mrmanner

Came here to say this. I've no idea what the app does, I presume that is because I'm old.

And that doesn't matter. It's cool to make apps in any case!

Trains AND solar power. Awesome.

I had the same thought at first, but in context I think the quoted text refers to business relationships. Which makes all the difference.

I noticed how they've marked the features that only Chrome supports (e.g. installation) but not the feature that only Firefox supports (orientation).

(tbh I don't know if the list is simply Chrome-centric or if there's a good reason behind, but it struck me as interesting)

I mean technically a flash drive could be "a secure environment walled-off from the internet"

Maybe I just haven’t discovered the track changes feature in word processors enough, but I find it lacking: no explicit grouping of changes (the git commit), no clear timeline of changes, no tagging / naming of versions etc.

Not saying that a line-by-line diff is that much better. Neither is great imo.

On the government endpoint, which returns X that the platform uses as "evidence" for you being an adult, yes, that's tied to your identity, as the certificate/whatever is tied to your identity.

In this scenario the government knows all the age-restricted sites I've visited. I'd argue that is worse than if all the age-restricted sites I've visited know who I am...

(FTR I don't know what I think about age restrictions in general, but I'm pretty sure there's no implementation that comes without negative side effects)

https://www.icehotel.com/ :D

they do not prevent them falling into that river in the first place

The article explains pretty well how the devices prevent cows from falling into the river:

Solar-powered GPS devices emit a high-pitched sound as the animal moves through a boundary zone towards the water, with a mild electric pulse delivered if it fails to turn around.

The carbon dioxide is captured and stored, the actual carbon isn't returned to whatever form it was before burning. So theoretically it _can_ work (but, as it turns out, it still doesn't make sense).

As a more prolific blog writer at the time I also liked that their bot would include number of people who were subscribed to my blog in their User Agent.

Something I generally appreciate with Google: The level of craftsmanship and the amount of elegant designs like this they come up with. (There are also… other things, but their standards are high compared to many competitors.)

yeah but we don't have time to analyse this for years and years while upping our power consumption

this is 100 % true. we also don’t have time to debate the morality and necessity of each specific activity for years. if AI energy use is indeed as small as some comments here suggest, ignoring it to focus on improving things like heating, cooling, and transportation could be a better course of action.

well except they allegedly asked said allegedly inexperienced developer to develop the thing for them, for free

at the expense of the parent's other employees

rather at the expense of the business owners, which may well be the parent themselves? (ok fine the other employees could have equity in the business, but other than that)

Not related to Instant, but saw that the backend is available on their Github: https://github.com/instantdb/instant/tree/main/server

Maybe pose it as a question to the user, rather than an error message: “This message has been deleted from the server. Do you want to:

- discard it permanently - store this version on the server - save as a file to your computer”

It has ceased to be

You need to actually send them the API key, so not really.

The thing is, the law/code only matters if it is enforced. I have little faith this will be enforced enough to be a deterrent

But the same would be true whether roaming is legal or not?

It's actually quite funny that the freedom to roam in large parts of Europe predates the USA by several hundred years and is universally accepted by landowners, yet it's talked about as if it's some sort of unprincipled anomaly.

To use an analogy: In the US there are fair use exemptions to intellectual property rights. That doesn't mean there's no such thing as intellectual property, or that it's meaningless.

The right to roam in some other countries is a fair use exemption to land ownership rights. That doesn't mean there's no such thing as land ownership, or that it's meaningless.

I believe you are right to some extent, but also overestimating how strong and important the specific principles you're observing are to most people. Some of us have stronger principles, yes. But more of us have _different_ principles.

”The goal is to increase security, privacy (…)”

Also autofill is just broken by some sites and app login screens, so users are used to looking at and typing their passwords every now and then.

The category of speech most in need of free speech protection is "unlawful but fine".

The dominant market position of someone who has last/mile cables to every household in an area is much stickier and more absolute than the dominant position of any social networking site.

Even if it’s hard to stop using e.g. Facebook, it’s easy to access 1000000 other sites too, and publish your own. That’s not the case with ISPs - for the most part you can have only one.

“ In exercising his or her right to data portability pursuant to paragraph 1, the data subject shall have the right to have the personal data transmitted directly from one controller to another, where technically feasible.”

They’re not necessarily in the right to block you, if you’re the data subject or acting on their behalf.

Could you not shoot an email to those institutions asking for a copy

They’ll respond within a few days, asking me to log into some web portal to prove that I am me, and then we’re back where we started

What are the legitimate (i.e. legal) use cases for a product such as this?

Data portability! Tools like this can be used to allow individuals to export their data from hostile web services trying to hold it hostage.

Legal in the EU, with GDPR.

Some of these changes by Apple are clearly user hostile. There's a consumer protection debate to be had about removing software features after selling a hardware + software package like this.

I think at least some of the "apologism" and "distraction" comes from more honest ideological differences though - like what should the role of the state be, what is a free market, should business be fair, how much consumer protection is the right amount...