you can also flip these keyboard shortcuts around, which I did for the cmd-shift-4, as I almost always want it to the clipboard without persisting as a file
Berlin is also super unevenly populated and includes several forests. If you compare the density of the actually populated areas, like Mitte, you are still under Manhattan, sure, but only by a factor of 4 - which is extra impressive given the near complete lack of tall buildings in Berlin. Neukölln (which borders the area in question) is even more dense - about half as much as Manhattan [1].
Its unfair to compare Manhattan which apart from Central Park is nearly 100% urban to Berlin, which is significantly larger and includes many areas with widely distanced houses and forests.
I'm the OP of the DBA StackExchange post, and while yes, it does technically work in this case, you do lose some abilities. For one, its much harder to `count(*)` rows with `DISTINCT`. Also, `DISTINCT` uses a totally different mode in planning that requires first retrieving all the rows and then finally filtering them. This is _much_ slower and generally not very fun to deal with!
L4 and L5 are stable (see Jupiter's asteroid collection), but the others involve essentially trying to balance on a infinitesimal pinpoint, with any perturbation causing one to "fall off" and move away.
Sure, but automating this requires a lot more tooling. In the case described with multiple, widely spread instances, you'll need to be able to
a) Reliably determine which step you are on - this includes both migration steps and application deployments
b) Fully automate your deployments from a list of staged code changes ("normal" CD will have issue with this)
c) Fully automate migrations _after_ all deployments are complete
Those are all totally possible steps, but they are all going to vary based on your setup, making a drop in solution for this process unlikely to be easy.
Additionally, these are only the steps if everything works! What happens if there's a bug halfway through? You probably want to stop the deployment process and either revert or quickly hotfix. A human-based system can handle this quite easily, but an automated system will need to be able to measure errors and reliably determine if an issue exists.
So its not that this can't be automated, in fact, I know that it has for several large organizations, but the hurdle to get to the full level of automation is rather high and fraught with secondary issues to consider.
The sticky part is the social network effect. Its by FAR the dominant messaging app in much/most of Europe. Some switch to Signal/others has occurred... but if you have _one_ friend who doesn't switch that you want to continue to communicate with... you're stuck too.
Not to mention, the alternatives aren't great. I'm sure others will provide a better breakdown, but at a high level:
- Signal is the best alternative but missing features like crazy that really do matter to "normal" people (can't change your phone number! Stickers only can be added from the desktop app)
- Telegram a) has a poor reputation in my greater social circle b) doesn't actually encrypt by default
- Matrix is simply not accessible to anyone who isn't highly computer literate
I don't know what everyone use (feel free to provide a source but until then I'll treat it as an anecdote) but I live in Northern Europe (Denmark) and the only person I know that use WhatsApp regularly is my 63 year old British uncle (to keep up with his family in the UK). Everyone else use SMS, old and young (well actually more and more of the younger contacts in my phone doesn't even own a smartphone and refuse to use MMS. Hipsters I say!).
I can't see a single thing WhatsApp or Facebook messenger can do for me that signal can't do better because I simply don't need SoMe on my phone. I need encrypted SMS. Anything more than that is worse than what I already got.
To paraphrase someone young from my family: "Facebook is for old people". So is WhatsApp and Facebook messenger. But of course it's just an anecdote that covers 100% of the people I happen to know. So from my bubble I don't believe for a second that they have a future. Signal might. As encrypted SMS but not otherwise.
Welcome to Latvia where I have to think hard to find someone that doesn't use WhatsApp.
I find that whatever number I call from the "local craiglist" where people sell items, I find them on whatsapp.
Nearby "home depot" accepts orders over whatsapp. I can even send pics for what I want!
Kindergarden - all parents and teachers form a group and communicate there, ask questions, make announcements. Teachers may share pictures what kids are doing.
School classrooms form groups.
...
SMS unfortunately cannot share pics and videos, and location which is sometimes handy and cannot form groups.
So getting out of whatsapp is, well... big inconvenience. No one has even invited me to Signal.
Welcome to Latvia where I have to think hard to find someone that doesn't use WhatsApp.
Same here in Wales. We are in the insane situation where local taxpayer-funded bodies such as schools compel people to use foreign, tax-evading commercial services in order to fully participate.
I'm not doubting it is different in other places and circles. I personally just haven't seen it.
