> Treating a rigged game as fair doesn't make it fair, it just makes you easier to beat
Not playing at all makes you easier to beat still. Anyone pining for civil war should vacation in a war zone first. It’s difficult to encapsulate the privilege of peace until it’s been lost.
I am a resident of the Twin Cities and I agree wholeheartedly with this perspective. I found reading the book Waging A Good War very educational about the deliberate, strategic use of nonviolence by the American Civil Rights Movement and its ultimate triumph as a means to win support and achieve social change. It was a clear and inspiring parallel for me during the worst times of this year so far.
> Civil war or getting screwed by elites aren't the only two options. That's a false dichotomy
I completely agree. But political violence increasingly polarises the outcomes to those two. (The elites can buy gunmen faster than you or I can.)
California has a referendum system. Get an AI measure on the ballot. Companies that are doing the things Anthropic got fired for refusing to provide are banned from doing business in the State of California. (Or with the State. Find a balance that gets the votes.)
I've had a buyout clause used while consulting before. The company was ending their relationship with the contracting company and wanted to keep a handful of individuals.
From what I understand, the contracting firms don't like (reasonably-priced) buyouts because it allows clients to cherry-pick the best 'talent', and basically use the contractor as a 'farm team'.
yes, it's unfortunately common for employers to abuse their workers by keeping their pay and work conditions as awful as possible and using any means possible to prevent them from leaving to better conditions and pay
I'm writing this in Safari now, I'm a huge fan. There are several "features" that I actively dislike and disable in other browsers. I wonder if not being implemented in mobile safari is preventing them from being required in some webpages.
Notifications struck me as odd. I aggressively disable notifications in my apps because they are often just ads or engagement focused. But as a developer, it would be cool to have a way to notify an iOS user other than building a native app and paying the iOS tax. There's a bunch of utility apps not getting built because of this limitation.
According to this, notifications are possible if you add the app to the home screen, which I didn't know.
A feature more devs should use- I've been surprised how much websites behave like native apps if you just "add to homescreen" instead of downloading an official app, e.g. twitter, instagram.
When you open the shortcut, it doesn't launch as a tab in safari, but appears independently in the app switcher. They are often indistinguishable from official apps!
Seems like a great way for devs to avoid app store pains
iOS actually does support notifications in webapps, but only ones that have a homescreen icon. Furthermore, the notification support is different enough that I can't get my iPad to work with Android Messages for Web. So I have no clue if the API is neutered or if Google is being Google and insisting every browser be Chromium. Probably both.
WebUSB is incredibly useful to flash firmware and update configuration on random devices.
The alternative is to install random software on your computer for every device (or, if you're a Linux user, you'll likely simply be excluded and whine about it).
Making device companion utilities WebUSB means that when the hardware maker goes belly-up and their site goes down, or just decides to stop supporting a device, it's now a brick. When they are native software programs, someone can preserve them.
Just look at all the old hardware like CNC machines still running just fine on old computers, and imagine if they were connected via WebUSB instead.
WebUSB is just a terrible idea if you're not an ad company.
Not if it's an Open Source project made by a bunch of people for the love of the game. Install a PWA and you have it even when the site is down, if not code available on GH. It's possible to do on a computer (write code and distribute an app not via an app store)...but not in the magical protected-profits land of mobile devices.
Your way of thinking is the reason why we now have a half dozen trillion dollar companies controlling the world.
I’m not sure why web-midi can’t be available behind a permission to control finger printing.
I can think of several light weight patch editors I’d like be able to use. There’s probably not enough demand for someone to make a stand alone app for them.
I can’t see any reason why this needs to be controlled by apple’s app store.
Complexity for who? The user having to click "Yes I want to enable Web Bluetooth for this website"? Or for the developers? Because if it's for the developers, it's literally their job to make complex things simple for users.
But why not Bluetooth or NFC? I can’t imagine any way those could be annoyances, or even why websites would want them outside of some extremely specialized applications.
I'm personally a WebUSB, WebBT etc hater but I totally get why PWA developers want those features. For example, let's say you're manufacturing some sort of USB device and you need a way to flash drivers. The idea of being able to just make a webpage that can update your drivers is so appealing compared to having to ship apps on Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android.
Similarly, if my bank website could do NFC tap-to-pay securely, that would be pretty cool. I can imagine lots of interesting opt-in uses for NFC in a webapp.
Arguments that these features are held back by Apple specifically in order to keep apps on the app store where they can control things and take 30% at least hold water, I think, even if that reasoning doesn't apply to Mozilla rejecting features.
> The idea of being able to just make a webpage that can update your drivers is so appealing compared to having to ship apps on Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android.
I suspect like many here, at $work we use a shit-ton of Flexoptix SFPs.
Flexoptix are not a $megacorp, they are a (very) small German company.
They manage to ship cross-platform apps to flash the SFPs. So its really not that difficult.
I would think a web app would be more of a pain the the butt to maintain because you have to deal with CSS reactive UI etc.
For little utility apps where you don’t care to deviate from UI default appearance and behavior (and, as a user, it’s much better if you don’t anyway, though it’s very trendy to make UX worse by customizing everything) iOS and Android both are dead simple, very easy to write and maintain a utility app for either of them.
