Been like this forever… Version 1.0 always sucks. Even worse is when a company ships a 0.4.2.1 beta and still calls it 1.0.
Testing costs a lot and hey, why not let your early adopters pay the price in return for having something nobody else has yet.
Ever since we started seeing traffic cameras showing up at intersections 15 or 20 years ago and recording license plates, I’ve had an uneasy feeling that these data pools just become a tool to move against people at any time in the future.
I’m not opposed to enforcement of rules. I want there to be rules in society and it’s important that we have resources dedicated to the enforcement of rules.
What I don’t want is a goliath unfair advantage that can be easily used to hurt people - even inadvertently - by ill-trained or malicious authorities.
The government has unlimited resources to prosecute people and destroy lives through the process. And it’s extremely expensive for people to defend themselves, even when falsely accused. The risk to everyday people, many who are following the laws, is just too high.
And if the wind blows towards fascist tendencies, that pool of data on you just became your worst nightmare.
The Fourth amendment was created in response to abuses by British authorities. At one point we wanted to protect individual privacy and property rights from government overreach.
Americans are not free if they are being detained for “probable cause” because some database + opaque lines of code said there is probable cause.
I now avoid all videos showing deaths or serious injuries (if I know that kind of content is coming).
Feels better to not have those images in my mind.
Once they are following, I’d think you can begin to convert them to higher tiers of support through private channels?
It’s all about control of reach.
If I was an influencer and using Patreon (I’m neither), it’s a simple decision:
Total reach * conversion rate * platform commission = income
Apple’s app store has a fuckton of desirable reach - they monopolize (arguably literally) all the easy payments from iphones and kill anybody else who tries to redirect eyeballs. They are too strong. But what else are you going to do if you need Patreons or app customers, etc?
You can’t ignore the reach, and you’d have to pay or work harder to get eyeballs another way too unless you can get free publicity by being crazy or something and pull people into your own payment/ download channels.
Huly is worth checking out. We’ve been on it for about a year. They’re in super active developments so features are coming rapidly, sometimes breaking or requiring migrations.
They have both a SaaS version and self-hosted version.
Handful of Windows desktop apps that don’t work well on Wine - WeChat desktop, LINE app desktop. I do tons of copy pasting of mocked up screenshots and stuff. It just doest work as well as in windows.
I wonder if I’ll soon be able to just lean back and bark orders at my PC.
I’m no China expert but I lived In South China for a while between 2016 and 2024. The Chinese people I know are mostly hardworking, very motivated to succeed, and well capitalized. In their major cities you might be surprised to learn normal guys who earn half what you do are living a higher quality of life than you are, in terms of access to technology.
Their government is no doubt using uncouth methods to give their country unfair advantages. They don’t play well with others.
But holy shit there is one thing this Chinese government is doing well: effectively driving growth with targeted investments in the economy. They have been focused on that one mission consistently for a long time.
While democracies fuck around trying to decide if they should tax themselves to build public transportation, China installs 10 new ultrafast subway lines in just a few years in every big city. Covers the country in a network of high-speed rail. Drives the price of shipping goods around the country to almost nothing.
A kind of monoparty like China has is very likely a net negative when we look at world history, but for moments of time, if it’s the right one, amazing things can happen.
I have a laptop and a handful of desktops between my office and home. Some run Windows and some run Linux. I simply choose which one matches my task best.
Systems where I’m writing server-side code are going to be Linux. Systems that run jobs in the back end such as my self hosting stuff are all Linux. Systems where I’m doing email, documents, and general web browsing are going to be Windows.
Of course, my Windows systems have WSL, and my Linux systems can run Windows apps in virt. These days the line is super blurred and it would no doubt be possible to use only one if I were willing to give up some native app running.
After shovels were invented, we decided to dig more holes.
After hammers were invented, we needed to drive more nails.
Now that vibe coding has been invented, we are going to write more software.
No shit
Should have been Jeemail. Lost opportunity…
A lot of FOSS projects are freemium based which seems viable for larger more complex projects.
In these projects it’s common to see the developer get paid for adding features on top of the core version, for a SaaS version, for custom development, or for offering support.
Other projects with a lot of community interest - and a good “community manager” style organizer can attract contributors in the form of pulls, bug testing and reports, and widespread use which generates valuable marketing. These projects only exist because of the labor of love from the whole community.
Here’s an example of the split screen not running at full width on Black Ops 3
And here’s how it used to look on Black Ops 1: https://youtu.be/lnF2W-e7e8Q
I’m not so sure about the latest versions, if they made local split screen better.
Black Ops 3 has the Kino der Toten map split screen but it doesn’t run full width. I’m pretty sure the same map on Black Ops 1 did run full width.
My favorite moments with these games were always playing locally, and having that keeps the game playable for as long as you own it and a working console.
A full width split screen zombies mode, and a full lobby of people who want to play Kino Der Toten are pretty much the only thing that would interest me in another COD BLOPS title.
I just can’t imagine who these titles are for now. I appreciate they’re trying to make the graphics and sound amazing, but these online experiences, as imagined by the developers, have taken away more than they’ve given.
The last modern warfare title I bought was MW2, that bizarro named one. I opened it a few weeks ago and the whole game has become a loader to other COD games and its multiplayer lobbies are empty. So stupid and I wish I could get a refund.
This is something travel agent websites do too.
If you’re logged out, they’ll show you a price that’s really attractive. But if you log in with an account that’s got some history, they’ll suddenly say that price is no longer available now you need to pay the higher price.
Agoda.com I’m looking at you
I’m not against ads in principle. The advertisers are paying the bill for stuff I consume. Great.
For that effort, they get a chance at my wallet. And to be honest, making me aware of a business or product is indeed a way to get me interested in what they sell. I do prefer the ads to be relevant instead of always useless.
That being said, it’s currently preferable to use a blocker and let the people who don’t know how to use blockers subsidize my ad-free ways.
A lot of people buy in to the argument that authorities should be able to conveniently take down bad people, and limiting privacy expectations is a way to do that.
It’s such a short sighted perspective, outsourcing the future to men who yearn for power like that.
Uh oh… I bet the sound isn’t directional enough to work like this too. Yet.