I've used CircleCI quite a bit in the past; it was pretty good. Feels tough for them to compete with GHA though when you're getting GHA credits for free with your code hosting.
I used Travis rather longer ago, it was not great. Circle was a massive step forward. I don't know if they have improved it since but it only felt useful for very simplistic workflows, as soon as you needed anything complex (including any software that didn't come out of the box) you were in a really awkward place.
CircleCI made great steps the last few years, f.e. to better support proper DRY working, supporting OPA policies-as-code, VSCode extensions with "dry-run" options.
To be clear, I do think CircleCI is a better product than GHA. I just think there's a lot of air sucked out of the room by GHA being available 'for free' and out of the box.
Also, honestly, I don't care about any of those features. The main thing I want is a CI system that is fast and customisable and that I don't have to spend a lot of time debugging. I think CircleCI is pretty decent in that regard (the "rerun with SSH" thing is way better than anything else I've seen) but it doesn't seem to be getting any better over time (e.g. caching is still very primitive and coarse-grained).
I had a considerably better time with CircleCI in the past than with Github Actions currently. It feels much more like a complete product rather than a tacked on mess, I hate how disproportionately we count running cost just because we have numbers for it (vs. DX and velocity which are hard to measure and impossible to predict)
That's a nonsensical connection. "Spaghetti code" is a very general term, that's nowhere near specific enough for the two to be related.
"I know for a fact that Italian cooks generate spaghetti, and the deceased's last meal contained spaghetti, therefore an Italian chef must have poisoned him"
Because both are languages that could feasibly be used to solve a particular set of problems. TigerBeetle could have been written in either, they explain why they didn't choose Rust but it was a feasible alternative (in a way that Java or Python would not have been).
Conceptually C and C++ are also in that potential solution space, but I'm sure they feel that Zig's properties are superior for what they want.
Of course Jessica Jones is on Disney+ now. I think most of those others are still on Netflix, but it is a bit of a problem for them - when they don't own the content they eventually lose the ability to stream it, especially as the content owners have entered the streaming space too.
I don't know. I never really had a sensible option to watch Game of Thrones legally, it's a little late for that now but presumably this would mean it's on Netflix which would be significantly better for me. (I guess useful for House of the Dragon now). I don't think I care much about the upcoming Harry Potter show but if I did want to watch that, I'm not sure what my options would be, and Netflix seems better than me having to take out _another_ subscription.
Obviously having one monopoly streaming service would be bad, but in the meantime having more of them is also not great for consumers since they each charge a flat fee so you have to pay more to see shows from different studios. The ideal would be something more akin to music streaming where you can more or less pick a provider these days, but video streaming doesn't seem to be moving there in any hurry.
This is so silly. It's like saying "Sweet manufacturers all had the chance to sell the same sweets, and they blew it. So I just nick most sweets." Just say "I don't like paying for things and can get away with this, and my ethics only work in public or when I'm forced to obey them." And then we're done.
Are you saying I wouldn’t steal a car, or a handbag, or a television, or a dvd? So piracy is a crime?
Are you really making that argument in 2025? You must be very young.
Bittorrent didn’t become popular because no one wanted to pay for things. In fact people stopped when Netflix was good. I stopped, all my friends stopped. It was no longer a mainstream thing. We even put up with a few price hikes. Then 1 service became whatever and people started torrenting and streaming sites started popping up.
Everyone was willing to pay for convenience. No ones wants to pay even more for in convenience.
You’ll note music piracy is not really a thing anymore. Thanks Spotify.
This argument has always confused me. Yes, it's true that a digital copy of a video can be duplicated endlessly in a way a physical item cannot. But... so?
It's an item available for purchase at a price. If you take it without paying that price then the seller is out money they would otherwise have received. If everyone pirated Netflix's output then they would have to shut down, just the same as a grocery store would if everyone stole their produce. The only reason that doesn't happen is because piracy is a minority activity.
Seriously how old are some of the people responding? An entire generation already went through this.
Bootleg DVDs, pirated files were common place. I could literally go out whenever and spend change on a VCD. Or a friend would have a copy of whatever movie on their HD. I’d go to anime screenings where people would bring their RAID arrays full of fan subbed anime. Music was pirated all over the place. Digital players just made music piracy more common. Everyone used BitTorrent. Everyone. People got sued. ISPs used to send out letters saying “we think you’re torrenting. Please stop or we’ll cancel your service”.
You know what didn’t happen? The entertainment industry didn’t collapse. You know why? Because none of these people were never going to spend money on entertainment. You know what I did if I couldn’t afford to see a movie or get a new CD in college? Something else.