>SMS unfortunately cannot share pics and videos, and location
MMS can. Not only that but it is only old people that use these things according to the younger people I know. Just today I read an article about emojis: It's only for old people. Matches my experience perfectly. These chatsnsill soon die out and be replaced by something different.
I live in the U.K. Basically everyone I know uses WhatsApp. My friends mostly use WhatsApp (it was to be a pretty reasonable choice even for the privacy conscious). My family use WhatsApp. My landlord uses WhatsApp. Some of my colleagues use signal but I work in tech so they aren’t very representative. I might use text to contact a stranger for some reason (say arranging pickup of something bought on eBay or Gumtree, or some other service) but they might also use WhatsApp. Some of my friends use Facebook messenger so maybe I shouldn’t care that much about WhatsApp’s privacy policy if messenger’s is so much worse.
Also in the UK and I've just opted to flat-out refuse to use WhatsApp. I think a lot of people want to stop using WhatsApp but are afraid to do so because of the imagined repercussions or a fear of missing out. I say to hell with that and I've found that, since there are, in fact, plenty of alternatives that work, people who need to communicate with me are able to do so perfectly well. A few non-tech oriented contacts have even installed Signal as a result of my stubbornness, including my landlord funnily enough.
There's an app, Silence[1], which encrypts your SMS if your contact uses it as well. It does so over the actual telecom SMS network, and doesn't break non-Silence user messaging either. Been using it for years.
There once was an app called TextSecure, who pioneered E2EE on phones, that used to work both with SMS and its own network. When they realized maintaining both networks was hard, they ditch SMS and remained on their own network. Some unhappy devs wanted to keep SMS compatibility so they forked the app, focused on that, removed the custom network named their fork SMSSecure and, after some time, called it Silence. The original devs used the opportunity of a groundbreaking change to rename their app... Signal.
You are absolutely right. I started out with TextSecure myself. I switched over to what became Silence eventually.
I'm not a Signal user though after giving them several tries, and that decision seems more final by each passing days. I find I disagree too much with how their leadership and organization have behaved in relation to other projects and the direction they continue to take Signal.
Yes, it was like this here back when WhatsApp was new too. Not anymore though, so the point stands: around here young people see these apps as being for old people. Just today I read that they also see emojis as something grandmothers use. Matches my experience as everyone I know younger than me will at most use "(:" and not any emojis (yes, they are upsidedown too). I know many with no smartphone (old Sony Ericssons are getting expensive!).
I get the feeling from your comment that you are proud of the fact many in India use these awful apps. It's not something to be proud of. You are paying with your privacy and in India that can cause you harm a lot easier than in Denmark.
Not me. I've NEVER installed any app owned by Facebook including WhatsApp. Never missed it, but then I'm not a social person. My stubbornness forced a few acquaintances to install Signal.
I don't know anything about the source, but on the bottom left I can see it says "Source: Facebook internal [something]". Various other searches corroborate similar numbers. There are about 80 Million people in Germany, so this is substantial.
It also matches my (anecdotical, yes) experience of pretty much all my friends and family in Germany using WhatsApp, and me having done so as well before I moved to the US. I remember the impetus being that at that time (long before they were acquired by Facebook), SMS were expensive in Germany, but WhatsApp over data was (effectively) "free". I believe this to be the main reason why WhatsApp took hold in many countries, while it didn't so much in others (e.g. the US, where I think individual SMS were always free, but not sure).
Nowadays, some of my folks in Germany at least use Signal or iMessage.
Afaik this applies exactly like this to most of/all of europe.
I still pay $0.15 per sms. Ok i'm on a prepaid plan but still, that's ridiculous. And my separate (very slow, but more than good enough for HN, voip etc.) mobile internet only sim is $4/month. Of of course with signal that is effectively almost a flatrate for all calls and texts.
I don't know where you are at but here in Denmark I have unlimited/free SMS and using Netflixs test servers (Fast) I get 80mbit/s right now, inside my house out in the country.
Many I know have basically zero data in their plan as they don't need it for anything so there's no way WhatsApp or FB messenger can be cheaper than SMS. I think the price with only 1gb data and free SMS/MMS is something like $6.
I mean, by now several people have pretty much told you that things were and are different in other (and larger) parts of Europe than they seem to be in Denmark, likely having a big effect on the initial proliferation of WhatsApp and potentially other messengers.
