Especially since I think they botched the whole splitting up of iTunes (which should have happened years earlier). I want to buy a digital movie from Apple. It does not occur to me to open the TV.app then click on Store and look for it there. What do you call the iPhone syncing and backup part on the Mac? I guess they were demoted to features in the Finder with nothing to refer to it.
Then there's Apple TV (the app--just shown as TV in many places), Apple TV (the set top device), AppleTV+ (the subscription service)...with the Apple icon swapped out in some places adding to the confusion.
I sysadmin a bunch of Macs and every time I have to talk about Apple's mail client to users -- as opposed to the generic concept of mail -- it's a whole ordeal. "Do you use Mail? Uhh, Mail.app, you know, Apple Mail, the built-in one that comes with macOS"
Usually when rebrandings are actually successful they are more about hiding whatever came before. This is very hard to execute well though.
One extremely successful example is Musically -> TikTok for the international version of Douyin.
Musically had a very bad reputation and TikTok was able to start cleanly and operate without that scrutiny for years resulting in it becoming mainstream.
Especially funny here, since officially Musk isn’t the CEO anymore and the actual CEO (Linda Yaccarino) has an advertising background and must have known this was a terrible idea.
It's quite funny how Gwynne Shotwell is able to steer SpaceX despite Musk while this new Twitter CEO is borderline toothless. There is just no way she would have allowed this to play out, given that advertising and branding is her core competency. So am guessing she was overruled.
Shotwell was recruited by Musk in 2002 and became COO in 2008. I feel Shotwell is more comfortable telling Elon to fuck off and has more autonomy in her role because shes almost a cofounder.
I’m pretty sure Musk was a much more stable person back then. The thing that completely made him hate the left and lose his mind was one of his kids becoming trans. It really is annoying there isn’t any true centrism and if you have to align with the left you have to buy into this trans ideology or your only other option is the logic defying insanity that is the right.
What exactly is "trans ideology"? And how do you "buy into it"?
I consider myself a centrist on most things. And I don't really understand that statement.
Either you think that people who want to dress, act, and be treated differently than their birth sex should be allowed to do so. Or you think that people should be forced to act and be treated as based on societal gender expectations.
The ideology part is the declaration that "transwomen ARE women", and that anyone who disagrees is a terf. At the extreme, there is the belief that 'identifying' as a women makes you a women, and that you don't even need surgery or hormones to qualify.
It goes much further than 'societal gender expectations' and accepting or denying that people should be able to dress and act how they want.
You don't seem to know the biology of hormone therapy very well. You might wanna research a little bit better.
> At the extreme, there is the belief that 'identifying' as a women makes you a women, and that you don't even need surgery or hormones to qualify.
This is about how you talk to people mostly. Nobody on the left believes that a man who wants to be a women is automatically biologically a women — that would be absurd, which is why the right likes to show it that way. What they believe in is that when a man decides to take the hard, life-changing decision to become a women the bare minimum decent thing is to respect that and call them "she" or "her".
I made no claims about biology or hormones, or my personal position for that matter — I simply stated that there is a trans ideology, and it goes beyond didibus' "Either you think... Or you think..." statement.
You were using the term "trans ideology" with the claim the left sees a persons self-declaration of wanting to transition as someone "being" a women.
I said two things:
1. If a man does hormone therapy they are biologically transitioning towards a woman, this is e.g. why they can give breast milk. In biology a sex isn't always as clear cut as many believe and there exists ample scientific research on the topic, so this isn't the topic of our discussion.
2. With the biology out of the way, what remains is the question of the gender — the social, societal and mental role of what it means to "be" a woman. And obviously like with any role people can have different ideas of what it includes and what it excludes. What the left does is simply to say: "Fuck those social constructs, they don't help us, if someone wants to be a woman they are a woman", while the more conservative type might have very specific (bit in the face of history: arbitrary) ideas on what a "true" woman looks like, behaves like, is like.
The conservative definition of the gender roles we have a net-negative effect in our society. And that goes for men as well. So many "real" men, that immitate what they think "makes a man" — because of fear that they are not they fail their loved ones and they fail themselves. They confuse acting strong with being strong, while the strong (=harder to do) thing would be to confront your own weaknesses.
So if trans-ideology simply means not taking those roles seriously I am on board. If it means something else I am all ears.
I do find it strange to call it an "ideology", but I guess if you want to say that.
