energywut

Oh, Roblox by far and away is worse than Apple. But also, Facebook is pretty clearly implicated in a genocide in Myanmar. It's difficult for me to put any genocide in a bucket less important than some kids being put into out-groups.

Apple walling off iMessage, giving the impression that Apple phones were high technology, and interacting with peasant androids is what made group chats fragment and pictures and videos look like trash.

Which lawsuit PDF related specifically to iMessage interacting with Android was mentioned in this comment? I see a comment about RCS.

Now, maybe you are right, maybe I narrowly interpreted RCS in iMessage to mean chat bubbles, and there's a wider interpretation. Even still, there's no possible way that's the singular most evil thing tech has ever done. The OP is free to be anti-Apple, more power to them, but like, let's be real about levels of evil.

Also, bringing up IBM, Microsoft or Facebook is "whataboutism".

It's absolutely not whataboutism. The claim the OP made was about Big Tech broadly. Bringing in examples of Big Tech doing evil things is a direct and appropriate rebuttable to the argument that Big Tech doesn't do evil things.

That's pretty evil & predatory to me.

That's not what the parent is asking. The OP said it was the most evil ever done.

Big Tech does predatory and evil stuff all the time. That's not what's being claimed. The OP is claiming that this specific thing is the worst, the singular event that is above and beyond all others.

I don't think any big tech company has ever done anything as evil and predatory as Apple walling off iMessage

I think you might be living in a bubble, if this is the "most evil" thing you have heard of a big tech company doing. Go read up on IBM's history, especially in the 30s and 40s. Or a more contemporary example, read up on Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. Or Amazon's mistreatment of workers in both corporate and warehouse settings. Or Meta scraping data off your devices without permission to train AI.

And, though I know some folks here disagree, plenty of people around the world believe what's happening in Gaza is a genocide, and Big Tech has materially contributed to making it happen. Or, if you want another example of human cost, talk about how resources for electronics are mined, or how electronics are manufactured.

Saying, "the most evil thing big tech has ever done is make some chat bubbles blue" puts a whole lot of human lives below the color of some chat bubbles.

You can think Apple did a really bad thing by doing that, that's fine. No complaints. But to call it the most evil thing ever done erases an incalculable amount of human suffering.

the claim that the internet descended into surveillance capitalism because of the walled garden approach of the App Store

I did not read this claim. I read the claim that Apple's approach unevenly benefits companies that engage in surveillance capitalism. No one's ad revenue, for instance, must pay a 30% cut of their revenue.

You are making an argument (and then arguing against it) that Proton did not make, as far as I can read.

if you make the platform that others run on and which creates entirely new economies and allows businesses to thrive, don’t you get to define the constraints that you want since it’s _your_ platform?

I don't think you do. We constrain what companies are permitted to do all the time. Apple must abide by regulatory constraints first, and then they can add the additional constraints they like.

A simple test -- could Apple say, "Everyone is allowed to use Messages, except Hindus"? It's their platform, don't you get to define the constraints because it's your platform? No, we've collectively decided that kicking some people out based on certain characteristics is generally bad.

Ideally we want all companies to be champions again authoritarianism, surely?

This was my intuitive read too. I thought it was about to say something about the socialists, anarchists, and communists I know.

Nope, just the left handed people I know.

Exactly this. It's not that it's a difficult problem, but it is a high mass-budget problem. Which makes it an expensive problem. Which makes it a difficult problem.

Depends on your orbit, but you need to be prepared to rotate into Earth's shadow seamlessly.

Putting a datacenter in space is one of the worst ideas I've heard in a while.

Reliable energy? Possible, but difficult -- need plenty of batteries

Cooling? Very difficult. Where does the heat transfer to?

Latency? Highly variable.

Equipment upgrades and maintenance? Impossible.

Radiation shielding? Not free.

Decommissioning? Potentially dangerous!

Orbital maintenance? Gotta install engines on your datacenter and keep them fueled.

There's no upside, it's only downsides as far as I can tell.

Are you saying that, irrespective of the chance of being caught and convicted, and of the severity of the likely punishment, the likelihood of someone committing a crime is constant?

I'm saying that prison sentences are not a deterrent to crime, and, in fact, increase the amount of crime done. Research has consistently shown that the threat of being caught is considerably higher deterrent than prison time, and that harsh sentences don't influence behavior:

https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/five-things-about-deterr...

