And in all 3 cases, the Google equivalents are worse. History shows they’ll probably just be replaced with a different product to solve the same problem which will be worse in its own ways.
Subjective, but I use both Android and iOS daily. Interesting byproduct of Android being the favorite of those obsessed with customization is that the stock apps are almost universally bad because everyone just replaces them with different niche alternatives.
Not so much that you’ve missed something or are mistaken, but Reddit is likely promoting those subs because they’re some of the only active high quality (I.e. not bots/astroturfing) ones left.
Not going to go through every example you gave, but the specific sport and team subreddits represent live and ongoing content rather than reposts from a decade ago, with many fans, strong communities, and nowhere else really to go. Consider the decline of traditional, non-steaming live TV networks, where at least here in the US, 98/100 of the top rated events people are still watching the old fashioned way are sports. Same thing.
Although to play devil's advocate a little: There are plenty of great subreddits that I had to find on my own that are thriving. Smaller subreddits, but I suggest that's partly because the people that would be interested in them aren't offered them, so it's a self fulfilling prophecy to some extent.
The issue is, however, that the managers of that community, the ones that make it thrive, have basically no comeback if reddit decides to arbitrarily step in and alter how it's run, which has been done many many times with the admins clearly not operating in a good faith manner.
Subreddit mods are told 'add more mods' and they add more mods. They're then told 'no, add some of _these_ mods.' The mods that are added then immediately go full wrecker and destroy the community.
Alternatively, subreddit mods are told 'you have too many unanswered modqueue messages' - they reply in public 'we have no unanswered modqueue messages' - reddit replies by banning them.
Seen it happen many times. Not a viable platform. The admins simply enjoy fucking with the userbase too much. The contempt they have for the users is so obvious.
Gambling is closer to smoking than regular gaming.
All the boy’s friends play the game and similar games. It’s an uphill battle and an extraordinary pressure on the parents to control each game that gets played and micromanage to that extend - to the detriment of their relationship with the child, because fighting these intentionally instilled addictive patterns will create upset in the child and tension in the relationship. The game devs pay psychologists to create the addiction at scale which the parents just cannot compete with.
In reality parents have finite amounts of energy and a finite numbers of battles to fight. Eat your food, go to school, do your homework, keep your phone charged and call me when you need me to pick you up. That kind of thing.
Having week longs drama forbidding a game that everyone else plays is just not on the map.
I agree with you in spirit, but I also can't help but think that most other internet denizens won't be satisfied with just banning the loobox aspects. most of the AAA games industry already moved past that and into battlepasses or flooding a store with direct purchase cosmetics.
It's more the nickle and diming people hate, not the actual gambling. And I don't know if we can or should regulate that.
The gambling patterns are related to taking additional action to getting the rewards - like spinning a wheel, choosing to take an additional step risking the current reward for the chance to win another one. That’s gambling, intentionally constructed to be addictive. It changes habits, normalizes addiction and is harmful.
Sure, and the console industry is already moving past it. It's now just asking you to lay $10-20 for a "season" of a battle pass, where you grind and get more rewards for your grinding. No RNG at all, just one input, and X actions to guarantee Y rewards. No more, no less.
But the games discourse online isn't exactly giving games like Fortnite any slack despite no longer using lootboxes for its monetization. Or on a fighter game (of which few ever used lootboxes) for offering dozens of skins.
That's the dangerous part on what to or not regulate. Do we want thr government regulating how many add-ons or cosmetics a game can sell?
They have no idea how to disrupt last mile delivery without corruption and theft. They’ve tried. My apartment building’s doorbox has Amazon Key, such that drivers have the ability to let themselves in and drop off packages in a secure area. I’ve confirmed with one of the better Amazon delivery drivers that it works like a charm.
The vast majority of them don’t (think/care to) use it. At this point I’m actually glad, lest they let themselves into the secure area and steal other packages.
The theft problem doesn’t vary at all in Chicago. I’m in a North (west) Side neighborhood and receive about 83% of Amazon packages, with the rest being stolen or just not delivered. Compare this with a 100% success rate for items delivered by UPS, USPS, or FedEx.
I figure at some point I’ll fall below whatever metrics Amazon has internally, they’ll stop resending/refunding packages, and I’ll have to fight the same battle as in the article. If anything, OP unfortunately/correctly teaches that empathy, common sense, and treating level 1 workers as human have no place with Bezos…you have to assume the worst and treat everything as a cost/blame situation.
I live in a high-rise which has a mail room so maybe I'm insulated from whatever factors lead to that (porch piracy obviously, but something about Amazon specifically). I didn't realize it was that bad, only getting 83% is insane
Edit: though my family in Rogers Park and the suburbs have never complained about this issue so I'm not sure it's that common.
I live in a single-family unit in Uptown and would be surprised if my rate is anywhere below 95%, I'd be shocked and demand a recount. I order several times a week, often several times a day (yeah, a lot of items I need are same-day delivery, most are next-day), and I recall two or three packages missing this year. And those were likely never delivered of to the wrong address, as they had no picture.
I live in Washington, DC. Two or three times a week on the neighborhood listserv there is an email asking whether anyone got the sender's package. Some of the problem is certainly theft, but I doubt all of it is.