It still seems to me it's just debating the idea that people who want to dress, act, and be treated differently than their birth sex should be allowed to do so or not.
I guess you can say that's an ideology, because it's an ideal societal reality that is being advocated for, to allow for this behavior and socially accept it.
But I don't see what you find goes beyond this?
Problem: Someone would prefer to be treated like society treats woman, including being referred too as one.
> there is the belief that 'identifying' as a women makes you a women
Do you mean that you do not believe that anyone has a brain chemistry that makes them feel like either they have the wrong gendered body or like they're not totally quite woman or man?
Or do you just mean that you don't trust everyone who pretends as such, and think there are some that are just opportunist about it?
Then you’re a woman that is dressing and acting like a man. It’s a personal choice and no one should have any problem with it. But claiming you are now a man makes no sense.
That's the point. Your conceptualization of gender doesn't actually make sense to the true reality of gender expression.
You have this idea that gender "should" be some way. You were told this, and raised to believe that. But if you're observant of the real world, you see that there exists many people for whom this doesn't make sense.
You can see there are people that have the traits of one and the sex of another. You can see that there exist many more relevant characteristics than just genitals. The structure, size and connections of the brain, the hormonal balance, the organs, the bone structure, the chromosomes, etc. All these things exists in so many more combinations than two distinct clearly delineated sets.
And so, like we did in the past with believing the earth was the center of the universe, or not knowing what caused diseases before we learned about germs, or why thunder would strike. We're forced to re-evaluate our understanding of reality, and update our mental models with one that can fit all we observe and better predict reality.
In the past, ideology has actually worked to repress and hide this reality. Forcing people that don't comform to pretend otherwise.
And yet here we are, thousands of years into human history, and still there exists many people that don't fit the model. They existed throughout history, there's accounts of it in writing from many prior civilizations.
Which takes me back to what I said previously. You can continue to want to repress them. Or you can just accept a model where there is a spectrum of gender, with most people fitting nicely one side or the other, but also many that are somewhere in between.
And that means, if they want to act or be treated one way or another, you can be okay with that. Or you can think that we should force them otherwise.
This sounds like a urban legend or an isolated incident portrayed to make the issue sound big and scary.
Prisons should be evaluating whether the person was genuinely living as a woman (and possibly taking hormone treatments, etc) before putting them into a women’s prison, and not just because they declared “I’m a woman now” after being convicted and sentenced.
Nobody making a fuss about trans people causing problems in prisons seems to give a single fuck about all the sexual assaults and rapes that happen between men or between women in prisons. It’s only when trans people come into the picture then all of a sudden prison rape becomes a big issue.
I think you still didn't address gp's statement? You cherry picked a handful of examples but failed to provide data indicting this is truly a systemic issue. Or at least an issue that is specifically worse than non-trans rape/sexual assault that occurs at correctional facilities. So basically absent that sort of data, the gender issue of the assailant is irrelevant - rape and sexual assault are a serious problem at these facilities that in general need a solution to improve the situation. If you put all your effort into stopping rape-by-trans and somehow you are able to make it go away, you still have rape-by-non-trans to deal with which is a much larger issue.
My suggestion is instead of screwing up the world, screwing up your own business, or ranting about “trans ideology” you instead try something very simple: love your kid. Tell them you accept them no matter what they want to be. I promise you that you’ll get to a better outcome that way than you will in any of the previous scenarios.
I agree 100%. But there is something more to it. For example, there are thousands of girls that, at a certain age, would just feel that they're lesbian and experimented with that, and either go on with this or decide they prefer heterosexual relationships more, but these days they undergo a life-changing treatment. Yes, many parents are desperate and blame those who point these kids in this direction. Paradoxically, both sides have good intentions and want the best for the kids.
That's not what happens. The waiting lists are incredibly long, and treatment is often withheld by clinicians - to a trans kid's detriment. If there were thousands of girls undergoing life-changing surgeries they would later regret, there would be thousands of detransitioners already - instead of the same few people flown from hearing to hearing.
You're talking of the fears of people like J.K. Rowling, who said she would be scared of having transitioned if it had been available to her when she was younger. And somehow that's supposed to be scary.
Says who? You can be left wing without accepting trans ideology, and you can be right wing without becoming a nutjob. And nobody is forcing you to align with either the left or the right anyway.