Most metropolitan areas of Denmark use Facebook Messenger primarily. People will just as gladly speak to you over SMS. Contrary to the experiences of many others in this thread, I've experienced virtually no resistance to asking close friends to install Telegram to speak to me. One close friend has flat out refused because they are a Signal diehard so we just SMS.
Clearly not as they use SMS only in my circles. I can't even send a picture to some of my younger friends as they refuse to use even MMS. It's all Nokias and Sony Ericssons.
I think the problem is with the whole virtue signaling thing. Telegram is so much ahead of the competition in everything except video calls and having E2E enabled by default. (Which doesn’t matter to normal users, and will make the multi-device UX much worse.) Signal’s UX is almost as bad as WhatsApp. Their only upside is that they are more privacy-conscious. Most people don’t care about that level of privacy, when they’re so many features missing, and so much free UX money left on the ground.
Why is SMS not used more widely in Europe? It's less ergonomic than a dedicated chat app, but in the states it's the one thing everyone is guaranteed to have.
Telegram, Signal and Whatsapp have tools for handling tens or hundreds of people in a group. (Telegram more than the others).
Also, everyone here has (near)unlimited data, so using a non-SMS communication tool is free. SMS have either a flat budget (1k SMS per month) or cost per message.
Oh, and sending pictures/videos over plain SMS is just horrible.
Nope. I don't, and I never have any issues with not having it. I communicate with my wife's family through Signal and everyone else through SMS, and my not having WhatsApp has never even drawn a comment.
Well, I'm happy for you. But the question was about Europe.
"Everyone" (scare quotes) does have it in Europe. Not having it absolutely draws comment, in a similar way that not having a Facebook account drew comment some years back. And as to why nobody defaults to the lowest common denominator of SMS, WhatsApp is vastly superior to SMS:
-seamless picture, video, and audio messaging - this is always super janky / broken on MMS
-built-in interface to Giphy
-integrated video and voice calling
-group chats (especially this)
These features are optimized for use by a meme-loving, highly social, audio-visually oriented userbase. Posting a reaction gif to a funny group chat thread is 1) vital culture and 2) impossible on SMS. That's why.
You are of course completely correct. I downplayed the network effect that drives the ability of these companies to say "screw you peon...accept whatever crap we shovel on you or your grandma's IMs get it".
> Matrix is simply not accessible to anyone who isn't highly computer literate
I would have agreed about a year ago, but the reference implementations have been slowly and steadily improving, as have alternative Matrix clients. If I still had contacts who struggled with Element, I might look at (for example) FluffyChat.
It probably does actually mean "File Transfer Protocol". Its not uncommon (or wasn't at least) to find workflows that rely on data files of a specific format (to varying degrees) being FTP'd into the right server and then processed by that server.
For example, I found this [1] randomly while googling.
I'm curious to see how this compares in real life to TimescaleDB hypertables with compression - which to me, reads as much the same thing. I'm wondering if Citus is bringing a lower level implementation of idea possibly?
The access method approach followed in Citus is indeed lower level and more generic, which means it can be used on both time series data and other types of data.
You can then use the columnar access method to compress old partitions (see the end of the doc), and use distributed tables to shard and parallelize queries and DML.
There are a lot of differences that need to be taken into account before making a comparison.
1. TimescaleDB implements the compression on a hifher level, the underlying table storage/access method remains the same
2. TimescaleDB doesn't compress latest data, allowing you to keep fast writes and edits for recent data, but also allows you to benefit from compression on row based data
3. Although not currently available, it is possible to have a TimescaleDB hypertable with a column based access method
4. Comparing would have to take into account the data model, access methods (types of queries), ingestion vs query comparison (batch vs real time), backfilling and editing, etc
I agree that this (Columnar) would be closer to Parquet.
TimescaleDB users have seen 98% (ie over 50x) compression rates in some real-world cases (e.g., for some IT monitoring datasets), but compression ratio will definitely vary by dataset. (For example, a dataset of just 0s will compress even better! But that's probably not a realistic dataset :-) )
The reality is that Citus and TimescaleDB [0][1] take very different approaches to columnar compression, which result in different usability and performance trade-offs. In reality one should choose the right tool for their workload.
(As an aside, if you have time-series data, no one has spent more time developing an awesome time-series experience on Postgres than the TimescaleDB team has :-) )
Kudos to the Citus team for this launch! I love seeing how different members of the Postgres community keep pushing the state-of-the art.
