a computer owner's sensitive data from eavesdroppers as it transits across the open internet, e.g., during "e-commerce", in practice TLS is used to conceal data exfiltration from the computer owner for commercial purposes by so-called "tech" companies. Not to mention the issue of "Certificate Authorities".
IMO, this is analogous to the situation with Javascript. It has the potential to provide value to www users, e.g., as a language computer owners can use to extend and control a graphical browser,^1 but in practice it provides the most value to so-called tech "companies" that are using it to control _someone else's_ browser to allow unauthorised and/or concealed data collection and surveillance.
> Others will have different opinions but I personally remain skeptical that TLS provides internet users with more value than it provides so-called "tech" companies ...
I think TLS can be helpful (for both sides of a communication), but the browser should not require it, and most servers also should not require it (but should allow it, if you deliberately choose to connect with TLS). HSTS is especially bad (I managed to disable it on my computer by using a hex editor so that the browser would no longer recognize the Strict-Transport-Security header).
Certificates can be helpful if you actually know which ones you specifically trust for a specific purpose (rather than being automatic), and if they will tell you information about a business (although as far as I know, Let's Encrypt does not do this and only verifies the domain name). However, sometimes if a certificate is changed or superseded, due to expiry, or change in ownership, etc, and it does not prevent the server operator from sending you malware; it only prevents spies from doing so. If a domain name is sold to someone else, that does not prevent cookies and other stuff from being sent, or from them adding malware, etc; however, it would be possible for end users to know the certificate to trust and avoid this problem (if a browser can be programmed to do this).
Client certificates could be helpful for authentication too, but this is rare with HTTPS (but it is commonly used with Gemini protocol). But, it does prevent someone who takes over the domain name from being able to use your information to log in, since a private key is required in order to use a client certificate.
Furthermore, the browser really should allow unencrypted proxies for encrypted connections, in order that if you deliberately want MITM then you do not need to encrypt and decrypt the data multiple times.
> IMO, this is analogous to the situation with Javascript. It has the potential to provide value to www users, e.g., as a language computer owners can use to extend and control a graphical browser ...
Yes, as well as other programming languages (if a browser supports it, which most don't).
(I disable JavaScripts on my computer, except for the scripts that I wrote by myself. I did write scripts to replace GitHub's UI (in much less lines of code than GitHub uses themself), and other things.)
> I personally remain skeptical that TLS provides internet users with more value than it provides so-called "tech" companies that profit from data collection, surveillance and online advertising services, and the CDNs that collaborate with them. While it can be used to protect a computer owners' data from eavesdroppers as it transits across the open internet, e.g., during "e-commerce", in practice TLS is used to conceal data exfiltration from the computer owner for commercial purposes by so-called "tech" companies. Not to meniton the issue of "Certificate Authorities".
I agree completely.
Google pushed HTTPS because it ensures that they are the only ones who can spy on users.
Silly me, I just realized its mostly a concern for users using their "Sync" service. *Even a host file from filterlists.com won't block that unless you stop using their service.* A host file will stop you from using the service that's a better way to word this. Haha. Don't use their services.
Yup. This is almost a year exactly after they announced a "pivot" to "privacy."
At least the most useless, overpaid person in SV is finally gone and no longer collecting her $7M salary.
Not like money has ever been a problem at Mozilla - they're sitting on over $1.5B in assets, $500M or so in cash alone. That's despite a plunging market share...
Yup, I’d wager that given how the meeting had gone thus far, he made the strategic decision to specifically do this. He knew that this would be spun in whatever way Trump wanted, so it was better to win another point with the group that is smart enough to look past the talking points that Trump is going to push onto the media.
Yes, I’ll be leaving. I used to prefer Firefox but have long since moved to Safari for browsing and <insert Chromium based browser> for web dev. Every year I give switching to FF a try. I’ve been using it for everything since mid-December but it’s honestly a pretty bad user experience. This is the move that’s gonna make me stop for this year’s trial run and all future ones. It’s simply not worth my time if their ideals don’t align with mine anymore. Safari and Chromium have their issues but I know what benefits I’m trading off for. Without ideals, FF has no standout features compared to the alternatives (for me).
If you can accept that you just happen to be born at the wrong time, you will be in a better place mentally than where I was at for a long time. I won’t say it’s easy; it will suck. But it is possible to make it out ok. I luckily had some financial and emotional support from my family to keep me going. I don’t know your situation but hopefully you are able to find support too. I wish you the best of luck.