What party? It's very strange that the democratic party exists in two states within America - the boogeyman democratic party on Fox News, and the actual democratic party that votes in congress. What trans "agenda" is the democratic party actually pushing?
This boogeyman democratic party seems to only exist so that conservatives can hide behind the label of "centrist". In this alternative universe, AOC is the president instead of a Representative (she's not even a Senator!).
You might consider that you drank the rights kool aid/carricature a bit too much — and if you grew up in a world where trans people were portrayed as "abnormal" that might have something to do with you being receptive to it. The US left is already pretty moderate. The Democrats are a centrist party by most of the worlds standard. Where I am from they would be the conservatives, and I am from a deeply catholic province in the Alps.
That means your right is just so very far right, that centrism is no longer a useful term in the US.
That being said, people "become" trans just like one "becomes" left handed: You discover it one day and go: "Oh shit, I am trans/left handed". There is nothing you can do about it. Sure you can hide it from society to avoid scaring them, but that is very unhealthy for you.
There was a long time when kids had to hide their left handedness because it was seen as "abnormal" by the right handed majority. And then when it became medically irrefutable that it is natural and that forcing right handedness on left handed people can have serious medical and paychological sideffects left handedness became normalized. Suddenly there was a "rise" in left handed people (in fact however the left handed people existed all the time, they were just hiding it). The number of left handed people then stagneted around it's natural occurance rate of roughly 12%.
The whole trans discourse is a discussion about a very similar phenomenom. People are gay, trans, asexual, left handed and there is nothing they can do about it, as they have been born with that trait. Now the flipside of that is that you can't get gay/trans/asexual/left handed by being "exposed" to it. Either you are already trans and hide it from yourself so well that it probably alreasy takes a psychological toll or (much more likely) you are not.
That being said, what is the "trans ideology of the left"? I can't speak for the US, but a few thoughts:
1. to speak of "the left" is... interesting. Last time I checked they all had different views on the same topic. So whom do you mean, or are we speaking about the left as the right paints it?
2. At least the left people I know don't do anything more than say: "If you are born trans, that is okay, we accept you." I guess if you agree with the scientific consesus that being trans is not something you learn, but something you are, then this should be a acceptable view to you too.
3. Because most trans people are not treated well by the society around them, the left often demonstratively gives trans people special exclusive spaces or helps them in ways they pobably wouldn't help a straight white guy from an upper-middle class background. As any political solution this can either solve real problems or be pie in the sky, but hey they are trying to help.
> People are gay, trans, asexual, left handed and there is nothing they can do about it, as they have been born with that trait.
Do we actually know that yet though? Handedness seems to be genetic, but for the rest we really don't know the causes.
> "If you are born trans, that is okay, we accept you." ... this should be a acceptable view to you too.
Why? It shouldn't matter if it's innate, a development 'disorder', a choice, or a result of trauma or social contagion. We can just accept people anyway.
> Do we actually know that yet though? Handedness seems to be genetic, but for the rest we really don't know the causes.
Yeah we know that (for various definitions of "know", but the evidence suggests biological factors have the most impact). There could be more research on that topic (and there would have been if the Nazis didn't burn down the first research institute that researched that field). This is a good starting point: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_gender_incongruenc...
> Why? It shouldn't matter if it's innate, a development 'disorder', a choice, or a result of trauma or social contagion. We can just accept people anyway.
Then we agree. And I am not sure "The" left wouldn't agree with the both of us as well. Most leftists I know are also pretty accepting of similar conditions (e.g. mental health acceptance, etc).
What a load of crap. People become “gay” in jail because they have no choice. A lot of people in heavily conservative societies where they aren’t allowed to easily come in contact with women are “gay”. It’s not genetically defined.
Her role appears to be fronting anything that would be too much of a humiliating climb-down for Musk, which is why she's doing all of the work on trying to assure advertisers that there will be a way for ads not to appear in the middle of Nazi content any day now.
It's like how you can't buy an oscilloscope from HP, the company that defined the test equipment market. Or how you can't buy an IBM pc anymore. Or how Boston chicken changed to Boston market and back and back
> It's like how you can't buy an oscilloscope from HP, the company that defined the test equipment market. Or how you can't buy an IBM pc anymore
Or how you can't even buy an express horse-and-buggy package delivery from Wells Fargo.
Moving out of markets (because you lost your competitive edge, because your star players have died/retired/became goat farmers, because the margins have gone to zero, because some other market is much more profitable) is completely different from actively and preventably screwing up a market you're in.
