I’ve had multiple purchases recently where the product I ordered (new) arrived in obviously-used condition. First was a metal kitchen trash can that had scratches and small dents on it. Second was a stroller cover for the airplane that arrived with tons of dirt and black streak marks all over it. In both cases I got a refund but it makes me wonder how many other “new” products I’m getting from Amazon that are likely used.
I hate seeing Techmeme links because it always guarantees I'll need to click yet another link before getting to the original URL. It's like a useless middleman.
As a consumer of Product Hunt (I used to browse it at least 4-5x/week), it has become completely overrun with AI "spam," low effort apps, and comments that are just variations of "this looks nice!" (likely AI-generated spam too). It's genuinely hard to find good apps there any more, although I assume it still brings a decent amount of traffic.
Google has done the exact same thing in the past, deleting Google accounts without warning (which is arguably worse because not only can you not access your phone backups but your email, calendar, drive, etc. is gone too).
Same, canceled my subscription of nearly 10 years last week. It felt like every inch of the interface was being used to push podcasts in my face. I came to Spotify to play music and discover new music. Both of those were getting more difficult to do, so now I use YouTube Music (which I was already paying for via YouTube Premium).
I’ve had a different, but similarly strange, issue with Drive on Mac (after using it for 5+ years without issue). It suddenly started moving tons of random files from deep in my Drive folder tree at the root of my drive. So files that were fifteen levels deep, that I hadn’t touched in years, suddenly appeared at the top of my drive. The only thing I can think of is that it’s related to the incident Drive had a few months ago where they lost data - maybe they’re recovering it, but can’t recover the location and just stick it at the root of the directory.
Is this comment tongue-in-cheek? We all know any increases in the stock price are certainly not going to fund "safety efforts" unless "safety efforts" has become a euphemism for "executive bonuses."
There’s definitely a science to it. To complicate matters, the way you explore those connections, take backups, identify owners, and perform restores is different across pretty much every cloud service.
I’m convinced that once a company reaches ~$10m/year in AWS spend it becomes entirely reasonable to hire an in-house engineer whose sole job is to find cost savings opportunities. Literally a “find unused stuff and turn it off” engineer.
Google Flights first, and then I go to the airline's site to purchase. I never deal with third-party resellers - they might be cheaper in some cases but a nightmare to deal with if the flight changes or gets canceled.
I like Google Flights so much that I also built a Chrome extension[1] to improve the interface (hiding the third-party affiliate links, putting seat data in the top-level of the results, and making business class searches easier).
Exactly, and most countries promoting these visas refuse to clearly state what the foreign employers are exempt from or responsible for.
I went through this myself a few years ago. I applied for, and received, a Taiwanese Gold Card (a similar program that allowed for foreign employment). I spent months going back and forth with the Taiwanese office attempting to understand what my employer at the time would be signing up for. They couldn’t give a clear answer on whether my presence would create a nexus for my employer, whether my employer would become responsible for health care program payments, etc. They kept referring me to one of the big four consulting companies. In the end I gave up and never entered.
In my experience, while these kinds of visas address personal tax liability, many US-based companies are still unlikely to allow W2 employees to participate due to (very real) tax, jurisdiction, and legal concerns (if a W2 employee is working in France, for example, are they required to comply with laws preventing employers from contacting employees on weekends? Maybe not, but even “fully remote” companies are unlikely to want to spend time figuring it out for one employee).
I think countries who want these programs to take off for employees who aren’t contractors need to invest in messaging and legal support for employers as well.
It gets worse than that at some places. I was just in Vietnam and some restaurants offered discounts if you left 5-star reviews. In China, a place actually went as far as confirming you'd left the review by viewing it on their device (literally refreshing until it appeared) and then keying in the discount.
I just spent two weeks in Vietnam, one in Hanoi. The motorbikes were actually something I could deal with - it was chaos, but organized. Everyone on the road seemed hyper alert and traffic just sort of flowed. The thing I could not get used to was the air quality. The AQI was easily over 120 every day I was there, and it just felt like I stuck my face in the exhaust pipe of a bus every waking moment. If Vietnam could figure out its pollution issue, I feel like it could easily be an incredible place to live.
I’ve been working on a small project to get familiar with building Chrome extensions. It makes tweaks to Google Flights to add data like transfer partners, estimated point redemption costs, etc. that can be helpful for folks redeeming credit card or frequent flyer miles. It also makes a bunch of UI enhancements to make the results easier to review.
Do you get to the checkout line and name your price to the store because you’re “not paying $6 for that sandwich since I don’t like the bread they used and don't plan to eat it” too?
At some point it becomes a failure to deliver goods and warrants a credit card chargeback. If you bought a 10-piece kitchen set on Amazon and only 3 pieces arrived, you’d want a refund.
My theory is that we’re just going to read about a never-ending (but possibly increasingly rare) series of edge cases. And in every one, it’ll be dismissed as “oh that was a really rare edge case” yet humans would have been able to make a better choice in the same circumstances.
I started a Google Chrome extension called “SkySavvy” to enhance Google Flights searches with additional data (airport lounges, seatmaps, points and miles award data, better filters for suites and lie flat business class seats, etc.)
It’s still an early beta but feedback is welcomed!
Sure, but the argument kind of loses merit, no? I remember the entire collective internet having site wide shutdowns, urging users to write to congress, etc. It was an extensive campaign that looped in many non technical folks to a very technical topic. You can only cry wolf like that a few times. If a similar campaign were to launch again, I’m almost certain it would fail to get the same mainstream support, especially because the “sky is falling” arguments made last time never came true (or at least not in the ways claimed). Lost credibility is hard to regain for the next time there truly is an existential crisis.