dotBen

"Old people don't have that because they didn't grow up with computers."

You know, it's time to stop this trope.

People who are 60 today were born in 1966, they probably entered the workforce in the mid 80's. They probably are not even retired yet. They know how to use computers, they own a smartphone (or if they don't, it's probably for economic reasons unrelated to their age).

As a founder and product manager, this kind of thinking is unhelpful as we design the future. In many ways it's actually ageist to imply that old people are unable to utilize everyday technology.

I was building public service websites (BBC News website) back in the early 2000's where accessibility was a real and important consideration. Technology progresses, and the bar for accessibility has moved up.

My father is about to turn 80 - he checks his heart with his Apple watch, video calls his grandson from his iPad, and asks ChatGPT questions from his iPhone and MacBook Pro. Maybe he's more unusual for 80yo's but it's time to stop this lazy trope that old people are technically illiterate.

(also, shit, I'm only 15 years away from being 60 myself :/ )

I'm familiar with the beef he has with CF, but why put up the fake cloudflare interstitial to me the end user who is just trying to use his service. I remain confused...

It's funny how developer time is considered free, but tokens are not.

In other words when it comes to FOSS contribution, developer time can be donated but tokens can't - so as we move into agentic code era all FOSS development carries a cost unless it is purely done by hand (which more often it isn't).

Not saying this is what is going on here but it's presumably a factor if the author was looking for an employer to sponsor development with his labor (and tokens).

Airmule. (There may have been others).

From my recollection the issues were that it is against the terms and conditions of many carriers to bring packages for other people.

What was being shipped was also dubious - sure it wasn't drugs but it was often ASIC chips, strange hardware from China etc.

I don't think I would want to take any packages in this way, but I certainly would be worried about export control stuff.

This is not a viable startup to be honest.

I wouldn't want a touchscreen MBP even if it was free, anyone else feel similar?

I don't get the draw - we already optimize for keyboard commands to avoid living our fingers over to a touchpad. Why would I want to start clicking on my screen?

If you're using your computer for tasks (rather than entertainment) and you're not a visual designer, I don't get why Apple are apparently going to be putting them into the new MBP line later this year.

Up until v recently cars were not remotely accessible and part of a command-and-control network which Teslas are (perhaps other modern cars are too, I only know Tesla because I have one).

I know that the car reports practically all user events to Tesla in real time over the cell network (eg, open door), and I know it has root access. I don't know if that root is available remotely and I don't know if foundational commands like steering, acceleration and brake are accessible via the CLI (they are computer controlled actions locally)

THUS I would not want to drive a Tesla if there was the possibility of all cars being rooted and remotely controlled by an unauthorized actor.

People are painting this as a mutually exclusive ideological decision. Yet two things can be true:

1) The act of archive.today archiving stories (and thus circumventing paywalls) is arguably v low level illegal (computer miss-use/unauthorized access/etc) but it is up for interpretation whether a) the operator or the person requesting the page carries the most responsibility b) whether it's enforceable in third party countries neither archive.today or the page requester reside in

2) DDoSing a site that writes something bad about you is fundamentally wrong (and probably illegal too)

Just use Android (Google stock not Samsung). Come over, the water is great.

Yeah he's right - my Pixel 10 is not as sexy as an iPhone but not only is the keyboard great but the AI integration is first class citizen.

iOS will never have first class citizen AI even if Apple finally develop their own model because Apple doesn't control the user's data.

It makes particular sense for vertically integrated conglomerates like Amazon-Whole Foods which owns Zoox.

I buy Whole Foods French fries shipped to the store via Amazon logistics and purchase those at Amazon owned Whole Foods, at a discount via my Prime membership on my Amazon credit card which is processed on AWS infrastructure and I ride home on an Amazon owned Zoox that also runs on AWS infrastructure.

Amazon owns so much of the profit margin across that stack that they can afford to give rides away for example.

Well, given that it is an equity sale, split still feels like it is the prorated amount so that alphabet continues to own its percentage - not more not less.

Obviously you're entitled to your view, but I don't think it's that kind of finance model right now - it's far too speculative and the upside too unknown to be adjusting for small amounts on risk models.

I guess that's semantics. If you opt in then yes I guess they could do anything. I think the point was that enshitification would occur if they forced you to do that.

You could opt in to have blood or plasma taken on every ride if you so wanted I guess.

/cries into my Uber shares and the deletion of the Uber ATG repos when the parts were sold to Aurora.

What I'm talking about is that is still considered an external capital raise for the purpose of the markets and where those assets sit on the balance sheet.

Also, keep in mind the Alphabet doesn't fully own Waymo. I don't know the percentage ownership of hand, but that also feels like it's probably a prorated investment based on ownership so Alphabet doesn't reduce its voting control.

That's what I'm talking about.

Sure and my time is limited.

The last I heard was that the Google rev-share agreement was on the skids and they stopped developing projects like Thunderbird and Fake Spotter because they were capital constrained.

