corin_

They need to do more due diligence on the cause before announcing the cause, but they don't need to do more than confirm users are having problems to update the status page that problems exist.

Even assuming they can't instantly see the problems in a dashboard and need to take time to understand user feedback to see which aspects specifically are affected to update the page in more detail, nothing is stopping them from very quickly putting a "Connectivity issues reported by some users, investigating the extent and cause currently" banner at the top of the page which should be ready to go at a moment's notice anyway.

Surely then a stalker just needs to be bright enough to make up a story like "I put it into my bag or wallet when I go out, and since I only have one tracker I often move it between them depending on if I have much cash." rather than "I got it for my cat"? That story took under a minute to come up with, I imagine there are even smoother ones a stalker could think of with 20mins effort.

Or at the expense of making it a little bigger, superglue something like a usb stick and you've always got an excuse to have it in your pocket until you "lose" it. Hell, isn't not wanting to lose a coat that you claim to often leave places a good enough reason to have one in your pocket?

Why not spend an extra 10 seconds finding out if there's a topping you don't like and asking them to not put it on? Surely even quicker than picking it off, and less wasteful! But maybe you like nearly everything so you only have to pick something off once in a blue moon.

A cardboard roach is not a filter, it's just a cigarette (or joint) holding/structural device. In the case of weed smokers, not having a filter is beneficial. Most cigarette smokers don't want to skip having an actual filter. Even most people I've known to use cardboard to smoke tobacco mixed with weed, would then use a filter when rolling a tobacco-only cigarette.

Your definition of "common" is out of step with most people's. It means not-rare, or widespread, for example jobs in trucking, retail, and tech are all common in America without that implying any of them make up 50% of the country's jobs. Or another example, in the UK the NHS classes probability of side effects into groups where "very common" means "more than 1 in 10" and "common" means around 1 in 10+ (with the next grade being "rare" for 1 in 100+).

You're confusing the definition of a singular thing with the group of things.

For example, apples are a luxury in that nobody needs them to live (and the same can be said of any single food source - and therefore whether or not we consider something a luxury comes down to its availability and cost, nothing to do with champagne being more or less "needed" than beer), but they are also part of a bigger group we call "food" that definitely is not a luxury.

Also from the UK, I've never heard a Brit say "zee" (unless quoting an American or talking about Jay-Z)

When driving I don't bother to use Siri for anything other than "call <person>" or "text <person>".

The most hilarious example of how bad Siri is for me, is that literally 100% of the time that I'm playing something on Apple TV, if I say "Hey Siri, pause the TV" (or any variation, calling it Apple TV, including the name of the room, etc.) it always replies that there's nothing currently playing. And if I tell Siri on my phone to play on the Apple TV, all it can do is start Apple Music playing a random song on the TV. It can however respond OK to "resume on Apple TV" which restarts whatever I was watching that had been paused.

I think your examples support the thesis that we're actually decent at discovering harmful effects, but we don't mind them.

I think it's less that we don't mind them, and more that it unfortunately is a slow process to go from first research realising there's a problem to general scientific consensus to then one or both of public awareness becoming big enough that companies have to respond and stop choosing profit over safety, or government concern needs to become great enough to enforce it through regulation.

I think we're seeing it with plastics at the moment, it seems very likely that in 50 years we'll a) know much more about the harm micro-plastics do and b) look back at now and think "there was enough evidence, why didn't they ban it immediately?" Well, because it's really convenient and cheap, companies don't want to give up profits, people like me don't want to give up convenient packaging etc, and governments don't want to piss off consumers and businesses at the same time by banning it too fast. Similar story for the climate crisis.

I've travelled internationally maybe a couple of hundred times and never had my bags searched (that I know of, who knows for ones checked in at airports) until one trip a few years ago when I arrived back in UK and customs officers pulled me over to spend 15 minutes making me get every item out of both of my bags.

It's a bad idea to travel with false paperwork, as it's a bad idea to travel with anything illegal in your luggage, not because there's a high chance they'll definitely look into your situation, but because if they happen to choose you randomly then the punishment can be severe.

From the article this thread is about (italics emphasis added by me):

The researchers found a significantly increased risk of developing a symptomatic Omicron case compared to Delta for those who were two or more weeks past their second vaccine dose, and two or more weeks past their booster dose (for AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines).

Depending on the estimates used for vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic infection from the Delta variant, this translates into vaccine effectiveness estimates against symptomatic Omicron infection of between 0% and 20% after two doses, and between 55% and 80% after a booster dose. Similar estimates were obtained using genotype data, albeit with greater uncertainty.

In the case of covid vaccines there's plenty of real world data and lots of governments, universities, etc. running different studies all the time. Pfizer would be stupid to fake some initial data because it would be very quickly found out once real world results didn't stack up. For example, this thread you're commenting in is about research from a prestigious London university which found 3 jabs provides better protection than 2.

It wouldn't shock me at all to find out examples of pharma companies including Pfizer acting that way, but in this particular case of Covid vaccines there is evidence and plenty of reason to believe that it's not the case and you don't have any counter evidence, so no it's not a reasonable opinion it's just a conspiracy theory.

So when you get a booster (or a breakthrough infection) your immune system kicks into gear again but now it produces a broader range of antibodies.

