cletus

112 ms·

721.
by cletus 5y ago
While technically possible I consider that incredibly unlikely as a result of what's essentially a contract dispute. What would Apple's cause of action be to terminate, say, Epic from the App Store entirely? They sort of tried thi
722.
by cletus 5y ago
I think it's certainly heavily weighted to the big publishers but 99%? I'm not so sure. But you know what's expensive? Private lawsuits, government lawsuits, a court or legislature deciding the outcome, compliance with legisl
723.
by cletus 5y ago
Good. I've been saying this awhile, most notably when Apple (of course followed by Google) introduced a discount on commission for smaller developers. This is completely backwards. I know why they did it. They wanted some positive PR t
724.
by cletus 5y ago
So here are two things I believe to be true: 1. Learning a language is not an academic exercise, it's a social one. If you're an introvert, learning a second language is (IMHO) going to be extremely difficult because the activitie
725.
by cletus 5y ago
So you need to look no further than NYC's gravity knife fiasco to see what's wrong with politics and policing. For reference, a "gravity knife" is something originally issued to paratroopers. They could get stuck in tree
726.
by cletus 5y ago
So here's a pattern neophytes often end up implementing: if (isValidInput()) { parseInput(); } It seems like a good idea but it's not, for several reasons: 1. It requires an explicit second step. Worse, the behavio
727.
by cletus 5y ago
I'm firmly in the camp that believes that exceptions are a false economy. The post links to an "Exception Smells" post that doesn't mention one of my pet peeves: exceptions as control flow. For example, Java's parse
728.
by cletus 5y ago
In the US those farm cats are generally called "barn cats". They will live in the barn and their "job" is to kill vermin and protect the livestock that also live there. They seem to do this instinctively. They need to be
729.
by cletus 5y ago
> Squirels seem to forget where they buried their stash? This is well-documented. In the wild they do this with acorns. It's estimated they "remember" ~70% of their buried acorns. What's crazy is the other 30% is wher
730.
by cletus 5y ago
This is an important point. I believe Chinese law is you can't hold dual citizenship so anyone with Chinese citizenship who becomes a naturalized US citizen loses their Chinese citizenship. A shallow look at that may lead one to think
731.
by cletus 5y ago
I worked at Google years ago when in response to what most believe was a Chinese state-sanctioned hack, Google decided to pull out of China. Many believed (myself included) that this pull out was largely driven by Sergey Brin. This all happ
732.
by cletus 5y ago
People need to wake up to the fact that China being a potential market of >1B people is an illusion. This is particularly relevant for any tech company. Let me spell it out: Chinese companies are extensions of the state. They are tools o
733.
by cletus 5y ago
I agree with this but it's even worse than that. Estimates on Bitcoin energy usage put it at over 1TW now. I believe it was comparable to the energy consumption of Argentina. Advocates will defend this by saying most energy usage is re
734.
by cletus 5y ago
Does anyone think this was a failed pivot from the p0rn and the backlash was so great that they backpedaled? It actually reminds me of Ebay. Ebay became big with online auctions but as soon as they did they seemed to want to no longer be in
735.
by cletus 5y ago
I think maritime law and safety is a good example of my point: the path to maritime law is paved in centuries of blood. And here's the kicker: this didn't even require global collective action. This required governments to police
736.
by cletus 5y ago
Here's an alternative view: we may never reach herd immunity with Covid-19 and it may be something we just always have to deal with in large part because a significant percentage of the population won't get vaccinated because of s
737.
by cletus 5y ago
Here's what I've learned: there is zero chance of the world uniting behind any cause. The solution to any of these problems will be economic and out of necessity and never because of altruism. Want to reduce fossil fuel usage? It&
738.
by cletus 5y ago
HIV is incredibly sophisticated. It's actually kind of amazing how effective it is. I mean obviously the resulting disease is bad, no question. You can still appreciate the sophistication. HIV has resisted efforts to develop a vaccine
739.
by cletus 5y ago
That commenter was responding to the assertion that Denisovans crossed the sea to the Philippines. That would’ve had to have happened >100,000 years ago if so. It’s far more likely that the migration happened much later from a population
740.
by cletus 5y ago
This is an interesting way to think about it. For one thing, the ocean is most teeming with life near the surface and almost all life in the air is on the ground most of the time. But consider an alternative. What if the surface was inhospi
741.
by cletus 5y ago
And... Apple misses the point of the criticism completely. This problem is the capability, not what it's used for. Any such capability will be abused by new use cases be it terrorism, drug trafficking, human trafficking or whatever. Pl
742.
by cletus 5y ago
How many politicians built their careers on the blood spilt in this pointless and expensive exercise? Overthrowing governments is awful foreign policy. This was never going to work, just like it didn't in Iraq, Iran, Vietnam, the Congo
743.
by cletus 5y ago
Apple's track record on user protection compared to Google or Samsung has been very good. For example, resisting wide net Federal "because terrorism" warrants as much as they legally can. There's a reason why Apple 0 day
744.
by cletus 5y ago
So here's a fun fact about the "security" laws China forced down Hong Kong's gullet recently: they apply to everyone on the planet. They're vague and "subversion" pretty much includes anything you want to
745.
by cletus 5y ago
Of course there are. Pretty much every stupid geo-restriction, restriction on downloads, restrictions on the number of downloads (why??), etc comes down to some stupid rights holder think this is something they want.
746.
by cletus 5y ago
Cynical title: Change with questionable benefit extends patent life and thus prices of insulin even further. To be clear: I don't know a lot about insulin. I'm fortunate enough not to be diabetic. So there may have been useful adv
747.
by cletus 5y ago
I'm honestly shocked that Apple is buying into this because it's one of those well-intentioned ideas that is just incredibly bad. It also goes to show you can justify pretty much anything by saying it fights terrorism or child exp
748.
by cletus 5y ago
For the record, I'm not defending car-dependent living. I wish there were more walkable options in the US for people to live in (myself included). But there's an awful lot of copium in these kinds of threads that shallowly blame t
749.
by cletus 5y ago
> It is illegal to build new dense walkable neighborhoods in almost all of north america Yes.. because of the people's representatives. Why is that do you think? > The older east coat cities built walkable neighbourhoods before t
750.
by cletus 5y ago
No, they don’t. This is a classic example of listening to what people say vs observing what they do. And it’s a good lesson in product development. Ask your users “do you want X?” And the answer is inevitably “yes”. Ask them “do you want A

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