If you know otherwise then you're better informed than I am I guess

They already will be selling your ride data and there is no way they could monitor conversations in the car for commercial purposes (at least in Western countries).

Ads in cars, partnerships with alternative destinations, etc. definitely would feel like enshitification for a demographic comparable to the hacker news one here. But these are all per session/user settings just like most of us have a paid Spotify account and never see advertising and those who don't get a very different monetized experience.

What is exciting about monetization like this is the possibility for rides to become very cheap or even free. If my dentist offers free rides to the office in return for my loyalty, I'm quite happy to take that.

It's a very capital intensive operation given the amount of vehicles that need to be carried on the balance sheet.

There are many reasons why a conglomerate like Alphabet doesn't want to hold all of that directly on the balance sheet, which is why Waymo is run as a subsidiary with its own sources of capital.

When I was at Uber 10 plus years ago and we were ideating autonomous vehicles. The general consensus was that we would run the technology platform and private equity would own fleets of cars built and operated to our specification.

Waymo has concluded either we are too early in the journey to decouple the tight vertical integration or they want to go very big and own all of the capital expenditure for what will presumably be a global rollout ultimately.

For anyone like me with a finance and technology crossover interest I actually think this is as interesting, maybe more interesting, than the private equity play around data centers at the moment because all of that is constrained against chip delivery and power constraints.

The concern, I think, is that their spare cash is dwindling and thus financial prudence might be beneficial - especially for those who rely on the core Mozilla propositions like Firefox.

If your comment is referring to the bending spoons business model, it's worth pointing out they are not VC, they are private equity.

If your comment is referring to the software company's exiting to provide a return to shareholders, that happens all the time whether it's venture-backed or privately owned. The owners of privately held bootstrapped companies still want an exit one day too.

As an open source software engineer who is now a venture capital investor, respectfully, I think your beef is with capitalism, not with the institutional investors.

One of the frustrating things about international roaming in the UK is typically your plan does not include coverage on this neutral network on the underground

Give the government your name, postal address, email address and citizenship information to store on a government database in order to protest against the government having your name, postal address, email address and citizenship information to store on a government database.

The best way to get rid of junk is not to put it outside your house with “free” on it. It’s to put “$10” on it. Someone will steal it.

Remember Snowden outlined the Google<>US government interface:

The US agency would type in the gmail address of the subject (ie the primary key/identifier) and somewhere between the agency and Google a decision would be automatically made as to whether the owner of the account was a US person* or not.

If yes - FISA warrant was required

If no - the US agency user would have immediate access to the entire google account (think Google Take Out).

In other words, if you were not a US person there was no duty to protect data.

* = US Person is either a US citizen located anywhere in the world or anyone of any nationality who is physically in the US (current interpretation includes visa holders, visitors and even undocumented but that's shifting)

wow you have a much better memory than I do, I don't even remember anything about the event (tbf for several years I used to attend a WordCamp somewhere practically every other week!)

Is there a tech scene in Exeter? I have long lived in San Francisco having moved from UK in 2006 but I spent a lot of time down in Devon where my parents now live.

Planes typically land with little fuel left (obviously enough for emergencies etc but they are practically empty, it's safer and more efficient)

I have had office desks professional adjusted by an occupational safety orthopedic person and that has always been the advice I was told.

Another piece of advice was that on a standing desk your forearms should not be parallel to the ground but slightly below your elbow.

Success here is the sum of an equation that combines publishing and distribution.

The early days of blogging, the distribution came from RSS feed readers. The minute those fell out of fashion, the distribution loop of self-publishing disappeared.

Medium was clever because it kind of created that built-in but it never took off.

The distribution loop has always been social media which is now drowned out with other noise (you don't need me to explain that dire state of social media).

The nth conclusion becomes newsletters because email remains the lowest common denominator of distribution (other than maybe text message but that isn't appropriate here).

I am a founder of a publishing platform (WP Engine) and my entire SWE background is content management. But I'm the first to admit that distribution is everything.

I think maintaining a personal blog or site is important to be able to have a source of record of important stuff you write. But it's a backup. It's not a destination for distribution.

Stands like this have to be paired with an external keyboard.

Raising the monitor so that the top is as close to eye level as possible (while maintaining a straight back) is better orthopedicly.

It's impossible to achieve this and a good keyboard posture, so you must introduce an external keyboard.

Without an external keyboard, there is no value in using a stand, you might as well just keep the laptop in a neutral position.

Fakespot is not infallible but a useful addition to any Amazon research process.

They try to hide it from the front page (a bit of a dark pattern) but you don't need to download the plugin to use it, just visit https://www.fakespot.com/analyzer

It’s fascinating that Amazon Web Services have so many overlapping and competing services to achieve the same objective. Efficiency/small footprint was never their approach :D

For example, look how many different types of database they offer (many achieve the same objective but different instantiation)

https://aws.amazon.com/products/?aws-products-all.sort-by=it...