dustinblake

We already have something far more insidious in the United States - Credit Ratings. Not only are the tendrils woven so thoroughly into nearly every aspect of modern life, they are run by for profit corporations with zero transparency and accountability. Getting access to credit/loans/housing/jobs/insurance and likely a whole lot more depends on your credit rating. Mess up your credit (often by no real fault of your own) and watch whatever tenuous grip of financial normalcy you have disappear - everything will now be much more difficult and much more expensive as you try to reconstruct your life over the next decade or two. Good luck.

China would love to have our credit ratings system - but I suspect that they don't fully have the financial transaction transparency and society-wide buy-in just yet to be able to really make it work. I'm sure they'll get there eventually, but for now, they still have a large enough 'alternative' economy/non-regulated transactions and exchange that would both allow people to escape the scrutiny of a more official credit ratings system and these unregulated economic channels would likely grow larger due to people's displeasure and avoidance of the ever increasing authoritarian reach. Social credit introduces this concept using data and tools they have available, and eases this into daily life with less existentially disrupting capability - at least for now.

I walk, a lot. I've been extremely happy with shoes made by Camper - especially their higher end lines - I have several of their Pelotas (not the lite version) with the oldest nearly 20 years old... and they are still all in great shape. I'd also recommend their Beetle, Peu, Peu Stadium, Bill and Atom lines. They have a wide range of styles and different colors and other options introduced seasonally. Unless you are an investment banker on Wall Street, they have shoes that will work in most office environments and also for casual wear. I do find that their leather lines do last much longer than the other materials, and they are priced accordingly, ranging $120-280+. If that seems like a lot, just wait for their quarterly sales of 30-40% (sometimes as much as 50%) off for the best deals.

The most important thing with shoe longevity is to not wear the same pair every day. Buy two and switch between them - or better yet, get three pairs - and rotate. Give them some time to rest, air out, dry out, etc. between wearings. They will last longer and your feet will thank you.

I agree that San Francisco has idiotic zoning and an overactive planning department that caters to the whims of NIMBYs.

And there's plenty of big tech still here, more than enough, really. Idiotic policies, sure, sometimes, however, the taxes are probably still too low.

But no, actually, I don't remember the anti-Uber law. nor the Twitter tax. It's amusing that you'd cite two made up things to support your case.

Are you referring to the Prop 22 that Uber, Lyft, Door Dash, and Instacart spent $224 million to enshrine their mistreatment of workers into the California Constitution? (kinda crazy that they couldn't just use that money to pay the workers better, huh?) But I'm not sure if a law could really be anti-Uber as their whole strategy was just to flout the law, screw regulations, and blast through billions while playing a game of chicken with Lyft.

And maybe you weren't here at the time, but it was the Twitter Tax Break. That's what started the whole mess anyway, puppet Mayor Ed Lee wanting to kiss Ron Conway's ass.

Actually, the notch fits right in with Apple's design decisions.

Apple loves to have a simple, black and white line art icon for products that allow you to instantly know it's an Apple product. Think original Mac/Plus/SE/Classic look, think iPod with screen and touchwheel, think classic iPhone screen + home button visual. These have broad-based recognition amongst the general public, at least if you were alive during the time. This kind of recognition is what is referred to as 'iconic.' Some other examples of iconic - the Nike Swoosh, the Coca-Cola word mark, the old Absolute vodka advertisements, and of course, the Apple logo itself - words really aren't necessary to convey the meaning (the Coca-Cola logo is recognized even if you don't necessarily read English). When you see one of these iconic marks, it's not just the name, you also cue up emotions and memories - quite a lot that's conveyed via something so simple (especially the Swoosh or the icon of the iPod).

With the move to full-screen iPhones, the line art would be a rounded rectangle on a rounded rectangle, which could be Samsung, LG, One+, etc. Adding the notch makes the design visually distinctive. It's form following function, but done in an elegant way (check out the bezier curves of the corners of the display and the notch - clearly time was spent refining them to make it as elegant as possible). I don't even notice the notch when using my iPhone, but I do notice it when seeing an iPhone from a distance - it's a clue in that you're seeing an iPhone. I don't expect the notch to go away for at least 3-4 more years - and when it does, it will be for a major change in the visual language of the devices.