When Netflix started streaming, they fixed all this. We all stopped BitTorrenting because Netflix was easier. They know how to fix it and they fixed it for a while. Sell us convenience. But I’m not paying and managing 5 subscriptions.
Personally, I can pay for media, so I believe it's ethical that I do. If someone in my position chooses not to pay, there's a pretty solid argument that the media company is out money they could have had otherwise.
However, not everyone who pirates something was ever going to buy it in the first place. A huge portion of the world lives in sufficiently deep poverty that the option was either: have the thing for free or not have it at all. These folks don't represent lost sales.
Luckily though, "price" is not the same thing as "cost". If they watch for free, it doesn't cost us anything.
Just out of curiosity, how certain are you that "piracy is a minority activity"?
By acquiring a duplicate of the original, you're no longer depriving someone of property in the way you would be with theft. If you steal an apple, that's one less apple that the store has to sell to someone who is willing to pay for an apple, and the store will still owe the orchard the cost of the apple you took. In contrast, pirating a movie doesn't remove any physical copies from shelves.
The problem comes down to what you believe the cost of piracy actually is, and who bears that cost, which gets complicated in the case of digital goods and subscription models. If the argument is that piracy lowers demand in general, then you'd have to account for the effect of libraries, the secondhand market, and competition from other media.
The practical evidence that pirates are outnumbered by paying customers suggests that on the balance, the system is capable of supporting some freeloaders without collapsing. To extend the apple analogy, it would be similar to people coming to the orchard after the harvest and gleaning the leftover apples instead of buying them from the store. Can you argue this diminishes apple sales? of course. Is it theft? yes, and the orchard owners have their right to insist it's a crime and all apples must be paid for, but if the apples were going to rot anyways the harm is minimal. Would it completely destroy the apple market and leave all apple growers destitute? I don't think so.
I agree overall, but it is a lot different when each further thievery requires no additional work (since you're not streaming from them). It'd be more like paying someone each time you walk in your door, for the lifetime of the door. In this case they can also take the door off anytime they want, put ads on it, or do pretty much whatever they want.
Far better for consumers to be able to binge Game of Thrones/Silicon Valley/whatever and cancel HBO Max than to have to pay twice as much for a subscription to both libraries to get either.
Yeah until Netflix adds tiered pricing for content and you end up paying more than what Netflix + HBO Max together would have cost because Netflix is the only game in town for that content..
I think like all media consolidation this will send a lot of people back to the seven seas..
Which is why it won't happen, what would the revenue benefit of that be?
In the medium term you'll get a D+/Hulu-esque split with maybe a discounted bundle of Netflix and HBO Max together - the evidence is pretty strong that bundles reduce churn.
If they ever do go to one library, it'll be because Netflix feel they are able to push prices to the same level as both services combined.
I'm actually a little surprised that, some discounts for annual subscriptions notwithstanding, the streaming services haven't done more to discourage short-term jump on/jump off subscriptions.
But they have the data and I don't. I assume there's enough stickiness and inertia that most people are not canceling and restarting services all the time. I know I don't. I just decide I don't care enough about most content (and don't really watch much video or binge watch anyway).
As much as people complain, maybe if I was still 22 and dirt broke, I'd do something like that, but more likely I just wouldn't watch TV. I didnt own a TV back then and it was fine. Now, sure, I don't exactly like being nickle and dimed from a pure intellectual perspective, but these streaming services are what? Like $15 a month a pop? That's 1/40 the cost of groceries. It's annoying but makes no difference and isn't anywhere near worth the hassle of starting and stopping. If it was a $120 a month gym subscription or the old cable bundles I used to pay $200 for, then it's getting to the point that it's worth caring about.
The stickiness is probably just that. Even as they raise prices, it's still less than we're paying for pretty much anything else. Gas, electricity, food, housing. Cut Netlix and well great, I just reduced my monthly spend from $5000 to $4980. Really making a dent there. I can retire comfortably now. It's almost as patronizing as the old avocado toast thing. Avocado toast might be overpriced and nowhere near worth it, but it isn't the reason anyone is broke.
I do keep a vague eye on subscriptions/credit cards/etc. that I'm really not getting value out of over the course of months.
But, yes, if you're either poor or optimizing points on an airline or whatever is sort of a hobby, then sure. But otherwise, it's just not very interesting to many of us and involves mental overhead we can just live without.
A big part of the reason I keep my Paramount+ subscription month-to-month despite mostly just watching Star Trek on it is that they sold me a pretty good annual plan discount.
Annual plans are a big factor in the stickiness of Amazon's efforts. Especially with Amazon's dark patterns around trying to make people forget they pay it (and making it hard to cancel).
