rchaud

39 ms·

631.
by rchaud 1y ago
The Internet of 2007 was more than Flash, so of course it had a web browser. It was designed to compete with Nokia, Blackberry and Windows Mobile, all of which had web browsers. The App Store didn't even exist before the second iPhone
632.
by rchaud 1y ago
Apple famously didn't use it because it didn't sit inside their walled garden and they couldn't put any ads in it, take a cut of every sale, nor charge developers annually for the privilege of building on their property. That
633.
by rchaud 1y ago
> We should be trying to reinvent the wheel Especially now as web browser vendors are openly trying to get you off the web and into their walled gardens. Apple and Google have no interest in pushing web capabilities forward because they
634.
by rchaud 1y ago
MP4s don't support transparency, so using it would rule out all but a small sliver of animations where the video background matches the web page background. If the webpage background has a gradient, the animation won't blend in. S
635.
by rchaud 1y ago
Even in the mid-2000s, when most PCs had 512MB - 1GB RAM, you could build complex 3D animations in Flash that ran flawlessly across multiple browser engines including IE6, with nothing more than a plugin.
636.
by rchaud 1y ago
Management doesn't get a cut of the profits, their bonuses are based on the market value of the stock relative to the strike price of their stock options. It's also easier to pump the stock price than it is to grow profits, especi
637.
by rchaud 1y ago
If you're already profitable, these types of investors will not be interested. They are looking for companies they can take public at massively inflated valuations based on growth projections totally removed from economic reality.
638.
by rchaud 1y ago
We definitely need a "slow news" type of publication that analyzes developments in AI with a critical eye: - Who does this move the needle for? How does it compare to how things are done now? - How does the regular person benefit,
639.
by rchaud 1y ago
The "American Dream" is really just a less socialist sounding way of describing a post-WWII economic structure where unionized labour (manufacturing, ports, trades and teachers) had bargaining power to hold corporations and electe
640.
by rchaud 1y ago
> People need to write their representatives. Volume of responses is what Congresscritters respond to Maybe in reruns of The West Wing. America is a long way past that now.
641.
by rchaud 1y ago
Lots of people are "intelligent", yet you would never want to be under their rule. Vance is a useful stooge handpicked by Peter Thiel. If push comes to shove, do you think his Yale degree is going to give him any backbone if he&#x
642.
by rchaud 1y ago
The writing was on the wall for Pocket when paywalls started to go up everywhere a few years ago. By that point, it could no longer scrape articles reliably. Before that, it's Discovery feature was great for surfacing long form writing
643.
by rchaud 1y ago
Money is real. Privately held company valuations are not. This is an all-stock deal, so what it's "worth" is entirely in the eye of the beholder. Its value rises and falls based on how long the hype train can keep running, or
644.
by rchaud 1y ago
As a senior dev or manager, you're responsible for the people you've hired. Their mistakes become your mistakes. If they make the same kind of mistake repeatedly, and aren't able to take responsibility, you will have to clean
645.
by rchaud 1y ago
US shareholder capitalism is increasingly dependent on pushing a fantasy where X Company will eventually operate as an unregulated monopoly with armies of machines run by a small group of contract labour with no benefits and no wage bargain
646.
by rchaud 1y ago
The iPhone's value comes from its software ecosystem and camera/SoC hardware, which Ive had zero involvement with.
647.
by rchaud 1y ago
It's a Hall and Oates album cover featuring two idea guys hellbent on putting artists out of work.
648.
by rchaud 1y ago
Let 'em make overpriced tchotchkes with private capital all they want. I'm more worried about them winning inflated government contracts and tax credits paid for with public dollars.
649.
by rchaud 1y ago
how do you know it wasn't an AI bot account posting all those laugh emojis?
650.
by rchaud 1y ago
Sidebar? With a junior developer making these mistakes over and over again, they wouldn't even make it past the probationary period in their employment contract.
651.
by rchaud 1y ago
The stock price isn't going to go up on its own. Even when MS was massively profitable in the 2000s, the stock used to be stuck in the $30-$40 range because Wall St didn't think it was "innovating" fast enough.
652.
by rchaud 1y ago
Especially ironic considering he's neither a developer nor a PhD. He's the smooth talking "MBA idea guy looking for a technical cofounder" type that's frequently decried on HN.
653.
by rchaud 1y ago
It's remarkable how similar this feels to the offshoring craze of 20 years ago, where the complaints were that experienced developers were essentially having to train "low-skilled, cheap foreign labour" that were replacing th
654.
by rchaud 1y ago
> They are just immature and not serious companies. Every company running on "Founder Mode" where the founder is banking on weak regulations and low competition instead of a solid product with customer safety guardrails will en
655.
by rchaud 1y ago
The moral of this story is that "vertical integration" doesn't always mean what it says on the tin."Carpe Diem" for shareholders can translate to "Caveat emptor" for consumers.
656.
by rchaud 1y ago
> Global megastar before the internet. Not just the Internet. Before cable and satellite TV, even. Similar to Muhammad Ali in that sense - a globally renowned icon, regardless of cultural or languge barriers. In the west, there is the id
657.
by rchaud 1y ago
"Might makes right" is how we got here. Airbnb and Uber can break hotel and taxi regulations openly, but if you start your own ride-for-cash service, the state will shut you down for any number of by-law violations. They have law
658.
by rchaud 1y ago
The issue is whether the artists creating things for love of the game will be crowded out even further by studios churning out slop (or in HN terms, Minimal Viable Products) for cash. There are probably 15 disposable reality TV shows create
659.
by rchaud 1y ago
This doesn't get said enough. The widescreen desktop Internet (even at 800 x 600) was far more creative and fun than the modern transactional app world. The 2008-10 era iOS apps being a rare exception, but that too was snuffed out due
660.
by rchaud 1y ago
It is now an overengineered and soulless website lacking all the personality that made the original a classic. It somehow manages to also be laggy on modern machines.

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