I’m not a fan of Thiel at all, but the “offensive” article in Gawker actually made me empathize with him. It’s the most flattering thing written about him, and it made me briefly consider him to be human. Those feelings were short-lived.

Why are we assuming that it was Twigg’s actions that caused her mother to kick her out? It’s just as likely (if not more) that her mother was crazy and/or abusive, and at the very least it was not a traditional family experience—they were living in a basement, not a house!

I went to check out BookFusion, which at first glance, seems like an interesting idea.

Unfortunately, I could not find anywhere on your site that indicated the cost associated with an individual user account. (Free to signup, of course, but how long is that trial, or what limits will I face? and then how much money will this subscription service cost me?)

End-users have serious account fatigue, and I seriously debated whether I should bother signing up for the site and create yet another login to a web app I might or might not want to use. Please, just be up front about pricing, free trials, limitations, requirements, etc.

If you have a 7-day free trial and I'm currently busy, I won't have time to kick the wheels before I'd need to pay. If you instead limit the number of books or the storage space I can use, just tell me so I can decide if it's worth bothering to test it out. As far as I can tell, you might or might not have a limit for a new/free user, but no idea what that is.

Finally, I see in the settings that you offer an early bird subscriber deal, at $4.99/mo (vs $9.99/mo) and $39.99/yr (vs $60/yr), for unlimited storage. I think you might have better luck with a tiered setup. Someone with a lot of ebooks might find $40/year to be a great deal, but most users likely don't have that large of a collection - they're looking for more of an ease of use and convenience factor. Take advantage of that, and then allow them to move up and give you more money once their collection grows.

$10/year = 4GB storage or 2000 ebooks? (count # of books, and not storage, to make it seem less technical?) $20/year = 8GB storage or 4000 ebooks? $40/year = 20GB storage or __? $60/year = unlimited

or $10/$30/$60 year, with 2000/10,000/unlimited? and only allow monthly payment as an option for the $30/$60 levels?

at $10/year, it would be an impulse buy for most readers, and then you not only have a paying relationship with them right away, you have a whole year to demonstrate the ease of use and utility of the product.

You might find one of the Notational Velocity forks to be exactly what you're looking for:

http://notational.net

http://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/

(nvALT adds Markdown support and a few interface adjustments)

Point whichever NV you use to a directory of txt or markdown files in your Dropbox. NV is nimble and lightning quick, and it excels at super-fast search. Don't even bother with tags, just search.

That government is wasteful has been a rallying cry from Reagan onward. Republicans have gleefully been cutting waste since then, so we’ve had nearly four decades of intense scrutiny of government waste. There is very little left! While each new finding of any waste is trumpeted from the hilltops, no mention is made of the numerous agencies and offices which are operating on shoestring budgets and, in many cases, operating at low efficiency because they are too starved of cash to do their jobs effectively.

This is the two-pronged attack, a maniacally evil strategy from the brains of the John Birch Society, the Koch brothers and their minion ‘think’ tanks, and Grover Norquist. They wish to institute their libertarian paradise, but what gets in their way is that most Americans don’t actually share their desires. Most Americans tend to favor the kind of smart policies that balance the needs of enterprise with the needs of society - laws that harness the engine of capitalism to work broadly in service of everyone.

Only by driving a wedge in between the American populace and government, and between the non-union worker and the union worker, and between the middle class and the poor, and between the poor and the immigrant - to the point that everyone is now against everyone else - could they succeed in creating such visceral hatred so wide and so deep in the populace that we would have no sense of society left. When we cease to feel like we’re all in this together, we cease to feel a responsibility for the common good, when we show no concern for the pillaging of the commons, we laugh haughtily at the misfortune of others, we joke about the failure of our institutions and collectively we stick our heads in the sand and turn to salve our sorrows with the solace of drugs or numb ourselves with our mindless entertainment, we step closer to the now-inevitable collapse of our great experiment in democracy, our once powerful leadership fallen to depths of ridicule and our empire crumbled.

