2,067 karma · joined February 9, 2008
From Amazon's perspective, that would be very much the wrong way.
Amazon's concerns here aren't technical. It's entirely about being disintermediated.
Another example is advertising. Apple made it easy for you to turn off advertising tracking for non-Apple things.
Apple made it very confusing to turn off advertising tracking for Apple things, including having a different setting for this to begin with.
I'm not sure how old you are, but I remember things being pretty rabid in the 1980s.
And all that it takes to turn seawater into potable freshwater is energy.
We don't have a water problem. We have an energy problem.
For all of LA County, it would take 500–750 MW each year to use seawater for all our freshwater needs.
Or put another, with a single nuclear power plant, we would solve all LA's freshwater needs -- forever.
I don't know that I've been brainwashed, but living most of my life in Chicago & Los Angeles, I've seen a lot of bloat, corruption, & massive inefficiency.
Many of friends lost their homes in the Palisades & Altadena fires. If it weren't tragic, it would be laughable the challenges they've faced in rebuilding. Several have kids about to enter high school. A dilemma they face is should they both building a house for their teenage children or assume they'll be off to college -- knowing it could be 3+ years until they're have a permanent home again.
In Chicago, I watched the mayor sell of all the parking meters for a fraction of their value. In Los Angeles, I'm watching them struggle to complete the people mover at LAX, a project years later & billions over budget.
This doesn't make me anti-government.
I see the need for it & I want it work well.
But comments like this make me frustrated that people would rather close their eyes & try to gaslight people, rather than acknowledge the problems & talk about how we fix them.
I feel our country is split between one side that doesn't want the government to do anything, even when it works, and another side that wants the government to do everything, even when it fails.
It's not clear to me where someone in the middle goes.
That does sound taxing. Is it volunteer or do people get paid?
It's pretty convoluted logic to blame Israel for Iran attacking the UAE.
Not really. You just weren't paying attention before. To wit, countries (including Germany!) have been questioning the safety of storing gold in the United State long before the Trump administration.
Examples 2012: Venezuela Receives Last Shipment of Repatriated Gold Bars https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-01-31/venezuela...
2013: Bundesbank to retrieve $200bn of gold reserves (Bundesbank is Germany’s independent central bank) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/15/bundesbank-ret...
2014: Netherlands moves 122.5 from New York https://www.dutchnews.nl/2016/02/85796-2/
There's obviously more, but that gives you a sense of it.
This matches exactly what they said.
That kid is lucky it was a Waymo & not a human driven car.
What about China? India?
But not everyone was on dial-up. A lot were in dorms w/ (for the time) high speed connections or workplaces with it.
Remember at the time it wasn't clear that search was going to be the dominate pattern for how people found information on the web. It seems crazy now, but in the early days of the web, the space was small enough that a directory-style approach worked pretty well. It was Yahoo's directory that made it initially popular, not its search.
And so there was a fair bit of debate on which was better -- something like a directory + search (a la Yahoo!) vs just search.
It took a bit of time before search proved if it was done really well, you didn't need a directory.
It depends on how you define "suck."
When Google first launched it's homepage, its emptiness (just a logo & search box) was a stark contrast to the portal pages popular, which were loaded with content.
Some thought the Google homepage "sucked" whereas other liked it. (I was in the latter.)
Likewise, the interface for Gmail. Or the interface for Google Maps. Or the interface for Chrome.
Why can't anything simply be "disliked" anymore?
I get you don't like it.
But abused?
Because there's a slide-in?
On a site run by volunteers?
For open source software you get for free?
That you freely choose to visit?
Calling that abuse seems... off. I have no concerns with people saying the don't like something. But the current nature to be hyperbolic is off-putting to me.
* Extreme poverty is at its lowest level in human history, down by over a billion people since 1990.
* More humans can read, write, and attend school than ever before, especially girls in lower-income countries.
* Global life expectancy has more than doubled compared to 1900
* Most countries continue to rise on human-development measures (health, education, income)
Yes, there's more room to keep improving, but the world keeps getting better & better.
"Reliance on documentation is the hallmark of a novice & a coward."
And having worked in digital advertising for 20+ years, I'd be shocked if they are anywhere as effective as often claimed.
It's mostly clickbait/outrage for the sake of headlines & clicks.
> These and other types of "unskippable ads" violate my personal freedoms and should rejected by society.
It's funny you keep bring up unskippable ads. I remember when YouTube invented the skippable ad format about ~15 years ago. How quickly it became a right & a guaranteed personal freedom.
This doesn't make any sense to me.
> Given that people currently are not able to choose to be free from advertisements in any practical way, even if abstaining from luxuries
Sure you can.
You can get a more expensive Netflix tier.
You can pay for YouTube Premium.
You can choose not engage with businesses that have a monetization model you dislike.
This is a terrible idea. Users should have choice & control.
I'll say something that on the surface level seems controversial, at least to HN: Some users prefer ads. And those users should be allowed that choice.
Ads are part of a value exchange. It's disingenuous, imho, to frame the question as "Do you want 'X' with or without ads?" Absent any other criteria most people would naturally say without ads. But I feel it's disingenuous because it overlooks the value exchange.
A better example: Would you prefer Netflix with ads for $7.99/month with ads, or $17.99/month without ads?
A lot of people are choosing the ads tiers. It's the fastest growing tier. Personally, I have the ads-free tier, but I can make that choice for myself. The people wanting the ads tier should be able to make that choice too. I don't see the value in taking it away from them.
I don't deny there are bad experiences. I do think Samsung is making a mistake & damaging customer trust with the refrigerator thing. I likely won't be buying one in the future.
Like anything, advertising can be done well or it can be done badly. I don't use Instagram myself, but I have a lot of friends who love fashion who do & say they're on their to follow brands & find deals. They find the ads a good way to discover some new fashion product & snag a good discount.
Likewise Amazon sent a catalog to my house. My kids are using it to think of what they want to ask Santa. A catalog is basically a book of ads.
The Atlantic recently wrote on how hotel policies have changed, with many no longer allowing free cancellations.
Why Hotel-Room Cancellations Disappeared
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2025/11/hotel-room-ca...
TL;DR: Hotel aggregators (e.g. Booking.com, Expedia) adopted a "cancel-rebook" strategy, where the aggregators would monitor hotel prices & rebook if the price dropped.
"TP-Link is a Chinese company that manufactures network equipment and smart home products. The company was established in 1996 in Shenzhen. TP-Link's main headquarters is located in Nanshan, Shenzhen; there is a smaller headquarters in Irvine, California"