It is curious there aren't more explorations in increasing stickiness. Though admittedly cable's biggest trick (long term contracts) is maybe thankfully out of reach for most of the streamers.
Bundles, where they exist, are a big stickiness factor. Especially during COVID, getting stuff delivered to my door before I'd have gotten around to the hassle of going to the store, was a big factor in making Prime more useful to me than it already was.
Apple is less pronounced but I'm very much in the Apple ecosystem so TV+ isn't really a big adder.
>Though admittedly cable's biggest trick (long term contracts) is maybe thankfully out of reach for most of the streamers.
Yeah. You make too much of an on/off ramp for just a streaming service and that's a hard pass for me.
As you say, most users probably don't bother stopping/starting subscriptions. Besides, if they make it harder to cancel some users might not subscribe in the first place in fear of being locked in.
They're probably making more with users saying "I'll subscribe now but cancel when I'm done watching this show" then don't bother cancelling.
The Crown is absolutely a prestige TV show. Stranger Things is also high quality and high budget. You could probably include Bridgerton in there too, it's not my kind of show but I can still recognize that it's a well put together one.
Its subjective, and full of nuance, but I do feel that Netflix has its own style that is very different to HBO's style. Consider the witcher vs game of thrones or black mirror pre-netflix vs post netflix. Its not black and white though, as Netflix animations (Castlevania, Pluto etc.) are amazing TV, but personally I would much rather watch a HBO show than a Netflix one - especially if its a fantasy/science fiction one where Netflix's style isn't one I find appealing.
The problem is all the crap kills the prestige. HBO remains what HBO is because they don't put out 600 other shows besides Game of Thrones that are utter garbage.
Netflix is the Walmart of entertainment at this point. Yeah you can find basically anything there- and VERY occasionally, you'll find something damn good- but you're wading through a sea of mediocre shit to do so.
And like, personally I unsubbed forever ago because I'm not interested in subsidizing all the garbage to get the occasional Frankenstein. Meanwhile I've maintained an HBO subscription for that entire time.
Obviously I am but one data point here and I know my opinion is in the minority, but yeah. I don't pay attention much to Netflix.
Netflix is a different creature because of streaming and time shifting.
They don't care about people watching a pilot episode or people binge watching last 3 seasons when a show takes off.
The quality metric therefore is all over the place, it is a mildly moderated popularity contest.
If people watch "Love is Blind", you'll get more of those.
On the other hand, this means they can take a slightly bigger risk than a TV network with ADs, because you're likely to switch to a different Netflix show that you like and continue to pay for it, than switch to a different channel which pays a different TV network.
As long as something sticks the revenue numbers stay, the ROI can be shaky.
Black Mirror Bandersnatch for example was impossible to do on TV, but Netflix could do it.
Also if GoT was Netflix, they'd have cancelled it on Season 6 & we'd be lamenting the loss of what wonders it'd have gotten to by Season 9.
Until Disney killed it because "they didn't like the numbers" the Avengers series, including Dare Devil, Luke Cage, etc were highly regarded by all my friends at the time. I don't know why Disney screwed that up colossally outside of wanting the show within Disney Plus.
Lol I wrote Avengers instead of Defenders, not sure why the downvote, but it was a really good series of shows, it was highly recommended on Netflix at the time any time a new season came out. Disney just wanted to pull it into Disney Plus that much is obvious considering they've only just started to do that, with the same cast.
Not only this, but there's also Stranger Things, which imho had too many long breaks between seasons. Black Mirror was another one that was really popular. Squid Game as well.
Narcos is another and one of my personal favorite shows of all time, really captures a lot of details that I had no idea about as known by the DEA agents who went after some of the biggest drug lords of our time.
They also fund and produce some of the best high quality documentary series.
Advertising for it has been everywhere, but it's never seemed like it's at the forefront of anything. It certainly wasn't competitive with ChatGPT and they haven't managed to catch back up in the way Google have.
It was competitive before ChatGPT existed, and IMHO that gives them a special insight that people miss to consider in this context.
They know what revenue streams existed and how damn hard it was to sell it, considering IBM Watson probably had the option of 100% on-prem services for healthcare, if they failed to sell that will a privacy violation system like ChatGPT,etc have a chance to penetrate the field?
Because however good ChatGPT, Claude,etc are, the _insane_ amounts of money they're given to play with implies that they will then emerge as winners in a future with revenue streams to match the spending that has been happening.
> Zig is distributed under the MIT License. MS is completely with in their rights to clone the git repository from Codeberg and do whatever with the source code. Including feeding it to their AI algorithms. Moving it to Codeberg doesn't really fix that. I get that some people want to restrict what people can do with source code (including using it for capitalist purposes or indeed ai/machine learning). But the whole point of many open source licenses (and especially the MIT license) is actually the opposite: allowing people to do whatever they want with the source code.