Those rich men who directed our demise might initially celebrate the arrival of their libertarian paradise, but with a limping husk of a state left, even a minimal order won’t last for long, and their wealth - in money that has little lingering value won’t shield them from the pains of society collapsed. Their land is only theirs if recognized by a government, and if property rights are respected. I suspect that it won’t be long until all are consumed in anarchy, followed by formation of groups of violent masses, led by ideologues who commandeer what bits of military hardware they can grab.

Isn’t that something Georgia should be proud of! /s

I’ve never understood why people in those sorts of places are so excited about such regressive laws.

The postal service is not taxpayer funded!

Yes, they are indicated in the Constitution, and they must service each and every little town, and they must go to Congress to gain approval for rate increases, but they are not supported by any tax revenue.

https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-facts/top-10-things...

Sure, a business can cease to operate—that's a risk that seems pretty clear cut and understandable. Or, if the business completely changes and doesn't offer that type of product or service anymore. If the lifetime offer was for unlimited (one at a time) VHS borrowing at the neighborhood video rental, and then the store shifted to only offering DVDs, or (perhaps better) streaming, the fact that there are no longer any VHS tapes to borrow makes sense.

But this is a case of an email company (likely profitable) that still offers email accounts. It's likely that the only difference between the product that they're taking away and current offerings is that the 'lifetime' accounts have FAR lower quotas and features offered. The cost of computing, storage and bandwidth trend downward over time. No new lifetime accounts are being created, so they've got a fixed quantity of lower-usage level accounts. They can already forecast the maximum technical cost for these over the next 10/20/30/40 years. Now these accounts may have high costs in terms of providing customer support, and that would be unpredictable, and potentially costly. I doubt anyone would fault Fastmail for simply stating that outside of a few designated problems/issues (either on their side or the most important) that no technical support would be provided for these accounts. If they wanted to be nice, they might offer that non-crucial support issues could be handled at the lowest tier/priority.

That would be a sensible way to move forward.

There's a major problem with term limits. Let's say we fix the House of Representatives so that instead of constantly having to run for (re)election with two year terms, we change them to 4 year terms but limit them to 2. Ignoring the major changes that the committee chair/assignment system would require, no longer having a wide range of seniority, the entire body would suffer because the most experienced any legislator could be would be those elected to their second term, i.e. years 5-8 of their House career.

Why is this not good? Who also resides in Washington DC and interacts with legislators, with virtually no limits on their length of involvement in this game? Lobbyists. You set up a system where the Legislators are effectively perpetual newbies with an extremely broad scope of issues they must interact with and influence for the best. Lobbyists with just a decade of experience will know far more than any legislator. There's already a lot of legislation is introduced that's provided verbatim from lobbyists... expect that to get worse, not better, with an even more inexperienced elected officials.

We already have a system of term limits, it's called electing someone else. Don't make it impossible to keep an excellent legislator who has the broad support of their constituents; make it easier to elect someone new to replace a bad one. With the insane costs of campaigning and getting elected, we'd all be better served by simply reducing that barrier to a minimum. Publicly funded campaigns also remove the influence of financial contributions.

And the only reason why the ban doesn't encompass those countries (Saudi Arabia, UAE, etc.) is because Trump has business dealings there.

It comes down to the curation. Those books were the result of one or a few people consciously deciding what was important to include. They made value-based decisions to decide what would make the cut. Constraint forces choices which lead to a more valuable experience.

In addition to the physicality of the book, browsing them meant the viewer didn't need to sort through the cruft (someone had already done that work for them), allowing them to use their own energy/thoughts to build upon that work resulting in new ideas and creativity.

Current (and previous) generation Paperwhites have the same resolution as the Voyage and Oasis. I have a Paperwhite and the screen is fantastic. I'd love hardware buttons for page turning, though.

While the Oasis is expensive, if you add a nice cover to the Voyage you're close in pricing. Either go solidly midline with the Paperwhite or go all out with the Oasis, depending on your budget.