97 karma · joined November 10, 2014
That's a load-bearing "if", though, given the incohesiveness of legal systems compared to typical Bitter Lesson examples.
There are some issues with contingency fees in German legal professional law. However, it can be argued that suing for these 5,000 EUR is just "collections", so it may be allowed.
The risk lies elsewhere: As I outlined in another comment, there is reason to believe that this may not stand on appeal, or at least that other courts in other parts of Germany may decide differently. As a result, it takes a lot of capital to keep all of these lawsuits going until the Federal Court of Justice or the ECJ have decided and there is legal certainty.
For example, the court ruled that the plaintiff is entitled to these damages without even hearing them personally on what kind of injury they sustained. This is an interesting direction, and we will see how it is argued in the decision itself. I would assume this could be something that Meta challenges on appeal.
Another way to go would be to argue that this lawsuit involves unresolved questions of EU law that need to be addressed by the ECJ.
In either case, this verdict will create some legal uncertainty in the short term, and I assume many people will sue---but we shall see what happens on appeal and perhaps at the ECJ, which will perhaps be a couple of years out.
What drives me nuts, however, is the lacking vector workflow in Keynote. The only way to export vector graphics is by exporting as a PDF. Import is similarly difficult. I wonder how this is done internally at Apple, but I would assume that everything we see these days in the keynotes is done using Motion anyways.
A good solution I have found to your particular problem is to use checkboxes in the cells. You can select them as a cell type and it converts from Boolean value text to checkbox. I also prefer that, as a user, to typing True/False.
Why is there a limit of nine levels of headings in Word? Why does it feel less usable on my i9 with 32GB of RAM once you hit 200+ pages? Why is the "collaborative mode" still way, way, way behind Google Docs functionality circa 2012? I feel like the core functionality has stagnated since Office 2003.
I especially enjoy Numbers and the way you can arrange multiple tables on a page. It's a different paradigm coming from Google Sheets or Excel and takes some getting used to, but to me it now makes more sense.
Of course, if I need something "done right", I'll drop down to Affinity, LaTeX, or InDesign. But I rarely have these needs nowadays.
A similar argument could be made for going all in on Google Docs/Sheets/Slides, but I feel queasy knowing that all of my data is in a free Google account, after reading some of the stories here about reaching Google support if something goes sideways.
Makes it even more puzzling what they are doing with the M2 Mac Pro.
[0] https://www.numerama.com/tech/1919213-m4-max-et-m3-ultra-let...
[1] More context on Macrumors: https://www.macrumors.com/2025/03/05/apple-confirms-m4-max-l...
I just find it interesting that you can currently buy a M2 Ultra Mac Pro that is weaker than the Mac Studio (for a comparable config) at a higher price. I guess it "remains a product in their lineup" and we'll hear more about it later.
Additionally: If they wanted to scrap it down the road, why would they do this now?
Additionally, I would assume this is a very low-volume product, so it being on N3B isn't a dealbreaker. At the same time, these chips must be very expensive to make, so tying them with luxury-priced RAM makes some kind of sense.
But then again: Does this kind of marketing touch the _core_ problem of net neutrality? You could argue that--as long as the user's high-speed data is intact--all of these services operate at the same speed.
Of course, this is an incentive to users to choose Spotify or WhatsApp over some competitor, but you could argue that _because_ they're giving you the same speed for everything as long as you still have data, it's not as bad as other approaches (not that I think it's a good thing).
Then again, it probably is a really slippery slope.
However, I can't tell you if OpenCV is still the framework of choice and/or widely used in the field you want to go into.
This may be a tangent, but speaking of mono fonts sponsored by big SV firms: Am I the only one who would like to see Apple's San Francisco Mono (which they stealthily debuted at WWDC) released properly (i.e. as an independent font file)? It's currently in the Xcode preview, but you can't use it anywhere else.
However, I have always wondered one thing about WhatsApp: How does it generate any kind of meaningful revenue? Apparently they've ditched the old $1 subscription model [0], and even that was so loosely enforced that I have never paid a single cent for WhatsApp in my life--and never will (got it while it was free on the iOS App Store and now have a 'Lifetime' subscription, if they don't change those at some point). And even back then, maybe half of their 900m monthly active users [1] were iOS users who paid only once, and the rest may have dodged the fee in various ways. I have a really hard time believing the revenues so gained could ever actually cover the cost of R&D (especially for so many platforms) and infrastructure (which should be huge, given the amount of data they shift). Now they say they want customers to use WhatsApp as a platform, the way Facebook Messenger is doing it, but I'm not seeing any of those features implemented anywhere. I always assumed there was some heavy data analysis going on behind the scenes--which would have been fair, I guess, since we're neither being shown ads nor really paying. Facebook's involvement added to that conviction. Now that they're encrypting everything (which, again, is wonderful), they can't analyze what is really, really interesting data anymore (keywords, etc.). And it's not like there was a public outcry for them to take this step--I would guess that not many end users actually appreciate the importance of E2E encryption.
So the question remains: How are they making money? You still have metadata (I presume), but then again, how do they use this data to make money if they can't always match it to a Facebook profile (where they can show you ads), and also, does this data really provide such a big improvement over all the data collected by Facebook and Facebook messenger? It just seems strange to me that WhatsApp apparently does not want to make any money.
Does anyone have any insight on this? What am I missing?
