It just hasn’t hit that Twitter-level critical mass of users

Twitter used to be bigger than it is now and it also used to have less spam. So clearly size isn’t the problem.

The problem with twitter is Musk fired all the people who spent their day figuring out how to hide (or just delete) shitty content.

Some of us don’t like watching beloved musical instruments destroyed. We also don’t like how so many people think watching TikTok on an iPad is “music”.

When my father died, my sister didn’t give a shit about the house. She just wanted the guitar - which our father (a drummer) inherited when the lead guitarist in his band died. The guitarist had two dozen guitars but was his favourite.

It’s close to a century old, nobody knows what trade secrets the luthier who created it used to get that sound, and no other instrument sounds the same. It’s been used on stage in countless live performances on every continent in the world and has been used to record over a hundred songs in professional recording studios. It was used to play music at the funeral of both the previous owners and it’s literally impossible to replace.

I get it, not every instrument is that special… but this instrument wasn’t that special either when the first guitarist ever picked it up. Nearly all instruments have the potential to become that special… and Apple created a video dedicated to destroying a bunch of them while also implying that listening to an MP3 is as good as an actual instrument. No way.

Google doesn’t own most of their map data - they license it off other companies that have spent decades and billions of dollars collecting map data from all around the world.

So even if Google gives a project a “special deal” it’s still not going to be free. Open Street Map, on the other hand, is totally free. And in some ways it’s better than Google Maps — because it has millions of people contributing to the map. No commercial mapping company can come close to the level of detail OSM has. Compare these two screenshots — the Google map has so much less detail it’s not even recognisable as the same place. Roads and major features are missing or drawn in the wrong place.

It was great, in 2017

It hasn’t stopped being great. In fact it’s better than it ever was.

We need better safe guards and checks so that some person can’t just delete France.

The map is updated millions of times per day. There are checks in place, but minor edits don’t get much review especially if it’s something simple like “this street has a bus stop”. Deleting France, yeah someone would notice that change and block it. Most software doesn’t use the realtime map state - they use a slightly older version of the map in part to avoid using a version of the map that has been compromised.

You really only see the current map state if you are editing the map.

It can be unlocked, and AFAIK doing so is perfectly legal, but then your warranty is void. And with a Tesla, you’re probably going to wish you had that warranty one day.

Toyota was offering remote car start but only if you subscribed online

That’s different - it relies on having an active cellular connection in the car and older cell towers (5G has improved this dramatically) could only handle a hundred or so active connections at once, so Toyota is absolutely paying a monthly fee to access the cell network. It makes sense to pass that on to the customers who wish to use the feature.

Those fees have gone down, since not only is 5G much cheaper per customer (for the cell network), everyone switching to 5G has taken the pressure off older wireless protocols so they’re almost never crowded anymore - so they can pretty much have as many cars connected as they want for near zero cost.

you can’t ignore basic laws of the universe that oil is a finite resource

TLDR - oil might be a finite resource but gasoline is not oil and it can be renewable. But it’s also a rapidly shrinking market.

The stuff can literally be grown on trees. It’s cheaper to pump it out of the ground, but it’s actually not much cheaper. Fuel from plants, which we farm in bulk for human consumption, can absolutely be used to create gasoline. It’s also net-zero — because the plant takes carbon out of the atmosphere to create the oil and then it’s simply returned to the atmosphere when your burn it.

Most gasoline in the USA contains at least 10% biofuel, and some is up to 85%. The latter requires an engine tuned to run on it, however it’s possible (and is an area of active research) if you’re willing to spend a bit more money to manufacture 100% pure biofuel that can run on unmodified engines. Porsche in particular has started selling a biofuel that is specifically designed to run on classic cars that were manufactured decades ago. They plan to produce something like a million gallons a month of the stuff, and it will work in basically any car. And if you have a classic car (designed for gasoline that contained lead) then it will work better than the fossil fuel you can buy at a gas station

The thing is though, battery powered vehicles are way cheaper than doing any of that. And if you really need a fuel based approach (e.g. batteries are just too heavy for large aircraft), then Hydrogen is a better option than any biofuel.

So - while gasoline can technically be environmentally friendly and is a usable source of energy for the foreseeable future, in reality it’s destined to follow horse drawn carriages and steam engines, a technology some people only use for their own personally enjoyment or to preserve our history.

Everything-but-Windows?

No. Any device that implements a certain DHCP feature is vulnerable. Linux doesn’t support it, because most Linux systems don’t even use DHCP at all let alone this edge case feature. And Android doesn’t support it because it inherited the Linux network stack.

