HN user
The worst curse put upon us is XNA games engine, which was unable to distinguish primary from secondary clicks. So players who swapped mouse buttons at the OS level were out of luck.
Most developers assumed that left click = primary click, but that's only true about 95% of the time.
Terraria, among others, still has this bug.
There is a comment somewhere on HN where a person described implementing ads for a small, hobby website.
Users complaied about the price to go ad-free (something like $25 per year).
The commenter revealed that the actual revenue from ads was much more than $25 per year. Every person who purchased the ad-free option actually cost them money.
----- The lesson I took away is that ads pay more than we expect, though i didn't know the specifics of YouTube.
By providing an ad-free option, they are really allowing the user to out-bid the advertiser.
I think for most people, they would not be willing to pay more to avoid the ad than the ad seller is willing to pay to show it. It's a weird conundrum--but people are very cheap.
I just don't believe that can be effective.
Cameras are legal and too useful to ban. Facial recognition is just software.
And it's getting easier to make. There are open source solutions for facial recognition.
Does Google get money for directing traffic to sites (barring sites that pay for ad placement, that is)?
If I search for 'astronomy', Google doesnt earn any money whether i go to the Wikipedia page for astronomy, or Joe's astronomy site, right?
It's sad how the snall web became invisible.
I used to use all sorts of small websites in 2005. But by 2015 I used only about 10 large ones.
Like many changes, I cannot pinpoint exactly when this happened. It just occurred to me someday that I do not run into many unusual websites any longer.
It's unfortunate that so much of our behavior is dictated by Google. I dint think it's malicious or even intentional--but at some point they stopped directing traffic to small websites.
And like a highway closeure ripples through small town economies, it was barely noticed by travellers but devestating to recipients. What were once quaint sites became abandoned.
The second force seems to be video. Because video is difficult and expensive to host, we moved away from websites. Travel blogs were replaced with travel vlogs. Tutorials became videos.
I am not sure about the legal implications. But, I do see the concern.
Someone else mentioned the analogy of patients preferring physicians of a given sex.
I would not be surprised if they find a way around this by just having riders 'select which driver you want'. Effectively putting the onus on the customer to do the discrimination.
From the article comments:
Add to this fatuous criminal charge the sad reality that the process is often the punishment. Even after Mr. Left's innocence gets determined by a jury, there's the strong possibility that he'll depart the courtroom to go home to the Poor House.
See: Wall Street Journal 8 November 2015
I Was an Oil Spill Scapegoat -- I helped cap the Deepwater Horizon well, The Justice Department then turned my life into a legal nightmare
-- Kurt Mix, BP drilling engineer, who published a blistering commentary about the US Justice Department immediately following a major revision to the case. After two years of expensive, life-upending dealings, all of the felony charges got dropped, and, "I would plead guilty to a minor misdemeanor for deleting a set of text messages without BP’s permission—something I had acknowledged doing from the very beginning."
Good luck Mr. Left...
I thought this was interesting on went down the BP prosecution rabbit hole.
There have been _3_ rabies transmissions in the IS in 50 years?
The writer suggests this likes it is rare. But organ donation is rare. And rabies is even rarer. That it has happened _three times_ seems surprising to me.
I always thought this was applied to all celebrities as a way to feel superior. But, I am not really sure.
Normal people despise being lectured by celebrities about social or political issues.
Hmm, having read that, I am starting to sympathize with Google if they are going to be punished for being open.
No one seems to care that Apple has never allowed freedom on their devices. Even the comments here don't seem to mention it. Google was at least open for a while.
Or maybe no one mentions it just because the closed iPhone is a fait accompli at this point.
We definitely are straining the rules. I think we actually want a federal government like this. The reality on the ground is that most people want things like FDA and FCC at the federal level.
Maybe we just need to change the constitution--which I know is technically possible but im practically it's frozen. It's like a legacy API no one wants to touch.
Hmm, I've never heard of this. My initial gut reaction is that this sounds good but the definition of 'single subject' is dubious. With enough leeway and creativity, anything can be a single subject.
But if it works, then maybe it's what we need.
Yes, that's a really good point!
This is going to be controversial because it steps into the shutdown blame game.
I think I am more interested in the mechanics of how this happens. Why do we need to attach riders / sneak in legislation? What changes could we make to the constitution to avoid this?
I just want to thank you for this nuanced comment. I had never considered #3.
It seems to me that there are many conflicting interests. We want simple taxes but we also want special protections and carve-outs.
Well we could just limit the _amount_ people gamble instead (say $1000 per year).
I have no idea if this is feasible.
I just don't think those are good analogies.
For one, we are just discussing financial ruin. Not deaths by guns or cars. And it does not impact you. Or else you would need to just regulate poor spending habits. At worse.
I think in principle just about everyone agrees in freedom and liberty where it does not affect society. We usually disagree just about what constitutes 'affecting others'.
Yes. I know it's incredibly selfish to push your laws on my body because you don't have self control.
How do you sleep at night, knowing you're a nosy fascist?
I happen to enjoy sports gambling and would be sad to see it disappear.
I'm writing this because I want you to know what you're depriving me of. Because _other_ people make poor decisions, we need to take that decision away from everyone.
I don't even know where to _begin_ writing an operating system.
If i wanted to learn just so i have a concept of what an os does, what would you recommend?
I'm not trying to write operating systems per se. I'm trying to become a better developer by understanding operating systems.
Internally, do contraint solvers just do brute force?
It's interesting how powerful contraint solvers are (Ive never used one).
But actually all of these problems are fairly simple if we allow brute force solutions. They just become stacked loops.
8T isnt really that much for America, especially over 24 years. And it's not like China does not spend on defense.
I would be cautious applying broad statements and simple causes. Often we take these opportunities to connect it with whatever pet issue we individually care about. That's why you can see people blaming everything from zoning policies to DEI.
And yet, people keep buying i Phones. They have a choice. And they are opting in to a closed platform. Likewise with PlayStations and Wiis versus computer games.
Consumers largely don't care and are not interested in esoteric concepts like free software. I would be careful about dictating how things should work.
I have some old crates, including the oroginal 'Weapons crate'. But looking at the steam store, it's only worth about $100 usd.
Is there a more valuable one?
Im also chiming in to say i remember these servers.
Frankly, i never liked the mod very much and only advanced a few levels. But i distinctly remember trying to kill enemies with some sort of lighting bolt move.
We will all live long, safe, and boring lives
It's just information. Data. Bytes. We need a proper George Orwell for the digital age.
The internet used to be a bastion of freedom. That era ended around 2005.
Well, afaik caller id is actually unauthenticated and can be trivially impersonated.
There definitely some hypocrisy, but it might work differently in the law.
As devs, we might claim that 'code is the law' but my guess is that the law does not care. That is, one cannot overwrite property laws by a few lines of code.
Consider how disclaimers work--we are increasingly putting limitations on what rights you can contractually forfeit.
This will be interting to watch.
Well, I thought it was interesting.