> how you can't even buy an express horse-and-buggy package delivery from Wells Fargo.
You're focusing on implemention details which are irrelevant. Every company changed what machines or processes they use under the hood after the industrial revolution and computerization.
From their own history [1], they weren't a general package service, but mainly delivered/transferred money. They still do this as one of their core services. Even internationally at a much larger scope than they used to. [2]
This is not the same as not being able to buy an IBM PC or HP oscilloscope.
Except unlike horse and buggy delivery, there's still demand for test equipment. In this case, HP spun off their test equipment arm as Agilent, which spun it off again under the name KeySight. They still make scopes.
Well Fargo's previous business wasn't really express deliveries. It was secure deliveries:
"The company had built a reputation for taking safety seriously, and its stagecoaches carried gold, silver, and other valuables from one location to the next. To safeguard such shipments, Wells Fargo shipped gold and other treasure in sturdy wooden boxes carried in the front boot of a stagecoach or secured inside the stagecoach in an iron safe."
A big part of Wells Fargos business back in the day was moving money around, same with western union.
Wells Fargo still does that, just in a different way. Same with Western Union.
"The company had built a reputation for taking safety seriously, and its stagecoaches carried gold, silver, and other valuables from one location to the next. To safeguard such shipments, Wells Fargo shipped gold and other treasure in sturdy wooden boxes carried in the front boot of a stagecoach or secured inside the stagecoach in an iron safe."
Go is not quite the same in that it didn't have an existing established brand to ruin. But it managed to roll with that name, after years of building on it.
"X" might be an OK name 16 years from now, the problem is that it already has a pretty good name called "Twitter".
Yep - beat me to that .. and I wanted to dive in as I once used Ingres before Postgres became a thing!
I came to Postgres just before the GIS range filters were added and chipped in on the backend as a project (very old now) needed a DB with GIS capabilities.
Reminds me of my girlfriend's favorite band at Columbia in the 80's - "The Special Guests". They eventually had to change their name because people kept showing up expecting, I don't know, Billy Joel or Beastie Boys, and got mad.
It took a ton of effort to find and order a cd by a group called Various. No clue if they did that as a laugh or not, but I was relieved when I found them.
I once got a club night for an event called "Sold Out" and while I could see what the organisers were trying to do with that - give the idea it was popular - I could also see what a mind-blowingly terrible name it actually was, giving the impression of a) being "sold out" so not worth trying to get a ticket for, and b) being a "sell out" which is not the impression any brand trying to be cool should give.
A friend was booked to DJ there and apparently it was not sold out, it was barely attended at all, to my complete lack of surprise :D
> I'm reminded of how poorly named the Go programming language is. So many people refer to it as "golang" since "go" is too common of a word.
The first search results for [go], [rust], and [ruby] all return links about the programming languages. And most people can figure it out from the context.
I guess my point is I see people all day everyday Monday-morning-quarterbacking decisions made by immensely successful people done so with zero humility nor recognition of all the home-runs these people have hit. There is seemingly no reason for these critics to feel like they can uniquely handicap the decisions these people made yet they are never remotely reluctant to do so. It just gets obnoxious seeing a random HNer think they know more about branding than the founder of Tesla and SpaceX -- to the point of accusing this founder of missing which would otherwise be obvious to the HNer. Wait a few years then opine.
Tesla wasn't founded by Musk (he acquired it in 2004), and regarding how he likes to put X's everywhere, this rebranding feels like an ego trip more than a conscious marketing decision.
Now to be honest, after having completely destroyed the Twitter brand, moving to a new name might seem like a good idea to make people forget about the "Titter" catastophe. But now instead of having to reconstruct Twitter's reputation, he has to create a whole new reputation for a whole new brand who just happens to already have disgruntled user from the get go...
Is your argument that Musk isn't most directly responsible for the state of the Tesla brand? Were you familiar with the brand prior to Musk's acquisition?
No, and no. I just mentioned that Musk didn't found Tesla, not more than Tim Cook founded Apple. The rest of my comment wasn't a deduction from this, although I admit I could have phrased it more explicitly.
My argument is that, as a spectator, it just seems to me like Musk is a mad man with big baby energy, and that at worst this rebranding is just another ego trip, and at best, it might be a tentative at making people forget his destruction of T[w]itter and starting from scratch.