An enormous amount of the cost of developing a lot of native apps is customizing the appearance and behavior, to match some slide deck mockup or to make it “on-brand” or whatever. It’s better for the user, and way cheaper, if you just… don’t do that. Hell a lot of common UI elements are easier in native than web if you just don’t try to customize them a ton (data-backed tables and list views and such are sooooo nice)
I like WebUSB in Chrome to update my Meshtastic radios. I also like that I have to go out of my way to launch Chrome for that, and other websites can’t request permission to access local hardware in my normal browser.
Nonsense. Firefox on Android (and I'm sure everywhere else) allows endless redirects without prompting me about the redirect, sending me to sites I never wanted to go to.
And even then, where does one draw the line on "privacy"? Especially given that every other app on the user's phone is granted every permission under the sun and feeding on as much data as possible.
The core of the problem isn't supporting web bluetooth etc or not...the core of the problem is that dumbass humans will go "yes use all the permissions" because their hands are already shaking from tiktok withdrawal.
> The real driver of white lab coats was the hygienist movement.
This is a really compelling read with several historical sources, with a title that can be answered in a single sentence buried deep in the article. I'm a little sad to see such quality writing with a title that could be mistaken for a slop blog post.
You're missing a bit, like there is an entire top secert division of people that fight against mind erasing aliens, and there are a large variety of mind erasing aliens.
The critique is "Taboos probably have a use." I think it's a good faith point. It's not as strong of a critique as "Taboos have purpose {x}" [Maintain ethical standards, promote public safety] or to say "Taboos probably have a use because {y}" [They are in almost every society, some rules should be rules but not laws].
The problem I see is taboos assume the act is always wrong, and preclude consideration for edge cases where it might be the lesser wrong. Consider the incest taboo--yeah, there are very good reasons for this. Should you enter a sexual relationship with a relative? I think society is better off prohibiting this. But what about "What, my wife is actually my sister????" Is forcing them to divorce actually the best answer? (And, yes, it happens. Bump into an unknown sibling, there's a substantial chance you'll fall for them.)
I'd agree- I think the analysis I was referring to believed that analyzing a taboo makes it no longer useful as a shortcut. Guess that didn't come across enough for anyone to offer a refutation.
It's interesting that your list skews entirely digital, and that more physical games of chance like lotteries and blackjack are not on the list. Do you see them as fundamentally different?
He was very much pro-legalizing online gambling. He had worked for sportsbooks, had done lots of sports betting himself, stuff like that. But has concluded that legalizing online gambling has been a disaster.
> When sports gambling was legalized in America, I was hopeful it too could prove a net positive force, far superior to the previous obnoxious wave of daily fantasy sports.
> It brings me no pleasure to conclude that this was not the case. The results are in. Legalized mobile gambling on sports, let alone casino games, has proven to be a huge mistake. The societal impacts are far worse than I expected.
The article makes a compelling argument that online gambling is a lot worse than other forms of gambling.
I have a take on this too. You know how scammers cast a really wide net, hoping to get lucky and find suckers? Well, that's really only part of the story, what actually happens is they get lucky and happen to find people when they are vulnerable. That's how smart people get scammed somewhat randomly.
When online gambling is in your pocket, it is guaranteed to be available when you're vulnerable.
Well I was thinking in the context of games, so the list is some of the stuff that you can waste unlimited amounts of real money on to get a chance for a shiny digital item. I do think that physical gambling is bad too, though it's not as easily accessible, you don't carry a (physical) roulette table in your pocket.
I think online/digital gambling is worse because it follows you everywhere. I don’t like any form of gambling, but at least with casinos there’s some escape in not physically being there. It’s also harder to enforce age requirements online.
They all have apps these days, and just like a local bookmaker might "accidentally" remove your name from their legally required self-ban list it's very common that a "bug" in your phone app means you can keep gambling after saying you want to stop.
"Mistakes" in the controlling party's favour are extremely common in such industries. Fluke 100-1 sport betting win? Oops we forget to fill out that mandatory anti-fraud paperwork, bet is off. Lost that 3-2 bet that the favourite would place in a horse race but actually you didn't show proper ID? Sorry that's your problem, we're keeping the money
Regulating gambling is a good idea. Gambling firms spend a lot of money on (lobbying for) ensuring the regulations are as loose as possible despite the very obvious downsides of their industry.
Not OP but I would certainly ban adding gambling "features" to other products or services. Either you can be a gambling or betting shop/platform (regulated and restricted to adults) or something else, but not both.
I think it's very interesting many people treat physical games of chance as different than purely digital ones, and wanted to explore this topic. To me, that's a more interesting topic of conversation than calling for legislation, or arguing about the merits of such legislation. Especially when it's about legislation in a jurisdiction I do not fall under.
This forum is a branching conversation pattern. I'm not derailing anything because this isn't a linear conversation. If you want to discuss something else that the parent comment said then make a post against that conversation.
Physical gambling is confined to a physical location (like a casino or a sports betting bar), so people have to go there to be harmed. It's bad, but it requires someone to spend time getting there (and if the victim has a family/friends they might ask where they're headed/intervene in some way) and there is a limit to the amount of people who can be there at once. With digital gambling, anyone can spend any amount of money, anywhere, anytime, with no oversight (however little it might be in a physical location). The harm is magnified immensely.
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