That has nothing to do with the point I made, which was about people becoming criminals.

We are discussing crime. Which has a total sum. You can reduce that sum by preventing people from being criminals or you can reduce that sum by reforming criminals. I believe you need both. So it is important to remember that prisons negatively contribute to reforming people, increasing total crime, while research shows they don't contribute to preventing people from being criminals.

We need other systems, systems that prevent people from becoming criminals AND reduce the likelihood of re-offending if they do.

Look back further - https://images.seattletimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/F...

In the 80s and 90s, violent crime rates were well above 1000/100k residents, and property crimes 12k/100k.

Prisons make people less likely to become criminals.

Here is a study supporting the assertion that prisons increase (or do not reduce) the likelihood of someone reoffending in the future. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/715100

Your claim that prisons reduce the likelihood of the population at large is not obvious on its face, as the US has very high rate of incarceration, but still has moderately high crime rates. Can you supply some data?

We pay. We pay to house inmates. It costs us a TON of money to house prison populations.

Don't be facile.

Police reports aren't the only source of data. If this was a widespread impact then there would be other sources of data that could be used to build this case.

Additionally, we cannot make policy decisions on "just trust me, my friend said...". Maybe we can't get a perfect signal, but if you are going to challenge the prevailing data, I expect you to bring something novel beyond vibes. It doesn't have to be perfect, but a single anecdote plus "I believe it" is not sufficient to oppose what the data we do have is consistently saying -- crime is lower in Seattle, and has been consistently lowering over time.

Steam favorability percentages are famously vulnerable to review bombing. HW3 got swept up in culture war nonsense around LGBTQ representation.

I'm a hardcore Homeworld fan. I've run campaigns of their TTRPG, modeled their ships, played the old games to death. I found my own experience with 3 to be "mixed", it's hardly the best entry in the series, but the reviews absolutely are artificially low due to brigading.

Aside, an unoptimized game is actually one I'd want included in my benchmark. Games that have the teams and budgets to really polish will likely perform well no matter what. But how does OS level changes affect those other games, games where the developers didn't put in the care? Does one OS make those games worse? Or does it help with the shortcomings? It's valuable to have entries like that in your dataset.

Putting poor, desperate people in jail isn't going to solve the systemic issues that create poor, desperate people.

Locking up people for petty theft is almost certainly FAR more expensive than the cost of the materials being stolen. It costs tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars to house an inmate every year, to say nothing of the damage it causes that inmate. Prisons make criminals more likely to commit crime in the future.

A person would have to be stealing like 40 bottles of mouthwash every single day for it to be cheaper to jail an inmate rather than just replace the mouthwash for the business. Cases like that also clog the justice system and prevent solving more serious crimes, deplete shared resources like police and public defenders, and overcrowd prisons.

Even if you aren't a prison abolitionist like me, surely the rational approach here isn't "Pay more and increase the likelyhood the petty criminal becomes a serious criminal". It just makes zero rational sense to try and solve the issue that way.

You have any data to support that? I've lived in Seattle for 40 years, and crime here is way less of a concern now than it ever has been. Especially violent crime.

My experience also seems to match statistics. So, it would seem that your friend's experience might be the outlier -- I'm not saying they are wrong, I'm saying their experience doesn't match the data and there's at least one anecdote (mine) that runs counter to their anecdote. Seems like a good opportunity to try and find data that supports your hypothesis?

I most certainly cannot deduct housing, food, entertainment, vacations, or large purchases.

The problem is that we obviously can't let you deduct everything, because if you can deduct everything there would be nothing to tax, aside from savings.

This is the point the parent poster is making. We say that it's ok for corporations to deduct everything, but not the people? Why are we ok with that?

Scriptable Objects are exactly what I would use in this case. There's even a whole host of fancy tools to work with them and import/export to csv or other file formats.

Alcohol is harmful, but I have a glass of wine or whiskey from time to time. HN is my glass of whiskey.

I create an account, and delete it once I start feeling invested. If I can downvote people, I've probably ridden that account too long.

Once I start seeing the number next to my name and think "I should make that number bigger! This is fun!" then I've hit the point that I'm too invested. I'm letting the number make decisions, not me.

