lambda_lover

It's great that you're willing to die for Tesla's profit, but you realize that autonomous vehicle-induced crashes affect everyone on the road? Even someone who doesn't consent to Tesla's TOS is still sharing the road with potentially dangerous software.

Granted, individual drivers are awful enough that it probably doesn't make that huge a difference in danger. But would you still feel the way if a family member was killed in an accident where their human-controlled car was rear-ended by a Tesla?

The QC35s also only need the battery for wireless use/active noise cancelling, so even if your battery dies on you you can still use them with a wire and a standard 3.5 mm jack. That is, assuming you still have a 3.5mm port to plug that jack into :)

It's not the battery life per charge, it's the battery lifespan. Similar to iPhones (which are rated for only 500 charge cycles because gotta pad those profit margins... so good luck using one battery for even 2 years), AirPods experience battery degradation to a point where they last < 1 hour and just shut down randomly because they can't provide enough charge to the buds. In just 2-3 years.

So if I go to my local library and check out a copy of the book (that my taxes paid for, presumably) I'm stealing from the author?

I pirate most of my ebooks because they're typically poorly made ports of the physical books. When I truly enjoy reading a book, I order a physical copy and add it to my shelf, so the physical copy becomes a) a conversation piece in my home 2) a decoration 3) available for my next read. But because I do most of my reading on the subway or while travelling, I still lean toward using my Kindle most of the time.

If I recall correctly one was created by a non-Telegram dev as a bit of a fanproject, and eventually adopted by the company as a pseudo-official app. At some point actual Telegram devs decided to create (I think) Telegram for Desktop based on native stuff like Swift. But both applications get bugfixes and updates because it's easy enough to maintain both.

Your discussion of "real time video chat clients" has me cracking up; it seemed that a myriad of pieces of software had this figured out in the 2000s, but today I can't think of a single piece of software that I'd actually want to use for video chat. All of them have some fatal Achilles' Heel: Facetime has security problems/previously did not have group chats/is exclusive to Apple OSes, Skype is laggy and has more connection problems than any piece of software I've ever used, Google Hangouts chokes once you get to 3 or 4 participants and frequently has issues with even 2 participants, Duo is only usable on Android/iOS as far as I know... does anybody have a good client that they can actually recommend?

Myself, I've gone back to using Ventrilo because I realized that I really don't care about having video.

As an aside, I could save $XXXX a year by having a roommate/living in a worse house/having a crappier car/never going out for drinks/etc. The list goes on. There is an incredible number of things your average first world worker could give up to save money per year. The reason people spend money on these things is that they spend 40+ hours a week working so they CAN afford to spend those unnecessary dollars a year on things they enjoy, that enrich their lives. Otherwise we would all have plenty of money in the bank while we live in a 5x5 concrete cell and literally only go to work/sleep. Some things are not about maximizing profit.

Their share structure prevents them from ending up in ETFs, so one of the largest segments of investors literally won't be able to invest in them. Seems more like VC wanting to cash out and leave employees who can't sell their shares yet holding the bag.

I'm curious to hear more from you on this, because I've always felt like Facebook-imposed censorship would be far worse than open dialogue on the site. People already wall themselves off inside of echo chambers that only reinforce already-held opinions, so is your thought that the worst of these echo chambers can be eliminated via FB filters?

Honestly, the most toxic content I've seen on FB hasn't been gore or racism or sexism or anything else distasteful, it's been blatantly false clickbait/opinion pieces that flare up existing divides.

I've always thought that the best way to make FB a decent place again would be to simply ban sharing of links, so that the feed could become what it was originally meant to be: a place where I can see what my friends are up to. But that would also mean FB would have to dial back its targeted advertisingm, which is all links (seriously, would contextual advertising really be that bad? Bad enough that we can justify the insanity that is FB data collection) and stop scooping up all the data they can get... which doesn't really seem their MO.

I felt the same. I wonder if some of these issues stem from the fact that the book was originally written in Chinese (iirc)... maybe some of the infodump sections seem more natural in the original tongue?

If Spectrum spent half the money they spend on leaflets and promotional offers (that aren't really promotions and invariably force one to purchase Spectrum TV) on actually growing and upgrading their fiber network, my internet at home wouldn't be so absolutely awful.

Naturally you just can't expect a comprehensive fiber network in the largest metropolitan area in the Western world, though.

$200 credit if you bring your own device today? That's it, I guess I'll try a 6-month free trial of Fi...

For friends who don't care about how pretty or color accurate their display is, the old Air can't be beat.

One can only hope that those software devs who create applications for both ecosystems don't leave for greener pastures, taking their software with them...

There are far, far, too many ads. But the ads are at least more tasteful than on most platforms. If you keep your list of follows < 100 or so (and take care to cull any accounts that get too spammy -- limiting yourself to people you know personally is a good strategy for this), Instagram is a pretty pleasant platform to check once a day, especially if your friends use Stories.