In my Play Store experience, a modicum of trust is established merely over the icon. If I see an app and positively confirm that its icon is official and authentic, that's a good flag. If I search for something and I see a bunch of janky fake icons, then I avoid them all. Of course an icon is not the be-all-end-all; you need to check the publisher too, and reputable apps usually have Verified Publishers to go with them.
So that's why, even if your X app shows up in a search for the term "Twitter", if your app doesn't bear the officially-trademarked blue birdie icon, then everyone's going to squint and scoff at it, or not even notice it.
Awhile ago I was playing mobile games with a friend, and she has iPhone while I have Android. So part of the challenge was finding a cross-platform game. And many of them didn't have verified publishers or anything, so the best way to ensure that we both downloaded the same app was to show her the icon so that she could hunt for the same image in the App Store.
Icons are also becoming the default way of identifying apps on your system, too. While Android 11 still has text captions for icons on the Home screen, I find them superfluous. In fact, I've taken to creating folders and labeling them with several emoji, and no Latin text at all. I've also done this to my Bookmarks Bar: saves a lot of screen space!
> Of course an icon is not the be-all-end-all; you need to check the publisher too, and reputable apps usually have Verified Publishers to go with them.
And the X app is verified on both stores as "X Corp", which doesn't exactly build confidence.
0% chance he's doing that but it's funny to think that he is.
Obviously he really does want it to be an everything app. Musk is very transparent about his ambitions and feelings. He's not someone to bear holding a secret, he'd want to share it so he could get the validation from telling people about his plans and his followers will act like he's already succeeded.
If that's the case, then I applaud him. But considering the kind of BS he's been spewing for years, I don't think this is some kind of secret long-term plan to destroy Twitter; I think he really drinks his own kool-aid.
I don't think so either. But I also know people who still think Trump is playing some 4D chess game and has the corrupt politicians and media right where he wants them. Any day now he's gonna win.
Just like Trump's followers who think the election was stolen, there are a lot of Sanders followers who think the nomination was stolen, despite the votes going massively against him. The difference is that Trump is telling his followers that this nonsense is true, while Sanders supporters are making their own conspiracy theories.
Huh? The Sanders followers blame the DNC for supporting Hillary over him, during the primaries. I'm pretty sure that was proven by the DNC email leak, it's not a "conspiracy theory": the DNC really was working for Hillary.
I'm not aware of any Sanders followers thinking the actual votes were altered. The voters (in places that had primaries and not caucuses) really did vote for Hillary. The controversy was that the DNC wasn't properly neutral and that this affected the results. Whether the DNC being neutral would have actually resulted in Sanders winning, I don't think anyone can know, though it's probably doubtful. He certainly had a better message than "vote for me because I'm a woman and it's my turn!", and lacked all the baggage that Hillary came with, and had far more charisma (which the DNC infamously doesn't understand the value of), but considering the Republican voters were happy to vote for a guy who bragged about grabbing women by the pussy, I don't think we can assume the best about the voters of any party.
No, not just like at all. The allegations against the DNC by Sanders supporters are orders of magnitude smaller in scale. There's nothing unrealistic or delusional about "Members of the DNC colluded against outsider" or "Members of the DNC all acted independently against outsider for the sake of their own interests".
Also the difference in evidence and reaction is huge.
> There's nothing unrealistic or delusional about "Members of the DNC colluded against outsider" or "Members of the DNC all acted independently against outsider for the sake of their own interests".
There is a world of difference between those not being unrealistic and "The DNC rigged the nomination so Sanders wouldn't win."
I’m certain this is what’s going on. Every move he’s made since he took over has been destructive to the foundation of the company and brand. Like him or not, he’s not that stupid. I think he’s pissed that he was basically forced into the sale for running his mouth and decided to take revenge by destroying the company.
The people that he bought the company from already got the money, which was more money than they could get on the open market. They don't give a fuck what he does with his company now. If you think he's tanking his own company to get back at the people who have all the money he gave them...yeah he's that stupid.
The reason why he keeps doing all these comically dumb things is exactly because people like you think he's cooking something. He has no one around him questioning the decisions he's making, so they keep getting worse, because that's literally what happens to every human in history who goes unchallenged for too long.
> Occam's razor is not an embargo against the positing of any kind of entity, or a recommendation of the simplest theory come what may. Occam's razor is used to adjudicate between theories that have already passed "theoretical scrutiny" tests and are equally well-supported by evidence.