[0]: http://www.cnet.com/news/whatsapp-kills-1-subscription-fee/ [1]: http://qz.com/495419/whatsapp-has-900-million-monthly-active...
Is anyone with a 'homegrown' vpn tunnel experiencing issues? I could also think of a solution involving cookies/fingerprinting that detects if someone's geolocation moves around quicker and more often than is physically possible.
I'm sure the technology is under tight wraps, and I'm also sure that other companies will be dying to license this from Netflix if they get it right, even if it's just a lengthy list of IPs (e.g. the BBC for iPlayer).
For those who are interested in Klee's personal notebooks, this collection of Bauhaus eBooks on the same site could also be of interest (iirc, HN brought me to these a couple of months ago): http://monoskop.org/Bauhaus#Books
But still, it corrects incorrect things that my spell checker doesn't see, like inconsistent spacing and 'goofy approximations' like (R) for ®. (Depends on your definition of incorrect, but I personally would not mind at all if these things were homogenized for everyone, it would not take any richness out of the English language).
What I'd like (--help doesn't list such an option) would be to be able to enable some checks with a flag while disabling other parts (the ones that contain suggestions you can elect to break).
I think the procedure itself entails a conflict of interest: If you dispute certain findings by certain researchers (and you have a clear agenda), how can you be trusted to write an objective year-end summary of relevant findings in the field? I think these kinds of articles are the root of the problem. Of course, it would be far from easy to find an objective voice interested in writing these without having an 'ulterior opinion'. Still, I think editors should at least bar researchers from summarizing what they have a stake in (or summarizing a debate that they have taken part in during the last couple of months).
The sample size is ridiculous. 27 participants is--as far as my understanding goes--not very representative. To make a news article based on this sample claiming that half of US students could be addicted is really a stretch. I understand that the researchers acknowledge this and have followed a qualitative approach (focusing on stories, backgrounds, etc. rather than facts and numbers), yet the title misrepresents that.
To anyone who's interested in what the Compulsive Internet Use Scale contains without having to go through a paywall, here's what I found after some random googling: http://www.aerztinnenbund.de/downloads/1/meerkerk_11.00am.pd... (Slide 7).
I think that with this one-year cycle that phone manufacturers have--unfortunately--imposed on themselves, it is a strategic decision to have both ecosystems at different times in the year--so you have all the media buzz for one system at a time. If you were to have both competitors released at the same time, there would be probably less reporting on either, and that may be a risk neither Samsung nor Apple want to take--the two being the only two manufacturers whose releases regularly make it into non-tech news outlets.
Also, if you have half a year between releases, then the pressure of being able to directly compare specs is off, as compared to if both were released the same day (then one would have 'won' the specs contest and the other lost, which would likely be publicized widely, which both want to avoid by being able to say: our next release will blow everything that existed before out of the water).
Those would be my best guesses why we're seeing such consistent schedules.
With Akzidenz-Grotesk [1] as a runner-up (and for headlines etc.). Font fun fact: This was actually the font Massimo Vignelli originally used on the NYC subway system, before the MTA changed it to Helvetica (which is a fine choice, too, though I personally think Akzidenz (on which Helvetica is partly based) is prettier) [2].
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garamond#Adobe_Garamond
What I have tried so far (the arm movements, and copying some of the letters) works with the left hand surprisingly well. They tell you to rest your arm only on a point near the elbow and on the ring finger and pinky ("the wrist should never touch the paper"). I managed not to smudge anything instinctively using those instructions. Still, I'm not sure if I've got the posture exactly right yet (and I'll probably be able to tell after I've written like this extensively).
A bit frustrating, though, that the website (as a modern-day adaptation of a 1915 book) seems to be specifically tailored to right-handed people only. But then again, in 1915 pretty much everyone was forced to write with their right hand.
The only solution I could think of from a security standpoint would be to limit functionality on the device itself to such a level that there is not much need for updating, i.e., ideally the fridge becomes a dumb device that essentially offers a vnc-style connection to a central FridgeCo data center, so that the fridge itself would never deal with your passwords etc. other than sending them somewhere in an encrypted connection. This basic layer of functionality (and even that would be a lot to keep secure) would be more reasonable to maintain and keep secure than having separate apps for Google Cal etc. Of course, this would cause many more problems, be a single point of failure etc., but I think that's the way it's most likely going to go.
The examples you provide for European laws being too restrictive are correct imo, and there are more examples of laws that were, in my mind, the poor execution of a good idea (take the EU privacy directive that forces the opt-in for cookie tracking. This has in its execution by Google etc. generally become more of an annoyance than a privacy feature).
However, I think the decisions the European Court of Justice makes on these issues could be a chance for Europe. The 'right to be forgotten' and the recent safe harbor decision show--in my opinion--that the ECJ wants to establish a more privacy-focused jurisdiction in Europe. That could be a chance for, say a Google competitor that does not track you through AdWords but, instead, relies on a monthly subscription model (this might not be a very good idea, but you get my point). And when Angela Merkel says that 'too much privacy is bad for business', I disagree, because Europe cannot come to the table one decade late and copy what worked in the Bay Area.
If Europe establishes a reputation for a different sort of service that relies on strong encryption, user privacy and the absence of ad-support but rather subscription, I think the European startup world could thrive in serving a market that is currently emerging rather than one that has been there for the better part of a decade.