yetanotherasian (u/yetanotherasian)

yetanotherasian commented on Forty years of programming fabiensanglard.net/40/ind... · Posted by u/billiob

devinprater · 2 years ago

He probably doesn't use Emacs. :)

I know what you mean. I was forced to use emacs for a year. I found it an interesting coincidence the person who forced emacs on us had the worst carpal tunnel syndrome and couldn't type on a standard keyboard without extreme pain.

I know you can remap your keys but there's inertia to just go with what you're given.

I've also noticed myself switching between Mac, Windows, and Linux, that Cmd-C on my Mac is way less stressful on my hand than Ctrl-C on the other 2 machines. I should probably figure out how to remap those.

PS: If you're curious how emacs was forced, it was because the lead built the project's IDE/build/debugging system into emacs

yetanotherasian commented on The FTC sues to break up Amazon over an economy-wide “hidden tax” thebignewsletter.com/p/th... · Posted by u/PaulHoule

araes · 2 years ago

It's obvious astroturfing.

The top two posts with the most upvotes are "Ebay is just as bad" for the startoff line, and "Everybody's just as bad as Amazon. Why are you being so mean and cruel to Amazon?"

Obvious astroturfing, just like the entire Amazon review ecosystem. Surprise? No.

https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/ Bezos' wealth relative to "normal" shown as 1-pixel comparisons. Be careful once you get to the $Trillion portion (you'll be scrolling for the rest of your life.)

yetanotherasian · 2 years ago

It's not astroturf. It's pointing out you've been living with this stuff for years, Amazon isn't new and special. If you want the problem solved then it shouldn't be about Amazon, it should be about entire process.

If Amazon can't sell an "Amazon Brand" that competes with other sellers on it's site, the Trader Joe's should not be able to sell wine that competes with the other branded wine in it's own stores. Nor should Target be able to see it's Good Stuff brand (or whatever it is) that directly competes with other things it stocks.

Similarly, if Amazon is going to be barred from having people pay to be the top of search results than Safeway should be barred from having companies pay to have their items placed on the end shelves.

This shouldn't be about just Amazon.

yetanotherasian commented on Strong static typing, a hill I'm willing to die on svix.com/blog/strong-typi... · Posted by u/tasn

insanitybit · 2 years ago

At this point it's beyond a hill I'm willing do die on. I'm not really interested in discussing it. If you don't get it I probably don't want to talk to you about it, I might even think less of you as a software developer. The amount of pre-existing respect for someone I'd need to have before I engage in a good-faith discussion on "are types good" is pretty high.

edit: To clarify, I am on the "types good" side of things

yetanotherasian · 2 years ago

How often do you write bash scripts or do you always write all automation in some other language? Just curious how much your conviction influences your behavior

yetanotherasian commented on Unity rushes to clarify price increase plan, as game developers fume axios.com/2023/09/13/unit... · Posted by u/danso

ilaksh · 2 years ago

It sounds like the WebGL initialization thing is ridiculous. They better fix that.

But aside from that, collecting a minimal fee seems fair enough to me. If paying 20 cents per sale of your successful game is ruining your life, maybe consider investing in some of the open source game engines.

yetanotherasian · 2 years ago

Getting fee isn't wrong maybe, but getting a fee by install is. They should instead ask for a percent of revenue. So if 1 billion people install my flappy bird clone but I only make $300k I don't owe them $15 million dollars.

yetanotherasian commented on U.S. v. Google wsj.com/tech/google-antit... · Posted by u/skilled

inductive_magic · 2 years ago

I wish more people understood how horrible advertising truly is.

Your life is essentially a compilation of what captures your attention. Embracing this perspective, any entity auctioning off your attention to the highest bidder is trading away a part of your life.

People don't understand what this means. They also don't understand how cynical this is in the context of a search engine. I don't have a solution to this, but man, its horrible.

yetanotherasian · 2 years ago

I don't personally feel like I notice many ads online. Maybe they are subtly influencing me but mostly I seem to avoid them. Yes I have an ad blocker but I still see ads or open things in an guest or incognito window or something which doesn't have an ad blocker. I don't think I can name an ad I've seen in the last year. Maybe a few years ago there was that Nintendo ad that took over all of youtube. Maybe I've seen a movie ad on IDMB once that caught my attention. Mostly though, it's just background noise that I tune out.