No doubt there's some of this given the ridiculous photos I get through the "take a picture" feature that Amazon, DoorDash, and others believe substitutes for actually validating delivery happens.
I just don't give these tech companies any benefit of the doubt for the situation. My home is on a major street next to a door that has the street number displayed very prominently. As mentioned above, FedEx and others have 100% success rate. Amazon's delivery drivers just don't care, because Bezos has created a system where they are incentivized not to care.
You're right, not sure why the doubt in the edit. Different [areas/data points/anecdotes] will no doubt yield different results. The suburbs are very different than the neighborhoods. I used to live the Loop high-rise life, felt the same way you did.
Though Amazon usually is no help in the last mile delivery there. Encountered numerous stories of high rise package rooms that have just been overwhelmed by Amazon/since COVID. If anything, most improvement/success stories I've heard have been from a startup in the space, Luxer.
Google is basically acknowledging they don’t want and or care about portfolio/small utility/first time project apps on their store. This obviously isn’t a great look, especially when both companies nominally support educational and vocational efforts around app development. IMO, onus is on these companies to resolve the inherent contradiction here.
That said, it might be the right move. Despite some FUD in the comments that this will hinder indie devs or prevent the next Flappy Bird, such claims seem a bit exaggerated. Also, overcoming obstacles is part of the challenge of app development so if somehow this relatively low bar is the line too far…good riddance. Anecdotally, I’ve interviewed quite a few mobile developers with clear resume projects who then claim they’ve “published multiple apps to the [Play/App] store”; almost universally these candidates acknowledge without much pressing that said apps are unmaintained bitrot or even delisted due to some other unmet requirement anyhow.
I suppose the best argument is the same mentality that leads to spam on the store could be used to get around the 20 tester limit. Sure, but I’d expect that Google expects at least meaningful improvement even with malevolent actors, as that’s the new normal with such mitigations in any online marketplace these days.
What he’s basically saying here is “I’d rather let my personal opinion prevail than responsibly disclose and get some vulnerabilities fixed.”
Even if, at their worst, Apple is as petty as he’s “heard” (given the FUD surrounding quite a lot of engineer’s), the proper response is responding with less pettiness, not more. It’s reflective of the author’s character no matter how he expressed the tantrum.
Well this is absolute bullshit. You're discussing private software. It's up to the owner to offer a bug program that's enticing enough to debug their own software if they care.
Reporting a vulnerability should be extremely low effort. Regardless of how I feel about a company I wouldn't want users to get screwed. I tried to disclose to google once and they required an account so instead I moved on with my life. I don't care about random people enough to make a google account.
It's very strange because like OP, huge fanboy. Early on it felt wrong to also burden Cupertino with being a cultural leader, but somewhere around $1.0T+ market cap, that has evolved.
Vaguely remember a charity used to have a thing where they'd auction off a dinner with Steve, then later Tim. Given time with a leader who has literally revolutionized supply chain in CN and a CEO who made Apple his own following the most notable CEO ever, going after various gotcha points would feel like a wasted opportunity. But think I'd have to ask why a company designed in California of the 1960s and 1970s doesn't have line in the sand policies when dealing with a genocidal government and perpetual backdoors in software and politics, but will take a move like this. Would hope for something more than a canned answer.
Capital. Once you grow to a certain point, politics and ideas are only good for marketing. Companies will happily work with banana republics and dictators if it outweighs the losses from paying your PR team a little more for a few months. Companies are not your friend, as in the end they only care about your money.
Obviously is super valuable, but overreliance on internal promotion can lead to not built here syndrome and rather close minded growth, esp if the co has a strong enough recruiting pipeline + brand to keep people hired fresh out of uni eventually claiming most senior/leadership positions.
> it leaves out quite a bit of agency from the employee
Good catch. Of course it does, as the easiest and most lazy trend in software engineering thinkpieces is to blame middle management.
Keep in mind that 90% of the article (itself “fake work” as another commenter pointed out) has nothing to do with managers. The only substantiated mention there is from a gaggle of “strategic” academics at overpriced universities, i.e. those part of what is currently the biggest scam industry of them all.
Nonetheless, the causes here are so glaringly obvious that the article somehow still calls out 1) overhiring endorsed from the very top and 2) infantile responses from engineers who take absolutely no responsibility for their circumstances or trying to make things better.
And yet, there’s absolutely no accountability for either of those groups. C-suite is rewarded by the market, fueled by culture that fetishes misguided views of developers.
Nowhere is this worse than HN, where engineers can do no wrong. Yet speaking of make work, completely pointless arguements and “Show HN”s building a CRUD API client app for the thousandth time predominate. These (lazy/pointless) projects are then evidence that these super talented minds deserve $200k+ jobs where, yet again, managers have to deal with their egos and it’s the manager’s fault when shockingly these “individual contributors” have no idea how to contribute value to a project or in many cases even act like an adult.
Subjective, but I use both Android and iOS daily. Interesting byproduct of Android being the favorite of those obsessed with customization is that the stock apps are almost universally bad because everyone just replaces them with different niche alternatives.