asoneth

My guess is that monetizing a video conferencing service simply isn't a viable long-term strategy so the company knows that they'll eventually need to develop new revenue sources.

I'm skeptical Zoom will be able to parlay their success in video conferencing to grow into a full business collaboration suite, but it's worth a shot. They got lucky that Microsoft and Google messed with their popular video conferencing services just before a global pandemic, but I expect that eventually other product suites will build in enough video conferencing that few people will bother with a 3rd party one. After all, even with incompetent management you can build a passable clone as long as you pour enough money into it.

Sprawling industrial-scale agricultural areas seems to be mostly a product of motor vehicles.

Before that, most farms were run by a family group and the farmhouses were typically within a couple miles of a community center which provided access to a church, school, store/market, inn/tavern, etc. (There were self-sufficient estates and plantations but they seem to be more the exception than the rule.)

For example, the town I live in now was founded more than 250 years ago when the families (mostly farmers) who lived at the outer fringe of their town got tired of having to walk 2+ miles to church and school. So they petitioned the government to split off and then built their own church and school.

According to Wikipedia the oldest known steel artifacts are from Asia Minor (the Kaman-Kalehöyük site in modern-day Turkey) which predates European steal by about a millenium which seems to support part of their claim.

For the claim about African metallurgists I suppose I'll have to wait to see what kind of evidence they provide before deciding if they are being "sloppy".

I'm not sure they will lower prices.

For selective colleges I think the impact will be negligible. They already reject a sizeable fraction of applicants so it would be less painful for them to respond to a shrinking applicant pool by rejecting a slightly smaller fraction of that pool.

And many of the rest may not be able to afford to lower the price due to administrative bloat:

"For example three universities, the California Institute of Technology, Duke University, and the University of California at San Diego actually have more non-faculty employees on campus than students."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulweinstein/2023/08/28/admini...

For many colleges it would be substantially less painful to slowly go bankrupt than to attempt to fire half of the staff. Perhaps new lower-priced entrants will emerge from the wreckage, but I don't think most existing schools can afford to lower their prices at this point.

> But they don't even seem to be on premium Windows laptops.

Yeah, from that my conclusion is that the market for Windows laptops with really excellent touchpads is simply not large enough to be worth pursuing. My guess is that the increase in revenue between a "good enough touchpad" and "really excellent touchpad" is nowhere near enough to cover the astronomical costs of developing one.

> Why does this seem like such a hard problem to solve for everyone that isn’t Apple

One factor is that many customers don't demand this kind of refinement, and of those who do many of them already use Macs.

Another is that it's not primarily a technical problem, but an organizational one. These kinds of interface refinements require coordinating across hardware, drivers, OS, toolkit, and applications. It would be hard for any one person to own that problem in Open Source Software.

I've read PC reviews that do point out when a touchpad is abysmal or excellent, or list models with good touchpads (https://www.windowscentral.com/best-laptop-touchpad) but near as I can tell most customers aren't willing to spend more money on a model with an excellent touchpad so it's not surprising that most manufacturers don't bother adding them except possibly on their premium lines.

I would also wager that the sort of customers who are willing to spend more for interface refinements like an excellent touchpad already use Apple hardware at a higher rate than the general population, further shrinking customer demand for good PC touchpads.

> Spanish it's almost dumb simple

Sure, the FSI ranks Spanish as a category 1 language along with other Romance languages, Norwegian, Swedish, etc which means it's simpler for English-speakers to learn than most languages, but I'm not sure I'd describe learning any natural human language as "dumb simple" -- at least for me, Spanish was the hardest thing I ever attempted to learn by a wide margin.

After a couple thousand hours spread over twenty years I could read simple texts and communicate simple concepts as long as I maintained an exhausting level of concentration and stopped worrying about conjugating properly. I eventually gave up after realizing that improving would require a significantly larger time commitment than I could afford.

Sort of. It was part of GNU, now it's sponsored by the GNOME Foundation, but I don't think it is considered a "GNOME App".

As per https://discourse.gnome.org/t/relation-between-gimp-and-gnom...: "The GNOME Foundation provides the GNU Image Manipulation Program community and developers with services like fiscal sponsorship, technical infrastructure, promotion, and copyright assignment."

However, it's not considered a GNOME "Core App" or even a "Circle App" (see https://apps.gnome.org/) and I believe that it doesn't attempt to follow the GNOME guidelines or have any GNOME designers/developers working on it.

I borked an installation because it had two desktop environments, and even when it works there always seem to be more odd issues than with a clean install.

If you have the time to debug these and straighten them out, it's fine, but given how simple a clean install is these days that's often the easier path.

I have the weather on my watch face as well, though I do have to drill into the weather widget/glance to see the air quality index and UV index. Skimming the Garmin Connect IQ Store it looks like I could add those metrics to my watch face if I install a 3rd party data field or widget.

I will admit that I haven't installed very many 3rd party apps and my subjective impression is that many Garmin users never end up using 3rd party apps. The apps also look a bit utilitarian compared to Apple Watch apps. Still, having tried various kinds of smartwatches I definitely prefer a wearable that acts more like an appliance than a wrist-mounted computer.

