sosull

But that was the single hardest claim in the model register!

The mini accounted for 3% of sales. Personally I’m a believer, and a buyer, but 3% isn’t a good number.

I really love this. It’s comprehensive, it consolidates the data to the point where the argument effectively ‘makes itself’, and the way it’s presented respects the reader’s time. It also makes for an interesting challenge (for me at least) to try to characterise the subject matter of a language problem so narrowly.

No ream of slides. No narrative. Just a lovely big painful conclusion.

With only a passing knowledge of the field, I'm aware that the standard of monopolistic effect varies between the EU and US (neither specifically uses financial size as the standard). In the EU it's about whether there is sufficient competition in the market, whereas in the US it's about whether the price is sufficiently competitive.

He has such a talent for brevity: "You know a judge is pissed when she busts out the bold italics."

For me (IANAL), reading the judgment was initially shocking primarily for its facts and tone, rather than having any understanding of the legal consequences. I initially skipped over the phrase 'contempt of court' because the phrase seems so familiar from TV. But on reflection, it's the most consequential part of the document because, as you say, it has actual consequences for the people involved.

Cast iron, presumably.

+1. I read this a few weeks back and it really stuck with me.

The article is saying ‘kinda’. The process works in lab conditions with highly purified ore, but produces an equivalent amount of chlorine gas and iron.

I think there's a reasonable case to be made that consoles (and the vertically integrated business structure that they represent) inherently encourage more diverse kinds of games development while also attracting new buyers. Their business practices aren't ideal, granted. But it's not entirely clear to me that a walled garden constitutes a true monopoly. That is to say that the console makers aren't using their control over their own systems to force their way into adjacent, unrelated markets.

Also, the standard for what constitutes anti-competitive behaviour is different in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. The US uses higher pricing as the prime signal, whereas the EU uses a lack of viable competitiors.

It pulls at a compelling thread about the differential possibilities of design and the identities it's coded against. Anti-design is an inherently valuable approach to work. It can let us think about how to achieve the right client fit, the right product motivations, and the right overall system incentives. This isn't to agree (per se) that only bad clients want glossy design in prototypes, but rather to suggest that we as people self-segregate into particular visual cultures that may seem inherently bad to outsiders. Design, or the perceived lack of it, can be a form of (highly valued) in-group signalling that allows us to sieve out the wrong kinds of interactions.

And then sometimes bad design is just great on its own merits. By way of example: https://x.com/NCTreasurer/status/1577673238536245248?s=20

Book hack: some lengthy autobiographies have an ‘about the author’ section on the inside cover.

I would think that software engineering is the exception that proves the rule: people with domain knowledge are highly motivated to share what they know, ask questions, consolidate knowledge, and refine processes using the Internet.

Working in another field (public services might be a good example) it’s often not possible to test out hypothetical solutions, or find relevant expertise, or to even discover that whole areas of knowledge actually exist. In that context, relevant qualifications have a little more weight.

I can empathise. Telling them that you didn’t want a management-style position was probably the right move given all the reasons you laid out, but it’s also an implicit rejection of everything that the people around you are striving for. They equate management with productivity and respect. You’re thinking of it like the difference between a pilot and an air traffic controller. Jobs with vastly different purposes. But still, your decision called their value system into question in a very profound way. It’s not like saying that you don’t want that kind of job, it’s more like you didn’t want to work with them more closely. And most people, myself included, don’t have the emotional intelligence to handle rejection maturely. It all gets very petty.

But not in Schitt’s Creek. Worthwhile things have always been rare.

I say this as someone living in Northern Europe in a wooden house: there’s a fairly good reason that the building industry uses brick rather than lumber here. The combination of humidity, temperature, and often densely-packed housing created both a skills base and a supply chain that has, over time, made it needlessly costly to build with lumber. And, a lot of our historic architectural styles prioritise brick, which is a huge pull factor when people are deciding on styles for new buildings.

Ah sure look.

I've spent years admiring his work as a type designer. It's vexing work to create a serif that's versatile enough to compete with the simplicity and legibility of standard office-type fonts. I think he pulled the rabbit out of the hat with the Equity font. It's intended for lawyers, IANAL, but it's genuinely useful in a much bigger mixture of situations.

It was a somewhat rushed point, admittedly. I was reaching for enlightenment-era imagery to challenge the seeming disavowal of morality itself. I note that OP extended those remarks elsewhere to claim that the law is the preferred source of moral constraint. I'm not even sure of what to say to that.