That being said, it suffers from Facebook syndrome to the extent that you literally have to fight the platform to make it usable. I'm holding out for some kind of federated hybrid of instagram/facebook in the near future with a chronological timeline and a reasonable volume of ads (to keep the lights on)/subscription option.

While I'm sure FB's algos are somewhat to blame for this, it's hard to estimate just how much content has been driven away by the site since the halcyon days of 2007-2012. Most of the reason I left was because none of my friends posted photos or thoughts any more -- folks just started sharing links and regurgitating talking points without generating any original content, so I left because I have HN/Reddit for that (with better curation tools, at that). Facebook was a good place when all of my friends used it for messaging and sharing their lives, but at some point everyone I knew started to use instagram and snapchat for those things.

Snapchat has mostly been killed by monetization, but instagram is still on life support for now. Losing the chronological timeline was quite the blow, though. Is it really that hard to balance "pleasant place to share my life" and "shove ads into my face"?

Don't worry: they've been slowly hobbling the mobile site to make the application more and more attractive. iirc you can't even message on the normal (non-basic) mobile site any more: it just shows a splash screen requesting that you download messenger. And of course their site uses screen dimensions and user agents to decide to force you onto mobile even if you request desktop.

Absolutely agreed. However, I don't think spending 15 years in China is a particularly rare trait in tech work -- a very good chunk of the people I work with in tech on a day-to-day basis were born and raised in a foreign country (typically China, India, or Russia, though there's a very long tail there). In fact, my own background (that of a very, very, small rural US town) who went to a liberal arts college is extremely rare in my own experience in tech. Of course, I'm a white heterosexual so I'm considered a member of "the majority"...

Diversity metrics based on the color of your skin or the country where you were born are an awful way to assess actual diversity of thought. It's much more about your own personal experiences regardless of your environment. It's a shame that's hard to quantify so everyone ignores it.

Couldn't agree more. It's also silly that there's a federal poverty level at all -- I see a poverty level as only useful on a scale as granular as county/parish, even state level is probably too large to give any useful data (for reference, I grew up in Northern New York State and now live in NYC, and any New York State poverty level is meaningless in both of those places because they're so disparate). It's a shame that the GOP, which is supposedly anti-federal power consolidation, no longer embraces that ideal. We would likely be better served here in the US by something more akin to a confederacy.

On the subject of Dollar General: I imagine the corporation as a whole is profitable, but I'm curious about their franchisees. If it's something like the McDonald's setup, then I imagine that their franchisees could be seriously hurting while the name Dollar General remains lucrative. Unfortunately I don't know much about their structure -- maybe they don't have franchises?

Lexington, Kentucky is the 60th-largest city in the United States. That is not the "small town Kentucky" that the grandparent is talking about. (S)he is talking about small businesses (or business franchises, like Dollar General) that are barely scraping by in small towns -- a gas station, a diner, a dollar store -- typically with a only 1-3 employees working at a time. A place like that would take a substantial hit from a doubling of the minimum wage.

Don't get me wrong -- workers are grossly underpaid in most of the US, and wage gains are good. But those wage gains do have to be relative. In NYC/SF, a $15 minimum wage is just enough to scrape by with a couple of 20-30 hour a week jobs. In a poorer part of the US, a $10 min wage is plenty... but anything more might be enough to kill what few businesses currently survive there.

Actually, Toys R Us went bankrupt through a buyout: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-27/toys-r-us... Basically, they were forced to take on a lot of debt to go private at a critical inflection point where competition was starting to undercut their pricing. Then they couldn't invest in anything else to fight their competition because they already had far, far, too much debt.

So I'd be skeptical to say there's something inherently wrong with non-tech stocks. You may have just lucked out and invested in tech stocks during one of the worlds largest bubbles (or just bull runs? Hard to say!)

I know of some towns in upstate NY that employ "crow hazing" techniques to harass and eventually drive away large flocks. Typically these groups tend to use nonlethal (and as non physically damaging as possible) methods like air rifles and lasers, and sometimes just bright lights.

http://www.wwnytv.com/story/37317955/crow-hazing-in-watertow...

My personal bias tells me that it won't effect much: I think a lot of current city dwellers live in cities not only for jobs, but also because they like the easy access to amenities, culture, and walkability.

There's also the fact that the throughput of autonomous vehicles compares very poorly with the throughput of a decent subway or light rail system (multiple orders of magnitude).

More objectively, I suspect there are a lot of people who are only living in cities today because of job availability. But I question how many of those folks want to transition from a 30 minute walk/public transit ride to a hour+ drive in a (semi?) autonomous vehicle. Even if you can read or work in your autonomous car -- which, in itself, is a dubious proposition for anybody who needs connectivity to their team or the internet due to the price of data plans -- it's still time spent away from home, family, loved ones, etc. I'm not sure how many jobs are truly flexible enough for you to let commute time replace at-desk time: even software jobs don't all allow that.

So for many people, autonomous vehicles would just mean more time spent commuting, away from their families. And for all of that, you end up driving (autonomously!) 20+ minute to do anything on the weekends or after work. It's not a deal I would make, but maybe other people are more OK with it.