Yeah, my Garmin (an Instinct 2 Solar) has ruined me for other smartwatches. I appreciate not having to think about charging it in the summer and only monthly in the winter. I appreciate the reliability of an always-on screen rather than one that usually turns on when I turn my wrist. I appreciate the consistency of buttons that I have learned by feel rather than fiddly touch/voice controls that usually work the way I want.

I'd consider upgrading it someday so that I don't need to bring a phone for podcasts or ad-hoc navigation, but only if those do not come at the expense of battery life, always-on screen, and physical buttons.

(Edit: I'm glad other devices with different tradeoffs exist for different kinds of people though!)

> the bill should be doled out according to income

First, income and electricity usage are already correlated for most residential customers -- in general wealthier individuals use more electricity and therefore pay more under either approach. More importantly, making taxpayers subsidize very-high-electricity consuming businesses and manufacturing seems unfair and regressive. (For example, an aluminum smelter may use as much electricity as a large residential neighborhood but pay lower net taxes than that neighborhood.) Third, paying for the actual cost of electricity helps incentivize energy efficiency which incentivizes energy efficiency and has environmental benefits. Finally, if your goal is to prevent rate increases from burdening low-income households then using taxpayer funds to bolster targeted subsidies such as LIHEAP seems like a more direct and cost-effective approach.

> (almost) everyone in the nation should share the cost, not just the customers of a specific utility in a specific geographic area

Why? If we make it easy for utility executives to ask for handouts and grants then who among them would bother with the comparatively harder task of convincing local customers to pay the true costs of producing the service they are using? More generally, asking everyone to collectively subsidize organizations or regions that make poor, short-sighted decisions is a moral hazard that shields utilities from consequences and discourages them from planning responsibly. Sure, a government may need to be prepared to step in to take over a failing utility but that seems like it ought to be a last resort in emergencies, not a standard way of funding predictable business costs.

Out of curiosity, what do you see as the practical differences between taxpayers footing the bill compared to ratepayers given that most people pay both?

(In other words, is paying for this with higher taxes substantially better compared to paying for this with higher utility bills?)

Agreed that an across-the-board change to admissions policies like this is an opportunity to test the thesis, although the pandemic had many other confounding impacts that may be hard to isolate.

Still, I don't know anyone who works in higher ed admissions who wants to get rid of standardized testing for "restorative justice" reasons. Rigorous schools need to be able to ensure they don't admit students who have no hope of graduating and competitive schools need to winnow down the number of applications to a number that they can actually review.

My impression is that the objections to standardized testing typically come from groups outside universities like the NEA, FairTest, teachers unions, parents, activists, etc.

I thought the popular narrative was that this was primarily driven by the pandemic? The debate about the value of standardized test scores has been raging for decades and up until the pandemic most elite colleges and universities still required them. (Upon reflection, there was a prior movement at some schools to boost declining enrollment by making tests optional, but that seemed more driven by profit-seeking than morality.)

The primary explanation I have heard both in the news and from friends in admissions departments for so many elite schools going test-optional at the same time was for the pandemic, and most of the ones I am aware of explicitly called it a temporary measure as Yale did.

Now I could buy that the testing debate may have played a role in why some schools have been dragging their feet to return to requiring tests post-pandemic because anti-test folks are exploiting this opportunity. But having worked in academia I also would not discount the immense inertia in university admissions playing an equally large role.

> throwing it out in search of restorative justice is extremely unwise.

I see this claim a lot, but it seems partially true at best. As per the article and conversations with friends in admissions departments, the testing requirement at many elite schools was suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic.

However, the debate over how tests impact disadvantaged students may be why "many schools continued their test-optional policies even as the public health crisis eased" as per the article, so you're partially right that it probably played a role in why some schools have dragged their feet. (Contrast to schools like MIT which also dropped their testing requirement during the pandemic but reinstated it more quickly afterwards.)

There is some evidence to that effect: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35237006

(Note that I'm not necessarily endorsing any specific views about this, just linking to a past discussion.)

I agree that we need to push back, but that can also be done politically.

Antagonizing a local police officer is a terrible idea unless you are wealthy and/or well-connected. Most are kind, but not all are, and antagonizing the wrong one can make your life hell.

(I also agree that the vast majority of police are not "murder junkies". But it's also not surprising that a handful of folks like that do join an organization that nearly always manages to protect their members from repercussions when they use lethal force.)

That's an interesting point I need to think about. I do wonder how the deaths would compare to the number of trips taken, because children in the US take significantly fewer trips by bike than children in the Netherlands. Given that pedestrian deaths were at a 40 year high[1] in the US last year, I wonder if the relatively smaller number of children killed is simply a reflection of the low number of children walking.

I can say though that the few times I've ridden on the road with my children were the most stressful of my life, I have never done it since, and it made me completely understand why I no longer see any other children or parents doing it.

[1] https://www.vox.com/23784549/pedestrian-deaths-traffic-safet...