Then I delete it. I'll leave it deleted until I find a comment I simply cannot not respond to, and deal with being a green text person again for awhile. I'll get irritated at being blocked by default for most folks, and engage less.

It helps me self-moderate a slightly toxic experience so it's something I enjoy without it becoming a problem.

Yes. The energy in a vehicle increases with the square of the velocity. A car going 40 has nearly DOUBLE the kinetic energy of a car going 30 and the braking time required to stop a car is therefore also significantly increased.

That lower speed limit was set for a reason.

Additionally, predictable car movement is important for wildlife, pedestrians, and other vehicles. If the cars on that street always go 30, the others there will learn to predict the movement of a car. If some rando car start speeding along at 40 out of the blue, that will disrupt the calculations and decision making of everyone else.

Finally, are we comfortable saying, "Any company can decide whether it thinks obeying the speed limit is important, and is free to go over the speed limit by 1/3rd if they deem it safe"? Are we sure that precedent is healthy and desirable? I'm not. I don't think automated cars should just decide to add 33% to a speed limit and go that fast in normal operating conditions.

So yes, it does matter.

Watching one of the videos, the car went 38/39 in a 30, and was the only car nearby. It was not keeping pace with other vehicles in its lane. It seemed like a lot of the roads it was driving on were signed 35 or 40 (it was a lot of stroads), but a few were signed 30, which it just flatly ignored.

I think too many people are too enamored with their "team" to really dig into the policy proposals of presidents and senators. Like, for so many people being a Democrat is purely about being Not A Republican (or vice versa).

I want more people out here who are willing to vote (or withold their vote) for a candidate based on the policy positions. This "Vote Blue No Matter Who" (or whatever the Republican equivalent is) mindset leads to candidates who don't have to hold coherent positions or perform their duties. They simply need to not be the other guy.

While being "not the other guy" they will get courted by capital interests, because they need that money to run their campaigns. It's really not hard to connect the dots between these politicians and the donors who buy them and mysteriously get policies that make regulatory capture and capital concentration easier. It's not even conspiratorial -- it's pretty much out in the open these days.

I'm so tired of hearing, "But not the democrats" or "but not the republicans" -- my friends, stop treating the people you vote for like part of your identity. Expect more from the people who represent you, be harshly critical of your own party to help it grow.

Quickly? This has been the path we have been on for at least 30 years, probably longer. Plenty of folks have been calling this out for longer.

When you have two parties in control, and they are both staunchly pro-capital, anti-worker parties, one party will push conservative and the other will ensure "nothing fundamentally changes".

Obama, Biden, Bush, and Clinton all had parts to play in empowering the executive, normalizing political violence, demonizing and silencing the left (the actual left -- socialists, workers parties, anarchists, etc.), and ramping up the militarization of the police.

This isn't some sudden moment, it might be the first time it's affected people you know, but this has been happening for awhile now.

If you openly criticize genocide and settler colonialism by Israel, you are probably the kind of person who might openly criticize the imperial efforts of the US. Especially once they become even more oppressive.

They know exactly what they are doing.

I'd go further. Discrimination against some people is axiomatically part of having a nation and a border. There are no nations, to my knowledge, that permit every person residing within their borders to vote and permit any person who wishes to reside in their borders entry.

The assumption of discrimination is therefore baked in to every national project -- there are people who wish to participate in the nation but are barred from doing so. It's uncomfortable for many people to consider this, because it runs counter to the idea that their nations are welcoming places, but it's important to remember this discrimination occurs (even if you think it's a good idea.)

I create and delete HN accounts every... 80-200 karma. I don't have a youtube account. I don't have a reddit account.

Why is it so difficult to believe that there are people here who view social media as a harmful thing they try to mostly avoid?

FOSS is a flexible term but carries the connotation of community ownership, and therefore independence from for-profit interests.

That's certainly not true. Unless Red Hat, MongoDB, Chef, etc. are not open source.

While I love to believe that the FOSS world is an anarchist utopia that believes in wellbeing for all, I think there are plenty of profit driven people there. They just don't sell access to the code/software.

I would argue UI that doesn't work for people with low vision is also broken UI. There's no distinction in my mind between "broken for many people" and "broken for people with disabilities". It's broken.