Interesting thought. I've been very anti Spotify-as-a-label, but this is a really neat way of looking at it that I hadn't considered before. What if Spotify becomes a (small) label that's very artist-friendly? Then they can offer non-streaming distribution of their artists as a bargaining chip for existing labels.

My only issue here is that I'm not sure if existing labels will begrudge a new competitor on the block (and then try to kill Spotify). It doesn't seem to me like Spotify being a fellow label gives them much more that the existing labels would want, but maybe I'm just not thinking of it.

According to my memory and a little research [1], the record labels have some stock stake in Spotify. Personally I think this is Spotify's best bet: if the labels can derive stock gains from helping Spotify (plus licensing fees), they have skin in the game so they won't try to sabotage Spotify. I'm of the opinion that instead of trying to produce music (and fight the record labels), Spotify is better off getting into a complimentary position: make it easier for fans to find out about concert, purchase tickets at fair prices, and buy t-shirts. All stuff that Spotify can probably do better than the record labels, and which won't cut into label profits.

[1] http://www.swedishwire.com/jobs/680-record-labels-part-owner...

I don't understand the appeal of this model. Do you really want to have to subscribe to 5 different streaming music services, one per label, just to listen to all your favorite artists?

I know that rents in those places has plateaued, but there's so much demand that even a steady outstream of new parents might not make a dent in housing prices. NYC rents dipped recently for the first time in years, but as somebody who's currently shopping around for apartments in NYC, the changes aren't really substantial to the end renter.

Absolutely true-- Apple is, after all, one of the most valuable companies in the world. But I think recent issues in iOS and macOS hint that they might not be one of the most talented software companies in the world. If regular maintenance and feature updates are bringing their OSes to their knees, what will a massive spec change do?

Good point on 1) -- basically, Intel has produced enough problems for a high enough cost that there's reason enough to try alternatives.

On 2)... I hate web apps. Probably much more than your average layperson. Electron is miserable in my experience -- laggy, high memory/CPU user, non-native feel, but I think a web app in a browser is OK. There are really two different use cases I see here. a) Take TurboTax, for instance. I don't want to download a TurboTax app for my computer. I'd only use it once or twice a year. But it works well in a browser. It's complex enough that a web app is justified. b) Spotify. It needs to interact with local files, and I usually have it up in the background. A web app doesn't work well for this. Unfortunately Electron doesn't work well for this either.

I think if this is executed well it could be amazing -- what if layouts scale beautifully onto a laptop screen, so I can use an iOS app instead of an Electron app for Spotify/Slack/etc? If this happened, the benefits could trickle down into iOS, making it a more useful platform. On the other hand, layouts might not scale well for larger screens, and iOS apps on macOS could end up neutered and even less useless than a current webapp. Hopefully the former case happens, but lately Apple makes me feel like the latter is more likely.

3) I'm not really convinced that this will reduce bugs. In my experience, combining two pieces of software into one just makes the resulting monolith harder to reason about because it doubles complexity at high levels and increases complexity exponentially at low levels. But maybe that says something about my development skills :)

I believe it's a T series, though your point still stands. I think I'd personally far prefer a display under the trackpad (though I don't think it's necessary at all) to a TouchBar or a touchscreen laptop. But I think I'm very much in the minority.

"A decision to go with ARM technology in computers might lend it credibility where it has failed to gain a foothold so far."

"Apple is working on a new software platform, internally dubbed Marzipan, for release as early as this year that would allow users to run iPhone and iPad apps on Macs"

Two things here:

1) I'm OK with breaking the Intel near-monopoly on x86. I'm not OK with moving to a walled garden where Apple forces you to publish apps through their App Store with a paid dev account, etc. just for the privilege of users on their platform. ARM doesn't necessarily mean this, but it is a different CPU arch. When Apple transitioned to Intel/x86 from PowerPC, Intel processors were performant enough compared to PowerPC processors to provide a pleasant emulated PowerPC environment for applications build for PowerPC. I don't think that a switch to ARM would provide this benefit, and afaik Intel's mobile offerings aren't that far off from ARM efficiency. So what's the benefit? Just vertical integration, I guess? Escaping Intel's backdoors and high prices?

2) iOS apps on OS X. Why? Does anybody want this? The way I see it, web apps are perfectly adequate for the desktop environment when it comes to stuff like checking my bank account or browsing Hacker News. I don't want to deal with a desktop app to do any of the stuff I can currently do via a browser. Is there actually a use case?

3) Given the hellscape of bugs currently present in iOS/macOS, does anybody have faith that Apple is going to be able to navigate a rewrite of macOS on this scale? It sounds like the sort of thing that requires a lot of talent and a lot of focus. Apple has the capital for this, but not the environment, imo.

Seems to me like this could be the nail in the coffin for Macbooks that's been pending since the merger of the macOS/iOS teams and the introduction of the controversial TouchBar/USB-C Pro.