bluebarbet

The comment is flippant but IMO it's also a pithy summary of an important argument in this debate. To which some of the responses are thoughtful and substantive.

Tangential: I quite often slap down comments for much the same reasons you're using. No objections there, in fact I wish more people would do it.

The irony surely being that the "economic value" here supposedly worth $10T is, ultimately, the very cause of their undoing (human economic activity is somewhat directly correlated with environmental destruction). Personally I'd prefer to live in a world where we saved coral reefs for their own sake and not for their economic value.

Still, it's a detail. Well done for the amazing work you're doing. We all depend on people like you and the organizations you mention.

But the unDRYness of RSS is pretty stark. It's literally a dupe of the list page of any website. I've often been frustrated at having to maintain two versions of the exact same content, and deal with XML, when `h-entry` exists.

RSS was invented just before the semantic-markup revolution (i.e. the end of table layouts). Bad timing.

In most places (certainly here in Europe) the alternatives to flat-pack furniture are not cheaper, quite the opposite. Unless we're talking second-hand, which is obviously the most sustainable option.

On quality, I have an apartment rented to students and the Ikea furniture in it is still going strong after years. I make sure to tighten the screws and bolts periodically, but otherwise it's as good as new. I would not have bought "disposable" furniture, no matter how cheap. Conversely, my experience of furniture (and lighting and other fittings) from department stores and hardware stores is that it's three times as expensive as Ikea, three times heavier, and yet obviously poorer quality.

My theory is that if you want quality you are better buying from Ikea. That's simply because any given product will have been bought by millions of other people. By definition, a lot of thought has gone into it and design flaws will likely have been eliminated long ago.

There's something to this but it's still a slightly dodgy generalization.

A random counter-example from France. If you have a one-person small business (i.e. with a registered business number and the right to invoice), all personal information beyond the name is private by default, it cannot be looked up. The Nordic countries are perhaps closer to the image you're painting. Personal tax information is famously public in Sweden, for example.

But IMO differences are easy to exaggerate. Let's not forget that private phone numbers used to be published in paper directories - with home addresses! - everywhere, including America.

Interesting. Since we're talking about PWAs, which are essentially apps running in the sandbox of a web client (i.e. browser), the issue you raise could presumably be fixed in an instant with a client-side setting: "Do not update this app".

As you hint, the rule of thumb is that driving is (mile for mile) roughly as polluting as flying. But that's surely the point: nobody is going to drive across a continent to go the beach. The problem with flying is precisely the speed with which the damage is done.

if you drive, it's likely that the flight you would otherwise have taken is going to make the trip anyway

This is a terrible argument, a straightforward (but surprisingly common) fallacy. The plane is leaving because of the price signal: people bought tickets for the flight. If they stop buying tickets, planes will very quickly stop leaving.

I agree that if we care about the environment then we should at least try to travel less, or less far.

China requires showing identification to buy a long-distance train ticket.

In China, ID and ticket are the same thing. You know that already.

Europe and Japan (what I meant by "rail heritage") are indeed more relaxed. But even in Europe the newest high-speed network, Spain's, follows the airport template, with security check and departure lounge. You have to turn up 25 minutes ahead of departure. It's such a shame and so self-defeating.

The "havnt" is letting you down.

This is a decidedly optimistic take given what we know about social media. HN may be a rare exception.

Rather than using reason to get people to surmount their "emotions" and to "think right", I'd argue we rather need to frame the issue in terms of their self-interest, and to try to persuade and convince not them but rather their tribal leaders.

Good for them. A few years ago I traveled from France to Thailand almost entirely by train (plus three buses and a boat). It's possible. You need time, not necessarily lots of money. Adventure is guaranteed.

In practice, those are two different types of train travel. The former exists only in countries with a rail heritage. Where countries are genuinely trying to replace air travel with high-speed rail (credit to them, it's much more sustainable), the new train stations are alas a bit like airports for trains. You generally can't just turn up and hop on. In China you can't even get into the train station without a booking.

Sorry you're being downvoted for your harmless and jovial asides. Really, downvoting is almost always toxic IMO, I wish HN would turn it off.

The problem with Indian rail is the eccentric booking system. All intercity trains are booked out days or weeks in advance. This is because Indian Railways deals with excess demand not by varying the prices (yield management) but rather by allowing people to cancel reservations at no cost, with a waiting-list system for latecomers. I suppose it allows poor people to travel cheaply by planning in advance, but then so would yield-management pricing. A bit of a mystery.

All true. Also: Weekend holidays involving flights are a completely unsustainable and irresponsible form of tourism given the climate crisis. Not that anyone much cares.

Sheltered from global depressions maybe, but ultimately not from ecological breakdown caused by the externalities of uncontrolled resource throughput.

But your broader point is well taken.

Possibly the first convincing argument I have ever heard in favor of the materialistic accumulative American lifestyle.

And not just thirds, decimal doesn't divide into quarters either.

This comment does not add any value to the discussion.

PS: Sorry, but "haha nothing matters" cynicism does NOT add anything to the discussion. In fact it straightforwardly breaks a whole bunch of HN guidelines: "Be curious", "Don't be generically negative", "Don't be snarky", "Don't post shallow dismissals", etc. This forum is supposed to be better than the R-site.

I like to think we might all agree that two "piles of utter nonsense" are worse than one.

This comment adds zero value. Make a point if you have one.

You're right, of course. Whenever I evangelize for OsmAnd, what always surprises me is that nobody has even heard of it. Must be for a reason.

The developers seem a serious bunch, the issue tracker has been actively curated for years (although it's snowed under). They have a subscription business model, which is a bit opaque but seems to be functional. And yet everyone always has the same complaint about the app: terrible UX.

If only the Organic Maps people had contributed their undoubted skills to improving OsmAnd.

The performance advantage is small to nil, IME. The UI is admittedly cleaner, though partly (as you say) that's simply because it has a ton less features.

Why do people inflict this on themselves? OsmAnd has all the features of Organic Maps and CoMaps and MapsMe (in fact three times more features) and in 15 years of using it I have not any of these problems.

Agree. In terms of features Organic Maps has never been more than a pale imitation of OsmAnd, only "more ergonomic". The developers admit this themselves. So why couldn't they have just invested their time and energy into making OsmAnd more ergonomic! Ego-fueled duplication of efforts is a real problem in FOSS.

The question I ask every time there's a breathless new post about the supposedly revolutionary Organic Maps.

To be fair, people have been writing scathing assessments of newspapers they don't like for centuries.

The Atlantic. Excellent writers, excellent editing. But as a European I find the US slant is a problem. I do miss The Economist's international coverage.

Indeed. I unsubscribed (after many years) out of frustration at their incessant and unquestioning incantation of orthodox economic dogmas, in particular economic growth (which is at the very least a flawed indicator). This is what religion looks like. I was paying smart people to do some of my thinking for me, yet I couldn't help but conclude that my mind was more open than theirs.

Still, the quality of The Economist's writing is in a league of its own. No denying that.

Yes I understand all that. I don't have secure boot, so I'm not protected against the evil-maid attack either. I know that too.

It's why I used the word "technically", by which I meant "in the absolute". What word do you propose instead? Encryption that can be worked around by anyone with skills and commonly available equipment is technically useless. It offers some protection (the thief will probably reboot or unplug) but ultimately it's null and void.

Most people expect

This would need to be sourced. I say most people expect "encryption" to be as secure as the encryption password. In the case of an unattended sleeping computer using Linux with FDE enabled and the screen locked, it's not. I'm not sure most people know that. I believe things are different on, say, iOS. All of this was the rationale for Debian's (buggy) feature.