emacdona

I _love_ Linux, but I agree with this as well. I don't think Linux will ever be easy enough that I could recommend it to an elderly neighbor. I hope to be proven wrong, though.

What frustrates me about this particular moment is that at the same time Windows is getting worse, I feel that OS X is _also_ getting worse. This _is_ an opportunity for Apple to put a big dent in Windows market share.

I can't stand animations while I'm trying to read something, and this one is particularly egregious.

- Went online, ordered everything for pickup (didn't pay yet)

- Drove there, they had it all bagged and ready

- I showed them online prices for some of the parts

- For the ones they could verify (I think it was all of them) by going to the website and checking, they matched the prices

- Then I paid and took my stuff home

I also got my M1 MBP there (it was 25% off when the M2 models came out).

Please, if you have a Microcenter near you, give them your business. I don't want them to go away. Once all this memory madness dies down, I'm going to go there to build a new gaming rig.

I'm so cynical now that I can't read articles like this without my first reaction being to look at how it benefits companies that profit from ads.

My two theories here?

1. An attempt to shift liability from companies having to comply with GDPR to browsers having to comply.

2. An attempt to consolidate all cookie consent into the three (?) browser engines we have... so efforts to thwart it can be focused on just those places.

I mean, it's burning ad dollars and causing advertisers to rethink their strategy. Who knows, maybe that will eventually lead to the realization that web pages that are 20% content and 80% ads are just luring bots and not customers.

On the other hand, the money being burnt is going to Google, Meta, etc... and helping fund massive surveillance infrastructure. To be honest, I'd prefer it if it all just went to shareholders. Heh, maybe that'll be the sign that we've hit peak surveillance infrastructure: Google and Meta dividend payments go up :-)

But I have trouble sympathizing with someone who writes this:

> Mouse Movements: Did the cursor move in natural, human-like arcs, or did it snap between points?

> Scrolling Patterns: Was the scrolling speed variable, with pauses and upward scrolls, or was it a perfectly smooth, mechanical glide?

> Time Between Interactions: How long did a "user" wait between clicking a link, hovering over an image, or adding an item to the cart?

I read that as: "We're tracking every movement, every hesitation... so that we can feed it to our models and determine how best to keep you addicted".

I knew it was happening, and I know I'm editorializing there... but they are getting closer and closer to just coming out and saying it.

edit: Added newlines in quoted part.

> I remember they were always confused and surprised to get a random call from a stranger

That's probably the only thing different about Ham radio. Random calls are kinda the norm :-)

I got my license less than a year ago, and in some ways, it reminds me of the "old internet"

* Way fewer ads. In fact, in ham radio, you aren't allowed to advertise. Maybe the absolute best thing about it. Without a legislative change, there will never be (legal) ads.

* Trolls haven't taken over. If you're an ass, you could lose your license. No ham wants to lose their license.

* It's as technical as you want to make it. You can go DEEP into technical things (I haven't even scratched the surface there). You can also just get a hotspot and a handheld for a few hundred bucks and be talking to people across the world after an evenings work of configuring it all.

If you want to talk to strangers who want to talk back... and who, for the most part, aren't jerks -- get your ham radio license.

Bonuses (above and beyond the old internet):

Amateur radio clubs are everywhere. They are filled with nerds who love the hobby. They can be _very_ social -- so there is opportunity for plenty of In Real Life (IRL) interaction.

Yes, it's mostly guys, mostly over 50, and (in my experience) mostly caucasian. If you are intimidated by that, that's totally fair. But, give them a chance -- check out your local club. Most I've visited are _very_ welcoming... and they want nothing more than to get more people interested in the hobby.

[edit: formatting bullets]

I’m been on the JVM for 20+ years, but an opportunity came up to leverage some of my other experience to get some CLR work… and I dove in.

This was in the top three results, and I can't tell if it's "real", or just a page created to capture those exact search terms!

https://akkaalternatives.com/

If the goal of that site really is just to capture clicks via very specific web searches... and people are creating sites like that at scale... what hope do we have of saving the web? :-(

However, the reason I started paying for Kagi was because they let me completely block websites from search results -- and they still let me do that. That feature alone will keep me as a paying customer for the near term.

These were the killer features for me and why I'm happy to continue paying for Kagi.

That being said, I've (anecdotally, at least) noticed the quality of their search results declining (still better than Google).

I search for a lot of error messages (for example, errors that I encounter while compiling Java code) -- with very unique strings -- only to have the entire first page of results not contain these strings. Even if I quote them. I really want the ability to say "The page MUST HAVE THESE STRINGS". Google used to have "allintext:" -- but even that doesn't guarantee a page will contain a certain string anymore.