The only place I actually notice is Amazon, since it seems to often insert things I don't care about

yetanotherasian commented on U.S. v. Google wsj.com/tech/google-antit... · Posted by u/skilled

arijun · 2 years ago

But why couldn't that be a monopolistic practice? For example, let’s say Apple is getting more than 100% of the ad revenue Google earns from iPhones, but it’s still worth it for Google only because it doesn’t have iPhone users start thinking about other search engines (thereby maintaining the monopoly). That seems pretty similar to standard oil pricing below market value to get its competitors out of business.

yetanotherasian · 2 years ago

Playing for placement is common (not saying it's right, nor am I saying it's wrong)

https://thecounter.org/coca-cola-frito-lay-mars-real-estate-...

https://www.vox.com/2016/11/22/13707022/grocery-store-slotti...

yetanotherasian commented on Public restrooms are hard to find in America washingtonpost.com/wellne... · Posted by u/linusg789

lolinder · 2 years ago

Most of the US gets by just fine with gas stations and restaurants providing them to the general public with no questions asked. Maybe instead of spending huge amounts of taxpayer funds treating the symptom, San Francisco should ask itself why local businesses find it impossible to keep their restrooms open?

yetanotherasian · 2 years ago

It's not just SF. Was in the Venice/Santa Monica area recently, every restaurant had a prominent sign "Restrooms for customers only. No Exceptions"

My impression is the USA is falling apart. Every year people get more rude, more selfish, break more laws, are less courteous, there is more crime. I'm not sure I believe the "crime is going down" stats. (hope that doesn't make me stupid)

The problem as I see it is people stop reporting crimes because they know the police will do nothing about it. I've had my car broken into 5 times. I don't think I reported it more than once. Further, some places like California, have declared they won't prosecute property crime under a certain amount so again, even less reporting. So, the numbers appear to be going down but in reality they seem to be going up (That's certainly my personal perception but maybe I'm being influenced by sensational news and personal experience. I definitely see objectively going up in traffic violations. People don't seem to give a fuck anymore. They just do whatever they want)

I have no idea how to fix it or influence people to be nicer and more respectful of the law. Maybe it's the bankers getting off from the financial crisis. Maybe it's the police being perceived as part of the problem. All I know is more and more I think I should go back to a 1st world country because this one no longer feels like one.

yetanotherasian commented on Chrome now tracks users and shares a “topic” list with advertisers arstechnica.com/gadgets/2... · Posted by u/edvinbesic

rapind · 2 years ago

> Some people in the privacy community seem to think advertising and tracking in any form should not exist and will always make a stink about whatever incarnation they take.

I don't think I'm in the "privacy community". It's my opinion that advertising will always exist, but tracking is complete horseshit and should be abolished ASAP. I don't think this is a very unpopular opinion either. There seems to be an attempt to Stockholm us all into thinking tracking is a necessary evil we must accept.

yetanotherasian · 2 years ago

I'm not apologizing for google, but think many people who are against all forms of this aren't really thinking the problem through. The same way newspapers said "stop linking headlines to us" and then once some popular service did and all their traffic disappeared they came back and said "oh, wait, no, you can link to us"

For the ads, a large portion of the internet that people want (maybe not you in particular but lots of people in general), run on ads. Arstechnica runs on ads, theverge runs on ads, slashdot runs on ads, the register runs on ads, kotaku runs on ads, tech crunch run on ads. To name a few sites that might be popular here

If those sites can't support themselves they'll more than likely disappear. If all those sites disappeared I feel like plenty of people (maybe not you but more people than not) would realize that they thought they wanted (zero disclose) lead to outcomes they didn't want

I feel like Google is genuinely trying to do something positive here. Provide a way of those sites to still target ads, still check if an ad was effective, still try to check for bad actors making fake clicks, but also be practically un-attributable to a single user.

Going through the actual specs, they really are trying to make it so you can't track and individual but sites can still function based on ads.

Is it in Google own interest? Yes. But it's also in the interest of sites people want which means it's also in the interest of the people who want those sites.

Apple on the other hand, would prefer you be tracked directly by having you download an app for each site where that app can track you way more than a browser with these features can track you.

yetanotherasian commented on Why teens hate Android phones wsj.com/tech/personal-tec... · Posted by u/bookofjoe

smt88 · 2 years ago

> There’s no such thing as a free phone.

If your choices are:

A) Pay $45/mo. for service.

B) Pay $45/mo. for service and get a new phone.

Then there is a free phone. You don't pay a lower price if you refuse the phone, so it's effectively free.

There are contract terms (usually 2 years), but if you cancel, you pay the remaining value of the phone, so you still got some percentage of that phone subsidized by the carrier.

yetanotherasian · 2 years ago

Which carriers are these? I just went to the AT&T site, they wanted $30 a month for an iPhone + a separate $85 a month for cellular service. If instead I pick "wireless->bring your own" and go through the steps it was $75 a month so

A) Pay $75 a month for service B) Pay $115 a month for service and get a new phone

Their bottom offer was $5 a month for an iphone 12 (plus the $85 month for service)

Curious which carriers offer free iPhones where there's no difference in price.

T-Mobile has a deal if you trade in existing phone but the phone has to be high-end and recent otherwise they won't give you the trade in value needed to cover the new phone.