bearcobra

On one hand, the idea of using Microsoft’s crazy amounts of money to try to build a subscription gaming business feels like it should have been more successful than it has been. On the other, I think gaming has some distinct qualities vs TV/Movies/Music or other types of software that makes the idea seem way less appealing. Curious to see what the new direction looks like

On one hand I think we should applaud when regulators target the specific issue (like noise or pollution level) vs using some other metric to achieve their desired outcome. On the other hand I don’t have a ton of faith that current administration will set the targets at levels that have the general public’s interest in mind

I worked in call centres for Telus and Shaw. I’m a white guy from southern Ontario. I’ve had at least 100+ calls where a customer went on a racist tirade directed at me. I think you’re underestimating how much of a role racism plays

Their revenue was up 22% in 2025 to over 200B. This seems like it really is being driven by AI investment

It's really encouraging to see these kinds of success stories. I really hope people who are concerned about affordability start to view things from more of a "yes and" point of view. We can work on reducing the barriers to building more housing of any kind while also advocating for more social housing development.

Do you facilitate the domain registration or do users bring their own? And if you do facilitate it, do you retain ownership of it?

In the context of the the lack of confidence investors seem to have in Intels long term vision this makes sense but it really doesn't feel like a good sign for their future

How have they created a monopoly? This comment is on a post about a company that charges for this data, not to mention competitors like foreca or the weather company

Weather data is incredibly important to a huge number of activities and to the general safety of the public, which is why the government is providing it in the first place. Debt to fund it is almost certain to economically productive. The republican controlled congress is cutting taxes and raising debt levels. A similar argument could be made that we should continue to fund services and raise taxes to reduce deficits instead

Companies can and do offer data for a fee. In the same way that private toll road existing doesn't mean we should get rid of the highway system, a paid option doesn't mean the government should stop providing a publicly funded option given the immense value it provides to society

I'm deeply worried about the number of people I see online who don't understand what Vanguard (or Blackrock, State Street, etc.) do and develop conspiracy theories instead. I think it presents a real risk for ETFs going into the future.

Being able to navigate back within the page history of a tab is the major reason I keep them open

Growing up in Vermont, this was clearly written before Red Sox fandom took over

I can see parts of Virginia not feeling culturally like a lot of the rest of the south but I’m still intrigued by the use of yankee. Like is someone from Wyoming a yankee because they aren’t from the south or is it more cultural to you?

Is it common to refer to Virginians as being Yankees? Growing up in New England I would have assumed they’d avoid the term by being in the Confederacy

It's a mix of believing that news has value and I should support that and actually enjoying the product. The NYTimes has done a pretty great job of expanding the scope of the offering to make it really valuable to me. Others like the Globe & Mail or Washington Post or random Substacks have more niche coverage that I enjoy. But there's also plenty of times when I've seen a story and gone "ok got it, not going to subscribe to Bloomberg"

Your point on competition is a good one. I find the news interesting, but watching a TikTok is a much easier way to find out what's going on. Not to mention the competition in my feeds to show me the craziest thing that happened in Australia or Morocco today. It's impossible for a single entity to compare with that. I think a major problem that creates is news becoming more sensationalized than before. I think it's also leading to a lot more misinformation (both intentional and not).

That's led me to think that more public funding of media, including privately owned publications, would be a good thing. Information is valuable even when the market doesn't recognize it, and I think we're becoming worse off as the public relies on institutions less and less. A tax on algorithmic social media & search to pay for it seems like a better plan than laws that just result in news being blocked

Fundamentally, I think laws like this miss the mark on what the actual problem facing news publishers is. Obviously Meta/Google shouldn't be allowed to scrape a large portion of an article and display it for users without compensation to the publisher. On the other hand, allowing users to see a link, headline, and maybe a bit of the opening paragraph are almost certainly a benefit to the publisher, encouraging more users to view the article and potentially generate revenue for them.

But the issue is news is competing with so much other stuff for our attention and consumers don't really care about where it originally comes from. I pay for multiple newspaper subscriptions but a bunch of my social media is "news" but not from a media outlet. It's commentators I like discussing a story. It's my Aunt posting "Can you believe the mayor is so corrupt". It's hacker news threads. I'm getting enough of the information to feel informed without feeling like I need to go pay for the original reporting.

What is confusing about it? Trademarks are there so consumers aren’t being misled in the market and not getting the thing they expect. It’s annoying that you had to come up with a different brand, but it’s pretty understandable that Basecamp doesn’t want someone to mistake their software product for yours. Its also reasonable that if your product was a new energy drink that you could ignore them since the trademark almost certainly isn’t that broad

I think this still increases the risk of an individual falling for a scam. If the official press releases are happening there, it's not crazy for a senior to think other communication might as well.

I’m curious how you’d define advertising. Is it just something applied to another form of media? Would you count an end cap at the super market? Does the McDonald’s logo on the big sign you can see from the highway count? Or the coke machine inside?

Yes? Unfortunately others can communicate to us without our consent. That could be ads or someone writing you a postcard, or yelling on a street corner. All of those can influence us and not all of them are welcome but I don’t think it’s reasonable to think we can live in a world where we can fully control it without becoming hermits.

Why would free trade eliminate trade deficits? The United States is incredibly wealthy and its citizens and companies can buy more than poorer countries. Not to mention all the other factors that exist in global trade. The belief that trade deficits are bad baffles me.

Save a ton on the legal department if you don’t have to worry about being convicted of fraud /s

Biden's ability to enforce the law seems to be pretty constrained given the amount of time left in his term. Like asking Garland to start a prosecution isn't exactly practical. I think it's also worth noting that TikTok was complying with the ban until they were given a signal by the incoming administration that they weren't planning on enforcing it.

The text of the law isn't totally unambiguous, but I still think it's quite clear that the conditions where a 90 day extension could be granted aren't being met, so we'll have to agree to disagree on how flimsy it is.

Yeah, I think that's bad. Some level of prosecutorial discretion is obviously needed but furthering a state of affairs where laws are meaningless depending on if you have the favor of the executive is dangerous. The checks and balances in the passing of the law make sense but there should be a strong norm towards actually enforcing things and pushing the legislative branch to change the law if there is something wrong with it or the judiciary to rule on if it is actually legal.

I think this is different. I generally feel like executive orders are 1) used to take some kind of affirmative step that the dysfunction in congress is blocking 2) have some level of defensible legal theory. This feels like the opposite. My understanding of the 90 day extension is that it's supposed to be there to allow a deal to close, but there is no evidence I've seen of a deal being worked on so the legal theory seems to be really flimsy. Disregarding a law, while not unprecedented, is not a great sign given some of the incoming administration statements on a ton of other topics.

Despite my own feelings on the ban, this kind of royal court politics is the worst potential outcome. Disregarding a law that was passed by a bipartisan majority, signed into law by the president and ruled on by the supreme courts feels like the start of a very dangerous path. Not to mention the prosecutorial discretion may be creating massive liability that the new administration could use to extract favors from some of our largest tech companies.

Even Lego has struggled to keep making Mindstorm sets unfortunately

This feels like the kind of article that will confuse folks into more confirmation bias. The claim doesn't even seem to be that Meta/Alphabet are the ones doing it, but a totally separate advertising company who would have no control over the apps from those companies.

I hate how so many people think this is how this stuff works when the actual methods are almost scarier because they don't rely on something as clear as our conversations.