Probably not. He borrowed 1/4 of the money from banks secured by Twitters value. Intentionally destroying that value may leave him open to personal liability. Just like if you have a mortgage but decide one day to bulldoze your house. Your bank can totally come after you if you do that and stop paying them.
That analogy isn’t at all apt, for the same reason that white-collar criminals are much more likely to get away with it. There is just way more grey area, way more reasonable doubt, in burning Twitter to the ground vs bulldozing your house.
Your honour, I didn’t mean to hold up that liquor store. It was merely incompetence. I was just trying to act on my legal obligation to my shareholders.
Grey area, sure. He legit thought a rebrand was a great idea! But shuttering the company would be a clear cut example of him intentionally sinking the company.
Once he fails they’ll say he was too big to fail. Corporate socialism will bail him out one way or another. Us, the taxpaying plebe, will cover the bank’s losses with increased mortgage rates and the government’s losses with increased taxes.
Honestly this feels like one of those situations where you just gotta ask what good is “fuck you” money if you don’t use it to tell people “fuck you”
He was forced to buy something that he only momentarily wanted to buy. And out of spite he just drives it into the ground.
Nothing else connects these dots in any way that aligns with his other successes, unless there’s some whole other part of this constellation I haven’t seen yet.
> Nothing else connects these dots in any way that aligns with his other successes, unless there’s some whole other part of this constellation I haven’t seen yet.
A. Luck. As we all know, there's a certain amount of luck involved in building a business. So "he got lucky, repeatedly, and then didn't" kinda works as an explanation.
B. as I understand it, he didn't found SpaceX or Tesla, but bought them and forced everyone to pretend he founded them.
C. Again, as I understand it, the management at the other businesses spend a lot of time managing Elon's ego, and this has been missing at X/Twitter.
I think this story will be discussed at length in future MBA classes. Interesting to see it happen in real time.
This is part of the narrative (and by all accounts, definitely what it "looked like" happened) but I'm starting to warm up to the idea Musk was commissioned to eliminate Twitter given its inconvenience to established wealthy and international interests. It would be hella convenient and arguably be worth even a 44 billion price tag (which is almost nothing to a hodgepodge of governments and institutional investors) to get rid of Twitter.
Especially since he seems to be at least tangentially involved with the Saudis methinks (based on his prior "Financing to go private secured" stock manipulation scheme he got wrist-slapped for...Who knows who else the guy's in bed with. Being a supervillian is way more fun than a superhero
maybe it helped that the other companies had specific physical products as an end goal. It's not like he wasn't doing stupid shit at tesla, but at the end of the day, the people actually doing the work are still focusing on making a car. He can't decide seatbelts are uncool and remove them. If you put a manchild in charge of a website, things are a lot more open ended.
> Nothing else connects these dots in any way that aligns with his other successes, unless there’s some whole other part of this constellation I haven’t seen yet.
All that remains is for someone to convince Musk to sell them the trademark for Twitter (suggesting a price of $69.420 ought to do it) and the revival can begin.
I don't understand the Musk fandom in the comments, I've never seen anything to signal to me he's been anything but a savvy investor? He's a better engineer than the average finance bro sure, but seems far from notable in any discipline this site typically cares about? His acquisition of Twitter destroyed the lives of many hard working people and has made it okay for many more companies to follow similar dark patterns (insane API pricing, furthering content lockdown, probably other stuff I don't like to see in the industry)
Bezos has had a rocket company for over a decade and never reached orbit.
I agree that Musk looks like an ass with Twitter but it's a heck of a coincidence that both Tesla and SpaceX were successful doing things nobody thought was possible.
Having spent some time in corporate america, it's a pretty low bar for execs in technical fields. Maybe he just had to be reasonably bright and focused on the mission instead of internal politics.
I could make the same argument for me. It's a heck of a coincidence the place where I work had no product or revenue or customers before they hired me and a few years later suddenly we have 5 products, huge contracts, and are one of the most hot brand names in our AI niche.
But is my contribution interchangeable with any rando or am I a 10x engineer? Was my contribution even net positive or did others on my team carry my dead weight to the finish line?
Once you've seen a rocket land itself Musk looks like a visionary - that was the turning point for me personally.
I'm a huge space nerd and Musk seems to understand future trends and how to get in early regardless of how it looks from the outside. So a bit of savvy investor mixed in with passionate about product in ways you don't expect from a money man.