> in my area none of this is actually true

That's wonderful you live in place where children are can roam freely without being injured or killed by drivers. But this is a real threat in most of the US. Being killed in a motor vehicle crash is the second highest cause of death among children and adolescents. (It was the highest until 2020 when firearm-related injuries overtook them.[1])

For every 100,000 people the Netherlands has 3.8 annual traffic deaths, the US has 12.9, and Libera (the worst I could find[2]) has 35.9. That means when it comes to traffic deaths the US is 3.4x more deadly than the Netherlands and Liberia is 2.8x more deadly than the US.

I bike with my kids and let them walk to school and we talk about how to manage these risks. But being near roads in the US is less safe than most other developed countries by a statistically significant margin.

[1] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2201761

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...

I agree that most regions have underinvested in mass transit, but even if the Federal Government does not step in to fund transit I think it still makes sense for them to stop subsidizing large highway projects.

Rather than citizens sending tax money to Ottowa so that the Federal Government can choose large projects in each province, it seems fairer and more cost effective to let each province decide what kind of transportation infrastructure makes the most sense for them. Some will choose to widen highways, others will choose to invest in mass transit, and others might decide to lower taxes. But with a couple exceptions like the Trans-Canada Highway, many of the projects that receive funding seem more like local projects that don't need to involve the Federal Government.

Also see https://www.strongtowns.org/highways

> But they can also mess up a project with giving power to non-developers who focus on changes like redoing the UX every release

Have you found that a new developer is meaningfully less likely to recommend redoing the UX compared to a new non-developer? Personally my sense is that desire to update the UX is more closely correlated with the "newness" than development ability.

I agree that patents serve a purpose, but taxing intellectual property similarly to other property doesn't seem like it would end patents.

A slightly different approach would be for patent owners to declare an estimated value and pay property taxes on that value to enforce their monopoly. (They may also wish to update the estimated value periodically as circumstances change, perhaps every few months or years.)

To keep owners honest, anyone is allowed to pay the owner a multiple (1.5x? 2x? 10x?) of the patent's current estimated value to invalidate it.

If the patent owner wishes to hang onto the patent but cannot afford the taxes then perhaps banks would be willing to offer a patent equity line of credit, like using any other income-generating property as collateral.

To use your example, if you estimate that your self-driving patent is a ten million dollar asset and Ford pays you twenty million dollars to invalidate it that seems like you come out ahead because you have more than the patent was worth and can still build your product.

> don't make up excuses why you should break the laws just because they are inconvenient to you

I tend to agree, and obey the speed limit and come to a stop at stop signs when driving. I get passed by other drivers, sometimes dangerously, often illegally, several times a week.

I would have sympathy for driver complaints about cyclists who ignore inconvenient traffic laws if drivers were any more law-abiding.

If you want to drive faster, fine, change the speed limit. But don't just ignore laws you find inconvenient!

A combination of stronger storms, more frequent coastal flooding, larger wildfires, and more severe heat waves.

Of course these sorts of things have always killed people and right now the statistical increases are small enough that it's not unreasonable to believe that they're just fluctuations within normal historical bounds. It would take significantly larger increases in severity and intensity for many people to accept climate change as a contributing factor.

So it's not just that we have to wait for people in wealthy countries to die, it's that we have to have to wait for them to die in high enough numbers that the average citizen acknowledges that there is a problem.

Agreed that it is a smaller risk. That's why I do not oppose geoengineering despite being reasonably confident that once we start that path we will be wholly incapable of quitting it.

I suspect we will end up resorting to large-scale geoengineering, certainly once people in wealthy countries start dying in high enough numbers, and I don't oppose it. But once we go down that road I am highly skeptical that humanity will ever wean ourselves off it.

As per the website: "Just one gram of our clouds offsets the warming effect of one ton of CO₂ for a year."

I would wager that politicians and business leaders who read such a statement would be relieved to hear that they no longer have to worry about a cure because the symptoms are treatable.

I agree it's disappointing to think I've found a native app only to realize it's just an Electron app. But I don't need the idea to die, I just want better transparency in app stores so I can know ahead of time whether an application is native or just a wrapped webapp.

> This browser-in-a-box cancer needs to die a painful death.

That depends on what you think the result would be.

What do you think companies who use Electron, CEF, embedded web views, etc today would do if those technologies all died tomorrow? For example, do you think GitHub, WordPress, Figma, Discord, Whats App, Slack, Trello, Skype, or Spotify would hire native Windows desktop development teams? (Or even Mac/Linux desktop development teams?)

Personally I doubt that there would be any increase in native app development. Any developer who cares about this is already making native applications, Electron just makes web apps slightly more convenient.

They weren't admitted, but how do you know they were not even considered?

More generally, a 1600 is not some kind of "get into college free" card.

I did admissions for a very competitive university program many years ago and we primarily used test scores to establish a baseline. One reason was to make sure we only considered people who could handle the program's rigour, but equally valid was that the four of us couldn't possibly review thousands of applications so we needed an automatic filter. But after that filter we didn't pay attention to test scores except as a tiebreaker when filling the last few spots.