But I very much appreciate the depth of your point. I've always found validation (?) in the deontological aspect of Kant's idealism because I think it neatly describes why people feel obligations to those they interact with most closely (i.e. I feed my child because I should, rather than to avoid his hunger). I certainly take your point that the categorical imperative isn't the best or only tool for interpreting moral dilemmas. Honestly, I was bringing it up in part because it's a recognisable phrase that might infer that there's more to the question of ethics than unexamined instinct.

Immanuel Kant came up with the idea of a categorical imperative. It’s one of the foundation stones in the field of moral philosophy (or ethics). An example would be the moral requirement not to kill other people. The only way to successfully prove that there are no moral requirements is by arguing the point with people who don’t know any better.

Yes, you’re correct. I was wrong. Apologies.

Is there even a remotely balanced alignment between the number of users on a platform and that platform’s advertising market share? I think the answer is no. Google and Meta dominate ads. No-one else really has traction, irrespective of their platform’s success.

There are twenty-three states where judges all the way up to the State Supreme Court are elected, rather than being appointed. These include partisan elections, nonpartisan elections, and legislative elections.

https://ballotpedia.org/Judicial_selection_in_the_states

Almost, but not quite. Brandenburg created a softer standard than Schenck. The offending speech would have to incite or produce imminent unlawful conduct. But there's an exception for political speech in Brandenburg, which handed people back their right to protest against (and urge people not to comply with) the draft.

Alito claimed* that the 'fire in a crowded theatre' standard should be applied to today's college campuses, essentially because he has strong views on how free speech should/shouldn't be regulated at college. It seems to me that he's taking issue specifically with the right of students to engage in political speech and protest. The current court seems to have a particular distaste for case law from the civil rights era. I think he's deciding to bring this exact issue up because he wants to signal to any prospective plaintiff what rulings and precedents the court is likely to focus on in a hypothetical case. But he did that by deliberately misapplying the relevance of a widely-known and easily-misunderstood civil rights-era standard. It feels like he's doing that to taunt his political opponents and signal his preference for an earlier legal regime.

My point is that it's fair to question whether the court is actually behaving like a legislature: it's concentrating on case law that specifically affects social policy and it's doing that because it has a majority's muscle. As a foreigner, I can't explain how insane this looks from outside. Judges don't get to just show up to cocktail parties or speeches and single out the precedents they'd prefer to ignore or dispense with. That's a politician's job.

* https://lawandcrime.com/supreme-court/justice-alito-takes-di...

Watching this play out (as a non-US person), there’s very little comfort in the distinction between court ignoring the law and the court interpreting the law in a way that is different to historic precedent. The act of interpretation infers that the court is making some kind of justification – backing these changes up by explaining them. Typically this would happen via written decision or at least by stare decisis.

But then I saw Samuel Alito commenting just today about how the first amendment does not give Americans, and college students specifically, the right to shout fire in a crowded theatre. The fire in a crowded theatre standard was overturned in Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969). So it’s a little odd to hear that the Schenck interpretation from fifty years earlier is back on the menu.

I find myself wondering how that happened. What’s the fine distinction between interpreting the law differently to precedent and ignoring settled law?

It’s a very fair point, but stranger things have happened. Case in point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden_laptop_controvers...

I’ll believe it when I see study after study after study.

If anyone hasn't read Robert Caro's books about Lyndon Johnson, give them a try. They are a truly exceptional achievement in both storytelling and research. I had no concrete understanding of what the New Deal actually was until I read the (fourteenth chapter) of the first book. The stories about it are insane: judges being kidnapped, stripped and beaten by farmers etc. There is a whole book, Means of Ascent, that's devoted to this short period in LBJ's life – the Senate primary campaign that he ran against Coke Stevenson. The helicopter features heavily.

But the point is about the quality of the product, not the financial size or userbase of the company. Isn't it possible to have the (impressive) attribute of size while simultaneously making a bad product?

What about Myspace? $800m in revenue from 115m users. The classic 'good product' story, right?

I don't think the analogy quite carries over. With computers there are only a few major operating systems, so the simplification of design directly reduces choice. Cameras are different. There are a vast range of bodies and lenses to combine, all creating different possible images. And people can easily understand the difference between an automatic and a manual camera, or between autofocus, manual and fixed focus. That's just one more choice.