Plus his opinions just coincide with a lot of my opinions when i hear his interviews. The X stuff seems like something I can't see yet coz i'm not a social media guy and avoid it in general. I've actually started using twitter more as a consequence of the rebrand coz I want to see if it's going anywhere.
As for the "dark patterns" i think it's just a recession/AI content theft hitting and it was gonna happen anyways, everyone was just holding their breath hoping they weren't the first in line.
App Store rankings most definitely cannot be taken to be a reliable indicator for anything. Max is at No. 3, while Netflix is at No. 29 - this doesn't actually tell you anything, except that Max has more downloads at the moment.
Threads is obviously going to rank high, because the vast majority of Instagram users haven't used it yet - they're going to download it now, and so it's at No. 2. Looking at how badly the platform seems to have tanked from launch, I'm not keeping my hopes up on it being a competitor to X in any meaningful way.
It would be nice if apps could be ranked weighted by install order. When someone is setting up a new phone, I want to know which apps they consider so essential that they install them right away. That's a much better signal of utility (to me) than overall app install volume trends.
On iOS this still wouldn’t mean much, as anyone upgrading from a previous iPhone (probably 90% or more of users) just do an automatic transfer from their old phone. This just redownloads all the apps in a semi-random order.
I do have an access to a couple of third party AppStore analytics tools and they clearly show a drop both on iOS and on Android after initial spike after rebranding. On iOS, the downloads are roughly half of what they were at the beginning of the year and 1/3 less than what they were during the month before the rebranding. Note that these are only rough estimates but they are relatively good at predicting the trend.
Couldn't Elon have shutdown Twitter entirely in a single day? Why the long process? Is he punishing someone for it? Is it a private bet betweens billionaires?
From what i've understood reading about the rebrand - broad strokes - he wants "X" to be an all in one portal to future internet experiences like metaverse/AI/crypto.
Kinda like metaverse stuff at Meta but instead of being a separate thing from the successful base product just rebrand the base product so people expect it to be more.
It sorta makes sense but could also be some kinda ego move idk anymore.
Remember when netflix was renamed to Qwix? The difference here is that elon is not concerned about losing billions because he will still have billions and remain in the top 5 billionaire club.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Musk’s plan was to have the illusion of a failed plan to tank downloads so that the news media would write about the failed plan to tank downloads of X, increasing publicity. Kind of genius, really.
Twitter had that already. People just convinced themselves otherwise, mostly due to politically driven narratives, but it always had real people and interesting conversations.
Of course, if your bar for quality is "more shitposting, chaos and racism" then I can see how you might think Twitter has improved. I don't consider any of that interesting, though.
I never said I wanted a "far left echo chamber". I'd prefer conversations with people who have matured intellectually and emotionally beyond adolescence, and are possessed of basic human decency. Unfortunately that's getting more and more difficult to find these days, even around here.
You describe people who reject your radical woke leftist beliefs (let's not beat around the bush here) as "intellectually and emotionally adolescent" and lacking "basic human decency". Pot calling the kettle black.
Hard agree. Twitter used to be actively bad for me - the for you page is simply incredible, and dialogue on the platform enriches my life every day I use it. It's the first time in my experience I actually feel like a social network is a net positive to my life. Opening X (Twitter) genuinely gives me joy.
That's nice to hear - I didn't use Twitter in 2009!
As I've said earlier - the groupthink on HN is at astoundingly high levels nowadays. First everyone said subscriptions are the way to go. Seriously - this was unanimous. And absolutely everyone on HN would complain about their linear timeline being taken away.
Now that Elon has bought the company, he's introduced a (good) subscription based product (while simultaneously keeping free access), and he's reintroduced the linear timeline. And HN can't seem to stop whining.
Honestly considering leaving this site - I can't seem to find any genuine debates any more. Not that it has anything to do with HN - what do I know, this perception of HN of mine might just be me seeing the platform through heavy bias. But the perception is there.
I think people are looking at this from the wrong perspective. X.com is not a rebrand. Elon Musk is trying to build a new service and is just jumpstarting it by shifting the Twitter user base.
It continues to amaze me how poor branding decisions get made when you could have easily predicted this.
I'm reminded of how poorly named the Go programming language is. So many people refer to it as "golang" since "go" is too common of a word.
If I name something I want people to search for, I'll definitely go with something more unique.