I would bet some Linux systems are vulnerable, just not with the standard network packages installed. If you’re issued a Linux laptop for work, wouldn’t be surprised if it has a package that enables this feature. It essentially gives sysadmins more control over how packets are routed for every computer on the LAN.

When I think of “influencer” this is the image in my mind.

… OK. But that’s not what the term “Influencer” actually means. The actual definition is basically just “anyone with a lot of followers”.

And there are plenty of people with a lot of followers who produce great content. For example this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpuX-5E7xoU

deleted by creator

How would that ruin it?

Um - Apple’s problems are very public.

It was clear they had supply constraints a few years ago, and when those cleared up there was a huge bubble of sales. Expecting growth this year when so many regular customers just got a new phone would be silly.

And it’s also a distraction - the problems facing Apple are

1. How poorly the company is responding to antitrust complaints.
2. The Vision Pro doesn’t seem to be doing well, and their car project was so much worse they literally killed it.
3. Twelve years ago Apple was leading the industry on digital assistants… Siri was nowhere near good enough but nobody else had a “good enough” product either and Siri showed real promise. Now? WTF is taking so long? It’s pretty clear other companies are very close to achieving what Siri failed and there’s not much to indicate Apple can keep up.

Nilay Patel - the editor in chief is anti-AI especially when it comes to article content. He doesn’t allow anyone at the company to use generated content except when they are writing an article about AI and even then only to demonstrate a point - e.g. “here’s a comparison of two LLMs with the same prompt”. It was also his decision to stop AI’s from crawling any content on their website.

He used AI to pad the article because that’s what real spam articles do. It had nothing to do with acceptance.

they do some squirrely stuff to try to get you to buy a new toner cartridge early

My Brother is newer than yours (the cheapest one I could get that prints on both sides of the paper), and has a setting to toggle how it behaves when toner is low.

The default is to pause printing until you replace the toner - honestly that’s not entirely wrong. Having the printer run out of toner half way through an important print job could be a disaster.

The alternative mode is to just show a “low toner” warning badge whenever you print a document. That’s what I use, but I also check if it printed properly before closing the document which a lot of people don’t do. It looks like this:

As far as I know it’s just a simple counter - how many pages have you printed since it was replaced. Obviously that’s never going to be particularly accurate.

What do you mean by “local”? If you mean finding somewhere to go for lunch or the opening hours of a store, I recommend using the maps app on your phone (I prefer Apple Maps over Google, because it uses Yelp and TripAdvisor for reviews which are accurate than Google reviews… if I had an Android phone I’d probably install Yelp/TripAdvisor).

I can usually find what I need on google pretty damn quick

It depends what you’re searching for. Some things are very hard to find that used to be easy.

The solution I’d like to see is for Google to stop being anticompetitive. For example it just leaked that they pay half of their company wide profits to Apple in order to stop Apple from using (or creating) another search engine.

Stop spending tens of billions of dollars per year trying to keep competition away, and instead invest all of that money into making Google Search a better product.

Because they are making so that we get less results that are just cheating the system to show up at the top?

No, because they are failing to hide low quality search results. Something the would invest more money in if an alternative search engine existed.

There are so many websites now that just shouldn’t exist at all. And they wouldn’t exist if Google didn’t send tons of traffic their way.

Hopes were set unreasonably high because the hardware designer has a great reputation. And the hardware seems well made (for the price) and certainly tries out some interesting new ideas. I love how the camera is physically blocked while not in use for example.

The software team has let this product down. Not surprising, but dissapointing.

Have you heard of “pedestrian controlled” trucks? They’re increasingly common. Here’s one being used to move an airplane cargo container:

They’re usually small but these days some carry 15 tons and you just grab them by a handle and start walking. Often there’s a lifting function (to load cargo onto/off of tall shelves/etc).

You’re not always limited to walking speed, some of them have a platform the operator can stand on to increase the speed.

I could totally see those increasing in size, to the size of a full size shipping container maybe, and having a wireless control system instead of needing to stand right next to it (which could be dangerous). It’d have sensors prevent the operator from running into anything and the control would just be a pair of joysticks. Outside of the loading dock of a building, they’d be able to drive autonomously.

The job of “driver” would be replaced by just a team of people who load / unload the cargo and plan/supervise the truck. And I don’t think it’s far away at all - we’re already seeing it with smaller cargo loads (is 15 ton all that small?).

You know DDG is just a wrapper around Bing right? No point comparing the two.