Now, when I'm trying to get more insight on an error message, I'll use AI first. And while I get much better results that way, I find it incredibly frustrating because search engines USED TO BE JUST FINE for this use case. Now they no longer are.

I checked it in a browser without an ad blocker. TWO overlay (one after the other) that covered the entire content of the page. Then ads, ads, and more ads in the content.

I get that the BBC needs to make money to produce content. But what good does it do for an advertiser to have ads be so annoying that people without ad blockers are just closing the page? What good does it to for an advertiser to be one of ten different brands being advertised on the same page?

The Olympics (or, perhaps more generally, national team cycling events) _do_ make a huge deviation from the conventions of competitive cycling already: no team radios. One of the reasons they are so fun to watch :-)

If you truly can consistently beat the market, you are already making a killing with your _own_ money.

If you want to use _my_ money to place your bets (presumably b/c you want to leverage your market beating ability), I want a guarantee (because I'm more than happy to take the return of the index).

Plus, they are being compensated. I'm offering 90% of the returns above the index :-)

We agree on an index and a time frame. You guarantee me the same return as the index within that time frame. If you beat the index, you keep 90% of returns ABOVE the index (and I get 10%). We both win, and you win big.

If you don't beat the index (within the time frame), you make up the difference (so I get the return to the index).

Yes, I realize I can unzip the xpi and see JS source. But... just curious.

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_roo...

I used lulu.com to print a copy of OnLisp [1]

What I got was one of the best bound paperback books I've ever held.

<rant> I wish all publishers would just sell eBooks (and publish settings like "optimal paper size") so that I could print my own copy using a service like lulu. One of my biggest gripes with hardcopy books nowadays is that the paper stock they use is so thin that the ink on the other side of the page shows through. Lulu let's you choose the paper stock. I really can't say enough about how happy I was with the quality of the printed book lulu sent me. </rant>

[1] https://www.lurklurk.org/onlisp/onlisp.html

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consideration_in_English_law

I'm very curious how you measure the "average" user's usage. It seems hard for me to believe that even an "average" user (which I grant I am not) who has switched their browsers' default search engine to Kagi on their (one) computer and (one) phone -- assuming an average user has a computer and a smartphone -- uses less than 200 queries per month.

We've all been trained for years now (by Google) to type searches (not urls) into our browser's address bar. For so many people, the first action they take to "access the web" is to type something that is not a URL in their browser's address bar. I suspect this behavior is even _more common_ among "average" users ("power" users seem more likely to actually type "mail.google.com" instead of "gmail", for example).

"Includes enough searches for X% of current Kagi users"

Figuring out that I need to subscribe to GCN+, Peacock, and Flobikes in the US was no small feat (and it changes from year to year!).

Let me pay ONE company ONE price and get ALL the content.

Pick the price! I don't care. If I like the sport enough, I'll pay it. If I don't, then I'll find another sport.

Just don't make me spend hours wading through online articles trying to answer questions like "How many streaming subscriptions do I need in the US to watch all UCI events?" (I did this, it was painful).

But some of those people are also PAYING to watch plenty of games in whatever sport they are "pirating" streams for. Calling these people "pirates" fails to acknowledge that they are also "paying customers" who are frustrated with how complicated it has become to pay for the product they want to watch.

F1 is great in the US. I can't speak to NFL -- I don't watch it. However, I suspect it may be a better deal in Europe (where they are trying to get new fans) than in the US (where it's one of, if not "the", most popular sports).

This is similar to GCN+ for cycling. In the US, it doesn't get you much -- but from what I understand, in some (most?) European countries, GCN+ gets you most (if not all) UCI cycling evnets.

I live in the US.

I briefly took an interest in the EPL. If I wanted to watch all EPL games (or have the option of watching any particular EPL game), I'd have to subscribe to Peacock _and_ Fubo -- and I'm still not sure that gets me all games.

I briefly took an interest in the NHL (this was years ago, granted -- things may have changed). If I would have subscribed to their service, the ONLY team whose home games I couldn't watch would have been the TEAM OF THE CITY I LIVE IN (i.e.: "my" team).

My two favorite sports, though, are Cycling and F1.

I LOVE cycling. To watch every UCI race, I'd have to subscribe to GCN+ (they have the Giro), Peacock (they have the Tour de France and La Vuelta), and Flobikes (they have most of the Classics races).

THE ONLY sports governing body that has figured this out (for sports I like, anyway), is F1. I pay F1.com $80 a year and get MORE content than I would if I watched the races on ESPN. I can see EVERY RACE, EVERY QUALIFYING, EVERY PRACTICE. I can even choose WHOSE car I want to see the first person view from.

If you want to "stop pirates", make it easy for them to give you money and watch their favorite sport.