Would/could it not also be the case for exposure to the virus that doesn't result in a breakthrough infection i.e. the body detects it and fights it off successfully? (I daresay you didn't mean to imply that, just checking.)

My point was that organising something and making it accessible to people doesn't have to mean "without doing so in the way that makes money".

Supermarkets organise food and make them accessible [to paying customers], as does (not with food this time) a private library. Sure their way of wording it makes it possible to read it naively as being altruistic, but technically I don't think they're not organising the world's data and making it accessible. Just perhaps not always in the way the world would most appreciate.

Actually I believe that in itself is a misunderstanding. Flu may be more likely than a cold statistically to hit someone badly, but it's quite possible to get the flu mildly, and it's quite possible to get really, really bad cold. The same way Covid being statistically more dangerous than the flu doesn't mean that every person getting infected by Covid has a worse time than every person getting the flu.

A piece of advice I was given once and try to remember to follow is to, when commenting online, think "does this comment seem wrong if read out of context".

For example you wouldn't have had to come back to explain the context of your comment if your "I strongly doubt anything will come of this." had ended with "..come of this in discovery."

It becomes second nature, but most people find it a bit of a challenge to learn - obviously not a particularly huge or impossible one considering how common it is for people to get the hang of it in tens of hours, but still a challenge compared to just learning to drive in an automatic.

Is that a criticism, or a reflection of the fact that 20 years ago it was already pretty much perfect except for graphics limitations of the tech of the time? (Genuine question as someone who tried it as a kid 20 years ago but doesn't remember much about it.)

If it's either a selling point of the car enough that the manufacturer wants to demonstrate it accurately, or if it's something enough people care about and want to see which car suits them better, then a third party could create a simulation tool that let's you quickly go through dozens of different sun positions, weather conditions etc. and see how your personalised body shape will be positioned in each car including being able to adjust the virtual seat position, sun flaps, etc. to compare how you'll be affected by light in a different range of cars... it could be a useful feature? Hell, maybe it even extends to being able to choose the perfect custom flap size and positioning, to either get it added into a new car sale, or ordered as an after-market minor swap to improve your driving experience.

Sure, but the complaint was written as it being annoying having to constantly unlock it for her to have access to it, not wanting to prevent her from having access to it.

From your blog:

Finally, here's what drove the purchase: I was taking a long car trip, and my wife was doing the DJ work using my device. Of course, every time she wanted to change tracks I had to unlock the device with my fingerprint. Ridiculous. This little device solved that problem

Wouldn't telling her your phone's code, or temporarily adding one of her fingerprints to it for the duration of the journey, have been a much simpler solution...?

Hypothetically if I became an actor tomorrow and were handed a "prop gun" for a scene, is it actually as simple as you make it sound to "check the chamber"?

The only guns I've ever held were shotguns for a couple of clay shooting sessions, and was told very firmly to never look into the barrel and to never point it at anything that it wouldn't be OK to accidentally shoot, even when cocked (don't think cocked is the right term here? In the non-straight form with an angle at the hinge exposing the middle of the gun)

But of course, "never point it at a person regardless of whether you believe it to be empty" doesn't work if an acting part requires you to... point it at a person.

Frankly (and not that I have any plans or dreams of being an actor), having read this story, if I were ever asked to point a gun at someone for a photo/video I'd just refuse unless I could first get actual firearms training to be safe, even if I were only due to hold a prop.

And you're defining "have a million dollars that you don't need to spend for 90 years" as not hard to achieve?

Doable for some, even easy for some, but for the vast majority of people.... very hard.

That would cover the "pretentious seeming" aspect, but my main reason is that I already have too many things like that which I don't really need, and I don't live in a huge mansion to keep accruing random stuff like that!

On the other hand, HN is full of people who a) type all day for a living and b) enjoy tech history and quirky things.

I'm 31 and have used at least 2 typewriters in my life - obviously at no point did I need to for either school or work, but there's something romantic about them and I often fantasise about getting one to write with... though I'm fairly sure it would end up gathering dust as a (possibly pretentious-seeming) ornament in the corner of the room, so I avoid the impulse to buy one.

You’re talking about accessing someone’s house here. I don’t know anyone that carries their passport around.

I'd guess that a high majority of passport owners do indeed carry them around when they travel, and places such as airports would be a fairly easy way to find such people carrying their passports.

I downvoted your comment to demonstrate that I disagree with you.

I've heard some good arguments against allowing users to show dislikes/downvotes as well as likes, but I've not heard your argument before and it doesn't strike me as accurate. Less used than the positive direction, sure, but still significantly used when available.

Not just almost, it originally was called that https://web.archive.org/web/20070405175109/https://news.ycom...

Do a search for either skywriting or air/sky tours, for a major city like NYC or SF, and you'll find companies offering planes and helicopters pretty low across the city for personal or promotional reasons. Not even that expensive, at least on the non-premium tours. Though a pretty nasty business in my opinion, both for wasting fuel on private flights and for making noise over lots of people in the city who get no benefit from having machines rumbling above their heads.

Unless you're talking about specifically thinking it looks too low in the photos, in which case I would assume it's just a case of their doing a good job planning the positions for two different flights to get great photos of one from the other that are framed well around the Apple locations.