MS training AIs on Zig isn't their complaint here. They're saying that Github has become a worse service because MS aren't working on the fundamentals any more and just chasing the AI dream, and trying to get AI to write code for it is having bad results.
The main thing I like about Github's PRs is that it's a system I'm already familiar with and have a login/account for. It's tedious going to contribute to a project to find I have to sign up for and learn another system.
I've used Gerrit years ago, so wasn't totally unfamiliar, but it was still awkward to use when Go were using it for PRs. Notably that project ended up giving up on it because of the friction for users - and they were probably one of the most likely cases to stick to their guns and use something unusual.
> You will need a Gerrit account to respond to your reviewers, including to mark feedback as 'Done' if implemented as suggested
The comments are still gerrit, you really shouldn't use Github.
The Go reviewers are also more likely than usual to assume you're incompetent if your PR comes from Github, and the review will accordingly be slower and more likely to be rejected, and none of the go core contributors use the weird github PR flow.
That seems unsurprising given that it’s the easiest way for most people to do it. Almost any kind of obstacle will filter out the bottom X% of low effort sludge.
sure it's correlation, but the signal-to-noise ratio is low enough that if you send it in via github PR, there's a solid chance of it being ignored for months / years before someone decides to take a look.
A competent developer would be more likely to send a PR using the tool with zero friction than to dedicate a few additional hours of his life to create an account and figure out how to use some obscure.
You are making the same mistake of conflating competence and (lack of) dedication.
Most likely, dedication says little about competence, and vice versa. If you do not want to use the tools available to get something done and rather not do the task instead, what does that say about your competence?
I'm not in a position to know or judge this, but I could see how dedication could be a useful proxy for the expected quality a PR and the interaction that will go with it, which could be useful for popular open source projects. Not saying that's necessarily true, just that it's worth considering some maintainers might have anecdotal experiences along that line.
This attitude sucks and is pretty close to just being flame bait. There are all kinds of developer who would have no reason to ever have come across it.
A competent developer should be aware of the tools of the trade.
I'm not saying a competent developer should be proficient in using gerrit, but they should know that it isn't an obscure tool - it's a google-sponsored project handling millions of lines of code internally in google and externally. It's like calling golang an obscure language when all you ever did is java or typescript.
It’s silly to assume that someone isn’t competent just because you know about a tool that they don’t know about. The inverse is almost certainly also true.
Is there some kind of Google-centrism at work here? Most devs don’t work at Google or contribute to Google projects, so there is no reason for them to know anything about Gerrit.
> Most devs don’t work at Google or contribute to Google projects, so there is no reason for them to know anything about Gerrit.
Most devs have never worked on Solaris, but if I ask you about solaris and you don't even know what it is, that's a bad sign for how competent a developer you are.
Most devs have never used prolog or haskell or smalltalk seriously, but if they don't know what they are, that means they don't have curiosity about programming language paradigms, and that's a bad sign.
Most competent professional developers do code review and will run into issues with their code review tooling, and so they'll have some curiosity and look into what's out there.
There's no reason for most developers to know random trivia outside of their area of expertise "what compression format does png use by default", but text editors and code review software are fundamental developer tools, so fundamental that every competent developer I know has enough curiosity to know what's out there. Same for programming languages, shells, and operating systems.
These are all ridiculous shibboleths. I know what Solaris is because I’m an old fart. I’ve never used it nor needed to know anything about it. I’d be just as (in)competent if I’d never heard of it.
> The main thing I like about Github's PRs is that it's a system I'm already familiar with and have a login/account for. It's tedious going to contribute to a project to find I have to sign up for and learn another system.
codeberg supports logging in with GitHub accounts, and the PR interface is exactly the same
Yeah and this slavish devotion to keeping the existing (broken imho) PR structure from GH is the one thing I most dislike about Forgejo, but oh well. I still moved my project over to Codeberg.
GH's PR system is semi-tolerable for open source projects. It's downright broken for commercial software teams of any scale.
Like the other commenter: I miss Gerrit and proper comment<->change tracking.
Conversely, to my knowledge there has been no court decision that indicates that the GPL is _not_ enforceable. I think you might want to be more familiar with the area before you decide if it's legally questionable or not.
I used Travis rather longer ago, it was not great. Circle was a massive step forward. I don't know if they have improved it since but it only felt useful for very simplistic workflows, as soon as you needed anything complex (including any software that didn't come out of the box) you were in a really awkward place.
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