endemic

I still have a Facebook account, and will occasionally log in (most recently attempting to sell something on their craigslist equivalent). The default content shown in your "feed" or dashboard is more than 50% engagement bait and/or slop. I attempted to start flagging those posts as "never show me again," but it soon became apparent that it was a Sisyphean task, and I just logged out again.

The naming scheme is too "clever."

they are about the most difficult to solve captchas I've ever done

Sounds like something a robot would say. Joking aside, I'd rather do a captcha that involves slightly more cognitive effort, rather than get trapped in a reCaptcha loop because I didn't select every last segment of a bicycle.

Non-replaceable batteries

Most batteries are replaceable. The difference is the level of effort involved.

My take is they didn't optimize for something that a small percentage of users would have problems with.

Yeah, he's definitely the cause of all our past and current problems.

So he has money.

What are you going to do? Asking for a friend.

I mean, they're already subsidizing some of the phone services (e.g. maps) that users expect to have.

Microsoft is completely and utterly defeated.

All the way to the bank, apparently.

I had the exact same thought about the brand crashing due to association with Facebook. Gotta juice them numbers, I guess.

If it makes someone feel better about themselves, why not?

Welcome to Costco, I love you.

That $7 isn't going to the developers.

Jobs really did make a lot of boneheaded decisions when running NeXT; this book just calls him out on it.

Funny, I'm the exact opposite!

demand for a touchscreen on a laptop

My take is that consumers didn't want this; it was manufacturers trying to "add value" or sell something new. Same as the recent "AI PC" craze.

Even with the latency/frame stuttering inherent in this sort of thing, it's been pretty amazing to re-play games with childhood friends who are now dispersed across the planet.

I'm debating using LLMs for my side projects. Does using one remove the "soul" of my project? On the other hand, a friend is actually making progress with his side app _because_ he's able to lean on the LLM after a full day's worth of working the day job. I might be able to actually do some of the things I've dreamed of and never had the capacity for. First world problems, I guess.

I liked it because it was very fast (I would always demo the startup time vs. Windows) and had a clean, macOS-inspired UI.

I built a few native iPhone apps 15 years ago, but these days do my tinkering in web tech and "Save to Homescreen." Probably couldn't do this if I wanted functionality like photo/video editing or heavy 3D, but for my relatively simple use case, Webkit is fine. This has the benefit of completely bypassing the App Store, and lets me share apps by just linking to them.

macOS crashes more than Firefox for me.

Congress needs to step up and take its power back from the executive.

Won't happen with this administration at least; the expectation being that unless you are a yes-man, you'll be denounced as "not loyal" and voted out.

I wrote some tutorials for making "grid-based" games that might give you some inspiration (https://ganbaru.games/writing-grid-based-games/) It's actually kind of crazy how many different types of games work with this approach.

If you're familiar with web development, you can make games with HTML/JS, which is almost its own "engine." Think DOM elements for sprites, CSS animations for movement, requestAnimationFrame for an update loop, etc. This has the extra benefit of zero friction for players -- no native app installation necessary!

I don't think it's iPhone vs. Android, rather "mega-corp $$$" vs. hobbyists. At the point where Android could be considered "open" (e.g. removing Google Play Services, etc.) you've lost a lot of the functionality that people come to expect from a smartphone. Sure, there are workarounds, but let's be honest: they're hacky and not a great experience.

Eh, I used to think we had standards in the US, such as “no masked goons roaming the streets asking for papers.”

And the end users pay the price!

I feel like this is the inevitable end result. Ironic that we’ll finally get well-regulated militias.

I'd be curious to hear more specifics regarding the "15 years behind" and "inconsistent experience."