TheRealKuni

Inventing your own “standard” and forcing everyone to use it (lightning and webkit)

It’s like people don’t remember history anymore. WebKit was a joint venture between many groups. It wasn’t “inventing your own standard” any more than any web browser engine. The restriction to WebKit on iOS devices can be frustrating, but this practice is anti-competitive.

And Lightning replaced another proprietary port, the iPod 30-pin connector. That 30-pin connector was born in a time when standards for device-side connections were not very often utilized. Many devices used proprietary connectors. When Apple transitioned away from the 30-pin, the industry at large was operating with both Mini-USB and Micro-USB, which were both straight-up inferior to Lightning.

The problem with Apple and Lightning is that they didn’t drop it when they should’ve. When USB-C became the clear de facto standard, and they began transitioning all of their other devices to it, they should’ve moved the iPhone over and bit the bullet then. Not doing so, and continuing to charge for MFi certification was, again, anti-competitive. But the existence of Lightning wasn’t anti-consumer.

preventing consumers from having their device repaired from anyone else than a “certified technician” at 4x the markup

Right-to-repair is an important issue and Apple are really shitty about it. I agree. They are not unique, and this also needs to be addressed.

Google pixels are not OEM-locked and I can easiely install graphene or any other operating system on them. In the smartphone category, google is the only good vendor, ironically.

Like I said, “in many respects.” For your use-case, one that you must admit is infrequently utilized, statistically speaking, Google makes a better product that fits your needs. The vast, vast majority of smartphone users are not flashing alternate ROMs to their devices. Most people aren’t power-users, and even most power-users don’t bother. That’s not to say your use-case isn’t meaningful; I’m glad there are still solid options available for a world I used to be a part of!

People can damn well choose to not buy an apple device.

Sure, but does that mean Apple should be allowed to get away with anti-competitive behavior? With practices that seek to force others to use their systems, or to keep users they have from exploring other options? I don’t think so. Bad business practices need to be addressed regardless of whether users have an option to look elsewhere. Especially when the company has a sufficiently large percentage of the smartphone market to force developers to work within their walled garden to hit target audiences.

a device that is known to be anti-consumer.

Anti-competitive and monopolistic, sure. Anti-consumer? Eh.

Don’t get me wrong, Apple is just as evil as the next guy. Their practices reinforce their market position in an insidious way. But in many respects Apple performs better on the consumer front than, say, their primary competitor Google. Not in every way, but I wouldn’t call their devices “anti-consumer.”

If one of your primary concerns as a consumer is an open platform then yeah, I can see you rejecting outright Apple devices. This could in turn lead to being dismissive of the concerns of those whose priorities differ from yours, though I would strongly advise against such a lack of empathy over something as insignificant as a platform choice. Regardless, curtailing their practices is still important.

If we don’t stop bad behavior because it doesn’t affect us directly, we set bad precedents. Regulatory actions are an important tool.

If we talk about restricting stuff like rent, food prices etc, so essentials, I’m on board. But Apple? Nah.

Fallacy of relative privation. “X is worse than Y, so Y doesn’t matter.” Rent and food prices are important, too, but regulatory bodies don’t operate on a zero sum system. Multiple things can be addressed with multiple efforts. It’s not like the EU is saying “we can ignore starvation and homelessness because at least we cracked down on Apple.”

But I don’t need this kind of use case as much anymore and have moved to Joplin

My first thought reading this was, “Why does moving to Joplin, MO have anything to do with note-taking?”

(Kuni from UHF)

McDonald’s still sells “hotcakes” for breakfast.

Is that a career?

Nope, choral singing is something I do as a volunteer. But I do it a lot! Primarily with my local symphony chorus, another small local group, and occasionally on tours.

This will be my third time singing at Carnegie, which is always fun. Hard to say the coolest place I’ve performed, but definitely up there is the American cemetery in Normandy, France. Also Winchester Cathedral in the UK.

The coolest thing I’ve performed is also tough. Literally my first concert with the symphony chorus was a performance of The Two Towers. Like, the movie played while we performed the soundtrack. It was incredible. I’ve gotten to do a few of those movie concerts. I also really love when we get to do video game music, those concerts are always a blast. Getting to shout the grunts in the Dragonborn song from Skyrim on a stage is so cool.

And then of course there’s Carmina Burana which features O Fortuna which most people have heard somewhere, and Verdi’s Requiem which features the most terrifyingly awesome Dies Irae of all time. Staples like Mozart’s Requiem and Beethoven’s 9th are always a blast.

I’m seriously privileged to have the talent and opportunity to participate in this stuff. It’s so much fun.

I get to sing in three concerts in the next five weeks. All three are going to be very fun, and one of them is at Carnegie Hall!

They manufacture significant parts of their cars (or sometimes entire cars) outside the US and then sell them in the US. It’s part of why small pickup trucks don’t really exist anymore, due to tariff nonsense.

They do it because manufacturing labor is cheaper elsewhere.

I’m confused what you’re asking.

Mentour Pilot had a great video about the technology they’ve been using to pinpoint search areas last year. Worth a watch, and definitely fueled my optimism that they’ll finally be able to find the plane.

American companies that do less of their manufacturing in the US than their Japanese rivals do.

The opioid epidemic is because the Sackler family and Purdue made money

Purdue Pharma. It’s important, because Purdue Pharma and Purdue University are not connected in any way, and when people from the Midwest hear “Purdue” we usually think of the university.

There was a “don’t use Amazon for a week” boycott thing at the beginning of March. It shocked me how quickly I lost the urge to just go order stuff the moment I thought of it. After the week was over I just kept not ordering stuff (with the exception of a subscription that came through).

Definitely at least helped me cut back.

I’ve been impressed by how quickly gen-AI 3D models have become somewhat useful. I expected that with the significantly lower training data than text and images it would take longer, but maybe 3D files have a lot more tagging and metadata by virtue of being “new” compared to text and images, making them more useful for training AI?

As much as I enjoy modeling, I must admit I’m somewhat excited about a future where I can think up something to 3D print and not have to spend hours in Blender.

LIDAR certainly has enough distance (airplanes use it too)

As I understand it, this is uncommon and mostly used for topological mapping.

Most commercial aircraft use a radar, augmented with a GPS-based terrain map, for their ground proximity warning (EGPWS, “Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System”).

I could be wrong though, I’m not a pilot.

However if all the world retaliates together to this bully then he will know what will happen next time he starts doing stupid shit. classic school yard bully situation in some sense.

You’re assuming Trump is capable of learning the types of lessons that schoolyard bullies learn.

I mean, I’d rather have a milquetoast center-right Democrat than a fascist, given the de facto two-party system.

But maybe that’s just me.

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Y’all should watch Silo.

Nah man. There are uses for touchscreens in cars. Just don’t put everything there, and especially don’t put anything you’d need to use while actively driving in there.

But being able to have dynamic user interfaces is very useful for plenty of non-directly-driving-related features.